Dreaming of (Bhutanese) temples from Brussels

Do you think these painters knew something about nuclear physics 'avant la lettre'?

Bhutan travels days-6 Punakha Dzong

Mystic Law

On Thursday a friend called –wanting to meet up, chant and talk. I was reluctant. There were deadlines and so I prevaricated. Then in the evening I re-read his message. And realised I was feeling the same as he was. And I remembered how important it was to support members of my Buddhist community, and realised I could delay some of Friday’s activities with no kickback. So I phoned him back – he came over the next day, we had breakfast, talked about our problems (obstacles/challenges, whatever) and chanted together for a half hour. Half way through chanting my phone rang twice – I ignored it. After my friend left I checked the messages- one was a solution to an administrative problem that has been bugging me since mid-November. I realised this was the mystic law in action – in a very direct way – by supporting others you create the magnetism that creates benefits and solutions in your own life.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

Soon I will write about this administrative problem (changing my car registration from Dutch to Belgian). It has caused me sleepless nights and generated endless phone calls and visits. But I want to write about it from a position of victory rather than whinging about administrative inefficiencies (and as many of those are Dutch as they are Belgian).

On leaving my friend gave me some guidance. I have heard it before – but it is worth repeating: 0- 1-2-3. One hour of daimoku a day, 20 minutes of study, make three people happy and never, ever complain (because its undignified). If I could keep that up for a month my life state would be so much stronger.

On blogging, Buddhism and ducks

Blogging can be a bit like meditation or going to the gym- you get out of the routine and then it's really difficult to get back into it. I had a 'dip' after coming back from England (partly because I had a big - natural- high from going back to West Wales). And I do try to resist the temptation to make my blog a 'sounding-off box' (that's what my friends are for - that way I can choose what I share with whom). Thank you for being patient over the past weeks.

Then we had a really cold snap - which disrupted travel plans but didn't give enough snow to go cross country skiing (grrrr) - but at least my journeys to work are short enough not to be disrupted by re-routing or traffic jams. And I found that I am not so self preoccupied to forget buying some fat balls to make a contribution to keeping our local bird life from being starvation.

Anyway, for the rest of this month I have determined to chant at least one hours daimoku a day. That's the spring from which fortitude merges. The sowing of seeds. There may well be things in my life that are difficult to change - but chanting is something that I can do irrespective of my circumstances. The funny thing (Buddhists call it the mystic law - the link between cause -in this case chanting- and effect -in this case a 'conspicious' benefit) is that as soon as I made that decision - I mean like five minutes after I started chanting with that determination - someone called me to invite me to a meeting to discuss an interesting project that has been on the back boiler for more than a year - so long that I had thought it was definitely a dead duck.

Dead duck - now there's a prospect. I can't remember seeing duck in the shops here - I get the feeling it's like trying to buy Beef Vindaloo in Southern India. The ducks here are so fearless, crossing as insouciant as holy cows - oblivious to humans. My first memory of Wageningen was seeing a gang of ducks strutting up the High Street on a Sunday morning - knowing it was theirs ("wanna make sumfink of it, Jan?"). A few years later I saw a mallard climb the steps of a cafe entrance - looking intent on going in and ordering a skinny latte. I had the camera shot all set-up and just at that moment someone walked out the cafe and scared him away. Damn. It would have been an iconic Dutch image.

So if I want duck for Christmas dinner I might well have to cross the border (or make the acquaintance of a poacher). Seriously, Lidl stores in Germany sell frozen duck, but their Dutch cousins don't. Maybe I could arrange a clandestine meeting in a forest clearing - five grams of sensimilla for a brace of Campbells (given what's going on in the Netherlands with legislation about foreigners' access to coffee shops this is definitely not a fantasy scenario). And, I wonder what would happen if I got caught at a random border control? I'd probably have my Dutch residency immediately evoked. ***k it I'll take a chance.

A time to fly , a time to build

A recent blog entry ended with the rhetorical question about how long the golden glow of Provence would last. To which I received the comment 'depends only on you, how long it will last'.

That is at least partly true - but one's environment plays a strong role too. We've just had one of the wettest weeks in history (the tree that Anne Frank used to gaze at from her hiding place got blown in the storms two weeks ago) and there are many things in my environment that I would like to improve - although I'm not going to list them here. The day I got back I read this piece of guidance from Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International .
"Certainly there will be times when you wish you had more spending money, more time to sleep and more time for fun and recreation. You may feel restricted now, but you should consider your present situation as the perfect set of circumstances for your growth. Within the restrictions that define your present existence the only thing to do is to discipline yourself and head in the direction of growth and self-improvement. In the process of exerting yourself in such endeavours you will without doubt build and strengthen your character".
Great advice on returning from holiday and settling down for the autumn. The coming months my focus will be on my Buddhist practice, on my Dutch (I want to pass the level 2A exam this year)and building my business - which may well mean less time for blogging and less time being focused on the restrictions that make my life smaller than I would like.

We are spirits in the material world

I resisted a friend's advice to give Micheal Roads a 'wide berth' and dragged myself along to Arnhem on a warm Saturday evening. A(nother) friend had recommended him and I thought 'yes lets go get some soul food'. Quite apart to another else it led me to sit next to a stream of audibly flowing water (in the Sonsbeek) - a very rare occurrence in the Netherlands and something that curiously I had talked about that very afternoon as something that I really miss in this country.

He said two memorable things in the course of the evening- neither was new to me - though it is good to be reminded of these things sometimes - to keep a balance of information input.

First thing. 'We are spirits living in a body' (rather than bodies with a soul). I first heard this from a tai chi teacher - some ten years ago. It gave me a new perspective on things. Instead of seeing oneself as a person who thinks about spiritual things once in a while and spends the rest of the time concerned with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain it gives you (gave me!) a stronger sense of purpose and a certain sense of freedom. Buddhists call this physical world the world of samsara (illusion) but I don't subscribe to the point of view that the way to free oneself from suffering is to sever the chains (attachments) that bind us to this world. Equally I don't hold with the empiricist view that physical realities are the only ones that exist (or matter). We also carry around and make up our own realities (in deciding for example if the glass is half full or half empty). Buddhism expresses this duality as 'manifest' and 'latent' effects (your external and internal environments) and sees the two as intertwined - constantly reproducing each other. It also teaches that it is more logical to work on changing what you can change (your internal environment) than what you can't so easily change (your external environment) and that changes at the latent level manifest themselves in the external environment. (I nearly wrote easier to change the internal environment- but of course its not - because we are often very resistant to looking into those dark holes and would rather focus on changing the outside world or our position in it).

Which brings us to Michael's second point. Make a daily commitment to feeding your soul. Of course its not enough to just to know that you are a spirit in a material world. You have to develop that knowledge, remind yourself of that fact every day. Its easy to forget it on really bad days (when you can't get a plane to an important business meeting) or really good ones. Its very easy to be swayed by what Buddhism (once again) calls the eight winds (four of which, like fame and fortune blow from the 'warm' south, the other four, like ignominy and misfortune, blow from the 'cold' north). After a while of making that commitment you become a bit more grounded (after almost ten years of chanting -almost- daily I will say it takes a very long time to even make a little progress in this respect). I have to struggle against my own ignorance and foolishness. But slowly the things that scare you become less scary and you become less attached to your desires. Which makes me very grateful that I met Nichiren Buddhism and was much more able to enjoy Micheal's lecture - seeing the truths in it, without looking to him to provide me with truth or the path for pursuing it.

Grace Slick famously sang 'feed your head'. I prefer Micheals' line 'feed your soul'

past, present and future

This is going to be an unusual weekend. On Friday I am going take a little trip back in time and go to revisit the mothership. Gong, that cult band of the 1970s, (they define the term cult band as a band loved too much by too few people) are back on tour- with just one date in the NL. I'm going to be there and, while I won't be playing any rounds of Laughing Sam's Dice, it will be interesting to take one more trip on the light fantastic. Jazzy, avant-garde, anarchistic and mystic - all in one package - they were the band that defined my mis-spent youth.

The first time I saw them I was still a schoolboy. They were playing one of those wonderful free gigs in Hyde Park and someone even had the wits to take a photo. As you can see, even by the standards of those days (circa '75-76) they were unashamedly part of the counterculture.
The other bands to grace the stage that day included Kevin Coyne, Chapman Whitney Streetwalkers (with Roger Chapman previously of Family) and the very shorted lived super-group that consisted of Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico and Brian Eno (yes I can say I saw Nico perform live-ish!)- Mike Oldfield was guest guitarist with the band if I remember rightly.

But it was Gong that caught our (pre-psychedelicised) imagination. They had a constantly changing line-up, in part caused by so many band members being banned from different countries for various narcotic infringements and insurgent activities. (It's a tradition that, it seems, they haven't given up- recently Daevid Allen - now a spritely 71 years old- was removed from a poetry festival in Queensland, because of reciting a poem that repeatedly invoked the profane / sacred F word).

I used to travel all over the South of England to see them whenever they were on tour. Shit, one night we drove from London to Bath and back - on a weekday- to see them, getting home at 3am and went to work (sort of) the next day. The best memories (if one can call them that) were of a few gigs they played at the Hammersmith Palais (immortalised by the Clash), one of the most beautiful, yet improbable rock venues I ever visited.

One summer the NME ran an essay competition to recruit a new journalist (oh my dream job in those days) and I spent most of an entire month's vacation house sitting a flat in Paris writing about the significance and earth shattering importance of this band. (The joint winners turned out to be Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill who crafted a piece about Patti Smith's Horses). There's a line in a "Cindy Lee Beryhill song: "God made obscurity for safety reasons" I think I am happy that I didn't grow up in the public eye. Anyway, tomorrow I am going to go and relive all those youthful flights of fancy.

Most of the rest of the weekend is going to be spent in church. Yes I know, call the nurse. A Buddhist colleague of mine was invited to arrange a presentation about the Buddhist take on "Mystic power in daily life" at her local church. Naturally, her local Buddhist colleagues have all rallied around and helped build a really good (well it remains to be seen) hour-long presentation with a small play about Nichiren Buddhism , drawn from the Lotus Sutra, a short lecture and an excellent DVD. It's a double challenge for me: appearing on stage, AND, doing a ten line speech in Dutch. Well why not push yourself??

Finally to cap it all - on Sunday afternoon I have been invited to attend an introductory afternoon of an "entrepreneurial boot camp", as a (successful) member of Wageningen's entrepreneurial community, appearing alongside CEOs and Directors of local hi-tech companies. OK I'll go along for the ride and see what I can offer - although it might be a bit subversive - maybe that's what they're looking for....

So in one weekend I seemed destined to travel from 'pot-head' to 'bread-head.' And I am wondering if my entire human evolution is being shrunk into one weekend and that now is a real testing time for me to reconcile these different positions that my life has led me to adopt and to make some coherent sense of them all

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Sometimes we go through life looking for something - and in our search other things that we weren't thinking about - but did want or need - materialise. An example: six years ago I was at a conference where I started talking to a woman - largely on the grounds that she was the most attractive, approachable and hippy type there (and I was looking for a lover at that time) we exchanged cards and e mails and her organisation is now one of my major and regular contractors.
These past few months and weeks that situation has repeated itself more than a few times- a visit to London to sort out some family business was pleasantly interrupted by an ex inquiring about my availability and interest for a supper date :-). This week an evening at sports club bought another potential new client and a visit to a therapist today bought news about a potentially very interesting future housing opportunity.
Next week there will be three days of overnight roadworks outside my house. Yesterday I got a random invitation to go and visit some friends on the other side of the NL. In short- we don't control this stuff.

This August I was at a Buddhist training weekend at Baarlo (yeah the photos are long overdue but I still haven't learnt how to upload them using bluetooth technology). I learnt something there - that I focus on the flowers and the fruits (you know -great lover, no debt, caring employers / contractors, blah blah). But when I focus on those things I miss the point about why I am alive. It's not so I can live a comfortable and easy life, with no problems. Because when the sun is shinng, there's money in the bank and a pretty woman in my bed it's all too easy to sit back and say life is good. But actually life is about planting seeds, about being a competent, confident and caring person who can make a difference in my community and in the world. It's not about how much money, pussy or kudos, I have- its about what I can give. Because that side of life is something that no-one can take away. My savings can dissapear into an Icelandic volcano - my lover can run off with Richard Gere - I can't control these things - so why spend time worrying about them?
In this sense it doesn't matter if you are a high flying banker or an impoverished Bangladeshi fisherwoman. The only thing of value we can do in the world is to give to it and make it a better place -not take from it. My father's hoarding habits have shown me how empty that path is -but that story is for another day.

The information super lay-by

I've been disconnected from the global media circus for a week. No computers, no emails, no blogging, no TV. What a nice break. I went to Baarlo (in Limburg) for a week's Buddhist training course - (photos to follow when I get up to speed with my photo management software). For me it was triple course because Dutch was very definitely the lingua franca of most people there - so if I wanted to keep up with the conversations over coffee or around the dinner tables then I had to focus on my Dutch. And I had volunteered to be on the 'soka spirit' group - the 'housekeepers' for the course: making sure everything ran smoothly - from waking people in the morning to ensuring the microphones are working OK, that the coffee arrives on time - to serving drinks in the bar in the evening. As half of the soka spirit group did not speak good English most of our planning meetings were in Dutch - with me chiming in for a translation when I felt that I had missed something important. So a triple challenge to face up to. 18 hour days, studying and practising Buddhism, being a volunteer caretaker and most of this in my third language.

I came home inspired but exhausted. This weekend I have been a complete couch potato, sleeping and enjoying the pleasure of drinking tea made with boiling water rather than with water that had been boiled in the past hour and had been kept in a thermos flask since then.

My time clock went out of sync (probably all that tea). I woke in the middle of the night in time to watch live coverage of the women's marathon. Since my childhood I have always been a fan of the track and field events - and it is so fascinating to see how the medals are going this year. Of twelve events so far, the golds are split between nine countries - Jamaica, Russia and Ethiopia head the list with two each - but then you see small countries like Cameroon, Slovenia, Poland and Ukraine carrying off golds too (and so far nothing but a bronze for team USA). The most amazing performances I have seen so far have been Ussain Bolt in the men's 100m- the fastest man on earth setting a new world record and looking like he wasn't even trying, the Russian woman (I'm not even going to try to spell her name) who just ran away with the steeplechase (again a world record) and the Romanian who took the the women's marathon by the scruff of its neck half way in and ran away from the pack and left them all behind her.

I do remember when the Olympics were very much an ideological battlefield between the USA and the USSR for top spot with the GDR and DDR (East and West Germany) battling it out for third spot. This year Team GB is third in the medals table! Ahead of Australia, Germany and Japan. Unprecedented. Normally if Team GB finishes in the top 10 that could be considered a good result. But now less and less GB medals come from the track and field. The Africans completely dominate the long distance events, the Caribbean islands have taken over the sprints from the USA and the Eastern Europeans continue to be hugely successful in the jumping and throwing events. It would be nice to see a Brit come with a gold on the track - but I'm not going to hold my breathe for it.

Other lives

A few weeks ago I name checked Dharamsala (in India) as a place where some important changes happened in my life. This week the tiny Himalayan town made world news as several hundred Tibetan monks left it to do a protest walk to the Chinese border to draw international attention to the 49 year long occupation of their country. They were promptly arrested by the Indian authorities fearing a break down in international relations with China. Today I came across a link to a site of Tibetan refugees living in Dharamsala who are training to be monks and nuns. Sometimes the world wide web opens new windows on the world.

The Buddhism of daily life

Coming back from Zeist I picked up on a programme on the History Channel (yes I have a UPC box now and 99 channels to choose from – more about that later) about Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This sparked my interest because it was through meeting Tibetans in Dharamsala (almost thirty years ago) that I first became interested in Buddhism. I studied and practised with some determination on my return to Britain but for me it just didn’t work. While the philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism appeared more coherent and complete than any spiritual system I had encountered before, its logical conclusion – that one should withdraw from the outer world and contemplate the inner world - just didn’t resonate with me. For sure meditation created benefits and it was nice to feel attached to a community that didn’t regard competition and material success as the goals of our lives on earth. But for me something was missing in that equation. I didn’t feel any desire to “take the robes” and withdraw from my society into another one (I too much wanted to change my society, was quite attached to “earthly pleasures” and felt it was a form of spiritual tourism). So my practice gradually waned.

I was quite astounded when I met Nichiren Buddhism in Cardiff some twenty years later. A member challenged me chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo ten minutes a day for a month and see if it made a difference in my life. I was less than happy with the direction of my life at the time, so I took up the challenge. It worked – I felt changes occur. But I was deeply sceptical of the philosophy and the organisational structure of what felt like a cult that almost seemed to be perverting the teachings of Shakyamuni by saying that earthly desires lead to enlightenment. I questioned this for a long time.

Watching this programme I began to understand both the linkages and differences between these two schools of Buddhism. Right now I want to focus on the differences. Nichiren Buddhism is the Buddhism of every day life. It teaches that the Buddha nature is inherent within all of us and that chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is a way to bring out and strengthen this aspect of ourselves and put it at (or at least closer to) the centre of our own beings. It doesn’t involve renouncing the world (often a tempting course of action) but rather transforming our relationship with it. To do this we must start to understand ourselves as potentially enlightened beings living in physical bodies and often in imperfect social and economic circumstances.

Our task is twofold. Firstly to challenge the circumstances that create unhappiness in our life – not because a new job, relationship, pay rise (whatever) will in themselves create happiness in our lives (though for a while they will) but because achieving these things removes a source of suffering from our lives. Secondly to become a source of inspiration to others: to show people in our communities and daily lives that through practicing Buddhism that we become happier, more grounded, and more competent people. Enlightenment can be found in our day-to-day lives, and most of all in our daily struggles -through trusting in our faith in ourselves as buddhas not in our intellects, past experiences or those of people around us.

What's the buzz?

This Sunday I went to the SGI Buddhist centre at Zeist- to be a guardian of the centre and to protect the Dutch Gohonzon for the day's activities. During the day I realised how much my life has grown in the five years since I have been in the Netherlands and in the seven years that I have been chanting. Not always in ways that I wanted and not always leading to the desired relationships (especially with money and love) but I realised that consistent (if sometimes weak) chanting to change my life gives me the tool to change those things from within rather than praying for external events to be more favourable and make my life seem happier.

In the afternoon I saw the first bees of the year buzzing around (albeit at a very low activity rate) the heather in the garden searching for fresh nectar. I realised that not only does winter always turn into spring, but also that bees always come to the flower. And this crystalised a feeling that has being growing inside of me for a few weeks that being my own flower is a much higher state of being than sniffing around for the next bush.

Snowblind

I spent the first week of the New Year learning to ski and in the prcoess pushed a lot of personal boundaries, physical and psychological. After two half day lessons at the ski school, I decided to sign up for a whole week. Not only because I enjoyed it, but also because I felt that there was a certain challenge involved – and I realised that I am very good at avoiding challenges and staying in my comfort zone. I felt that there is a spiritual/ life training aspect to skiing that was worth exploring. It felt like I was learning something useful about conquering my fears and going with the flow. Ski-ing involves looking where you want to go (your target) rather than where you are going or where you feel more comfortable (on the less steep bit of slope going slowly). Every day the instructor would tell me “Nicholas, look where you want to go and your body and skis will follow that direction. By the last day I started to accept that it was true and was going with the flow (albeit slowly). And I am surprised it took me so long to do so because it is the same truth that Buddhism teaches: “Set yourself goals, move towards them and don’t get bogged down in your day-to-day circumstances”. Someone has probably written a book on Zen and the art of ski-ing. (Tips please?).

So I overcame my antipathy towards ski-ing as being a thing for alpha people with big wallets and egos to match. Perhaps it’s one reason why they get to be alpha people in the first place. It’s highly addictive. Cocaine is not the only sort of snow that empties your bank account faster than you can say “your mother’s a crack whore”. Even on the way home I was calculating whether I could afford another trip this year.

Buddhist blogs

One of my fellow keibis has also posted a blog about our week looking after the European Centre at Trets. Here's his account.

Benefits in Buddhism

Practicing Buddhism brings two different of benefit: conspicuous and inconspicuous. The first is what generally motivates people to start chanting: for a new job, lover, success in ones work or business, whatever. These are the types of things that we think of as important, nay central to our happiness, as the lack of them causes us real suffering. Often these things do arrive but then they bring new problems in their wake or are not the solution that we envisaged and we become disappointed again. That's the time that one starts to realise the importance of inconspicuous benefits- of building a stronger sense of self worth, an acceptance of how one's world is and a determination to be happy within it while working to improve it and to become a useful and valued person. This is the true benefit of practising Buddhism as it makes one a happier and stronger person.

Starting with oneself

Shortly after coming back from Poland (and wondering what I do to fill in my time in the foreseeable future) I get an invitation to go to Provence to help look after my Buddhist group's European centre. Buddhism and the South of France two of my favourite things rolled into one package. "I'll think about it" Half an hour later I call back. "Yes I'm up for it." It's a timely opportunity to serve others, let go of the past and build a stronger platform for the future. It is tiring, humungously so, especially when there are courses (of 150 people) in - but in between the two courses we have three days to clean and maintain the centre, and by extension do the same with our own lives. Over the course of a week the three of us start to work together as a real team, anticipating each others needs, covering for each other when we are tired and encouraging each other through bad patches. We eat well, share experiences, chant lots and usually get up before 6. I get to speak French every day with the staff, volunteers and contractors and have to act as translator at some points.
In a week I get to chant more daimoku than I have in the past two months and come home brimming with energy and a new sense of purpose- standing tall and strong. This buddhism certainly is good medicine. The difficult thing is to remember that in the good times as well as the bad ones.

Anniversary

This weekend I celebrated the sixth anniversary of receiving my Gohonzon, when I made commitment in my life to practising Nichiren Buddhism and to developing my innate Buddha nature through chanting Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo. It was also my ex-girl's birthday so I spent much of the day torn between a sense of celebration and one of loss. I spent a lot of time thinking about my life had changed in the past six and the last two and a half years (the later being the time we were together ) - and i felt, well a lot.

The external changes I can catalogue pretty well and are generally positive. The internal changes, which are more important ones as they will determine my life state and future are harder to see right now. I am torn between the need for distractions and the need to focus on what I really want to do next in my life to move it forwards. And my brain - the organ we usually rely on to give us a sense of direction - doesn't have an answer to that - so I know I need to chant to attract the right opportunities and influences in my life and to protect myself from harmful ones.

I saw a great quote on the net last night about our thoughts determining our actions which determine our destiny. But it was more eloquently put than that. Basically it all starts within.