mindfulness and mortality

More peaceful wild for you

2012-01-12T10:53:00.003Z

Just a nice picture for you - sometimes it's the heron and the placid calm water that eases you into the present moment, sometimes it's the wild winter sky, rough seas and distant hills that'll do it.

"The Peace of Wild Things" - anxieties, mindfulness, being in the wild.

2012-01-12T09:02:00.004Z

Poem for you below.
We're a bit short on wood drakes around here, but we have got herons and other triggers into a state of mindful calm. The thing about people knowing you are using mindful meditation is that sometimes they expect you to be a Buddha all the bloody time. Well, being mindful doesn't mean you never wake into fears of chaos and despair, but it sure does help to deal with it all.

And looking at this stuff helps, too - provided you are actually there, in the moment, in the place, so it can work on you.

Thanks to the impactED nurse for alerting me to the poem.

Pax vobiscum.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

For meditation, contemplation, or for a funeral

2012-01-08T12:35:00.003Z

Over on the Good Funeral Guide, Charles often posts really interesting and powerful songs, mostly for possible use in a funeral, but also some of them are simply life/death songs.

But sometimes, you don't need any words.

This track could be used for meditation, for reflecting on . . . whatever comes to mind, or for a funeral. It was just chosen as one of her musical private passions by Tama Rojo, one of the finest ballerinas of her generation on BBC Radio 3.

But watch out, it is powerful sad!

O God, she's just chosen DuPres playing the Elgar cello concerto. Overwhelming. Can't see straight...

I think I'd better go and play something by Bonzo Dog for a bit of silly cheer-up.

Time/lessness: some quotes for you

2012-01-06T17:14:00.005Z

Don't know about you, but I can get impatient with people who use quotes in order to present themselves as wise, or to demonstrate the breadth of their reading - in other words, ego games. Also, a string of brief quotes can cause one to glaze over.

I will now run all those risks, and say that these little quotes, jotted down decades ago by me and recently re-discovered (do you have a clear-out after 12th Night?) seem to me to be really worth considering, each one, in no rush. If only I could say I had been living by them for those decades!

They relate to the transitory nature of the present moment, which is yet our nearest moment to eternity. Because (vide the picture) "Time like an ever-rolling stream/Bears all its sons away..."

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

(Wittgenstein)

All the people I meet make faces as if they were going to live for ever.

(don't know)

The shell of a cicada

It sang itself

utterly away

(Basho)

Quite apart from all religion, there are the plum blossoms, the cherry blossoms

(Nan pu ko)

Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant.) Perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable, marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious quality of Being.

(HG Wells)

'I have now seen the truth in this one instant,' Yang Shan said. 'But how can I apply it in everyday actions?'

The Master replied 'All that is important is that you see things correctly. I don't talk about your everyday actions.'

(don't know the source)

However hard you search for it, you will never grasp it; you can only become it.

(Ikkyu)

Heaven and earth and self -

of one root,

the Ten Thousand Things -

they and myself are one body.

(ZaZenron - not to be confused with Da Doo Ron Ron,

who lived much later...)

If you want to see into it, see into it directly. When you begin to think about it, it is altogether missed.

(don't know - East Asia, for sure)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - Infinite.

(Blake - and don't blame him because too many of my generation thought they could do that with the wrong chemicals...)

Life comes to an end at the previous thought; it is resurrected in the subsequent thought.

(Shan Tao - remarkably, that is what neuroscience

seems to be saying too - and maybe it's in that gap

between the two thoughts that we can enter the

timelessness of mindful contemplation.)

I hope that between the moments of ecstasy and agony in your life, you can find eternity in moments of mindful contemplation.

Discussion about Funeral Rituals

2012-01-05T11:30:00.003Z

Have you visited the Good Funeral Guide recently, or at all? If not, and if you have an interest in ritual, especially funeral rituals (and you know you do, really you do, go on, go on, go ON), then hi thee thither/get over there now. And all you have to do is stick the jolly old cursor over the title above, and click. Even in the depths of January (darkness, storms, rain, Christmas bills, tax returns...) you can manage that.

This plug has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have been honoured by having a humble (!) offering of my own posted up there for the world to see. Hooray, hooray. Thanks GFG. Once again, you show your excellent taste and timeless wisdom.

X to the GFG

from Gloria

A Happy New Year:Karine Polwart, " Rivers Run"

2012-01-01T18:12:00.002Z

Sometimes it is possible, whatever contentments are to be found one's own life, just to get down about the state of the world, yes? The planet's environment, and - oh, let's just say the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

If you feel a bit like that, as we totter out of the insanities of 2011 and into, no doubt, the madnesses of 2012, here's a song for you. I believe Ms P wrote it for her son. I find it fits grandsons too. In fact, it just fits people.

I wish you a Happy New Year.

Gloria M. x

(Thank you KP)

Rivers Run

This weary Earth we walk upon
She will endure when we are gone
While kingdoms come and kingdoms go
Rivers run and rivers flow

You know I don't believe it's true
That in this world there's nothing new
For darling you have just begun
Rivers flow and rivers run

And if those rivers should ever run dry
Somewhere the rain will still fall,
Will still fall from the sky

When I'm beguiled by the fear
That darker days are drawing near
My darling, you seduce the sun
Rivers flow and rivers run

And if the rivers.

This wounded Earth we walk upon
She will endure when we are gone
But still I pray that you may know
How rivers run and rivers flow

And if the rivers.

So I cross my heart and hope to live
Just long enough that I can give
It all to you, my darling one
Rivers flow and rivers run

Words & Music: Karine Polwart (Bay Songs Ltd 2007)

Merry Christmas and a Mindful New Year

2011-12-23T06:53:00.003Z

Here's wishing my extensive readership joys for the season and thereafter. I shall be back (applaud now) in the New Year with more thoughts on : mindfulness, (hooray!) meditation, (hooray!!) dealing with our awareness of mortality (bravo!) funereal matters (encore!) and anything else that comes to mind - other than the goddam GFC, Eurozone bollocks etc - "the music goes round and round, and comes out here - what, here? no, here - yes here..." special Christmas prize if you can remember where that came from.

Your Christmas pic this year, BTW, was in fact taken two years ago, because this year it's mild and soggy and looks like being so for The Day. Don't know if our bovine friend would rather it was soggy or foot-freezing cold.

Whatever the weather, have a Merry Christmas.

Meditation in the Face of Death

2011-12-11T08:01:00.006Z

Not for the first time, I urge you to visit the Impacted Nurse, Ian Miller. In a large Australian hospital emergency department, he is on the front line of life and death, and it has yielded him some invaluable insights. He recently blogged this passage, and I thank him for it.

http:/www.impactednurse.com/?p=3551

Lee Lipsenthal, MD, wrote this not long before he died:

I am powerless in my dying, aware that those whom I love are hurt by the news. I have also spent the last few weeks in pain from my cancer’s spread, sitting up and meditating to distance myself from the mental agitation of suffering. On most nights this works well, as I remind myself that, though I am in pain, this will pass or I will pass, but it will not be forever.

A sense of peace prevails. I am still alive.

It may seem peculiar that I am calm while others in my life are suffering. I can assure you their suffering makes me sad; I wish this weren’t happening. Yet after almost 30 years of meditating, I have learned to embrace optimism, gratitude and the knowledge that I am not in control over my life or death. Instead of being mad at the hand of fate, I am focused on what is going on — mentally, physically, and emotionally — with myself and those that I love. In spiritual language, I am awake.

I have no bucket list of things to do. I have been living my bucket list for some time now, and when I was first diagnosed, it came to me that the real list in my life was not the places I wanted to see, but the list of friends in my life with whom I want to spend my time.

:: Lee Lipsenthal MD- Huffington Post interview ::

Dr Lipsenthal leaves us with a gift of great value, and it ripples out to us, who never knew him.

There's a video clip on Ian's web page, but I've not copied it here - why not go and have a look, and acquaint yourself with the Impacted Nurse himself.

Funeral Directors welcome, sales crap less so

2011-11-25T13:44:00.003Z

Round the other side of the planet for a bit, as I am, it's cheering to find a couple of comments on the jolly old blog "awaiting moderation." Both were brief and perfectly acceptable, from "funeral director." Generally welcoming to all the variety and vagaries of human opinion, I was just about to welcome aboard both comments and commenter,but I noticed that the words "funeral director" were a live link. ( A URL, as I believe you Internet swots call it?)The link took me to that Internet site that looks at first glance as though it will find all your local funeral directors for you, but is in fact a Co-Op Funeral Service front end. It only takes you to Co-Op funeral directors.I really value each and every genuine comment on me blog, and thanks for them; I don't really value commercially focused spam. Go away, Co-Op. In fact, F**K right OFF.I trust that's plain enough, 'funeral director,' unlike your advertising manoeuvres and feeble attempts to get link through from my blog to your sales drive. Here's a tip, sly boots. Real commentators, ie individuals, sign blog comments with a variety of daft aliases (moi? Daft?) But they use names, not trade descriptions.

A Little Peace and Quiet

2011-11-01T09:20:00.003Z

is what you'll probably be getting from me, for a few weeks, due to hols being taken. But if the worm turns, I may throw out something before December. Who knows? (Er..who cares, you might say, peace being such a delightful blessing.)

Meantime, look after yourselves, dear readers. You may be interested to know that mindfulness meditation is being used for training Australian physicians to help them deal with stress, burnout and depression. The ImapactED nurse Ian Miller is well ahead of them, since to my certain knowledge, he has been advocating related techinques to his nursing colleagues for years, via his blog:

http://www.impactednurse.com/?p=3405

Well worth a look, and it also includes a handy brief definition of mindfulness meditation, which would have been useful for all those times I was asked "anyway, what exactly is this mindfulness business you're always banging on about?"

For another way to combat stress, depression etc, see below.

The Tao,Buddhism and Mindfulness

2011-10-19T22:46:00.000+01:00

The third and final (for now) episode of Gloria on the Tao owes much to one of Melvyn Bragg's excellent "In Our Time" Radio 4 programmes a year or more ago.

The Dao wasn't originally, it seems, agod-following religion, more like a philosophy and a way of thinking andliving.In its early form (the "Tao Te Ching") it is a teaching that involvesrecognising the way the universe works, and following that, rather than tryingto force your way against nature. Water is a frequent symbol in the text - ifyou come across a boulder, then like water, flow round it, over it, under it, toget where you want to be; don't try to move it. You won't smash the boulder,but it will in any case be worn away into a small pebble in a few thousandyears. Seems a clear enough symbol to me.

Following the way of the universe is how to live in the world. The people ruledby the best rulers - those who follow the Dao - hardly notice they are beingruled and guided.

Buddhism teaches an escape from the world, from the cycle of birth, death andre-birth. (First off, you have to believe in re-incarnation, clearly, in orderto escape from it!) Meditation is the technique through which this escape canbe earned.

But in our own lives, I can't see any particular conflict in what contemplating the Tao offers us, and what we can learn from Buddhism. I was fascinated to discover that the origins of Mindfulnessmeditation were derived from Buddhist meditation techniques, and Buddhism, especially Zen, owes much to the Tao. So there is a line through here from an ancient Chinese philosophical/mystical text, through Buddhist traditions and practices, to something you can no doubt study in an evening class in Shepherd's Bush or Droylsden.

Mindfulness meditation is a training inhow to live more of the time in the present moment. To achieve, or approach, amindful awareness of the present moment and nothing but it, you do need toretreat, as it were, for an hour or so - or five minutes, even. So to thisdegree, a temporary escape is necessary. And mindfulness practitioners, likefollowers of traditional Zen Buddhist schools, often seem to favour occasionalretreats, for a day or a weekend.

But the state of mind, this "presentmomentness" enables one to dealbetter with the world beyond the room you meditate in - to move through it alittle more like the water round the boulder. It encourages tolerance, sharpensunderstanding of the situations of other people, helps one to keep things inperspective. It calms.

So occasional temporary bits of escapism enable one to emerge and deal with"the world" better. The little I know of these two great strands ofEast Asian religious philosophy and practice seem to me to work more ascomplementaries than opponents.

And in all this, there is no need (unless you want it) for god-centredreligion, for dogma and scripture. No wonder a professor of religious studiessneered at mindfulness as "Buddhism-lite." He's right - and that'sexactly the point. It sidesteps dogma-based argument, and says simply "ifyou do this, properly, your life will be better for it." You can do it andstill follow a religion, you can follow it and be a nature-worshipping pagan,you can follow it and be a stroppy atheist (though if it works for you, you'llprobably be a bit less stroppy, whatever your beliefs.)

So is it The Answer To Life? Well, it certainly helps e.g. with tensions,anxieties, uncertainties and sadnesses. But if it works for you, it's part of ordinary life, not analternative to life. We all know there's only one alternative to life - andfacing that is also something mindfulness can help with.