tariki

Yes, ways and means. Our tent, their tent, shared tents. Our own intent. The world just keeps revolving.

The 2022 soccer World Cup is soon to begin. Awarded to that hotbed of soccer, Qatar - one can only presume because of some form of distribution of Oil Billions - the brand new stadiums have been completed with the loss of about 6500 lives. For a month or so many footballers, paid more in a week than a front line nurse in the UK can earn in ten years, will do their thing, with all the various goal celebrations. VAR (video assisted referee) will be in operation to ensure that the "correct decision is given everytime" (ha ha......actually the only way to ensure this is to apply the rule that "the referees decision is final".....but hey, who can argue with technology?) My daughter and I, both lovers of the game (which one older footballer, Danny Blanchflower, once said was "all about glory") have decided to boycott the "beautiful game." I can confirm that yes, I am becoming a grumpy old man.

One last post on this topic. The Conservative Party is currently not fit to run the country and attract investment, according to a long-time supporter of the Tories. Guy Hands, founder of the investment firm Terra Firma, says that unless Brexit is renegotiated, the UK economy is "frankly doomed". He warned of increased taxes, reduced benefits, higher interest rates and "eventually a bailout from the IMF [International Monetary Fund]" unless the next leader of the party has the "intellectual capability and authority" to work out a revised Brexit deal. Hands told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Relate this to the triumph of Boris Johnson at the last GE, winning with the mantra of an "oven ready deal" and "getting Brexit done". A landslide victory with the votes of 34% of the total electorate. Relate it to those who had suggested that Mr Johnson still has "the mandate" of the country, having "delivered" on his pledges. Relate it.........oh, forget it. 😐

The contest progresses. My own punditry in the past has always proved woeful, but as I see it I simply cannot believe that even the current Tory party would contrive to bring back Boris Johnson. I think that they will see that the only hope is to elect Rishi Sunak uncontested, as the only candidate with over 100 endorsements. Creating a picture of "unity". Mr Johnson will attempt to gain the needed 100 endorsements of the Tory MP's but if/when this attempt fails he will declare himself not interested in a challenge and a supporter of Rishi Sunak "for the sake of the Party and the country". Should he gain the 100 endorsements the final vote goes to the Tory Party Membership (who chose Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak) and polls indicate they would choose Boris Johnson! Longer term, should Mr Sunak become PM and bring relative stability the mantra in 2025 when the next GE is due will be "let's not risk returning to the chaotic circumstances of 2023 by electing a new Government" (thus turning their own created chaos to their own advantage) And the UK electorate would in all probability buy it! However, should Boris Johnson actually achieve being in the the final two, all bets are off. Watch this space.

Latest from the surreal land of UK politics.....

Electioneering slogans and soundbites that have not worn well. Prior to the 2015 General Election:- Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband. Spoken by Dave Cameron. Oh! The irony!

Hi Rom, there is always a degree of collective responsibility. But some are always more responsible than others. Then you have the parameters set by the system (what "system" we have in the UK, what with unwritten Constitutions) Even since the very first EU Referendum when the UK went IN there have been those refusing to accept the verdict and working to overthrow it. Strident anti "forriner" tabloids just the tip of the iceberg. The 2016 Referendum itself, where less than 50% of the TOTAL electorate setting the direction of the UK for generations. Then (because of our First Past The Post electoral system) just 34% of the TOTAL electorate brought forth the "Landslide" victory of Boris Johnson and his Party, with talk of "Oven Ready Deals" and "Getting Brexit Done". Well, there was no oven ready deal and Brexit remains undone, with the NI Protocol unable to be resolved in any way that does not threaten the fragile peace between Northern and Southern Ireland. Regular Polls now show that about 60% of the electorate recognise that Brexit was a mistake, yet there seems no real appetite to rejoin. Most seem sick of it and Brexit has become the great unmentionable in polite company. One little known fact further clouds the whole subject of collective responsibility. The Leave Campaign was taken to court for breaking electoral laws, those passed to ensure fair elections. They were found guilty of breaking those laws and in the verdict it was said that had the Referendum not been "advisory only" then the court could have declared the result null and void. Well, work that one out. The farce continues and yesterday we had another resignation, this of the Home Secretary, and we still await to find out if the Tory Chief Whip resigned, was sacked, has not resigned, is out of the job or remains. Scuffles in the voting lobbies over "Fracking"! Absurd. Meanwhile a country I love heads towards becoming a Banana Republic, the laughing stock of the world. So many good people who constantly raise millions for charity following every appeal - without any "leader" worth the name.

Ha ha! The old "there is always someone worse off so cheer up" angle! 😀

Just one of a multitude of analysis of the total disaster...... https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/how-did-brexit-do-so-much-damage-in-so-short-a-time

The situation is now so surreal that I find an almost maniacal release from overdue concern. Our governing party has dug a great big deep hole for itself and really has no where to go that will not make the hole deeper. Brexit has been a disaster, is a disaster, yet the Tories have nailed themselves to the Brexit mast. The "icing on the cake" is that, looking around, there seems no calvary coming to the rescue. Brexit just cannot be mentioned in polite company. The whole country is in denial as virtually everything ceases to work.

I'm still one for quotes, for better or worse. when tapping out the above there were some words of Thomas Merton hovering somewhere in my grey matter. I've found them, they are from the Introduction to "The Way of Chuang Tzu", a book of loose (very loose) translations of that ancient sage by Merton. To share Merton's words:- For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a “way out.” Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost. Finding our own home, our own path, time and place. One and the same thing as being lost. Everything is paradox, beyond the mind's calculations. "For the earth brings forth fruits of herself" (St Marks Gospel)

I can sympathise. Thich Nhat Hahn would always say:- "When walking just walk" but I've yet to get the hang of it. "Progress" I have little interest in, more just getting lost. Expectations seem to be killers. Maybe Faith, complete letting go, is the only work in progress, yet it seems to happen beyond my calculations. Thanks

Sitting again in McDonalds, and a couple more of my ode of yesteryear, drawing forth thoughts old and new. The first, and I can still vaguely remember the incident, window shopping in my hometown and this lady was quite taken by some writing desk in the window. My muse was awoken ( 😀) and I penned this:- Oh! What an exquisite desk!" she said, Gushing away from her husband's hand. Then "Oh! what a lovely four-poster bed!" (Later the Ming vase on its stand). So she continued, voice rising shrill, Straining to wrench life and death apart, Using American Express to fill The empty mansions of the heart. As someone else once said (not me I hasten to add!) there's only one thing worse than a woman with a mouth and that's a woman with a credit card....... Quickly onto the next ode, which makes me think of dreams. Some seem to get a lot out of dreams. Interpretation and so forth. My own dreams tend to be fairly mundane. i may have mentioned this before but Carl Jung once had a dream when still quite young. Brought up in a fairly restrictive religious home, apparently he had a dream where a gigantic turd dropped down onto a cathedral, crushing it beneath its weight. For Jung, such was the end of organised religions. I'm not surprised! Anyway, I obviously did have a dream back then and maybe it was conjured up by having tried to suppress the thoughts of the suffering of others. (I seem to remember that there was a dog that followed me to work, a couple of days in a row, a hapless creature) I'm glad that dog has disappeared, The one that followed me to work With limping leg and lonely eyes, It's coat smeared hard in night-time dirt. I'm glad that child has disappeared, It's face and body built to shock, It's skin stretched tight across its bones; I switched the News off, read a book. Yet they both came back that night In a dream of a cripple with a twisted knee Who, pointing with two fingers, begged:- "Help me" Maybe we are born for empathy?

Subjectively I'd say that anyone with a deep nihilistic view would carry with them a sense of ultimate absurdity and pointlessness. As I see it, this comes back to the "silence of the Buddha" in the face of all metaphysical questions. Any "view" at all will obstruct the living of the "Holy Life". A slight tangent, but I think of Dogen once more, and of his time in China when he was seeking for the answers to his very own questions. His then teacher taught "the power of the present moment as the only moment". Yet also that this doesn’t mean that there is no future result from practice. The circle of the way, yet a "movement toward Buddha".

Oh yes, I'm rather good at that! 😀

Just had a nice day visiting relations in a little village about 22 miles distant. Travelling there with our daughter and grandchildren. A good day. Just to say, regarding "significance", I'm not so sure that "significance" would actually imply a destination, an end product. At least not one that we could ever imagine. The heartwood of the Dharma according to Theravada Buddhism, is "unshakeable deliverance of mind" (Majjhima Nikaya). The Bible speaks of being set free by "truth". So it is freedom, beyond any "answers", "conclusions" or an ultimate terminus. Poetically, the "journey itself is home." For me this all relates to the way of unknowing. Reality is mystery, but not a mystery that is hidden or unknown in darkness or which will be revealed or made known in the future. Rather, it is more a present intimacy, transparency, and vividness, this of thusness/suchness, for “nothing throughout the entire universe is concealed” ( Dogen) Nevertheless, this mystery of emptiness and thusness has to go beyond this: intimacy must be ever penetrated. Or as another has said, "the only extension to the present is intensity." All this may well be why Buddhism is sometimes dismissed, even condemned, as nihilistic. Related phrases such as "casting off the body-mind" are simply not understood. Dogen, the 13th century Japanese zen master, began to understand when he was himself a novice in a Chinese monastery and the pupil next to him slumped forward and the Master struck the man with the keisaku (awakening stick) and shouted:- "How dare you fall asleep when you seek to drop body and mind!" Such was a moment of illumination to Dogen! As a commentator on Dogen has written:- To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness. Or, perhaps, as the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart has said:- "Love has no why"

On the cover of the book Carlo Rovelli is termed "The Poet of Physics" and for once such book cover claim is not exaggeration. And given my mark of 5 out of 100 in my school Physics exam it is poetry I need rather than algebraic equations and constant reference to quantum leaps. Poetry. Our world is one of "becoming", not "being", of "events", not "things". Inter-being. Or as the poet (Carlo Rovelli) himself expresses it:- "A kiss not a stone". And humour too. Here is Mr Rovelli explaining that such events do not follow a precise time that is unvariable:- "The events of the world do not form an orderly queue, like the English. They crowd around chaotically, like Italians."The prose of the author is humane. As an example, here he speaks of another physicist who he has admired but has now passed on (or passed back perhaps?) Rovelli writes that he "can no longer tell him I believe that he was the first to come close to the heart of the mystery of quantum gravity. Because he is no longer here – here and now. This is time for us. Memory and nostalgia. The pain of absence. But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life."This is fine. Humane. Science meets our humanity.Next stop the "Shobogenzo Uji" of the Zen Master Dogen, who seemed to anticipate much of this in 13th century Japan, in his famous essay "Being-Time". Being is time, and time is being. Dogen sought his very own time and place as we must continually seek and live in ours. The journey itself is home.

I love that you spun off at a sort of tangent. One thing suggesting another. Correspondences, one thing not quite the other, but suggestive. Merton goes on to speak of another type of consciousness, beginning not with our thinking self, but with Being itself, prior to any split into subject and object. Hitting the "ground" of Being first, in Faith, will eventually bring forth all the various diversifications of our own search for our own "time and place", our own journey. Beginning with some assumed split between "self" and "other" will lead to the endless confusions of thought that constitute suffering (dukkha) As one wag once said, we must rest on the firm foundations of emptiness. Or as St John of the Cross...... "If we wish to be sure of the road we walk on we must close our eyes and walk in tge dark" While I'm waffling, another verse or two from St John of the Cross:- On that glad night in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me — him I knew so well — there in a place where no one appeared. While I'm waffling, drinking coffee in McDonalds, another thought just popping into my mind, Case 2 of the Blue Cliff Record, all about not having preferences, of Buddhism teaching nothing. In the little book by Terrence Keenan, a commentary by some modern zen worthy:- In the old city at the head of Grafton Street a busker plays his fiddle. First Brahms, then Bach and a little Paganini for fun. Fingers run up and down strings. Is it the vibrating air, his skill, or the old melodies that bring tears to my eyes? Tell me, I need to know. It is that "need to know" that causes all the misery.

This is why I think it best to simply ask if Reality has significance rather than asking ourselves if we "believe in God". For me the simply FACT that there is indisputably something rather than nothing implies "significance"; rather than Reality simply being mindless matter in motion, a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Once we start asking if there is "One who speaks" (or any other phrase denoting some "higher" being) then we are sucked into the endless dialectic of reason, its conflicts and confusions. One thought leads to another, questions, objections. And "who shall untangle this tangle", as per the very beginning of the Visuddhimagga (the Path of Purification) by Buddhaghosa. The Buddha's answer, as mentioned elsewhere, was to be silent in the face of all metaphysical questions, simply because any "answer", clung to and "believed in", was inimical to the Holy Life, the path to the final end of suffering (dukkha) The true path is pathless, beyond definitions, beginning where we are. Faith. But if we confuse faith with "belief" the game is up, at least as I see it. Faith is a complete letting go, which - strangely perhaps - guarantees absolutely nothing.

Hi Paul, good to hear from you again. Not actually my signature, which is further down, and the full words are:- May true Dharma continue. No blame. Be kind. Love everything. I just thought that the Inquisition would be after me if I quoted it in full. 😀

Hello there 'goose (if I might be so familiar.....😀) Like Rom above, I don't really fall into the category you specify. I would say however that there really is no need to feel compelled to assert and believe in many of the beliefs of "fundamentalists" in order to explore and deepen your faith, or to identify as Christian. Christianity really is a very broad Church, embracing the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and the various Protestant expressions. One theme often articulated by many of the Early Church Fathers was the incomprehensibility of God. Some of the great Christian mystics have explored this in their own spiritual journeys, with Meister Eckhart (13th century) saying:- "Nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness - and there God shines" Such words are far from any transcendent Being imagined and "believed" in by many. Anyway, the above just one example. Recommended is "The Universal Christ" by Richard Rohr. All the best

When I first started looking back at some of these old poems there were one or two that I simply could not remember writing. One was obviously about an incident of seeing some old and vacant lady wandering down the street and my reactions. It was particularly striking in a very emotional way........this because eventually my own mother declined with dementia, and her last three or so years were particularly stressful in many ways. So my words, written before this happened, made me think of those who may have just passed my own mother by as she must sometimes have stood, bewildered and lost. And When She Had Gone, Pity Came She seemed to have no yesterdays And very little else As she stood alone in the passing crowds Staring, talking to herself. I approached her with a numbing dread. Would she turn to me and speak And isolate me from a kinship made With all others on that street? But I had no need to worry - Her mouth gaped and trembled wide; So I passed her without a sideways glance And left her far behind. Yet looked back. She had moved at last To the pavements edge, still lost - (I remember thinking how strange it seemed That she looked before she crossed) I also happened to hit an old poem that I remember at the time as being fraught with a deal of anguish. It came from a news story, of a young boy, just five or so, who fell down a man-hole. His mother rushed to the opening but he was too far down. Soon a rescue squad arrived, a microphone was set up. His mother could hear the little boys cries. Calling for his mother. Eventually one guy went down on a rope. At one point his hands and the hand of the little boy clasped each other, but then slid apart because of the slime. The little lad slid away. Basically, that is the end of it. I found it all shocking at the time and I think anyone will still find it so if they still have......what can you call it....... "imagination". I see from my old book the use of much tippex as I tried different words. But really, what words could ever be adequate? The boy was called Alfredo, my poem "Alfredo is it dark?" Curled within your shocking tomb As once within your mother's womb (Alfredo, is it dark?) On microphone, soul destroying Hear the muffled fearful crying (Alfredo is it dark?) When you lie so far below Can any stand and worship now. (Alfredo is it dark?) The horror of your mother's grief Rips the heart of all belief Far beyond the empty skies The still and silent figure lies Drawn the final muddied breath Died, the tiny lonely death At the time I was into Theodicy, the attempt to justify God in the face of our world's evil and suffering. Sometimes I thought that I had "the answer" but I now think any "answers" are virtually blasphemy. The "answer" does not rest in any "belief" but is found at another level of being (or non-being) As I have said, I have moved east. But really, "east" and "west" are indistinguishable at certain levels. There is a fancy word to describe what is claimed to be the central philosophy of Buddhism. The Madhyamika, initiated historically by a guy called Nagajuna, around the 2nd century AD. There is a quite famous book on this, a sort of classic, by T.V.R.Murti. It revolves around the "Middle Way" which is said to be not a mid position between two extremes but rather a "no-position" that supercedes all positions, and also relates to the "silence of the Buddha" in response to any metaphysical questions, his refusal to take a "position", claiming that "views" were detrimental to the actual living of the Holy Life, the path to the end of suffering (dukkha) Murti speaks of all the dichotomies, opposites. Being and becoming, eternalism and annihilationism, the substance view and the non-substance view (atman and anatman) and asserts that though most would associate Buddhism with - in this case - the second of each, in fact the Dharma, the living truth, is the "middle way" beyond all views; lived, not thought. Some assert that having no views is itself a "view" but Murti insists that awareness of being free of views is not a view, but freedom itself. Getting back to theodicy, I see this as relevant. It relates to Faith/trust, of letting go. To the book of Job, where eventually God tells Job in effect to shut up! Who was he to judge, or to "take a position", where was he when all came into being? The Richard Dawkins et al of our world often object to this, yet there is a profound sense in which we can "shut up". No blame. Be kind. Love everything.