McDonalds Memo 1

[tariki]

Six mornings out of seven (grandchildren permitting) I head for town. First stop is McDonalds for a large cup of their white coffee. Cheap and cheerful. I quite like the ambience of the place - downmarket, children making noise, a few regulars, always busy, a few spillages uncleared. I find my time there very therapeutic, my usual morning blues being blown away. By the time I hit the place I have usually ruminated on a post or two on a Mental Health forum I now participate on.

Always best to ruminate upon something as I walk along, despite the advice of some "masters" that when walking we should "just walk". To think is to help avoid seeing the multitude of discarded drink cans and cartons thrown aside in the subways and along the paths, this despite quite adequate litter bins provided by the authorities. This is Global Britain. One other distraction, besides the thinking, are the swans as I approach the first shopping centre, beside one of the two rivers that flow through the city. This year we have been graced with two large broods and all seem to have survived. Now, just into the New Year, the brown feathers have all virtually turned to white. They sit preening themselves beside the path - one sometimes actually sits right in the middle of the pedestrian/cycle track, almost as though it owned the place. I wish it did. 

Anyway, I waffle. This is a preamble to what I will call my McDonalds Memos. Tapped out while drinking my coffee, "inspired" by posts on another Forum. Pretty spontaneous stuff, yet produced in part by my ruminations.

Here is the first, which I shall call "The Hidden Ground of Love". No debates please. If anything triggers discussion please open a thread elsewhere just so I can avoid it. Thank you.

 

There is a sutta in the Buddhist texts where after a lot of terse, involved instruction on how to quiet the mind, the Buddha simply says that we should just grit our teeth and try robust effort! I suppose that there is a time for silence and a time for speech, for simplicity and verbosity, a time to let go and a time to hang on, make effort. (As far as verbosity is concerned, I certainly hope so!)

In the past I have often opened threads on "Wisdom" and what it actually is. I often quote a Buddhist scholar, Edward Conze, who defined wisdom as "the mind/heart, thirsting for emancipation, seeing deep into the heart of reality." Such seeing is not conceptual or even self-aware, or at least I do not understand it as such.

All definitions are just words, some simpler to understand than others. Sometimes, reading the latest "philosopher" I reel away in incomprehension. It all seems far away from the OT phrase "a little child shall lead them"

But I think wisdom is grace, gift. It is never our own. When the gift has been given/received then we are totally unaware of having it. It simply becomes part of us, to be given to others. To think we "have it" is to lose it.

I think of a letter Thomas Merton once wrote, which contained that beautiful paradox, a letter written to E.D.Andrews, an expert on the life and beliefs of the Shakers (or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing). Andrews had sent Merton a copy of his book, Shaker Furniture, and Merton was responding to the gift.

This wordless simplicity, in which the works of quiet and holy people speak humbly for themselves. How important that is in our day, when we are flooded with a tidal wave of meaningless words: and worse still when in the void of those words the sinister power of hatred and destruction is at work. The Shakers remain as witnesses to the fact that only humility keeps man in communion with truth, and first of all with his own inner truth. This one must know without knowing it, as they did. For as soon as a man becomes aware of "his truth" he lets go of it and embraces an illusion.

Such a paradox as I see it, supports Faith. If we follow some sort of path, way, of "no-calculation" and yet we find the gift of love flowering in our mind/hearts, not of self, then there is only one source - that which Merton called "the hidden ground of love" (for which there is no explanation)

Thank you