How to grow

We become whole
through relationships
and through letting go
of relationships

Freud

Retreats

A lot going on these days. I am very excited as I have put my name down for a Retreat in Spirit Rock Meditation Centre in California in the summer. It will be run by Phillip Moffit, Sally Clough Armstrong and others. Phillip is the author of the excellent Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering and I also have always enjoyed the articles he writes for numerous magazines, including Yoga Journal and Body and Soul.

Why do we go on retreat? It gives us an opportunity for more in-depth practice. Even though, in a very real sense, our everyday life is our practice, we use the time out of a retreat to gain a clearer idea of how to practice and to find some perspective upon how we should integrate practice into our everyday life. We need, sometimes, to go greater in depth for a short period in order to sustain the width which is our ongoing daily life. There are not too many places near Geneva that offer English speaking retreats, so I hope to organize and offer a one day Day of Practice before the summer holidays and some regular one days in the Autumn. I will announce details on the blog.

However, you can check out what is offered in centres in Switzerland and England under the Sites to Support Practice links on the right hand side.

Changes to the Blog

I have made some changes to the blog which I invite you to have a look at. There is a search facility on the right hand side allowing you search for particular entries or themes. Across the top I am adding gradually some different sections, the first two being Recommended books ("Good Reads" ) and Tips for practice (be patient with that one, I will add content gradually!) Finally I have added some links on the right hand side that refer to research sites or other webplaces that can support our practice. Check them out!

Lifting one another up

The most empowering relationships
are those in which each partner
lifts the other
to a higher possession of their own being.

Teilhard de Chardin

Outside and Inside

There are many wrong tracks in society, but they are all basically the same:
They all take us outside of ourselves to satisfy our inner needs.
Whether they take us toward material goods
or towards social relationships and emotional codependence,
they all ignore the mind's own potential to provide us with happiness and peace

Dzigar Kongtrul, It's Up to You

Ants

The other day I threw out into the garden the end of a pear I had eaten. I had hoped that it would be food for the songthrush and blackbird who visit. However, a few minutes later I noticed that it had been discovered by ants, who were working incredibly fast to extract its goodness and bring it back to the nest. In a straight line they worked quickly, back and forth, organized, one following the trail left by the last, with one purpose, focused on a clear goal.

This dull Sunday morning I can reflect on direction and purpose. My Sunday roots are in Catholicism. When I was young we dressed in our best clothes which were all laid out in preparation on the night before. Saturday night was the time to polish shoes, so that there was a heightened sense of ritual and specialness about going to Church on the Sunday morning. It was a place set apart. It anchored the week and was clearly the moment which gave meaning to it. In my young eyes it was a place of certainty and continuity, an outer form that was bigger than me and gave the impression of being a container where all of life's questions could be answered and complexities resolved.

However, despite such clarity when little and despite having invested all the years since to developing the inner life in different ways, I cannot say that life has become more certain. Ants can move consistently in a straight line. As a young adult I felt that my life plan moved in the same way. However, I see now that such a need for straight lines and a definite script came from anxiety and has been replaced by trust. Life is complex and I have moved, and continue to move, in more meandering ways. What I have come to realize, is that in spite of those seeming changes in direction and complexity of experiences, whatever meaning there is to be found comes to me slowly, sometimes unexpectedly, and I am content with that.

I am dressed more casually this Sunday morning, but it is no less special because of that. Meaning can be found inside and in the ordinary. It is not necessary to always be as busy as the ant to find direction. One does not have to know the end point on the map to be going in the right way.

Inside or Outside: Where to look

I may not hope
from outward forms to win
The passion and the life,
whose fountains are within.

Coleridge

Practice

In your light I learn how to love
In your beauty, how to make poems

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art...


Rumi

Richard Davidson on how the brain can change

An excerpt from Dr. Richard Davidson's keynote address on contemplative neuroscience at the Center for Mindfulness 7th Annual International Conference, March 2009