Whatever You Say, Say Nothing

…or perhaps still and moving might be a better description of the last few weeks. My longest distance so far in terms of running is 9 miles - will it be enough to get me on schedule for 13 miles on 5th October??  My limiting factor now seems to be more in the knee department than the lung department which I feel is overall probably a good thing.  Someone said to me I might need to look out for my knees when running in the longer term.  I said "What longer term??" My target is 5th October which is not that far away (unless you are a small moth, or some other small thing,  in which case it is many lifetimes away).  I guess though it would be good to keep up the gains I’ve made so far (getting into pairs of jeans that had been consigned to the back of the drawer, for instance).  Oh and yes - I did the Great Wales Run on 27th July - probably the hottest day of the year so far.  It was exciting, confusing and somewhat daunting to be running with so many people and I had to work hard with a tendency to think that everyone knew what they were doing except me. Is it seriously uncool to wear your iPod when running in a ‘proper’ race?  And what’s the etiquette re. disposing of plastic bottles?  I’m really grateful to Sharon, who drove me into Cardiff and dropped me off at the start point so i didn’t have to worry about parking the car as well.  The course was fab - running at one point over the barrage in Cardiff Bay with views of blue, blue sky and blue, blue sea.  And how did I do?  63 minutes - slow, but i didn’t stop!

Over in Ireland I enjoyed running round the scenic route (or the switchback road, as we used to call it) near Marble Hill in Donegal (5 miles, much up and down as the name suggests!).  In the last few days it’s been lovely running late in the afternoon along the Taff Trail above Talybont Reservoir, seeing the sun (a novelty in itself!) reflecting on the water and highlighting all the various shades of green on the hills.  Ok, so maybe it’s not all about getting into those old jeans.

So what have I been doing for the last week?  Resting on my laurels?  No!  Last week I managed 8 miles - very slowly - in the bucketing rain at Tiratanaloka.  It was hard going though and I felt as if my legs belonged to someone else (much older) at the end.  This is how wet it was - I was able to wring water from my shirt as I was running, and the rain running into my ears kept washing my iPod earbuds out!!

At the moment I’m in Colchester and am about to do a 5 mile run on a mixture of pavement (not nice, lots of noisy traffic) and roads (through an army firing range which always lends a frisson of excitement to the proceedings). 

I’ve entered the Great Wales Run, a 10K race in Cardiff, on 27th July so I can see what it’s like running with lots of other people on an unfamiliar route.  Lots of advice and encouragement from the lovely Dee yesterday which was really helpful.  And thanks a million if you’ve sponsored me!

Well, an interesting morning!  6 of us from the community decided to go to the gym this morning - a larger number than usual, so we had to go in 2 cars.  On the way there we were joking about needing to do a head count before we came home.  This turned out to be slightly less amusing when, 2 hours later in the middle of breakfast, we discovered we’d left someone behind….

As I was on the way back to collect her, a car travelling rather too fast in the opposite direction on our narrow country road removed my wing mirror and then carried on without even slowing down.  Grrr!!!   Well, all that got the adrenalin going in a way the gym could hardly match.  I do notice that my muscles complain strenuously if I exercise before about 9am - aches, cramp etc.  I think they have a point.

Back to pounding the roads tomorrow.  I was disconcerted to find that the distance along the back road from Brecon to Talybont is only 4 miles - 13 miles is starting to sound like a long, long way!!  Any encouraging tips or comments gratefully received from anyone out there.

Well, run of course.  In the wind and the rain.  So here’s the latest progress report: 2 days ago I managed to run to Nick’s house and back - a total of 6.4 miles - hooray!  The bad news…? The length of time it took me to do so - over an hour (about 67 minutes if we’re being totally precise).  Still, I did do it without stopping.  Today I ran (I use the term loosely) 5 miles at a slightly faster pace.  This was ok I think as I was feeling pretty tired.  In the good old days I would have stopped after about 5 minutes and decided to do something a bit less strenuous instead, like reading the paper.  Listening to music while I’m out really helps too as I used to find the sound of my own rather laboured breathing really off-putting.  Talybont reservoir looks very beautiful even in wild and wet weather so that’s an added bonus.

Coming soon: dealing with unskilful mental states that arise when flies buzz round your head when you’re running.

…. attempt to raise money by asking you to sponsor me to do the Great North Run in October.  OK, pause for a moment while those of you who know me pick yourselves up off the floor.  It’s true I have never been a runner and I’m getting on a bit for starting this sort of malarkey.

But the money will go to a good cause - the bursary fund at Tiratanaloka, which we use to help women to come on retreat here, who would not otherwise be able to afford the cost.  This year we had someone come all the way from South Africa (she paid her own travel expenses and some retreat costs as well) just to be on one of our retreats. 

Some very generous retreatants who have just finished a 2-week retreat here today donated £46 so I’m off to a good start.  It also means I have to do it now!!

If you wish, you can donate through the JustGiving website by clicking here.  They will also gather gift aid if you are a UK taxpayer.

I’ve currently managed to work my way up from 1 mile (embarrassing) to 5 miles (slightly less embarrassing) but there is still quite a way to go before October.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress!! 

I’m a little embarrassed my blog has been gathering such a thick layer of dust.  The reasons are several: 1) Blogsome doesn’t work very well with Safari so I’ve been thinking of moving to something else (rather pathetic excuse) 2) I felt a bit bad about neglecting the Tiratanaloka blog while continuing to write my own and, finally, 3) I rather lost my way in terms of why I was doing it and who I was doing it for.  This last is probably the main reason I haven’t written anything for so long.  If you’d like to see my (somewhat unspectacular!) photographs of my trip to Australia in March, then you can see them by looking here

If you have any thoughts about the point of non-anonymous, non-business-related blogging then I’d like to hear them and have another think about it all.  Thanks. 

I thought I would say something about the blog title.. a very northern Irish saying.  I found an article in Sociological Research Online with this same title which asserts: 

"When strangers in Northern Ireland meet, they draw upon a variety of cues in an attempt to ascertain each other’s religio-political identity and, depending on the outcome, enter into what Burton (1978) terms ’systematically distorted’ or ‘pseudo-communication’. "

This brought a smile to my face, although I haven’t lived in N Ireland for a long time (23 years to be exact)…..  all the little cues you looked for in what someone said that would be a dead giveaway as to whether they were Prod or Catholic (ok - what their religio-political identity was).  And the questions you politely asked if you couldn’t work it out in the first minute or two of conversation.  And then the pseudo-communication - oh yes indeed!!  I guess (and I’m very happy to be corrected) that the phrase ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’ is advice to heavily edit what you say unless you know who you are saying it to lest you inadvertantly let slip something that might get you into deep you-know-what.

This made me think about writing a blog and how it’s easy to imagine at first who might be reading it (no-one? your friends? your family?? your preceptor???) and therefore to suddenly find yourself editing the content when you realise that actually all of them could be (although probably none is….).  I suddenly started to realise why so many blogs are anonymous!!  It would be really great to just pour out all those inner thoughts without a care in the world who was going to read them, but it’s just too scary for me, I am a embarrassed to admit.  Work in progress.  There’s a lot more that could be said here in terms of this sort of self-censorship - is it valid or even interesting to write this sort of thing if some of what is going on is edited out?  Is it meaningful communication at all?  What does it mean to me to be typing this at this very moment?  Answers on a postcard please.  Perhaps I will check out Sociological Research again…

This is just a quick post because I fear my blog is gathering dust…..

Over the new year we ran a retreat on the Four Mind Turning Reflections (or the 4 reminders, as they are sometimes known).  These are:
the preciousness of our human birth
death and impermanence
karma and
contemplating the defects of samsara.
They sound like sobering stuff, and indeed they are in one sense, but in another way if we can really take them to heart they somehow set us free from trying to make our lives ‘work’ in a way that we often know won’t quite come off in the long run. Giving a talk on death and impermanence really pushed me up against the fact that life IS short - an unknown span in fact - and that whatever I want to do with my life I need to get on with it NOW.  Why waste time rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, as a Dzogchen teacher said.  After the retreat I spent a few very enjoyable days in London (yes, doing a certain amount of deckchair rearranging!) - seeing Charlie and my sister Lesley and her family and reacquainting myself with the family gene for deadly competitive charades.  I also saw a great play at the National - The Seafarer by Connor McPherson.  A funny, sad, haunting theme of the human need for connectedness.  Now I’m just about to start another retreat here - this time the 2-week Transcendental Principle, studying the core Buddhist teaching of conditionality.

That missing comma in my blog title has been bothering me too.

Well it wasn’t rainy then but it is now!  Here are some pictures of the holiday I went on with Charlie to Gran Canaria in November.  I found the place through a website called i-escape that Vajradarshini told me about.  It was extremely quiet and peaceful… nothing much to do but lounge by the pool and generally chill out.  The weather was warm and sunny… yes, enough to get out the bikini (for those of you who enquired!)

I started writing this post a week after returning from a meditation retreat at Vajraloka retreat centre in N. Wales.  However, that was about 6 weeks ago and of course my experience and thoughts now are slightly different … so I’m starting over.  Well, in the spirit of the retreat, I guess I’d have to say my experience will have changed again by the time I have finished typing this, which raises another question entirely about the nature of this sort of online diary type stuff…. but not one I’m going to go into now [collective relief!].

The retreat was Tejananda’s ‘Entering Pure Awareness’ and it was the first time I had been on a retreat where formless meditation of this type was taught.  Although the retreat was billed as ‘open/mixed’ there were a lot of dharmacharinis on it - probably more than 10!  Well, I suppose we were mixed…..  I certainly was.  It was the first time I had ever been to Vajraloka and I had to reassess my view of where the back of beyond is, because I think Vajraloka is much closer to it than Tiratanaloka.  It is in a fabulous location, with the community house sort of clinging to the side of a hill and ever-changing light and weather moving into the valley beyond.  The team couldn’t have been more welcoming and my sense of the retreat was one of formal practice carried out in an informal and relaxed atmosphere (mostly in silence, apart from meditation teaching, interviews and ritual).  I enjoyed Tejananda’s teaching style very much - clear and somehow light.  Well, that’s been the easy bit to write about…. the more I try and put into words the actual effect of the retreat, the more difficult it becomes. Maybe I will just say that it was somehow simple and strong at the same time - whatever it was, it has given me a renewed enthusiasm to get on the cushions and a different perspective of things off them as well. I’d really like to do the retreat again, but unfortunately the timings don’t coincide with our programme at Tiratanaloka in 2007….