Deckchairs
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.
