THE CREATIVE BUDDHIST NEWSLETTER

Dear Subscriber First Name,

Being married to a Swede means I’m often asked what certain words mean. Recently it was ‘humdrum’. Like many similar words I don’t know why we say it, only when we say it. Hum drum basically means dull or monotonous.

I was explaining how I’m not very good at having a ‘humdrum’ life, a life where the same things happen each day, where you are maintaining some kind of status quo, keeping body and soul together the best you can. Now all lives require a level of maintenance, mine included. But to be truly happy, I need something else. I need a project.

Some people are content with maintenance + pleasure, but not me. We just had a lovely holiday in the south of Sweden, good food, white beaches, cold sea. Now we are back in the swing of normal life and spent our Sunday repairing, cleaning and oiling all the garden tools. ‘This is more enjoyable than being on holiday’, I said. She agreed. We had a project.

Maybe you are the kind of person who does not need a project, many of my friends are. They have their lives, like mine a little humdrum perhaps, but then lots of enjoyable things around the edges, that’s what makes life worth living for them. But for me, no matter how many friends I meet, art galleries I visit, or great food I eat, I’m not truly happy without a project.

An ideal project for me is something that needs to be built in the real world. It could be a house, or a loaf of bread. If I can see it in my mind’s eye then I want to bring it into being. It’s a reason to get up in the morning. Funnily enough, I never have to find the energy for a good project. The project itself creates the energy.

I’m in a bit of a bardo, waiting for my next big project, meanwhile satisfying myself with lots of little ones. If you’ve got a big project on the go, hit reply and tell me about it. I can live vicariously through you!

The Dharma Bundle

Mirror-like mind -
Understanding thoughts

I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say it’s ‘thoughts’ that stand between us and awakening. Here’s what you’ll find in this month’s Dharma Bundle:

• Article: From prapanca to insight

• Video or audio: Why we need to understand thoughts

• Video or audio: What are thoughts? 

• Audio: Insight inquiry into thoughts

• Creative Assignment: The power of our surroundings

• Video: Zoom workshop recording

When we do understand what thoughts are they lose power over us. 

The Dharma Bundle is a ‘bundle’ of dharma resources, thoughtfully made and beautifully packaged. Short, illustrated Dharma videos and audio talks. Audio meditations and reflections. Creative assignments. Zoom meetups.

On my radar this week

Art interventions - All the town square’s lions now have pink tongues!

TV - Kaos: We’ve just finished watching Kaos on Netflix and I can thoroughly recommend it. It’s surprising, funny, moving, good looking and a brilliant commentary on the current state of society. It’s based on the mythology of the Greek gods, which I didn’t know lots about (you don’t have to) I’ll learn more before season two. I literally relished every minute. An episode before bed was the perfect night time treat.

Podcast - Tricycle: How did I not know Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, has a podcast? I’ve just lined up these two to listen to next: Andrew Holecek’s ‘I’m mindful, now what?’, in which he argues that mindfulness is not enough to meet the challenges of the modern world. And Bruce Tift’s ‘Already Free’ where he asks, ‘why are we so invested in believing there is something wrong with us’. Both are from the last couple of months.

TV - This Town: Just started watching this with my bonus kids, 20 and 18. I’d watched a couple of episodes months ago then forgot about it, forgot how good it is. This Town is set in Birmingham in the 80s, it’s about a couple of cousins getting a band together (inspired by The Specials), but there’s trouble rumbling in the background with one cousin being drawn into IRA activity by his uncle. It’s unusual, rough and full of poetry.

Concert - Laurie Anderson’s ARK: So Laurie Anderson is coming to the UK just as I finish a retreat there in November. You can’t ignore that kind of synchronicity! The show is called ARK - Fast forward to our own time and the multiple countdowns that now engulf us. Climate collapse, environmental disaster, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence have all added to a sense of isolation and powerlessness as we retreat further online. We’ve made the flood, but can we build an ark? If you get tickets for the 20th, in Manchester, I’ll see you there!

Podcast - Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Nexus’: Yuval Noah Harari is a historian who each year goes on a 3 to 6 week silent retreat. He calls it an information fast. You might know him as the author of ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’. Now he’s written Nexus: a brief history of information networks from the Stone-age to AI. I don’t know where you stand on the spectrum of alarm about AI (one minute I’m thinking it will take over the world, the next that it’ll never learn how to make up a good joke, both true perhaps) but this was the most clear and intelligent explanation I’ve heard about the dangers of AI.

Diary extracts:

Changing my relationship to pain

In the Dharma Bundle over the next three months, we are exploring ‘thoughts’. I reflected that most of the suffering in my life comes from the thoughts I entertain. But then there’s also my knee. It hurts (years of living with a slightly wonky leg) and now my hip hurts too. This week I listened to an interview with Peter O’Sullivan about chronic pain and it was a revelation. Here’s what I learnt:

Don’t be afraid of pain or use it as an excuse to stop moving (unless it’s acute). When I walk to the gym and my hip is a little painful, if I’m not careful I can conclude it’s because I’m walking. The reality is it’s because I’ve been sitting at my desk for too long. Being still causes pain, even though it’s when I move I feel it.

You can have pain without damage and damage without pain. They did an extensive study where they put everyone through an MRI scanner. Half the group were told they had normal signs of aging, nothing to worry about. The other half of the group were told the medical terms for those things, osteoarthritis, meniscus tear, etc. Three months later, the people who were told the details of their condition were in more pain and had restricted their lives more than the group who were told what they had nothing to worry about. This just goes to show the power of nocebo.

Notes to myself - Move a lot. Don’t be careful. Don’t restrict what you do. Practice relaxed movement.

Miksang and direct experience

I mentioned in a previous newsletter that I’ve been doing a course on Miksang photography. Each week we get feedback on the photos we submit. I’ve noticed that the most successful photos are the ones they have nothing to say about, just a surprised and silenced ‘huh’.

A photo that gets you thinking isn’t a Miksang photo. The best ones are the least interesting. When they flash up on the screen, there is literally nothing for your mind to do except stop.

It’s reminded me of doing ‘insight inquiry’ where we are looking only at direct experience, pure sensations. Direct experience stripped of any conceptual content. In the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard. Miksang is like insight inquiry with a camera.

A quote I’m thinking about:

‘Every object is turned into a subjective and direct experience, in which no previous associations disturb the freshness or distort the originality of the impression.’

- Lama Govinda