Dear Subscriber First Name,We celebrated Midsummer here on retreat with friends — you can read about it and other news in the blog post June at the Guesthouse below. The theme was Living with Ease, based on the Four Noble Truths. It's a classic, some would say 'basic' teaching. I prefer 'essential' — I'm beginning to realise my thing, when it comes to Dharma, is "the essentials." I've been circling around some of the most essential teachings for decades: the skandhas, the lakshanas, the vimokshas, the fetters. My experience is that I can always dig deeper, find a more creative way of engaging, or relate a teaching to something else — often art — which shines a whole new light on it. Recently it's been the Four Noble Truths, the theme of a few recent retreats, and there have been new discoveries — yes, even after knowing about them for nearly forty years! I’m sharing four new realisations about the Four Noble Truths in The Medicine We Keep Rediscovering. One reason I'm dropping you a line between retreats is to ask for your help. I'm in the process of creating a new retreat, Beauty and Insight, a retreat on perception. It's based on the 5 skandhas, where I want to explore them through art, alongside the traditional dharma teachings and meditations. For each skandha I'm looking for art, music, film, etc., where the artist is working with that particular skandha. I'll outline what each skandha seems to be about for me, and if you have an idea of an artist or artwork that connects, please drop me a line. I might not reply straight away as I'm on retreat again soon, but I'll share all your responses in a future newsletter. The 5 SkandhasForm – The forms we experience through the senses, 'things' that we make from the raw materials of sight, sound, and so on. Feeling – Traditionally the initial feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. But I'll be exploring feelings in a broader sense and how we work with them. Perception – The ways in which we notice and recognise things as things, how we are creating our world through perception. Volition – Our patterns of being, habits, and tendencies. How the way we act in the present leaves traces that become patterns we carry into the future. Consciousness – How our knowing of anything is always divided into subject and object, and how we can start to soften that sense of in here and out there, coming into a more intimate relationship with other beings, animate and inanimate. Look forward to any tips or leads you can give me, especially the ones that might take me out of my own wheelhouse!
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