Category: mind-forged manacles

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Double dendritic delight

The latest Festival of the Trees is up at Windywillow! and it’s got two branches – a frightful one (with accompanying howl, turn the sound down if you’re easily startled) and a fruitful one. Both are well-foliaged with beautiful pictures and words. (Yes, I toyed with the idea of their being well hung, but thought I’d already ridden that one on a previous occasion. So to speak.)

(And more delight – I am going to see Orchestra Baobab when they are in London. When I was at the bottom of the pit and could barely exist at all theirs was the only music I could listen to. They hold a really special place in my heart and I am overjoyed that I shall see them play in a great venue. Last time (the only time) I saw them play was in Dakar (back in the raised-from-the-dead archives there, sorry about the unavoidable discontinuity in appearance). It was a stadium concert and they are so “old fashioned” in domestic Senegalese terms that they were about the first band on in a huge line-up and when they played audience barely covered a handkerchief. So I was right at the front! In London the smallish venue will be crammed full of devoted fans so the atmosphere will be wonderful, I hope. Now all I need to do is find a sitter for the boys. Also the camera is cured and I shall probably pick it up tomorrow so I may be able to take some pictures of them. And other stuff before then, no doubt. Oh joy! oh happiness!)

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Flying saucers in the sunshine

Well that was a particularly gloomy previous post. Today has been a bit weird. I made complicated childcare arrangements (it’s half term and the boys are on holiday) in order to go to a particularly important meeting on the outskirts of London at 11am, got there and discovered that it was actually supposed to be at 1pm. I couldn’t hang around because 1pm was the time the childcare arrangements expired.

At least it was a lovely sunny day.

flying saucers

Remember flying saucers? Sweet bubbles of thick rice paper enclosing a rustling sizzle of sherbet powder? I always thought the best way to eat them was to stick them to the roof of your mouth with your tongue and allow them to dissolve slowly, the sharp fizz of the sherbet working its way slowly but ever more insistently through the glutinous layer of deliquescing rice paper.

Obviously there’s some uncultured oik in the neighbourhood who seriously lacks discrimination in the finer things of life. These sad, broken saucer superstructures had been discarded on a bench at the station, eviscerated and left to, well, dissolve probably, eventually.

But they looked quite pretty all the same.

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Borrowings

For instance, the blessing for the body uses the word חלולים / chalulim, “ducts” or “tubes” or “openings.” (In context: “Who formed humans with wisdom and created a system of ducts and conduits within them.”) A chalal is a flute, so this blessing evokes the ways in which our bodies are like flutes through which the ruach ha-kodesh (“holy spirit,” more or less) flows.

Velveteen Rabbi

“We are all in some way instruments. And we all have to be virtuosos at taking a back seat when necessary. Way back. The prayer life of a flexible instrument cannot be well ordered. It has to be terribly free. And utterly responsive to a darkly, dimly understood command.”
– Thomas Merton
The School of Charity

Whiskey River

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The single dimension of infinity

In Israel and in the Reform world, today is also Simchat Torah, the day of “rejoicing in the Torah,” when we read the very end of the Torah and then immediately cycle back around to the very beginning. Our central narrative is a kind of mobius strip, a continual spiral, which shifts in meaning each year as we change and grow.

Although the path is usually described as having eight steps, in essence there are only three, with each of those three broken down in groupings of three, three, and two sub-step. The three basic steps are ethical conduct, meditation, and transforming insight into the way things are. Rather than forming a stairway that leads to heaven, these three steps and their eight sub-steps are more like a Mobius Strip that endlessly leaves, travels, and arrives in the here and now. One can start anywhere on the path, or choose to follow any step at any time, or several or all of them all at once, and always arrive at the same place. The Noble Eightfold Path, as the path to the end of suffering is usually called, truly describes more of a place than a path, with the place being the present, a boundary-less orb without coordinates in which all things happen everywhere all the time.

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The Dhamma Brothers

For anyone who found the film Doing Time, Doing Vipassana interesting (about meditation in prisons in India) here, fresh off the camera, is a film about the same practice in a high-security prison in the US.

The Dhamma Brothers has its own website complete with trailer and details of a book of letters from the prisoners to accompany the film which is being published by Pariyatti Press.

That last link indicates financial support was being sought for the book. The film, clearly a labour of love, benefited from support from Rivers Cuomo of Weezer.

There’s an interview with the film’s director, Jenny Philips, which gives some interesting background to the project:

In the fall of 1999, Phillips, a licensed psychotherapist and cultural anthropologist, was researching meditation within Massachusetts prisons when she heard about a group of men at Donaldson who gathered on a regular basis to meditate. “I’m not sure why I went down there,” she said. “But I did.”

After an examination of the prisoners, through observation of their meditation as well as one-on-one interviews, Phillips found their lives to be filled with apprehension and danger and, even though many of these men were serving life sentences, they were still searching for some sort of meaning in their lives. “There was such a sense of misery and hopelessness there, but also such a sense of survival of the human spirit,” she said…

Phillips, a meditator herself, knew that meditation could offer the prisoners relief from suffering. “If you can find peaceful ways to live in prison, you’re going to be much happier there,” she said.

Getting a camera inside the prison proved difficult. “Prisons like to do what they do quietly and be left alone,” Phillips said.

But, after pulling some strings with Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, director of treatment at Donaldson, Phillips was able to capture the transformation of the prisoners on film. “I think it was the only medium,” she said. “The written word can’t quite capture them — and I think film is the most powerful medium anyway.”

I’m not sure how I might get to see this film but for anyone living in Massachusetts you can watch it at the Woods Hole Film Festival later this month.

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Meditation in prisons

Doing Time, Doing Vipassana.

A documentary film about the success of Vipassana courses in Indian prisons. In 1993, Kiran Bedi, a reformist Inspector General of India’s prisons, learned of the success of Vipassana in a jail in Jainpur, Rajasthan. A 10 day course involved officials and inmates alike. In India’s largest prison, Tihar Jail, near New Delhi, another attempt was made. This program was said to have dramatically changed the behavior of inmates and jailers alike. It was actually found that inmates who completed the 10 day course were less violent and had a lower recidivism rate than other inmates. This project was documented in the television documentary, Doing Time, Doing Vipassana. So successful was this program that it was adopted by correctional facilities in the United States and other countries as well.

The film, now 10 years old, is on YouTube cut into six nine-minute sections. Here’s the first.

and here are parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Fascinating and compelling viewing. I really recommend watching all of them.

As is the way of things I discover these films the same day that I receive in the post a copy of The Fires that Burn. This is about the Canadian Catholic nun and Zen roshi Sister Elaine MacInnes who has been teaching meditation in prisons for thirty years and is a former director of The Prison Phoenix Trust in the UK.

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I’ll be your mirror

Because you yourself have imperfections, you therefore feel the environment is imperfect. It is like a mirror with an uneven surface, the images reflected in it are also distorted. Or, it is like the surface of water disturbed by ripples, the moon reflected in it is irregular and unsettled. If the surface of the mirror is clear and smooth, or if the air on the surface of the water is still and the ripples calmed, then the reflection in the mirror and the moon in the water will be clear and exact. Therefore, from the point of view of Chan, the major cause of the pain and misfortune suffered by humanity is not the treacherous environment of the world in which we live, nor the dreadful society of humankind, but the fact that we have never been able to recognise our basic nature. So the method of Chan is not to direct us to evade reality, nor to shut our eyes like the African ostrich when enemies come, and bury our heads in the sand, thinking all problems are solved. Chan is not a self-hypnotising idealism.

(Re the title, definitely been ODing on VU. And I should really have had the pic from the previous-but-one post on this one. Rats.)

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I'll be your mirror

Because you yourself have imperfections, you therefore feel the environment is imperfect. It is like a mirror with an uneven surface, the images reflected in it are also distorted. Or, it is like the surface of water disturbed by ripples, the moon reflected in it is irregular and unsettled. If the surface of the mirror is clear and smooth, or if the air on the surface of the water is still and the ripples calmed, then the reflection in the mirror and the moon in the water will be clear and exact. Therefore, from the point of view of Chan, the major cause of the pain and misfortune suffered by humanity is not the treacherous environment of the world in which we live, nor the dreadful society of humankind, but the fact that we have never been able to recognise our basic nature. So the method of Chan is not to direct us to evade reality, nor to shut our eyes like the African ostrich when enemies come, and bury our heads in the sand, thinking all problems are solved. Chan is not a self-hypnotising idealism.

(Re the title, definitely been ODing on VU. And I should really have had the pic from the previous-but-one post on this one. Rats.)

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Depilling – week two-and-a-half

There is a very annoying side effect. It’s as though, whenever I move, my brain moves rather more slowly than everything else. Think stomach-in-lift experience. But permanently, prompted by anything more than the most gentle and regal turning of the head. A cross between slightly-pissed-while-very-tired and the up and down motion you get walking on dry land after a long boat trip in rough weather.

At first I thought hey, this isn’t so bad. Not nearly as bad as the drooling catatonia of starting to take SSRIs. It’ll pass, I thought. It’s nothing, I thought.

Well it hasn’t and it isn’t and I’m getting pretty pissed off with it. Even, on occasion, sick of it. As in nauseous.

Otherwise life seems… hmm. To have a bit of a sting to it. To be complex. Annoying. Exciting. Tiring. And zesty. None of which is necessarily bad, in small amounts.

mirrors
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Have I mentioned Lou Reed’s arms?

oh those arms and sinews

Strange, it never occurred to me that anyone else in the audience might be fixated on these two parts of his anatomy but it turns out this predilection is shared by H, whose idea it was to go to see him perform his concept album Berlin in its entirety. And in fact, judging from the larger picture from which the above was cropped, performers as well as audience members shared the interest.

neck

This was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to, possibly the best (although to be honest I go to so few there isn’t much competition, but don’t let that get in the way of how fabulous this was).

Quite apart from the stunning quality of the musicianship it was the physicality of the thing that so enraptured… Lou Reed moving like an ancient and arthritic monkey yet taut as catgut stretched across a violin bridge, face contorted in intense concentration; the swaying of the angelically-gauze-robed New London Children’s Choir; Katie Krykant in her stunning scarlet dress seated quietly while silent then stretched tight, pulling the music out on threads between her hands.

backing singer

The guitarist, Steve Hunter, played on the original album and has been described as “one of the best guitarists on the planet”. I’m not going to argue with that. An extraordinary presence, tall, inexplicably wearing what looked like a black wooly hat, he sometimes bounded around, at others reclined on a stool with one long leg extended out across the stage.

The intensity and rapport between all the musicians on stage (about 30 including the brass and string section from the London Metropolitan Orchestra was incredible. That’s drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith having some kind of out of body epiphany during Satellite of Love (played as one of three encores).

satellite of love

The only cavils I have are minor. The set by Julian Schnabel didn’t quite work for me. It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t really very inspiring. And the presence of what appeared to be an old green sofa hanging against the backdrop was annoying. The back-projected film by Schnabel’s daughter Lola Schnabel featuring Emmanuelle Seigner as the album’s central character, Caroline, was a mimsy spun-sugar confection completely emotionally disengaged from the intensity of the music and narrative it was supposed to complement.

And what a narrative. Emotionally and physically abusive relationships, infidelity, jealousy, a mother having her children taken away, suicide by the blade. Quite apart from my own general history in the 36 hours before the concert I learnt of the suicide of a former colleague and discovered a friend had grown up in a series of foster homes after being removed from their mother’s care because of her repeated suicide attempts. Yes, life is indeed a bitch. However at the end of the performance I was left feeling profoundly uplifted. I’m not sure why this should be so, but guess that it’s partly sheer gratitude for what hasn’t happened and partly an ability now to look at pain without the fear that the mere act of looking will allow it to infect, overcome and destroy.

As for the pictures, I am so happy with them! I’ve long admired Caroline‘s spectacular concert photography but grabbed the long lens pretty much as an afterthought just before leaving the house. I think that given how far away from the stage we were it handled the challenge really well. I shoved the ISO up to 800, cleaned up the Olympus trademark noise afterwards; the tiny size and weight of the lens and camera means less shake, and, perhaps the most significant factor, Mr Reed kept quite still most of the time 🙂

I still really really want the new E-510 though. Can you imagine what my tiny light lens could produce on a body with built-in image stabilisation? and with (at last) an effort by Olympus to tackle the appallingly bad noise their cameras usually have at high speeds? It’s only a few millimeters larger and 85g heavier the the E-400… with the weak dollar I could get it for £400 when I go to NY in September… that’s £150 less than over here… nonononononono… no spending money. Tell me to stop. STOP! DON’T DO IT! NOOOOOOOOO!!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

PS Did you know Lou Reed meditates? He studies with Mingyur Rinpoche who’s a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu lineage. Maybe it’s Rinpoche who’s taught Reed to smile. Yes, there is visual evidence. Lou Reed can smile. Well, after a fashion. Looks like he still needs practice. And he’s released an album, Hudson River Wind Meditations. User reviews are positive. The one music critic I read was, um, savage.