Grace.

“There’s the moon, asking to stay
long enough for the clouds to fly me away.”
~ ‘Grace’, Jeff Buckley

“Wait in the fire, wait in the fire.”
~ ‘Grace’, Jeff Buckley

Rebecca

Late this afternoon I arrived back home from Dhanakosa, where we spent the weekend in community, friendship, practice and Dharma study during the Glasgow Triratna Sangha retreat. I arrived home ready, I feel, to advance.

During the work period with which we ended our time at the retreat centre, I found myself singing Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’ as I moved from room to room, mopping the bathrooms. I do often sing Buckley songs – I consider ‘Grace’ to be one of a few albums that come as close to perfection as is possible.

This weekend, though, it seemed to have a deeper significance that’s only become clear with some reflection.

In the past few days the moon, full mid-week and now waning gibbous, has been bright and looming large in the sky. With such clear skies around Dhanakosa, the moon was bright and stunning among a sky-wide spray of sparkling stars.

Thanks to that cloudless sky and the lack of light pollution in the Scottish countryside, I was able to clearly see what I’ve struggled to spot before – the hare in the moon.

In the west we usually talk about the ‘Man in the Moon’ because of the facial features that we read there in its shadows. In the East, the moon is seen from a different angle and when they look upon it they see a hare.

There’s a tale from Buddhist folklore connected with the hare in the moon. A summarised story (with a wee bit of poetic licence and a nod to Osama Tezuka’s version of the story which moved me to tears) goes a bit like this…

The story goes that the Buddha, in one of his previous lives, was born as a hare and was living in a wood with a monkey, a jackal and an otter. One day they came across a starving monk, close to death, warming himself by a fire.

“We must help him,” said the Buddha-to-Be. “By each giving from our own food.”

The otter rushed off and returned with some fish and dropped them next to the fire. The jackal raced off and returned with an iguana and dropped it next to the fire. The monkey leapt off and came back with some mangoes, which he gave to the emaciated monk.

The hare ran back to his home and returned with the food from his store, but when he placed the grass before the monk he realised that this food that nourished him was no good to humans.

So in an act of supreme compassion, he gave the monk the only food he had. He threw himself onto the fire, giving his life so that the monk could eat him and survive.

According to the story, the hare’s act of compassion was celebrated by the drawing of his shape on the moon.

In Christianity, the word ‘Grace’ is used theologically to describe a spontaneous, unmerited, wonderful gift. That certainly describes the gift, the ultimate sacrifice, that was made by the hare, who in a future life would become Sakyamuni, the Buddha.

When I found myself singing ‘Grace’ today and thinking of the moon, I thought it was just because of the opening line of the song. But just maybe there was a wee bit more to it than that.

The First Rule of Fish Fight.

I’m having a bit of a struggle with Hugh FW’s Fish Fight.

The problem Hugh is trying to address is this:

Fishermen go out in boats to catch loads of fish at a time using large nets. Because this method is pretty indiscriminate (some of the more intense fishing companies use nets covering an area in the region of 4km) they catch many sea creatures that are not of the species they intend to land.

Some of these animals have been designated as ‘over-quota’ – cod famously so – and so the fishermen are not allowed to land them. So they throw them back into the water. Dead.

Sometimes hundreds at a time.

This seems like madness to all of us, I’m sure, carnivore, vegetarian and vegan alike. Sanna (an occasional carnivore) and I were watching Hugh’s Fish Fight last night.

“This is horrific,” I said. “Even meat-eaters will be by appalled by it.”
“Of course,” said Sanna. “It’s a horrible waste of food.”

And therein lies the rub, and the problem I have with supporting Fish Fight. I don’t see a waste of food, I see a waste of life. Yes, I believe it’s worse to kill an animal and throw it back into the sea than to kill it and eat it.

But Hugh’s preferred solution – that people should be encouraged to eat more fish from a wider range of species – I can’t support.

There were a couple of moments in the programme that showed the disconnect to which even people like Hugh, who has gone to the trouble of visiting fish farms and doing great work chasing companies like Evil Tesco, are prone.

In one he was talking to the owner of a salmon farm (did you know, btw, that the pink colour of salmon is an additive – canthaxanthin – which has been linked to retina problems) and asked him what the mortality rate of his salmon was.

“About 7%” responded the owner.

I blinked several times. What? So the other 93% live happy lives and die in old age? Of course not. What Hugh meant is “How many of your fish don’t survive long enough to be killed en masse in factory machines?”

In another, Hugh visited a factory where salmon are killed, opened and gutted by industrial machines, thousands at a time . It was incredibly bloody and the factory workers’ overalls, goggles and and hats were sprayed red and dripping. A stone of sadness formed in my stomach and sank, making my body feel heavy.

“Well, it’s certainly hard to argue with this from an animal welfare point of view.”

Hugh and I clearly have a different idea of what constitutes looking after the welfare of an animal.

It seems to me that the first rule of Fish Fight is that you must forget that fish are living animals, rather than ‘food resources’.

Me, I found the sight of so many animals being killed and torn apart very disturbing and it led to some very bad dreams.

And that, I’m afraid, is why, as the Dragons say, “I’m out.”

Good Night.

There’s nothing like a funeral to help give you a perspective reboot.

A few months ago my dad received news that his brother had become very ill while visiting his sons and their families in Dubai. This began a nightmare time for my uncle, aunt and their family and, with my uncle’s death on Boxing Day, came great grief.

My dad, a very emotional man, has taken this hard and he struggled through the funeral today. He and his brother had been out of touch for a long time but, thankfully, had become close again in the months of my uncle’s illness.

For us ‘kids’ the funeral was a strange affair. My memories of my uncle are 20 years old due to family issues that aren’t anything to do with me. I make no judgement on that – it’s just the way it is. When I met the sons – my cousins I guess – I had difficulty reconciling the grown men before me with the teenage boys of my few memories of them.

But they looked like family.

My brother and I look a lot like our mum, but my wee sister is the double of my dad and, judging from the photo in the arrival hall of the church, my dad and uncle look (looked) very alike.

Meeting his sons was like looking at my sister’s true genetic family. It felt odd to meet these people who were really strangers to me, but who were physically so familiar, because for decades I’d been looking at these features in the face of my beloved sister and father.

The funeral was hard, despite the fact I didn’t really know my uncle properly. It was hard because a coffin brings the preciousness of the limited time we have in this life into sharp relief. It was hard because a wreath that spells out ‘Dad’ tells uncomfortable truths. It was hard because it was impossible not to connect with the family’s grief.

It was hard because we, his wife and children, watched dad’s heart break. Carrying the coffin of his brother, a relationship he’d lost and only recently found.

Good night, Uncle Peter. All the best for the next life.

2011: The Year of Living Simply

“Since my house burnt down,
I now own a better view
Of the rising moon.”
~ Basho

I made one New Year’s resolution for 2010 and that was to avoid putting on all the weight that I’d manage to lose in 2009. It was mainly successful – although I’m currently sporting a post-Christmas tummy, this seems to be a popular look at this time of year.

This year’s resolutions are a tad more complicated (ironically ).

2010 was the year that, after having hung around the edges of various groups for a few years, having ‘swept the grasses’ as the Zen Masters used to say, having spent a great deal of time humming and hawing, I fell in love with Buddhism. This has had a profound effect on me. This is the year that I really embrace that and allow my Buddhist practice to transform my life.

It’s also a year for re-evaluation. I’m sure I’m not the only one who often feels trapped by this modern life, full of things, of ever obtaining new things, things that need to be maintained, often by buying other things. I’ve dubbed 2011, ‘The Year of Living Simply’ and I’m committed to achieving that. What this means in practice, I’m still working out, but on Sunday night Sanna and I made a start by going through the first of our storage spaces, identifying what should be eBayed, what should be charity-shopped, what should be binned. Being as ruthless as possible.

Next we go through all of our books, DVDs. Everything. Every single item will be given a cold, hard look: What is this for? Why do we have it? Do we really want to keep it? How much did it cost to buy? How many hours will I have worked to pay for that (and any potential credit card interest on it)? How would I rather have spent that time?

I’ve been reading the book, ‘The Joy of Less’ in which Francine Jay writes..

“It’s no picnic to get up every morning and drag ourselves to jobs we don’t like, to pay for stuff we may no longer have, use, or even want”

Hear, hear sister!

I predict a year of big changes in our household.

Watch this space. It should become less cluttered.

Final Fantasy GBC

As a confirmed, fully paid up and committed Geek, I have to say that the first thing that sprung to mind when Parami was speaking about her dream, in which she sang to release the souls of beings who’d passed on, was Final Fantasy X (probably the last great FF game released).

In FFX, Yuna performs a similar service to the souls of the dead (albeit by dancing rather than singing) so that they won’t remain remain in the world, craving existence so strongly that their jealousy of the living turns them into monsters.

Which is, the Dharma tells us, also a very real risk for those of us not yet dead.