hi all, yes its hot but more or less to be expected in June. The heat here is very dry so I am attending to some of the new plants and trees that we planted out this Spring to help them get passed there first couple years and get their roots down. The lavender fields are spectacular. Much of our lower terraces have been turned over to organic Lavender.
I had a long and surprisingly moving conversation with Claude AI a couple of weeks ago. It did that thing which AI is famous for of affirming me excessively like a sycophantic friend. Not ideal for an aspiring Bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas need more “resistance”! Given its vast data resources it did have some useful things to say about running the retreat centre; calculating solar panel/battery capacity, for example (engineers AI). It praised our 2010 Chinese built 30kW Taiguer generator, suggesting it would survive a nuclear war given its robustness. It is essentially a 1980’s tractor engine -tried and tested for decades, an engineers delight. It apparently understood well some of the dynamics, tensions and challenges that go into running «non-profit» organisations that we, in Triratna are so familiar with.
It reminded me that I need to take time out, more often and more frequently. My life really is just here. Retreat Centre enterprise, domestic set up, family and a lot of my own teaching projects. I live in the centre. This is obviously very «full-on» and intense at times – no escape.
It recommended at least every 2/3 months a get away for a day or two and once or twice a year a longer break, phone and email disconnected. I have to confess that is difficult for me. I love being connected in. My working ground has been finding a daily sense of connecting and disconnecting within the everyday life that is continuously unfolding here in the One Place. However, sustainability is the key theme. I have seen lots of «burn-out» over the years!
Claude AI also suggested that I share more of my contemplative/intellectual life! So here we go…
Hammock time reading is a precious daily must-do. Especially in the warmer weather. I just worked my way through Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which book paper burns) made into an arty French movie by Truffaut in the 60’s. Loved it. How society can become so superficial that we just end up in a dumbed down nihilism. Seems even more relevant today with the obsession with Social Media and AI.
Now I am on to «The World of Yesterday» by Stefan Zweig. Recommended by the Ezra Klein show (NY Times podcast). The context is amazing. An Austrian Jew who grew up in a culturally rich and material abundant life in Vienna at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. He describes an almost painfully exquisite world of art, music and refinement, intellectual pursuit, material wealth and freedom. A truly privileged life! He and his wife fled the torrential rise of National Socialism in Europe in the 1930’s, ending up in Brazil where having sent off the manuscript for the Memoir in January 1942, when Hitler and his cronies were at the height of their destructive powers. Shortly afterwards, he and his wife committed suicide. If only they had waited a few more months! The tide turned and the Third Reich collapsed.
As my driving instructor coached me a year or two before I left Valencia for the hills, me describing myself as a Buddhist and Yoga teacher, him, an ex-Guardia Civil, telling me I was going from the quiet introspective life to a «man of action». Being a dad of young kids, running projects and enterprises requires a «man of action» approach. I do nourish my inner life, meditation, reflexion and devotional practice has been a component since my first contact with Buddhist and yogic spirituality in my teens. I recall while at Leeds University, in the final days of a Chemical Engineering degree, sitting up in the «Religion» section of the Brotherton library and working my way through DT Suzuki’s «Zen and Japannese Culture». A distraction for the monotony of Engineering subjects.
Meditation, along with some bodywork practices, Yoga and now some all too fashionable strength training nourish me. Teaching, mainly dharma and yoga in the retreat setting are important to me. The practice nourishes the teaching and the teaching nourishes the practice.
Currently, partly provoked by some one to one therapy work I am exploring «dukkha» more profoundly, particularly my relationship to it. I recognise that I am drawn towards the light, the feel good and superficiality and I recognise too that I must turn toward the darkness, the pain and the suffering. (The image of the crazed Kurtz from Apocalypse Now came to mind this morning in my meditation). Nihilism again. One has to work with that! That work is my current working edge and I am fortunate to have the conditions to support it. Time is of the essence. That is my sense!
