Author: Karen Richards

Mia writes in response to this month’s theme, The Map To Where I Live

My parents loved to travel, and created the chance to do it with their work. (They’d both worked their way from humble beginnings into careers in development economics and science.) My siblings and I travelled with them. As a result, I grew up moving countries and sometimes continents every few years.

Maybe this sounds like an incredible way to grow up; I don’t know. In retrospect I think I was lucky, though at the time, of course, it was all I knew. On the one hand, I was jealous of children who never moved or travelled; they seemed to have a lot more friends and confidence than I did. I felt insecure and anguished from never having the chance to attach to people and places outside of my small nuclear family. On the rare occasions that I did make a connection, I would soon be forced to leave them behind, and most likely never saw them again.

On the other hand, I lived like a very small social anthropologist, living literally side-by-side with people of every age, class, and from almost every corner of the world. I was endlessly curious about their lives, drives, ‘loves’ and ‘hates’; all the ways in which we humans are different from each other, and in which ways we are the same.

I adored where I lived aged eleven for almost three years, in Zimbabwe. This was in the 1980s after Independence, when to many Zimbabweans the country felt more safe, strong, free, and full of possibility than it had before. It seemed a perfect environment for a young pre-teen.

When my parents’ work contract ended, I desperately tried to stay on my own, by getting myself adopted by a close friend’s missionary family. My parents were understandably not willing to let me go however, and I braced myself for another repeat of grey and angst-ridden Swedish suburbia. Sweden was my family’s “default country”: most of us had been born there, and our passports and my father’s work HQ were based there.

A year or so later, my family was supposed to move to Indonesia. At the last minute however, my father’s new work contract fell through. Somehow I ended up living on my own in Jakarta aged only fifteen because I’d already been enrolled in school there.

While living alone in a completely new culture was a shock, just like in Zimbabwe I fell in love with the country, the school, my new friends and opportunities.

Unfortunately at the end of the school year, again I was not able to find a way to stay. I was told to return to Swedish suburbia again, where I despondently stumbled my way through the remaining years of secondary school.

By the time I finally graduated school I felt exhausted, lonely, and out of sync with my peers. I was eighteen and had struggled to live on my own for three years, as well as having attended nine schools (in four education systems, on three continents). I hadn’t even begun my adult life, but I knew down to my bones what love and loss were.

Looking back I can count how by that time, I had loved and lost four times. Not in the romantic or familial sense that people usually mean when they say that; rather I had lost the sense of somewhere to call “home”: somewhere to belong; familiarities that I’d slowly built, with continuity of friendships, interests, and relative safety. A comfortable-enough place to eat dinner at night, and to sleep. Somewhere to be happy, or comforted when I was sad.

Humans tend to naturally and mostly unconsciously build healthy attachments to the place where they find themselves. As a toddler, I naturally attached to wherever I lived. As a teen however I found far greater belonging and joy in Zimbabwe and Indonesia, than in what others called my “home country”. I realised that to some extent—if there is some sense of safety, joy, and connection—it is possible to choose where (and who) to attach to.

I moved to London to study, reasoning that a degree in Development would allow me to work in the places that I loved. What I learned instead was that engineering would have been far more useful, and  I was not an engineer. Nor was I cut out for the other jobs in demand where I wanted to live — English teaching, business, medicine, politics, and missionary work.

I was drawn to psychology, the arts, and journalism. But with the exception of war reporting, these careers typically required years of slow growth: building a work portfolio in a small hometown, as my parents had managed to do, and then maybe by your 40s working your way up and out—if you can and wish.

I tried it. I wanted so badly the traditional and sensible approach to work. However by the age of 29, despite my best attempts, I was no closer to the sense of connection that I yearned for. Instead, I had battled clinical depression multiple times. I felt unable to bear any longer the shadow of alienation that followed me around, and yearned for a place—any place—that truly felt like home.

With a sense of urgency, I approached the puzzle the other way around. “Maybe I should save up and move to somewhere I love first,” I thought, “and THEN try to find a local job once I’m there.” It was risky; I would have to leave behind my job, friends, fiancé, and the house he’d bought (that I had never felt at home in). But my life was in my hands, and I felt that I had no choice.

For almost one whole joyful and adventurous year, I worked as a columnist in Thailand—another country that I had always loved.

Unfortunately because of my lack of relevant experience, I couldn’t secure a long-term work and residence permit. I returned to the UK and ended up for many years in the same situation as perhaps most: in a good-enough place that would have me, doing good-enough work when I could get it.

As a Buddhist, I kept trying to be whole-heartedly present and to do my best: to choose wherever I already found myself, if I had no other choice. But my heart still wasn’t in it, and I was back fighting both bills and depression.

Until one day, after eleven years had passed, I felt like a grown butterfly looking with surprise back at my discarded cocoon. Sometimes change is simultaneously seismic and gentle. Without warning or apparent cause, it seemed that nothing and yet everything had changed. I might as well have been flung into a parallel galaxy or taken over by an alien life form, for all the familiarity that my usual, ordinary, daily life still held for me.

It was unchanged on the surface: I had the same name, address, and appearance; the same flat that I struggled to pay the rent for; the same cheap-but-nice throw pillows, old desk and kitchen utensils.

But somehow, all these things and identifiers had become void of intrinsic significance. In other words, they no longer felt familiar; I could no longer take them for granted. At the same time I could see that at their core, along with all other things—somehow, beyond material form—my life and all the people and things in it were incredibly precious; treasures.

I hadn’t taken any drugs. So by which circuitous route, I wondered, had I arrived in this brand new “place”?

Maybe it was pure chance. Or maybe everything we do adds up, even as we despair that our efforts do not appear worthwhile. Since I hadn’t been successful at choosing the big life-changing things like work, home and family, I had resigned myself to chipping away at doing my best in all the tiny day-to-day choices that I did have: my thoughts, words, and actions, as they related to the Buddhist precepts. I don’t know; other than that one day, without my doing anything differently, my life had completely and irrevocably changed in every way.

This month’s blog theme is “The Map To Where I Live”. Like a nurse seeking a vein from which to tap blood, I had spent my life seeking a map that would lead me to the river of life itself. A few times I had been lucky to fall into that river, and to find myself fully and happily submerged. Equally unpredictably though, I’d been flung back out into what felt like an unforgiving desert. Then I’d spent years feeling lost and trying to trace my way back.

But there is no “way back”. If there’s anything, it’s not a linear path but a spiral: a gradual climb, as if towards the sun. Familiar challenges return to us again and again, sometimes harder or softer. And as long as the challenges don’t kill us, the best we can do is keep trying.

Within this work, imperceptibly is something akin to progress. While this on the surface is the opposite of ‘the way back’, because the shape of life is a spiral, perhaps even the smallest step leads home: to the place that we’ve been trying so hard to return to.

‘Home’ for me was not a place after all, but a state of heart over time.

The Dew on the Grass team wishes all our readers and contributors a Very Happy Wesak! Continue reading “Happy Wesak!”

Many years ago, I walked into an empty house. We were moving in, the furniture van was on its way. It was a different sort of house for us – modern, detached, four bedrooms, on an estate of sorts. Not like the Victorian terraces, we’d always had. Perhaps it was the very strangeness of it. It didn’t feel like home.

The thought that came into my mind was ‘I don’t own this. It’s a myth. You can’t actually own anything, let alone a house. What I have bought is the right to live in this house for a while, and then we will move on and someone else will buy that right.’

It was strangely liberating, because I didn’t much like the house in truth, and for the first time I didn’t see the place where I lived as reflecting anything about me.

Now, I also live in a house that I don’t ‘own’ in any common use of the term. The house belongs to the man I married and he has lived here for 30 years. I simply dwell in it, alongside him. And it feels very different. Ultimately the house is not my responsibility. That too feels liberating. It is an old house, but I don’t need to worry about the state of the roof or the boiler or the paintwork.

And so I live where I am. You can find me in the woods and the fields. You can find me swimming in the rivers. You can post letters to me at a particular address but I only live here for as long as I am in the house. At other times I live in other places: on trains, in a priory, in cities or on the beach at the edge of the waves.

I don’t even live inside this body. I am this body and there is no separation. There is no ‘me’ inside. This body moves freely in time and space and lives wherever it finds itself.

In our final post on the theme of “Hello”, Anna Aysea comments on a very relatable situation and offers insights into the cause and effects of “The Problem”.

“The problem must be on your end” insisted the female support line rep of my hosting provider.
“Well, I don’t think it is, I mean, we have just gone through everything here, several times in fact, and..”
“Pease hold.”
“Hello?! Hello?!!”

As I was put on hold once again for the 4th time after the same circular conversation, I was forcefully reminded of the movie “Groundhog Day” about a man caught in a time loop.
Looking for the cause of the connectivity issue I had reported, we had gone through all the possible causes on my end and eliminated them. Three times. Causes I had eliminated before making the call anyway, but never mind. So, there was no issue found on my end, yet the rep was insisting it was not on their end. I had the distinct feeling she was determined to stay with that position no matter what and she was only pretending to look into the issue.

As I sat with the knot of frustration – and I had ample time for that since the subsequent holds were getting longer each time – it suddenly hit me: She doesn’t have a clue how to solve this issue and she cannot say that, probably out of fear for the consequences. Hence the frustrating head-in-sand policy.
The flash of understanding of the situation on the other side had a profound effect. My frustration and irritation evaporated like a puff of smoke as I realized the predicament of this, inexperienced employee. Even though the situation wasn’t resolved, I was not resisting. The sense of freedom that followed the dissipation of tension in mind and body was absolute and instantaneous.

When the representative returned to the call with the predictable: “The problem must be on your end”, I thanked her for her time and ended the Groundhog Day loop. Half an hour later I called the support line, again, and got a different rep. Within minutes the issue was identified and fixed. The cause was definitely on their end. The freedom from suffering I experienced may be subscribed to understanding and empathy. I believe understanding and empathy do certainly ease the way but freedom comes only from acceptance.

Life is full of interactions where someone fails to meet a reasonable expectation – after all, it is a reasonable assumption that a support line employee handles a reported problem professionally. I did register this representative was not handling the situation well, but instead of acknowledging it, I resisted that. I rejected her refusal to help. Frustration and irritation, the manifestations of resistance, were the resulting suffering. The flash of understanding led to acceptance and the freedom that comes with it, that is, the end of suffering. I could however have reached the end of suffering more directly, simply by accepting the fact of the situation right away, without necessarily understanding the reasons.

Why not accept the fact of the situation right away? After all, registering a given fact and then rejecting it is a form of madness. The resistance is in truth not so much about the situation as it is about the feelings triggered by the situation: feelings of being dismissed, of not being heard, of not being respected, wanting to make the feelings go away by trying to change the situatio. Understanding the situation on the other side can help dissolve the “me” feelings and pave the way for acceptance but it is a roundabout way. It may not always be possible to gain sufficient insight into the situation of another to help dissolve resistance. Focusing on the situation is in fact a diversion act to avoid the real issue. A more direct and failproof route is to simply accept a given fact right then and there. Acceptance of a fact doesn’t mean resigning, agreeing or subscribing to it. It is an acknowledgement, like the acknowledgement that it is raining today. Whatever the needed course of action, it will then be based on facts rather than denial and rejection and will be more effective for it.

The choice between suffering and instantaneous freedom sounds like a no-brainer, and it is. Except that the tricky part is the resistance to the me-feelings of hurt, triggered by the behaviour of someone. The default reaction is to resist these feelings and attempt to eliminate them by trying to make the other person behave differently in an attempt to appease the hurt. Enter the house of conflict and dependency: I need you to cooperate, to hear me, to respect me, to not dismiss me, I need you to not make me feel hurt.

Well, too late. The action-reaction qualified as hurtful is already a given and the whole universe has cooperated for this interaction to take place, so it is not just a case of these two limited entities, me and you, colliding. Like the rain, the interaction and whatever arises as a result is a cosmic event, courtesy of myriad ways and means coming together to manifest this. Refraining from resisting what arises ends the conflict and cuts through dependency: This person is unable/unwilling to meet reasonable expectations, what is needed to deal with this fact adequately? This is a position of openness, the opposite of resistance which says: you should not be acting this way because I don’t want the feelings your behaviour is triggering. There is always the liberty to remove oneself from the interaction if someone oversteps what is acceptable in the given context. This innate freedom becomes hampered and inaccessible by resistance: If I am rejecting or denying what is arising I am preoccupied with being in conflict with it and I am stuck; I am not exercising the innate power and freedom to choose the best course of action. In this case, ironically, what was arising was denial and rejection and I was rejecting the rejection.
It is raining, what is needed to deal with it adequately? I have usually no problem with simply acknowledging the rain as a given and dealing with it.

Without resistance there is no conflict, no psychological suffering, so dealing with the situation is a practical matter. Without resistance to the me-feelings, there is no conflict with them arising, nor with the behaviour triggering them. And without conflict, there is power and freedom to act, to choose the right course of action. Even if the answer is not obvious right away to the question “what is needed to deal with this effectively?”, adopting the position of openness, refraining from rejecting the triggered feelings and refraining from trying to make the other person behave differently is already a true taste of freedom.

Once I was able to fully accept the unhelpful head-in-sand policy and the frustration it triggered, I was able to act effectively, remove myself from the repetitive interaction that is characteristic of resistance and conflict and the situation was reduced to a practical matter. Miss Headinsand was right on one thing, this particular problem of resistance was not on their end.

Our last posting on the topic of “Hello” is a very poignant photograph, called Prince and the Buddha, with accompanying haiku poem, by Mo Henderson. A short backstory to this companion pair is below.

The moment is now,

Prince is sleeping in the grass,

Who knows what’s to come.

We lost Prince last October. An old cat, he kept going off into the long grass to sleep. We never found him. This reminds me of the Buddha’s words, ‘was, is and will be’. I don’t know where he is, but there is always a ‘becoming’.

It is morning; late summer, before the daily throng of vehicles begins to pass my bedroom window but long past sunrise. I wash and dress then, looking into the mirror, take a brush to my hair. There you are! A glistening silver, peeping out from around my ears.

‘Hello’, it says. “‘I’m here! Let me out!’

Through social convention, more than vanity – although vanity is surely in the mix – I had coloured my hair since my mid-twenties when the first of the white appeared. It is the ‘done thing’ for women of my generation, particularly in my family. To accept the passing of years gracefully is looked upon with a curious suspicion, perhaps sympathy of sorts, but going grey is definitely not encouraged.

This is not the first time those stubborn, hard to colour, strands have spoken to me. But now I’m listening. I decide to release them from their bondage. No more hair dye.

And with the decision comes a joyous release of heart. A spiritual, “Phew! Finally!” and I find myself laughing, all alone, in the bathroom.

In the weeks and months that follow, my decision is met with many questions and disapproval from some. My husband and children are supportive. My mother is horrified.

“You’re too young to be grey,” she says

“ Evidently not!” is my defiant reply.

“ Well don’t expect me to stop tinting mine”

“ I don’t Mum,” I say more gently now, realising that she thinks I’m introducing some new social rule that I expect her to follow.

My hairdresser, reluctant at first, comes on board and makes a feature, in her salon, of helping women who want to ‘transition’ from colouring their hair to ‘embracing their natural blonde’. There are three ways to do it: the first is to have highlights (dyeing strands of hair a lighter colour so the grey comes in gradually). I decide against this – it’s still hair dye and I’m not convinced it will work.
The second is to cut out the dye and sport extremely short hair for a time. I’m not keen on this option, either – I remember the conversation with my mother and know she won’t like it. I don’t want to cause more controversy than I have to.

The third is simply to stop colouring it and let it fade and grow out so that with each haircut, there is simply less dark and more light. I am told it can take up to nine months to fully transition, if I take this route, and it will look ‘odd’ for a period of time. The significance of the nine months timeline is not lost on me. I choose this method for my ‘rebirth’

Before long, my appearance does indeed look odd – like the head of a badger or a skunk, dark at the sides and with a white stripe through the middle. But I am resolved and inch by slow inch I feel that I am being liberated from a pretence. I am facing my own humanity directly and it is joyous.

Around this time, I need to attend a meeting at the monastery. I am a little nervous about both the meeting and facing the monks with my weird hair. The meeting goes fine and afterwards, in a quiet moment, a most senior monk makes the remark “I like your hair”. I thank him but am surprised by the feeling of being caught out in some way. Quickly, this gives way to a quiet gratitude for the remark, which acknowledged the intention behind my actions.

True to the prediction, nine months later, after several haircuts, the transition is complete and I feel a renewed sense of peace with myself. Choosing to show the grey is not for everyone. We live in a world of judgement, where appearances matter. I don’t think that I could have made the decision whilst I was still working my very busy job. The pressure in the workplace, to be a certain way, would have prohibited this. As with most things, timing is everything. For me, I was not merely transitioning hair colour, I was transitioning, from a phase of life that was outward-looking, to a time of ‘coming home, of asking more deeply, “who am I?” And welcoming the privilege of old age.

Over the next few weeks, the Dew on the Grass Team is posting on the theme of “Hello!” Our first piece by Chris Yeomans is both moving and insightful.

‘Hello? John? Are you here? Hello?’

I walk through the ground floor rooms and there is no sign of my elderly and slightly demented husband. He was here. I heard him rattling the grate with the poker. I heard him go into the office. I walk upstairs, because always in my mind there is the thought that he might have collapsed on the floor. No sign of him in the bedrooms, nor in the bathroom. He must have gone out.

I can’t see him through any of the windows. Often if he is in the garden, a thought jumps into his mind and he goes off down the lane in pursuit of an idea. Mostly he forgets to take his phone.

I think that the dog might like a walk. I pull on my boots and coat and prepare to set off after him, just to set my mind at rest. Then he walks in through the back door. I am intensely irritated.

‘Why can’t you tell me if you’re going out?’
‘I was just in the greenhouse. Have I got to tell you every time I go in and out?’
‘Yes…’. There is irritable body language.

Another time, I will know that he has gone out, perhaps walking or perhaps on the bike. He doesn’t go far anymore. As it gets gradually darker, I start to worry. He’s been out a long time. Has something happened? I stand and watch the sky behind the trees on the horizon turn pink then grey. The garden is in deep shadow. Then I hear a movement upstairs.

‘Hello? Are you there?’
‘Hello?’
‘What are you doing up there, for heavens’ sake?’
‘I’ve just been asleep.’
‘You could have told me. I was worried that you hadn’t come back.’ Again, I am irritated. Again, I am made to feel that I am being unreasonable.

I try to explain. I am on 24-hour alert. In my head, I am constantly aware of where he is and what he is doing, in case something goes wrong, in case he needs me. And then I make assumptions, based on the most recent data that I have. I assume that he is in the house, I assume that he is still out for a walk. The difficulty is that my experience moves from some kind of reality (I do know where he is) to a complete illusion (I think I know where he is, but actually I don’t, because he has relocated himself without telling me).

So, when my mind makes an assumption, and the assumption turns out to be incorrect, and I find that I am acting on a delusion, I am cross and disappointed because I believed one thing and actually was completely wrong. And it feels like it was through no fault of my own. And I have worried and fretted unnecessarily.

Our nearest and dearest are the best, if sometimes the least welcome, teachers. I am repeatedly compelled to look at the way my mind works, to question my responses. And I am always fearful that, one day, I will call out to him, and he will indeed be lying on the floor, or by the roadside, and I will have been unable to keep him safe.

The Dew on the Grass team has been exploring different topics, recently. Currently, we are reflecting on the word ‘Acceptance’. Tomorrow we will be posting our final piece, written by Mo Henderson – lookout for it, in the morning!

In the meantime, we thought you might like advance notice of our next topic, which is ‘Hello!’. The word opens up many possibilities, for exploration. If you find the word inspiring, then please do contact us with your musings, art or photographs around the topic.

The third article, in our feature on Acceptance, is a reflection, by Anna Ayse, on the true reality of painful situations and how to transcend them.

Looking up the etymology of the word “acceptance”, amongst the definitions I found, what stuck out for me was: to get without effort, to assent to the reality of a situation.

Some years ago I wrote an article called “Dealings with Pain” on dealing with excessive physical pain. The article is in fact about the process of how to assent to the reality of a situation. The keyword here is, I think, “reality”.

When we find ourselves in a situation that feels unbearable, unacceptable, we feel that we, that is “I”, the self, is in that situation and limited by it. That is a very narrow perspective of reality, of the self, a belief that warrants closer examination.

Taking direct experience as the starting point, all experience consists of thoughts, feelings, sense perceptions and bodily sensations, arising and passing within the space of awareness as the wider self. The space of awareness is the lasting aspect of reality, which contains the transient aspect of reality within it. Right here, the idea that “I” is in the situation, does not align with direct experience. There is nothing outside of the space of awareness as the wider self. Whatever is arising within that space is made out of that space, is a manifestation of it and not something coming from outside. The experience we label as “pain”, as “unbearable”, as “unacceptable”, when broken down to its raw components, consists of thoughts, feelings, sense perceptions and bodily sensations, arising and passing within the space of awareness. When we, as awareness, believe “I am this arising thought, feeling, sense perception, bodily sensation”, in that instance the wider self contracts into a name and form, and becomes the limited self, finding itself in an unacceptable situation that appears dense and opaque. Resistance is an added layer of thoughts, feelings, sense perceptions and bodily sensations, and further identification with that layer results in the familiar inner conflict and inability to “assent to the reality of a situation”. The conflict is the erroneous belief that the limited self is reality.

From the above perspective based on direct experience, acceptance is not an add-on to the limited self, it is not some advanced level of spiritual practice, some extraordinary achievement which the sage has acquired through arduous effort and which the ignorant lacks. Acceptance is the natural result, not of an add-on but of a removal, that is the removal of the belief that the self is limited to thoughts, feelings, perceptions and sensations. The true self as the space of awareness is so much bigger than whatever is arising within it, it illuminates all experience. Whatever the circumstances, that is the reality we can always assent to effortlessly.

Links to “Dealings with Pain”:

Dealings With Pain – Guest Post

Part 2 -Dealings With Pain – Republish of Guest Post