Over the next few days, the Dew on the Grass team will be sharing articles, poems and artwork, on the theme of Freedom.  Each of us has presented our experience of Freedom from a slightly different perspective but all of the pieces reflect the seeking mind of the Buddhist practitioner. We hope that you enjoy reading them, and should you have reflections of your own on this topic, please do get in touch, via the contact page, or in a message via the Dew on the Grass Facebook page, by Monday the 28th of February, and we will be happy to share them. Please read our editorial guidelines, by clicking the ‘About’ button.

Musings 1

A couple of decades ago, it seemed that all the usual stresses and anxieties of life had coalesced for me into one focus. I became aware that I was suffering from severe claustrophobia. The feeling of being trapped is of course the antithesis of freedom. I found I was unable to go into places where my way out was not clear: caves, basements, the London underground in crowds, trains and planes, the backseat of two-door cars. I began to sleep with a knife when in my tent so that I could cut my way out through the fabric.

Retreats at Throssel became a challenge. When I mentioned to a monk that I wasn’t sure I could sleep in the Ceremony Hall he said, with some incredulity, ‘But we don’t have a larger space, Chris.’ I explained that it wasn’t the space around me as much as my ability to get out. And to get out of that room I would have to negotiate sleeping bodies, noisy doors, clattering stairways, deal with the fear of meeting the Night Guardian in the corridor, of not being supposed to be walking around. Thus it was that I found myself allowed to sleep in the Avalokiteshvara shrine, close to my exit route, next to plastic containers of human ashes, which was almost, but not quite, worse.

But it didn’t stop there. At home, panicked by being in bed, I would go out into the garden and stand and look at the stars. And suddenly I felt trapped on the planet. Unlike the fish which doesn’t know it is in the ocean, I knew that there was nowhere else that I could survive and that gravity tethered me to the earth. It sounds obvious, but for me, it was an experiential realisation that I am one with all things and not a separate being. I am not free to leave this planet, which provides me with the very means of my existence – the air I breathe, the food I eat. I remember RM Saido once saying ‘If you have difficulty grasping the concept of dependent origination, try not breathing for a while.’ I breathe because of the infinitely complex life of this planet. I am an earthling.

Musings 2

‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.’ Thus Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1755. And today, in 2022, I think perhaps we understand that we are not born free at all and really have no chance of ever attaining freedom if that is something that we seek. At birth, we bring with us our entire genetic make-up. Immediately, life starts to happen for us and we are affected by an infinity of sensations. We grow, we learn we relate and we become one of the indescribably complex beings that comprise the human race. Within that framework of my life and being, I have the illusion that I am free. But in reality, I have very little control over my life. Simply to start with, I cannot really affect my physical environment. In the words of the Tom Lehrer song – ‘Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.’ Except that of course I have no choice.

But beyond that, I am aware that every single thing I do and think is because I am me. I am pretty much unable to think ‘outside of myself’ because my thought patterns and my opinions are the product of my genetic nature and my experience. Even my wish to do ‘that which is good to do’ or to ‘do the next thing’ arises because of a fortunate concatenation of circumstance and predisposition that has led me to this Buddhist path. My human mind allows me to consider alternative paths and alternative courses of action, but I am deluded if I think I really have the freedom to choose to do anything that is ‘out of character.’

Chris Yeomans

The late, Reverend Master Alexander Hardcastle, when he was prior of Telford Buddhist priory, often said,’ Nostalgia is not what it used to be’, and then would chuckle at the irony of his remark. He may have said this in the company of others, but my recollection is that we were usually alone, working on some project or other. I would laugh with him (though maybe not as heartily) and I knew what he meant. Nostalgia, which is essentially a sentimental view of the past and reflects discontent with the present, holds less sway over us once we become regular meditators. We become far more satisfied with our present reality, however difficult and painful that might feel, at times.

Remembrances of the past come and go. They are part of our brain’s natural function and can be helpful both spiritually and practically, in the everyday world. What happened in the past is part of who we are now; part of our current experience. The physical and spiritual realignment of the heaps of our being, in time and space, create a new reality, moment by moment. Within this shift, our memories float along with us.

Those that feel painful, we may shrug aside (although the cells of our body will still remember them unless we have done significant work on ourselves). Or we may do the exact opposite, and hold them tightly, in fear of what would happen if we let them go. Conversely, we may hold onto memories of good times, idealise them, hold them up as the epitome of existence. Of course, there are many permutations of how this might manifest itself.

As a nation, we are prone to do the latter. Hence the success of political promises to make our country ‘Great Again’ as if, in some perfect past, all ills were virtues and we stood, as a united and homogenous body, a paragon of unity and virtue, which was lost to a perceived evil, along the way, and to which, with the ‘right’ political direction, we can return. This is a deluded notion, of course. The world, its nations, and individual people exist in a constant state of flux within which, what we judge as good and evil continually arise, like ripples on a much deeper ocean.

In my younger years, when I was focused on work, family and the setting up of a priory – the time of life referred to by the social-psychologist, Erikson, as a time of ‘Generativity’, when we are at our most productive – I had no inclination to look back. More recently, having lost several of the older members of my family, during the pandemic, I have enjoyed reminiscences of those treasured people that I called, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin, teacher and friend. Some memories might even be termed ‘nostalgic’, having a sentimental or ‘rosy’ quality to them, mostly they have been part of a rite of passage, a celebratory ceremony of the mind, and have included, of course, thoughts of you, dear Rev. Alexander. I am grateful for them all.

Traditionally, sense perceptions have been explored extensively by artists. Highly developed perceptual sensitivity is the talent and field of expertise of an artist. Their explorations and discoveries hold valuable lessons about the nature of reality. This series is about artworks that resonate Buddhist teaching.

Alberto Giacometti, Hands Holding the Void, 1935, bronze cast, MoMA

The statue expresses the artist’s recognition of the inherently empty nature of sense perceptions.

O Shariputra, — in this pure there is no form, sensation, thought, activity or consciousness; : No eye, ear,  nose, tongue, body,  mind; no form,  no tastes,  sound,  colour, touch or objects;

The internet is currently flooded with tributes and reminiscences of his life, so I will not try to recreate them here. Suffice to say, I feel drawn to reread some of his books and, having lost six people from my life, during these past pandemic years, this quotation, posted by a Buddhist friend to Facebook, this morning, lifted me out of a fog of melancholy and raised my eyes to the sky. Thank you!

“One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but that it was merging with the moist soil in order to appear on the tree, the following spring, in another form. I smiled to the leaf and said, ‘You are pretending’. Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including the leaf.

The Buddha said, “When conditions are sufficient, the body reveals itself, and we say the body exists. When conditions are not sufficient, the body cannot be perceived by us, and we say the body does not exist.” The day of our death is the day of our continuation in many other forms. If you know how to touch your ancestors in the ultimate dimension, they will always be there in you, smiling. This is a deep practice.

The ultimate dimension is a place of coolness, peace and joy. It is not a state to be attained after you “die”. You can touch the ultimate dimension right now by breathing, walking and drinking your tea in mindfulness.

Everything and everyone is dwelling in Nirvana, in the Kingdom of God,”

Professor Thich Nhat Hanh – Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995)

Thich Nhat Hanh

Saturday sleeves are long knitted cuffs, so-called because they are meant for slipping on when you need to do outside chores, on a chilly Saturday morning. They have also proved useful as a way of providing warmth to my husband’s hands, which are wracked with arthritis and unable to take regular gloves and mittens.

Adapting the simple pattern to accommodate the different size and shape of the hands, one glove was knitted on circular needles 4.5mm (32cm length), with 43 stitches and was worked (knitting every row) until it measured  25cm long, and the other on 5mm needles, with 50 stitches, until it measured 15.5cm long. I kept the tension loose so that the finished cuff didn’t drag over his painful joints. The hands and knitting both have flaws. Yet both are perfect just as they are.

I’m pleased to say, he reports that they keep him ‘toastie!’

A dying man asked photographer Erwin Olaf to make a farewell portrait. He died a couple of hours after this final picture was taken, photographed at home as he was already too ill to come to the studio.

What strikes me is the powerful presence and the unflinching peace that is emanating from the face, shining brightly through the frail body that is about to give way. The artist managed to capture both the impermanent and the transcendental.

I was interested to catch, on BBC Sounds recently, a programme made by William Miller about his father Jonathan.  (Radio 4, Archive on 4: Lost Memories).  Jonathan Miller was fascinated by the human brain and in particular the workings of memory.  It was a cruel irony that in the end his own brain was destroyed by Alzheimer’s.  Making the programme was clearly cathartic for his son, who was trying to come to a better understanding of his father’s life work.  And it was, of course, of particular interest to me as I watch my partner struggle with the same disease.

While listening to a talk on the Throssel website, I wrote down the following quote by Reverend Jishin. (These may not be her precise words). “We are inextricable from all that’s gone before. Our sense of being as an individual is based on that.  (…) There is no separated off and permanent me.”

And in the programme, William Miller says that ‘Memory is what makes us who we are.  Our memory of our lives is what ties us together.’  (I think he meant into a coherent personality.)

I think, until watching someone else struggle, I had not fully understood the enormity of this; that ‘There is then nothing more than this.’  Hearing quotes from a string of academics, I learned that memories do not in fact exist per se; that memory is a suite of different systems which our brain organises into recognisable recollections.  Memories themselves are processes or actions and have no separate existence in the brain.  The brain is constantly editing memory and this edited version becomes the story of our lives. And, of course, we have all experienced instances when even shared events will be remembered differently by different individuals, leaving us to ponder whether there can be such a thing as verifiable ‘reality.’

And so, with the loss of the sense of our own past, what is left?  The answer of course must be ‘nothing.’  The body will persist, maybe for quite a while, but that which made the recognisable person is no more.  What I think we do is to project onto that body our own memories of how the person used to be.  It is so hard really to comprehend and to accept that the person has ‘checked out’.

William Miller asked his mother, in an interview before his father died, whether she felt that she still had a relationship with him.  Her answer was that they did have a relationship. ‘He is able still to recognise me as someone who is different (from the carers).  But it is not a proper relationship.  It is not a meeting of minds in any way.’

That’s a good description.  Slowly the person, this unique collection of memories, recedes.  My partner remembers almost nothing of anything we have done over the five years that we have been together.  He still remembers a lot about life well before that and is therefore able to establish some sort of conversation with his family that he cannot do with me.  But what he does say, and this fits with what William Miller’s mother said, is that he remembers love and happiness, in the abstract, even if he can’t remember anything about the things we have done, places we have been, trips we have had.

And so I often remind myself of the famous Larkin poem “An Arundel Tomb’ whose much quoted last line ‘What will survive of us is love,’ offers some modicum of comfort.  Perhaps that awareness of love, however it is formed, is one of the last parts of the brain to disappear.