Back to the cushion

It's 4 weeks in a row that I don't miss a meditation.

I say it with shyness as I am aware of the danger of spiritual pride...also for fear of failing, to be honest.

They say it's part of the process: accepting that sometimes life gets on the way, and we will fall short and skip a meditation.

However, I know how important it is to validate ourselves and celebrate life when it matches what we aspire for. Also, it's just true. I meditate everyday for 4 weeks (damn, did I just make it difficult to say?!)

The 36 weeks long Samatha meditation course is holding me accountable. My reporting teacher is an Assistant Professor of Islamic studies...and probably born as a Greek Orthodox. Our course teacher is an English professor of Buddhist studies. I went to a Dervish dance the other day and I met by chance another teacher of Samatha meditation: he said never happened to him before (being Samatha a niche small world) to randomly meet another practitioner. 

For me it makes sense. The spider web has got connected points. Since I am getting more deliberate about the threads I am laying down and what I am perpetuating moving forward, my web has a pattern: I know which thread to step on, which ones to avoid (this metaphor is not mine, but is by from Danielle Lynn). Resonating people are stepping into my life.

Gerry is one of them, as we share a rare idea of photography, we practice Non Violent Communication and Buddhist meditation.

In his work Transpires Gerry has realized a way for people to have eye contact without facing eachother, by using mirrors, and recording all on camera. The result of those videos has been displayed in very large screens in an experiential room, so that the visitor feels completely immersed in the connective human experience (breathing, eye contact, micro facial movements..). Many visitors have reported that they felt seen there.

As we bring our cameras (and our teas!) to a place dear to me, Linh Son temple in Beulah, London... In today's photographic adventure, I get deeply inspired by Gerry's piece of work.

Deep seeing = deep listening

I have been sitting in the temple's garden many times to meditate surrounded by all those statues, which actually have scary faces and deep emotions.

Still, my mind has not retained a clear image of them. My attention was not clear. They were more like a background to my main experience, my main character. Today I decided to give them the most caring and generous quality we can offer to anyone: attention (as Simone Weil would say!)

So I stopped in front of each of them and I placed myself in a position so that my camera would meet (the beam of) their eyes. This created a magic experience. In fact in seeing, we are also seen. I mysteriously felt mutuality, and with some more years and NVC in my pocket, I wasn't troubled by the strongest emotions of some statues.... In fact, I was familiarising with them (meditation means getting familiar with...) perhaps wondering which need was behind their emotions:)

A statue not looking at me:

Same statue looking at me:

In this specific case the act of offering, feels directed towards me only in the second photo. Eyes direct intention. Even if they belong to a person made of stone!

The experiment is fascinating for me. It's relational.

I remember over 10 years ago I used rush in front of the statues. Timid... almost afraid anyone could see me paying them SO much attention. And now, I stop, I take an image. I don't even need much time to get "to know them". I enjoy the diversity of emotions they represent within me. I don't dismiss, I don't avoid. 

In order to engage I do...

Positioning. (In martial art, in love, war, life... Photography... Where and What you stand for)

That's the important bit.

Framing it from below, from the position of the dragon..

Or from the position of a witness of a revelation, participating this man's dismay:

Once you can be met, it's easier to meet. Especially teachers.  ...Life teaches.

Once it gets cold, Gerry and I go inside, in the indoor temple. Removing shoes is the ritual of entering into a sacred place.

We find out it's a special day and the temple is active up to 10pm with activities. 

We stay for one meditation only. I keep looking at the big bell the monk has hit at the beginning of the meditation. It's my intention to leave the room only when the bell will be perfectly still. When I signal Gerry it's time to leave, the monk hits the bell for ending the meditation.

In the temple a young Vietnamese nun gift us with apples.

At 4pm we find a Thai restaurant 

At 6pm we drink hot sake in a Japanese place.

In London, we have been to Asia today.

On the bus on the way back I wonder....what really is boredom?  I liked this definition:

https://youtu.be/74jCg8J01Wc?si=O6Pa8ijQ-E0ZvmOy

Boredom is like a filter: once removed we find the presence of our true nature.

For reference. This is the best book on meditation found so far:

Back to bed now. 

Back to cushion tomorrow morning.

Non Violent Global Liberation in London

Hello readers,

 if you are close to London, don't miss this event !! 

Meet with Miki Kashtan, Emma Quayle and Verene Nicolas

 Friday 24th October 5.30-8.30pm 

Elephant & Castle, London

 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/engaging-with-deep-divergences-with-nonviolent-global-liberation-in-london-tickets-1823137546479?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl=1%2A64191u%2A_up%2AMQ..%2A_ga%2AMTk4MzAzNzc0MS4xNzYwNTIwNzI3%2A_ga_TQVES5V6SH%2AczE3NjA1MjA3MjYkbzEkZzEkdDE3NjA1MjA3NDUkajQxJGwwJGgw

 It will be an evening of discovery, learning and togetherness around practices to engage with divergences. 

The sovereignty of Good

I am sitting on my train to work, reading Iris Murdoch's book "The sovereignty of Good". A young lady comes standing next to me, holding her coffee cup just above the book I took from the library.

I feel a bit tense now, and I realize it's not much about the fact that I don't want the book to be stained. It is about the care I feel Iris' words deserve, against the frivolity of coffees. I find myself moving away the book a little bit. Her writing is so valuable; the price written in the back cover is only a silly symbol, a joke actually. What a strange thing to hide a diamond within a common object, behind a little price. A coffee can be drunk, consumed, gone, replaced everyday with a new one. While we might need to come back to Iris's words a few times to fully grasp them, her reasoning is one of a kind, and leaves a mark. She's the one leaving a stain after all, if you let her.

I am surprised to find out that Iris is "someone who gets what I mean" (it would be more correct to say, I get her or so I believe...) especially on regards to art, and a self less art as I have come to intend it after years of inner struggle about my own position (criticism?) towards current photography, photographer's personalities, the media-induced styles and all the same fashion-induced topics (if not propaganda).

She has inadvertently held a mirror on the importance I give to morality behind all that. I refused to call that inclination of mine in that way as I perceived a negative connotation on the word morality, as a form of external rules, not integrated, often used by people for judging. That's it. Actually Morality when integrated and genuine, coming from experience, (from meeting the karma's consequences for example) is discernment and care for impacts. That's why integrity  has functioned a less charged word for me, and still, by becoming easy for me is dismissing some importance. We need confidently affirm the importance of morality in this world, especially now. Not as a empty conduct of good actions, but as a widen look to our own motives and responsability of choices...as a way to care. 

 The Via negativa (not doing the evil) is a necessary starting point, but not the end of a moral choice. Morality is not passivity, quite the opposite. It's making good use of our life time. 

The Via positiva (for me) is to dig enough deep, "to come out to the other side" where all is integrated and peace is found. For example only naming the needs behind my feelings, validating them, has allowed me to soften the impact of some experiences. To find out what matters and why. Embodying a new compassion towards the self when it's less than perfect, and understanding Karma (this concept probably deserves a post on itself) has allowed me to fully know that God/Good is always operating beyond all, and we may just not see it because of our preferences, filters, obscurities.

For now, for the sake of my notes, here a passage on art by Iris Murdoch. 

Purity is in seeing with clarity; it's also true the other way around. Seeing with clarity brings up purity and liberation.

https://youtube.com/shorts/uaFfLYpH7E4?si=DkzGaW6PeSIoRJvw

I just heard in an Italian mass this passage:

"What is inside you—be generous to give it to others, and everything will be clean for you." Which I found more fitting than (see below translation) the idea that the giving is a charity about "money/stuff to the poor", . It's more about the availability to offer the gifts we carry within, with vulnerability and courage. Especially when they come from purity/clarity in seeing.

Luke 11:37-41

37 When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38 But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.

39 Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

31 Miles for Nature

For this October I have decided to join Greenpeace's "31 Miles for Nature"

The challenge is to Walk, run, swim or wheel 31 miles in this October to raise money for Greenpeace.

Here my team:

https://fundraise.greenpeace.org.uk/fundraisers/earthangels

21 days to go...