I can’t recall exactly where and when I first learnt this practice. I’ve googled it and have come up with this – tonglen. I’ve read a number of Pema Chodron books, and have had some read to me while at Shambhala meditation sessions. It is very likely that it is from Pema that I first learnt this practice.

I think of this practice as ‘black and yellow’. I practice tonglen with one of the men I visit. Mr Singh is an old frail Indian man. He speaks English well, and says very little. His wife however hardly speaks any English and talks with me all the time. I love them both to bits. Mrs Singh is always (and I mean always – ever time I open the door) smiling and laughing. She finds me enormously funny. Don’t ask me why, perhaps it is because I don’t understand a word she says, although I do now know that ‘tikka’ means something akin to ‘ok’ or ‘correct/right’. Something like that. And every morning we say ‘Co-naa’ (that’s what it sounds like anyway) to each other through the glass of the front door. This sends her into fits of laughter.

I am coming to recognise Mr. Singh as one of my gurus. He sure looks the part. I wash him every morning. This has always been a meditative and spiritual moment, one that at first I was a little slow to recognise. Now, every morning, I am well aware of how palpable the calmness, quiet and presence is that pervades the time  and space we share together.

Large blisters will rise up and pass away upon Mr. Singh’s body. I saw these as I washed him. At first I just started trying to be as present as I could when I was with him. He made this easy as he sat very still, hardly moving other than to help me as I undressed and dressed him. The few movements he makes are graceful and economical. I’d focus on each button of his shirt intently as I did them up, being mindful of my breath as I did so.

I guess that was akin to Anapanna Sati I learnt on the Goenka retreats. It wasn’t long before I started practising ‘black and yellow’ – trying to match my inbreath with a sense of congealed blackness entering me, and my outbreath as one with a brilliant translucent yellow light. I tried to do this without attachment. I tried to consider these moments as an opportunity for me to practice, nothing else.

I added something else, something that for me is a mish-mash of many things I have learnt, heard and read. As I slowly and systemtically washed Mr. Singh’s body, from head to foot I started to add blessings, such things as:

May your head be clear so you can be still and at peace

May your arms be strong and healthy so that you can hug those you love and keep them safe

May you chest be clear so you can breathe deeply and sleep soundly

May your stomach be healthy so you can eat well

May your legs be strong so that they can carry you whereever you may want to go

May you feet be strong and hearty, so you can stand firmly

So this is what I do ever morning. I am privileged to have such an opportunity. And here I was, just the other day, thinking I would like to meditate more. I think at this stage I just need to continue practising while I am with Mr. Singh.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

breathe in, breathe out, live, move, rise up                                and pass away

meditate

quiet

calm

abyss

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

When I arrived at Frank’s this morning I realised that I had lost my pen. It was no longer where it always was, attached to my shirt collar. I kind of knew straight away where it was. I had taken my shirt off as I sat in the park 20 minutes earlier. I had eaten my muesli, packed up, put my shirt back on and cycled off. As I rode away I glanced back at the bench with a vague feeling that I had left something behind.

I knew where it was. It must have come off my shirt as I put it back on over my head. While at Frank’s I did not even bother to search my backpack. Instead I practised letting go of this pen given to me at my last Christmas do with the Department. Given to my by a great boss – thanks Robin – that pen always reminded me of the brief time I spent with you and your team – what a fantastic group of people they were.

So over the 50 minutes I was with Frank I kept practising letting go. Letting go of any and all thoughts of disappointment, anger, sadness and loss that came to me. This was good practice – a most wonderful opportunity to practice acceptance. To accept that this is ‘as it is’. An opportunity to simply take responsibility – I left the pen in the park, that is how it is, end of story. No feeling bad, no recriminations, no beating myself up, no “I should of’s’. An opportunity to accept that I have lost nothing as all things rise up and pass away all the time, in their own time. When they do, they do – it is as it is meant to be. To practice trust – that things happen when they happen – life is as it is.

An opportunity to practice taking responsibility and acceptance, trust and letting go – and in doing all that, an opportunity to practice simply being present. Right here, right now, with Frank.

By the time it came to leave Frank’s I was so engrossed in his ruminations on the art of printing some 30 years ago that I felt no urgency, felt even no need to return to the park, to the bench to see if the pen was there. In remembering it I realised I had forgotten about it.

I did however go back., and as I rode towards the park I remembered my meditation that morning. I had sat for about 40 minutes – and all I recall of those 40 minutes is a constant recurring of  – thinking about something – realising I am thinking about something – and letting go of that thought. I can not recall any of the thousands of thoughts I had during that 40 minutes – only the process – realising I am thinking – letting go of the thought – and (gently, without recrimination) focussing back on my breath – in and out.

I smiled as I rode – and felt gratitude for this morning’s practice. Those 40 minutes were helping me now, had helped my over the last hour as I became increasingly non-attached to the pen (which I no longer considered my pen).

Of course as I neared the park bench, I saw it – in the grass at the foot of the bench I had left some 60 minutes before. A busy bench in a well-utilised park, right next to a paved walkway upon which a legion of dog-walkers, cyclists, joggers and parents and children off to school passed back and forth every few minutes.

The pen is now once again in my possession. I am, for now, it’s guardian.

I have been wanting to learn how to make things appear. The last month has seen me become rather good at helping things disappear, keys, pens, cigarettes, people – so good in fact that some things were disappearing while I was still quite attached to them.  I realised that if I was going to make things disappear I needed to be able to make things re-appear, just in case.

And after today’s little episode with the pen (rising up and passing away and rising up again) it may be that the secret to having something reappear is to let go of it – completely. It seems to me that it was only when I had completely let go of the pen – of any claim or attachment (be it sentimental, financial, emotional or physical) that I had to it, that it was able to appear. We need to accept that once something is gone, it is gone – it has disappeared forever – we may never see, touch, smell, feel and use it ever again. We may never realise it.

I received a letter from Ireland last week. I didn’t get that job I was going for in Belfast. It took about as long as it did with the pen for me to let go of any anger, disappointment, sadness and loss I felt about that.

This is one of the gifts of meditation practice. To release ourselves from those moments of regret, frustration, disappointment, anger, rejection and loss.

To be free of such a moment as the one I experienced with the pen may seem small and insignificant in itself, yet imagine being free of all such moments, whenever they occur and whatever they may relate to. Small and big, pens and partnerships. Imagine a life without those moments – imagine how much more of a life that is. There becomes all this ‘free’ time – time that was once filled with colours and images and words and thoughts associated with anger, resentment, disappointment, sadness is now freed up. Where our minds were once busy, now they are free, empty, available.

What would you do with all that available free time?

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Wow, so much is happening!! All the time!

Have you ever stopped and noticed? So much going in. So much going on. Everywhere. Everywhere we look. Everywhere we are. There is so much that we are aware of – all sensation – things, ideas, events we touch, taste, smell, hear and see. In our lives, everyday. In our dreams, every night.

Where does it all go? What of it? Where is it all, right now?  I can’t seem to be aware of it all. So I select, I choose. I focus on this or that, one moment, one aspect, one bit.

One bit at a time. I heard somewhere that our brains can only think of one thing at a time. Perhaps that is why they flit so quickly from one thing to another. So superfast that we will never ever build a computer to match it.

And yet … What if we could be aware of it all at any one time? What if that were possible? What would that be like? As an experience? To be aware of, to know everything that was going on, for us, at one time. Whew. That would be magic.

That IS magic. There are no tricks, no props, no one else involved. Magic is up to us, magic is in us. We are capable of it. We CAN hold and be held by all that we know, all that we are aware of, in any one moment.

Believe it!

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Midday. Twelve o’clock. The middle of the day.

A time for mad dogs and Englishmen.

What is the time at exactly noon? Right now. At 12 o’clock? Where is time? When those two hands are as one? Both pointing up. Always up. Together. As one. Where is time now? Is it in the morning or it in the afternoon? And when is it neither? Or both?  Twelve o’clock, high noon is when time stands still. When the two become one for a moment in the middle of the day.

It’s 12 o’clock now. High noon and it feels like it’s been that way for the longest time. Today is one of ‘those’ days. You know those days when we feel, we know, that something is not in synch. It’s as if we could have woken 10 minutes later, or earlier. And got out the other side of the bed. It is as if, from the moment we woke, we were slightly askew from the reality around us.

Things, in particular, are just not going as planned.

A long time ago when one of these days was upon me, I would be afraid. I had learnt to be afraid of the signs of being out of synch. I learnt that one of these days meant things were going wrong, and I knew that from now on, throughout the day, I would experience such things as:

1. flat tyres
2. rain and no umbrella
3. an upset work colleague
4. a full bladder and nowhere to go
5. buses running late
6. any combination of the above
7. any combination of the above and then some

And I think I was always right. As soon as I realised the day and I were out of synch, I would fear the worst, and whatever the worst was would happen. And it happened time and time again. No. 7. The worst and then some. Of course I never really knew what the worst was. I was simply reading the signs as I had learnt to read them, and what I was reading was bad.

Now, I don’t fear it. Well ok, maybe there is a little bit of fear. That remains. I still understand some things, some signs as bad. Not good. Some things remain either good or bad.  I struggle to see both. That is the practice. The work and the play. That is life. That is suffering and that is bliss.

What has grown in and around all that, all that is me, is trust. And trust has grown as I have paid attention. Taken time to notice what is happening when                the tyre goes flat

heavy drops of cold rain touch my face

his face reddens as he looks at me and swears

as wet myself

I decide to walk home

What was I thinking, feeling, experiencing, sensing in those moments of time. The moments before. The moments during. The moments after.  Where was I? My mind, my heart, my spirit? Were they here with my body? Was all of me in synch? Was I one?  Like the two hands of the clock, as if one. Like the sound of one hand, clapping. Was I one?

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x