It has been quite a year. Everything continues, everything is different.

This year we have advanced our Buddhist training programme by instituting the idea of a set of Five Sesshin (intensive retreats), by reasserting some of the original ideals of the amitarya programme and moving to a less-tied-down style of life, and by holding a ten day non-stop-chanting intensive in November-December, perhaps the first of its kind in the West. New people have joined the sangha and there is certainly electricity in the air as well as the deepening peace of shared confidence. 

This has, for me, been a year of much travelling. I've rarely been in one country more than four weeks at a stretch. Twelve months ago I was in India with Jnanamati. He is now back there and I'm in Spain in Gran Canaria. In the meanwhile I've visited California, Israel, New York, Italy, France, Belgium, Korea and Japan. I was in Japan immediately after the tsunami and in Korea during the worst monsoon for 100 years. I've been to Spain several times and established a "second life" here with many good friends and involvement in the local Maestro Eckhart sangha. I've lectured, run retreats, met spiritual masters, learnt about Shinto, and drafted an autobiography. We've started an Institute for Zen Therapy. I've also published a book of Poetry called Her Mother's Eyes, thanks to the good offices of the Quaker Universalists.

Much of the early part of the year was impeded by differences of opinion between Caroline, my ex, and myself, about how the organisation that we jointly were involved in starting should proceed. In November we achieved a break through in negotiations and she is now setting up her own organisation. This has released a lot of energy within the Amida sangha and a number of new initiatives are germinating, so the coming year promises to be rather full and exciting. It has also entailed me moving my base of operations to London - another promising development.

Most gratifying, however, are the many friendships that have deepened or been born in this time. In my case, my spiritual life and my close connections with others overlap to such a degree that I do seem to be able to say that friendship is my practice and my practice is friendship. Where the lives of many people break down into work and leisure, in my case the boundary between the two is hard to distinguish. Yesterday I went with three close friends to a sacred spot at the centre of this island. Today I will meet with other good friends and plan future work together here in Spain. Via the internet I am in daily contact with many good friends back in UK and in other parts of the world as we share and generate ideas and plan activities for the year ahead. On the one hand, all of this is work. On the other hand, none of it is just work and all the people that I have just mentioned are those with whom I share my life whether there is any "work" to do or not.

This, of course, is how it once was for all people. It is modern life that has carved our existence up into functional units and made us into cogs in imaginary social machines in order to become economically efficient. I, personally, am not very economically efficient, but I do have a wonderful life, and I think this is essentially because there is more love in each of the encounters that I experience than there would be if I lived a more conventional life. Again, it is part of my mission to, as and when I can, liberate other people into just such a life in whatever degree is right for them, so I also have the satisfaction of living a life that is itself congruent with my own values and goals. In all these respects I feel very fortunate - blessed.

It has been a year that has included quite a number of struggles, but, all in all, a very blessed one.

Comments

[Christina]

David, Happy New Year to you. I hope that this new year brings your revelations and resolutions.

I just want to comment that life as you are fortunate to know it was never like this "for all people." Yours is a most privileged existence. And, I think it is a very modern life you are leading. It is many of the luxuries of modern life which allow you the freedom to live as you do without toiling in your garden, tending to your beasts, forging your tools, repairing your thatch, baking your bread, nursing your sick... in a long day of hard work. Of course, the most privileged in society would live much as you do as others would tend to the daily needs and that privilege was often afforded priests. But, it was never the way for all people. Most lives have always been full of very hard work just to keep body and soul together -- so to speak.

[David Brazier]

Dear Christina, yes, you are quite right in many ways, though it is amazing how often people faced with the possibility of living a life like mine turn it down. They want more predictability, supposed security, and control. My life is wonderful and a great deal of it is in other people's hands. Most people strive for a kind of "independence" and to most people that means money and that means employment and that means loss of independence and so the wheel goes round. Modern life, notwithstanding the perils of possible ecological collapse if we go on over-loading the situation, does have many advantages with its transport, communications and labour saving devices that are such that even people on quite low incomes in UK now may still have, say, a mobile phone which would have been regarded as a miracle machine when I was a child. Modern has its advantages. It also has its drawbacks in that the organisational structure that delivers this has made us into a corporate world in which the problem of alienation from one's labour (even though it is nowadays easier labour for the most part) has become more intense for many. So now, having overcome some of the more gross illnesses of less economically developed situations, we have epidemics of depression and mental illness instead. But you are right that there are huge opportunities in our modern situation. How do we get the best of both worlds? Thank you.

[Christina]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, David. I quite agree with what you write. I fear we have lost a great deal with our distance from tending, forging, repairing, baking and nursing, don't you. I doubt there will mindful texting (well, there may be, actually ;o) as there are mindful tea ceremonies. The connection to earth, fire, water, wind... were important as they helped us to understand the finite nature of resources and the smallness of our power in the face of the ultimate power of nature. It kept us humble. There is great comfort and peace in humility.

I agree with all you say about the corporatization of modern life. In the US a corporation has the legal status of a person - an extremely powerful person without a conscience and with allegiance only to the bottom line. This is our creation. We created our overlord and, in so many ways, our undoing.

And, yes, I often think about watching star trek when they began to transmit image with voice on their communication devices and hot utterly far fetched it seemed. Now it... and so much more... is commonplace. But, I wonder how the means of communication changes the nature of it and the ultimate connections between us. All of this is coming from someone who has embraced communication technology eagerly... except the cell phone. I resist the cell phone. Were I travelling and had no base, I would have one temporarily but I cherish my ability to move away from my phone to walk the dog or sit on the beach or just be away from the phone. I know one can always turn one's phone off but then one is called upon to explain why one was not available. I never have to. I suppose it will get me one day as landlines go the way of the public phone.

Anyway, I most certainly don't know how we get the best of both worlds but we really should work it out before peak oil thrusts it upon us.

"Everything continues, everything is different."

christina

[David Brazier]

Thank you.