feminish

Off to the Immanent Grove again, for a while.

I shall try to despatch a post or two from there, if I can. There’s no broadband (in fact there are no phones, except the cabin telephonique out in the field), and I’m not sure how it’ll feel squeezing in some computer time between ‘Household Delights’ and ‘making flat the soil next to Big Meditation Hall’, but Hey, there’s a first for everything. I’ve had a browse around and not many bloggers seem to post when they’re on retreat, so we are in fact talking about a feminist exclusive here.

Watch this space….

(Or enjoy eating my feed)

This one’s for someone called Dom,

an old friend who sent me an email a few days back. If I remember correctly, our first encounter was a couple of eons ago when, at 2 in the morning, it seemed (to me) like a good idea to knock on the tiny fire-escape door between our college rooms to ask him if, by any chance, a little Something from his free student union ‘freshers pack’ might be going spare…

I was moved by his email’s kind words and tickled by his insightful analysis of Hackney trains ( “full of character and characters; Christian preachers, burqa-wearing mothers with denim-clad toddlers, young Afro-Caribbean guys who have been working so hard that they sleep standing - and me, the only suit-wearer, feeling a bit like I’ve been sent to do a survey…”).

But it was this question that hit my nail on my head (as-it-were),

Tasha, in almost-total ignorance of your life right now, I have to ask one thing: Is there room in your life for humour and the unexpected? (So inextricably linked, I know, but I couldn’t decide which one should take priority). For me, this has been my salvation in all the big moments. If not, I will have to come find you, jump out from behind trees and tell you jokes.

Now there’s a threat if ever there was one.

Never mind your meditating, Natasha, never mind all this earnest ’simple life’ stuff and all those ‘interesting’ books you’re reading and all those nice thoughts you’re having, and all those organic good-for-you legumes you’re munching ever-so-mindfully, the real question is - in fact, the only question is - are you having fun?

It’d like to say “no”, if only to enjoy being startled out of solemn meditation under a ficus religiousa by a man in a suit with a joke. But, because I don’t know how long I’d have to wait in this profound state for Dom to learn himself some jokes, catch the Ryan Air and track me and my bodhi down, it’s probably simpler to confess that I have been giggling a lot and am still pointlessly frivolous.

In the spirit of which, and against my better judgement, I’d like to share two videos. Both made me laugh. Both are pointless. (If you have a deadline, please spare yourself. I believe they cost the Patterner a few bars of his Third Movement yesterday…)

The first is Britney Spears (How many female popstars does it take to fill up a petrol tank? How bizarre can celebrity be?):

X17: Britney in Action Scroll down a little to see the video.

The second is Kamini - the black rural rapper that has taken France by storm since his homemade video hit YouTube last month (2m downloads to date) - brought to you today in tribute to the general hilarity of Rural France which has so kindly taken us both in:

“Gone to a monastery, you say?”

I do.

But what, I wonder, does that mean to you?

The Immanent Grove, I call it, or Innisfree.

Wizards?
“Noted for appearing more extensive inside than out”
Small cabins? Hives for the honey bee?
And peace - peace that comes dropping slow?

Midnight all a glimmer? Noon a purple glow? Lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore?

It’s true, I tell you. All true.

Though to be honest there was actually only one self-proclaimed wizard and she was hospitalised on the first Sunday. The world is surprisingly eventful when it is stark and honest.

I could tell you about the Immanent Grove’s unassuming French farmstead outbuildings a few centuries old, the couple of dozen acres of plum trees, the slime-greened poly-tunnels, the two large oak trees and a bare pond - which is what you’d see if you drove along the Route Departmental, weren’t speeding, hadn’t just drunk half a bottle of Duras and happened to glance across the valley through the mist. You wouldn’t be able to see the lotuses, unmanifested in the mud, nor the meditation huts nestled in the scrub brambles, or the wild bees in their hung swarm on the poplar branch beside the walking meditation path. But, like I say, it’s more extensive inside than out.

I’ve trod the pavements grey and have known the urban un-peace, the concrete-echoed droning un-rest. And can tell you that they are absent from this particular Innisfree. Here, waking before dawn, there is four hours under midnight’s glimmer - four hours of silent coming and going outdoors between bells, tea-urns, meditation, breakfast and chi-cong, every step on the frozen mud taken under the silent cloak of the shimmering ceiling of stars. There’s only the sound of your own steps, the cats fighting and the owls whoo-hooing. It’s good to be away from whirring hard drives, whistling central heating and whining fridges - they’re over in the other building, with the nuns, their iPods and the DVD library.

Oh, and lake water lapping? If you pause a moment, feel your feet on the ground under the desk, your bum on the chair and your neck held upright by your back, you might then notice your chest rising and falling ever so gently, the lake water air of your breath lapping right up to your nose and then slowly down again, rising and falling. You don’t need to go to Innisfree for the soothing low sounds by the shore.

I return to retreat at the Immanent Grove today, for a while… perhaps a week, perhaps more…
It will be good to be more human than woman again.

And good to be more woman than feminist.

I send a brisk, fresh autumn gust to you all. Enjoy the clouds - they’re probably better for the eyes than this screen…

I’m steadily returning from the Immanent Grove… un-retreating after three days of stillness, resting and mind-blowing teachings on metaphysics I’m still midst fathoming. I learnt about Death - or, to be more precise, What Happens When We Die (there was no talk of 49 days and thirty-third heavens). Where do I go when my body no longer manifests? Where, for me, does this world go when I no longer have eyes to see it or a nose to smell it?

The answers were, as the locals here would say with their nasal Langue D’Oc twang, tres interressang….

But somehow, having driven past two hedgehogs slowly crossing the road last night, and seeing their squashed bodies on that very same spot this morning, I realise yet again that the Death Thing is more than just interesting to me - it is damn important; as important as it gets. Why I’m here. Where I go. What it’s all about. Sometimes I’m stunned by how powerful a question it is for me, by how strongly I want to work it out, and by how confident I am that one day I will…

And so I am throwing pots. Mucky, sticky cold wet earth that thuds and slodges and swirls off kilter. Only if I’m breathing right and am rooted well can I (with a struggle) centre it. Throwing a pot - pressing, lifting and drawing it into form - cannot begin until the clay is centred on the wheel, a meditative interplay between mind and body as simple and difficult as the Zen monks’ calligraphic circles (known in Japanese as enso). (( If you’d like to enso-browse you may be interested in Shambala Sun’s Enso Art Gallery. My current favourite is this one. )) It takes pottery mistress Laetitia 10 seconds to centre her clay with one hand. It takes me a hundred attempts, twenty minutes, a cup of tea (for morale) and all my bodily force. I celebrate with a yelp.

The pottery studio’s aural wallpaper is France Bleu FM. “A la cuisine!” the D.J. declares at 11a.m. for the womenfolk. And, after the saga that is the witching hour of midi and France’s three-hour lunch break, he announces “on a bien mangé, on s’est bien reposé”. These words are for the men. They play one-minute versions of Queen, the Beatles and Tom Jones. When my clay develops a swerve to one side or another I’m mortified to notice that it’s dancing to their exact rhythm.

The pottery mistress wanted to know more about British music, so between sighs and yelps at my wheel I attempted to describe, in French, the Britpop phenomenon:

Pooolp? I ventured, hoping she’d nod.

Bleurrr?

Wa-seez? …

I slinked off into retreat last Friday, down at a medieval priory west of London. The stone floors were cold and the gothic arches reassuringly old. Time slowed and I played with acorns.

The priory is empty of nuns. They have died, as humans do, and have not been replaced. The last two survivors are seeing out their dusk in the almshouse wing. But the energy of the female spiritual life is still there: bells in just the right place; carriage clocks with fairy-like rings; and a total absence of dust - as though the stones remember the centuries of unrelenting female labour dispelling it.

I noticed two framed tablets hanging in one of the narrow red-and-black tiled corridors. Yellowing paper squares had been pasted one-by-one into the frame, each bearing testament to the death and life of one of the sisters. Where monks might have carved stone slabs or wooden plaques, the modest sisters here had a bit of paper and glue. Spaces have been left at the end for those yet-to-die; there’s sign of tipexing and re-gluing. I immediately thought of the immense old-style library type-writered catalogue books, which end up extending to impractical numbers of weighty, frayed volumes (now it’s all just stored in zeros and ones to be flung at us through LED screens at the tap of a finger).

Here was one entry in the frame:

CECILIA
OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

ELEVENTH AND LAST MOTHER

ORDER II

12 FEBRUARY 2004 AGED 89 YEARS

IN RELIGION 64 YEARS

There was also “Hope of the Precious Blood” (9th Mother) and “Priscilla Lydia, Foundress and First Mother”, who died in 1876.

Powerful words.

These women didn’t seem so very far away after all.

Dew courtesy of The Patterner, who was meditating on’t at dawn.

The sun is warm here on the dry rocky plateau of the causse, and there are improbable numbers of flies from the sheep and goats. They have developed an unfortunate habit of mating on my shoulder. (I would normally call myself fairly fly-tolerant, but this proximity of parasitical procreation is pushing me over my bug-loving edge.)

The thing is, is the sun ever not warm?! Is the sun ever not shining? Sometimes on cloudy days I remember how hot and bright the sun still is - it’s just that the clouds are in the way. The sun is still shining, even on the greyest days.

I have a little game when I’m feeling stuck with something, or caught up in worries. I ask myself,

Where are the stars, Natasha?

It works every time. They’re there, and there and there and there. Just millions and billions of light years away, but in every direction, even in daytime. When I remember where the stars are things look different and I feel better (even in the middle of a newsroom).

I’ve been angry this past 24 hours, and I’ve been doing my best to take care of my anger. I’ve written a lot, I’ve talked to myself a lot, and last night I took refuge in the stars, which were bright (and the Great Bear didn’t look like a saucepan after a while….).

There’s a good little practice I once learned about what to do when I’m furious, when my buttons have been pressed. You know the kind of times. The times when you want to kick a wall, or throw something - or shout. (And if there’s a door nearby I’d want to slam it.) In these times, I do my best to follow this little gatha:

I close my eyes and look deeply.
Three hundred years from now
Where will you be and where shall I be?

As the zen master says,

Looking at the future, we see that the other person is very precious to us. When we know we can lose them at any moment. We are no longer angry. We want to embrace her or him and say,

“How wonderful, you are still alive. I am so happy. How could I be angry with you? Both of us have to die someday and while we are still alive and together it is foolish to be angry at each other.”

The reason we are foolish enough to make ourselves suffer and make the other person suffer is we forget that we and the other person are impermanent. Someday when we die we will lose all our possessions, our power, our family, everything. Our freedom, peace and joy in the present moment is the most important thing we have.

I’ve returned from the Immanent Grove and the Retreat for Scientists in the Field of Consciousness.

My memory is still resonating with mind-zinging teachings, and phrases like these

… the true nature of reality which has no duration in terms of time, no extension in terms of space.

There is luminescence in every human being, and there is also darkness.

I learnt about quantum coherence, electric dipoles oscillating in phase, and the BE condensate (and how humans don’t have to be at Absolute Zero).

But mostly I learnt about myself, the beauty of the leaves and the non-ugliness of all my personal junk.

And I saw that this is my path.

My heart is still there, strangely warmed.

I’m off to the Immanent Grove for a Neuroscience & Meditation retreat.

I shall be back online next week.

Happy Summering!