Karma, that’s a good Buddhist word and it begins with K – maybe I’ll write about that this week. That’ll be easy.

Except that I have a problem with karma. I just don’t believe in it at all. It makes perfect sense to me that what we do now affects what happens later. Simple cause and effect. Or, in most cases, not quite so simple, because most things in life are over-determined – caused by more than one factor.

What I don’t believe is that anything I’ve done in a past life is having an effect on my present life. I certainly don’t believe that the illnesses and other troubles I have and have had are caused by something bad I did in a previous life (or even in this one). I believe that these problems just are. Stuff happens, end of.

Why? In part because I don’t believe in past lives or future lives. This life is the only one I’ve got. I know a lot of people who believe otherwise and it really matters to them. That’s fine, and they may be right. But, as far as I’m concerned, when I die my atoms are going back into the universe (though hopefully some are going via the MS Tissue Bank). Just the same way they are swapping in and out of me all the time. Sometimes me, sometimes not me.

And the universe just goes on. Earth quakes quake. Storms wreak havoc. Floods soak and drown. The sun shines. Heatwaves happen. None of this is wrought by the hand of an angry god. None of it is caused by what the individuals who suffer it’s effects did in their non-existent past lives.

It may, at least in part, be caused by what human beings have done in the past. I do, for instance, believe in climate change and I do believe that human activity is a factor in it. I also believe that we might be able to reduce it’s effects by the actions we take now. At least we need to try.

I do my best to do the right thing now, for myself, but also for the community, the human race, the planet. Well, at least as far as I can figure out what that is. My incentive is just because that is the right thing to do, and because that way aligns me with that positive, loving, creative force that I call God.

And if it is true that my positive actions in this life will generate good karma that’s all to the good. Even if I don’t believe in it.

J is for joy, jargon, jokes, jewels (three), Jim (Pym), Jehosophat, joining, jobs …

I had plenty of ideas lined up for this second J in my Buddhist Quaker alphabet, but somehow none of them was quite becoming a post. None got further that a sentence or two. Not that I’m aiming at any great length, but it needs to say something to make it worth posting.

Then, as I sat in meeting last Sunday, I saw these words, these happening to begin with J words, as being a jumble, like a jumble of threads in the mess my sewing basket sometimes is, or the mess we used to see when emptying out the bags of donations for our annual guide jumble sale. When the jumble was sorted there would be a very few gems, lots of could be useful to somebodies, and loads of probably complete rubbish. But it was always hard to be sure quite what might sell. What’s rubbish to one person could be just what is needed to another.

Sometimes my spiritual life is like that pile of jumble waiting to be sorted. So many ideas coming in, from many different sources, that I can’t see any way forward. But time and patience, looking at each one, maybe trying it for size for a while, eventually create some degree of apparent order.

Until someone (probably me), accidentally or deliberately, tips the table over ….

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

no hands but yours,

no feet but yours,

yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion

is to look out to the earth,

yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good

and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.’

This well-known quotation, attributed to St Teresa of Avila, summarises much of how I feel Jesus (or Christ or God, if those names sit more comfortably with you) acts through us in the world. If I am to follow his example, simply by reading about his life and applying that example in my own, I would be doing this. That is one way I can understand being a Jesus-follower, a way of being christian.

There are also times when I feel that something else, whether from within me or from outside me, but somehow not actually me, is acting through me. In my Quaker understanding I describe that ‘something else’ as ‘that of God’.

Recently at a ‘morning of mindfulness‘ in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, someone requested that we chant ‘Namo‘valokiteshvaraya’. There were some newcomers to the tradition with us, so an explanation of this was offered. The chanting invokes the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, who is said to manifest whenever someone needs, or asks for, help, in whatever form is most helpful. In Chinese this bodhisattva is known as Kuan Yin and is reputed to always manifest in female form.

I found the explanation helpful in several ways, in part because I had not previously understood, in language or ‘head’ terms what we were doing when we chanted. But also because the explanation continued by saying that we need not see the invocation as literally invoking a separate being, but that it could be understood as invoking something within us. This gave me a clearer image of something I’d vaguely seen before. Anyone could, at any time, be (however briefly) a bodhisattva. Avalokitesvara could look out through your eyes and my eyes, could use your feet and my feet to go to were the need was, could use my hands and your hands to do what needed to be done. We can help the person who has fallen in the street, we can listen to the person in distress, we can feed someone who is hungry (directly, or by contributing to a food bank, or by sending money to an appropriate charity), we can help one another in all manner of ways, large and small. We can allow that inner bodhisattva to manifest through us.

So I came back to Christ, to Jesus. I also came back to the necessity that I act.

I can pray or chant or listen to ‘the promptings of love and truth‘. If I allow compassion to waken in me, I will be moved to act. If I act in line with, in tune with, ‘that of God’ or that inner bodhisattva, I will, hopefully, be acting for the best.

On this particular occasion,at that morning of mindfulness, I chanted, holding in the light my friend Stephen whom I knew, from his text messages, to be very ill with bowel cancer. I had replied to his texts offering my thoughts and prayers. In the circumstances I could offer little else, I wished I could. I heard, about a week later, that he had died only days after that chanting. I hope he felt upheld by it, as I had done on a previous occasion. I hope he is freed now from the slightly desperate searching that was so much a part of his life in the time I knew him. I give thanks that we shared a part of our spiritual quest, that we had spent some time together fairly recently and that we had remained in contact, however tenuously.

‘I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,

and I am the bird which, when Spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.’

I am a water molecule. I’m here in this raindrop with my siblings, surrounded by all these other raindrops. Any time now we’ll be hurling down, down, into another adventure.

Yesterday I was calmly resting in a lake, having tumbled down a mountainside in a stream a few days earlier. I was enjoying the peaceful interlude. The sun shone hotter and hotter as the day went on, my fellow molecules were gradually sucked up into the air. Soon enough it was my turn. Up, up, into the clouds. In the cloud we cling together in little droplets, until we are just too heavy to hang up here any longer. Then it’s down, down to another adventure.

Where will I go this time? Into a plant becoming part of a cell for a while? Or into a mammal’s lungs to sit about in that moist environment until I am exhaled again? Or drunk in a glass of water to be absorbed and used by that body, until that, too, ejects me, perhaps as a tear?

Every thing, every constituent part of our bodies, of what seems to make up the permanent stuff of our selves, has been part of all sorts of other things in the universe, and will cease to be part of us and go to be part of something else, while all the time we may think that we continue to be the same ‘self’.

We are all intrinsically part of the universe and it is part of us. We all interbe with everything.

I follow the science of the water cycle. I know intellectually that all my molecules are only ‘mine’ temporarily, and that they are mostly empty space. I find it harder to grasp in my inmost self (made of entirely of stuff that is not ‘myself’) that I interam with every thing, every plant, every animal, every person. That I am the mayfly, I am the bird, I am the homeless person sleeping in the street doorway. That I am the arms dealer (arms dealer, surely not – I’m a Quaker, we don’t trade in arms – or do we?), I am the flower bud, the rose, the thorn, the cancer cell, because we all inter are.

But I’m cultivating this insight, so that compassion may grow in me.

Having already tackled greed and hatred in this Quaker Buddhist alphabet, it seems appropriate to take the third of the three poisons next, so here is I for ignorance.

Like the other terms in this list, the sanskrit source word can be translated in various ways: confusion, bewilderment, delusion and sometimes, stupidity. These help us to gain a sense of the breadth of meaning in the original word and stop us getting to stuck on one particular interpretation.

What is it that we are ignorant of? The truth of the way the world is I suppose is what is meant, the basic Buddhist teaching and understanding of the way the world is. The four noble truths and the noble eightfold path. (Yes, more lists.)

So how can we dispel ignorance? I think it needs to be tackled in lots of ways. We can read and study, using our brains and our analytical, logical thinking. This lets us learn on one level, but I can repeat the four noble truths and write them on my exam paper, without them making any impact on the way I live my life. So book-learning and study and listening to dharma talks are not enough on their own. I also need to practice the teaching, apply it in my life. Live the noble eightfold path, follow the five mindfulness trainings, coming back to read them from time to time to remind myself of them.

Not a big problem in that I always understood that to follow Christianity I should be living as Jesus taught, following his example. I found, among Quakers, people who were doing that, as best they could, without getting bogged down in unnecessary rituals. Following the Quaker way, accepting the guidance of Advices and Queries, and keeping the five mindfulness trainings, all seem to amount to the same things on a day to day basis.

Only a big problem in that to do this properly is a huge challenge, I continually fail to do as well as I aspire to. ‘I will not kill’ says the mindfulness training – clear commitment, easy, until there are ants in my kitchen. I squash them. There’s a slug on my lettuce when I come to wash it, I carefully take it outside and let it go, but I used slug pellets on the allotment earlier in the day (albeit they were organic gardening approved for occasional use). I’m a vegetarian, but is my pension fund investing in arms manufacturers? Do I know, can I make the effort to find out?

What about the ignorance of others? Should we share this message, and if so how? Buddhism has the concept of ‘skilful means’, that teaching needs to be in a way the recipient will understand. So I can share my practice and my understanding in different ways.

I might explain to a colleague who tends to trip and fall, how practising mindful walking helps me to avoid falling over, and to another that taking three breaths before answering the ringing telephone makes me much more patient with the caller. To someone else I may comment how practising mindful walking has increased my compassion for the people who live in my neighbourhood, how being in the here and now makes me more aware of those living immediately around me. With my guides I provide short readings at the close of meetings, that hopefully provoke thought about the spiritual aspects of life. To a fellow Quaker I may explain how practising silent meditation and mindful breathing on a (nearly) daily basis makes it easier to settle into the silence of meeting for worship. Or I could write a blog about my experiences in trying to live this Quaker Buddhist path.

Hatred, not a word I generally associate with either Buddhists or Quakers. Surely they are all nice, gentle folks who don’t hate anyone.

Not true of course. We are all just normal people doing the best we can. We are trying to increase our compassion, our loving-kindness, and to let go of hatred. Hopefully we succeed at least a little bit.

Hatred, like greed, is one of the three poisons. The sanskrit word dvesa can also be translated aversion, anger, aggression. This gives us a wider sense of the meaning.

So when do I feel hatred? Well, when my next door neighbour, in his over-enthusiastic garden ‘tidying’ has reached under the fence and damaged my plants. I am angry on behalf of my plants, I feel threatened by the intrusion into ‘my’ space. I want to react aggressively. I remember not to act in the heat of the moment. I try to see things from his point of view. I become a little more sad, a bit less angry. I work on developing compassion for him. I try to develop non-attachment – did you notice all those mys I was using? I did. Takes me back to greed too, doesn’t it? These poisons are inter-connected, even in this small example.

When we speak of anger, people will often say ‘but aren’t there things we should feel angry about?’ Well yes there are. Real injustices. Anger can give us the energy to fight against them and perhaps that can be justified. But how much better to act from love, from compassion, than from anger.

Let us cultivate metta and begin to change the world in a truly positive way.

At an local SGI discussion meeting some years ago, someone said something that has stayed with me. He said that we often speak of the symptoms of illness, but it can be useful to think of the symptoms of health.

At the time I had a long-term, largely untreatable illness – ME/CFS. It was a great help to me to look at things from a different perspective and I made a list of those symptoms of health that occurred to me. I began to look out for them in myself. Much more positive and encouraging than dwelling on the symptoms of illness.

Here’s my initial list:

feeling energetic

sense of joy in life

enjoying healthy food

flexibility in times of eating and sleeping

succeeding in basic hygiene and healthcare (eg actually getting up and getting dressed each day)

honest acceptance of the current situation and capacity to work on improvements (eg dress to look good at current weight & plan ways to lose weight)

readiness to accept a challenge

being able to prioritise

being thankful

being able to communicate with people

finding time for spiritual practices

concentration

discussing/sharing things that matter

self-discipline

awareness of other people

2 colds/year

What would be on your list?

‘Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness & just be happy.’

This quotation from Guillaume Apollinaire filled the front of a handbill I was given in the town centre recently (on my way to my bus stop home from work) along with a piece of coconut ice and an invitation to join in the dancing and chanting of ‘Hare Krishna’. I can’t dance at present (walking is challenge enough), but I chanted for a few minutes, until I saw a bus coming – and I smiled all the way home.

A few days later I was on a bus going to meeting for worship. New posters on the bus shelters read:

‘Happiness in a new bottle. 1.75 litre Coca-Cola’.

Somehow I don’t think so, even if I liked Coca-cola. But it illustrates the ways that we are being bombarded with ways we could be happy, often ways that will make profits for someone else. Which they hope will make them happy.

It brought me sharply back to Advices and Queries 39 ‘Consider which of the ways to happiness offered by society are truly fulfilling and which are potentially corrupting and destructive.’ The same thought is also encapsulated in the five mindfulness trainings.

In my experience happiness comes along when I am doing something else, probably something that might be termed ‘work’, doing it with my whole attention, often doing it principally for the benefit of someone else, or when I am just being: stepping outside first thing in the morning, watching a bird in the garden, listening deeply to someone, preparing food.

As a Friend reminded me, when she h read my comments about the Hare Krishna handbill: ‘Man asked Buddha “I want happiness. ” Buddha replies,”leave out I then want & you are left with happiness.” ‘

Then just pause and enjoy being happy, and sing along with my young self whose favourite sunday school chorus was:

I am H A P P Y,

I am H A P P Y,

I know I am, I’m sure I am,

I am H A P P Y.

Greed is one of the three poisons in Buddhist teaching; greed, anger and ignorance.

It’s also something I remember daily when I recite the five contemplations before breakfast: ‘May we recognize and transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat in moderation.’

I am always brought up short when reading the five mindfulness trainings by this sentence in the second training: ‘I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.’

Then from the Quaker perspective, Advices and Queries 39: ‘Resist the desire to acquire possessions or income through unethical investment, speculation or games of chance.’, and 41: ‘Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford. Do you keep yourself informed about the effects your style of living is having on the global economy and environment?’

From the bible, the so well known: ‘Love of money is the root of all evil.’ (1 Timothy 6:10) and ‘Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? … Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.’ (Matthew 6:31,34).

Greed is in part about eating too much, but that is far from the whole story. It is about wanting too much. It is about wanting to have things to make ourselves feel secure, because we all, at some level feel insecure. Insecurity springs from fear, fear of the future, the unknown future, and ,for some, fear (a logical, reasonable fear) that events of the past will repeat themselves. Buddhist teaching is that everything changes, change is inevitable, but that if we can accept that and realise that happiness is only possible in the present moment, and that it is possible in the present moment, we have ‘more than enough conditions to be happy.’

Greed, it seems clear to me, is also at the root of much that is wrong in society. It is easy to see that bankers’ bonuses and MPs expenses claims are rooted in greed, but there is also the lack of people being willing to share their ‘ time, energy, and material resources’ and arguments about who constitutes ‘those who are in need.’, instead of just getting on and sharing. It also seems to me that greed is part of the human condition, it did not need money or many material resources to show itself. I imagine even in early societies with simple bartering that someone would be trying to get the better part of a bartering deal when exchanging perhaps a sharpened flint for a portion of the recent kill, or a bunch of herbs for a basket of berries.

I go away now to work on ‘ not to possess anything that should belong to others’ – just what ‘should belong to others’, if I have clean water to spare to flush my toilet with, and yet other people do not have clean water to drink? And ‘ keep yourself informed about the effects your style of living is having on the global economy and environment’, such a complex topic to grasp that I must take it small step by small step.

Today I am grateful for –

a new day

all those wonderful people out there whom I might meet today

waking up pain free

a warm house

sanitation

a garden with trees and flowers

tomato seedlings on the windowsill, just emerging from the compost

supportive friends

breakfast

I could go on …. and all that is before 8am! (Though I confess I find this much easier first thing in the morning than later in the day.)

Those of you who are Facebook friends with me will have seen that I quite frequently use this format for my status updates. It’s a good practice for me, especially on days when a lot of things are not the way I would like them to be. I adopted the practice having been inspired by the example of a friend who has considerable health problems, but is really good at maintaining a positive attitude to life. I find that expressing the gratitude I feel strengthens it considerably.

A few years ago, among the ‘unwanted’ christmas gifts in our household was a good quality birthday book. I didn’t have use for another birthday book (one really is sufficient, and is scarcely a necessity) but I was sure that a notebook with a space for each day must have a use. I came up with the idea of a blessings book. I changed the title on the cover and challenged myself to record everyday the ‘blessings’ I was grateful for that day. Some days it was not easy, but it turned out to be a very encouraging experience. I allowed repetition. After all, I really can be grateful for sunshine every day for a week, and for friends, and so on, but I tried to record the things that specifically stood out each day.

One of the prompts that led me to think hard about gratitude was Michael Mayne’s comment near the end of his book ‘A Year Lost and Found‘ about his experience of ME. He observes that we are called to give thanks for everything. Not just the good things that happen to us, but everything. To be really, truly grateful for everything. I haven’t yet got to the stage where I can be truly grateful for having suffered from ME. (Having just written it, I realise that the preceding sentence contains the truth of the matter. If I was truly grateful for the illness I wouldn’t be use the verb ‘suffer’ about it.)

Another was one of the Reiki principles that I encountered when I received my first Reiki attunement. Three of the five were very much things I was already aiming to do (following ‘Advices and Queries’), although phrased differently. The other two really made me think: ‘Express gratitude to …’ and ‘Respect your elders, … teachers’. Not just be grateful, but ‘express gratitude’. I was prompted to look for opportunities to express my gratitude. Some of these are private, like the blessings book; some more public, like Facebook statuses; some, and these are really important, are face to face, thanking people directly for something they have done for me. This is relatively easy when the gratitude is for something recent (eg making me a cup of tea, serving me in a shop) and the thanks are immediate, it is more challenging to thank people for something ongoing, or something they have done in the past (eg one’s parents for all the care they gave one as a child, a teacher for ongoing support over a period of time).

Tomorrow is ‘Mothering Sunday’ when it is traditional to thank our mothers for all they do for us. It could be a good practice to broaden this and to thank other people for the help and support and love they give us. Which brings me round to the theme for Watford meeting’s all age worship tomorrow ‘a nestful of gratitude’. If you are in the Watford area you are welcome to join in, any time between 9am and 11.30. Worship will include breakfast, activities around the theme and a period of quiet together.

Who will you thank today? What will you express your gratitude for?