When I breathe in,

I know that I am breathing in.

When I breathe out,

I know that I am breathing out.

Buddhism began in India a few thousand years ago. You can easily look up the life of the Buddha, his basic teachings and the history of Buddhism, so I’m not going to attempt to recount that here, except to note that ,over time, as Buddhism spread to different places and different cultures, it adapted to those different situations. This led to a wide variety of different emphases. In the modern world, where many people have moved from one country or culture to live in another, Buddhists have moved around, just like other people, and have brought their brand of Buddhism with them. This means that, particularly in western countries, Buddhism is not only a relatively new arrival, but that it has arrived in many different varieties. Some of this broad spectrum has impacted on my own beginnings with Buddhism.

Years ago, when I was a student I read some books about Buddhism, most notably John Blofeld’s autobiographical The Wheel of Life, much of which I did not understand. Looking back, this reading was a bit like reading holiday brochures, flicking through, thinking ‘that would be a nice place to go, and so would that, or what about …’, but not actually booking a holiday at all.

Then in early 2006 a course at Charney Manor ‘Exploring Stillness (Quakers and Buddhists)’ rekindled my interest. A few days later in the bookshop at Friends House I bought several books including Teach Yourself Buddhism and Living Buddha, Living Christ. On the tube on my way home, I was reading one of these and noticed that the passenger standing beside me was reading a Buddhist magazine. I was intrigued enough to note the web address from her magazine and to look it up when I got home. It led me to SGI UK and after a quick read I decided that form of Buddhism was not for me, and went back to my choice of books.

The following autumn this email arrived in my inbox:

Dear Friends,

Hi J.
I thought you (and WIFA) might be interested to learn that we local Buddhists are coming out of the closet and holding our monthly meetings in public from this month on. Our venue is the Newton Price Centre, Grosvenor Road (just off the ring road, opposite John Lewis in the Harlequin Centre), and we’re holding an introductory meeting there on Monday 18 September, 7.30-9pm. You and/or any member of WIFA will be more than welcome if you’d like to discover more about exactly what it is we do. If that date is no good, we’ll also be there on 16 Oct, 20 Nov and 18 Dec.
Hope to see you there one evening – or indeed, somewhere else!
Best wishes,
E

When I read that – I just knew that I was going to go to that meeting. I didn’t know how I would get there, why I was going or what would happen, but I had a very clear idea that I was going, which did not lessen as the weeks passed. When I went to that meeting, it turned out that this was our local SGI UK Buddhist group.

One thing that happened was that I was challenged, in the discussion, to speak from my own experience – ‘what can you say?’ (Quaker readers will realise what this meant to me). I still wasn’t clear for a long time why it was important that I be there, but it led to some good friends; to a lot a challenges to explain myself; to an increased confidence in speaking of God (not easy in a group of Buddhists) and to a regular informal interfaith discussion group, which seemed to fill a niche for some time.

So, having at one time rejected this brand of Buddhism out of hand, I came to value it. At first the chanting, prolonged and often loud, was very strange to a Quaker used to quieter ways, but I came to find that it was a way into stillness. The chanting calms almost all chance of following any those thoughts in my monkey mind. Done in company I am continually brought back to ‘nam myoho renge kyo’. The quality of sharing and listening in the discussion groups is impressive and I have learnt a great deal from other people sharing their experiences.

A weekend course at Woodbrooke in December 2009 brought me into contact with the Community of Interbeing, practicing Zen Buddhism in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. The emphasis on silent meditation was more accessible for me, as one deeply steeped in Quaker silence, and the walking meditation, in particular, was both a delight and a practical help with my MS symptoms. The tradition also includes opportunities for sharing experiences and for deep listening, as well as practices to help us deal with difficulties. For the present, this is the Buddhist tradition that I feel I want to join and explore further, while remaining firmly within my Quaker context¹. But I am glad to continue occasional contact with my local SGI group, and very happy to sit and chant with them when the opportunity arises.

When I applied to formally receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings at the Nottingham Retreat in 2010, I was asked to fill in an application form. It requested the usual sort of details: name, address, etc. and then asked: ‘Would you like a dharma name (to encourage you in your practice)?’ and ‘What is your aspiration?’ I ticked yes to a dharma name, but what was my aspiration? It was a question than puzzled me for some time, and I only had about 24 hours before the form had to be handed in.

In the end I wrote:

“My aspiration is do what God wants me to do. In seeking to know what that is, I tried several denominations of Christianity and found my spiritual home among Quakers about 30 years ago.

My understanding of God/Love/Reality/Allah/the Ultimate and of what God wants me to do has developed over the years. I would currently say that I have an awareness of the Love of God within and around me and other beings, and that Love wants me and other beings to be what we truly are. I have long believed that the kingdom of God is available to us all, here and now, if we did but realise it. I was delighted to hear Thay express this so clearly during this retreat.

“In recent years I have had the opportunity to study at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, developing my knowledge and understanding of the Quaker tradition, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. This has enabled me to offer my skills to support Quakers, and those new to Quakerism in developing their understanding of our tradition and in their spiritual growth. I have also felt drawn to greater involvement in Interfaith work in my locality.

“My contacts with Buddhism have greatly nourished my spiritual life, I feel it would help both my own spiritual development, and my contribution to Interfaith work, to make a commitment to the Buddhist path, in the form of the Five mindfulness Trainings, at this stage.

“I would like to commit myself, in particular, to using the practices I am learning to help others develop along their own spiritual paths, to listen deeply to one another and, especially, to help people from different religious or faith backgrounds to understand one another better.

“Thank you for making this opportunity available.”

I share this now in the hope that it helps to explain how and why I come to be a Buddhist Quaker, who sometimes goes by the dharma name Brightening Spiritual Light of the Heart. I really like ‘Brightening’ – it’s both affirmative and aspirational.

I am about seven, certainly no older, walking home from school alone. I can still picture the road from the infant school in The Rutts, Bushey Heath. As I walk I am thinking about what the Sunday School teacher has been telling us:

‘Jesus is with you all the time. He is right there, holding your hand.’

I’m trying to understand how this can be: ‘He must have an awful lot of hands’ I reason ‘to have one for each child here, for each child in the whole world.’ I have a picture in my mind of a being with many hands ‘like an octopus (which I’ve heard of but haven’t seen), but more so’. This made sense to me and remained with me as a picture of God reaching out to everyone. I never related to the old man in the clouds, though I couldn’t say where my ‘octopus’ was located!

Along with this I had a sense of what the teacher was trying to tell us, that He was always close by, always ready to help, always loving each and every one of us.

Many years later I came across a picture of the Tibetan Bodhisattva ‘Chenrezig of the Thousand Arms’. I recognised that image. That is as close as I can get to what my seven year old self would have drawn that day walking home from school. That is the loving Jesus of my childhood.

Image courtesy of Osel Shen Phen Ling

I have since learnt a bit more about Chenrezig of the Thousand Arms. Chenrezig is the Tibetan name for the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (sanskrit), also known by the chinese name Quanyin.

A boddhisattva is a being who has achieved enlightenment, but vowed not to enter nirvana until all beings have achieved enlightenment. A bodhisattva is often held to be able to manifest in any appropriate form in order to help anyone who needs help. Avalokiteśvara is known as the boddhisatva of compassion and manifests in both male and female forms.

There is a story that Avalokiteśvara struggled so hard to understand the needs of so many unhappy beings that his head split into eleven pieces, so he was given eleven heads to hear the cries of the suffering beings. Trying to respond to all the cries he could then hear and understand, his two arms broke into many pieces. So he was given a thousand arms with which to help. I am struck by the way this story reflects my ‘childish’ reasoning that Jesus must have many arms to care for all the children in the world. These days I my understanding is the the hands, heads and arms that God has in this world are mine and yours, many thousands of us. It is for us to hear, understand and respond to the cries of the suffering beings while recognising that we, too, are suffering beings.

I went to Woodbrooke and I learnt about

Authority and Power, Apocalypse and Aftermath

the Bible – in a new light

Christianity – in the early days

Distinctives, Discovery and Deepening

the Evolving tradition, Experiencing the Spirit and Engaging with the world

Fox, George and Friends, early

the Gospel of Mark

the History of Holland House

Interfaith Initiatives

Journalling

Knots in a length of string

Library stacks and how to move them, the turnings of the Labyrinth

Muslim women, Mindfulness and Mirroring

Names, and what mine might be

Opening to the Spirit

Peace activists and Being Peace

Quakers!

Rumi and Reed-beds, Red cabbage and maples

Stephen

Talking over Tea

Understanding Islam

Volunteering – opportunities for

the Whole banana

some eXtraordinary things

Young Friends

Zen (in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hahn)

Hang on, I thought this was a Quaker blog, what’s Zen doing here?

Well, let me attempt to explain. As you might have picked up reading this blog (assuming you have been), I’m interested in learning about other faith traditions, especially in understanding what it feels like to be part of the tradition, rather than just book learning (though that has its place).

In January 2006 I went to Charney Manor for a weekend retreat entitled ‘Exploring Stillness (Quakers and Buddhists)’, which became very much a turning point for me, not least because I came away with the burning question ‘what ways into stillness work for you?’.

I identified several possibilities that I felt warranted following up, among them circle dancing and mindful walking. Over a period of time I availed myself of opportunities to learn more about these various possibilities. This led to my going to Claridge House for the first time (which led on to other things, but that is another strand in my story). It also led, via the poetry of Rumi, to my taking Chi Gong classes for several years (but that too is part of another strand). And, eventually, it led to my joining a ‘Being Peace’ retreat at Woodbrooke in December 2009, as my final short course on Equipping for Ministry.

‘Being Peace’ was a retreat practising in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn. I really liked the sitting meditation, both guided and silent, and, even more, I liked the walking meditation. I wanted to learn more. I took a follow up weekend at Woodbrooke in March 2010 and booked for the retreat that Thich Nhat Hahn was to lead at Nottingham the following August.

Nottingham was initially a bit of a culture shock. I hadn’t taken in quite what it would feel like to be part of such a large group of people who did, actually, all file in for their first meal together in silence, and sat and ate it, in silence. It did seem very strange not to greet people, not to swap names, not to share something of about our journeys or talk about the weather. Quite disconcerting.

Later we all assembled in the huge hall of the conference centre, renamed the Dharma Hall for the duration of our retreat. I don’t remember much of what was said that evening, except that it included fairly routine information about what would happen when. What I do remember, absolutely distinctly, is hearing Thich Nhat Hahn say ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is Here and Now’. My immediate response was that this was what I’d believed for many years, if this was what he was teaching, I’d follow.

Another evening we had a presentation about the ‘Five mindfulness trainings’ and five people spoke about how receiving the trainings had affected their lives. I’d never thought of formally receiving the trainings before, but I came out of that session thinking that the trainings, although expressed rather differently, ask exactly the same behavioural changes that Advices and Queries do. Perhaps I could receive them. Despite my daughter’s best efforts to dissuade me, the final morning of the retreat found me prostrating myself, along with 100+ other applicants, in a very unquakerly ceremony to formally receive the five mindfulness trainings. It felt to me that I was making a very strong commitment to this path, although I was equally clear that I was in no way ceasing to be a Quaker.

So it is very much from my Quaker home, and by following what I have understood to be ‘the promptings of love and truth’, that I have come to be following a Zen path alongside my Quaker one. This is particularly pertinent at this concluding stage of my Quaker alphabet, not only because Zen begins with Z (though obviously that helps a lot), but because I propose to attempt a Buddhist alphabet next year. It will I expect be very much a Quaker Buddhist alphabet, because that’s where I’m coming from, but I hope it will be a good continuation of the spiritual discipline that writing the Quaker alphabet has been.

I wasn’t going to write about Z for zzzz, but then I caught myself nodding off in meeting for worship today and thought that perhaps I should.

It was midweek meeting, which we hold at lunch-time, never my brightest time of day, and I’m not very well at present, so there is may be some excuse for my taking a nap during meeting. But does it matter?

Some people I know won’t come to meeting any more. They say ‘I only fall asleep, I won’t come’. I’m sad they don’t come, they wouldn’t sleep all the time surely, and anyway, does it matter?

In a way, yes it does matter. We come to meeting to be aware of the Presence, to listen to the Divine, to align ourselves more closely with the will of God, or however we describe it. Generally, our experience suggests that it is easier to achieve this if we are relaxed but alert, comfortable but aware, still but awake. We want to be conscious of what is happening in the silence.

Someone who falls asleep may worry that they will disturb others. They don’t usually, although people will be aware that someone is sleeping (and I think that in most meetings of any size someone probably falls asleep most weeks). Of course, if someone snores that can be quite a distraction. Often a Friend sitting near a snorer will be able to give a gentle nudge and awaken them.

If someone is really tired, it maybe that sleep is what they most need. If they take heed of the advice to come to meeting even when they “are angry, depressed, tired or spiritually cold.” A&Q 10 then it maybe that sleep is a gift to them from the meeting and from God.

Today, when I caught myself dozing, I just held the sleepiness in the light, accepted that I would be forgiven, and attempted (not entirely successfully) to remain alert for the remainder of the meeting.

Yack(ety-yack) – trivial or unduly persistent conversation. Concise Oxford Dictionary.

We Quakers do like our silence, but when we stop being silent, you should hear us.

Sometimes we do sit quietly after meeting for worship and are reluctant to break the mood, but more often everyone seems to burst into frantic conversation, yackety-yackety-yack.

Over refreshments after meeting there can be a hubbub of chattering that can be very off-putting to anyone who is not part of it. They may feel ‘not part of it’ because no-one comes to speak to them, because they are a newcomer, because they find this particular sort of social situation difficult. Sometimes people are rushing around trying to speak to a list of people about various committee tasks and other, very worthy, Quaker business. Others will be talking about the weather, or yesterday’s football match. Those not involved may feel bombarded by the noise and busy-ness.

I’m not actually saying that any of this is wrong. It’s good to talk, I like to talk myself. It’s good to get to know one another in the things temporal, as well as in the things eternal (Advices & Queries 18). It’s good to discuss some things face to face and when we are in the same place at the same time it may be an ideal opportunity. But it may not be the right occasion for some of our busy-ness.

Please, Friends, try to be aware of those who are new, those who feel left out, those who can’t cope well with standing to chat or fetching their own coffee, those who want to ask deep, important questions about meeting for worship or other spiritual matters rather than discussing trivia. Maybe you are the person who can do something to improve their experience, rather than just joining in with the yackety-yack.

‘We did conclude among ourselves to settle a meeting, to see one another’s faces, and open our hearts one to another in the Truth of God once a year, as formerly it used to be.‘ Yearly Meeting in London, 1668 QF&P 6.02 

I love to go to Yearly Meeting. Arriving at Friends House, or on whatever campus we are visiting, and spotting familiar faces, greeting Ffriends, talking to Friends I haven’t met before. And then assembling for our meetings for worship for business. Unusually for a Quaker meeting, we tend to chat as we assemble for sessions, but it is helpful to have introduced ourselves to those we are sitting near before we settle into worship. As the clerks or elders enter and take their places, silence descends promptly like a blanket covering us all. The discipline in Britain Yearly Meeting is good, it has got better over the years I have been attending, and is often superb. Our local meetings could learn much. It is necessary with such large numbers to be very disciplined, but it is also possible. It is also possible, though sometimes it has been doubted, to have a flexible agenda and be open to the movings of the Spirit, in a very large group as in a small group.

It is hard to explain to my work colleagues what I do at Yearly Meeting. We (all 800 or 1000 of us) sit in a big room, in silence, for 2 to 3 hours in the morning and listen, and consider some important business. Then in the afternoon we do the same again. Somehow they don’t feel it’s the most exciting way to spent a bank holiday weekend, preferring to have long lie-ins; or go to the DIY store and put up shelves; or have all the family round for a big meal. But to me, the depth of worship in the sessions; the calm way we consider the business; the deep sense of being led and the occasional excitement at times when the Spirit moves us to a dramatic, unexpected decision draw me back year after year.

Added to this are the chances to go to special interest groups and learn more about some aspect of Friends’ work; or to share something that I am particularly interested in; or to sit and chat informally over sandwiches or a meal, in the Friends House restaurant; in the lawn in the garden on Euston Road; or in the refectory of a university hall, catching up with old friends or making new friendships. Yearly Meeting can be an overly busy experience and we all have to learn to pace ourselves. This is especially so when we meet residentially as we will next summer. Yearly Meeting Gathering will take place August 2-9 at the University of Bath. The gathering elements provide plenty of choice of activities for non-Quaker family members to participate in related activities without attending business sessions at all. They also provide additional choices, even temptations, for those, like myself, who choose to prioritise attending business sessions.

Will you be joining us at Bath in 2014?

X marks the spot on the treasure map where the treasure lays hidden.

As I finished Equipping for Ministry (almost four years ago) it was suggested that I might look to the future and write my own story, which might include a treasure map, shipmates, a tool kit, treasure, dragons, and possibly other features too.

I identified my treasure as the Love of God, which is here and now, and doesn’t actually need seeking for. Someone else in the group said, when we shared our stories, that the treasure was for sharing with everybody. I liked that idea and it fitted the treasure I was identifying.

I drew a map too, and the islands that I identified, where I might land and meet friendly people (Becoming Friends, Watford Interfaith Association, Quaker Quest), have been visited.

I was quite fascinated by the dragons I drew, that lurked around the map (as they do on some antiquarian maps). I named them ‘fear’, ‘my agenda’ and ‘the rut’. I hoped to tame ‘my agenda’ and re-direct its energies constructively. I hoped not to get dragged down by ‘the rut’.

Now I come to a place in my journey where the map has run out. I’m not sure whether my path is blocked by a log I might sit and rest on, and perhaps, in due course, climb over to continue my journey. Or by red & white danger warning tape saying stop, here, now, do not continue this way. I’m seeing gentle countryside around me, rather than seas and islands to explore. A time to take stock and review. Perhaps a time ‘to make your home a place of loving friendship and enjoyment, where all who live or visit may find the peace and refreshment of God’s presence.’ (A&Q 26), to wait, to let people come to me, rather than rush around going to this meeting and that meeting.

What does your map look like? Do you see adventures? Dragons? Shipmates? Treasure?