post wabi sabi

It is always so much harder to write about something that has passed, with the temptation to be onto the next thing. I want to write a little about the wabi sabi retreat while it is still fresh in my mind. There were 19 of us and the programme was very simple. In the mornings i would talk about wabi sabi, the laksanas and the vimokshas and lead some meditation. In the afternoons there was space to explore wabi sabi for ourselves or to join in with an informal discission group on, well everything from reality to the meaning of life, which seemed to develop a life of it's own! In the evenings we had movies, music and puja.

some thoughts intersperced with some 'things'!

nothing to loose


the edge of nihilism


everything has a body of light


breaking the bonds


and next time...



themes from the evenings

Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia'.

"There isn't "realism" on the one hand, and on the other hand (in contrast, in contradiction) "dreams." We spend a third of our life asleep (and thus dreaming): what is there that is more real than dreams?"
Then how would you explain the style which you have in mind for Nostalghia?



"I refer once again to Stalker. There is a place there, the Zone, which is and is not, it is reality and, at the same time, it is a place of the soul, of memory. In the film, when you see it, it is a forest, a river. That's all. But the air that circulates, the light, the rythms, the perspectives, without distorting anything, make you feel it as an "other" place, with various dimensions, always real and, at the same time, different.... The sky, a sky is always just that, but all it takes is a different hour of the day, the wind, a change in climate, for it to speak to you in a different way, with love, with violence, with longing, with fear. Cinema can give these "ways" back to you, it must. With courage, and honesty, always starting from the real."


Bjork interviews and Live at the Royal Opera House.
Björk: Live at the Royal Opera House contains a live performance in London, Convent Garden, on Sunday, December 16, 2001.

One of the first contemporary pop artists to perform on the historic stage of the Royal Opera House, Björk is joined by harpist Zeena Parkins and the electronic duo Matmos. An all-female Inuit choir from Greenland and a 56-piece orchestra appears under the direction of conductor Simon Lee.

Bill Viola's 'Hatsu-Yume' (First Dream).
Hatsu -Yume progresses from darkness to light, stillness to motion, silence to sound, simplicity to complexity, nature to civilization. There are two interwoven themes: the dark water world of fish, and Buddhist rituals invoking the souls of dead ancestors. As in a dream, we frequently can’t tell if these wordless streams of image and sound are unfolding in realtime, slow-motion or time-lapse. A work of extravagant pictorial beauty. Hatsu-Yume represents the most painterly use of light in the history of video. Form is content: the light that lures fish to their death protects human life. At once ominous, majes tic, mystical, and deeply spiritual, Hatsu-Yume is the work of a visionary poet of image and sound.

Bent Hamer's 'Kitchen Stories'.
Part surreal satire on human domesticity, part gentle study of male loneliness, Bent Hamer's engaging little movie occupies a strange no man's land between little-known history and pure Pythonesque looniness. In the 1950s, the Swedish government sponsored a mass observation project in which the kitchen habits of Swedish housewives were minutely examined to see if more rational designs and layouts for these food preparation areas could be devised - and to see in general, in a very nanny-state-ish way, if individuals could not be induced to live their lives more logically.
Hamer pushes this conceit further, but not that much further, and imagines the Swedes persuading their neighbours Norway to participate in a study of single men's kitchen lives, on account of their statistical surplus of such males. They send a convoy of researchers driving out over the border, each towing their own little caravan, which they will park outside the house of each subject, and then spend the day in their kitchen: an impartial observer, tracking, noting, recording, but never, ever getting involved.
So the mild bureaucrat Folke (Tomas Norstrom) sets up his observation post in the kitchen of the elderly, taciturn Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), sitting on a high seat, as if about to umpire a game of tennis. Inevitably, Folke finds himself involved in Isak's life and Isak finds himself observing Folke - intimately curious about another human being for the first time in his life. They develop a tender friendship, and director Hamer does not badger us with any quirky odd-couple comedy, and neither does he invite us to congratulate him, as Kaurismaki sometimes does, on how deadpan and cool the performances are.

With dhammadinna at 44 degrees in marrakech!

Out my window is a very wet autumn and 44 degrees seems unthinkable! Wanted to write about the trip but think the moment has passed... mm that is the thing with blogging, one has to keep going, guess that is the thing with life.

It really was 44 degrees, dangerously hot and with no sign of airconditioning anywhere, it was even hot for moroccans. Marrakech is a mad mad place, made more so by that kind of heat. We took ourselves to the main square in the evenings, to see the story tellers, snake charmers and tooth pullers. We spent a lot of our time lost, but then being lots when you don't have to be anywhere in particular isn't quite 'lost' or is it? One night we sat having a drink in a bar and then made our way to a restaurant that we'd found in the rough guide. We were very pleased when we found it after about 15 mins, none of the streets have signs, then realized it was next to the place that we'd been drinking!

Luckily we'd just spent 5 days on the coast where is was a strange mixture of hot and foggy, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to lie on the beach in the fog, though it did remind me of Yarmouth, except that the women were veiled!
I've had an embarrassing amount of holidays this year but it is such a lovely way to spend time with people. Dhammadinna is great company, I like being able to have an ongoing conversation that you can keep coming back to, with various threads. I like laughing a lot. I also like being able to be quiet and read my book! We did all of these, mostly while drinking wine on the roof...the wine you have to buy in a dodgy shop outside of town, where it is wrapped in black bags...therefore the whole experience is so much more enjoyable!

3 doorways to freedom

Two streamings across the doorsill“…lets be bold and claim that there are two major streamings in consciousness, particularly in the ecstatic life, and in Rumi’s poetry: call them fana and baqa, Arabic words that refer to the play and intersection of human with divine. Rumi’s poetry occurs in that opening, a dervish doorway these energies move through in either direction. A movement out, a movement in.

Fana is the steaming that moves from the human out into mystery. Fana is that dissolution before our commotion and mad night prayers become silence. Baqa goes the other way across the doorsill. The Arabic word means ‘a living within’. The absorbing work of this day, …a return from expansion… into pain and effort…the end of a frayed rope. You feel a tremendous intensity within limits.

By letting these two conditions, fana and baqa flow and exist simultaneously in his poetry, Rumi is saying they are one thing, the core of a true human being…where the secular and the sacred are always mingling, the mythic and the ordinary, dream vision and street life."
Coleman Barks ‘The Soul of Rumi’

I'm about to lead a retreat on Wabi Sabi and as a framework for the retreat i'm going to be using the 3 laksanas and the 3 vimoksas. In meditation i'll be connecting them with the 3 qualities of mind talked about by Rigdzin Shikpo as; openness, clarity and sensitivity. Then through looking for the wabi sabi aspect of things i hope we can get an inkling that everything around us is continually showing us reality.

We are not dealing with distinct properties of the conditioned, but rather than with so many ways of penetrating into its true nature.Bhante on the laksanas


the laksana - impermanent
We are constantly encountering profound revelations of impermanence, which are obscured by the characteristic of continuity.
Arising is the beginning of impermanence; decay it’s middle point, dissolution is its end.

Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet do no suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood is firewood, which fully includes past and future. Ash is ash, which fully includes future and past. Dogen

the vimoksa - signlessness
Animitta - No words, concepts or thoughts apply, even the idea of those not applying doesn’t apply! The term Maya we know to mean illusion, yet it’s literal meaning is ‘to measure, to cut up’. Through concepts, even through perception, we cut up the pure flow that is reality. Really there is just this continuous process of ‘pure becoming’ out of which we create; table, firewood, ash.

in meditation - clarity
It’s a sense of being awake, knowingness and luminosity. We see the quality of our experience, we aware of the relationships and connections between things. Clarity and awareness are connected with a sense of the passing of time. Clarity is a mirror; it’s dynamic, it moves, though in a sense it is unchanging.

It’s a sword that instead of cutting into two, it cuts into one!

in wabi sabi - things are either devolving toward, or evolving from nothingness
In wabi sabi there is the suggestion of a natural process, we find expressions of time frozen.
Objects carry the signs of time passing; they are weathered, rusty, tarnished, warped or sun bleached.
They carry the signs of wear; cracks, bruises, dents and holes.
And the signs of love: patching, stitched, softened and worn with use.

The beauty of impermanence.


the laksana - painful
We think of pain as coming and going, that it is added on to our experience rather than ever present. We can see this in terms of our body, we continually change our posture having the notion that the postures bring us comfort, but all the time they bring us pain.
Dukkha is translated as Unsatisfactoriness, a gross or subtle searching, a restlessness.

At the base of the conditioned mind is wanting. This wanting takes many forms. It wants to be secure. It wants to be happy. It wants to survive. It wants to be loved. It also has specific wants.
The planning mind tries to assure satisfaction. Most thought is based on the satisfaction of desires. Therefore thought has its root in dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.
When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeking elsewhere… There are things that we want that may never come our way, or things we only get once in a while, or which don’t stay for long. There are also things we get and after we get them we don’t want them… Steven Levine

the vimoksa - wishlessness
Apranihita - the unbiased. When we really see that nothing is ultimately satisfying we give up, we give up our searching, the mind rests wherever it is, like a perfect sphere on a perfectly flat surface, going nowhere.

Ironically when we experience the depth of dissatisfaction in the wanting mind. There follows a great joy. Because when we see that no object of mind can in itself satisfy, then nothing that arises can draw us out and we begin to let go because there is nothing worth holding on to. The more we see how the mind wants, the more we see how wanting obscures the present moment. To realise there is nothing to hold on to that can offer lasting satisfaction shows us there is no where to go and nothing to have and nothing to be – and that’s freedom.
Steven Levine

in meditation - sensitivity
A responsiveness, compassionate, uninhibited, spontaneous and blissful; it is the heart of awakening.
There may be a sense of wellbeing and joy, on the other hand unhappiness and sorrow, but it is associated with awareness it feels ‘good’ to be more aware, no matter what we are feeling.

We shut off awareness, frightened by what we might find – but the nature of our being is good and carries within itself a sense of wellbeing. As long as we are aware, sensitivity is there and that is good in itself.Rigdzin Shikpo

in wabi sabi - coaxing beauty out of ugliness
The beauty in wabi sabi is not held by the object, but hidden in the experience. It is a dynamic between you and some thing in your world, the beauty is a state of consciousness
Wabi sabi is indifferent to conventional good taste, things might be misshapen, awkward, random, and the result of letting things happen by chance. Things wabi sabi may exhibit the effects of an accident, like a bowl glued back together, or scar.

The beauty of imperfection.


the laksana - insubstantial
Perception itself is a very subtle grasping the process happens very fast. The real nature of things is concealed beneath the appearances we ascribe to them. What we call ‘seeing’ is in fact an imagining. The self is such an imagining.

The Dhammapada says all conditioned things are impermanent and painful, whereas all things whatsoever are insubstantial. So the emptiness of the conditioned and the emptiness of the unconditioned resolve themselves into a third more profound kind of anatman – ‘tathata’ or thusness. I think there is a strong connection between tathata and wabi sabi.

the vimoksa - sunyata
Voidness - Really there is nothing to our experience, each sensation seems to be made up of other sensations and so on… There is nothing to get hold of and no one to get hold of it. But there IS experience.

Emptiness here, emptiness there, yet the infinite universe stands always before our eyes. Hsan Tsang
In the light of this mirror like wisdom things are freed from their ‘thingness’, their isolation, without being deprived of their form. Lama Govinda

in meditation - openness
Spaciousness, where nothing is fixed, both emptiness and fullness, a mysteriousness in which manifestations self arise and self liberate. This spaciousness is the basis of our being, a complete openness in which we can turn towards whatever arises without fear and where there is always space for something new to happen.

in wabi sabi - nothing can seem anymore important than anything else when the idea of not existing is
brought into the equation

There is an emptiness or nothingness lies behind everything, how are we to know this emptiness? Wabi-sabi shows it to us.
Things are vague, blurry, murky. Like morning mist, or old glass in windows.
Wabi sabi is where the fine line between being and not being is at it’s finest.
Simplicity is at the heart of wabi sabi, nothingness is the ultimate, this side of nothingness we have simplicity. We find it in the spaces between things.

The beauty of incompleteness.

Wabi Sabi Retreat – Coaxing Beauty out of Ugliness
Fri 13 Oct – Fri 20 Oct
for booking details go to www.tiratanaloka.org or use the tiratanaloka link opposite

an old new favorite

While in Morocco i was reading 'Independent People' written in 1935 by Halldor Laxness. I'd escape from the world outside where it was 44 degrees into this tale of a crofter in Iceland who has this fierce desire to be totally independent, and to be independent a man has to put the welfare of his sheep before anything else. He is principled to the point of absurdity: at one point he has a house keeper living with him, here is a man that is hard to get any praise out of but you get the sense that he loves this housekeeper. She makes the simplest food taste good, she works as hard as a man, she keeps a good house and has pillows and a duvet softer than he would have believed possible. While he is continually struggling to make ends meet she has a little money of her own and one day, when things have become very tough, there is even no coffee left and coffee seems to be what keeps body and soul together through the long bitter winters, she goes into town and comes back with coffee, tobacco, a little wheatflour, some sugar. Bjartur doesn't speak to her or look at her for 24 hours, then when she makes him a big steaming cup of coffee he says "you better go". She packs her bags and leaves.

The book is set in the 1800's and life is harsh. Bjartur looses one of his sheep and decides to set out looking for him, he takes a bit of bread and a bottle of coffee, he is going to be gone for 2 or 3 days and is looking forward to this little outing. It is autumn and sleety snow is in the air, he walks all day heading for a place where he knows he can spend the night. This place turns out to be a cave with a large flat stone which, apparently, makes an ideal bed. He sleeps a couple of hours then wakes up shivering, he is freezing cold. But in this cave there is a trick to staying warm, you get up and turn this massive stone around 18 times, by which time you are warm again, enough to sleep another couple of hours. You then repeat this through the night!
I don't think i have ever enjoyed a book more. It is beautifully written, as one review says "He embodies the Joycean idea that nothing is more universal than the local perfectly described."
Here is my favorite quote - "Some people grumble about monotony, - such complaints are the marks of immaturity, sensible people don't like things happening."

need to escape?

i've just come back from a holiday in Morocco with Dhammadinna (see other post). I found the place on a website called i-escape. It is the second holiday that i booked through them and both have been great. Basically what they do is find interesting, non touristy, accommodation all around the world. Then on their site you get loads of info about the place, including highs and lows, you also get to read lots of customer reviews so you get a really realistic idea of where you are going. Anyway a few people have asked me for the web address so if you are interested the link is opposite. The two places that i have been to are 'the Tea House' in Essaouira, Morocco and 'Lela's Taverna' in Kardhamyli Greece.

the garden

thought i'd post a pic of the veggie garden. funny this little patch of the garden, in some ways it is very much 'mine' in fact it is one area where i pretty much do what i like without consulting anyone else (though some would say i do that in all sorts of areas!) but it is a little project that lots of people coming on retreat have had a hand in, weeding, watering, lying brick paths as well as just having a look... maybe the most important thing to do.

below are two pictures taken by Cheri a friend of mine in Finland. she is a designer and takes great photos, she sees the things that other people walk by without noticing. she's just been on retreat with us and sent loads of beautiful, quirky pictures which she is happy for us to use in our publicity, very generous of her. what with her pics, dhammarati's design and samudradaka's web building we should look pretty good in 2007.

jack kerouac - gatha

sitting in the chair
in the morning ground
is no sitting in no
chair in no morning ground

(to be continued)

preparing for ordinations

early morning and outside my window it is pouring with rain. tomorrow are the private ordinations of five women here at tiratanaloka. today, in the rain, we'll build a shrine in the hut under the trees.

wabi sabi

the first of many posts about wabi sabi, but here is where it all got started! i saw this picture by jeff wall many years ago in some modern art gallery, i don't remember where, but i remember turning a corner and coming across this picture in a light box say 3mx2m sq. it was this perfect abstract form in these beautiful muted colours. it baffled my perception, i just saw what was there, my mind couldn't for a few moments make anything out of it, it was just perfect form. then it registered. it was a dirty old sink, maybe in a caravan. it was horrible, like your worst experinces of public toilets.

i'm fascinated in that moment where perception changes, where, as leonard koren says 'beauty is coaxed out of ugliness'. since then i've uncovered wabi sabi in all kinds of places, in art, movies, music and most of all in ordinary life. for now here are some more pictures.
this is another jeff wall it's called something like 'pie dish with peas'.

i don't know who this is?

this is one of many that i took in a deserted mining town in america, it is called 'bodhi state park' but i don't think they spelled bodhi like this!