Unhooking

Have you ever noticed that emotional turmoil often starts with a tiny spark? It could be a fleeting thought, a sound, or a sight that makes us feel either comfortable or uncomfortable. This is what is referred to as shenpa—the gentle hook that pulls us in.

Think of it like this: it's akin to wanting to scratch an itch. There's a pull, an energetic nudge, that immediately prompts a reaction. And the magic is, we don’t need to be seasoned meditators to catch this initial tug of "for" or "against." The key here is to remain as steady as a log when feeling that initial pull. Just be with the feeling, experience it fully, and resist the urge to feed that spark with more thoughts. It's all about embracing the restlessness of that energy without getting caught up in it.

By staying present with the rawness of our direct experience, emotional energy can flow without taking us over.

Remaining steady is not a walk in the park—it takes practice. But with time and dedication, we can become more adept at weathering mental and emotional storms.

So, the next time that initial tug is felt, remember to breathe, relax, and embrace the rawness. Because it’s in those moments of stillness and presence that true strength and resilience are found.

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Regrets and Apologies

Ever come across a person who claims to have no regrets or doesn't believe it's necessary to apologise for the harm they have caused?

An egotistical delusional attachment to a sense of self or ideas about how things should be can put us in this problematic mind state. A state in which we’re likely to shirk responsibility and attribute blame to others or situational factors to protect our narrow viewpoint.

As we grow up and move through relationships causing some upset is likely, but rather than seeing this as something that is okay and the people we hurt as collateral damage, we should always do our best to make amends and, whenever possible, apologise.

An apology shows that we have considered the person and the situation and have recognised and taken responsibility for the part we played. This attention and desire to communicate remorse can heal us and the others involved.

Our regrets become the fuel which, when ignited, moves us to become better, to see that our thoughts, words and actions impact others and have consequences. With understanding, we can behave compassionately.

I have many regrets relating to poor choices I have made; most of these were due to ego, misunderstanding and delusional ideas - I have regularly behaved selfishly and carelessly.

I am so sorry to all the people I have caused upset to, knowingly and unknowingly, and I am doing my best to behave with mindful awareness, compassion and kindness to limit the harm I do as I continue to live.

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Why doesn’t Nick Cave eat animals?

Not only has Nick Cave produced some musical masterpieces and beautifully healing letters for readers of The Red Hand Files he also has a vegan cookbook! But why did Nick stop eating animals? In this moving letter, he explains.

Dear Samuel, Elena, Lars, Florian, Mel and Liii,

It was about eight months after our son had died. Susie and I had barely left the house. Susie decided it would be a good idea if we went somewhere for a few days to just get away from it all. Often times you think a change in location might put things right, but, of course, in the end, you take yourself with you and the thing you are running from ultimately finds you. So it was with us. We flew to Marrakesh and checked into a hotel next to the central square.

That evening, Susie and I walked through the main market place of Marrakesh. It is difficult to exaggerate the suffering of the animals that we saw there – ancient donkeys and workhorses being flogged, monkeys on chains, dozens of chickens stuffed into small cages, emaciated street dogs, skinned carcasses hanging on hooks. Death and suffering and cruelty were everywhere and I felt overwhelmed by a dark energy. How much of this energy existed within Marrakesh itself or how much I was carrying with me was difficult to say, but everywhere I looked I saw existential anguish. I was, in part, seeing this remarkable city through my own cultural prejudices, of course, and it was not lost on me that industrial farming in the West, in terms of net suffering, was on a vastly greater scale than what I was witnessing here on the streets of Marrakesh. However, it was the seeing, the close proximity to the cruelty, that made all the difference.

Susie had met a man on the plane, an English guy, who had set up a rescue centre for ancient workhorses in Marrakesh and Susie wanted to visit it, so the next day we caught a cab and drove there.

On the way to the rescue centre, we entered a busy roundabout and saw, in the middle of the road, a cat that had been run over. Its back was broken and it was arched horribly, spraying blood and literally screaming in pain. It was a deeply upsetting sight and one that instantly attached itself to the most vulnerable and traumatic images that lived in my mind. At that moment, something ruptured. I had had enough. Life was too much. It was literally impossible to bear. My son was gone. I would never see him again. In the back of the cab, in Marrakesh, I broke down.

The next morning, we decided to return to the UK. But, sitting on the plane, something had changed in me. I felt different. I felt that if I were to continue to live in this world I had to do what I could to reduce the existential suffering around me, or at the very least, not to add to it. It felt like a way forward. I felt that our collective unhappiness was brimming at its maximum capacity. There was no room for any more. I felt a sense of duty to do whatever I could, in my own way, to minimise sentient suffering. That call to action extended in many directions, and has stayed with me since, but one of the consequences of it was that I gave up eating meat. I have not eaten it since.

As we go through our lives we take on the expanding burden of our own distress – as we are abandoned, broken apart, betrayed, isolated, lost and hurt. This is essentially part of what it is to live. This despair will overwhelm us and turn inward into bitterness, resentment and hatred – worse, we will take it out upon the ones closest to us if we do not actively live our lives in the service of others and use what power we have to reduce each other’s suffering. This, in my opinion, is essentially the key to living. This is the remedy to our own suffering; our own feelings of separateness and of disconnectedness. And it is the essential antidote for loneliness.

We must live our lives in such a way as to make better, even in the smallest way, the situation that we are currently experiencing. This is what it means to ‘take on the suffering of the world’ – that we each act in accordance with the limits of our own personal capacity for good. By doing this, the lives around us will become incrementally better and therefore, so will our own lives, and the life of the world itself.

In the Philip Larkin poem ‘The Mower’, Larkin runs over a hedgehog while he is mowing the lawn. As he removes the body of the hedgehog from the blades of the mower, he muses on the nature of death and ends the poem with these words.

We should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time

The urgency of these words came to me on that flight back from Marrakesh. The vision of the dying cat wrenched me from my own self-absorption and bitterness and isolation and loneliness and showed me that the world, in all its terrible wounded beauty, was in need of our urgent attention.

Much love, Nick

Check out Nick Cave’s vegan cookbook Comfort Eating with Nick Cave - https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/4692

Here’s the link to this letter and others.

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Climate change - Act now

The teachings of Yoga are practical tools we can use to behave better as global citizens. They point us in the direction of union, being able to understand that we’re interconnected and dependent on everything else and that our actions have consequences that reach far and wide. They’re explicitly clear that we should be non-violent, truthful, not take more than we need and relate to others with honesty and kindness.

Our world is on fire. If we're scared about what's to come, we should act. Our choices today affect the future for all life on Earth.

What can we do right now?

1. Fly and drive fossil fuel-powered vehicles less; instead, walk, ride a bike, or take public transport

2. Switch to a renewable energy supplier - ditch fossil fuels from your home or business

3. Go vegan - animal agriculture is a leading cause of the climate crisis and the leading cause of species extinction, habitat destruction, ocean dead zones and rainforest deforestation. If we all ate plants, we would reduce the land used for crop production by 75%.

One vegan person saves approximately 829,000 litres of water a year. It takes 4,500 litres of water to produce just 4.5 litres of milk, and beef has an overall water footprint of roughly 15 million litres per tonne.

We'll need that water during drought and to fight fires

4. Only support politicians that recognise the climate crisis as the biggest challenge facing life on Earth

5. Air dry clothes

6. Whenever possible, share things; and reduce consumption, re-use, and recycle

7. If you need to use heat or a/c, insulate your home and your windows, and only use heat or a/c when you need to; dress appropriately for the temperature

8. If you own a home; add solar panels

9. Plant trees (we need a few trillion more) and stop mowing the grass in our gardens - we're destroying the habitat of insects and small creatures by cutting our lawns

10. Support companies working towards environmentally friendly solutions like carbon sequestration, sustainable energy, plant-based foods, etc. Stop investing in or working with fossil fuel companies.

If we stop using oil & coal, stop using animals for food, build a few million carbon sequestration units, and plant a trillion trees, we may avoid complete catastrophe.

We know better; we must do better.

#BeTheChange #SaveTheFuture #SmallIsBeautiful #Ahimsa

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The Four Reminders

It’s handy to have a reminder from time to time, listen, be kind, don’t break the speed limit, etc. But what if there were Four Reminders that could fundametally change how we experience our lives, making us more appreciative and grateful for everything we go through?

Here are those reminders.

We are fortunate to have a Precious Human Existence. Considering just how massive the universe, or potential multiverse, is, it’s miraculous that we’re even here on Earth experiencing a human life. Therefore we might want to make the most of it.

Everything in the known universe, at least as I write this, is changing. Scientists so far haven’t identified a single thing with any lasting permanent state. Impermanence means that anything, at any time, could cease to exist or change beyond recognition. Perhaps we should value the time we have and not waste it.

What we think, say and do impacts the world around us. The reminder of Karma tells us that our actions have consequences, and our lives result from how we relate to what we experience. In creating our reality, it might be worth paying close attention to what we’re thinking, saying and doing so we truly understand the impact we’re having on the world around us, near and far.

Finally, it is possible to get caught up in the cyclical suffering of Samsara. Whether it be destructive thought patterns or behaviours, it’s easy to learn or adopt ways of being that aren’t conducive to our happiness or the happiness of others. We inherit many traits from our parents or the people we grew up with, our friends and societies. We should seek to recognise harmful patterns so that instead of going round in circles, we can move forward and away from whatever might be holding us back.

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‘Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.’

If you’ve not yet seen Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar acceptance speech for Joker in 2020 look it up! I think it contains everything we should be focusing on at this moment and in every moment that follows. Here’s the transcript:

“God, I’m full of so much gratitude right now. And I do not feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees or anyone in this room because we share the same love, the love of film. And this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. I don’t know what I’d be without it. But I think the greatest gift that it’s given me, and many of us in this room, is the opportunity to use our voice for the voiceless.

I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively. I think at times we feel, or we’re made to feel, that we champion different causes. But for me, I see commonality. I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender or one species has the right to dominate, control and use and exploit another with impunity.

I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us, what we’re guilty of is an egocentric world view — the belief that we’re the center of the universe. We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. 

And I think we fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something, to give something up, but human beings, at our best, are so inventive and creative and ingenious. And I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment.

Now, I have been, I have been a scoundrel in my life. I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance. And I think that’s when we’re at our best, when we support each other, not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other, when we guide each other toward redemption. That is the best of humanity.

When he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric. He said, ‘Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.'”

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True Peace

Below are three paragraphs about peace from Thich Nhat Hanh. I am encouraged that every moment offers a new opportunity to bring more peace into the world. We don't need to wait to change any of our behaviours that may be causing harm to others. Change requires awareness and courage, and it's always possible for us to do better.

True Peace.

True peace is always possible. Yet it requires strength and practice, particularly in times of great difficulty. To some, peace and nonviolence are synonymous with passivity and weakness. In truth, practicing peace and nonviolence is far from passive. To practice peace, to make peace alive in us, is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict. Practicing peace, especially in times of war, requires courage. 

All of us can practice nonviolence. We begin by recognizing that, in the depths of our consciousness, we have both the seeds of compassion and the seeds of violence. We become aware that our mind is like a garden that contains all kinds of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of mindfulness, and also seeds of ignorance, fear, and hatred. We realize that, at any given moment, we can behave with either violence or compassion, depending on the strength of these seeds within us. 

When the seeds of anger, violence, and fear are watered in us several times a day, they will grow stronger. Then we are unable to be happy, unable to accept ourselves; we suffer and we make those around us suffer. Yet when we know how to cultivate the seeds of love, compassion, and understanding in us every day, those seeds will become stronger, and the seeds of violence and hatred will become weaker and weaker. We know that if we water the seeds of anger, violence, and fear in us, we will lose our peace and our stability. We will suffer and we will make those around us suffer. But if we cultivate the seeds of compassion, we nourish peace within us and around us. With this understanding, we are already on the path of creating peace. 

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Got the poison or the remedy? The Three Poisons or Kleshas.

As human beings, we all experience three primary afflictive mental states; in Tibetan Buddhism, these are known as the Kleshas, or 'Three Poisons'.

The first is delusion or ignorance, more softly described as misunderstanding. Our misunderstanding comes in the form of dualistic ways of observing the world around us. We can quickly categorise things as good or bad, black or white, square or circular. When this happens, we overlook the intricacies and complexities of whatever we are observing. We may fail to see that all phenomena comprise a wide range of different attributes that are constantly changing. This delusional way of seeing things puts us in a fixed or rigid mind state, one that's closed to the vast array of factors that make up every single moment.

Secondly, we have attachment, also referred to as greed or grasping. In this state we may try to obtain or hold on to what we desire or have categorised as being good or valuable. Our grasping to gather these things can become a struggle, and we feel disappointed and suffer when we can't get what we want. We get stressed trying to hold on to what we like, and when we lose what we love, we experience suffering.

The third poison is aversion, also referred to as anger or hatred. It can cause us to attempt to manage or get rid of what we dislike. Some of us try very hard to create a life that avoids everything we despise, find difficult, unpleasant or challenging. Our aversion again causes us to struggle because, of course, not everything in our external environment can be managed and is constantly changing. The nature of our existence is that we are interconnected. Humans attempt to create separation by building social and physical constructions, like walls and borders, to keep out the people we feel afraid of or dislike. These mental or physical barriers represent our fear and ignorance and our inner struggle with aversion/hatred.

Now we know what these poisons are, we can seek to recognise them when they pop up in our thinking. Some of them may be heavily ingrained; our ignorance, attachment or aversion may lead us to respond habitually at times before we even realise what's happening. Under examination, we might find that some of our behaviour is not just making us feel bad; it may harm other beings and our environment. Perhaps we’re hasty to make superficial judgements, want more than we need or harbour prejudices.

Albert Einstein said, 'the measure of intelligence is the ability to change'. No matter how deeply ingrained our thinking and behaviour is, change is always possible. We can build a relationship with our minds that gives us more control over our responses to thoughts and emotions. When we become more capable, we can pause and then respond more peacefully, rationally, and logically, carefully choosing our words and actions.

Try regularly asking yourself, 'why am I thinking this? What am I feeling? and how will I respond?' Maybe try to identify if your thinking relates to one of these poisons. We are not our thoughts nor do we need to react to them.

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Dhyana - meditation

In Tibetan Buddhism, Dhyana, the meditation practice, is the fifth in a series of 'Six Perfections' or Paramitas. These perfections or 'noble behaviours' allow us to move from a place where we struggle through misunderstanding, attachment and aversion, to another location in which we're aware, free from the suffering caused by these three poisonous states. The literal translation of Paramita is to cross over to the other shore.

Much mysticism surrounds meditation, and it can appear inaccessible. It shouldn't be; everyone can meditate. There are three elementary stages to use while meditating:

Stage 1: focusing on something - for example, the breath

Stage 2: noticing when the mind wanders - without criticism or judgment, this stage provides us with the opportunity to meditate

Stage 3: returning - to our initial focus point.

When we repeat these stages, consistently starting over each time, we notice the mind spreading out, telling stories, judging and creating narrative - we reinforce our ability to gently bring the mind back from its wandering. We develop the habit of seeing each moment clearly without the extra layers our minds tend to add - preconceived ideas, judgements and prejudices.

A commonly discussed meditation aspect is vipashyana, or vipassana, as we often hear it referred to in the west. Vipashyana, or 'looking deeply', is vital as it allows us to develop insight into our afflictions. But shamatha, the aspect of 'pausing' is critical. We need to pause, step back from being swept along by our thoughts and feelings, to experience insight with clarity.

The Yoga practice is moving meditation. Its postures (the strange shapes we make) challenge our bodies and minds and give us a rich opportunity to experience some of our embedded patterns of thought and behaviour. During practice the mind chatters away, we might hear a critical inner voice, doubt, fears, and pride. We can also experience bliss, focused attention and greater awareness, moments of space between the thoughts, and ability not to react when things are tough, and insight into impermanence.

We don't need to sit for hours at a time to begin developing the ability to pause and find insight. Starting by simply checking in with where thoughts are taking us a few times a day and merely returning to our initial point of focus is a significant first step. Another is to pay attention to the words we use when describing what we're experiencing; words are our mantras 'mind tools', shaping our experiences. 

Perhaps the best way to start bringing meditation into our lives is to acknowledge that we can always begin again. Every moment is another opportunity to start over, to try again.

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