broadcast 06.06.04--the object that isnt there

afterwords

We say 'tree'

for the object that isn't there.

We say 'I love you',

acknowledging the failure

of whatever there was

to speak for itself.

We say 'God did it';

we mistrust everything.

You read these lines,

you think of something profound,

you pay too much for the ticket

and miss the plane.

- Dan Gerber

a bewildered-looking, cross eyed young boy, led by the hand by his mother, smiles with a mix of confusion and joy as an old man greets him on the street.

passing two girls talking on the street i hear a fragment of their conversation - "yes, my ex-boyfriend is thinking of doing that too..." suddenly it hits me how sad and inadequate the term 'ex-boyfriend', 'ex-girlfriend' is, with its dismissive, blank prefix. i wonder if our language might evolve a beautiful word for someone who has been in our lives in some way that has affected us forever and who still resonates deeply and sweetly in our minds.

one of the beggar women i see every day puts her palms together in greeting - just the stumps, with no fingers. big smile on her face.

i love the names of israeli women. a few nights ago, after the late film, sharing a taxi home with a woman called 'yel'.

the soft logic lineage begins to unfold... i told the manager of the monastery where i am staying that i planned to move out for three weeks to watch the european championships in a hotel room with a tv. his reply? - "no, this isnt necessary. we put cable in your room. we have tv in monastery nobody is using, satellite connection ok. just pay monthly rental fee. no problem." the electricity man is coming in a couple of days...

you could walk the length of mcleod ganj - about 1500 metres - and take a photo every five metres, and every one would be complete in itself, would be 'lookable at'. the same thing in london would inevitably have stretches of blankness - 100 metres of desolate subway passage or office block facade etc. and actually walking through these streets makes the contrast stronger: each little space is the centre of a story, a 'drama' in the traditional sense of the word, somebody's life being lived out. the streets here are just as 'busy' as london, but in a totally organic way - unlike the stretches of 'busyness' in the big cities back home, where people are sometimes just passing through 'dead space' between, say, 'home' and 'work', every metre is lived and filled and settled and dramatised. i never tire of walking these streets.

the debating class is so beautiful. yesterday, walking into class, it actually felt like a holy thing. when i think about what we are doing in this class - learning to think clearly about reality, and the objects and people and phenomena within it (which, being the focus of the torrent of all our likes and dislikes, are the source of all the suffering we create for ourselves) - i feel so thankful to be doing this. what amazes me is how much we believe we already understand reality. as my faith in the teachings increases, and my appreciation of the logic and architecture of its worldview becomes wider and sweeter, i can feel it actually pulling away from me, emphasizing the gulf between what i think i know and reality itself. as if it trusts that i am strong enough in my faith to have a glimpse of just how deluded i am in reality, without thereby becoming dismayed or discouraged. i struggle to find an image for this, of the feeling of everything beautiful and true presenting itself to me by moving away from me. in the logic class we are studying the second (second lowest) of the four schools of buddhist philosophy, each one deeper and more accurate (more comprehensive) than the previous one. in the highest school, objects become incredibly gentle and tenuous - more like évents than objects - still real, but incredibly tenuous. i've been studying the biography of je tsongkapa, the 16th century tibetan saint, who spent fourteen years studying to understand completely the highest school's view of how objects, people and phenomena exist - he studied extensively, conducted purification practices including three million prostrations, had face to face teachings from an emanation of the buddha of manjushri (you dont get that at a british university!), did extensive retreats... did all these things for fourteen years, before he finally understood. and i sometimes delude myself into thinking i've got it just through a couple of years of vaguely focussed buddhist practice within the ambience of a casually structured life! i must be crazy. but as i watch my understanding of even these simple, initial rudimentaries of debate practice and buddhist logic float in and out of focus, with days of confusion mingling with days of clarity, i appreciate more and more where it is going. and if i can feel this happy just standing outside the outer courrtyard walls mumbling my limited comprehensions, i cant help wondering how blissful it will be to be sitting in the central palace, understanding reality completely.

"a little music, played every now and then, sounds so full, so alive" (- from a friend's email). i remember the silent cassettes i made during the hulme years in the 1980s: C90 cassettes with just three or four songs on, separated by 20 minutes of silence. i'd put one on and forget it was on as i wandered around the flat, then suddenly be 'visited' by some beautiful song... i havent listened to music much over the last five years: mainly because when i came back from japan i came back with nothing, and havent settled in england long enough to have bought into a 'music collection' mindset, but also for other reasons too, 'difficult joys' that i would probably struggle to express properly right now. but last year, after i ended my two month stint as a monk and left the silence of the jungle, my friend john lent me a cd player to listen to on the way to bangkok, and some cds from south america, and it was the most beautiful thing to be listening to music again, and i realised it was coming back into my life. a few days ago i was thinking about my mp3cd player: there's just over 300 hours of recorded material on the discs i have, and 98% of it is buddhist teaching - just a half dozen hours of music. but once a week the teachings come out of the player and leonard cohen or fernando alvarez go in, amazing me with their warmth and sadness. the vietnamese monk, thich nhat hanh, now living and teaching in france, says how important it is for westerners to bring as much of their western culture as they can into the ambit of their emerging love for the buddhist teachings.

i guess the manager of my monastery thinks this way too... five days to go. fantastic.

till next time...

shenyen