broadcast dec 2005 jan 2006--UK Impossible

'impossible'

"Meditative, and predominantly a writer, everything for him begins by being 'impossible'... "

on the underground i pass through a station called 'temple' and suddenly there is a wonderful moment of cognitive dissonance. i see some tibetan monks in a poster for a mobile phone company and it just looks like a picture of tibetan monks (i dont 'read' it in any way), not some brief, sparkling manifestation of the West's endlessly churning image-repertoire. a truck drives past with 'diamond cutter' on the side and its like the emptiness teachings are as ubiquitous as, say, plumbing.

my eyes are so tired from being able to read all the signs. and all the signs are so mundane, so exhaustedly clever or charming or sincere or brash. i'm missing the walk from tushita to the stupas...

why is it possible to sit on the beach for hours listening to the unending sound of the waves, engrossed and energised, yet two minutes on the london underground is enough to make you want to vomit? because the rhythm of the assault on the underground is relentlessly monotonous - every poster is precisely 32cms by 19cms (or whatever) and each one the exact same distance apart. as brian eno once put it in relation to the same problem with computers: "there's no 'africa' in computers".

"what the modern movie lacks is beauty: the beauty of the wind moving through the trees." (do you want to try and put an approximate date on that quote? i'll tell you at the end..)

attended a weekend of teachings by sogyal rimpoche a few weeks ago. as he passed by me on the way to the teaching seat he asked me where i was from and i immediately replied 'liverpool and dharamsala', which got smiles from the audience.

he's preparing his entire worldwide community for a three year retreat beginning this july - most will do it more 'in spirit' than in the traditional isolated way, remaining at home and simplifying their life as well as they can. but its interesting to see it happening. another confirmation from the world around me that what we do over the next few years is very important: that a window of opportunity, an energy pattern for the entire planet, is going to be in place for a while and we must use it. you have to do what your conscience is telling you to do, not what your hopes and fears are telling you to do. you have to be ruthless - ie totally clear and gentle - beyond all hope and fear.

you dont need to stress, you just need to very gently decide not to waste any more time. you dont necessarilly have to 'get things done' - a lot of the work actually consists of dreaming. you may look lost, confused, vague, lazy - that's ok. so long as you are honest and gentle and totally ruthless.

have been back in england for a month now and i'm glad to say that wearing robes here hasnt been difficult (though my mum wouldnt let me go out the house in kirkby (liverpool), fearing for what the hooligans would do to me). london especially feels totally natural, probably because of it being such a cosmopolitan city.

strangers talk to me. there are six billion of them. they come and go, beyond biography, so clean. so fast, so gentle. i walk on the heath, or around the tate, sometimes with no sense of where i am. "like the bird in Kafka (she says) searching for its cage, not in order to imprison itself but to feel its caginess along with its freedom..."

gertrude stein: "i write for myself and strangers."

i practice for myself and strangers.

i've seen most of my friends and family, although i feel like i hardly spoke to anyone (even writing this has been unusually difficult). but its enough just to see them and to let the micro-perceptions flood through. i knew i had to come back 'home' at some point, and having done it i can feel inside that it's done, even if i cant say what it is that's been done. so much happens at a subterraenian level nowadays. sometimes i feel like i'm sleepwalking while all the time feeling totally attuned to something hidden and approaching. and i've learnt to be ruthless enough to stay in that space of not-knowing without worrying. i could almost say that i'm resigned to not having my friends around me for long periods of time - that i'm prepared (and preparing) to meet them again in 200 years time, not next month. i imagine a future where friends dont exist, just the plenitude of love and awareness, sufficiency and creativity. like in the sufi dance: "i love you when you arrive, i love you when you leave".

off to canada tomorrow (feb 3) and then new york and maybe further afield - to meet geshe michael at long last and to just enjoy the feeling of the ground moving beneath my feet. after that i really dont know - i cant see where i'm going to be three months down the line anymore - all i know is my intuition is saying to try and be 'in place' by the end of the year, somewhere i can settle and study and slow down deeply and begin to find my own voice and rhythm in that deep, slowed down space. i'll be happy to teach a la tushita 2005 within that scenario, but right now i dont know how its going to evolve. an obvious solution would be to go back to asia - thailand or india or maybe nepal - find a dharma centre where i can teach a little and go deeper into the meditation spaces, or (like in thailand) just disappear into my kuti and leave the teaching side alone for a while. but i'm sure there are other options too, waiting to announce themselves as my distracted head tumbles an extra 4 or 5 degrees left or right. i just have to stay loose and focussed and keep taking the interesting options, keep imagining the sweeter scenarios - optimism and imagination as a discipline.

talking of which (ie the interesting options, the sweeter scenarios), its great to have 'artforum' back on the floor of my room, read and re-read and semi-destroyed. every issue is a fantastic journey into the sweeter options of enlightened subjectivity: rirkrit tiravanija, a thai artist making wooden simulacra of gallery spaces in which he has temporarilly set up home (in one of them a voice-recording of sci-fi writer bruce sterling says "imagine living in an art gallery. no don't even imagine it. its unimaginable.")... a new art school in LA teaching free classes in a 'disappearing' classroom on top of a mountain... paul chan, a korean artist projecting onto the floor of a darkened room black sillouettes of objects tumbling through space (people, bicycles, even a train)... someone designing a town for ghosts to live in, and an imaginary island off bermuda with its own imagined bird (she's even created sound recordings of the bird's song)... maybe i should find a studio, not a kuti - become the first yogi to live on nettle soup and artforum. a cave in india "sponsored by sony, artforum and liverpool fc"... of course, i wouldnt last five minutes!

but maybe five minutes would be long enough.

till next time,

shenyen

ps the quote is from around 1920