Im taking a holiday, I’m going on retreat. I will see you in ten days or so. Enjoy

I’ve been on the run - or more to the point freedomforall.net has been movong home for the second time in as many weeks. The first move was simple, the second less so, and is still ongoing. If things don’t work as you expect, I am sorry. It will all come good in the end.

Having been attacked by the British Medical Establishment in their attempt to get freedomforall.net “off the air”, I was somewhat bolstered by the support of my webhost. He linked to my site, even after I had been forced to move overseas for my hosting. He said his dad worked in medicine all his life and said doctors were a “totally closed shop” and that “whether there has been negligence or not” the doctors in my case seemed to be acting to protect themselves first and foremost.

I have done much of the work now of moving to a new host and away from Blogger as my publishing engine - something I had intended for a while in any case but which I brought forward as that was the next obvious point of attack for the self-serving hypocrits of medicine. When they took the Hyppocratic oath these people should have first said “I reserve the right to ignore everything I am about to say if it becomes neccessary to put my own selfish interests first - or those of a colleague”.

There are a few tasks left to sort out. Some old posts have yet to be moved, I need to redirect all my old archive pages to the new ones by hand coding the HTML and I need to update keywords on the new system. I also intend to hand import all the comments currently residing on the Haloscan system from the old site.

Yet first I am going to take a rest. I will do some sittiing meditation and take the advice of Shantideva in remaining like a log, come what may in the guise of impulses or desires to “get this right”. My own perfectionism - a common result of surviving an abusive childhood - is just another way of running. I need to let go.

From a speech by Rajan Madhok to the Royal College of Physicians, delivered September 2003, titled “Doctors in the new millennium: Hippocrates or Hypocrites?”:

“So, has modern medicine once hailed as the greatest benefit to mankind become a
dangerous activity? Have doctors turned bad? Become uncaring, only interested in
money, professionals? Closed ranks and started covering for each other? Forgotten
their vocation, become hypocrites pretending to be true to the Hippocratic Oath?

There is no denying that there are grains of truth in all these statements. Some
doctors have continued to use outmoded practices, have not been self-critical and
made repeated mistakes. Some have been arrogant and not respected patients’
wishes or indeed the law. Some have done things for money. There have been
cover-ups too.”

Having talked of beautiful people in my last post I could talk of ugly people. Ugly people do ugly things. And they are not intrinsically, inherently “ugly” - it is all in their behaviour. It is an adaptive learned behaviour or set of behaviours, which has passed it’s sell by date, yet remains in use.

This ugliness it has little to do with physical attractiveness, actually nothing at all. They often hide their ugliness behind an acceptable facade. You can’t always tell the ugly people from the outside or straight away. If you don’t get what this post means, stop looking in the mirror and learn to meditatate.

All you have to do is sit straight backed but comfortably on the floor or in any kind of chair, stool, or whatever. Breathe, noticing your breath, and if you start telling yourself a story or reviewing the day or making a shopping list or planning your wedding, gently let the thoughts go and start paying a bit more attention to your breath again. Do it daily for only five minutes and it will change you forever.

This basic “sitting - calming” mediitation teaches you how to allow “identification with thoughts” to drop slowly away. Don’t worry if you don’t get what that means, it is ok just to enjoy the benefits of this stuff. Calming the mind reveals the sea of impulses which bubble up as “Me”. This calms - eventually achieving peace - and then the mind naturally becomes more flexible and stronger and can be applied to conscious “awareness and thinking” meditation to comprehend or see the truth of things.

First one examines the tuth of one’s own body, life, existence, history and sense of self. “Know thyself” said Christ. Then the meditator is achieving a dual benefit of peace and understanding. With discipline and effort, patience and generosity comes the natural development of a wise mind which can then be compassionately applied to all one encounters.

And when one compassionately applies oneself to that which one encounters, the result is naturally and by definition, never ugly.

A friend who worries continuously is faced with some real challenges in her life. She makes things worse with incessant worry. Her mind, starved of peace, leads her to the wrong actions time after time. The right actions she can not see, despite them offering themselves boldly to her. Her worry stands in the way. This week she came to me for advice, the day after I found this old poem and I was able to say, “work out what you can do and take right action and work out what you can’t do and learn to accept”.

Whats Worrying Me?

If worry could solve things,
That would be real fine,
I’d worry like a madman,
Nearly all the time,
I’d worry ’bout my money,
And my health and God,
And if we must experiment,
On cats and dogs,
I’d worry ’bout the Buddha,
If he cries at me,
And worry ’bout my breakfast,
And me afternoon tea,
But most of all I’d worry,
‘Bout what’s worrying me.

Politics is not often a subject of Buddhist teachings, however, this does not mean that Buddhist teachings have nothing to say about the subject. Buddhist teachings about peace, compassion, non-violence and the nature of person-hood are all relevant to a our daily world. War and politics intermingle seamlessly as the interface between powerful men. The law as the tool of poltics, and it’s enforcers from judges to prison warders, are the interface between the powerful, the governors, and the governed. The basic dynamic has remained unchanged for milennia.

From parents and schools and churches and company law and accounting and one thousand other namesless enshrined systems, we learn who we are and how we are to be. Politics forms a very significant portion of ego, and to this extent, it is a bad thing. Freud with his fictitious substructures of personality and sytemetised nonsense would have disagreed. The super-ego, he would have argued is what lifts us from barbarity. He was wrong - this is what drives many to break the norms.

Buddhism teaches us to undo ego and hence politics as real forces that dictate our lives. It opens us to be real feeling human beings. Buddhist wouldn’t make great soldiers. To pick up the gun is abhorrent. It is contradictory to the fundamental nature of man. Man is not a “barbaric” creature it is the cage of other peoples ideas that causes the barbaric acts of those driven to the edge. They are the roadkill of power politics and economics that by definition empowers the strong by tappping the poor.

Buddhism teaches that it would be better to spend our energy on solving problems than waging war. It teaches us that peace is a real and virtuous and available place, personally and politically. It teaches that compassion grows from your own awareness and that you can grow your awareness. And that compassion leads to outer and inner peace. As a practical philosophy Buddhism says a lot about the nature of our society and its ways, even though aimed principally at self transformation.

Buddhism has always been a personal and political issue for me. I have never separated the two ends. This site has included many political stories and themes and they are interwoven with the personal ones and with Buddhist Dhamma (”teachings”). I was therefore quite chuffed today to discover I am nominated for a “Blogissattva” Award It is of course an ego-thing to be quite chuffed - but never mind; “You can’t win em all”.

I have to walk. It’s very painful and difficult, but I have to do it. It never occured to me that aged 39 I wiould be something of a cripple. To learn lessons of impermanance of the human flesh at such an early age has been salutory. I will myself to recover. I investigate reasonable avenues. I work to learn what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong.

Now I have to walk. I am seeing an Osteopath and to maximise the benefit of the adjustments he makes walking seems to do the trick. It can take me hours to walk what I would have done in a third of the time previously and it hurts like buggery at times, literally, as the muscles in my ass recover from a lifetimes misuse around the injuries inflicted on me as an infant.

The Buddha used to walk a lot. I think it is what some human bodies need. Mine can cope with buses and tubes at times but driving is easiest and walking healthiest. I can’t walk to Fulham though so I am going to buy a car. That way visiting the osteopath won’t bugger up my back.

This story may well win another nomination at pointlessandboring.org, but thats not the point. I did have a merry laugh yesterday when I discovered that searching google for them brings up freedomforall.net above the ofenders themselves. hehehe

Poem from a Dharmic soul - words spring to my mind. They are usually simple and short. This one I wrote some years ago now. Sometimes it takes a while for the Dharma of the song to sink in and become the practitioners reality.

It’s the world out there,
Doing it to me.
Making me unhappy,
Not letting me be free.
The truth’s a little different,
Now I start to see.
The problem isn’t in the world,
It’s in my sense of me.

Some people, I’ve heard

Are mighty confused

They are looking for something

They never did lose

What’s the meaning of life?

They cry and they shout

Not looking within

But seeking without

Some say that it’s god

In Heaven on high

Some say that there is none

You just live and die

That no god is scripting

The things that you’re doing

That he is not clapping

And never pooh-poohing

The meaning of life

Is simple and clear

It’s the life that you lead

And the things you hold dear

It’s the things that you do

And the things that you say

The thoughts that you have

That give meaning each day

Comment

Look within to find the truth through the establishment of peace and clarity. Do not expect God to save you for you must save yourself with your own efforts. The deeds, words and thoughts you have are very important. Once you have done the work of knowing yourself and establishing your mind in clarity and peace they are the key to a happy life. A life based on truth and not the lies of your own egotistical persopective. In fact there is no “meaning” to life because meaning implies an external relationship to things. Things are just what they are, they are their own meaning, without need for interpretation.

“The law of codependent arising implies everything is connected; the web is karma or the laws of consequence, physics, Newton, Einstein, Freud, Rebirth, God and all that … “