A garden in summer
I wrote this piece as a conclusion to a book I’ve just completed about gardens and gardening. As you can see, it’s quite recent but the event described below happened over thirty years ago. Why is it important, at least to me? Well, firstly, I remember it, always a good criterion for inclusion. And, secondly, there are turning points in everybody’s life and this was one of them.
23 May 2006
Stuck indoors, I wondered, ‘Why does anybody garden? The rain pinked against the windowpane in response and outdoors sat sodden. ‘What is this urge to beautify?’ I further inquired of the snivelling garden, and ‘What’s this horticultural nurturing all about?’ And how, I further ruminated as the rain steadily swelled, does contact with the earth and the elements nourish us and the plants that live with us? Rather a lot to ask of a wet morning.
At one level, the answer came clear enough – we’re part of nature, our bodies are made of the same stuff, and it’s natural to seek the company of plants and care for them - even in the rain. But take it one step further – beyond the basic need for food – and there might just be a chance of creating a mini paradise in one’s own backyard. A redemption of what has been spoilt in this world. Could that be what it’s about? A longed-for gift, both to bestow and receive?
I was reminded of this when driving down a road in Bayswater where I lived years ago, renting a flat in an early Victorian house. Its stubby front garden had long gone under concrete and a dubious clutter of dustbins. You see them everywhere in cities – multi-occupancy houses with not a scrap of grass in sight, possibly an ancient privet hedge shedding dust, but nothing to welcome and gladden a city heart.
This house in Bayswater didn’t even sustain that old codger, the privet hedge. But we did have a landlord and he wasn’t best pleased with me.
He had reason not to be. Friends living in the flat above had left without paying the rent - but I wasn’t giving away their current whereabouts. So we had a chilly stalemate, John Best and I, my landlord quite rightly suspecting that I knew more than I would tell.
How best to restore harmony? I couldn’t see which way the signpost pointed until one morning, while sorting letters in our common hall, the top-floor tenant mentioned that our landlord liked trees. Over the next few days this seed germinated and I wrote to Mr Best suggesting that we plant a tree at the front.
With only a farewell swipe at unsatisfactory tenants who didn’t pay rent, he embraced the idea. So did my fellow house occupants. And so did the neighbours. In the shake of a leaf a VW van shot off to the local garden centre to buy a winter-flowering cherry, subscriptions for its cost came in from several quarters, and in no time at all strong men were smashing concrete. All anyone wanted me to do was greet my perspiring neighbours and discuss the finer points of whether this or that branch should point south or 10 degrees to the west.
In seeking to appease my landlord I’d unwittingly careened into a truth. Everybody wanted a tree but nobody realised that they did, if you see what I mean. Then, with the advent of the idea of Tree, everybody needed one. A tree – it was agreed by all - would bring life and grace to the house and be a quicksilver blow against concrete. In the event, this tree was more unifying than anything else I could have conjured up. A tree brought peace to our fractious house.
It’s still there, thirty years on, a bit lumpy from clumsy pruning … but there.
Of course, even then the concrete surrounded the cherry tree, the traffic still clumbered past, but the tree grew and thrived. Its white blossoms could be seen through the winter murk as one turned the corner into the road, and in the summer its leaves dappled the sun. Call me sentimental but, as the tree prospered, so did we.
Except perhaps for John Best. At length the Inland Revenue caught up with him and he had to sell the house. One way and another, we each bought a share and, one way and another, that’s how I now come to be living with my Hammersmith garden in rain or shine. In this, my birthday week, as I reflect on life and mortality, a garden is a promise fulfilled.
Postscript: as a young student in the School I gave the crux of this story as an example in my group. It was the unity that was important and the practical action that brought it into effect. Next term I was put on the horticultural team at Waterperry and stayed there for twelve years.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
A story for summer
The Gospel According to Jaiswal
Jaiswal said, “You may be right and I may be wrong, but if we disagree, we are both wrong”. Then he told us he read that on a poster on a church in Golders Green.
Someone asked him about meditation and he said, “the Indians have had mantra for quite a long time. Look at their society and their level. Mantra will not do it for you alone. You need to find the balance”.
Jaiswal announced that “There is no divine revelation that man cannot evolve for himself. There is no divinity ‘up there’, but there is a divinity ‘here’ (pointing to his chest) and ‘here’ (pointing to various members of the audience).
He said that the Shankaracharya was always gentle and never criticized his questioner. He said that sometimes his answers left the groups in London without any questions, so people had to manufacture questions in order to have something to talk about.
He said that the Shankaracharya came from a very orthodox tradition, but that he was beyond it, and so he spoke for himself. He said that HH said, “There is no Shankaracharya. There is no tradition.” Mr Jaiswal said that only His Holiness could have said such a thing.
He said that everyone had to be free, and that to be free meant to be independent. To be independent is to become the Shankaracharya, to become the teaching.
He said that in the West we believe not in reason, but in faith. Reason is supposed to be the handmaiden of faith, but in fact faith is the daughter of reason. When you have understood properly, you will have no doubt and will have faith.
He said that in the tradition there is a statement which says, "Crack the Absolute", analyse the Absolute.
He said that there is a competition “between you and the Shankaracharya. Between you and Mr Jaiswal. Between you and Mr MacLaren. Between you and you.”
He told us that we couldn’t be the Absolute, but that we could all march together into the Absolute. What that means I have no idea, but I’d like to find out.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Topics for conversations ...
Rather than 'treating' everyone to further personal utterances, I thought it might be more interesting to propose some topics for comment.
These are all open questions and I don't think there's a single answer to any of them. It's probably more important that people think about these issues and explore them together, than that we arrive at a solution.
What I would suggest is that if any one of them catches your eye, click on "comments" below that post and submit your views. You can remain anonymous if you wish.
If you're a member you can add your own new topic. If you'd like to be a member, email me for an invite.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Food for thought
I cannot help breaking off from philosophical musings to wonder whether a world-class defence should really allow a throw-in to bounce in the penalty box.
Read moreTuesday, June 20, 2006
Religion and Democracy
The Guardian journalist Madeleine Bunting has been for a while one of the few left-leaning commentators who acknowledges the importance of religion. Yesterday she announced that she will now be leaving to become the director of the Demos think tank, "to try to shape debates, to move upstream in the process of how ideas bring about change".
While I'm sorry to learn that Ms Bunting (a recent discovery for me) will no longer be pitching into Richard Dawkins etc, it will be interesting to see what happens at Demos. I remember when it was formed by a guy called Geoff Mulgan about 20 years ago, and announced with much razzmatazz. Then I read one of its papers and remember being really quite unimpressed. Maybe it's time to take another look.
One of Madeleine Bunting's themes - probably her central theme - is that "democracy may not generate the values on which its vitality depends"; and that religion is one of the "ethical resources" that we have available to us. This point was illustrated very well by the (atheist) Roy Hattersley last year in the same paper, when he observed that following the Tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean there were very rapidly a large number of religious organizations on the ground dispensing essential medical care, building shelters and otherwise providing people with succour in time of need. Where, Hattersley asked, were the secular equivalents? If religion is really unnecessary in our post-Enlightenment times, why does it seem to inspire people in a way that secular institutions and ideals don't?
In yesterday's piece, Faith can make a vital contribution to both democracy and scientific ethics, Bunting reports that the German leftist philosopher Jurgen Habermas recently had a dialogue with Pope Benedict XVI, concluding that 'The liberal state should "treat with care all cultural sources on which the normative consciousness and solidarity of citizens draws"'. Fans of HH will, I am sure, not miss the significance of that phrase "cultural sources". It does seem as if the liberal secular left is finally coming round to the view that something has been left out of the equation.
Speaking for myself, I don't subscribe to any particular religion, but I would defend the right of anyone to do so. I don't find religion is necessary for myself, the thought of a paternal, overseeing God never enters my mind, although I would describe my interests as almost entirely spiritual. Son of Moses might, I imagine, object to my position as "arid", but frankly that is just one point of view. In my view, the "Religion of the Self" spoken of by His Holiness as a possibility for the future could be a far broader Church, and a more generous philosophy, than has so far been dreamt of.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Churchill
I'm in Germany right now, with German national flags flying from every window. Our host Werner says this is the first time since the war that it's been possible to be a patriotic German. It's a massive party. Not a hint of violence anywhere.
Not entirely unconnected, a quotation I discovered this morning from W Churchill ... can't you just hear him saying it?
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and toRead more
make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we
are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the
great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I
avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not
be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand
high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the
sun.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
The Real Inquiry
At the language lecture a couple of years back, Mr Jaiswal delivered the following speech:
"There are three kinds of people on this path. There are those who obey; there are those who inquire; and there are those who know. In the School of Economic Science, we have raised obedience to a formidable height".
What I took from this, when I had stopped laughing, is that the next step for the School is to inquire. We don't know: we only have the words of knowledge. So, we have to inquire in order to find out what they mean.
I would say the same to Son of Moses in respect of revelation, which, as I said before, is the lifeblood of philosophy. It may seem that we have the words of Jesus or Buddha, but it's not so. In Jesus' case, the Gospel writers are generally thought to be writing more than a generation after his death. They contradict each other. In Buddha's case, it seems to have been as much as two centuries before the basic texts were set down. Why did no-one record what they said at the time?
It seems to me that when you have the real meeting, the revelation, the most evident thing is that there is not much that can be said. Words will not suffice, they only lead away. It's only when the memory starts to fail that words are set down, to preserve something of the past.
The opportunity for the School is not that we become some repository of knowledge about the past, but that we become a place where the real meeting can happen - today, or tomorrow. Our revelation, our knowledge, our wisdom, is yet to come into being.
We need to inquire without pretentiousness, now.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Response from Son of Moses
This was originally posted as a comment here. I thought it was worth a posting all its own. This is quite a long post, so you need to click "read more" to see the full text. Love to hear what people think. Vayukesha.
I think that a lot of what you say in your post of June 13th is a sort of half truth, or, to be more polite, an expression of only one side of the truth. I say this because what you say seems to deny the place and the function of true revelation.
Philosophy, as usually understood and as to some extent I see you and Mr. J. using the word, is an after-the-event activity, an analysis of what has first to be revealed to the inner soul of a seer (either that of the philosopher him/herself- as probably in the case of Plato and Shankara - or that of some other recipient of authentic revelation).
A seer in this context means simply a human vehicle suitable for the purpose, sufficiently inwardly pure, that is, or otherwise fitted for reception of a cosmic vision, a vision that necessarily comes through but is otherwise sourced than the limited mental conditioning of the human being. The job of philosophy, therefore, is to seek to make sense of, to explain and to bring down to earth, a primal communication of the Holy Spirit.
Thus philosophy tends to make use of the analytical function of the mind, whereas the original divine vision comes through the intuitive function of human inwardness, which, rather than analytical, is whole, positive, balanced and affirmatory.
On the other hand, if we start from the human end of things, philosophy can be seen as the human search for authentic vision, and this too must eventually - as soon as possible, in fact - pass beyond the activity of the analytical mind.
Now, you may say that true philosophy is ultimately self-knowledge, needing no outside agency, and this may be so. Where then is the place of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit and the long tradition of the masters through which we gain knowledge of the path of self-realization?
This, to me, is a living question and I spend much of my study, which in my case consists of a large part of my life, pondering on and enquiring into just this area. I have noticed that Mr. J. always seems to leave out the divine world, the world of revelation, preferring, as you say, to speak of vision as the ‘product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity.’ This, to me, leaves out any higher agency (angels, messengers, divine beings, or Being and higher worlds). It seems to negate any concept of the reality of such things as heaven, supernatural agency and the potency of prayer. It suggests that there are only two realities in relation to spiritual evolution, namely human intuition and the universal Self, perhaps with the teacher standing as the link between. This has always seemed wrong to me. As you say ‘Where does that leave revelation? What about the idea of the Upanishads as "Shruti"? Is there no place for mystical union with the divine,of intuitions received from the eternal?’
There is a lot more I could say on this subject and how Mr. J.’s words often seem so arid to me, but, for the moment I will only add just a little to the above. Indeed, I would love to meet and thrash it out with you and perhaps others. This would probably be more interesting than the average group night.
The result of the ‘reductionism’ I complain of is that there is no proper acknowledgement of the power of poetry, narrative, myth, ecstatic revelation and the like. Short of self-realization, these, in fact, are the only contact we may have with valid truth. The human mind on its own cannot know truth, only its figuring in these other, more original forms, and, as I say, philosophy has the job of midwifery, of translating these otherworldly communications to the ordinary human mind. Whether self-realization can arise without such a connection with Samashti is a question to which I have not yet reached an answer.
Concerning the living power of the scriptural word, revelation may indeed vary in purity, strength and veracity according to the cultural conditioning of the recipient, but it will always be at a different level to ordinary human thinking. It is just this higher level of understanding that qualifies it for the title of ‘scripture’.
One way of proving the potency of such scripture is its efficacy, its fruits. Thus the simple words of Jesus have transformed the world over the last two thousand years in such a way that no other words can come near. Who can say that these are mere words, or, as you put it, a ‘fossil record’ or ‘sedimentary deposit’?
There is a further point to be made before dismissing or belittling scriptures in this way, and seeing them as mere time-bound records, albeit revolutionary statements in their day. I am not alone, I think, in believing the greatest scriptures to be revelations of a ‘divine plan’, consciously given for the evolution of the human race, and also that special incarnations such as Jesus Christ are agents who ‘come down’ from higher worlds to furnish the next step in human evolution, to guide us, or at least to mitigate what would otherwise be great destruction and suffering.
Their sayings are thus relevant for as long as their visitation is current, and I personally get the sense that Jesus together with his vision still have plenty of life left in them and will guide us well through the next millennium.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Another thing I learned
It's quite easy to get the mistaken impression that there is something called "The Teaching" that doesn't change. Or "The Truth". Not at all. What I learned from Mr Jaiswal is that teaching that is frozen in time and does not change is called religion, and the dogmatic part of religion at that.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is:
- without a single authoritative source
- a product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity
- evolving continuously
Where does that leave revelation? What about the idea of the Upanishads as "Shruti" (heard)? Is there no place for mystical union with the divine, of intuitions received from the eternal?
All of these things are the lifeblood of philosophy, but they are not transferrable in mere words. Therefore, the philosophy that we have in books is a sedimentary deposit, a fossil record of something that once happened. That something may or may not be exactly the same in every instance, but because it happens at a moment in time it will always be expressed differently. Indeed, it must be expressed differently; it must be expressed, if possible, more fully. A philosopher will scorn to use the words of another, because he knows those words are not there to be worshipped.
Mr Jaiswal spoke once of his first efforts to translate for His Holiness. After he had spoken a few sentences, Mr Jaiswal interrupted him to say that if he were to speak for such a long time, the translation would not be accurate. Shantananda laughed at him, saying, "That's not the way to translate! Don't listen to my words, listen to my meaning." Purists may bridle at this: what they want are the exact words, to get the thing just as it was. Like Jacques, the cynical philosopher of As You Like It, they want "honest set terms". I'm sorry, O fundamentalist, but your little text won't do it for you.
I need hardly add that there is a great (too great) regard for precise words in the School.
I remember meeting a labourer on a building site in the summer of 1991. He was the same age as me, and although his name was Patrick, he was known as "The Horse" for his huge size and strength. He was illiterate. He told me about when he started school, people thought he was an idiot because he couldn't answer any of the questions. But I thought he was most articulate: he said, "I couldn't take the words out of my mouth".
Maybe the teaching is no more than doing what can be done to help people take the words out of their mouths. The first thing is to encourage them to value the meaning they have within them.
So, here we go - another piece of teaching from Mr Jaiswal:
4. Philosophy is the product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity. Every living human being, regardless of education or background, has his or her unique contribution to make.
Including YOU ...
Monday, June 12, 2006
Last chance to see?
Someone asked about the date of the Language Lecture, quite possibly the last public appearance of the ailing Mr Jaiswal. It's Wednesday 28th June, in the church diagonally opposite Mandeville Place, 7.15.
Read moreSaturday, June 10, 2006
Taking responsibility
Another aspect of the tradition that Mr Jaiswal has highlighted is this:
3. The teacher takes responsibility for the student.
This might seem a bit paternalistic, but it is always intended as a temporary measure. In one of his lectures, someone asked Mr Jaiswal about doubt. He responded, "You don't have any doubt. People give you doubt. Doubt means - one question, two answers." He continued, "All questions are emanations of consciousness. But not all answers are emanations of consciousness. If someone has given you an answer from immature understanding, you will have a doubt."
The alternative view to this is, of course, that if the student has a doubt, it is his own fault. He has been given the teaching very plentifully, but he has not practiced enough, or meditated enough, or there is a blockage of ignorance somewhere, otherwise he would have got rid of the pesky doubt long ago. The teaching works. It's students who don't work. Dozy buggers.
This is a view much beloved in certain quarters, not least among masochistic students.
But in the tradition of philosophy, the aspiring student is a spark of divine consciousness, a being to be worshipped. Confucius once said something to the effect that everyone should be held in awe up to at least the age of 40, because until then it was impossible to say that they would not turn out to be extraordinary. This is the view of the real teacher. If the student has a problem, a doubt or an unresolved issue, that is the responsibility of the teacher in whom he has placed his trust.
I discovered for myself what this meant in practice when I had just started tutoring for the first time. I asked Mr Jaiswal about it and he said, "When you have been tutoring a little while, come and tell me what your students say. I will tell you what you need to get you through." And he did.
The teacher's job is to get people through, and then to let go. The relationship comes to an end when the teacher has nothing more to teach. The teacher gives the disciple rahasya (the teaching) and sankalpa (the power of decision). With sankalpa, the disciple no longer needs anyone to tell him what to do.
Friday, June 09, 2006
An additional note ...
The other side of what has just been said below is, of course, that the tutor must never see the student as ahankara.
This might seem obvious, but in fact there has always been a tradition of needling the student's weak points to force them to change. As His Holiness has never, to my knowledge, spoken in such a way to Mr MacLaren or Dr Roles, we must presume that this habit was already part of the School in 1960. I remember one long-standing Irish student of the School telling me how he had met a Prominent Member on the stairs at Waterperry. The aforementioned PM looked at the Irishman's toolbox and said unsmilingly, "Oh, I thought for a minute you had come to blow us all up." My Irish friend saw this as a deliberate attempt to force him to face up to his ahankara.
On another occasion I recall a branch leader reporting how he had driven past another car at an intersection without letting the car out, and that the thought had entered his head, "It doesn't matter, he's black". According to the branch leader, there was no way such a thought could have come from him, so it must have been the thought of the black driver, somehow transferring itself. The subtext here is that a prominent person in the School is naturally pure and conscious, while a student or, worse, someone of 'the world', lives in a fallen state. I would propose, following the example of Mr Jaiswal, that this is almost 180 degrees the wrong way.
Last week I sat and watched a tutor responding to several students in turn, each with a little barb of criticism. It was clear that the tutor believed it was his duty to do this. I didn't say anything, because confrontation has proved useless in the past, even though I was perfectly clear in my mind that this was disgraceful. The next day I spoke to one of the students in question and he told me without prompting that the tutor's remark had 'upset his normal equilibrium'. 24 hours later he had still not recovered. Cause and effect.
His Holiness did not criticise Mr MacLaren. Regardless of how many tutors have thought criticism of the student's ahankara was the way forward, it still does not make it right. Criticism is just the way of the world.
PS it may be thought that I spend quite a lot of time criticising people, but it's not so. The student is always right, in some sense. The tutor is not always right, because when he or she is being a tutor, the role is always contrasted with wisdom. We need to be clear about what represents good and bad practice for the tutor.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Point No. 2
I knew someone who once attended a lecture by Mr J and he was moved to say something that was greatly distressing him. He said, "It seems as if everything I do and say is taken over by ahankara. Even now, I can feel nothing but ahankara".
Mr Jaiswal answered, "The question was without ahankara". My friend was deeply moved.
I don't believe it was a generous response, because that might suggest he said it to cheer my friend up. What Mr Jaiswal said was just the truth, because confessing to the worst thing is what ahankara cannot do. In a way, it was a simple thing to say, but how many tutors would have answered like that? How many would instead have launched into an exploration of the tenacious nature of ahankara, ending with a homily on the virtues of discipline? How many could resist that temptation?
So the second lesson I would take from Mr Jaiswal is:
2. The teacher sees and acknowledges only the Self in the student.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
An introduction to His Holiness
A few years ago I came across the great Mr Jaiswal. It would not be too much to say that I owe him a tremendous debt.
The most valuable thing he did was to introduce me to a totally different approach than the one I had been used to. Up to this point I have been a bit wary of speaking about this openly, because I know he's upset plenty of people in the past, but I think I need to get over this. He gave me an introduction to the tradition of philosophy, and an introduction to His Holiness. I was going to say "a re-introduction", but really I had never been introduced before. I had to let go of a few treasured assumptions before I could meet His Holiness properly.
The first thing I noticed about Mr Jaiswal is that he often uses the first person. This is unlike some august figures in the School, who will say something like "the response to that is ..." suggesting that there words descend from some great peak of impersonal knowledge, when what they mean is, "in my opinion". Mr Jaiswal will say, "in my opinion", or more often, "in my personal opinion", when that is what he means. So the first lesson I take from Mr Jaiswal is:
1. Never be pretentious.
PS please read the comments on the recent posts (click on "1/2/3 comments" link) for some interesting conversations.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Tutors and Students
To some extent, the relationship between tutor and student within a group meeting is characterised by the idea that the tutor plays the role of buddhi and the student that of manas - "a good servant but a bad master".
The student may report success due to following an instruction, or failure due to not following the instruction, but to question the instruction itself, to point out that the instruction was not wise or consistent with reason, is almost impossible because the student is playing the role of the manas. Only the buddhi (played by the tutor) can adjudicate. Even if the tutor is wrong, it is better for the student to follow the instruction without question because he will ‘come to no harm’.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Wonderful, and again wonderful
Hard on the heels of the announcement of the apology (see below), another momentous occasion.
It is being announced to philosophy groups in the School this week that the dress code that has been in existence since the early 1970s will now be abandoned. Dress will now be an "internal discipline".
A small point perhaps, but like the apology symbolic of so much else. Just as the long dresses defined a certain kind of School, characterised by obedience, the freedom to dress as we see fit will allow a different kind of School to come into being. Obedience will become not the main feature but the springboard.
There may be some who will see this liberalisation as the beginning of the end, but this is a mistake. If exterior discipline does not lead to interior discipline, it was of little value anyway. It's up to the School members to validate the new policy.