A renga from Harnham Buddhist Monastery yesterday; the genius loci schema adapted to incorporate the Ten Perfections (paramis – positive qualities to cultivate as part of the Buddhist path – generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, kindness, equanimity). Ajahn Sucitto calls them ‘ways to cross life’s floods’:
The parami take spiritual practice into areas of our lives where we get confused, are subject to social pressure and are often strongly influenced by stress or stress-forming assumptions. Providing alternative ways to orient the mind in the stream of daily events, the ‘perfections’ can derail obstructive inner activities and leave the mind clear . Cultivating parami means you get to steer your life out of the floods.
Tomorrow night we’ll gather for our ritual of Forgiveness and Aspiration – the best way I know to begin a new year. The New Moon, traditionally a good time for setting fresh intentions, falls on 31st so this year our usually rather arbitrary ‘new’ beginning should have added resonance. May you have a peaceful and clear crossing of the threshold at the dark of the moon.
Getting Used To Darkness
Brief blue scatterings
lighten the limbo
at the end of the year
*
cold gates clunking
mark the way in
*
the open water
receives sun, breeze
and a lone swan
*
getting used to darkness
I know you are there
*
how even the body relaxes
when you enter a house
full of good people
*
Emma watched the pull
to text back many times
*
fear’s sour taste –
not having
not being enough
*
we sit with the impossibility
of nothing
*
these walls built from stone
out of the fields
they now enclose
*
two gardeners
on their hands and knees
*
the bleached tree guards
stake out a promise
of soft glade and birdsong
*
crossed fingers behind your back
won’t do it
*
spines on cacti
fine and scarlet
beneath dim light
*
grant me a spider’s skill
her slow spun wheel
*
he listened
with complete attention
to the difficult guest
*
geese graze tight-in
amongst the Cheviot ewes
*
dark clouds
arced glow
rippling at the shore
*
a rumour of snowdrops
instead of first snow
*
the young oak
have yet to learn
to shed their leaf
*
two hundred kilos of salt
awaiting the weather.
A genius loci/parami renga
at Harnham Buddhist Monastery
on 29th December, 2013.
Participants:
Ajahn Abhinando
John Bower
Chandra Candiani
Linda France
Geoff Jackson
Linda Kent
Eileen Ridley
Tim Rubidge
Christine Taylor
That’s a bonnie thing, that renga.
I’m sitting on a swing seat with a humming bird 10 feet away
I wish you were here getting brown.
x
Studio Alec Finlay
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