The shrine for our mitra ceremony
So, the blog has been neglected slightly of late! Ooops!
A lot has happened over the last month or so .. where to start?!
Mitrification
On 23rd December myself, Sean, Con and Peter became Mitras at Colchester Buddhist Centre in a lovely ceremony – a photograph taken by Sean of the shrine shows our offerings of flowers (to signify impermenence), candles (to signify the ‘light’ of enlightenment and wisdom) and incense (to signify how the teachings of Buddhism affect the whole of our life, just as the smell of incense spreads through the air).
Retreat and birthday!
After a lovely, relaxing Christmas with my partner’s family, I set off on a scenic tour of Britain! First stop, Taraloka retreat centre in Wales, where my friend Ellie was on retreat over Christmas. After a rather skatey drive up the bendy windy roads of Bettisfield and the well known ice rink that is the farm track up to Taraloka, I arrived in good time and was greeted with a well received cup of tea!
Ruth and Ellie, Dhanakosa
Ellie and I then departed for stage 2 of the epic journey, up to her flat in Falkirk! Quite a long journey later we somehow managed to skate up the ice-rink of a hill from the town hall car park to her flat (literally, at one point Ellie was moving backwards without actually moving!) …. notice a theme here?! where we were staying for the evening. After a scrummy dinner and much ooohing and aaahing at the awesomeness of under-floor heating (and maybe a screening of Finding Nemo!) we headed off to sleep before an exciting week ahead!
The Women’s Winter retreat has been happening at Dhanakosa retreat centre, situated near Balqhuidder, Central Scotland, for quite some years. Led by Parami with a great support team, we spent a week studying the Therigata – stories from the earliest women in Buddhism – and meditating, while having an awful lot of fun! It happened to be my birthday on New Years Eve, and I was treated to a ‘Clootie Dumpling’ .. apparently a Scottish delicacy (google for recipies!) along with learning Ceidleigh dances, morris dancing with spoons, poetry recitals, singing, guitar playing, story telling – even a ghost story! – and ending the year with a fantastic meditation and puja. If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have never thought I would be bringing in the new year chanting the Padmasambhava mantra outside in sub-zero weather, in the middle of Scotland, watching the things we wanted to let go of or transform wash away in water or burn in flames under a cloudless, star filled sky!
It really was such a fantastic retreat, I highly recommend it to anybody who is interested. During the last ritual before the retreat ended, I made quite an important decision …. which people who weren’t on the retreat had to wait a few weeks to hear about while I sounded it out to myself and made absolutely sure it was the right decision ……
Asking for ordination!
For quite some time I had known that Buddhism was ‘for me’ – in fact, probably since I was about 16 I considered myself to be ‘Buddhist’ in some shape or form. It was really interesting re-discovering my blogs from 2001-2003 where I talked a lot about my interest in Buddhism, and about discovering meditation. When I looked back even further, to 1999/2000, I found lots of references to Buddhism in my diaries from when I was in Nepal during my gap year. I think, really, when I came away from the Young Women’s Retreat last year, I knew that my ‘path’ was Buddhism and I had found my context in which to practice, but didn’t really know enough about myself, the movement, or the processes to know what I was committing to.
At Dhanakosa I realised that I did see my path quite clearly aligned with Buddhism, and that at ‘some point in the future’ I would ‘probably’ ask for ordination ….. when I reflected on that statement it seemed to be full of self-doubt, lacking in confidence and enthusiasm, and just plain vague. During the ritual, we had two candles about 2ft apart, symbolising the flames of transformation, and what I like to call the ‘vajra runway’ leading up to the shrine, two lines of vajras about 2ft apart, symbolising determination. We approached the shrine, and made known what we were going to take away from the retreat and carry forward into the next year – and it just came to me that I needed to transform, I needed to be determined, and I needed to have the courage to break through my self doubt, find my confidence, and be quite clear about my intentions!
Back in the real world, the self doubt, confidence and vagueness started to creep back in, and two weeks later I still hadn’t sent off my letter or spoken to anyone about asking for ordination … after all, I’d only just become a mitra, I was only 29, I had only been part of a sangha for a year, it was such a huge commitment, I’d not even started mitra study yet, I didn’t really know many order members very well, ohhhhhh all the doubts and questionning and everything started to come out .. like little maras stomping around in my mind! By this point I had tried to write ‘the letter’ and it had already been through about 10 iterations – each one being too long, too short, too detailed, not detailed enough ….. and then I kept hearing this scottish sounding voice in the back of my head saying ‘for goodness sake woman, just send the letter!’ .. so I did!
Physio starts again 
Unfortunately with the good comes the not so good, and after the excitement of having asked for ordination came the commencement of ‘shoulder class’ at Physiotherapy. I’ve had endless problems with my Hypermobility (also known as Ehlers-Danlos Type III) for the last year or so, including 4 weeks off sick with extreme fatigue. One aspect of the problems I have is that when I sleep or lean on my arm or shoulders, my upper arm ‘subluxes’ (partly comes out of the socket) painlessly, but in doing so, stretches the nerve. This results in me waking up every 2-3 hours with a totally numb arm from shoulder to finger which has happened most of my adult life, but I didn’t realise a) that it was abnormal and b) that anything could be done about it. My consultant suggested that physio may help to strengthen the shoulders and hopefully reduce this happening (and hence result in a better nights sleep!).
Given the fact that in 2006 I qualified as a physio (but never worked as one except for in private practice for a year) I do struggle with being told I need to see a physio. Surely I should know what to do myself and be able to do it! But I guess sometimes you need someone else to tell you what to do!
So, I duly started shoulder class on the recommendation of the physiotherapist, and it was quite an awakening. I knew that I had lost an awful lot of my exercise tolerance and stamina, but I was truly shocked and really quite upset by the true extent of the changes. A year or two ago, I was teaching the exercises I was doing – and doing them easily with weights and resistance in the gym for a couple of hours – but now, after half an hour my muscles were shaking like jelly, I felt like I had run a marathon and then done an hours worth of press-ups, and I really didn’t like that. To say I was feeling low was an understatement – I was overwhelmed with what I can only call grief for the ‘former me’. Interesting when meditating on this .. what ‘me’?! It’s that idea of a fixed self again!
Trying desperately not to dwell too much on the past and how I ‘used to be’, I’ve been looking more into what I have now – although I wear splints on both hands, sit on a funny chair, type with a funny keyboard and use a funny mouse, and have an amazing uppy-downy-electricy-whizzy-desk .. I am probably the happiest and most content that I have ever been in my adult life. Although it’s really tough financially running my own business and having to make ends meet, I feel free to make my own choices, to decide what is right for me, to live to my own ethical standards and to accept that I need to listen to my body and my heart, rest when I need to, be silly when I want to, dance around the kitchen if I can .. a year ago I was such a different person.
Young women’s retreat 2011
Young Women's Retreat 2011
All this interest and involvement with Buddhism started just over a year ago with an invitation to the Young Women’s Retreat on Facebook – which had a hugely transformative effect on my life and for which I am really grateful to Singhamati and the team who are the driving force behind the Young Buddhist Movement – without them, I probably wouldn’t have found my way back to Buddhism for quite some time.
Coming back to the same retreat a year later felt very strange – it was on a totally different theme (‘The True Individual’) – and I was quite curious to see how I found it. The other difference was that I was planning to stay on for a couple of days to help the Taraloka community with managing their website. The retreat was brilliant and it was lovely to meet friends I already knew and those I had not yet met. I think I was expecting the same kind of transformative response but this year was a lot more subtle. The theme of the true individual keeps popping up all over the place, and is something which I’m finding really interesting to consider on a deeper level.
The interesting thing I have found is just reflecting on the huge transformations that have happened over the last year. So many positive things have happened, circumstances have aligned to direct me towards various life decisions which have ultimately led to where I am now – and I am very grateful to everyone for the gentle nudges or delicate shoves along the way! I am sure this year will be just as exciting and transformative (and hopefully see a slightly more active blog too!).
