Following the dharma in the 21st century

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!).

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

This evening at the Ipswich and Colchester Young Person’s Buddhist Group, we each presented two items of creativity which meant something to us – perhaps they inspired us, motiviated us to make a change, made us think more deeply or simply resonated with us.

It took me quite a long time to figure out what I was going to present, after all I am about as creative as a blank sheet of paper. Music has always been a part of my life and at difficult times I’ve always tended to turn to music, whether to find someone who feels the same as me, or to take out my feelings on something, escape from the world, or to relax.

I spent a couple of weeks collecting various pieces of music that meant something to me and actually ended up with half a dozen tracks. I really struggled to figure out how to present them, but then suddely with something of a surge of emotion, I realised what I needed to do.

In my late teens my dad left my mum unexpectedly – the first any of us knew about it was when I got home from school and found three letters, one to me, my sister and my mum. I won’t elaborate too much on the details but we were all distraught and I felt such a weight of responsibility to have to tell my sister and my mum what had happened when they got home from school and work respectively, such pain seeing and feeling their responses, that I can never forget. Unfortunatey this also coincided with my long term boyfriend of about 3 years deciding that when I went away on my gap year for 4 months, he couldn’t bear the separation and he left me too. And I left my mum, who I was very close to, and my younger sister, and went out to Nepal for 4 months.

Initially I felt an absolute torrent of emotions ranging from rage to anger, fear to loneliness, sorrow to guilt. Much of my feelings and emotions were very much self-centred, but at the time all I had that wasn’t rejecting me, which I could rely on, wasmyself. I wrote some pretty shameful letters to several members of my family who seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling me how childish I was being by not speaking to my dad, how I should grow up and move on, how it was for the best, and so forth. At the time, I was almost blinded by a veil of self-preservation and just didn’t want to see any other view than my own.

Some time later, I listened to a song that my dad used to play by Mike and the Mechanics, and it really made me consider the impermenance of all things, and the futility of the fear, hate, rage, anger and guilt that I was feeling when life is potentially so short, and the feelings were really down to my own attachment and my unwillingness to see the world from any other perspective than my own. At this point I started to consider why I was feeling so strongly, what WAS this emotion ….. and I started to look more deeply into Buddhism, impermenance, ego and the self.

In some ways, this started me on my journey, but it was only just the start. Going back over this tonight and creating this video/movie made me realise just how much emotion and feeling I have “boxed up” over the years and not dealt with, just how strongly I feel ashamed of the way I acted all those years ago, and a real sorrow at the hurt and pain that I caused in acting in such a selfish and unkind manner.

So, feeling quite stirred up and quite emotional tonight, but lots of things to work with.

Here is the video:

Young person’s group – creativity that means something to me from Ruth Cheesley on Vimeo.

Wow, so much has happened since the last time I posted a news update, I keep thinking “what should I write?”  …. should I write what I want, or what I want people to read, or nothing at all?!  Surely nobody wants to know all the things going through my mind, or events I’ve been to?

There’s not much point in having a blog if I don’t write anything at all, that’s for sure!  So I’ve decided to try and let go of the ego/thinking and just write!  So here goes!  This is going to be a fairly long post as there’s quite a lot to update!

The winds of change – an update

The FWBO Young People’s Group young women’s retreat at Taraloka was, on reflection, a life changing weekend for me.  I am eternally grateful to everyone who was involved in organising the retreat, and of course to everyone who came along and gave inspiration, shared their thoughts, and became friends.  In particular I’ve been fortunate to form strong friendships with some people who were, before this weekend, complete strangers and who have now become invaluable in terms of their friendship, inspiration and support.

As a result of the weekend I started reflecting on all the issues that I had left “open” in my life which were unsatisfactory, some of which were really quite painful to address.  Firstly I wasn’t really enjoying my job, which also meant that I was having to spend virtually my entire evening and weekend spare time running my business, which had recently been taking off quite considerably.  This was putting a huge amount of pressure on my relationship with my partner, as well as starting to cause health problems which would later emerge to be far more significant than I could ever even begin to imagine.

While we had just bought our first house together, I knew that I needed to do something to address this issue, giving me more time to focus on building the business but while having a guaranteed income to cover my mortgage and loans.  Despite feeling quite imprisoned by having a mortgage, the liberation from renting , where we had to ask permission to do absolutely everything; and having a lovely garden as well as a huge amount more space, far outweighed this feeling.

In February the opportunity presented itself – to work for a good friend 3 days a week for a salary which would cover these outgoings, while leaving me with 2 days a week to run my business.  I jumped at the chance, and handed in my notice pretty much the next day!  The start of a new era!

Buddhism

While I’ve always been interested in Buddhism from a young age, going to the young women’s retreat really sparked a flame somewhere inside me, and made me realise that I needed to do something more than just talk about it!  I had started going along to the Colchester Buddhist Centre newcomer evenings on a Wednesday night a few weeks before the retreat, as my local centre’s days clashed with my hockey training.  Somehow, I just felt at home – the people were friendly and inviting, the practice non-judgemental and completely open to anyone, whether you have Buddhist views or not.

I really struggled with the meditations at first, it is amazing how we live our lives with so much chatter and noise going on in our minds!  I later found it very interesting to hear an Order member speak on this subject, explaning that it is ridiculous that we rest our bodies every day, take care to ensure we feed it and nourish it, and exercise it if it becomes out of shape, yet we do not ever give the mind a rest.  Even in our sleep, our mind is active with dreams, perceptions and so forth.  We often don’t even realise our mind is out of shape until we start looking inwards, or experience problems such as memory loss.

One of the most important things I learned in these early days is to just stick with it.  Meditation is a practice, not a goal to be achieved.  Whether the meditation went well or not, it helps me in my journey to improve – the more often I practiced, the better I was able to focus on the meditation subject and disregard the hundreds of trains of thought that try to intrude!

Other retreats

During the last few months I’ve been on quite a few retreats, both day and longer weekend or week-long retreats.  I won’t go into many but here are a few snippets of my experiences:

Day retreats

Silence - this was led by a Mitra as part of her project, and considered excerpts and inspiration from Sara Maitland’s book, “The Book of Silence”.  It really fascinated me when I considered the complete lack of silence in my life.  When I drive, I have the radio on.  When I work, I turn the radio on or put some mp3′s on.  If I am with people, I talk.  Rarely do I choose to be silent aside from during meditation.  After this retreat I started to look at this a bit more, by turning off the radio when driving for example.  The difference was quite unexpected – stopped at traffic lights, I suddenly noticed the birds singing in a nearby tree!  Without the distraction of the radio, I was able to turn my thoughts to other issues.  While I have somewhat dropped this practice I think I will buy the book and read it myself, and perhaps consider more how I can bring this into my life more fully.

Wesak celebrations – A really lovely day at Colchester Buddhist Centre celebrating Wesak, which is a day when the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death are celebrated around the world.  Some really lovely talks, puja’s and chats combined with a beautifully arranged shrine and some lovely warm weather allowing us to sit outside made this a lovely day.

Longer retreats

Sangha retreat - I signed up for a weekend retreat at Vajrasana with the Colchester Buddhist Centre, having been previously unable to attend the East Anglian Women’s Retreat.  I was a bit apprehensive about the retreat, having never been to Vajrasana, but a friend of mine came along too which was lovely to have someone to share the drive with!  The retreat was themed on the fetters of suffering, which I found quite interesting.  Again some really good talks from Srikirti, Prasadavajri and Amalaketu, as well as group sessions – mine was with Karunadhi.

International Retreat - Several of the young people’s group and some from the January young women’s retreat were going to the International Retreat in May, which ran from Friday to Tuesday over the Bank Holiday.  It was held in the grounds of Taraloka, but this time there were more like 450 people in attendance from all over the world!  Most people were camping or staying in caravans, although some stayed in the retreat centre itself.  This retreat had a really profound effect on me, reinforcing not only that this is what I want to do, and who I want to be, but also gave me a real appreciation for the FWBO (or Triratna Buddhist Community as it is now known) sangha on a larger scale.  Part of the retreat involved the changing of the name from “Friends of the Western Buddhist Order” to “Triratna Buddhist Community” – I’ll write a blog entry about the retreat complete with videos and pictures later!

Young people’s group

After coming back from the January young women’s retreat, Hannah and I got talking about how to get a young person’s group going.  We came to the conclusion that it would be sensible to pool our resources, and have a group which operates between the two centres at Ipswich Buddhist Centre and Colchester Buddhist Centre.  After speaking with the chairpeople of the centres, we were able to get our first meeting up and running quite quickly.  Attended by 6 people, we decided to meet every 3 weeks and alternate between the centres. Since this meeting we have had up to 12 people attending, and have watched films, played games, shared music and of course, meditated together!  We have plans for other events such as a bbq and film night, and it has been really fantastic to start meeting together, talking about the dharma, and how we implement it in our lives.

Work

having made the decision to go part time and work for myself 2 days a week, I’m now considering much more seriously how I run my business – particularly the ethical and “right livelihood” ideals to which I aspire.  As a result I now donate 10% of my turnover to the Abhayaratna Trust and am currently in discussions with a designer regarding rebranding my business to bettwe demonstrate the whole spectrum of work we do, as well as reflect the ethical and Buddhist  background which underpins it all.  Watch this space!

I’ve been doing a fair amount of Loving Kindness meditation recently – not only formal “sitting” meditation but also what I call “here and now” – wherever I am and whatever I am doing.  I always found it difficult when coming to consider the neutral person or the person you don’t like/have problems with, but more recently my perseverance has shown me what a difference it can make to keep working away at this.

Some of the people I focus on for the neutral person are those who work for the same organisation as me, but I don’t necessarily work with them on a day to day basis – I perhaps know their face, know roughly what they do, but that’s about as far as it goes.  I wouldn’t usually talk to them because I don’t know anything about them, and wouldn’t know where to start!

That is what I have noticed has changed!

Recently, if I pass someone like this, who I don’t really know, I always now say good morning, or ask them how they are.  It’s suprising how nice it is just to chat to different people!  Also some people who I (and others) had found to be quite “grumpy” – every office has some I’m sure! – have now became quite friendly and chatty, perhaps because I had bothered to take the time to ask how they were, or remembered something they had told me about what was going on in their life and asked how it was going.

It made me realise that all too often we tend to float along in our own little bubble, not really appreciating or taking on board the fact that other people have their own bubbles too, and this might affect they way that they interact with us (or not, as the case may be).  Through the Loving Kindness meditation I have started to become more aware of this and have certainly found it has had a profound way in which I interact with people on a day to day basis.  I’m currently reading Vajaragupta’s book “Buddhism: Tools for Living Your Life” which has a really good section on this – I highly recommend it.

Firstly let me say that I’m going to revive my blog in the new year and hopefully contribute to it a bit more! I’ve become a bit lax mainly due to competing demands on my time.

I love the ending of the year, not least because it coincides with my birthday (woohoo!) but because it is an opportunity to reflect on the year that has passed and consider how things might be improved, what didn’t go so well, and the bit I always forget, what went well and what I succeeded at!

This practice doesn’t have to necessarily have any kind of religious or spiritual beliefs underpinning it, and in fact it can be a really useful thing to do from a business development and also a personal development perspective.

I tend to put aside some time, usually in the morning before all the New Years Eve madness kicks in, to sit quietly – perhaps with some relaxing music on if this doesn’t distract you, and just sit and think about the year that has gone by and my role in it – sometimes I work through in chronological order but this can be a bit of a struggle unless I have a calendar or diary to remind me, but other times I just wander through my memories – from the last New Years Eve through to New Years Day, going back to work, seeing the spring start to come in, and so forth.

When something comes up which I find unsatisfactory – perhaps the way I spoke to somebody, a piece of work that I didn’t prepare well enough for, maybe something like having put on too much weight, then I try to come up with some strategies to improve this in the coming year.  I also do this for my business – so for projects which didn’t go so well, or for aspects of the business which I would like to improve, I set myself some goals and steps to go through to achieve these goals.

Sometimes this short moment of time can generate some quite profound realisations, and it has certainly made me aware on several occasions of aspects of my life that are far from how I would like to be.

2009 seems to have passed so quickly but when I do this reflective practice tomorrow I am sure I will be suprised by the amount that has happened in this period of time!