So ten minutes out of Buddha Bootcamp and what happens ... I'm on the train trying to find my seat ... And there's a pensioner sitting in it. What to do? At the sound of her husband's excuse that they didnt know they had to reserve a seat it crosses my mind that he's lying out of his arse ... It's summer in France and this is a train. You don't get on it love without a reservation. I didn't actually say that. Just thought it. That probably still counts as bad karma. I pride myself however on actually saying 'ce n'est pas grave', and walk up the carriage to find a spare seat. Bugger. No spare seats. It's jamboree season and the train is full of scouts. Hell hath nothing on travelling during scout season. Facing the prospect of standing for an hour (as the scouts have taken all spare capacity and show no sign of getting out of their seats for a middle aged woman) I moan to the conductor who finds me a spare place. The husband and wife show no sign of gratitude and I give them death stares all the way to Limoges. That's probably bad karma as well. I am very attached it seems to displays of gratitude but then Buddha never had to travel on a train full of scouts. And besides, the principle of unreciprocated gifts sucks.
I'm not surprised really at such unBuddhistly thoughts popping into my head when even at bootcamp I had an attack of vipassana vendetta after someone sat in my meditation spot. Okay, it was her first meditation and she probably didn't realise that non-attached buddhists do in fact often get attached to their meditation spots when we've spent hours getting the stack of cushions just the right height and found the perfect shawls that are long enough to keep toes warm as well as head, it's not too near the front to attract the attention of the teacher in case he asks any tricky questions about non-duality, and not too near the back to get the drafts from the door. Attachment seems to grow even more stronger during periods of resource scarcity ... Everyone seemed to need at least three cushions (just in case knees started hurting and more height was required) even though we're only actually using two, and the shawls were all gone in 60 seconds. Good to know that when the apocalypse finally arrives the buddhists will be fighting for the last spot on the life raft as well. I'll just do it with a trained mind, in full awareness as I boot a pensioner out of my seat.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Monday, 4 July 2011
A fine day out
At the risk of sounding completely bo-ho, it's been a fabulous London weekend. Saturday was spent walking to Southbank with the weather remembering what it's supposed to do in summer. Okay, it's only 22 degrees but leave me with my illusions. It's warm enough to sit outside and sip my Pimms and that's all that matters. We even have our own urban plage now ... two inches of sand on reclaimed sidewalk next to the Thames. It comes with a replica Chowpatty Beach (Mumbai) cafe, where they serve sides of poetry. And along with these visual memorials to hot days in the past comes auditory reminders of joy ... of the squeals of kids running under the hose pipe in the backyard, chasing the dog and getting scratched from razor sharp kikuyu grass ... although at Southbank there is no dog or lawn but never is there so much squealing as when the dancing fountain is turned on.
To these pleasures can be added two seminars at the London Literature festie. The first, a talk on 'London as a Satellite City' with Rana Dasgupta (author of Tokyo Cancelled and Solo) and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (author of What if Latin America Ruled the World?). The second was Owen Jones (who looks all of 16) discussing his book on Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. There is an absolute hatred held by some in the UK for those who must sell their labour for a living and have no control over what they do once engaged in that labour. It is an indigenous version of social cleansing based possibly on the fear of retribution for the violence of the industrial revolution.
On my way back home, pondering this hatred, I realised I must now be a Londoner as I could give correct directions to everyone who was lost along the way (although I'm worried the young ladies at Liverpool Street station, heading to Southbank, may not have made it given their lovely high heels had 50 minutes of walking to do).
Home in Hackney, being 90 minutes walk or another world away from Southbank, is having its own festie at the moment: Create (the Hackney Fringe Festival). In an old WWII bunker at the back of a theatre in Dalston, Sukhdev Sandhu created a performance piece of Night Haunts, scenes from the underside of London. I'm not sure I really needed to know that the men who unclog the Victorian sewers of the fat of a 21st century city occassionally eat what they find down there (okay it was an unpeeled orange but really ...!).
The bunker, creating the dark and dank smell of London at night, also provided shelter from the random monstrousness that is a rapidly regenerating Dalston that I pottered through on the way home, just in time to round off my day with the David Hayes vs Wladimir Klitschko heavy weight title fight. It's amazing how watching boxing on a 50 inch high definition plasma screen with slow motion replay can improve one's appreciation of how much it must hurt.
To these pleasures can be added two seminars at the London Literature festie. The first, a talk on 'London as a Satellite City' with Rana Dasgupta (author of Tokyo Cancelled and Solo) and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (author of What if Latin America Ruled the World?). The second was Owen Jones (who looks all of 16) discussing his book on Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. There is an absolute hatred held by some in the UK for those who must sell their labour for a living and have no control over what they do once engaged in that labour. It is an indigenous version of social cleansing based possibly on the fear of retribution for the violence of the industrial revolution.
On my way back home, pondering this hatred, I realised I must now be a Londoner as I could give correct directions to everyone who was lost along the way (although I'm worried the young ladies at Liverpool Street station, heading to Southbank, may not have made it given their lovely high heels had 50 minutes of walking to do).
Home in Hackney, being 90 minutes walk or another world away from Southbank, is having its own festie at the moment: Create (the Hackney Fringe Festival). In an old WWII bunker at the back of a theatre in Dalston, Sukhdev Sandhu created a performance piece of Night Haunts, scenes from the underside of London. I'm not sure I really needed to know that the men who unclog the Victorian sewers of the fat of a 21st century city occassionally eat what they find down there (okay it was an unpeeled orange but really ...!).
The bunker, creating the dark and dank smell of London at night, also provided shelter from the random monstrousness that is a rapidly regenerating Dalston that I pottered through on the way home, just in time to round off my day with the David Hayes vs Wladimir Klitschko heavy weight title fight. It's amazing how watching boxing on a 50 inch high definition plasma screen with slow motion replay can improve one's appreciation of how much it must hurt.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)