They say being older is not for sissies.
I didn’t find life easier when I was younger... at all.
As a small boy I loved more than anything, being on my own.
There was something in me that was self-conscious and anxious
when I was around people.
Whereas when I was with a tree or a cat
the world was mine in a slightly different kind of way.
It was real to me.
But it was much less simple when people were involved.
I have something of the same now
where I do need quite a lot of solitude.
The world that I hear when I’m quiet
has a simplicity about it, a straightforwardness about it.
It feels real in that way.
The more I’m willing to make central to my life
a stillness beyond my thinking,
I am connected with the world
as if it were for the very first time.
Being quiet for a moment
is the way that I can quieten that voice that says
‘What’s the point of all this?’
What really breaks my heart is the suffering around,
of people who are motivated by self.
The self of ambition, of greed, of intolerance, of fearfulness.
The moment I try and protect myself
by saying I don’t want to see the injustice, I turn my head,
then I’m already in a brittle space.
And I’m always trying to keep something out.
So I do let the injustice and suffering of the world touch me.
It’s important for me that I feel sad, deeply sad,
and sometimes just hugely angry and desperate.
I’m not going to become more real by trying to shut off bits of it.
My job as a human being is to wake up
and find my real connection with this universe
and all the people in it, including their suffering.
I take a deep breath.
I hear the cries of this world, and I stand up again and go out.
How do I step into the world?
How do I take that injustice that I see, and act on that?
I tried various meditation techniques,
followed gurus and lamas and zen masters,
and read all the books.
It never worked of course, predictably now,
because I was looking outside of myself
for something from someone else.
That’s in fact one of the Buddha’s earliest teachings...
Don’t believe any authority, any scriptures, any wise men.
Find out for yourself what’s true, what’s real for you.
People talk of meditation as a way of reducing stress.
You see it in a lot of magazines now when you go to the dentist.
But I think the more one does it
the more it becomes natural
to see it as more than just me improving my life.
But of finding this life to be deepened and broadened
to including everything in the most natural
and immediate and light hearted way.
When I do this meditation practice
even though it appears that I’m going inside,
what it does is it actually connects me with the world
in a way that my anxious mind, thinking mind,
preference mind, judgement mind, wasn’t able to do.
And I find that then I can step with more affection
and tolerance and enthusiasm and humour, into the world
if I step in from taking a deep breath.
Then I say, ‘Hello Michael, nice to see you.’
To perhaps just use the words of a zen kōan,
‘When you meet the Buddha on the road, how do you greet him?’
Each person that you meet is quote unquote “the Buddha”.
So how do you respond?
How are you? Nice to meet you.
Whether you like them or not... whether you find it easy or not.
How can I make compassion real?
Whoever they are! And to be able to stand in their footsteps...
whoever they are, stand in their shoes.
Sometimes it may be obviously more charitable stuff...
a donation or looking after the elderly.
Sometimes it’s just listening to someone else.
We’re not talking of fireworks in the sky and angelic choirs.
We’re talking of you and me, meeting each other.
So that compassion is not a romantic ideal
that one is measuring oneself against,
but simply an expression of the fullness of this moment.
I don’t feel afraid of being dead.
What frightens me is of not living fully before I die.
That’s a kind of terror.
How can I just allow this life to be mine in the deepest way,
including the fact that I don’t get it right?
I just need to be genuine and sincere
in the best way that I can.
So that if I don’t wake up tomorrow, it’s fine.
I would like to think that the life I lead will help others in theirs.
But I have no objection to being scattered in the fields
and being forgotten.