Routes

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Buddhism and meditation have been important in my life for decades, and this is time to bring them back right to the centre - less formally now, more in everyday breaths and pauses, cultivating awareness, becoming a kinder witness to experience. And the experience is that there's been so much anger around recently. That anger is itself bewildering, and it hurts.

Lois Holzman's workshop on what she calls Developmentalism has opened up new options and possibilities. Marita Schmidt's online talk about Buddhism and dementia have brought connections and possibilities about applying the practices and to the process of living through and with dementia.

You know those times when you hear something that's bright and new, and completely familiar too? Like discovering something at the back of a drawer that's supremely precious to you, but forgotten?

Here's a new poem.

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Routes

Could there be other ways towards an end?

I know the routes of battles and defeats,

the sink from light to dark, from here to gone,

and my way so far: write and shout, confront.

This new route bends round back streets, shady corners,

past landmarks on the way. Trusted, sturdier

companions whisper directions: ‘You can be here.

It was different for us, we know you can.’

This route is far less boring than the rest.

I’m bored with suffering and supplication

blended with restless pleas and breathless rants.

And most, I’m bored with my own endless rage.

I’ll welcome nocontrol, nochoice, nofight;

release the grasp on who I think I’ve been,

greet growing needs for kindness, trust and grace.

Smile, rest in emptiness: that’s always here.

Go naked, lose the forms that we’ve called human,

float body-free. Then meet a destination.

For Amita Schmidt and Lois Holzman