One By One, By One, By One

14 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , ,

Little Ducks In A RowThe little challenges that life presents now and again can be solved if we use wisdom, courage and compassion. Usually they appear one after another, but occasionally a coach load turn up all at once, and then what do we do?

First thing I do is chant. Chanting allows me to sort them into order of priority, determine which need to be solved quickly, before they cause still more challenges. Then having my running order, I chant some more to visualise the solutions to each one in turn.

Of course there are no guarantees, but this works for me. Work, family, health, money, you name it, we get challenges in every walk of life. If you can stay focussed, prioritise, and meet each challenge one by one, not only will you succeed, you will learn with each and every one.

A Mystery Solved

25 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , ,

Mystery SolvedEver since Bumble and I have been going out, there has been this third party in the equation. Let’s be frank, his name was, and still is, Chris. Not that I am particularly prone to jealousy, but there was always something a bit ‘secret’ about his presence.

He is in a new relationship, and has been pretty much ever since they split up, but his new significant other is rather possessive and will not allow B and Chris to meet. Presumably because she is worried that he, or she, or they, might decide that they had made a mistake.

Bumble is allowed to pop round to collect her misdirected post, but only if Chris, and particularly his new lady are out. B has always been very open about all this, she can be painfully honest at times, but when the odd chance to meet Chris had occurred, I was left sitting in the car, and the mystery continued.

So imagine my surprise when, whilst pottering around the garden today, Chris turned up on his new Triumph motorbike, to deliver a rather important looking misdirected letter for Bumble. I guess that he might have expected us to be out, but finding us home, came in anyway.

But what of this mythical being? Well, pretty much as expected really, he is a really nice bloke. Bumble obviously has really good taste in men, the children’s father, Nigel, is a really nice bloke too. I have no idea what they think about me, but we seem to get on pretty well.

We sat and had a drink in the garden, had a nice chat about what was going on with him and with us. He said how sorry he was to hear about Ivor and hoped that all had gone well with the funeral. All very civilised. So the mystery, if ever there was one, is now solved, and life goes on as usual.

I guess, looking back, the real mystery is why I thought there was a mystery at all.

An Outpouring

21 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , ,

Mental IllnessI’m busy writing a story. It’s about a boy, Tom, and the strange events that unfurl when he and his mate Eden encounter a spirit entity that resides at the bottom of a long disused well, in the grounds of a derelict asylum.

It’s all fiction, all that is apart from the asylum itself, High Royds in West Yorkshire, which allegedly still echoes to the sounds of the long departed patients. Victorian mental hospitals were, and still are, very daunting places. They were built in an age where there was little, if any, understanding of the illnesses the poor souls who were incarcerated within their walls.

Today, there is still much we can learn about mental illness, although treatments are now far more humane than they were in our fore-fathers day. But there is still a stigma attached to diseases of the mind and many people are still locked away to protect them, and us, from the damaging effects the diseases can cause.

The story is the outpouring of my thoughts about possible supernatural events that are the result of the history of the hospital, but writing down these thoughts has made me aware of my own feelings towards these poor people.

Mental illness is a terrible thing, for those affected and those around them. With the cases of depression and stress related illness rising as a result of economic pressures, we must be even more aware of our own feelings. We must show compassion towards the victims, they do not chose to be affected and fully deserve our sympathy and help. Who knows, one day it may be us who need that compassion.

Stand Up And Be Counted

20 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , ,

Problem SolvedWhen those around you are unable to help, be it due to fatigue, misfortune or other pressing matters, it is beholding to us to stand tall and shoulder the challenges for them. The office was pretty sparsely populated for a number of reasons, so it was down to the troops on the ground, to deal with the issues the day delivered.

I may have mentioned that Monday is not my favourite day of the week, but today was pretty good, all things considered. I had pre-empted the email mountain by sorting and dealing with, a number of them over the weekend, so that wasn’t too bad.

Dan and Steve were on good form, so that meant that, although Guy was unavoidably detained by a misbehaving motor, and Nick is away on his honeymoon, we managed to deal with some rather awkward little problems rather well.

Having a full day also meant that the time flew by. By the time it felt like lunchtime, we were already half way through the afternoon. Despite feeling rather tired after the full agenda of the weekend, I still had enough petrol left in the tank to go out for a nice ride in the warm evening sunshine.

As always, the challenges of today will be followed by the challenges of tomorrow, but having risen to them all today gives us a nice warm confident feeling for the morning. Of course, I may be tempting fate (if there is such a thing) by feeling this way, but with tons of life-energy, I’m sure we can deal with anything the day might bring.

Best Laid Plans

18 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , , , ,

Best Laid PlansAs with all things in the universe, the normal order is that of chaos, and so it was that our Friday night plans to go over to friends for dinner were turned upside down and inside out. Not that the evening wasn’t a real pleasure, it was, but nothing like that which had been envisaged.

Having preconceived ideas about things can be a source of much disappointment. Expectations, as discussed previously, are simply one set of outcomes , seen from your own point of view. These must be shelved, otherwise the enjoyment of events can be completely overshadowed.

When things change, be flexible, allow yourself to see the positives and supress the negatives. Nothing in life is set in stone, so go with the flow, chanting along the way when necessary, and make the most of each and every possibility.

Challenges, Just A Fact Of Life

16 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , , , , , ,

Just A Fact Of LifeSometimes, problems, or as we like to call them, challenges, seem to just keep on coming, one after another after another. With two deaths, as well as other problems associated with dementia in the family happening in the past few weeks, it’s been all too easy for us to start to wonder ‘What on earth have we done to deserve all this?’

However, challenges are just a fact of life. It’s true that some people seem to have more challenges than others. It is also obvious that there are times when they appear to come along like buses, nothing for ages and then a bunch of them turn up at once.

What helps, or at least helps me, is to look upon them as a way to become stronger. Buddhism sees challenges as a way to strengthen your faith and your practice by turning their poison into medicine. Of course this is easier said than done, but over time it is amazing what a person can learn to deal with.

When a challenge rears its ugly head I try to think about it from a number of viewpoints. Chanting definitely helps me in this regard. While I’m chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, my mind is emptied of the minutia of daily life, so I can concentrate on the issue at hand. Finding the positives in a situation is never easy, but they are there if you care to look.

So even though things may look dark, that there is nothing but sorrow to be gained from some event, that really is not the case. Losing someone close may seem to be such a situation, but if that person was suffering, that suffering has now ended, which is positive. If someone has to go into care, that is very sad, but it means that they, and others, are safer in the process.

Whatever the situation, there are positives, all that is needed is to find them in amongst the morass of bad feelings we may be having. As I say, chanting allows me to do this, and although it may not work for you, giving it a chance certainly won’t make things worse. Having a really good chant raises my life-energy and life-state and that in turn makes me more able to confront things head on.

Changing Viewpoints

13 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , ,

The Pole In The RiverWe all have a mental view of where we are going in life, what we would like our future to look like, a set of challenges that we must conquer if we are to find our utopia. Each day, maybe even each second of each day, that view changes, usually just a little, sometimes quite a lot.

In a way, we can look at this from the view of a swimmer who is trying to swim against the flow of a river or a tide. He or she can swim at a constant pace, from their own viewpoint, a set number of strokes per minute, but their progress, from the viewpoint of an observer on the bank or the shore may be anything but constant.

It all depends on the strength of the current. If the current is flowing slower than the swimmer, the swimmer moves forward, if it is flowing faster than the swimmer, the swimmer moves backwards. Unsurprisingly, if the two are the same, the swimmer stays in exactly the same place.

Now we know that rivers and tides change, hourly, daily, in fact all the time. In order for the swimmer to know how fast to swim in order to make his or her desired progress they need to have a constant unchanging point on which to focus, a pole in the river, or a landmark on the shore, a point against which they can measure that progress.

Our situation in life changes in a similar way, so when we are striving towards our goals, we may think we are ‘swimming’ fast enough, think that we are making progress, when in fact, from another viewpoint, we are going nowhere, or even going backwards.

So what can we use as our ‘pole in the river’, our landmark by which we can measure our progress? Something that is constant, no matter what else changes around us. The answer, for me at least, is my practice. It is unchanging, it is strong and resilient and is always in the same place, no matter what else may be going on around me.

My practice gives me a great view of my progress. No matter what the challenge, when I chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, my perspective on things is focussed on a wider view of the situation rather than just my own viewpoint. So I know whether I am ‘swimming’ fast enough to reach my goal, or whether I need to put in more effort to achieve my aims.

Just Deserts

07 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , , , , ,

Mr Worry - Don't Do ItLeaving the works PC in a dishevelled state last night was not good for my peace of mind. But my fears of being left with an unusable machine for a week while Dan ‘the man’ went off to Barcelona on holiday proved to be unfounded.

With a laudable effort on all parts, particularly Dan’s, the machine is now honed to perfection and all ready to take on the challenges of the Fraser’s website restyling. Much of the work has already been done, all that is needed, and I say ‘all’ reservedly, is to incorporate said changes into the working copy, iron out any bugs and publish it to the server.

Worrying about things is such a pointless exercise. It takes energy, it lowers your life-state and achieves absolutely nothing. So don’t do it, I tell myself, but that’s easier said than done sometimes. What does work, and it works every time, is making the causes to create the effects we wish to see.

So as the old war-time song went, ‘what’s the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile; so, pack up your troubles in your old kit back and smile, smile, smile’. In my case that happens to be a rather battered old shoulder bag, but the principle still holds true.

If It Isn’t Broken

06 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , ,

If it isn't broken ...You know the saying, ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ meaning that some things are best left alone. Sadly today has been a day of trying to mend something that wasn’t broken in the first place.

Although this time it wasn’t my doing, it was a frustrating time for all concerned, and it’s still not working as I write this. So it’s been a really long day, with not very much to show for all our efforts.

Now there is something that I won’t be changing. My practice, it works for me, it works for countless others around the world. The proof is there for us all to see, in our daily lives, in everything we do, so why change a single thing?

Olympic Recuperation

05 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , , , , ,

Usain BoltI have no idea why, but Bumble woke with a bad back this morning. Maybe we stayed in bed too long, listening to the rain lashing down outside. Maybe it was the result of our abdominal exercises yesterday morning, who knows. Whatever the reason, she was in no fit state to be her usual busy bee self, and it showed.

She was a proper grump. She really isn’t good at sitting still for more than a couple of minutes at the best of times. But having a sore back, the result of some sort of muscular spasm, really didn’t help her mood at all.

Fortunately there were a ton of things that needed doing indoors, so we lit a fire, put the Olympics on the telly and hunkered down in the lounge for a recuperative afternoon and evening.

And there was some great stuff on too. Ben Ainslie winning a gold medal in the sailing, Andy Murray doing the same in the tennis and Usain Bolt breaking the Olympic record to finish first in the men’s 100m final in an amazing 9.63 seconds.

The day few by. With all the great telly, coupled with some PC housekeeping, a bit of digital photography and a very tasty veggie pasta dish thrown in for good measure, it was time for bed in no time.

So a whole bunch of challenges sorted out in a single day. Behavioural for B, mental for me and physical for the athletes. Although Bumble and I didn’t get a medal, we both did a sterling job and that brings its own rewards.

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