Monthly Archives: August 2010

Planting seeds: What we resist

During my summer break this year, I went to join my fiancé at his Buddhist retreat centre in the heart of France.

My plans for the fortnight were mostly: lie under a tree. Read a novel. Sip cool drinks. Repeat as necessary.

The first week was a course on eco-therapy, and I’d expected the schedule to be light, leaving me plenty of time for my novel-reading. Instead we were up at 8 for service, then breakfast, then washing up, then a session 10 til 2, then lunch, then washing up, then a session 4 til 6, then dinner, then washing up, then a session 7 til 10. Something like that, anyway.

The idea was that we would become utterly immersed in nature. And we did. We sat cross-legged for an hour and investigated spiders. We wandered through the woods and down the meditation path and across the fields. We took turns leading each other, blindfolded and barefoot, over grass to touch bark and smell flowers. At night we lay under duvets all in a row and gazed at the bright pin-pricks of stars.

At first, I resisted letting go into the week. There was no space for reading my novel. This was what I wanted, and so I assumed this was what I needed. I was wrong.

The intensive week forced me to take time out from my busy head. It connected me to the landscape, and questions about my future, and it reminded me of things I already knew but had forgotten. I wouldn’t have received that gift if I’d had the week I thought I wanted.

Some of the realisations were uncomfortable. It did feel a bit like I was ‘coming down’. Maybe sometimes what we resist is what we most need. Why else would we resist it?

Things you might be curious about:

What are you resisting in your day today? In the coming year? Could you see any potential gains in facing this resistance? What gifts might these events bring, if you were able to let go into them?

Quotes:

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

~Krishnamurti

To fly we have to have resistance.

~Maya Lin

This post is from my weekly newsletter – to sign up, put your email in the sign-up box on the right and tick ‘Planting Seeds’. Don’t forget about the competition to win one of three coaching sessions as part of my Planting Seeds coaching practice

Why desire is A GOOD THING

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When I started reading about Buddhism, I was troubled by instructions to ‘give up clinging’. If we give up clinging, then where does that leave desire? Would we get anywhere in life without a teensy bit of desire? Is it really always a bad thing?

It was relieving to hear what Mark Epstein had to say about the subject in his book Open to Desire (and then later David Brazier in his excellent and highly recommended The Feeling Buddha). We can have a direct experience of desire (sitting with it, tasting it) without clinging to it or making demands of it. And that this is where the heat comes from – the heat that drives our engines.

The difficulty (as always) is to tread the fine line between fully engaging in our experience of ‘what is’ (I really want that cake) without slipping over into wanting to manipulate it (I MUST have that cake or I will never be happy).

But we don’t have to stop wanting the cake.

Well, that’s my reading of the books, anyway. Don’t take my word for it. Have a read of Epstein’s article In Defence of Desire on Tricycle – and make up your own mind. Here’s a quote from it:

We can treat desire the way we treat everything else in meditation. This means accepting it as it is, not pushing it away and not holding on to it. In Eros the Bittersweet, a big inspiration for my own book, the Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson points out that desire implies the presence of three things: the lover, the beloved, and that which separates them. In other words, there is always a gap, an obstacle, impeding the union desire seeks. This obstacle seems like a problem, and we want to get rid of it. This is clinging. I propose that if you relate to desire in a different way—if you learn how to simply dwell in the gap it opens up—then desire can become a teacher in its own right. In practical terms, this means learning to desire without expectations.

I can’t possibly write about desire without sharing my favourite Kunitz poem, which almost made it into my brother’s wedding ceremony. Maybe it’ll get into mine. If you read it slowly and enough times, I guarantee it will break your heart. Happy Thursdays, people.

Touch Me

By Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Nicking stuff from my fiancé

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I love having a blog-writing beau.

It means that I can nick all his good stuff.

He put a whizzy box on his blog last night, which means you can receive his posts as an email. I signed up, and feedburner have just delivered his most recent post, Waking up to beauty, to my inbox.

It’s everso good. The post (read it for yourself if you think I’m just biased – it has peaches in it, and my friend Zee-Zee), and the fact that the internet is a marvellous invention, and can do all kinds of whizzy things.

(PS do say hello and that you came from here if you do pop over – he’s very friendly…)

So I’ve nicked his idea and now have my own box – just on the right hand side. I’ll tuck it away lower down in a week or two, but before I do that you might want to sign up yourself.

In other news, I’m very much in love with William Stafford’s book of poems The Way it is at the moment. Here’s a tasty little morsel for you. Happy Wednesdays, lovely people : )

The Well Rising

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through the deep ground
everywhere in the field —

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer —

The swallow heart from wing beat to wing beat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.

William Stafford

Planting seeds: A person who prefers baths

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I am a person who prefers baths.

I like them hot. I like to lie down. I like bubbles. I like essential oils. I get grumpy when I stay in hotels that only have showers. I am a person who prefers baths.

Lately, I have noticed how much I like showers. Zingy lemon shower gel. The water pummelling my back. The sounds of the thousands of falling drops. The way you’re in-and-out so quickly. That extra-clean feeling.

My story that I am a person who prefers baths has kept me from properly enjoying showers for many years.

I am a person who very much likes baths and I am a person who very much likes showers.

Things you might be curious about:

What stories do you have about yourself? Listen to yourself this week and see if you can catch yourself out. What are these stories holding you back from experiencing? Where could you make your stories about yourself more flexible?

Quotes:

The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting go of them.

-John Seely Brow

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

-Bertrand Russell

(this went out to my Planting Seeds mailing list yesterday – to sign up put your email in the box on the right!)

A copy of my newsletter with four free gifts

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I send out an email every three months or so, and if you’d like to sign up put your email in the box on the right hand side and tick ‘occasional updates on Fiona Robyn’. Here it is below so you don’t miss out. Have wonderful weekends x

——————-

Four gifts for you. And news of my engagement : )

The first gift is my ears. Since last writing, I’ve relaunced my coaching practice at Planting Seeds, for anyone who’s in need of a little OOMPH. I’m running a competition to win one of three gift sessions (or an email coaching session) plus a copy of my book A Year of Questions. To enter, reply to this newsletter with ‘Gift Session’ as the title before the 12th of September. Easy peasy.

The second gift is my newly-started-up-again Planting Seeds newsletter, which will deliver a small oasis of calm into your inbox every Monday. See an example here. To sign up, reply to this newsletter with ‘Planting Seeds’ as the title. Lemon squeezy.

The third gift is an article I’ve written (especially for you) about discipline, in which I suggest that it doesn’t need to conjure up maths homework and threatening yourself with a stick. Here it is – I hope you find it helpful.

The fourth gift is a recipe for chocolate shortbread, which I will be trying out later this morning. I think everyone could do with a little more chocolate shortbread in their lives. Here’s the link (from the delumptious Hotel Chocolat), and I’ve copied it below too.

In other news, I shall soon be a married woman : ) (I still can’t say that without grinning). You can see us both grinning here, and you can get to know Kaspa a little better at his rather marvellous blog, Purple Clouds (I am a teensy bit biased, but it is actually marvellous).

Finally I have a short story in Even More Tonto Short Stories (one my mum didn’t like) and my novels are still all rather cheap on Amazon UK (or The Book Depository if you’re not in the UK). They’re still cheap as people like you keep buying them.

I hope life is good with you, and if it’s not then I’ll include some good wishes and a nice cup of tea (with a chocolate shortbread) with this newsletter.

Chocolate Shortbread biscuits

Serves: 12
Preparation time: 10 mins
Standing time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 40 mins

Ingredients:

255g plain flour

225g butter

15g cocoa powder

85g icing sugar

25g cocoa powder

100g Milk Chocolate for Anything

100g White Chocolate for Anything

Method:

Preheat oven to 170°C/325°F/Gas 3.

In a large bowl, cream the butter using an electric whisk, gradually add the sugar as you do so beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Gradually sieve the flour and cocoa powder into the mixture and blend to produce a soft biscuit dough.

Lightly dust your kitchen work surface and rolling pin with flour.

Turn the dough out and roll it to a thickness of about 1cm, then use a heart-shaped cutter to cut out biscuits. You should be able to make 12, though you may need to roll the dough between cuts.

Place biscuits onto a well greased baking tray.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Allow to cool fully before removing from the tray.

In the microwave, melt the milk and white chocolate one at a time in separate bowls – heat in 30 second blasts, stirring between each one to ensure chocolate does not burn.

When chocolate is melted spoon into a piping bags and pipe stripes of each chocolate onto biscuit. Drag a fork across the surface of the biscuit to create a marble effect.

Leave to cool, try one for yourself, then serve to loved ones.

(NB I like that order…. you need to try one to make sure it’s safe for the others to eat! Enjoy!)

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An instrument of grace

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I miss my garden today.

I miss pulling up garlic heads from their beds and storing them in the dark.

I miss tweaking fat raspberries from the vines.

I miss browsing the seed catalogues in front of a woodburner with snow on the ground outside.

I might have a garden again soon.

I’d better be careful though. When I get a garden again, I might miss the long spaces I have now to read my book, to wander in the garden outside my house (which isn’t mine, but is beautiful), to write posts about gardens.

Note to self. Don’t forget to live now.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
May Sarton

Meet my fiancé and his new blog

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My fiancé, hee hee. I almost feel like a grown-up.

Kaspa used to blog about being a Buddhist monk, and was well read in Buddhist circles.

He’s just started blogging again, and I guess he’ll be talking about Buddhism some more, as well as his other loves – theatre, books, poetry, ministry, who knows what else… and me ; )

Here he is at Purple Clouds. Do follow.

(warning – his first post is seriously soppy.)

And here’s the whole poem Kaspa quoted at the top of his most recent post. Enjoy.

New Religion

Planting seeds: Muddy water, set down

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As you read this, I will be in the middle of rural France with my love, writing, reading, walking, and hopefully eating lovely French bread.

This morning I have been working hard for several hours at my laptop. I was starting to feel a bit fuddled. Outside called me.

I didn’t feel like a long walk, and so made it to the edge of the lawn, where I sat down in a place I hadn’t sat before.

The vista was new and I took it in. A blackbird landed on a wood stump to the left of me, something tasty hanging from his beak for a little one in the nest. I turned my head to the right and saw a rust-breasted robin watching me from a hollow in the hedge. The sound of silence sprinkled with birdsong soaked through me. My brain free-wheeled for a while, and then began to settle – muddy water, set down.

I had a fresh surge of energy. ‘This is what I want to do next’. I came inside. I started writing.

Things you might be curious about:

Do you make enough big and small spaces for yourself in your life? If not, what holds you back? How could you make a small space for yourself right now?

Quotes:

The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.

-Floyd Dell

This post is from my weekly newsletter – to sign up, put your email in the sign-up box on the right and tick ‘Planting Seeds’. Don’t forget about the competit ion to win one of three coaching sessions as part of my Planting Seeds coaching practice

Let light onto us

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I’m still in France, surrounded in beauty. Golden spiders, giant fennel plants, undulating endless hills.

This poem, which arrived in my inbox via the glorious whiskey river, says something I like very much.

It also lead me to Five Branch Tree, which will lead me elsewhere and elsewhere if I’m not careful to turn my computer off and go outside when I’ve finished typing. Outside into the world. Where I can let light onto me.

Nothing but fade and flourish. And how much that is – how much.

Need not end. Indeed, nothing. Step
out. Grist for wits. Shadow of your
shell. Stand there.

No other ground. No
other. And the world concerns you every-
where, but do not identify with it.

Let light onto us. Flowers through the
gate, flowers skimming
the wall. A carpet of petal.

Treasures below the earth. Neither in
this world nor another, guarding.
Nothing but fade and flourish.

- Keith Waldrop

Read my short story (the one that my mum didn’t like)

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The everso talented novelist Caroline Smailes chose the short stories in this collection, and so they are bound to be very good indeed.

I was also lucky enough to have the only short story I’ve ever written included. It is a teensy bit dark. My mum wasn’t very keen on it. But you might like it.

I’m still in France and having a magnifique time. The landscape is so beautiful… and the patisseries are pretty good too….

Here’s the link on Amazon UK and here it is on The Book Depository if you’re not in the UK.