Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

I don't need very much really. A book, a glass of water, of better still a glass of wine, although at my age now, even one glass of wine makes me regret it almost instantly. A pen. I need silence. That is not so easy. Solitude. I am totally low maintenance. I don't even really need to travel. I don't know why. Perhaps because I am already a stranger here, so everything is still alien, outside to me. So, no, I don't need to travel either. I love the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the hazel and elder. Is there are word for this phenomena? The sound of the wind in the leaves? I love the early morning light, the way it alights on the melamine whiteness of the desk, a tinted blue. I love the sound which my fingers make as i run them over the keyboard, clicking and clacking. To me, it is the most civilised sound in the world. That and the scratching of an ink pen on thick, bond paper. I love the way i can feel time run around me. Run past me. Swirl about me. Time ...

So here I am in the aftermath of the aftermath. Seriously questioning my wisdom of not taking that holiday in Singapore, the Singapore which i not only have nothing in common with any longer, but also which i care nothing for. Materialistic, over developed, bastion of the free markets, ruled by a government who are signed up boot wearing facists who will stop at nothing to reinforce their world view, populated by people who are so rich and yet at the same time so harassed that they treat each other and the people who do the menial chores with the kind of respect i would never wish on a Donald Trump. However, now that Brexit has taken place, the UK is a sort of crazy place to be in. After two days, there is now talk of rerunning the referendum. The ugliness born of frustration and resentment now has permission to surface its ugly head. All over England reports are coming in of people who are not white or not English being subjected to abuse. Some of this really cruel - children, as yo...

So here we are, after twenty years of being too clever. There is such a thing as being too clever, you know. Being a smart arse. This has been happening to politicians and business - the unholy alliance. Raking it all in for themselves. Using the catastrophe of the financial crises to funnel money to the top. Rely on wet liberals like me to just get on with it, as long as we just had our one holiday a year and were relatively well off. People like me who did not do something, although we worried deeply, about the rising inequality. They used the media, they used the financial markets. They used the economy. They used their influence. Their cushy talks in Davos and the WTO and the free trade pacts. They used wars and they used patriotism. They used it all to get their own way, to push the neoliberal, the market ruleth all, the Mammon of the Matrix, to do enable them to roll around in money, to take luxury cruises in the same seas that children were drowning in because of wars they had...

Over the past few weeks I thought that people were voting for the question, do you want to remain in the EU? It was a simple question, although the issues were very complicated. Legislation, co-operation, peace, the economic benefits - you know, complex huge questions, which demanded a lot of thought, and also a lot of caution. What i did not realise was that this was not the question which most of England was engaging with. The question which most English people were thinking about was, "How have you and your class fared over the past 46 years?" If the answer was, we have been jollying it up and never been made to be accountable for the fuck ups which we have made, then you would vote in, cos why would you change the status quo? But if the answer was, it has been utterly, completely, miserably a life without hope, like  protagonist in a Ken Loach film, then your answer would be, No, cos, obviously, things can't go on the way they have. Freed from the fetters of party loy...

I have been doing fractions with my class. Now they can contract and expand fractions, they can add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. Next week, I will teach them to use fractions to cancel common numbers out. It has been the best fun showing them the physical proof and then explaining it mathematically. They absolutely love it. Maths is now something they can begin to play with. I start by drawing circles on the board. Can you see that 10/3 is the same as 31/3? Yes. Yes, they say. Do you understand this? BUT you do not have to draw circles to work the sum out. This would be a waste of time. All we have to do is work it out mathematically. Granted I have had to explain this about a million times to some children, but eventually, we have all gotten there. Fractions are actually really easy. The hard part is getting the children to remember what to do with each of them. So after Wednesday, next week, when I will complete cancelling out, I will do a set of papers with...

Honey... all you need for everything Honey is a miracle substance. Great for skin care, illness, wounds... if you have raw honey in your home, you have everything you need to keep yourself healthy. But it HAS to be raw honey. Even better if you have it raw and local. A great skin/face mask is raw honey mixed with egg yolk. Free range organic egg yolk is best. Whip it up with some almond oil and leave it on your face till it dries. Wipe it off with a soft warm towel. Do this once a week and you will have the skin of a 16 year old all your life. What about the hair. Wrap the hair in the same mixture and then rinse it out with COLD water and vinegar. If you want you can add nettle tisane. This gives you soft shiny hair. It may smell of egg though, so maybe you want to skip the egg. Massage it into your scalp as opposed to slathering it on your hair, it is the scalp that needs the LOVE, the hair is secondary. Wounds. If you have a cut, wait for the bleeding to abate, if you have ...

2007 Yesterday we celebrated Oisin's birthday. He is now almost 15. He is now taller than Peter and stronger. He is funny, and patient, and sharp, and perceptive, and resourceful. He loves arguing and listening to music. He wants to do international law on human rights and the environment. He also wants to be a kick ass parkourist. He loves pizza and burgers, sushi, ramen and roti prata. He prefers being vegetarian, but this is balanced out by drinking loads of Coke and eating lots of sweets. He enjoys watching YouTube and playing Assasins Creed. But he also plays Nitin Sawny on the piano and will stay up to compose songs on his Mac. He loves drawing and painting, and travelling. He talks to people and makes friends easily. He knows when to keep quiet and when to speak up. He has some very curly hair. He has no fear of heights. My Oisin. Beautiful and graceful and full of light. A child whom is almost no longer a child. I try not to be proud of my children, because real...

The good weather they say will soon be at an end.That's one thing for certain, the good weather will end, at some stage, in the meantime, i think we try to enjoy it. And how am i doing this? By sitting in the house, lying in bed, trying to get up some energy to do something. I have spent the whole weekend driving - first to St Andrews, then around St Andrews, and then back from St Andrews. I am beat. St Andrews itself is a very pretty town. It is golf courses and university. Literally. There is nothing in St Andrews which is untouched by golf. It has more golf shops per square yard than any other place in the world. Everything else is built around the golf. The shops to cater to golfers and their families/partners - i was sitting in the breakfast room and watching over the Old Course and i said to my mom, people love wearing uniforms. Look at all these golfers, they all dress alike. Golfers and their jumpers and trousers and hats and sweaters. Their bags and their tans and their ...

Today I was really pissed off with myself. After all that reading with the Gita, I enter a situation and proceed to act in a completely unskilled way. It has to do with being hurt. Of course I should recognise instantly that there is no such thing has being hurt - really no one can hurt me. No one can make me feel small without my consent. Similarly, no one can piss me off without me wanting to be pissed off. I suppose i need to change my perspective and realise that indeed when someone is being continuously and consistently acting as an asshole, then it is certainly true that they are in some way impaired. But it is not my job to sort them out. They need to sort themselves out. What I need to do is to not get in their way. Or in my way. I am still trying to ask myself, what is the learning which i am resisting about this situation? What is it that i find so pleasurable in holding on to this position? I think that partly, I find it really hard to see that people cannot see that...

Christ Church Cathederal, Dublin Rereading the Gita, the answer to my question about self annihilation is given. You understand that there is the immortal self which is never vanquished and is perfect in itself. The senses, if uncontrolled by the mind, will distract you for the true self, the Atman. The mind is like the charioteer (which is why Krisna is the charioteer). The self, or Atman, is the immortal self, which stands perfect in time. It is one thing of course to agree, if I agree with this, but it is another thing to put it into practice. How do we do that? It is all well and good saying we can retract our senses like a tortoise retracts its limbs and we don't get swayed by fear and anger, etc, etc... but then, what does that look like in practice? When someone is doing not very nice things to other people, do you then go to that person and say, that was not very nice what you did, or do you just ignore that person and say, well my sense impressions are telling me...

Well, the weather is fabulous. Literally. Tales will be told of it. I was so warm last night and as we headed back to Belfast, there was something odd about a very dusty countryside - and it hasn't rained for only three days. I think this is due to go on for a few days yet and then it will break when we head to the farm. Of course. It is a bit shit, i know. It has been very interesting reading the Gita. The best is saved for last - the last five chapters, Krisna talks about being able to ignore the crazy, and having a path which is freed, having a path which does not have any attachment to anything at all. It must be amazing to lead that sort of life - it must feel slightly flat. Also it must be a bit detached from the world around you. Surely you'd like to give people some help and some empathy - can you do that if you are more or less fire proof to life around you? Can you do that and still be useful to others? I suppose you can, even as I write that, I think, yes you...