Silence

Yesterday Ks and I went to see Buddhafield’s new land at Frog Mill in the Dartmoor National Park. The light was just incredible and the landscape beautiful and glorious. I was especially drawn by the atmosphere around the ruin of the mill on the land. Afterwards we had lemon meringue tart in a tea room in Chagford, which was also perfect.

I am very pleased. This week the Dutch Party for Animals gained two seats in Parliament. Needless to say that I voted for them too. I am just so happy that animals finally will have a voice that can be heard. They cannot talk: how can they fend for themselves? I’ve never been able to understand how we - the humanoid species - can presume to rule over the life and death of other creatures. If we look inside ourselves we’ll find a very strong wish to live and to breathe. Life itself is our most precious possession. How easy it is then to empathize with all creatures’ wish, longing or drive to live. So I just hope that it will help - even only just a bit - to have this new party watching out for animals and guarding their rights.

This morning I received an invitation for the opening of a very special exhibition. My sister (Inge van der Drift) and Barbara Czapran, an artist she’s been working with for years, are showing their recent pieces in a museum in Oslo. I am not sure whether I’ll be able to visit Norway before the end of the exhibition, but my sister’s installations never cease to amaze me, grab me and move me. I am very proud of her.

For no particular reason that I am aware of, the following lines sometimes pop up in my consciousness: ‘Hell is wide beyond measure, deep without a ground’. What’s really coming up is the Old English version of these lines, which I am too lazy to look up. They’re in a book that’s in a box that’s in my attic… At the time - that is when I was reading philology at university - I found the first prose written in the vernacular very inspiring. There was something very spiritual about the first accounts of Christianity. Well, hell must be a very spacious place indeed according to this text.

In the past four days I have been attending a seminar by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche about Heart Drops of Dharmakaya, or nine methods to search for the mind. The mind in the end is nowhere to be found, but a good place to start searching from is the heart space. Rinpoche’s teachings come from that place. They’re direct, simple and beautiful. One of his reflections was about space and people’s relationship to it. We want to fill it up and cover it up. We generally just don’t like gazing out over the void, let alone abiding in it. The practice is about resting in the void and allowing its qualities to arise. It’s a challenging exercise, that requires one to do nothing while being very much aware and alert. Recognizing the void is a first step and I think by now I’ve built up some courage to pay it a little visit now and again.

photo from space.com representing a heart-shaped crater on Mars

This morning I interviewed Neten Chokling Rinpoche about his film Milarepa. I left home in a hurry and cycled to the Amsterdam address where he was staying with his wife. Rinpoche was very friendly and it was easy to chat with him. The interview was scheduled from 10.45 to 11.15 am. A full half hour in total, granted to me by the publicity company of the Buddhist Broadcast Foundation. Strange how being in a hurry affects awareness, narrowing it down. Listening to the tape afterwards, I noticed how I’d not picked up some of his clues because of this time pressure. And I was really following my own line of questioning. I’d already read a lot about him on the internet: about his lineage, about his son who was recently recognised as Urgyen Tulku Rinpoche and of course about the film he’d recently directed. What I found interesting is that he is connnected to two teachers that are in the refuge tree we use in the Western Buddhist Order. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, his teacher in this lifetime, and Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, whom he worked with in his previous incarnation. Well, so much for Tibetan lineage. I enjoyed the interview and am now transforming it into an article. Rinpoche is flying back home tomorrow, to Bir in India.
Photo copied from www.lerabling.org.

My mother sent me a postcard from Portugal saying how pleased she was to see a photo of a beautiful goddess on my web-site. She’d finally managed to log in and surf the net from her Portuguese address and there was this goddess waiting for her on my blog. She didn’t mean me, I am afraid. She referred to the photo of Prajnaparamita that Sadara had put up on the site after he’d installed a second package of WordPress for me. She’s only been adorning my site for two days or so and was cruelly put aside for the current front page. Prajnaparamita is the mother of all the Buddhas and she’s my personal guide in the spiritual landscape. I received her visualisation practice on my ordination. She’s got supreme wisdom, she’s mature and she’s kind. She is all I’d ever hope to be, really. So here she is again, in honour of my mother and all mothers.

The question is: why blog at all? To me it is largely a matter of writing as an exercise, to have an incentive to write, to keep writing. And now I’ve started to ramble in English as well. This is mainly due to my frustration about the people that know me and cannot read my Dutch blog. Well, here is something they are able to read. I’d better make it interesting then. Right, my thoughts were wandering off. It is 4 degrees Celsius here in Amsterdam and soon, very soon, I’ll get up from my chair to grind some beans and prepare myself a cup of coffee.

Interesting events ahead are the International Buddhist Film Festival, starting on Sunday in Amsterdam. I’ll be interviewing one of the directors, Neten Chokling Rinpoche, for our magazine. A few days later I’ll be attending a seminar by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. So there’s some Tibetan time coming up for me. I’m quite excited. Yesterday in meditation I was able to sit with my excitement without jumping up and starting to do something. I was very pleased.

The director at work filming Milarepa, photo from www.milarepamovie.com