We spent the weekend of October 14, 15 16 at Sharpham Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Enquiry - which is in the very wonderful surroundings of the Sharpham Estate. The house is a beautiful Palladian style mansion. Ken Jones, a widely-published Zen Buddhist teacher and practitioner of thirty years' standing, gave an inspiring weekend. The days provided a space to explore meditation in an atmosphere of silence and in glorious surroundings. The programme consisted of sitting and walking meditation -We sat outside on the November Sunday morning watching the dawn rise gloriously and triumphantly over the river Dart- as well as Dharma talks and discussion on the theme

Turning Suffering Inside Out:: Introducing the Liberative Path of Emotional Awareness

Ken created an atmosphere of trust necessary for this enquiry. Fundamental to his teaching
“When afflicted with a feeling of pain those who lack inner awareness sorrow, grieve and lament, beating their breasts and becoming distraught. So they feel two pains, physical and mental. It is just like being shot with an arrow, and right afterwards being shot with a second one, so that they feel two arrows. For a start, we can develop a positive frame of mind for this work by reflecting on how illogical it is for this self to be so unique and special as to expect to be free from affliction. We can then determine to make a transformative use of our suffering, instead of just being a confused, complaining victim.

Once we can distinguish between the two arrows in our own life experience we can move on to the next step. What is it that most discomfits us or gives us pain in our life Where does the shoe pinch ?

The ups and downs of our lives constitute our inner workshop—from despair to elation, the whole gamut of pains and pleasures. Yes, pleasure too, is worth opening up to the light of bare awareness. Is it a pleasure that burns with the smoke of evasion – the need for the lonely, vulnerable ego to maximise the red letter days ? Or does it burn with the bright flame of the “sheer pleasure” of an unconditional awareness With practice we can begin to sense which is which at least at the more extreme ends of the continuum.

Working with our suffering, however, concentrates and motivates best, and especially where the pain is acute. The value of this practice is well expressed by Zen Master Susan Murphy, in Upside Down Zen:

What is the sharpest fact in your life right now ? Take a moment to consider your most haunting terror, your most persistent aggravation or relentless criticism of yourself, or a deep pain you have taken upon yourself. Feel it in your body. That terror, aggravation, shame or sadness is your dearest enemy … all your creative power for the Way is to be found right there … so turning that way is turning toward your true freedom … Such is the blessing to be found in a curse. Practice is not just a matter of breaking through the fact of suffering, but realising that suffering is a Dharma gate which lies open to you.

So a first task is to take stock of our lives, and to identify what discomfits us, great and small. And how we typically respond to it. This, in itself, is a useful undertaking. If Buddhism is essentially about “suffering and the way out of suffering”, then how about you ? Most of us, for example, experience some deep sense of inadequacy, or maybe guilt. At a deeper level still we may feel that something is profoundly lacking in our lives, or we may be haunted by existential fear or anxiety. Or we may suffer the physical pain arising from ill health or disability. At the other extreme we may be dogged by some comparatively petty annoyance, like the untidiness of a shared household. And then there are all the difficulties and discomfitures that are commonly encountered at work and in families and relationships.

The taste of liberation is one taste, and so insight arising from working with a comparatively minor aggravation can nonetheless be beneficial when we are struck by some greater misfortune. However, great grief has the potential for great insight, so it were best to work with the strongest emotions that we can handle.'

Furthermore Ken tells us that
"Awareness practice is learning to open up to some such powerful emotion without either letting it discharge itself (as anger or self-pity, for example), or suppressing it. This, incidentally, is not to deny that anger may be a healthy response to some injustice out there – but when angry we can often sense how much is in fact coming from some gutsy ego frustration. This middle way of creative containment is not easy to describe, and harder still to do. It requires a lot of personal experimentation." - from Ken Jones writings and weekend workshop November 2008

Ken is also a celebrated Haiku poet. He inscribed for me his book of Haiku Stories "The Parsely Bed" with

Pushing my reflection
this wheelbarrow
full of rain


Reading this I am reminded of Molly Molone -as she pushed her wheebarrow through Dublin's fair city