Golgonooza

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

Completed 'Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions': it is an excellent survey - balanced, intelligent and absorbing. It is written from a particular perspective - that of the 'Traditionalists', defenders of the perennial philosophy. Reading it has been a journey of nostalgia and recovery. He touches on a number of writers, explorers in the Spirit, that have been important to me and whose work has shaped me; and, would appear now to be in a process of return and recovery. In addition to the Catholic monks: Griffiths, Le Saux and Merton and the ever-present Jung is the German Buddhist convert, Lama Anagarika Govinda. He began as a Theravada monk in Ceylon and set out for the Himalayas one day to a conference to defend this older, austerer tradition from the apparent superstitious accretions of Tibetan Buddhism only to be 'converted' for a second time. He was one of the early expositors of the Vajrayana in beautifu...

This week I went to the European Foundations Conference held in Cascais near Lisbon. This gave me my first ever opportunity to visit a casino. The juxtaposition of sober grant-making bodies and the free-wheeling of wheel and dice was an interesting one (perhaps a side opportunity to make up on declining portfolios after the financial crisis)! But I think conditioned by the need to find an alternate space (to the hotel) that could house 600+ for dinner and entertain them. The restaurant glittered starry in black and white with ranks of tables ascending away from the stage and into 'space'  was, I think, the effect looked for. The food was surprisingly good given its mass production. This was followed by a stage show: the History of Fado, designed by an apparently famous theatre director/producer which I can safely say astonished its audience. It was if Portugal's ancient and distinguished folk tradition had decided to compete in Eurovision: high camp and florid 'a...

Harry Oldmeadow's excellent accounting of Western encounters with Asian religious traditions continues to prove gripping. I think his best chapter is 'Christian Missionaries, Monks and Mystics in India' which focuses on the four noble spirits of Jules Monchanin, Henri Le Saux, Bede Griffiths, and Thomas Merton. This is neither simply because they are figures close to my heart (and unfolding narrative) but they are (you may equally surmise) close to the author. He has also written individually an excellent book on Henri Le Saux/Swami Abhishiktananda. Fr Bede I knew, though we did meet, mainly through correspondence and for being a patron of the Prison Phoenix Trust: geographically the most distant, in practice the most active most especially writing to people in prison (by return) in his spidery but clear hand. I recall our first meeting. I had prepared a series of serious questions that I might appear profound (or, at least, marginally intelligent) and they all evapora...

The Transfiguration So from the ground we felt that virtue branch Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists As fresh and pure as water from a well, Our hands made new to handle holy things, The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed Till earth and light and water entering there Gave back to us the clear unfallen world. We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness, But that even they, though sour and travel stained, Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance, And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined As in a morning field. Was it a vision? Or did we see that day the unseeable One glory of the everlasting world Perpetually at work, though never seen Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere And nowhere? Was the change in us alone, And the enormous earth still left forlorn, An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world We saw that day made this unreal, for all Was in its place. The pa...

Harry Oldmeadow's 'Journeys East: 20th century Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions' seemed a good place to go after having read John Blofeld's autobiography. I have read it before. It is an excellent survey (and an expensive book, so many authors/books to follow up). What was the 'Orient's attraction'? How did people approach understanding its religious traditions, and assimilate them?  In what ways did they transform them and in what ways were they transformed by them? Some of the characters are deeply familiar - Mircea Eliade or Carl Jung or Fr Bede Griffiths - many are obscure to any other than specialists. All are woven into a text of great insight and skill that is written with a clear eye to current controversies, not least Said's 'Orientalism'. It is written from a traditionalist perspective - espoused by Guenon, Schoun, Coomaraswamy - but with an openness of tone and fairness that is admirable. One of the early characters pl...

John Blofeld's 'The Wheel of Life' culminates in his initiation into a Vajrayana path in Sikkim. He has tested many of the principle paths in Buddhism and has been drawn to this one. Zen requires one to plunge to the heart of things, and from there surface, allowing that centre to verberate through the layers of obstructing ignorance. Vajrayana peels those layers away, one by one, confident in arriving at the centre. The choice is one of temperament (shaped a Buddhist would argue by karma). The intensity of Zen proved unfitting to Blofeld's ox-like nature: plodding towards truth rather than plunging! The account of that plodding is at once informative, illuminating and delightful. It both captures alluring incident, trending narrative, and intelligent discourse on the core truths of Buddhism (shared by the cores of all authentic traditions). It stirred my own slothfulness towards truth: a nurturing of holy desire. It, also, evoked the Himalayas: seen from diver...