Monthly Recommendations

There are many women writers and artists I would wish to share with you in these pages, but I'll begin with Simone Weil, the French philosopher of the 1930s. Weil was an ethicist, an activist and a reluctant mystic and Robert Zaretsky's book explores her work in five key ideas. I am troubled, challenged and inspired by Simone Weil and reading her faces me with the most profound questions of being alive. These are, for me: her questions about the spiritual meaning of 'attention', the relationship of love as a counter to 'force' and the meaning and limits of action arising from spiritual insight. For Zaretsky click here, for the poet Lisa Robertson's meditations on Weil here and for Weil's own words on spiritual experience here 

A good friend recently sent me a link to this short and profound radio 4 interview with the Scottish poet John Burnside, who describes a recent experience of consciousness separating from the body. More than a 'near death experience' his words touch on the direct experience with 'wholeness', with the human longing to give words to the ineffable (what, in retreat we have described as the 'poetic logic of life') and his lasting sense that it is in witnessing this 'ordinary life' that we touch the transcendent.  To listen click here 

I recently found an excerpt from the writing of Dainin Katagiri, a section I had pasted into a document back in 2016. It was exactly the text I needed to re-visit, here six years later. It sits very well alongside the film 'Everything, Everywhere..' (above) in it's zen exposition on Dogen and Being-time. In mindfulness we often speak of 'being not doing' but here is its radical conclusion. The red sections are my notes so please ignore them if they're not a useful addition. I am constantly seeking to try to find the most plain language for that which can seem so abstract and conceptual. It's a good exercise. If we can translate these writings into our own experiences and words, they become 'our own' in the sense that these are fully digested and internalised insights. The excerpt is here.

And on the subject of Dainin Katagiri, his zen student Natalie Goldberg wrote a very insightful memoir  called The Great Failure which reflects on, amongst other things, the desire for the perfect parent and the Western tendency to project god-like qualities onto spiritual teachers, to the detriment of both teacher and student. 

Judith Blackstone is a dancer, psychotherapist and spiritual teacher. Her course 'the realization process' is available as an audio-book with her own soothing voice leading a series of guided embodiment practices. Her approach is drawing from the wisdom that the deepening of consciousness is not an ideology or a set of teachings but rather something that happens within our felt experience. It is a wonderfully practical, wise and deep offering and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who is seeking to bring healing awareness into the whole body-mind. 

There's a wonderful short documentary series on Netflix called 'Move'. For anyone who loves dance, it's a joy celebration of those choreographers who have innovated within the genre of their craft. One episode introduces the Israeli contemporary dance choreographer Ohad Nahari who teaches a form of dance called 'gaga.' It is 'gaga' because it's dancing as you did when you were a child, before you tried to look cool or pretty or anything for anyone but yourself. It's totally joyful and spontaneous and entirely about inhabiting your own body's way of moving. You can join in a gaga online dance class for about £7 one-off via zoom (the 11am EST is 4pm UK time) and join others leaping around their living rooms :-)