The Passage of Time.

It is as if the seasons have shifted and the cold that would so often have been associated with the beginning of the year is now spread over the land in the sharp glinting sunlight of an earlier dawn.  Large clusters of snowdrops hang their heads under the trees and beside the hedges.  Sporadic daffodils nod their yellow trumpets, testament to the false spring of a warm winter.  Now there are primroses at the side of the lane, soft colours beneath the tiny, fledgling leaves tentatively appearing in the shorn, stubby hedges.

What is a life?  A period of time between birth and death?  A life is not confined to time though: a baby born dead, a child taken from its parents, a life ‘cut short’, a ‘long and fulfilled existence’, are all lives.  The trees, the animals, the birds and the rocks are all lives – not lived by a human definition, but lived all the same.  So what is the life of a mother that moves from independence to immobility, from the sharp focus of a mind honed on manipulation to vague recollections surrounded by scatterings of the past?

This is her life - slumped in the chair that is the centre of her existence.  Sparse white hair covers her head; it is dropped forward, nodding in a deep sleep.  A huddle of unrecognised clothes, white knitted socks loosely cover her swollen, discoloured legs and there is the unmistakable smell of indignity.  The carer gently shakes the old lady’s legs to alert her to the arrival of two of her sons.  Her head is lifted in a movement that manages to express incomprehension and pain.  Her eyes are red, the right one shows a raw exposure and there are unnatural crimson blemishes creeping down each cheek, violent against the white grey folds of skin.  After a few brief seconds she recognises her sons and greets them in a high forced voice that neither had ever heard before – the voice of an imperious duchess from another age, a caricature of control and superiority.

So the mother is no longer the mother, but has shifted into some kind of creature that exists beyond any attempt to influence, to shape another’s existence; instead she clings with the desperation of the drowning to some semblance of living her own life.  She is profoundly deaf and can only be effectively engaged in communication through writing on cards; though this does not dilute the cascading, unrecognisable sound of her voice – high and penetrating.  Yet she does not seem to be unhappy, the bitterness of a few weeks ago appears to have been superseded by a more childlike connection with what is going on around her; a connection where she is centre of attention.

The slow ebbing of life is visible in the body that deteriorates over the time between each visit.  She eats with some relish and the rose tinted wine is enjoyed, but food spills over her clothes and there is a frustrating mouthful of liquid that cannot be drunk as her head has dropped to a point where she is no longer able to make that final, satisfying tilt to sink those last dregs of wine.  She moves with pain on account of a fall she had two days ago, lifting herself out of the wheelchair is slow with stoic facial expressions and subdued intake of breath.  She is as determined as ever and will not demonstrate any weakness.  As her sons leave there is a look of desolation in her watery eyes, not of anger as there might have been in the past, but of abandonment – a look that may have had its genesis many years ago in her own childhood.

This is the life of an individual, unique as a product of environment, culture and experience; separate, fulfilled or not, independent.  Is it then that a life is the process of individual progression from birth to death?  Or is there something that goes beyond the individual, that division between mother and son: an expression of humanity that is not divided?  Is there life that is indivisible beyond humanity? 

If so, then what is death?

Walking up the Waterfall

For a while a buzzard has flown down from the nearby trees to stand in the field next to the cottage in which we are currently living.  It stands for some time surrounded by green shoots and surveys the world with sharp inclinations of its head; occasionally it will heavily hop a metre or two to take up a new position.  I have not been able to watch it for all the time that it has been there, but I have, once or twice, seen it lift itself off the ground and with a few strong sweeps of its wings take its next existence back in the trees.  Is it looking for food potential?  Is it just watching?  What does it see from the ground that it cannot see from the trees?  To watch this bird, indeed to watch any living creature, is to connect to a world that is beyond words.

The human being is born into the wild, the uncontrolled; born into fragility; and born into the extraordinary potential that is life.  Unfortunately, much of this life is spent in denial and in direct conflict with all that connects us with that which is more than our individual and collective selves.  As human beings we are nature, indivisible from the animals, plants, and all living things on this earth.  When we die we return to the unknown and our deaths are no different to that of the fly, the elephant, the fish or any other living creature.  So why do we educate our children in enormous regimented mechanical factories?  Why do we create vast towering blocks for people to live in amongst the pollution in the cities?  Why do we produce food that has little or no nutritional value, involves the killing of animals on an industrial scale and the pumping of chemicals into their bodies?  Why have we made the pursuit of money the root of our existence?  Where is it leading to…?  Where are we going…?

So walk up the waterfall with a heart that bangs in the chest almost to breaking.  Watch with care the slight movement beneath the glassy water where the bird is about to rise.  Feel the soft rain fall and the bite of the cold on your cheeks.  In watching life, can you also observe your separation?  Can you see how you have been taught that it is all to be about you?  And how that prevents you seeing. 

The snow on the mountains cuts into the cracks and feels for the solid base to gather and stretch.  Blasts of wind take flesh and bone and play at throwing it down the hill – a good game!  If taken solely with sedentary logic and the pontification of the armchair, then your skeleton will gather dust in a room with no windows.  And the light of the slow revolution is appearing now through the spaces in the floorboards whilst the awful, destructive sense of those in authority is creeping like suffocating smoke into your thinking. 

You may be dividing yourself from others through sex, through age, through your cleverness – climbing the ladder of superiority; but you cannot hear the song, see the colours, feel the joy and touch the pain.  You are lost and already dead.  Others may also be lost, but they vibrate with a life that has come knocking unexpectedly at their door.

The buzzard is there again today.  It is cold and it shakes its feathers against the chill wind.

So the killing continues...

I wrote this blog about eighteen months ago and the only response I feel I can have to recent events is to post it again.  For the passage that begins ‘This week has seen...’, I now write - the massacre of innocent people in Paris, the state killing of an individual by use of a drone, the continuing aftermath of the bombing of a Russian passenger plane, the almost daily atrocities taking place in Syria, Iraq and many other places.  The politicians will call for greater security, the military will call for reprisals, the media will look for blame, and all will fuel the flames of fear.  So the endless circle of violence rolls on as the individual cowers in tears for the human race.  Soon the politicians will meet in Paris to discuss climate change.  Will they make the connection between the devastation of the earth and the devastation of humanity? Will they see that peace and sustainable living are intricately linked?  Or will they bow yet again to the forces of greed and callous cruelty?



Last night the moon rose from the Albanian hills, a ghost of what it was to become.  As it gained form and substance it filled with an extraordinary gold/silver light, sending a pathway across the sea towards the tiny village on the coast of the island of Corfu.  Today the sunlight dances on the water against the background of the blue, misty hills and the pale early morning sky.  The beauty takes the breath away, not in some sentimental moment, but in the realisation this is the natural world of which all humanity is part.  It exists, untouched by human thought. 

The killings go on, justified in the name of security by men on television in their impenetrable grey/black funeral suits; whilst for their 'enemies' murder is carried out by men dressed as plastic action men dolls.  Flesh and bone are torn apart to make room for ideas: there is nothing sacred about a life which does not agree with you, may threaten you, might defy you.  Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters brothers; indiscriminate lives, indiscriminate tears, lost smiles and all tenderness exposed as bloodied flesh in the explosion of bomb and bullet....

This week has seen what human thought does at its most vicious: the attack on the Palestinians in Gaza and the shooting down of a civil aeroplane as it was flying over Ukraine.  Both these events have seen the violent deaths of innocent people caught up in the desperate fighting of other human beings, who appear not to care who they kill as long as their goal is achieved.  Elsewhere bombings and killings continue, the number of refugees rise and those who suffer most are women and children – the powerless.  As a species we seem to be addicted to violence, to the cruelty and greed that drives aggression.  We lack sensitivity and are dominated by fear, which leads us to seek security in ways that make us all much less secure.  We are divided by nation, by ideology, by religion; by the way we define ourselves; by the images we create; and we use these divisions to give meaning to our lives, whilst we cut short the lives of others.  One wonders sometimes how we, who are so destructive, continue to live on this planet that contains so much beauty; and, if we continue as we are, it would seem likely that we will not survive much longer.

What can be done amid such apparent callousness and ignorance?  Can a new generation be brought into being where violence, anger and selfishness are not seen as the way to be? At the moment we live in a world of separation and we teach our children through this separation; humanity is separate from nature; I am separate from you.  So we compete instead of collaborate; we exploit instead of care; we are individuals standing out from the crowd – who we despise.  We compare so we might feel superior, but all too often we feel inferior.   The continuation of war takes place in our families, in our classrooms, in our entertainment, in our media and ultimately in ourselves.

Do we really want to live without war?  Are we prepared to face the reality of how we live; in conflict with ourselves and in conflict with others?  Or will we continue to wring our hands in horror at the photographs of bloodied, broken bodies?  Cry our tears of outraged hypocrisy at the carnage, call for revenge upon the perpetrators and carry on the madness that underpins our so-called sane society.

We have to look at what life is, without sentiment, without judgement, and observe exactly where our behaviour is leading us.  So come to understand what is happening, without justification and without condemnation.  And then that understanding leads to a change in this way of being, not through the creation of a new ideology or system, but through taking care of humanity through pure observation.  Taking care in the sense of learning what it means to be human in this world, not separated, but unified through our common consciousness.

This has tremendous implications as to how we bring up our children – this is where the road to sanity begins.

(I have reverted to the original blog title for reasons of simplicity and due to my technical incompetence!)

In the company of writers... a time of learning

Waiting outside the station for the taxi I watch for anyone else who might also be making their way up to the house that used to belong to the poet, Ted Hughes, for a writing course centred around nature.  When my wife read the description of the course to me so many months ago I felt I had to go; that this would be an integral part of the next phase of my life.  Two women come separately past me, looking every inch writers; confident, assured, knowing where they were going.  I begin to formulate the question, but they are gone, over the narrow bridge that spans the loquaciously enthusiastic shallow water.  I realise then that I am apprehensive, that I am experiencing a nervousness born from past hesitance and antipathy to groups, heightened by the sense of being exposed.  Can I write after all?

I arrive at the house, a grey stone impressive monument, slotted into the steep hill; the meadows below give way to young woods that dip to the river then rise towards the horizon.  The colours will change during the week, but the mists, early morning light and evening gloom will create an ever changing connection in the mind.  I am shown to the Log Shed with its own grey plaque detailing its grand opening some years ago by a Baroness, no less.  I am honoured indeed and relieved to find the Log Shed has its own bathroom, cause for relaxation at the thought of private nocturnal wanderings. 

I am the first, but it is not long before others join me on the lawn that overlooks the valley.  We talk in tones that acknowledge our reasons for being there and it dawns on me that it is our love of the natural world that has brought us here and that many of us will be quite tentative in our approach to writing.  Apprehension continues, not like a debilitating affliction, more as an uncomfortable memory seeking to take hold.  This would carry on to an extent into the next day in its symptoms of a tightening of the throat; a turbulence in the chest and a tendency not to seek out interactions. All the time there is a magic in process, unseen, unknown and arising from my fellow writers with their unassuming abilities and care for the world; the tutors, so different, but with intelligence that reveals itself in their conversations and a genuine concern to explore humanity’s relationship to nature and how that can be expressed in writing.

On the third day there is a change of perception.  No longer do I question my writing ability – it is irrelevant.  What is clear is that I need to work on the project, to give it serious attention and to see where it leads me.  I am no longer apprehensive, as the walks through the woods, the sound of the river and the watching from the garden have mingled with the conviviality and communication to bring about an intense feeling of learning.

And this is my project: to explore what is learning and what is our relationship to nature. This exploration is set against the background of the work of J Krishnamurti, with which I have been familiar for over forty years; I am currently teaching in a school founded by him.  This will give the exploration context in a global sense and provide opportunities for further conversations in India and the UK in particular.  There is no attempt to create an authority or to adhere to orthodoxy, but the opportunity to examine questions and statements that have been alive for a long time.  This approach sits harmoniously with the direction the week has taken, in the sense of engagement with the world crisis through nature and the fundamental understanding that humanity is inseparable from the natural world.

I am not alone when I return to the station, with a grateful acceptance of the road ahead.  I have said my farewells to the two women who, at the beginning of the week emerged from the station; they are no longer strangers. I have been helped both in practicalities, and in understanding.  The road stretches out.

Treading the Road of Peaceful Revolution - last blog

Above is blue sky, the pale tender blue of an early spring, crossed by wisps of smoky cloud blown by a sharp breeze.

There is a call, a shrill cry, and the form of a bird of prey, long wings outstretched, drifts over the bare trees.  The grey brown of its feathers can be seen and its head moves from side to side, surveying the ground below.  There is another and another, at different heights, barely a movement of wings, yet they cover immense distances in a matter of seconds.  They are magnificent, free and beautiful.

The ground below is damp and muddy with the footprints of many sheep; several trees lie like broken giants felled by the unusually strong winds of the winter.  It is a blessing to be alive on such a day.

 To wander through life, both physically and psychologically, with no end in sight and no roots to put down, brings a sense of exploration that is neither romantic nor seeking out new experiences.  In engaging with living in this way there is an immediacy to relationships, an openness to question assumptions and a willingness to face insecurity.  It is not possible to hide behind dogma, ideology; to join any movement; to follow or to be followed; and yet if there is any separation from life then all exploration ceases

To wander; to move around; to be free; to travel; to see foreign lands; to observe; to swim in cold rivers and warm seas; to walk in mountains and forests; to see all manner of birds and animals; to listen to the voices of others; to talk to friends and strangers; to make mistakes along the road….. to be human. 

However, I am an ordinary man, somewhat cautious, neither a courageous explorer, nor a discoverer of truth.  Nevertheless, I have always been curious as to what might lie on the other side of the next hill.  I am a family man; I have not as yet uncovered any extraordinary revelations; I have not changed the world although I may have made some difference somewhere; my steps are small, almost inconspicuous, leaving the barest of footprints in the dust, sand, snow, mud and leaves.  All the same there has been movement, constant movement, the passing of time, travelling, ageing, and learning…..always learning.  Not the accumulation of knowledge, just learning: finding out, understanding; so that one word, a gesture, an observation, a reflection, has the possibility of changing the mind, opening new doors and closing old ones.  I have travelled across Europe to India, to various parts of that country and met so many people.  I have visited places in Europe, observing the different cultures.

However, I am a teacher, not of a particular subject, but of children and young people and I have been teaching for a long time.  I have discovered I know very little with certainty, and have more questions than solutions

The pilgrim, the wanderer, the teacher, has a particular responsibility; that is to observe, to listen, to question and to communicate.  How communication comes about varies from person to person.  When modern society is seen in its insanity, arrogance and stupidity, then there has to be some kind of action, and an action that does not arise from a reaction that will further contribute to the mess.  There is a slow, urgent, revolution in progress. The present stage of my pilgrimage is to question and explore the relationship between young and older people through learning and to participate in this revolution.

My pilgrimage may be one I have taken alone, but it is not a lonely journey.  My wife has been is an intricate part of these wanderings; the pattern of my life is weaved in with hers.  My children, grown and living their own lives continue to be an essential part of this exploration, and now my grandchildren form part of this delicate and fragile pattern.  The students I am with now, all the students that have come before them and those that will come after are a constant source of discovery: the wanderer learns the danger of conclusions and the illusion of knowing.

Now, in my seventh decade, the road has left more time in the past than that which will be to come.  As the leaves of the trees turn brown, become brittle and fall, and the branch’s stark beauty is outlined against the silver of the winter sky, so my wanderings will cease.  But now it is spring and there is energy and life in the air; and I am quietly treading the road of peaceful revolution.  

J Krishnamurti and me: a relationship

For over 45 years I have had some kind of relationship with the work of the educator J Krishnamurti.  I have seen him, heard him speak, I have read books, watched videos and listened to audio recordings; I met him briefly once, but he was more interested in my young children than he was in me.  The man himself has been of passing fascination in that his story has more than its fair share of fairy tale elements, and, inevitably, many of those that have written about him have shed more light upon themselves than they have upon the man.  It is in the message that I have found a constant source of learning and renewing of understanding.

As a 19 year old in London just 18 months out of British Public School after 11 years as at boarding school, I had embarked upon an unconscious process of re-education.  Rejecting the system that had been effectively designed to produce leaders of the British Empire; men who would be unemotional, insensitive, arrogant and capable of withstanding all the possible physical and psychological discomforts that could be found in any foreign land, I pursued the possibilities that had been awakened by the intense cultural shift that had taken place during the 1960s, the decade that I had spent at school.  At an evening talk at the Buddhist Centre I came across Krishnamurti through a passage read by someone there.  It was on organised religion and powerfully exposed the hypocrisy and deceit that I had experienced at first hand in my schooling.  It was uncompromising, stark and discomforting.

What does it mean to engage with the work of one individual in one’s life?  Does it mean you become a devotee, a follower, as I saw so many people do, creating a sense of belonging by seeking out their own pet guru choosing from seemingly endless array that rode in on the tides of interest that flowed to and from India in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s?  In life, does one have to find a code by which one lives; an orthodoxy, an ideology?  Or does one engage directly with life itself?  Attracted by the sparseness of Zen Buddhism, the similar brevity of words found in the Tao te Ching and the simplicity of Buddhism, I found that Krishnamurti’s way of questioning, creating seemigly paradoxical statements and unfolding insight through negation led me to explore life, not settle on ‘inspirational quotations’ or trite phrases.  As I have over the years met people who were closely involved with Krishnamurti’s work, mostly in education in the UK and India, some for a very long time, I have been struck by the integrity and humour of the vast majority of these people.  Many have become friends.  All have spoken of Krishnamurti the human being, not his intelligence alone, but also his fallibility and mistakes. Always they spoke of his sense of affection for humanity – you could feel it, hear it when he spoke in front of the crowds in the tent all those years ago.

I have learnt from my wife, our children, the students I have taught and continue to teach.  I have learnt from the wind, the sun, the rain, the sea and the hills that fall away into the mist.  I saw into death through the eyes of our golden retriever on the night before he died, and through a moment of understanding with my father just a few days before his troubled life ended.  There is so much that teaches us and we do not need the words of another to tell us how to live.  However, I continue to return to the work of Krishnamurti, particularly regarding education and nature, as I walk the path of shedding all the thoughts that have crystallised into unshakable convictions, empty ideas that carry their own destruction: re-education is a lifelong process.

I have deliberately not quoted any words from Krishnamurti here.  Look if you are interested, but treat them lightly, observe them as you might some lofty bird circling the sky that melts away so silently.  As with all words, watch yourself and do not get caught up in the net of identification or rejection.  If necessary, put them to one side.  My feeling with language is that what is not said contains as much significance as any utterance.

photographs taken by Maggie Alexander of the Ganges near Rajghat, Varanasi.

People move from place to place

People move from place to place, some search, some flee and others resignedly take whatever faces them.  For centuries there have been the nomadic survivors creating a way of life that gives attention to both the land and people’s needs; ensuring that the delicate balance is maintained and life continues.  Similarly, for centuries there have been people seeking refuge and safety from attack, abuse, escaping from conflicts and desperate for a life of peace; hounded from their homes through floods, droughts and crying out for food and shelter.  This is nothing new.

What is new is that we can now so effectively terrorise our neighbours and we can do it without leaving the comfort of our own little war offices hundreds of miles away.  Bombings can be done to order, smashing the fragile growth of young children; strutting militias can be directed to rape women and hack down men; and the politicians of the world can play their deadly games whilst the men in the background grow obese on the fare that is bought through the sale of death.  We are all in it for the profit, and we are all are clever people who can string together so many lies that for centuries we believe it is the way of man to destroy another; to cut the flesh so that it bleeds and ensure that only certain lives are worth anything at all.

Under the setting sun, in the cool breeze of an autumn evening there is such a clarity to the air that the distant trees set on top of the hill stand with stone like sharpness against the backdrop of a black, crimson sky.    Close by, the living creatures that hop, spin, scurry and nibble are going about their business and will leave traces for us to find in the dewy morning – a delicate web here, small cavities in the ground there and many mysterious droppings.  In the cold, clear air wisps of departing mist cling to the trees and the dripping can just be heard, as the leaves tremble from the weight of such fine liquid.

photo: courtesy of Maggie Alexander

  So time stands still in the English countryside, as time stood still all those years ago when a young man swam from the banks of the Euphrates, ate dates from the palms that swayed in stately fashion on the outskirts of Baghdad and walked the streets of Kabul resplendent in cheap Afghan coat and even cheaper locally crafted boots: time standing still in a world of magic, of exploration and where the stench of fear was conspicuous only by its absence – a time that connected this emotionally hungry and reticent youth to the World.

Since then there has been progress and the advent of a modern world, where money rules and violence comes in the guise of the smiling politician whose only concern is our security:  and the hooded individuals prepare to shatter their bodies so that others may be broken apart and made grotesquely disfigured, torn and bloodied.  Life becomes even cheaper as the lifeless float face down on to the soft sands of tourist beaches.  We have arrived at that modern world that separates, crystallizes and breaks everything down to its essential components – divide and rule, divide, create enemies, real and imagined, divide and grow fat on the suffering of others.

We do not stand by and wring our hands in a pathetic show of empty concerns, but we blow through our cupped fingers, we blow the winds of change, and they will be irresistible.