My Dear Friends
Sitting here at Orgyen, cancer and covid within and around me; a natural retreat – a blessing. I find myself contemplating life and death and dharma in an expansive field of memories; reviewing and reflecting. Some thoughts have emerged which I would like to share with you in the form of a poem. I have added a few notes afterward in an attempt to make my meaning a bit clearer for those who might feel confused.
good wishes are with you always
Tarchin

Sit down in the unimaginable fullness of your living
and savour this wild and wonderful truth.
From a first person perspective,
death does not exist.
I exist in the living process that I am.
so why should I fear what doesn’t exist?
This is true for me.
It’s also true for you.

Of course, death does exist from a third person perspective.
All ‘he-s’ or ‘she-s’ will die
and eventually do die.
We can fear that,
the loss of connection once they are gone.
I can grieve for that.
But I will never grieve for my own loss
when there is no me-process to grieve.

Perhaps this is why people find it so difficult
to really contemplate the fact that they will die.
Ernest Becker said we are trying to deny death;
that our culture is a colossal immortality project.
But there may be an even deeper truth here.

It’s only by taking up a third person perspective,
treating themself as an other,
that death becomes real.

In the utter silence of first person perspective
there is no place here for death.

Join me in this,
sitting together in fundamental zazen.
Settle in the unimaginable fullness of your living
and savour this wild and wonderful truth.

————

Sit down in, abide as, merge with, sitting is a stationary posture; not going anywhere; rooted right here; being this here. “Stillness and movement have merged in the womb of the uncreated” Sit down into the fullness of your walking. Sit down into the fullness of your running, the fullness of your wrestling with life. Sit down in the fullness of sitting.

“I exist in the living process that I am.” I exist in and as this living process that is giving rise to me realising that I exist as this living process, sharing these thoughts with you.

Ernest Becker was a social psychologist /anthropologist who wrote a widely quoted book called “Denial of Death”.

“It’s only by taking up a third person perspective,
treating themself as an other,
that death becomes real. “

We have become a society of observers and in the process of observing, we craft stories, explanations, and understandings in an effort to make sense of the seeming distance between ourselves and everything we experience.

Zazen is a Japanese Buddhist term for complete absorption in the fullness of being. Although traditionally it often takes the form as sitting cross legged in meditation, this sitting is really the stability of abiding where there is no abiding, pointed at in the first line of the poem.

I’m very happy to announce the posting of a recently completed book called “This Nectar of Naturalness” For those who would like to download it immediately, please click here.

My hope is that readers will find “This Nectar of Naturalness” to be a treasury of hints and intimations. I suspect that most of you will initially treat it as a conventional book and read it from beginning to end but then you may find yourself returning to particular sections and exploring the themes more deeply. Diving into your direct experience with one juicy metaphor or support, you come out in another place – sometimes a place in this book, sometimes it is in a completely different area of living. You recollect, integrate, look around, and then dive back in again. In and out, back and forth, thus your living weaves a world into being. A poem, paragraph, a single sentence or phrase may energise your contemplations for a while. They become trusted and much valued friends who you walk with wherever you go and whatever you do. It reminds me of a poem I wrote in 1986.

I dive in a dog and come out a cat.
I dive in a cat and come out a rat.
I drink a glass of water, it turns into the sea.
I jump in to go sailing and what’s become of me?

I am a happy dragon a rolling in the surf.
I shake my rainbow coils and grin
And disappear in girth.
Thick and thin, large and small, the ocean waves its tune.
The dragon’s me and I’m the sea so see that you are too.
We are the one that’s inside out and also upside down
But always we are right way up – now don’t begin to frown!
What really is this dragon me and sea that’s all around?
It’s blissful, clear and loving here
At least that’s what’s been found.

Click here to download the complete 140 page PDF version of “This Nectar of Naturalness”.

Today, Jan. 22, 2022,
Thich Nhat Hanh died in Vietnam
and my heart is cracked thoroughly open
moist eyes of gratitude
and a big smile
thankyou Thay,
thankyou, thankyou, thankyou
smiling, breathing, present, appreciating, offering.

For a rich remembering published in
“Lion’s Roar.” go to https://www.lionsroar.com/thich-nhat-hanh-zen-teacher-who-popularized-mindfulness-in-the-west-dead-at-95/?goal=0_1988ee44b2-9ee0296fd8-25587484&mc_cid=9ee0296fd8

Please click here to download or read a fully formatted PDF version.

It’s been raining all week.  A weather system of blocking highs and small intense lows is funnelling hot humid equatorial air down to Aotearoa, and so we sit on our damp, misty deck, having breakfast, listening to a morning chorus of invisible birds, cicadas, and background crickets punctuated by distant traffic sounds of people driving to work.  We live in an aqueous universe, water journeying through the lives of myriad beings, through uncountable domains and dimensions of  inter-being~inter-knowing engagement.  Everything is damp.  Fabrics have absorbed the moisture, wooden floors feel sticky, mould appears in unexpected places, tiny ants invade the kitchen and become regular frequenters of Greycoat’s food.  Outside, the garden is bursting.  In the heat and wet, the yellow French beans seem to grow as you watch, and the butternut squashes look like they are pumped up on steroids, heavy and lumpy with unusual shapes.  The peaches are splitting on the branches and everything is extraordinarily green for this time of year which is more often thirsty and brown.

In my mind I can see this precious nectar; water moving through membranes, slipping from one creature into another: micro-organisms in the soil, bacteria, worms, and mycorrhizal fungi, then up through trunks and branches to leaves merging with luminous grey mist.  For water, there are no boundaries.  It shape-shifts through the lives of all of us with hardly a hello or goodbye.  And so I sit, contemplating this mystery, while the internet bubbles like froth on the surface of a deep fermenting pool, crackling with small-visioned conflict and human-focussed concerns, seemingly oblivious to the magnificent dance of living that spans galaxies.  In the face of this, what is a student of dharma to do?

Covid, cancer, climate disruption, political power games, celebrity distractions, family conflicts, personal fears, secrets and anxieties, desperations to be in control . . .   Some days it all seems too much.  I close my door, pull the drapes, and hang a quickly scribbled sign in the window.  It says, “Gone Sailing”. 

I sail the ocean of suchness
in a boat of explanation.
a thin shell of crafted wood, metal, and transformed oil. 

Growing from this shell
like a tree reaching for the sky is the mast,
an anchor of upright self in the shifting winds of otherness. 

The higher the mast, the greater the conceit
but what a view!
The thin sails of assumption and cultivated belief catch the wind
and I think that I in my boat, am going somewhere,
or so it seems and feels. 

Scanning the horizon, I look for evidence of fellow sailors.
I focus lenses,
soften my gaze,
and survey in a gently aimless way,
and lo! 

I realise the ocean is cloaked with,
and in fact, composed of – boats
large and small,
macro and micro,
sailings of suchness;
masts bobbing to and fro. 

Everywhere I look,
this is what I see;
countless watchful sailors
waving familial greetings,
nautical camaraderie,
all feeling the winds,
tugging on tillers,
charting their courses
sailing this ocean of everyone’s lives. 

Some toss ropes and make their vessels fast with others,
and so we become a raft,
a biosphere sailing around its star,
surveying the cosmos,
oceans of oceans,
ships within ships. 

What a glorious day! 

Oceans of boats
boats made of oceans
worlds inter-being with worlds. 

Why should we fear getting wet? 

Dear friends
I just listened to a wonderful recording by biologist, teacher and writer, David Haskell. It seemed to capture in 40 minutes what I feel I have been hinting at in teaching for all these many years. I urge you to take time to listen, preferably with a good head set or sound system, and contemplate again, this symphony of natural awakening. https://emergencemagazine.org/audio-story/when-the-earth-started-to-sing/
with love and good wishes to you all
Tarchin

After a very extended labour, midwifed by Stephen, Mary and the printers in Auckland, I’m delighted to announce that the final version of This Nectar of Naturalness is now now available in a beautifully bound and laid out, limited edition paperback version. Copies can be can purchased from this site for $20 NZ plus postage. To order, contact Mary.

For those that prefer to read on screen devices, the free PDF version that many people have been using since last November has now been replaced with this updated final version. Click here to download this most recent PDF.

The following is a very brief excerpt to hopefully whet your appetite – plus a glimpse of the book’s over all contents..

“Now might be a good time for another pause in your reading. Let’s go outside under the wide open sky and sit together upon the earth.

Opening in sensitivity; every cell responding, feeling the breeze, smelling the world, listening to the multilayered conversations of beings all around.

Sometimes there is just smiling and we melt into mystery . . .
Sometimes there is just breathing, heart to heart with everyone and everything; rhythmic attunement, a music of satisfaction . . .
Sometimes all that’s needed, is to remember ‘presence’, and we are blessed . . .
Sometimes appreciating parses the universe and marvels at the self-organising miracle . . .
Sometimes everything surrenders and we sink into the matrix of earth, returning to the ground of becoming. What further offering is there to give?

Again and again, deepening into mystery, utterly beyond words and understanding. And we begin to find our way home, abiding seamlessly and wondrously, this nectar of naturalness suffusing all in love.”

Chapter 1 – Entering: A Cycle of Samatha – – – 8
In this chapter we learn to cultivate a natural flow of easeful presence ‘samatha’; calm abiding in the midst of whatever is occurring. Five words are introduced to support this work: smiling, breathing, present, appreciating and offering.

Chapter 2 – Deepening: A Cycle of Vipassana – – – 36
In this chapter, we deepen our understanding of the five supports while emphasising the ‘vipassana’ aspect of experience; an increased capacity for actively probing and investigating the nature and detail of what is immediately occurring.

Chapter 3 – Seamless Abiding: A Cycle of Samatha~Vipassana – – – 104
In this chapter ‘samatha~vipassana’ carries the meditator ever more deeply into the flowing mystery of life; a knowing, being and utterly complete functioning of profound wholeness. This is the true nectar of naturalness.

Chapter 4 – Action: Continuous Attunement – – – 131
Given the seemingly transcendent nature of ‘abiding where there is no abiding’, and given the immense social and ecological challenges facing us throughout the world, how should we act?

Endnotes – – – 150

Dear Friends in Dharma
I’m delighted to share with you the first section of a new book which I’m calling “Gifts of Wonderment”. This is a relatively polished draft of what will eventually be a much longer book. I’m posting it now as I don’t know when I will manage to finish the entire project.  The entire first section in PDF format can be downloaded here.

Preface
(written in late 2022)

I’m writing in a hut that looks out toward Mt Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa (New Zealand).  It’s been a wild night with winds thrashing the palm fronds and punctuations of torrential rain battering the roof.  Now the pinky grey light of dawn is beginning to reveal contours of cloud.  Spring leaves are dancing everywhere I look; a wet green lushness of sound and smell, a growing lightness, a sense of relief of having survived the night.  

It feels trite and perhaps a bit cliché to write that we are living in a historic period of immense uncertainty. After all, life as an ongoing evolving process, is inherently uncertain. Never-the-less, for people all over the world, a malaise of uncertainty tinged with uneasiness and bewilderment, seems to be staring them in the face wherever they look.   A viral pandemic is turning the human social world upside down and inside out.  UN climate-change conferences, repeatedly collapse in a hormonally driven dust storms of intransigence, wildly hurled accusations, and insincere rhetoric.  While this is taking place, greenhouse gasses continue to accumulate.  Ice-caps are melting.  The primordial symphony of life is sounding more and more dissonant.  Pollinators are out of sink with blossom time.  Soils are drying out.  Fires are raging.  Floods are becoming commonplace. Habitats are changing so much that participating species can no longer sustain themselves.  As the pace of modern human life becomes ever more frantic, driven by fear and anxiety and increasing desperation to do something, to ‘fix’ things, we find ourselves, either slipping into dark places of despair, or being seduced by promises of dictators, ‘experts’, strong leaders or utopianists, each one of them telling us the right way to live.  

As if this wasn’t enough, we are pouring more and more of our resources into funding military ‘solutions’: walls, surveillance, control, incarceration, invasion and proxy wars which in turn lead to floods of refugees, displaced people and damaged ecosystems.  Our economies have come to depend on ever increasing extraction, pollution, destruction and fear. Stealing from the future to fund an unsustainable present, we are degrading the living world, our homes, our heath care, education, and social support systems.  Seen from a larger socio-historical perspective, this is nothing new.  It is simply the current iteration of human struggling that has been going on for thousands of years. In Buddhist thinking, this engulfing ocean of suffering, where the very attempts to solve problems contributes to further problems, is called samsara. 

It is little wonder that over the centuries, yogis and meditators have opted for renunciation, withdrawing to caves or monasteries while yearning for transcendence. Today the caves and forest retreats are mostly privately owned.  You’d have to book a space well in advance and pay exorbitant rates!  In the pages of this book I will suggest other options, ones that might transform your sense of who and what you are, and how we might live well with each other.

Experiential understanding can only take place in and through the activity of the living that we are, and by ‘we’ I mean all of us together, an evolving biosphere on a particular planet circling a particular star.  There is no transcendent other place or space to which we can escape, no second planet or plan ‘b’ to fall back on.  With such understandings we are left with two options; either to sink even further into a swamp of despair and distraction sometimes punctuated by periods of angry thrashing around, or; to embrace the world in its fullness, to cultivate love and clear seeing in the midst of whatever we are doing and at the same time to help each other on the way.  

Gifts of Wonderment is an expansion of contemplations that have been with me since writing Natural Awakening nearly thirty years ago.  From time to time I would jot down an essay, or a poem, some of which appeared in earlier books or postings on Green Dharma Treasury. Revisiting them now it seems that all my writings are linked and so I find myself bundling them all together in this book.  You could think of it as a long drawn out message, put into a metaphoric bottle and thrown into the ocean of life, with the hope that it might some day wash up on the shores of someone’s experience, helping to reassure them that in their thinking and seeking, they are not alone.  Please accept this offering in the spirit it is given; a patchwork quilt of essays, instruction and poetic intimation which I hope will inspire you to embrace, to love and to wonder about this ever mysterious caravan of life unfolding, this collective dancing of all of us. 

Inevitably the book is somewhat autobiographical but in a non-chronological manner.  It arises out of what, I now see with appreciation and gratitude, has been a rich and full life of exploration – a wholeness of living. 

Growing old in the garden of Orgyen Hermitage, in the the lea of the Kaimai range that encircles the Bay of Plenty, my days involve weavings of cancer and ageing faculties, study and contemplation, life reviewing, writing, mentoring, and sharing with whoever comes by some glimpses of vision of how we humans could live. My hope is that these writings synergise the already present beauty and wisdom of whoever reads them.  May love and clear seeing bless us all.

Come, my friend,
come and ramble with me
through the fields of my life interests.  

Meandering along the pathways
of our unfolding aliveness,
We will see various flowers and creatures,
landscapes and scenes of adventure,
personal becomings and planet wide evolvings.
Sometimes strolling with ease,
sometimes climbing with exertion and deep gulps of breath
and occasionally
gliding so effortlessly that it might seem we could fly.

Let’s walk together;
your life interflowing with mine
and let’s see what we can discover,
and through our walking,
Let’s see what together we create.

To download Gifts of Wonderment: section one in PDF format, click here.

I come from my mother,
and mother I be,
forest and sky and thee.

The suffering in Gaza has become too horrific for me to not say something on Green Dharma Treasury. Not speaking makes me feel somehow complicit. Speaking, however, can feel trite, a way of unloading tension in an ocean of horror. That said, I offer you these heartfelt words.

On behalf of humanity, on behalf of all life on earth, stop the bombing, stop the killing! Stop and breathe and feel your utter interdependency with this mystery of life and living. As I and others have said and written so many times, “We are in this together.” What we do, matters and what we do, seeds innumerable actions in the future.

Today’s suffering in Israel and Palestine has grown from past violence, tragedy, humiliation and forced dispossession – traumatised people passing on their wounds so that oppressed become oppressors, and the macabre dance of sufferings goes on and on. Our economies reflect this, growing from systems of slavery, exploitation, colonisation and entwined as they are with a military industrial complex. Our legal systems, our health care and education systems reflect this. Today, the expressions of human neurosis have become magnified by technology, so much so that we often loose sight of the awesome majesty and immeasurable mystery of evolving life.

My dear friends, please join me wherever you are and remember the basics of sanity. Breathe and feel your feet upon the living earth. Cultivate generosity, love, patience and your inbuilt capacity for wonderment –right now – today, in the midst of whatever you’re doing. Help others wherever you are able and cultivate a heart/mind of kindness in everything you do. Years ago, I remember the Dalai Lama saying similar things and then pausing at this point as he became obviously griped with deep feeling. He then continued, “and if you don’t know how to be kind, at least don’t harm each other.” It strikes me, as it did then that this is surely the non-negotiable core of all meaningful practice.

I’d like to finish here by sharing the second half of a longer poem/prayer I called, “We Are In This Together”

We are brothers and sisters;
Conceived and gestated and born and nurtured
and matured by our mother – Wholeness/Inter-being.
And through our reaching bones and flesh,
extending and retracting,
drawn forward in wonder
and transforming as we go,
we learn our bodies;
babies, children, adolescents and adults
all of us making and remaking the stories of our journey
life-bards, each one of us
singing the world into being,
our mother tonguesounding forth in myriad cultural dialects;
through movement and gesture
touch by touch, we know ourselves into the world,
lives of mystery,
journeys of transforming understanding.

We are in this together.
Together we are born,
together we learn,
together we thrive,
together we suffer,
together we grieve,
together we console and,
together we die.

By we – I mean every manner of us:
humans of myriad shapes, flavours, colours and beliefs,
we mammals, we reptiles; we birds, insects and fish,
we trees and flowers, fungi and bacteria;
brothers and sisters all
we are in this together,
whirling round a life giving star
flowerings of sunlight
dancing in sunlight
knowings of sunlight
fabrics of radiance – bodies and minds
woven from a common source
sons and daughters all, singing our stories
celebrating this living creation.

Each one of us belong;
needed and valued,
Each one of us, and all of us together,
mysteries of interbeing
continuously awash on primordial beaches of now
reaching forth with cautious sensitivity and finding ourselves
finger to finger,
heart to heart.
Moons of aspiration
Shedding tears for our forgetfulness.

May our communal heart be firm.
May our goodness stay firm.
May our centre – our groundedness – remain firm.
May we remember our whakapapa
remembrance in the functioning of flesh and bone and action;
not this sect or that group,
but the great and venerable whakapapa that joins and heals
This journey of all of us.

And through remembering,
our continuously transforming ever-fresh communion
becomes the womb and mother
of unimaginable futures and future beings
conceived in love,
yet to be born.

May the balms of love and healing and deep understanding,
bless us to our core.
May the guns fall silent
in the Middle-east, Ukraine, and all the conflict areas of the world.

A month has gone by since my last post titled Gaza Catastrophe. During that time the situation there has become unimaginably worse. I have felt compelled to write further.

We take refuge in love and clear seeing
We live courageously in this world of birthing/dying
Our hearts embrace all companions on this path of lucidity and freedom

I am crafting this post this with a heavy heart. Around me the sun is shining, birds are singing, the gardens are beautiful with life unfolding and at the same time, on the other side of the world, unimaginable suffering is being brought upon millions in a tornado of insanity that is degrading our moral foundations and normalising the outrageous, the appalling and the inhumane. I invite you to watch the following interview and allow yourself to feel. https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2023/11/30/why-have-so-many-palestinian-children-been-killed-by-israel

As I and so many others have said again and again, “we are in this together”. The living world is an evolving web of communal responsiveness. All creatures along with all their environments are profoundly inter-dependent. The actions that we do, contribute directly and indirectly to the lives of everyone and so shape the future world. This inter-becoming comes with a challenging implication. It means that no individual person or creature can be in complete control of their life. Our very existence depends on others. We rely on situations and activities; on movements of creatures; and on cultures and ecosystems, beyond our control. I suspect that an unconscious recognition of this fragile and vulnerable nature of life contributes to states of fear, anxiety, hunger, desire, anger, aggression, depression, confusion, and even deep withdrawal. The same reality however, can nourish increased empathy, compassion and aspiration to support beauty and wellbeing throughout the world.

I watch the news, and fear for the too many people who actively or tacitly kill and maim and dehumanise others. I tremble for the people and corporations who make money from inventing and supplying tools, weapons and systems of coercion. Settler colonial mentality has become commonplace. It can apply to all humans wherever they see the earth as being merely a place to live, the biosphere as a larder and material storehouse to plunder, and other humans as either useful or threatening objects in one’s personal living space. Given various nation state’s support for Israel’s slaughter and persecution of so many Palestinians through supplying weapons and discouraging all forms of critical analysis of this tragic situation, it seems we are rushing towards a living hell. Through loosing touch with empathy and caring, through supporting situations in which we are increasingly consumed by concern for our individual and clannish well being, we are destroying the basis of life that sustains us. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

I wish I could tell you how to ‘fix’ this. But the idea of fixing things is perhaps still a vestige of colonial enterprise and human hubris. What we can do is to open our hearts to the non-negotiable interbeingness of everything and then to encourage the skills we need for living with uncertainty, ambiguity and collaborative action.

The Sanskrit word sila can be translated as ‘wholesome relating’. Sila points to an ambiance of serenity and open heartedness that blossoms with truly ethical behaviour. Is your tax money supporting weapons of destruction? Does it support institutions and tools of coercion? Does your consumption enhance the world or degrade it? Are we actively remembering to support and appreciate the lives of all living beings? Are we intentionally cultivating a heart/mind of spontaneous generosity? Are we using our senses and sensitivity to explore dharma and to come to know the world more profoundly and more compassionately? Are we refining our abilities to listen deeply and to speak truthfully? Are we learning to nurture each other in ways that support awakening? These questions deserve to be contemplated again and again and again.

It is true that we are inter-dependent phenomena but no-one can force us to hate, and no one can make us love. Namgyal Rinpoche said on a number of occasions that, “the practice of dharma is not a hobby”. A life of dharma demands courageous choice and sometimes even a patient doggedness. Only then will we see a such a life as a blessed treasure.

Over the last weeks, these contemplations and wrestings with conscience have been with me continuously. Wherever you are dear friends, I invite you to join me in this. Deepen your investigations, risk finding tears and wobbly stomach and the challenging vista of not-knowing. Utilise the various supports and contemplative techniques you have discovered in the course of your living, to deepen in wisdom and compassion and to share the radiance of this wherever and whenever you are able.

May wisdom and compassion,
the very heart and substance of being,
blossom continuously
for the sake of everything and everyone.

(Please feel free to share this post)

Dear Readers

It’s Christmas day in NZ. A gentle rain is thwap, thwap, thwapping on the palm leaves and a vast chorus of birdsong is celebrating the moment. Wherever you are and however you find yourselves, Mary and I send warmest good wishes along with a few links and announcements.

“Ten Love Letters to The Earth” This is a beautiful meditation composed by Thich Hhat Hanh who has been a central inspiration and teacher for me. You can either read the essay or you will also see the option of listening to it being read by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. My thanks to Emergence Magazine for posting this. Click here

On a much more somber note, yet equally inspiring in different ways, here is a link to a talk given by an extraordinary medical bodhisattva who has recently been working in Gaza. It’s called Wounds of War: The Gaza Experience Through the eyes of Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta. My thanks go to Kelvin Falconner for pointing this out for me. Click here

Closer to home I have uploaded the latest version of “Gifts of Wonderment” Section 1. The text has been further edited and refined, especially in the last two chapters. Some people have kindly enquired as to how section 2 is coming. I’m pleased to say that although the process is slow, it is happening and we might have it ready for posting in the coming year.

Green Dharma Treasury Youtube channel continues to have classes added. There is also a collection of audio and video teachings available from the treasury itself under Audio/Video.

Here at Orgyen, May and I are both well. Miraculously, on the cancer front, I seem to be in remission. We now have two self-contained retreat facilities, Kowhai Cabin and Forest Hut. As our travel days seem to be drawing to an end, we invite people who would like retreat with us to come and enjoy the beauty here at our little hermitage. If you’d like more information on this, contact Mary