A red or white poppy?

This time last year the commemorations around the centenary of the beginning of the First World War got me in quite a jam over how I felt about the red poppy. I have proudly purchased a red poppy every year that I can remember. I can remember one year pinning a red poppy to my primary school sweater and then keeping it in my pencil case come the end of November, where it stayed until the next November.

What really jarred with me last year was the idea of commemorating the start of the First World War. If we were going to go all out and have intensified national ceromonies I thought, wouldn’t it be better if we commemorated the end of the First World War? At least at the time the soldiers sent to fight in that war believed they were going to fight ‘the war to end all wars’. Because of that belief, seeing the end of the First World War must have been glorious; the end of all wars!

We now know that this was not the end of all wars. Even recently through Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 14 years we have had to watch our brothers and sisters come home in boxes. And what of the countless civilians lives that have been lost to war? Civilians now greatly outnumber the amount of soldiers who are killed in war.

Furthermore over this summer we have had the devastating affects of war made very apparent by the largest refugee crisis that we have seen since the Second World War; a direct result of the conflict in Syria (as already covered by this blog). The horrors in Syria have displaced half of the entire population of the country.

David Cameron and the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond along with many other politicians and high profile public figures will spend the next month or so boldly wearing a red poppy. They will at the same time continue to advocate and push for more bombing in Syria.

Last month our government welcomed one of the world’s biggest arms fairs to London as part of the government’s current campaign to boost its position as the world’s second largest distributer of arms. Attending the arms fair last month were authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Azerbaijan .

Yet members of that government will still be seen ‘respectfully’ wearing their red poppies.

It is a complete affront to anyone who has lost a loved one through war and conflict, civilian or soldier.

When we wear a red poppy we say ‘we will remember them’. I fail to understand how you can ‘remember them’ if you advocate for war and deal in arms.

It seems to me that the red poppy and remembrance has been hijacked. Our grief and our sense of loss for the fallen have been exploited. Each Remembrance Day we are shown greater displays of military parades, marching bands and rousing poems of heartache. Guns fire. Silence falls. We remember them.

But we are not prompted to consider in our silence; why wasn’t the First World War ‘the war to end all wars’? Why are people still dying as a result of armed conflict? Why are we still packing off our sisters, brother, mother, fathers never to be seen again?

This is why, alongside my red poppy, I will be wearing a white poppy. I have read explanations of how the white is a symbol for peace, a statement that says ‘never again’. But actually, I believe that most people that wear a red poppy, as I have always done, wear a red poppy for exactly those reasons anyway.  Wearing a red poppy means remembrance and peace.

For me, wearing a white poppy is a tiny flame of defiance that says to our world leaders ‘I know what you have done’. Wearing a white poppy will hopefully prompt people to ask ‘why are you wearing a white poppy?’ and I will be able to explain what I have written here. It is important that we raise the profile of peace during Remembrance because that is the only way we can truly say ‘we will remember them’. The only way we will stop having casualties of war is to stop having wars.

I will wear my red poppy too out of respect for so many of those who draw comfort from seeing them pinned to people’s chest, who wish to remember those that they have loved and lost. I will wear it in remembrance for all of those killed in war and conflict.

I will wear my white poppy for peace. I will remember the words of Harry Patch, who was the last fighting Tommy;

"I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder." 

You can buy white poppies from http://stopwar.org.uk/shop/white-poppy-2

Remember that when you buy a red poppy that money goes towards supporting veterans and I would compel you, whatever colour poppy you decide to wear, to donate to the British Legion http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/story-behind-the-poppy-8?utm_expid=51730890-7.iYtKnQpLTO6fjUnTZeHP_w.7&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

The Refugee Crisis; the Stroud Coffee House Discussion

The dark, drizzly September evening didn’t put off around 100 supporters gathering in Stroud to answer a crucial question; what can we do about the refugee crisis?

On Wednesday 23^rd September people from Stroud crammed in to the Imperial Hotel for a discussion organised by Amnesty International mid-counties and Stroud District Green Party, to answer that important question;

·         What is already being done in Gloucestershire?

·         What are the needs?

·         What can we do here in Stroud?

·         How can we change the rhetoric from ‘keep out’ to ‘welcome’?

·          What should we be demanding of our MP and the government?

Imperial Hotel, Stroud, crammed with supporters

How have we ended up with so many people seeking safety?

The evening kicked off with a lively and interesting discussion from Judith Large, Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Conflict Analysis Resolution, University of Kent, about how we have come to the current situation in which half of the Syrian population has become displaced. The desperate situation began with what was initially a popular uprising in Syria but soon spun in to an international issue because of a dictator who refused to budge from power; President Bashar al-Assad.

One of the most heard about results of the conflict in Syria are the significant advances and abuses carried out by the so called ‘Islamic State’ or ISIS. Since 2013 ISIS have made strong advances in Syria and Iraq and none of us strangers to the news of the various atrocities that they have inflicted.

From the outset the US have supported the Syrian rebels opposing President Assad, initially with food and supplies but then moving on to training and arming them. From 2014 a US-led coalition, of which the UK is a part, has been carrying out airstrikes against ISIS.

Between the brutality of the Assad regime, the barbarity of ISIS and the bombardment by the US-led coalition, Syrian civilians, regular folk like you and me, have become terrified for their lives. More than four million people have packed up and left in fear for their safety.

The question Judith Large left for those gathered in Stroud to wonder was; is the use of force really the answer to a problem caused by a use of force?

Climate change

An interesting point raised from the floor was the impact of climate change on the current refugee crisis.

The worst drought to strike the country in modern times had gripped Syria in the years leading up to uprising in 2011. Researchers were able to draw one of the strongest links yet between climate change and human conflict;

“They cited studies that showed that the extreme dryness, combined with other factors, including misguided agricultural and water-use policies of the Syrian government, caused crop failures that led to the migration of as many as 1.5 million people from rural to urban areas. This in turn added to social stresses that eventually resulted in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.”

Our government is taking an embarrassingly inadequate approach to the refugee crisis in general, as I will go on to explain, but this adds yet another dynamic to that woeful response. The Conservatives have taken a full scale assault against the climate at an extraordinary pace, killing off many of the existing green policies in the UK.

Stroud MP, Neil Carmichael has demonstrated a real ignorance for the environment during his time in office, voting against many measures and in support of fracking; as covered in this blog previously.

Action in Gloucestershire and Stroud

The swell of action from the people of Stroud has been astounding. An article in the Guardian on 5^th September described how locals had offered to open up their homes to refugees. Stroud District Green Party played their part by writing an open letter calling for Stroud to take it’s fair share of refugees. The Stroud News and Journal reported how District councillors, John Marjoram and Martin Whiteside, County Councillor Sarah Lunnon, Stroud Town Mayor Kevin Cranston and Green MEP Molly Scott-Cato had used the letter to indicate that Stroud could take just 10 refugees to have a fair share of the 40,000 refugees which the EU will need to resettle over the next 2 years.

Some of the most impressive action locally has come from the facebook groups as Jeannie Etherton passionately explained to all of us assembled in Stroud on Wednesday. These groups have been very far from being ‘just a talking shop’ and have in fact been the main mechanism for local people to combine and coordinate their stunning efforts.

There are two main facebook groups that Jeannie discussed, the first being Stroud2Calais – Refugee Support which started as a group to get donations to ‘the Jungle’ in Calais but has moved to more widely supporting refugees entering Europe. They have now raised £2607 in one week to go to a fundraiser purchasing tents for refugees.

Jeannie explained how this group has joined up with the other incredible group Stroud Supporting Calais Refugees. Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of the kindly people of Stroud this group have collected an unimaginable amount of donations in to two large shipping containers to take to Calais; the collection has now ended because they simply cannot take any more donations.

Collecting the donations for these groups and raising the funds has taken an enormous amount of work and energy by local people volunteering their time and working tirelessly.

It is so terribly important that we do all that we can. Not only are the conditions in Calais ‘appalling’, as described by the charity Doctors of the World, but to make matters worse there have been reports that the French authorities have recently moved in with bulldozers and tear gas against the camp.

Judith Large 

Next to speak at the Coffee Discussion was Adele Owen from Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers or GARAS. Adele explained that GARAS work with people seeking asylum in Gloucestershire and how recently their work has been thrown in to the forefront of the public’s consciousness because of the current crisis.

The government have proposed that they will take the embarrassingly low amount of just 20,000 refugees over 5 years and Adele explained how this represents only 0.2% of those people who have left Syria. However refugees are still coming from many other countries, including Afghanistan (the setting for a previous military intervention from the West that you might remember).

Furthermore the plan from David Cameron is to help only those refugees still in Syria and not any of the people currently on the move or already in the awful conditions in Calais. This plan is very ill thought out and will not, as Cameron has argued, encourage people to keep away from the EU.

In the discussion it was noted how the government, some media and other sources appear to deliberately blur the language used when referring to the current situation by interchangeably using the words ‘immigrant’, ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’. The discussion raised how Neil Carmichael MP has seemed intent on muddying the waters in this way whilst towing the government line that they are doing enough and will not do any more to help.

GARAS are now working with Gloucester City Council and the County Council to arrange the all important programme of response to the current situation. It is crucial to have structures in place with health, social services and education to ensure that the people who come out of the crisis to our county get the best support that we can give.

Not a single seat left.

What next?

Once refugees start arriving in Gloucestershire, and hopefully Stroud, Adele Owens said that the current groundswell of support will be crucial in assisting individuals and families to settle. Help will be needed to prepare and kit out houses with basics such as TV’s and simple home comforts. There will be a continued need for donations and for donations of appropriate food.

People settling afresh here will need locals to help them get familiar with the area, to help with learning English and support with accessing local amenities and services.

We need to keep the movement going. We need to keep our hearts open.

Adele’s message was that we are all human first.

Local Amnesty International members explained that it was crucial for as many people as possible to continue to put pressure on the government to take adequate action, particularly by writing to your MP. You can write to Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud District, by writing to;

           Neil Carmichael MP

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

You can also contact him through his website http://www.neilcarmichael.co.uk/contact

It would also be very good if you could send copies of letters/emails that you send to the local press to help raise the profile of the crisis locally.

Talk to your neighbour

In my opinion one of the simplest and yet boldest suggestions made at the evening event in Stroud was made by a woman standing near me in the throng of the discussion. It is my regret that I did not have the chance to get her name, so if you know her, or you are her, please let me know if she would like to be credited properly.

This woman passionately explained that one of the most important things that we can all do is to speak to our neighbours. We can challenge attitudes that we meet that might be misguided or else discriminatory. There is a lot of misinformation out there, as with blurring of the terms of ‘immigrant’ and ‘asylum seeker’ for a political purpose. There is a lot of hate out there with certain groups looking to capitalise on people’s fears of immigration.

We can counteract this by putting an alternative message out there, by painting the picture of what is really happening and by cutting through the myths and confusion; that we can afford, in every sense of the word, to do more.

Talk to your neighbour. With compassion and with love, show everyone you can that the most important thing to do in light of the current crisis is to open your heart.

***

I note that I have not really credited people directly and have probably unfairly skimmed over individuals and groups who have done awesome work locally. I apologise for this but suffer from the limitations of writing inbetween the normal hustle and bustle of life; which for me includes a very energetic 15 month old! Please post about anyone you think has been important in the comments and include any links that are relevant

Goodbye Āloka, our teacher; what Buddhism can teach us about the world we have

Goodbye Āloka, our teacher; what Buddhism can teach us about the world we have

I have not been able to write much recently. I have been caught in the busy trappings of life; working, renovating a kitchen and spending time with my family over the summer. So it seemed apt to me to take some time to stop and reflect on the death of a very important person and Buddhist teacher; Āloka David Smith.

Āloka David Smith 1946 - 2015

Āloka David Smith attained awareness in 1981 and went on to found  and lead the Dharmamind Buddhist group. It is through a Dharmamind group in Nailsworth, Stroud, that I came in to contact with Āloka and his teaching; I feel that I owe him a great debt for his teachings. Āloka’s teaching focused on practicing Buddhism ‘in the body’ and reintegrating the body and mind. Āloka advocated a practice that was simple, yet so difficult, in it’s method of ‘just sitting in open awareness’ (with no breathing techniques etc in meditation) and achieving a connection with your true awareness, or Buddha nature, through a process called ‘silent illumination’.

Although I am an atheist, I would also describe myself as a Buddhist and Buddhism is very important in shaping my thoughts about how we should approach the world and how/why to ‘be green’.

I could get in to a long complex debate about how you can be a ‘Buddhist Atheist’ but this isn’t really the space to do that. It is simpler for me to say that most importantly Buddhism is about ‘being in the here and now’ and it does not matter if there is a god or not. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. In this context though, what really matters is that you spend your time in the present moment wherever you can. I see Buddhism as being very practical and worldly, whilst at the same time giving a greater sense of interconnectivity with all living things. This interconnectivity, the combination of all things, far outweighs our own significance… some sort of essence that in order to encapsulate it in a word, you might call it ‘God’!

A very brief  and very simple breakdown of Buddhism

Buddhism has been about for over 2,600 years and has since its inception purportedly delivered thousands of individuals in to state of peace and wellbeing. The story goes that Siddhartha Gautama, once a wealthy prince, found that he was always unhappy and unsatisfied no matter what he did. Siddhartha Gautama, giving up his unsatisfying worldly riches, went forth to try all manner of different religions and methods to overcome his dissatisfaction.

Eventually Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment whilst sat meditating under a Bodhi tree and became ‘a Buddha’. Notice he became ‘a Buddha’ not ‘the Buddha’. There are many ‘Buddha’s’ and the term means ‘someone who is perfectly enlightened’ or ‘at peace’ could be another way of saying it. The Buddha then, is not a god, he is more like a symbol of what is possible; a reminder to be ‘in the moment’ and to follow the example set in the story.

 More recently the same ideas have become incredibly popular, but without the Buddhist trappings, in the form of ‘Mindfulness’. To be mindful is to be in the present moment and it’s most basic level if you are ‘in the present moment’ you can’t be worrying about the future or the past. For this reason, practicing Mindfulness is seen as a great way of improving mental health by combating the causes of depression and anxiety for example.

 A central part of the teachings of Buddhism and the skill of mindfulness is the practice of meditation. Meditation essentially means being in the moment and often people will try to firm up this skill by ‘sitting’ in meditation and focusing on the present moment; normally by focusing on breathing or by saying some kind of prayer (mantra) in their heads. The latest research in neuroscience is now demonstrating the importance of meditation for mental wellbeing.

Celebrating the life of Āloka David Smith

                                                “All momentum lost,

                                                I’ve run aground,

                                                I’ve come to rest,

                                                At last I have come home”

A few weeks ago on 13^th August 2015 I travelled with my good friend Rob up to Birmingham to attend the funeral of Āloka David Smith. In 2012 Rob and I had arrived late to the ‘Dharmamind’ Buddhist group which Āloka founded in 2007, but the group struck a chord with the both of us at a time when I think we were both looking for answers.  At that time, when we were beginning to hear Āloka’s teachings for the first time, it didn’t seem to matter that we had come to the group 5 years after it’s founding; Āloka wasn’t going anywhere we thought.

Death is an important teacher in Buddhism; it reminds us of impermanence. Impermanence, Āloka explained in his teachings, is an impersonal law and if we could fully embrace the truth of this law we would see that all things are in a constant state of change. It is because we fail to understand what impermanence is that we grasp at things, experiences, people, possessions, money. If we faced the truth that these things go in to change we wouldn’t grasp at them and as a result we wouldn’t experience ‘suffering’ (dukkha, to use the Buddhist term).

Understanding ‘suffering’ brings us to the most basic formulation of the teachings of Buddha; ‘The Four Noble Truths’

1. 1.       All life is suffering, a struggle in which we cannot find happiness
2. 2.       The cause of suffering is craving or attachment. (To put it another way; it is failing to see that all things are impermanent)
3. 3.       The cessation of suffering comes with the cessation of craving and grasping
4. 4.       There is a way out of suffering, a path that every individual can take responsibility for.

The path, as Buddhists would see it, is the path that the Buddha took. But really if Buddha isn’t your thing I would think you could simplify it by saying ‘be nice to all people and all things and the way to do that starts with spending time in the present moment’.

It was this path that Āloka was so skilled at teaching. Not just because of the incredible personal journey he had taken, not simply because he was a very skilled meditator, not just because he was very wise and thoughtful. But because Āloka was normal! He could be grumpy and particular, he could have a joke and be a lot of fun and he could convey a simple and profound teaching by using normal every day words.

Āloka died on 31^st July 2015, on the blue moon, on a day known in South East Asia as ‘Guru Purnima’ or ‘Teachers Day’. On the Dharmamind facebook page, his group (Sangha) and friends, left this message;

                                    “Dear Facebook Sangha,

Yesterday (July 31st) at 17.25 our teacher, Aloka David Smith, passed away. I expected that when it came time to send this message, that I would be full of sadness. But the manner of his passing was so gentle we almost didn't notice it had happened. A slow quieting of breath over a ten minute period, then no more movement. It was a teaching for us all about how to enter stillness. So it did not feel sad.

There is no doubt he was in full awareness of what was happening to him. In this regard he got his final wish - to die in full awareness following 40 years of practice, and to fearlessly be present to the dying process. Even death was time for practice for Aloka, and this was his final teaching to us, and one of the most powerful. Aloka - "light". Please bear him in mind in your meditations and pujas over the coming days.”

‘Even death was time to practice for Āloka’. This should not be taken as something strict and severe. On the contrary, in Buddhism to be in awareness, fully committed to the practice, is to be in peace and not suffering. 

How frequently do you come to the end of the day and struggle to remember how it has passed? How often do you find yourself bored, trying to distract yourself in some form or another, maybe through reading (or writing!) or watching TV? How difficult do you find it to be still, to be alone with yourself? Even for only a few minutes? Try it now.

How much time do you spend truly living? Truly alive and in the moment? Awake to all that is happening?

Āloka’s funeral was a celebration of his life and teachings. Āloka had written a letter which was read out so that he could address us all from beyond the grave. He had planned his funeral and the readings that would be given. Having embraced death fully aware of what he was facing, Āloka committed himself to making it a continuation of his teachings and making it an important lesson to us all.

If we want to be able to face death as Āloka did we need to live in the ‘here and now’. We need to have full commitment to being alive and having compassion. It is not easy to achieve and Āloka demonstrated again and again that it requires full engagement in the face of frequent ‘failure’. But so long as you are committed and trying, you cannot fail.

When I think of all the things that are happening in the world at the moment I only wish that I could have brought some of our world leaders along to Āloka’s funeral. If I could have sat them beside me and asked them to think about what is truly important in life. To consider how we are all so interconnected. We do not live in isolation. That we will all die, that all things go in to change, and that life is transient.

If we could get some of our world leaders to consider these teachings would we have massive consumption of finite natural resources that damages the planet? If presidents and prime ministers considered these things would they worry about amassing wealth and power for themselves? Would a little boy have washed up on the beach?

When you realise the true nature of awareness, the true experience of life, the concern for all of the other trappings fall away and you become committed to all other life; realising that we are all one.

In his book ‘The World We Have; A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology’ The beautiful Zen master Thich Nhat Hann wrote;

“It’s wonderful to realise that we are all in a family, we are all children of the Earth. We should take care of each other and we should take care of our environment, and this is possible with the practice of being together as a large family. A positive change in individual awareness will bring about a positive change in the collective awareness. Protecting the planet must be given the first priority. I hope you will take the time to sit down with each other, have tea with your friends and your family, and discuss these things. [ ] Then make your decision and act to save our beautiful planet. Changing your way of living will bring you a lot of joy right away and, with your first mindful breath, healing will begin”

Goodbye Āloka David Smith. Thank you for your commitment, your example. Thank you for the Dharma.

***

Sentient beings are as limitless as the whole of space.

                May they each effortlessly realise the nature of their mind

                And may every single being in all the six realms,

                Attain all together the Ground of Primordial Perfection.

                By the merit I have gathered from all acts of virtue done in the this way,

                May all the sufferings  of every being disappear.

***

You can visit the Dharmamind website, where you can purchase books by Āloka David Smith and find out about the regular meetings around the UK and the monthly day retreat in Birmingham http://dharmamind.net/