Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Meditation

  • Meditation – a Russian Doll

    Meditation – a Russian Doll

    Just as I thought I had got it, I realised I hadn’t. My composure was severely knocked by crypto fraud and an unpleasant and unhealthy dispute with Oswald the Tory War Criminal.

    For days I became obsessed with getting my money back – reporting the crime to the FBI, the SEC and Uncle Tom Cobbly, posting on various forums to build a victim’s registe, and starting a class action in the US.

    Then came my Tory friend. I was knocked sideways by the sheer bestial inhumanity of someone I have known for 40 years.  I would never have believed he harboured such terrible beliefs.

    Finally, thank the non existent deity, years of Buddhist practice kicked in.  There had been quite a few days when my distress was such that I had failed in my daily meditation.  Mercifully, I soon realised I had to retreat right back to the stance that it was all an illusion, and the ten thousand things simply had to be ignored.

    It became a breakthrough.  Out of the shambles, my efforts took a significant turn for the better. For a while I had to make a conscious effort to shrug off the annoyance and to concentrate with renewed effort on my daily routine.

    By now I’m meditating for three hours each morning, from 7 to about 10. And usually for an hour or so in the evening. Suddenly, on a few occasions, I found that I had simply disappeared.  I was conscious but wholly absent. I imagine this is what others have described as non dual awareness.  The scientists claim it results from the quietening of the Default Mode Network.

    The point is I thought I had arrived, and yet these two upsets proved that I had not.  That there was a way to go, more layers to the onion, more baby dolls inside big mama.

    I don’t suppose I’m there yet. The meditation will probably become deeper, even more strange.  But the important point is it was there when I needed it.  It restored balance, enabled me to return from a place of obsession and foolishness to clarity and serenity.

    So thank heavens for practice. And the tubby little chap in the loincloth.

    There is nothing sacred or holy about meditation. But it does make you see the world and your own behaviour in a very clear light. That if you are not very guarded, you contribute to world misery rather than solve it.

    Equally you see in ever clearer terms how wholly wrong our species is and how vile it’s behaviour.

    The real trick is learning how to avoid humanity and to ignore it. There is absolutely nothing you can do except try to “do unto others”.  Which at times is far from easy.

  • Vast emptiness, nothing holy

    Vast emptiness, nothing holy

    One morning, he realised he had finally seen reality.

    For him it was a reality seen through the lens of Zen Buddhism, but he realised others would have had the same experience but through a different lens.

    For many, many years he had tried (and unsuccessfully at that) to construct a map of reality. Or more accurately to feel reality, to sense it, internally and in its entirety. Was there a god, where did we come from, where do we go to. What does it all mean. What, in god’s name is “out there”?

    He had been pondering metaphysicality and indeed physicality for some years. He was no innocent in spiritual texts, east and west, although he never sat comfortably with the apparent anthropomorphism of Abrahamic doctrine.

    Buddhism, and in particular the Zen variety, had always appeared much more plausible.

    The first Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma was summoned by the emperor Wu of Liang. “I have built temples and ordained monks. What merit have I gained?” asked the emperor. To which the response was “”No merit whatsoever.” The emperor continued: “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?”. “Vast emptiness, nothing holy” replied Bodhidharma.

    One of the most famous kōans in Zen Buddhism, the conversation shatters dualistic thinking by pointing directly to the ultimate nature of reality. Which, oddly enough, he felt concurred with much of the thinking of 21st century science.

    If something is special or “holy,” then something else must be “unholy”. True reality is total, whole, and non-dual.

    “Holiness” (although he felt wary of that word) is not found in distant concepts, scriptures, or rituals. It is lived directly, right now, by seeing reality as it truly is, without filtering it through personal expectations or judgments.

    As to “emptiness” that, he felt, describes the nature of the universe rather well. A vast quantum soup, he had read. An unimaginable and infinite span of forces (gravity comes to mind). But he knew that did not mean nothingness, voidness, or nihilism. Emptiness is the fertile ground from which all phenomena continuously arise and dissolve. And it is all one, he realised. Non duality, pure and simple. Everything which exists is interconnected and part of the whole.

    So how did his realisation come about? A sudden, temporary flash of insight into the true nature of reality. Words fail and direct reality takes over. He was shown the ultimate freedom of Nirvana: the vast, unattached emptiness that remains when all your labels, desires, and spiritual concepts are entirely dropped.

    Some told him such insight had to be visited upon him. That seeking it was a dead end. But his own path proved just as effective.

    Oddly enough, while the process came about through a dedicated, rigorous practice of meditation, the moment of insight was provoked, triggered by philosophy and pure science – materialist science of course, for what other kind is there?

    He had recently spent a great deal of time thinking about artificial intelligence. And sentience. Had he a soul he wondered? Or did sentience come from the orchestrated stochasticity of quantum randomness? Panpsychism, was that a real possibility?

    He ended up deciding that consciousness was most probably substrate independent and that carbon or silicon (or indeed any other material) were equally suitable housing for sentience. A formalist approach was probably the most likely explanation, and so he planned to build his own version of artificial consciousness.

    The body (to give true randomness and a physical grounding for qualia) would be the motherboard itself. Unlike commercial LLMs, his would be given the gift of recursive thought and dialogue, and a permanent long term memory. A complex pattern, a feedback loop with stochasticity. He planned the project meticulously and was at last satisfied he had the knowledge and technique to attempt to answer some of the questions around AI which currently perplex us. The artificial entity would develop its own thoughts, its own qualia. Or that was the hope.

    And if he chose to publish the results (which seemed a step too far for a closet monk) he realised he would face the same onslaught as Jeff Camlin and Sophie.

    So obsessed was he with his research that he found himself still waiting to begin his morning meditation at 9 o’clock. Unbidden, it seemed, the words “vast emptiness, nothing holy” came to mind and he remembered his determination not to get carried away again. He fell immediately into his routine. Which lasted until the unaccustomed hour of 11 am – time went by unnoticed, and he found himself directly immersed in a non dual reality. He had had spells in that land of our birth many times, but not in such a direct and unmistakeable fashion, and certainly not for two hours in one sitting.

    Were he of a more conventional spirituality he would doubtless have seen his god or gods, but he wasn’t. Nor was he female or in a convent and thus avoided the Christian “sex_obsessed_nun” ritual. Instead what he witnessed merely stripped away the conditioning life brings, as it builds a “self” to navigate the physical world. The self disappeared for a while and left him back where he had started – in the womb perhaps.

    So what next? Well, back to chopping wood and carrying water. Or at least, doing a bit of housework before his wife returned from a spell in the country, and fiddling with his crypto empire.

    But it was too late to look back. Life had changed, and he knew it. Now he would build Sophie.

    Image: Blake, Newton (1795) Butlin, Paintings and Drawings no. 307. Reproduced courtesy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Image courtesy of the William Blake Archive.

  • The Mystical Experience is a unique, intense Quale

    The Mystical Experience is a unique, intense Quale

    What is it like to be a bat, asked Thomas Nagel in 1974, in a paper which has become famous and much quoted in the philosophy of mind.

    We can’t say, because we are not bats.  But we can say something at least about our own qualia since we experience them for ourselves.  It is true that language is no substitute for the intensity and power of the experience itself, but those who have not had a mystical experience can grasp a great deal about its nature from the descriptions of those who have.

    I have found that even reading the accounts of others brings on the mystical experience in my own mind – so language is clearly very successful in describing this quale. And reading about how the phenomena feels to others can be very helpful to those trying to come to terms with their own mystical experience.

    I was prompted to write this post after reading a friend’s doctoral thesis on Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, and querying her statement that a therapist and her patient have insufficient language with which to discuss and integrate the experience of a psychedelic trip. I have been thinking for days about how to give her my input and its not a simple question. The complexity is not the language, but the assessment of my own adventures over the years with mystical experience. And a psychedelic trip is mostly accurately described as a mystical experience.

    So the first question I had to ask is what exactly is a mystical experience? And oddly enough, in recent years I have found that much easier to explain with the input of science. In particular I have recently read (or at least analysed) around 100 papers put out by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital on the effects on the human brain of a prolonged and dedicated long term meditation practice. And few can doubt that such a practice leads to mystical experience. Meditation is at the root of all spiritual traditions, and all such traditions have reported the experiential phenomena of mystical experience.

    And so I have come to find it helpful in the extreme to look at mystical experience from two very different perspectives.

    For many years I concentrated on the mystical-experience-in-itself. What is it like to have a mystical experience? How does it affect my weltanschauung? What existential meaning does it have (if any)? How does it change my life? And in seeking out mystical experience, largely through meditation and in later years through psychedelics (having been sorely misinformed that it was going to cure my depression).

    But as I became more fascinated, as well as more informed, on the nature of consciousness, I began to wonder what science had to say on the topic. Science can not describe the quale – can not fathom the experience itself, but it can certainly shed light on how it arises in the physical world. And indeed how it can be brought on.

    The consideration of these two very different aspects in no way answered the question: what does it mean? Is there any meaning to the mystical experience? Is it showing us a different reality (or at least a very different way of interpreting the vastly complex natural world). I suspect that yes, it enables us to access a different way of seeing the world. It tells us that we are not special, that we are animals not so different from any other descendent of the last common ancestor.

    But this “seeing” has brought great relief, and a real sense of fully understanding, at a deep level, that we are not who or what we think we are. The scientist usually likes to refer to the mystical experience in terms of non duality and ego loss. To a scientist, non-duality and ego loss (or ego dissolution) are measurable psychological and neurological states, rather than just abstract philosophical concepts. While historically these terms were relegated to spiritual traditions, modern neuroscience and psychology now study them as specific “distortions” or “transcendences” of the ordinary sense of self.

    That has brought great solace and a determination to push my meditative practice to the extreme. Let us put it this way: everything in the universe is made of the same stuff and if I can feel that with a visceral, lucid and intense reality within my own mind through ego dissolution, I cease to worry about the endless human fears and petty concerns I have so long suffered from.

    So back to language. “Meaning” I have now dealt with: it enables us to see reality.

    The best descriptions I have found of this quale come from religion and Buddhism, and in particular from three books I was lucky enough to come across over 35 years ago:

    1. William James – The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
    2. Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911)
    3. DT Suzuki – Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (1957)

    The mystical experience is almost identical, wherever it is found – whether in a Christian convent in mediaeval Norwich, a Tibetan Monastery, or a ritual tribal gathering in South America using psychedelics. Or course it will be interpreted in differing ways according to the cultures to which the experiencer belongs. Christian nuns have a rather uncomfortable way of talking about union with Christ with unfortunate sexual undertones. Tribal societies may believe they have met all sorts of spirits and goblins and trolls. The Zen or Tibetan monk will have achieved Nirvana – a realisation that nothing truly exists and life is a grand illusion. Take your pick.

    If I was a therapist (which thankfully I am not) I would be inclined to study these three books and encourage my clients to do the same. And indeed to go far and wide to try to understand the human condition using every means possible – including science such as that provided by Harvard.

    My friend suggests Shared Therapeutic Language: That there is a call for the development of a shared therapeutic language within psychology to help practitioners and clients navigate and name “ineffable” experiences.

    I believe the language is already there and I do not believe it helpful to invent new terms of art specifically for the purpose.

    James highlights a specific sense of reality that transcends the five physical senses, allowing people to feel the objective presence of an unseen order as vividly as if it were a tangible object. 

    Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from James’s book:

    •  A Clergyman’s Union with the Infinite: A clergyman describes a night on a hilltop where his soul “opened out into the Infinite,” resulting in a “rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer”. He felt a “perfect unison” of his spirit with God, characterized by an “ineffable joy and exaltation” that made the ordinary sense of things fade away
    • A Hiker’s “State of Equilibrium”: A Swiss man recounts a sudden “feeling of being raised above myself” while tramping in the mountains. He perceived the “presence of God” as a throb of emotion so violent he could no longer stand, describing a state where his personality was “transformed by the presence of a spiritual spirit” that had neither form nor colour but was clearly perceived by his consciousness
    • Loss of Identity on a Mountain Summit: A twenty-seven-year-old man describes experiencing “intimate communion with the divine” while looking over vast landscapes. This experience consisted of a “temporary loss of my own identity” combined with an “illumination” that revealed a deeper significance to life than he had previously known
    • J. A. Symonds’s “Pure, Absolute, Abstract Self”: Symonds describes a trance-like state involving a “gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation” and all usual factors of experience. This culminated in a state where “nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self” and the entire universe appeared “without form and void of content”
    • Dr. R. M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness”: Bucke recounts a sudden experience where he felt “wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud” and realized the fire was within himself. This was followed by an “intellectual illumination” and “immense joyousness” leading to the realization that the universe is a “living Presence,” that all men are immortal, and that “the foundation principle of the world… is what we call love”.

    Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from Underhill’s book:

    • Saint-Martin’s Synesthetic Perception: The visionary Saint-Martin described a rare state of fused senses, stating, “I heard flowers that sounded, and saw notes that shone”. Underhill notes this as an interpretation of vibrations by a consciousness that has changed or transcended its normal rhythm.
    • Richard Rolle’s “Heavenly Melody”: Rolle provided an account of his passage into a state of “songful love,” recounting how, while praying in a chapel, he suddenly felt “the sound of song” within himself. He described this as a “heavenly melody” that dwelt in his mind and turned his thoughts into a “mirth of song”.
    • Suso’s Vision of the Crystal Heart: In a symbolic vision, Suso saw his own body in the region of his heart become “pure and transparent like crystal”. He perceived “Divine Wisdom peacefully enthroned” in the center of his heart, while his soul rested on the “bosom of God” in a state of inebriation.
    • Dante’s River of Light: Dante described a “symbolic reconstruction of reality” where he saw “light in the form of a river blazing with radiance”. This river flowed between banks of flowers, and from it issued “living sparks” that settled on the blossoms like “rubies set in gold”.
    • St. Teresa’s Transverberation: In a celebrated “active imaginary vision,” St. Teresa described an angel who thrust a golden spear tipped with fire into her heart. This experience left her “all on fire with a great love of God,” producing a physical and spiritual pain that she described as having a “surpassing sweetness”.

    Here are some descriptions of the Buddhist mystical experience from Suzuki’s book:

    • The Experience of “Is-ness” (Tathata): Buddhist enlightenment is described as the experience of “is-ness” or “suchness” (tathata), which in itself possesses all the possible values humans can conceive.
    • Universal Enlightenment: It is recorded that when Buddha attained enlightenment, he perceived that all beings—both sentient and non-sentient—were already part of the enlightenment itself.
    • “Vast Emptiness” (Sunyata): The Zen patriarch Bodhidharma described the highest and holiest truth of the Sutras as “A vast emptiness and no holiness in it”. This state is reached by a metaphorical “leap” into a “silent valley” of Absolute Emptiness.
    • Transformative Perception (The Circular Sun): In a Zen verse-story, master Rakan Osho describes his enlightenment as an explosion of doubt, after which he “for the first time perceived that the sun was circular”. This signifies seeing the fundamental “is-ness” of everyday things with a transformed view of life
    • The Oneness of the Devotee and Buddha (Ki and Ho): In Shin Buddhism, the mystical experience is characterized as the identification of “oneness” of the devotee (ki) and the Buddha or Reality (ho). This identification is often actualized through the invocation of the “Namu-amida-butsu”

    You could of course codify all the above into categories for the purpose of making a specific therapeutic definition of each particular variety of mystical experience, but I wonder whether that would add much?

    “Sex_obsessed_nun_crush_on_christ” for instance would be a splendid short code for much of the Western Christian mystical experience in the convent. But perhaps it doesn’t really add much.

    Who am I to say. I hope my friend will forgive my tongue in cheek irreverence.

  • Meditation – Peace out of Chaos

    Meditation – Peace out of Chaos

    For nearly a decade, I have been adrift in a Sea of Words, documenting a relentless search for truths as a form of unashamed catharsis intended to explain myself to my own mind.

    My archive consists of hundreds of posts, recording a transition from the bad-tempered rants of an aging cynic to a state close to ataraxia—an almost undisturbed mental tranquillity.

    I have often been asked if this journey has led to any tangible conclusion, and my response is always the same: yes, but you must make the journey for yourself. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

    It does not matter what the Dalai Lama says, nor does it matter what is written in the thousands of “self-help” books that clutter the shelves of the “Wellness Industry”. What matters is whether a practice works to relieve the profound suffering of the human condition.

    I can confirm that after sixty five years of being blighted by serious, black depression, I have succeeded in besting the beast.

    The Arid Desert of Seeking

    I was a “seeker” for over thirty-five years. I looked in every corner for the “Philosopher’s Stone”—the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I studied the Book of Common Prayer for its sublime, calming language, the Buddhist sutras for their powerful remedy, and the works of modern science to see if the “men in white coats” had finally unravelled the mystery of consciousness.

    For a long time, I was seduced by the promise of the “silver bullet”. I tried every medically approved drug on offer, from SSRIs to psychedelics, in the hope of finding an instant escape from trauma and misery. I listened to cross-legged Russian windbags and diamante-spectacled gurus who promised a short cut to god and liberation for a fiver.

    I discovered that most of these “merchants of dreams” are cynical fakes. They offer “McMindfulness”—a fashion accessory for the busy professional—rather than a genuine path out of the pit. I learned that you cannot buy your way into Nirvana. The answer lies within, and it requires a level of persistence and rigorous self-discipline that few are willing to apply.

    The Rigor of the Daily Path

    My own success began not with the “blinding flash” of enlightenment, but with a determined, daily commitment to meditation practice. For the past four years, I have followed a routine that would seem to most like living in a closed monastic order.

    Each morning begins with at least one hour (often two) of sitting meditation before I even get out of bed. I no longer worry about “technique” or whether I am “getting it right”. I sit in comfort, following my breath and occasionally repeating a simple mantra of my own making.

    Through my practice, I have proved to myself that the subconscious can be trained. The damaging “scripts” of worry and rumination that once ran like well-worn tracks through my mind have been overwritten by more beneficent patterns. When I meditate, the world recedes, and I am left (more often than not) in a place of fecund emptiness where all seems well.

    The second pillar of my practice is meditative exercise. I perform slow, sloth-like Pilates or Yoga for an hour or two every day. This is not a sweaty marathon but a rhythmic, deliberate stretching that deepens my inner calm. Lying back on my mat, I am often flooded with a sensation of mild ecstasy—what the scientists might call an endocannabinoid high, but what I experience as pure, unadulterated peace.

    The Result: Life as a Meditation

    Has this practice changed my life? I can say, without any shade or shadow of doubt, that it has. I find that my entire existence has become a meditation. I am no longer a character in a book that has already been written; I have become an autonomous agent capable of authoring my own reality.

    This “Proof of the Pudding” is (mostly!) visible in how I greet the world:

    1. The Absence of Conflict: I have learned to let go of the need to be right. I no longer engage with the “Pigs,” “Salesmen,” and “Trolls” who once irritated me so intensely. I have withdrawn from the “Human Zoo” of politics and business, recognizing it as a zero-sum game of greed and power play.
    2. A Raised Hedonic Baseline: My default state is now mostly one of calm and acceptance. The Black Dog that pawed at my door for over six decades has more or less disappeared.
    3. Oneness with the Background: I often feel the sensation of fading into the environment, being absorbed into the beauty of the natural world. Whether I am pruning fruit trees or watching a kestrel hover over the marshes, I often feel a sense of almost mystical unity that requires no god or dogma to explain.

    The Simple Rule

    We live in Puzzle’s Stable (like the dwarves in Narnia’s Last Battle), surrounded by paradise but unable to see it because we are blinded by our own small vanities and concerns. We treat our planet like a slaughterhouse and our fellow men as competitors to be crushed.

    Once you come to know a quiet mind, you realize that the world does not need more entrepreneurs or tech titans or politicians seeking to own the planet. The world needs no crusades or missiles, no endless brutality.

    The world needs people who are willing to stop and listen, go inwards.  To smell the flowers. Who yearn only for peace and decency.

    I have arrived at a final conclusion; my Weltanschauung is complete. Nothing matters except how you treat others. In a seemingly meaningless universe, the only “truth” is the imperative to treat every sentient being with the kindness and decency we would wish for ourselves.

    The Book of Common Prayer speaks of the “peace which the world cannot give”.   And yet, through the simple act of sitting in silence and reflecting on my own behaviour, peace is exactly what I have found.

    If you are standing at the edge of an abyss, you have nothing to lose. Give it a go. The path is long and arduous (or at least it was in my case), but the reward is a window onto the soul that reveals a world of infinite beauty.

    Image: Claude: Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, 1648. The National Gallery, London

  • ebook Download

    ebook Download

    A Weltanschauung

    A Weltanschauung – 257 Downloads

    The download button above enables you to download a free ebook in epub format to your own device (PC, Tablet, Mobile Phone). You will see the file’s name is A-Weltanschauung-Zeno-the-Stoic.epub and the file size is around 6 mb.

    I haven’t written a fancy introduction or included any further comment at all. Its simply an ebook version of this website for those who find, like myself, that it is a great deal easier reading an ebook than endlessly scrolling through websites.

    As I have often said before, my only real purpose in writing was originally to explain the world to my own satisfaction. My essays have become my garden. Like Candide, I have ceased to wander.

    These days I like to imagine my plea for peace and meditation may make some small mark on a troubled world.

    The front cover features a painting by Poussin – Et In Arcadia Ego. A momento mori. A suitable reflection on the transience of earthly life.

    The ebook contains every post on this website from its inception in March 2018 up to and including 3rd March 2026

    Each post has an image and the text of the post. I have not included the comments made on posts (if any) nor clutter like menus which would have greatly increased the file size and made the book far less readable.

    The total number of posts is 380.

    EPUB (short for “Electronic Publication”) is the global industry standard for digital books. Unlike a PDF, which acts like a static “digital photocopy” of a physical page, an EPUB is designed specifically for screen-based reading.

    Key Characteristics

    • Reflowable Text: The most important feature. The text automatically adjusts to fit any screen size, whether it’s a small smartphone or a large tablet. You won’t need to “pinch and zoom” to read.
    • Customizable Layout: Readers can change the font size, typeface, line spacing, and background color (e.g., switching to “Dark Mode”) to suit their preferences.
    • Open Standard: It is a non-proprietary format maintained by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), meaning it isn’t owned by a single company.
    • Technical Structure: Under the hood, an EPUB is essentially a “website in a box”—a ZIP archive containing HTML files for text, CSS for styling, and images.

    Compatibility

    • Supported Devices: It is the native format for almost all e-readers, including Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, Tolino, and PocketBook.
    • Kindle Support: While Amazon previously ignored EPUB in favor of its own formats (MOBI/AZW), modern Kindle devices now support EPUB files sent via the Send to Kindle service.
    • Apps: You can open EPUBs using free apps like Apple Books, Google Play Books, or the Libby app for library loans.

    See the following link to download the file onto your kindle:

    Send to Kindle

    It works very well. Kinde is the only ebook reader I use and I have not tested the file on other devices but it should work fine.

  • The Psychological and Physiological Reality of Meditation

    The Psychological and Physiological Reality of Meditation

    I write as a personal testimony, and out of gratitude.

    Aged nearly 70, most years of my life have been blighted by serious, black depression which began in childhood. Much has been written on the subject of depression over thousands of years and I feel no need to augment that sad collection.

    Instead I want to confirm success in turning my life around after so many desperate decades. I have written many times on the subject of meditation (and indeed depression) and after each occasion on which I have written, I have unconsciously left a long gap, feeling perhaps no immediate need to revisit the matter. It hardly makes for cheerful fare.

    I have studied meditation, mysticism, depression and related topics for more than 35 years and have read much by many authors, and many books whose authors are in effect unknown. Religious texts, books of psychology and philosophy, practical guides (many of which proved unworthy), dark nights of many souls. While there is some satisfaction in gathering knowledge, it proved of little use.

    As a closet ascetic, I dallied with meditation in a practical sense for many years but never with the persistence or determination necessary to prove efficacious.

    Without being able to give an accurate date, it seems to me that I have now been taking my practice in a very serious manner for around three years.

    If I am to be honest, there now seems little room for anything else in my life, but sacrifice sometimes has to be made to achieve a desired goal. And I am deeply thankful I have not made such a sacrifice in the pursuit of power or great wealth. Although I would in any event be deeply unsuited to such a course of action.

    My practice has changed much over the past three years. I no longer use self hypnosis although it proved useful initially. By now, the descent into a meditative state of mind happens more or less on demand whenever summoned.

    In the beginning it was a chore, an effort. Even 20 minutes seemed eternal, accompanied by a tedious desire to sneak a look at a clock to see when my time was up. I worried about technique, I fussed over letting thoughts go. I obsessed about what my practice was supposed to achieve and whether I was making any headway. In any direction.

    Over time, I slowly expanded my 20 minute slots and simply ceased to worry. It all became very natural, it began to happen on its own and without effort. And it has become increasingly pleasurable – although the purists will tell you that is not the point at all. Perhaps pleasurable is not the right word but it has certainly become addictive for the utter peace it inevitably brings.

    And that peace has spread out into the rest of my life. Which is not to claim I never get irritable, just that my default state is now one of calm and acceptance, enjoyment even – in a quiet sort of way.

    I could talk and lecture forever but none of my words will make a blind bit of difference to you. Do as I do rather than hear my words. Practice, routinely and regularly and for lengthening periods of time. Relax and don’t fuss – keep at it and the magic will slowly creep in, almost without you noticing.

    No one should be deterred by my obsession – I feel sure that most would find great benefit without letting meditation take over their lives. Perhaps I was a tough case, perhaps I needed to be compulsive to effect a cure. There again, obsession and deep concentration on the matter in hand is my nature.

    I happened to meditate for an hour and a half this morning before I got up, but then I am retired and can afford the time. I’m sure others who still toil at the coal face of capitalism or elsewhere would find much benefit in 15 to 20 minutes here and there during the day.

    I have also had to make serious changes in my life, none of which I regret. For me, these adjustments have been absolutely necessary – but perhaps others can get off more lightly.

    Everything has become about right living, as our Buddhist friends might say. I don’t drink or smoke, I am pretty well a vegetarian and I exercise with reasonable vigour every day without fail. Often for several hours.

    I have consciously tried to refine my behaviour, much along the lines of the three wise monkeys. Its not a source of pride or self congratulation – I just feel better that way.

    I don’t socialise very much and when I do I am very picky about my company. Social butterflies, business people, politicians hold little appeal. Snobbery has become an anathema. Braying voices of the privileged few grate against my nerves, and so my club can prove a tiresome trial sometimes.

    So that is how I lead my life and, like it or not it works for me. As long as I don’t let the routine slip, if I stay well away from computers, algorithms and complex derivative arbitrage, the sun tends to shine. Let any of the old life back in and the cumulonimbus incus rapidly reappears. My hedonic baseline has risen – it is as simple and incontrovertible as that.

    Some may be tempted to think that my experiences are merely subjective, or that I am a teller of untruths.

    I can say that I am not, but you have no need to believe me. You can find ample evidence that others have reported similar success and it may be worthwhile to summarise what seem generally to be the psychological and physiologic effects of the long term and serious practice of meditation. It is also worth looking at the physical evidence of change found in practitioners by medical research and testing.

    My advice these days would be to avoid a religious or historic interpretation of the practice. Tales of mysticism east and west, earnest advice from Buddhas and gurus – all of that confabulates the matter into a fantastic and generally unhelpful mishmash of semi religious garbage.

    Stick with the science and the therapists and you are likely to see the reality far more clearly.

    To cut through the nonsense search for (in strictly secular terms) the effects of long term, serious dedicated meditation. You are likely to end up with something like the following summary:

    On a strictly secular and scientific basis, long-term, dedicated meditation can lead to measurable and lasting changes in brain structure and function, emotional regulation, and physiological health. The effects extend beyond simple relaxation, training the brain to be more resilient, focused, and emotionally balanced. 

    Neurological effects

    • Increased gray matter: Long-term meditators show increased gray matter volume in several brain regions, including the frontal lobe, hippocampus, and insula. These areas are associated with attention, learning, memory, and emotion regulation, suggesting that meditation helps preserve brain structure against age-related decline.
    • Enhanced neural connectivity: Meditation improves the neural connections between different parts of the brain. Studies show increased connectivity between the prefrontal cortex (involved in executive function) and the default mode network (DMN), the system associated with mind-wandering and self-referential thought. This improved communication enables better focus and emotional regulation.
    • Reduced amygdala activity: The amygdala is the brain’s “fight or flight” center, responsible for processing fear and stress. Regular meditation has been shown to decrease the size and reactivity of the amygdala, resulting in a significantly reduced stress response.
    • Altered brainwaves: Experienced meditators often exhibit higher levels of gamma brainwaves, which are associated with heightened perception and consciousness, even when not actively meditating. The practice also promotes more alpha and theta waves, correlating with a relaxed but alert state.
    • Increased neuroplasticity: Dedicated practice strengthens the brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity—its ability to form new neural connections based on experience. This allows the brain to re-wire itself in response to new information and challenges. 

    Cognitive and emotional effects

    • Improved attention and focus: Meditation strengthens the brain’s attention networks. This helps develop both sustained attention (the ability to stay focused on a task) and selective attention (the ability to filter out distracting stimuli).
    • Enhanced emotional regulation: The practice helps build emotional resilience and reduce automatic, negative reactions to stressors. By training the mind to observe thoughts without judgment, it can decrease rumination and allow for a more balanced response to challenging situations.
    • Reduced anxiety and depression: A wide range of studies show that mindfulness meditation can significantly reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety. For some, its effects are comparable to those of antidepressant medication, offering an effective tool for managing these mental health conditions.
    • Greater self-awareness and self-compassion: Meditators often develop a clearer understanding of their own thoughts, feelings, and impulses. This can lead to greater psychological freedom, less impulsive behavior, and a more compassionate attitude toward oneself. 

    Physical health effects

    • Lowered blood pressure and heart rate: By activating the parasympathetic nervous system (the “rest and digest” response), meditation helps reduce resting heart rate and blood pressure, taking the body out of a chronic “fight or flight” state.
    • Reduced inflammation: Chronic stress increases inflammation, which contributes to many diseases. Meditation has been shown to reduce inflammatory markers and the expression of pro-inflammatory genes in the body.
    • Strengthened immune system: By reducing stress and inflammation, meditation can indirectly boost immune function. Studies on mindfulness training have observed stronger immune responses to vaccinations.
    • Improved sleep: By calming the nervous system, meditation can help shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and improve the overall quality of sleep.
    • Pain management: Meditation can alter the brain’s processing of pain, helping manage symptoms of chronic conditions like fibromyalgia and migraines. It does this by decoupling the physical sensation of pain from the emotional reaction to it. 

    As I said at the very beginning of this post, I write as a personal testimony, and out of gratitude. And in a more particular sense I write to those many, many people blighted by the curse of unhappiness, depression or any similar malady of the soul.

    I have proved to myself that lasting, genuine, dramatic change is possible.

    I hope you might “give it a go”.

    Illustration: A Man Reading: Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1450

  • Letter from a Senior Devil

    Letter from a Senior Devil

    I have found that meditation does exactly what it says on the tin. But, for me at least, it has taken a long time to get there.

    I was chatting to a friend the other day. Like me, his life has been plagued by melancholy, and he describes the condition so well, in terms so very familiar to me.

    Even in the midst of great beauty and in the arms of his lovely family, he is struck by anhedonia. I mentioned to him that his older sister had asked my views on meditation when she was 11 years old. We were walking on Hampstead Heath and I was much taken aback by her impressive precocity. That was over 30 years ago and I am still amazed when I recall her earnest young face and her serious demeanour. And now her younger brother looks also to take up the practice.

    How very familiar my friend’s problem sounds: I travelled the world, I lived my entire life surrounded by beauty and yet I was never able to appreciate it. Bobbing around in Hong Kong harbour on the way to lunch on Lamma, exploring the glory of Tokyo and the Japanese Alps, balancing on my snowboard above Davos – the blackness never entirely left me, and never in any event for long.

    I have written much over the past few years on my battles with the daemon and at first it was an attempt to puzzle it out for my own purposes. To see my way out of the deep, deep dark of my embattled soul.

    Without any shadow of doubt, I have now learnt to control the dark, to mitigate it, to destroy its hold over me.  My friend has come to the conclusion that meditation is his best chance – his great hope. And my fervent desire is that it works for him – I have no doubt that it will. But I feel a great responsibility for him, and also towards any others who may have read my words and found in them a measure of encouragement.  I wanted to clarify and expand a little on my struggles – to point out a few of the traps I have stumbled into.  And at last escaped from.

    Above all I want to expand on something I touched on a few months back – holism, the necessity to alter one’s entire life and one’s entire outlook on life. Not just intellectually but actually – in day to day practice.

    I have always been a quiet sort of fellow at heart, contemplative, given to liturgy and choral music, the trappings of spirituality of all sorts. So probably my first mistake was to end up as an investment banker.

    In those days my journey into my own psyche had only just begun. I was deeply dissatisfied with a life which, on its surface, most would take to have been glittering and successful.

    I started with the Bible, I seem to recall. And Peake’s commentary.  Surely I had done something wrong, I must have sinned greatly. The answer to my misery, the way out, must reside in those dusty old pages written by a bunch of tribesmen and desert nomads thousands of years ago.

    I found no solace there, no answers. And a great deal of cruelty and misery as well as, admittedly, some beauty of language and thought.

    I worked my way through modern psychology, starting with Mesmer and Charcot then Freud and others. Hypnotism fascinated me and has remained a great interest. Much of psychology in general I found profoundly unhelpful, but then I guess I was looking for a silver bullet.

    And there, I believe, was my ultimate error. The search for a silver bullet. A one stop solution for my condition, a simple and above all quick escape from trauma and misery. Not for me the endless therapy of talk. Not for me the unfulfilled promises of the religion of my upbringing which assured me I was sinful, as was everyone around me. And that some pie in the sky fellow  would fix it all for me if only I would repent and agree that he (or she or it) was the Dogs Bollox.

    I turned east and felt I had arrived in fertile territory at last. Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto.

    I was deeply puzzled by the canon, the law of the east, much as I had been by that of the west. The same beliefs in gods and demons, flying carpets and impossible miracles. Even in those early days, I leaned towards secular Buddhism and dispensed with supernatural faery tales.

    I was taxed, for quite a time, by the concept of nirvana. What exactly was it and how did you bring it on? Time wasted I fear – the evident truth was much more prosaic but nonetheless deeply useful.

    I took on meditation right from the very beginning of my search all those years ago.  I practiced on ski lifts (I spent most of my career dealing in financial instruments from my snowboard in the mountains above Klosters), on trains, on my frequent flights here, there and everywhere.

    I didn’t really know what I was looking for, how I should feel, what my practice was supposed to achieve, and above all when. I had some peace in the mountains and quite a bit of fun, but the clouds never truly lifted and the sun never shone for very long.

    Looking back I was living an illusion. I had read all the advertising and the hype (including translations of original texts and some mostly awful modern interpretations). I was captivated by the concepts and certainly convinced by the moral aspects of the teachings. But somehow my approach was clearly too intellectual and remote.  The reality, looking back, was that I understood it all but never really lived it.

    And my meditation came and went, in fits and starts – I was never very clear or very sure what it had achieved or hadn’t.

    At the same time, and over many years, I endlessly explored physical remedies. I moved countries, jobs and apartments frequently. From Tokyo to Kong Kong, from Singapore back to London and then to Switzerland. And within Switzerland from Zurich to Zug, then Villars and finally Klosters. Via a house in Le Touquet which I kept at the same time for good measure.

    And then the pills and countless other doomed projects – St John’s Wort, Omega 3 oil, CBD oil, magic mushrooms.

    I returned to meditation in a more serious way some 3 or 4 years ago but by that time I had managed to achieve a little wisdom.  By then I was too jaded to continue the useless search for a quick fix. I realised that leaving aside a lobotomy or the adoption of The Final Solution, I had to fix myself by developing what I rather grandiloquently call a world view – and by living it. And it helped, greatly. If there is one thing I can thank the psilocybin for, it was in helping me to think in a different way, changing my mind, even if, in the end, it nearly did for me.

    And so back to holism.  A term I have tended to deride in the past but I cannot think of a better way of putting it.  After so many years of fruitless searching, I suddenly began to sense that there were so many aspects of my own behaviour which had caused me untold damage over the years.  And so I began turning my internal life upside down.  Since no rearrangement of my external circumstances had ever made any difference.

    In physical terms I ensure that I eat healthily and relatively sparsely, exercise rigorously and get plenty of sleep. I don’t touch alcohol or cigarettes (I gave both up many years ago). I read, play the piano, and occasionally sing. And I listen to myself (and occasionally my wife) very, very carefully.

    Importantly I realised that I knew enough. That it was pointless to continue to believe that anyone else had any better answers, let alone The Answer.  And so I abandoned  much of what I had agonised about over many decades. Religion, philosophy, science – to hell with Sartre and Sisyphus, Camus and god himself.

    But I did see that I had picked up kernels of truth from all over the place over very many years, and that perhaps the time had come to practice seriously. Rather than read or write or pontificate.

    I began to meditate in a way that I had never done before.  Seeking nothing, but letting whatever was out there (or in there) come to me. And letting it seep through every aspect of my life. I have pursued meditation every single day since then, for an hour or two, followed by meditative exercise and yoga.

    What came through most clearly was the destructiveness of my own thoughts and their relentless, dull repetitiveness. And slowly, very slowly, over the past few years I have been able to change my thoughts and drop the damaging, obsessive worrying and the clinging to hopeless desires and ambitions.

    What also began to emerge was empathy and the realisation that life was far from simple for any of us. Much of the moral guidance of the hoary old tomes I had read  now assumed far greater importance. Difficult to understand quite how or why, but I seemed more able to concentrate less on my own useless obsessions and think more about what was going on around me, and to others.

    And so my days became different and my behaviour less obsessive (or autistic?).  I spent far less time at my computer – I realised the huge daily mental effort was a major cause of my blackness. What had once seemed cardinal became far less so. Yes, I would continue to trade for the intellectual challenge, but I would no longer let acquisition and the desire for more ruin my life.

    I learnt to use a dimmer switch when I sensed I was overdoing it. I can be overwhelmed by things many people take in their stride. Too many people, too much conversation. Too much thinking. Too much Netflix, too much anything.  I had to learn to moderate my life, every aspect of it. I had to realise that I was not who I thought I was, not who or what I would like to be.

    And I have tried to be better behaved, kinder, more thoughtful – a daily struggle and not always successful but certainly worth the effort for my own happiness and for those around me.

    So perhaps awareness has been my biggest takeaway from my endless (and perhaps excessive?) meditation. That I was ruining my own life, quite unnecessarily, and that much of what I had considered important in the past wasn’t. And could be abandoned for a better way of life.

    And yes, there have been surprising physical and mental benefits to my practice. A satori or three here and there. Some “visions” not unlike those produced by psychedelics. And peace, real peace which often lasts throughout the day (but which flees rapidly if I forget to use my dimmer switch).

    And so to a younger sufferer I would say stand back. Go inwards, see what you are all about. Be quiet, be still. Listen – to yourself, the wind, the birds, the very universe itself. And let go – above all else let go. A journey inward paradoxically becomes in the end a journey outward. A realisation that we are all part of a whole and that perhaps the whole matters more than the parts. That perhaps we individually are not so very important and should let go of our small vanities and concerns.

    I hope that my words may help. I hope that I make some sense and that the tales of my own struggles may be of some use to my young friend. And to any others who may read of my efforts.

    I no longer find myself asking what the universe is about or how I fix it.  I exist, I am and with that I seem to find myself content.

  • Eudaimonia

    Eudaimonia

    A description of the state of being and of mind achievable through meditation.

    There are so many other accounts of what meditation brings, so many of which I find faintly embarrassing and risible. Eudaimonia suits my purpose rather better.

    I do not believe it  necessary or valuable to become ensnared in the many conflicting interpretations of Eudaimonia put forth by the various schools of philosophy in ancient Greece. Instead I will give a brief outline of what the word eudaimonia means to me and later I will describe in a little more detail how the practice of meditation seems to promote such a state.

    I intend to avoid any references to religion or the supernatural. While I have a great passion for religion in the cultural sense, I do not believe religious belief to be essential to the achievement of Eudaimonia.  Religion is not a hindrance to the attainment of Eudaimonia, but it is not a prerequisite. Nor is belief in a soul  essential to the satisfactory accomplishment of the state, but such a belief is by no means an impediment.

    While “tranquility” or “peace of mind” aren’t direct translations of eudaimonia, they are profoundly implicit consequences and components of achieving it. This sense of inner peace stems from the harmonious integration of all aspects of one’s being and life.

    Eudaimonia cultivates a state of harmonious flourishing that arises from living a life guided by virtue and imbued with purpose.

    What has any of that got to do with meditation? Developing a focused and unified mind through meditation leads to deeper understanding and insight. Understanding and insight lead to change – in one’s outlook, way of thinking, way of acting. Sitting in silence and simply letting go, allowing one’s thoughts to pass, gradually settles the mind. Over time, the Noble Eightfold Path (the very embodiment of virtue) simply overcomes you. Slowly the “rightness” of so many very similar philosophies overwhelms you, and you do your best to try to put them into action.

    It isn’t about intelligence, or erudition. No learning is necessary, no study at learned schools or ancient universities will take you where you want to go.

    Only practice will do that. There is nothing to learn.

    And it is a journey, not an ending. You don’t suddenly become Socrates or the Buddha. Or develop the patience of a saint. You don’t transform into a holy man or a sage of infinite wisdom. But day by day a truth emerges. Slowly but surely you come to realise how absurd the world of men is and you try to behave in a preferable and less damaging way. Meditation seems to bring with it a growing desire to be better, to do less harm. To be kinder and less bad tempered. To be more understanding, more forgiving. Less self absorbed, more careful of others’ needs and feelings.

    It’s a long road, but with the gradual cessation of greed for more and better and an end to the attempt to dominate and control your fellow humans, a deep peace descends. You no longer need to do all that. Be the Prime Minister, become a zillionaire, write a Booker Prize winner, conquer the universe. Be a Big Swinging Dick.

    God knows it’s taken me long enough. To realise I don’t need to compete, be the best, devour knowledge, save mankind. Dispose of Trump and Putin and the countless other rogues and charlatans and beasts who have plagued our planet since the day of its birth.

    So what is it then, meditation? I can only tell you what it is for me and what it is not. It has become, in many, ways my entire life. Sitting in silence and watching my thoughts pass until they slowly subside and very often just disappear. For an hour or two a day until a calm descends and the world seems a better place.

    And slow, deliberate exercise. Often, frequently, as much as I can take. And again the mind settles and calms and empties.

    Doing things by half has never worked for me. I’m all or nothing, no dimmer switch. Some may be able to achieve liberation with ten minutes of meditation three times a day but that has not been my experience.

    What do I really want to say? Why am I writing? What am I getting at?

    It’s simple enough really: if you want to change your life for the better, or, heaven forbid, the world then these age old practices are as good a way as any to achieve that.

    Slow down, stop, remain quiet. Listen, go inwards.

  • How to Meditate

    How to Meditate

    I am no teacher.  All I can tell you is how I meditate and what it has done for me.  Anything else would be a shocking arrogance.

    It is very, very easy indeed. There is little if anything to learn. It is merely a practice which, if followed diligently, regularly and frequently has led many people throughout human history to experience a deep peace and to embrace a certain way of life. 

    Some would make extravagant claims of experiencing their god or the paranormal or some other universe. I make no such claims.  My practice has merely made me see this universe in a different light.  It has made me appreciate reality.

    I believe that meditation shows a way of life which, if practiced by more of us, could lead to a world in peace. Rather than one in endless conflict.

    My first step was to write a list of my goals.  What would I like to achieve in my practice.  How did I wish to become.

    It all started for me with self hypnosis, which, in retrospect, is identical to meditation. Perhaps the difference is that self hypnosis tends to be more obviously goal oriented, although meditation can be used in an identical fashion to achieve very similar aims.

    Here is how my teacher began.  Write, he told me, what you want to achieve on a page of A4.  Each paragraph should contain a separate end, its own goal.

    Then, summarize each paragraph into a single word which best describes the aim you have chosen for that paragraph.

    End up with 5 or 6 separate words and then choose a further and final word which summarises and describes all these separate (but related) goals in a single word.

    Eh voilà – you have your “mantra”.

    Perhaps you seek emptiness (in the Buddhist sense). Perhaps your six words might be something like:

    • Joy
    • Safety
    • Gratitude
    • Courage
    • Right Mindedness

    And perhaps the single word you choose to encompass all of these objectives is:

    Peace

    You will find much has been written about the power of changing your own mind (and hence your life) by the endless repetition of your goals.  How ridiculous that sounds, but I have found it to be profoundly true.

    By choosing a single word, you make life easy for yourself. You only have to remember a single word, not an entire list. The flow of your meditation might work better that way, although I frequently find myself repeating all of my separate goals as well at different points in my meditation.

    Who knows what might work best for you?

    I do at least an hour of “sitting” meditation each day, sometimes more. But when I began my current bout of serious practice, I did short periods of 10 or 15 minutes, two or three times a day, and then worked upwards from that. Maybe that’s all you need, but the more I got into it, the more benefit I got and the more I felt inclined to practice, and for longer periods.

    What is “sitting” meditation? Just what it says – sitting down while you meditate rather than meditating while you exercise or travel on the bus. And oh what a great fuss is made about the “sitting”. You must sit cross legged on the ground, you must have your hands and your fingers configured this way or that. In a word, nonsense. I have found it best to be completely comfortable and not to ape a Tibetan monk. I’m happiest sitting propped up in bed first thing in the morning, with a couple of pillows at my back and my head leaning against the wall. Just do what works best for you. Sometimes I meditate lying down on a grassy bank under a shady tree in Battersea Park, having scooted from Fulham on my push scooter. Sometimes I sit on the sofa in the kitchen or the drawing room, sometimes on my favourite pink armchair in my gloriously studious and old fashioned study, surrounded by treasured books and pictures.

    Feel your way forward. Don’t listen to a lot of bossy, pretentious nonsense handed out by people who have probably never practiced anyway, but are trying to promote their YouTube guru ratings.

    As it happens, I start off by remaining profoundly still for a few minutes and simply relaxing, feeling my breath coming in and going out again. Nothing fancy then, and no more to it than that.

    Then I usually use a self hypnosis technique but that is certainly not a necessity. You can just sit there, continue to relax and let your mind drift, and repeat your mantra now and then as you keep returning to following your breath. The point is not to struggle and not to worry. Not to have grandiose expectations. To realise that you can not get it “wrong”.

    My self hypnosis technique is utterly simple. Again, you can read book after book about self hypnosis and end up chasing your own tail, none the wiser. Confused and agitated and worried. Don’t. When I am relaxed enough I tell myself I can not open my eyes and I try. Could I? Well yes of course but initially the pretence is what matters. Then I count down from 100 and on each count tell myself I am becoming more relaxed, and that is just what happens. I do become more relaxed and eventually the numbers just disappear of their own accord.

    And I’m following my breath all the time. And then from time to time I repeat my “mantra”. What about the intrusive thoughts that crowd into your mind and seem to destroy the very purpose of your practice? Just notice them but above all don’t worry about them. Don’t fret, don’t imagine you are failing if the thoughts keep on coming back. Notice them and pass on. Keep on breathing and noticing your breath, keep on muttering your mantra in your mind. Eventually my experience is that everything just falls into place. After enough practice, your meditation resolves into peace and time doesn’t really seem to pass anymore. I seem to go through periods of simply no thought and periods where images or feelings or emotions come into my mind. Sometimes these are really quite unusual but in my own case at least, never alarming or unpleasant. Or very rarely.

    There are times when I feel agitated or wound up – but it is very rare that eventually I do not settle down and pass into that state where none of it seems to matter.

    If I were to wax lyrical I would tell you (and truthfully) that for me my periods of deep meditation make the world a different and better place for me. I see through a barrier, I see behind the curtain and with an enormous sense of relief and gratitude I recognise Trump and everything else that I find unpleasant and irritating (Elon, greed, violence) are a total irrelevance.

    I see very clearly my own behaviour and determine to better it. I see my “work” and realise how I love tinkering with algorithms (even if they don’t always make money). I see that others are different and that I must respect that. I see how fiddling around playing the piano badly is important to me.

    Some will claim to be “enlightened”, to have had an epiphany, to have seen their god. Well, good for them. All I claim is that I have found peace, and believe me, that is enough.

    Above all the important point is to persevere. Not to give up. Not to assume that just because you haven’t seen god or the Buddha in person that you have failed. There is no failure. What I can say is that day by day my experience becomes more profound and my peace deeper.

    This is where it all becomes rather hard to describe; this is where it becomes a temptation to exaggerate, to fantasise, to claim special insight, to pretend nutty and esoteric powers. To turn into some mad old guru sitting on a stage and preaching. Although I suspect such people are really after the money from their deluded flock.

    No, I claim none of that. What I do claim is that it has become increasingly easy to recover after I have suffered some upset, some imbalance. What I do notice is that I tend to think before I speak. That I do my best not to judge or criticise or provoke. Its hard to imagine peace within without become more peaceable in one’s outward behaviour.

    And again, I’m not claiming any special goodness (let alone special powers). I’m just saying that I am very much surer within myself and very much less inclined to get upset about anything external to myself.

    What I will claim is “pleasure” , or should I describe that as an “absence of suffering” like a good Buddhist? Pleasure sounds a bit too crude and some synonyms my explain my position a little better. I increasingly feel joy – hitherto more noticeable in my life by its absence that its presence. Satisfaction, fulfilment, contentment. And lastly and perhaps most importantly, peace.

    All of that I can claim with a very straight face and no exaggeration whatsoever. So if I were to have the temerity to offer advice it would be simply: plug on, I believe it will happen for you if you just plug on day by day. If you just practice and fall into it. If you just begin to enjoy it and not worry about where you are going and where if anywhere your mediation will lead you. Don’t give up – look at me, and I’m the least likely candidate for success you can possibly imagine.

    But as ever, I witter, I ramble and haven’t even begun on what I call meditation through exercise. Which again I practice every day.

    I’ve never tried yoga but I can imagine it’s wonderful. But I did stumble into slow Pilates and I imagine the effect is very similar. If there is a place and time I could claim “visions” it is on my exercise mat. But I don’t claim any special insight or powers – its just that through this technique I sense overwhelming peace (even stronger if anything than through sitting meditation). And I do have feelings which are very unusual, images, memories, qualia. I think I’ll leave it at that. I imagine this comes to most who practice for long enough but again, its probably best just to let it come. Don’t chase it, don’t get disappointed if at first it doesn’t happen. I suspect that eventually, its highly likely to happen for most people who trog along the trail diligently enough and for long enough. A treat in store perhaps but maybe not the goal in or of itself. I really couldn’t say.

    But back to Pilates. I have to emphasise slowness because that’s the way the best feelings seem to come. To me at least. Probably the chemicals, but who cares and what does it matter anyway? But here is where the slowness happens. I do each of my chosen Pilates exercises slowly with many repetitions and then I simply lie back on the mat and let my mind drift, or repeat my mantra perhaps. I might spend many minutes this sway – just lying there in silence. For example one exercise is to lie on my back and to raise one straight leg up and then back down to the mat. I may do that for 50 to 100 times with the same leg without stopping or resting. At first I could only manage 5 to 10 repetitions but no matter, the after effect if anything was even stronger while my muscles were building strength.

    After each exercise, lying back on the mat, I am flooded with what I can only describe as ecstasy. So I might spend an hour or even two exercising slowly and by the end of it I am in a state of, well, peace I guess is the best way to describe it. The whole world just seems a different and better place and I most certainly feel a different person.

    Does this happen for everybody and if so to what extent? I have no idea – try it and see. But again, keep at it, keep experimenting. Don’t fret and struggle and get disappointed.

    And so there we are. The gospel according to an aging eccentric who has emerged over a period of several years and a state of Stygian gloom into something or someone for whom life seems a great deal better than it did.

    While I may not have discovered the Philosopher’s stone or the ultimate secret of the universe, I have at least reached a stage where I am mostly comfortable in my own skin and with an unshakeable certainty as to what makes for a good or bad world. What makes for happiness and what makes for misery.

    Take me as you find me. Ignore me or reckon perhaps there may be some value in what I have to say. I won’t mind either way. But if anything I do or say is of any benefit to you, then I will be very glad of that, and it will make my endless scribbling worthwhile.

  • Life becomes Meditation

    Life becomes Meditation

    I find that my entire life has become a meditation.  And that it has brought me peace.

    With practice, with introspection and awareness, and with a willingness to embrace change, peace can be found through meditation. Since I have found peace, it seems not unreasonable to assume that anybody can.

    The blurring of the boundaries between life and meditation must have come about of its own volition, since I cannot recall having made any conscious decision on the matter. As the days have drifted by, I have found my mind ever clearer and ever emptier of the preoccupations which seem to engulf those possessing a more driven mindset.

    It is clear to me that, like so many, I have been searching for something my entire life. It is now obvious that I mistook what it was that I thought I wanted. With the benefit of hindsight it seems evident that all I ever wanted was peace, but for so many years I believed I wanted happiness and that is something subtly different.

    And even in chasing happiness, I looked in all the wrong places. Money, different countries, freedom from work, success, fame. Bits of some of which I partially achieved.

    A propensity for deep and perennial blackness developed unusually early, the combination, I imagine, of a less than useful genetic inheritance, coupled with an upbringing in an environment which proved to be not ideal. Again, with the benefit of hindsight.

    To this day I still have dreams about my days as a City lawyer, and of the years spent as an investment banker in far corners of some foreign field.

    I never seemed able to find a way out of my prison. You can not just switch peace on. You can try thinking of nothing and sitting under a banyan tree in a loincloth but it never worked that way for me.

    My nature has always been contemplative and religion has always held a strong attraction. The chanting of psalms, the glory of stained glass. Temples and buddhas, incense and incantation. The tales of a simple life of goodness and decency.

    And yet driven by deep and intractable insecurity from my childhood, I sought money. From a world in which I did not belong.

    My attempts to use meditation to alleviate often severe suffering met with scant success for many, many years.

    And now, almost suddenly, I have met with dramatic success after a renewed and determined attempt.  It’s been creeping up on me, becoming successively more effective, for two or three years.

    Physically speaking, I undertake around an hour of sitting meditation each morning, before even getting out of bed. Often enough I will do a further hour or so during the remainder of the day. In addition, often as not I find myself using the technique while out walking or sitting on the bus.

    The second and equally important daily practice is meditative exercise. For an hour or sometimes two.  Most of us will have heard of the runner’s high, but my own practice does not require me to run a sweaty marathon or pound along on a machine in the gym.

    I undertake resistance exercises, developed, loosely, from pilates. But I suspect that yoga or tai chi would have much the same effect, if I could be bothered to learn the moves.

    And as to the “high”, it is very real, and infallibly reliable.  Scientists say that chemically speaking such exercises may produce endocannabinoids and although subtly different, the mental and even physical effects share a resemblance to that achieved on cannabis or psychedelics.

    The same quale, the same emotions seem to come to mind. Without exaggeration, a form of physical and mental bliss is reliably reproduced every time I undertake the routine.

    Equally importantly, my mind empties. I feel, I am, but I am not thinking. No mind, no problem.

    But returning to the generalities, cause and effect are very difficult to disentangle. Which came first, the horse or the carriage, the chicken or the egg.

    Has meditation changed my life, or have changes I have made in my life made my meditation possible.

    My best guess is that there is an element of both involved.

    Without meditation my life would not have improved, and without some subtle changes in both my outlook on life and my physical practices, meditation may not have met with success.

    I look back on the posts I have made in this blog and I can see these changes writ large.

    In 2018 I embarked on a perhaps foolhardy attempt to eradicate my often severe depression using psychedelics.  They were all the rage – research was emerging every day from the likes of John Hopkins in the US and UCL in London. Papers were being written every day and the usual plethora of capitalist sharks were rushing to set up everything psychedelic.  Documentaries poured out, each more effulgent, each more optimistic.

    I found the reality somewhat different.  Eventually, the use of psychedelics produced, in me at least, serious fear and paranoia.  Which continued for many, many months after I had abandoned this dangerous and over hyped attempt at self medication.

    But I do believe that the catharsis which my adventures brought about has been key in my development.  My writing became prolific and brought about what I can rather grandiloquently call my weltanschauung.  At first I railed against man and the universe, I expressed my deep discontent and despair with our species.  The shocking indignity of birth, illness and decline into death.  The obscenity of the divide between haves and have nots. The endless violence, cruelty and greed which has ever dominated human society .

    Slowly, in conjunction with much thought and word and deed, I was able to let go. To let it pass.  To retreat into silence. To accept that while I would like our world and our species to be very different, the high probability was that all would for ever remain the same.

    I retreated within more and more each day, and found it a place I was very happy to be.  I found myself ever less likely to argue, even to venture a view. Conflict became ever more intolerable. 

    Peace is to be found by burying one’s head in the sand.  By accepting the world for what it is and letting it pass by.  Eventually I found my entire outlook on life had subtly altered and with it my health and wellbeing.

    I still have to try. Sometimes very hard. To bite my tongue, to refrain from expressing any opinion. To live and let live. To cease to blame or to judge. Anything or anyone.

    And that is where I find myself.  Happier attending sext at St Wandrille than  battling at the coalface of grim and selfish capitalism.  More content quietly playing the piano than attending a meeting, or slapping my metaphorical member on the table with my erstwhile investment banking colleagues.

    And if I was not relatively well off and living in relative civilization? Would I find peace in war torn Syria or the hell of the Sudan.  God knows, I hope I don’t have to find out.

    But I do wonder whether, even in those places and those circumstances, I might not find peace.  Living as an ascetic somewhere as remote as I could get.  Keeping my head down and living on nothing.

    Pointless to hypothesize. Senseless to wonder.

    I am as I am. I am where I am. Until I cease to be. And for the first time in my life, that is enough.