The Pearl
Nestling, not wrestling
I began writing this 12 hours before it should have winged its way to you. It is strange indeed to start writing for you so late in the week. Usually, a piece is finished a minimum of 2 days before I post it and I have had a chance to edit, refine, record and re-edit… But it does not matter, as much has been percolating this week, in amongst so much joy of working with bright earths (recipes and methods for my next book, and for teaching online this and last week). Also amongst so much woe, regarding the depths to which people are sinking in their dehumanisation of who they insist is the other.
I enjoyed reading this piece by
which inspired my original thoughts for this piece. In addition to this, a week in contact with dear colleague discussing plans for our next workshop, and how to craft a good container for what needs carrying across, means there is a wild ferment going on this organism, for which I am glad. So, I hope you will see this piece as a fresco, alla prima, rather than as a well-crafted oil painting.I’ll just dive in.
The Dragon
In the Taoist Classics, dragons signify many things, depending on context, but the one I want to talk about is the sky dragon as the spirit of nature and the nature of spirit. In many Chinese artifacts and art you will see a joyful, sinuous dragon, mouth open, wide eyes, and wider smile, front legs outreaching with all its energy towards its goal - the pearl. What is this pearl? Well, talking of it with my old friend and T’ai Chi teacher Mark Raudva this weekend, he raised his eyebrows and smiled, ‘Ah, the mysterious pearl of great value…’
What it often represents is true wisdom.
How the dragon is portrayed shows us how we too could gather all our vitality, energy and spirit1 to pursue this great prize. That this is our true nature.
But our vitality is drained by the dopamine cycle. Our energy is wasted chasing complicated accoutrements and enervating experiences, which cannot replace simply being at home on the earth, which we ancestrally crave. Our spirits are tranquilised by fake ritual which numbs, but never kills, our longing for connection with each other, the living world and Great Mystery.
Grit at the centre
Diamonds are transparent, extremely tough and are prized for their purity. Conversely, pearls are cloudy, have grit at their centre and must be handled rather carefully2. Gemstones are created underground in heat and under huge pressure. Pearls are made by fleshy creatures attempting not be be ripped to shreds by that which they cannot escape.
In T’ai Chi pushing hands we are by turn like oysters and grit: when we push, we are providing the grit for our partner to work with. Moments later, those roles reverse. This sounds very sweet and lovely, and sometimes it is. Other times, the grit is real: after almost an hour pushing with that person who just wants to control everything, tell us what we are doing is wrong, give lots of unsolicited advice and then alternately lash out and block, exactly how they said not to.
Even worse, sometimes that person is us.
After five or six years, that gritty classmate is a pleasure to push with, not necessarily because they’ve changed much, although they might have. Instead, we have put layers of pearl over that difficulty that once irritated us. We changed, thanks to them being a tricky customer. Now we seek out the challenge, to see if we can grow that pearl a little…
How do we do this? Not by ejecting the problem or running away from it. Galling though it is at first, we attempt to stay in close contact with what we’d like to reject. The pearl’s opaque beauty is formed slow layer upon layer by tolerating and living alongside that which is not self, (or psychologically, sometimes that which is unwanted and unintegrated in the self, therefore not recognised as part of the self)3. As the Taoist Classics constantly say, ‘This truly is not easy!’
At first, it actively inflames us. It is only by somehow bearing the proximity of the irritant and making it not not-self, in other words, integrating it, that we can gain any wisdom.4
The busy town we live in, the noisy neighbours, the awful politicians, The Machine, the Military Industrial Complex, the PMC, the Liberals, the Conservatives, your boss, [insert your particular everyday irritation] that is definitely not ourselves…
I thought of both my and Jack’s ongoing, not necessarily chosen, city lives. My heart said to me this week, ‘What if we are in exactly the right places to do our practice and develop some wisdom?’
My Grandmaster used to advise, ‘Nestle in closer, don’t pull away! The push will follow your retreating mind and you’ll end up chased by trouble.’ When we don’t pull away from the unsatisfactory5 conditions of life, it reveals itself to us.6 This knowing can be bodily, it doesn’t always come in words.
Nestle closer in until we are not-two, as John Kells put it. Neither pushing away, nor blocking, not running away, not ejecting, not denying what’s happening. Growing a pearl often involves getting closer to that difficult thing.7
The pearl
Apparently, Heaven is also a pearl of great price.8
Whether ‘the pearl’ we seek is Sophia or Heaven, we can infer that both are as close as our nearest and most pressing difficulty.
Wisdom is in the mind and the body, and can be accessed via joy, via pain, via any long slow apprehension of the real. Via immersion in the sea, in family, long companionship, in duty, well executed. Wherever we are not in control. Wisdom gleaned via reading must be metabolised and enacted, otherwise it is only half-baked. Like unfired clay, it will be prone to disintegrate when tasked with containing something hot.
So what is stopping us becoming the mediaeval mystic / Sufi saint / Taoist sage / cryptic citizen / hedge bothering odd fellow we are being called to become? Nothing. Including where we happen to be. I always liked Pema Chödrön’s exhortation to ‘start where you are.’
And, ‘The greatest stillness is the stillness found in movement’ (T’ai Chi Classics)
There’s some characteristically straight-talking advice from Liu-I-Ming, (I paraphrase), ‘Nothing deserves our contempt more than the man who leaves his family and responsibilities to practice meditation in a mountain hermitage. The best meditation is done in the midst of ordinary life.’
Silence
This week I have experienced so much spaciousness, so much silence, considering I live in a huge town in a block of flats. No flatmate this week and only a boat-dwelling Taoist for one day’s enjoyable company. I have been writing my book, one day to go and I will have handed in the first draft. Lots of work with earth, making pastels, creating grounds for drawing, devising simple vegan alternatives to ancient animal-based art materials, so more people can go plastic-paint-free.
I read Max Picard’s The World of Silence (1952). It was apt and very good, (except for the sections on the body and gesture, where the tone was markedly different.)9
The silence we feel we want, that will give us ease and relaxation, is external. The true silence we seek is within. I have tinnitus, so my personal experience of silence is never silent. The deepest I can abide in silence is when I am by the sea shore, as the sound of the waves dithers and masks the sounds produced internally by my auditory system, and it is extremely peaceful for me. I used to let it bother me, but it doesn’t irritate any more, though it has objectively got somewhat worse. Yet right now as I write, with the flat upstairs playing their TV so loud I can almost follow the film’s dialogue, I feel that my words are emerging from the week’s silence.
The silence is not being disrupted by noise. This is interesting.
I hope we can nestle closer in to what we are unconsciously pulling away from and thereby begin to grow a pearl, right here in amongst all the stacked lives, bleeping devices and electromagnetic hum. I will be interested to know about your experiences of oblique hermitage, that is, meditative (or prayerful) practice in amongst the everyday hubbub of life. To all of you reading this, good luck!
This week’s good things: 1 - This painting by Gabriel Liston. I saw it on Instagram this week (I have a work account for Found and Ground) and asked if I could share it with you. He often posts great art, but this really made me stop and look closely as it was so well-seen. His website is here, and much of his work is for sale. Go have a look.
‘Old man gleaning on the wrack line below the headland at Ona. I keep this one up on my dining room wall waiting for someone to like it as much as me. My bias stems from the double shift it pulls. A: it hit the Ona beach light just right, and B: it reminded me that someone could come into my sightline and, with a twist of their body, unlock a place.’
2 - Seen from the train to London, two hares in a field near Micheldever. Those big brown long-eared beasts, just sitting on the ploughed dun field edge. Then, a few minutes later, a red kite above a red deer. over a green field, speaking together how only colour can. Ordinary. Breath-taking.
The traditional three Taoist treasures we seek to nurture, protect and transform.
Rubies, gems and pearls have all been used to describe wisdom, both in the Bible and in early writing in English. Pearls of wisdom. These days, ‘pearls of wisdom’ is mostly used sarcastically, to mean the exact opposite of something precious and worth passing down. I am not going to critique that here. Ironic space is essential to any sane society, but so is local wisdom.
Congruent with, though not identical with The Shadow.
I can’t always do this. For the first time in over a decade, over the last year I have felt it necessary to block two people I have known not especially well from contacting me via electronic media. It may have been necessary for my own wellbeing, but it is not something I am especially proud of.
This is not the same as being fatalistic. Sometimes we must leave an unhealthy or abusive situation. Other times we need to organise with others for rights or justice. Wisdom is having nuanced insight and knowing what kind of situation we are in. Becoming comfortable with discomfort through pilgrimage, fasting, meditation or other anti-indulgent practice is a sure way to both suffer less during difficult situations, and to know when to make a move towards freedom.
No wisdom, safety or peace will come of cancelling, condemning, exiling or eradicating.
New Testament, Matthew 13:45-46
Which were shot through with aversion and palpable fear. I felt compassion for the writer expressing being so at odds with the mystery and privilege of embodiment. I will return to this book and write about it here when time allows.
My skittering mind caught onto one word in your footnotes and I remembered this little daftness that I conjured many years ago (intended to go on a T-shirt): Dukkha ain't pukka; metta is betta. I'll get me coat...
Thank you so much. Many paragraphs and sentences jumped out at me, but especially this:
“Wisdom is in the mind and the body, and can be accessed via joy, via pain, via any long slow apprehension of the real. Via immersion in the sea, in family, long companionship, in duty, well executed. Wherever we are not in control. Wisdom gleaned via reading must be metabolised and enacted, otherwise it is only half-baked. Like unfired clay, it will be prone to disintegrate when tasked with containing something hot.”
I relate to the whole idea of coming closer as I work with students who can be challenging. The difficulty is slowly transformed by relationship. As this happens the difficulty doesn’t go away, but it becomes something to work with. I could not tell you exactly how this happens: there is no formula and it can’t be taken for granted. It is always more powerful when it is a shared experience. Sometimes it happens that I have to fight for someone, like the song goes “use my heart like a fist, till it’s black and blue.” But this is temporary until community is created around the individual.