Pond Life 6 January 2003

It was the first Sunday of the new year. Soon after I woke up I was overwhelmed with anger, with someone I love, but who I feel no longer loves me. I had the day before me but did not really know what I wanted to do with it.

I had a pot of tea in bed, and a bath, and then sat down to meditate for an hour.

After a while, I felt myself to be sitting or lying at the bottom of a pond, looking up at the surface. It was choppy and disturbed, so that the light in the pond was subdued, as on a grey overcast day. I realised, as I looked at the surface, which seemed far above me, that it was my anger, confused and disturbed. Yet I felt completely calm; it was quite separate from me. Although I could feel it, or remember how it had felt a half hour or so before, it didn’t touch or affect me - as if I was watching a surgeon cutting my flesh under a local anaesthetic. Not like that really, because I did not feel numb or drugged, just that it was distant, happening outside of my self. A sort of haiku popped into my head, which I wrote down in my journal after the meditation had finished.

When I got up, I had breakfast and a cup of coffee. I decided I wouldn’t go to mass at 9.30, but that I would try to find the Friends Meeting House in town, which I had been meaning to go to for some weeks. The meeting was due to start at 10.30. I got up to leave at 10, still sort of undecided, not quite sure where the Meeting House was, or where I could park the car. When I had spoken to someone about the times of meetings before Christmas, he was very particular to say I was very welcome but that, if I came, I should arrive before the Meeting started. I decided to leave it in god’s hands - if I found a parking space, and if I found the Meeting House, and I arrived in time, I would go to the Meeting - if not, I’d go to Asda and do some grocery shopping.

As it happened it was easy - a parking space appeared and I followed my nose (I had a vague idea where the Meeting House was as I’d been there for a sort of seminar two years before) and I arrived at the house a few minutes before 10.30.

As I stepped through the door, into a hall crowded with people, and stood looking about, an elderly lady came up to me and asked me who I was, and offered her help. I explained I was a visitor and she gave me a few leaflets about the Quakers. I felt how friendly Friends seemed to be - there was a warmth and liveliness in the hallway that was very warming and reassuring.

We all trooped in to the room where the Meeting was to be held. The Meeting House itself looks Georgian, but the room is a sort of annex, modern, hexagonal, with large windows letting in the brilliant winter sunshine, and comfortable chairs arranged in circles around the room. A large bearded man got up and apologised for the loud drilling noise, and assured us it would soon stop, which it duly did, and everyone sat in silence around the room. I closed my eyes, and assumed most of the others did also. Somewhat to my surprise, and pleasure, the meeting proceeded exactly as I’d always heard they did. There was no leader, there were no readings, or hymns or rituals, just about twenty people sitting quietly. After a while a woman got up and asked us to remember a friend who was appearing in Clacton Magistrates Court for refusing to pay part of his taxes - the part that he estimated was paying for a war in Iraq. After a while a man got up and talked about old age, and a bit later another man picked up the same subject and said a few words more. All the time, the room was filled with sunshine, warmth, and the sound of birdsong from the little garden outside. I sat in my chair and meditated.

I then had a very clear visual experience. Occasionally when I meditate this happens. When I first began, many years ago, it would usually consist of a dark background, with a bright glowing golden disc in front of it, or occasionally a sort of doughnut. The disk or doughnut looked like molten gold, a brilliant rich yellow colour, slightly blurred around the edges, and the darker background generally looked like clouds, grey and dark and brilliant white where the light caught them with here and brilliant edges of gold and silver where the sun caught them. The background might vary but the disc or doughnut was nearly always there. I read some time later in a book called A Meditator's Diary, by an American woman who had stayed in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand to learn to meditate, that this was a nimitta, and that each person had a different one, and that this tended to change over time as they meditated. The visual experience never lasted very long - it’s hard when meditating to know how much time has passed in any case, but it usually seemed to last for only a few minutes, perhaps only seconds, and frustratingly, because it was always very beautiful, if I attempted to look at it, it disappeared even more quickly. As if by grasping at it, I had chased it away.

I stopped regular meditation many years ago - there never seemed to be enough time - and only very occasionally made an attempt to do so, and I usually ended up feeling frustrated. Then my marriage failed and after several months on my own I started to meditate again, every day, for an hour, usually straight after I had got up and bathed. On the odd days when I missed it, I felt uncomfortable and insecure. Ironically, I missed it most often on Sundays, when I got up too late and didn’t want to miss mass at 9.30. During the week, as I work for myself, I would simply go to my office that much later in the morning, if I woke up later than usual.

When I resumed regular meditation, I did so in quite a different spirit than on those few occasions when I had tried over the previous twenty or so years. Then I had often felt desperate, or very depressed, and needy for some dramatic experience, which never came, so I gave up frustrated and discouraged. Now, despite all the anguish over the preceding months, I came to it without any expectations, just a feeling that this was something I should never have given up, and that I should persist, patiently, and trust in God I suppose, to let whatever was to happen, happen. And nothing very much did happen. I found it relaxing, deeply so, and as the months went by, it became more and more important to me that I made the effort every day to put the time aside for it. That was the only effort - meditation is about the contradictory state of trying (to meditate) without trying, which can be confusing, and disheartening. But that was also part of the benefit - not to be disheartened, to accept whatever happened in meditation as intended, part of the process. Sometimes after an hour of trying to still my thoughts, continually focussing on my breath coming in and going out, or simply on being aware of my surroundings - the bird song outside, the warmth of the sun on my face - it would seem as if I had done nothing but daydream, one endless stream of thoughts about anything and everything chasing their tails around my mind, and, only for a few seconds in the hour, actually being aware of the moment. But I began to realise that this was not time wasted. For a start, although trains of thought came and went, I wasn’t interested in them, or what they were about. Although not perhaps aware in that pure sense of the moment, I was very much aware of how these thoughts arose, and each thought led to another, and another, and another, in an endless silly cycle of mental chatter. At times it was like watching a hamster scurrying round its cage, running in its wheel or up and down its little ladder, endless motion, without going anywhere. So even if I wasn’t stilling my mind, I was at least becoming aware of its separate existence, and for such a lot of time, its futility. And oddly, sometimes after the most frustrating sessions, feeling deeply relaxed and secure afterwards, as if the part of me that was observing the mind, was really relaxed, and was quite separate from the thoughts themselves. Sometimes the thoughts were quite disturbing - violent, or fearful, or angry. I didn’t try and suppress them, or change their direction or mood, just constantly tried to pay attention what was actually happening in the moment.

After a while I began to have visual experiences again - I am deliberately not referring to them as visions, because they aren’t - more akin to the effect of pressing your fingers against your eyeballs with your eyes closed, which makes you see bright flashing lights, or what you see if you’ve been looking at a bright light and then close your eyes and you can still see the after-image. This time they were different. The background is light, varying from a silvery grey to bright white light like hazy sunshine, and in the foreground, a tiny dark fragment. If you imagine the background as a sheet of white A4 paper, the object in the foreground measures perhaps only one or two millimetres square. It looks most like a small fragment of paper ash, very sharply in focus, with the colour varying from jet black to a soft grey. It often seems like the focus of the whole field, as if everything is being drawn in to it. I also sometimes think it may be the “blind spot” at the back of the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eyeball and there are no rod or cone cells to detect light - that is as if with my eyes shut what I am aware of is that part of the brain that processes the signals from the retina.

To return to the meeting. As I sat there meditating, I was once again sitting or lying at the bottom of the pond looking up at the surface. Now the light from the surface was much brighter (probably the effect of sitting in the sun filled Meeting room, even with my eyes shut) when it seemed quite suddenly that two things happened. Firstly my nimitta was no longer a piece of ash, but a water boatman swimming on the surface of the pond. I could see with pin sharp clarity each of its legs, moving frantically, and so clearly that I could see the depressions in the meniscus that its body and legs were making. And at the same time I could see that the surface was completely flat like a sheet of glass, mirror smooth, through which I was able to see the sky completely clearly. And then, suddenly, as I was looking at the water boatman, it suddenly shot off out of view over my right shoulder, and I suppose I sort of came to.

What was so wonderful, funny ha ha really, or funny ah ha!, was the way in which this experience complemented and completed the experience I had had whilst meditating at home that morning. What the little boatman signified, if anything, I don’t really know or care about. Perhaps nothing, perhaps the last vestiges of my anger, perhaps me, the little me that wanders about the world supported on this perfectly clear, perfectly still, pond of water. But I felt wonderfully answered, completed, satisfied. I wanted to stand up in the Meeting, but something held me back, and I said nothing.

Once the hour was up (I heard no bells or alarms so I suppose one or more were looking at the wall clock) everyone sort of woke up, and shook hands with each, and after a bit of business (upcoming events and announcements, just like the priest gives out at the end of a service) we all went back into the hallway for coffee, and I chatted with one or two of the Friends, and borrowed a book from their library. After about half an hour I went off to Asda to do my shopping, and then to the village pub for a couple of pints and a bit of social life.

Towards the end of the week, on the Friday, I got into a bit of a panic about the amount of work I had to do, and having slept late, rushed off to the office without meditating. In the event I got there no earlier than I normally do, and although I worked away all day, did no more than I often do in two or three hours. I went home at the end of the day, having worked until nearly 9 pm, feeling nervy and frazzled, and determined that tomorrow I would not miss out.

I thought I had the Saturday to myself, and was relaxing in bed with a pot of tea, smoking a cigarette and reading from the book I’d borrowed from the Friends’ library the previous Sunday. I was looking forward to my bath, and an hour’s meditation, when the ‘phone rang. As this doesn’t happen often, I didn’t want to miss the caller, and hopped out of bed and rushed down to answer it before the answering machine picked up the call - it wasn’t an old friend, or one of the family, as I’d hoped, but someone from the gliding club, asking me why I wasn’t there to do my winch duty. Somewhat confused, I said I wasn’t there because I was on duty the next day (Sunday) but it turned out that the man who’d done the winch driver’s rota had got his dates muddled and that in fact I was due at the club this morning at 9 am for a 3 hour shift. As I had in any case wanted to go to the Friends Meeting again, I was quite pleased, and in any case it was too late to try and get someone else to do the shift in my place, so I said I’d be there as quickly as I could. So I finished my tea and got dressed, and rushed out without either bathing or meditating, deciding that I would do both when I got home again after my shift was over.

I then spent three hours driving the winch, launching gliders into a clear blue sky on a beautiful clear and very frosty morning. When driving the winch, one is generally alone and, for a lot of the time, just waiting for someone to call you on the radio to ask you to launch the next glider. In the intervals I tried to meditate, but I found it hard to concentrate. I then had a very powerful insight, a sort of visualisation. Although not in that meditative state that I had been on the previous Sunday, I saw myself again, now looking down. I was in air rather than water. And all I was was an observer, just consciousness. And below me, quite separate from me, was the rest of me - David really - the full set of vices and virtues, my past, my personality, everything of me that makes me me as distinct from anyone else, apart from my consciousness. And I had this wonderful perception of how completely innocent that entity was, how what David is, how he behaves, responds, acts and reacts, how he thinks and feels, is all contingent, all arises out of where he was born, his parents, his upbringing, his genes - that he is utterly helpless to change any of this. Even that the boundary between himself and the world, where his autonomy begins and ends is almost a construct, that he is part of a continuous chain of causes and effects which he both suffers and transmits. And that this David has come into being, at his birth, and will disappear utterly with his death. That if anything continues, it is simply this awareness. As I am describing this, it may sound as if I’m describing a chain of thought, but it wasn’t like that - it was all bound up with the visualisation or vision, apprehended immediately, although the implications worked out over the next few hours.

It was wonderfully liberating - no guilt, suddenly seeing what is meant by action without acting - David is part of the flow of events, continuously responding to the things that happen to him, and this disembodied self floating above him, the will, now wills nothing, desires nothing. And David is no more special than all those other personalities he’s interacting with, that they are all equal, and equally unimportant - that what matters is the self behind and above and beyond each of these personalities, and that’s how it’s possible to love your enemy - ironically easier to love your enemy’s true self, because you don’t even like the personality - that all there is to love is the self (whereas to truly love our friends and lovers and children is much harder, because as personalities we love their personalities or perhaps what we see in them that is of us, or complements us). The Dalai Lama talks about this in his little book On Transforming the Mind - that we need to learn to see particularly those we love without attachment, to realise that the thing we are loving is transitory, not really real.

The experience is also horrifying, as The Gospel of Thomas (apparently) says “. . when you find that for which you are seeking, you will first be horrified and amazed . .” because suddenly all these things from which all my happiness has seemed to come, are nothing. It’s not lonely or depressing, it’s just so different.

And then seeing so clearly what I’ve been told and sort of intellectually understood for years, about our desperate searching for happiness and fulfilment in the world, but really seeing it and understanding it - that it is the self trying through the personality to find the satisfaction in the world and its abundance and riches, in relations with others, the satisfaction that only the self can provide. That the world is wonderful, but as soon as we begin to believe in it, we are lost to it, and to our true selves.

And more of the same, to the point where I feel myself on top of a very high mountain, and very much afraid that I shouldn’t really be up here at all, and that I will fall, and it will hurt terribly. I shall probably go home soon, and get drunk.

 EleniKapiri is an artist on Naxos

working in sculpture, paint , photography and poetry

 

Eleni Kapiri was born in 1970 in Moni, on Naxos. Her father operated a marble quarry and this brought her into direct contact with the unique qualities of Naxian marble. She began to make her first sculptures at the age of 12. At 18 she studied at the Fine Arts School of Tinos.

She has spent time in Brighton, England, in Germany, and in Athens, but most of her working life has been on Naxos, which she loves with a fierce passion and pride.

• In 2014 she will be exhibiting her sculpture, painting and photography in the Bazeos Tower on Naxos, in Athens and in Thessaloniki.
• In 2000 she took part in an exhibition of traditional artworks in her home village of Moni.
• In 2001 she held an exhibition of her work at the Venetian Museum in the historic old town - the Castro - of Naxos.
• In 2004 she participated at "Dionysia", a series of activities and events organised by the Municipality of Naxos.
• In 2007 she held an exhibition of her paintings (she began painting in 2003) at the "Naxos Cafe".
• In 2008 she held her own exhibition in Athens, at the Art Hall.

Many of her works are in private collections. Tragically in 1996 a great deal of her work to that time was stolen from her studio.

"Elements from the African, Indian, Maori as well as from the Buddhist sculpture of the Far East make her artworks part of the contemporary global aesthetic." Stamatina Palmou

"With her work Eleni Kapiri takes the history of human art from the very beginning. She is like the Statue of Liberty - only that instead of the torch, she is holding a paint brush or a chisel." Jimmy Efthimiou

"Tracey Emin on steroids. A unique perspective. A sense of the energy and tension in things, and a powerful connection with the natural world and her home, Naxos." David Simpson

More pictures of Eleni's sculpture, painting and photography, and translations of her poems, to follow

All images copyright © Eleni Kapiri 2013 - not to be reproduced or used without the permission of the artist.
Please email to eleni@elenikapiri.net for more information. 

www.elenikapiri.net

Mirror

Sunday August 30^th 2009, 9:13 to 9:40 am,
in the garden at 12 Mehetabel Road

I am sitting on a wooden folding chair at the end of the garden looking back at the house. It is a sunny morning with a cool breeze blowing. I am slightly hungover.

In my notebook I write:

“another lovely morning – sunny, cool breeze, oyster shell clouds. A bit stale. Half inclined to go home now.

When the Buddha attained enlightenment, everything (one) became enlightened.

The Buddha is not out there

I am / have the Buddha.

Hence if I see him, he is a delusion.”

I am looking at the blue plastic washing line tied to the white painted brickwork on the back of the house.

Thoughts come and go. I keep returning my attention to the blue plastic line on the wall. At some point, I think towards the end of sitting, I disappear. Image – a perfect mirror and I and everyone are flecks of dust lying on or just above the mirror. It seems as if I have fallen out of my fleck of dust. I see I am just pure awareness, always have been. That out of this awareness the fleck of dust arose, could not help it, when the mirror became me, whenever that was. This all happens at once. A complete understanding – intellectual, emotional, physical. It is so simple. So everyday. The blue plastic line is still there. The sun is still shining. But I, the fleck of dust above me, is transformed, the water of life seems to pour through all of me, every aspect of my self, my past, transformed, aligned in one direction. I am not forgiven, there is nothing to forgive, nothing to judge, awareness trapped in me had no way other than to become me, to struggle in the delusion and agony, unable to see itself, the I AM. I see this is the kingdom, within me and among us, each of us trapped more or less in our little fleck but in reality, all one. Yet there is still I here, just free of all the trappings of I. Seeing the fleck and all other flecks with perfect understanding and compassion, only wanting everyone to come down here. And the whole world is brilliant, sparkling, full of love and energy.

On the bus to St Marks I want to weep, and keep laughing at the wonderful shops – a shop with a stuffed ostrich and what looks like a capuchin monkey, a shop called ‘Lie down I must tell you I love you’, an extraordinary cinema like an Egyptian temple which I have never noticed before but must have passed many times. Wanting to rush out and tell everyone it’s true, the kingdom is at hand, right here and now, and they weren’t making it up (Jesus and Buddha and Eckhart and Teresa and everyone else).

At the same time, mind rushes back. I’m so lucky, special, clever – I wonder how many others have experienced this – it is just like the tempter in the desert, almost beguiling, and I know I can never stop meditating, that it would so easy to try and take possession of this, turn it in to an idol, hug it to myself. And I’m suspicious of the urge to get up and tell everyone about this – and fearful – I want them to understand, to believe me, not to think I’m bonkers or arrogant, and I don’t feel worthy or able to do that. But I’m filled with this overwhelming love and joy and peace, and everyone I look at seems to be alight, and there isn’t somehow any necessity to tell them – they are already filled with love. And it is love, somehow agape and eros combined.

Even as I am writing this, I can barely recall the experience. The mirror or kingdom has an impersonal quality – it is not me but it is not not me. I may never have such an experience again, but I know it is real, and as I meditate, as I remain mindful, walking the dog, whatever, it is there even though I am not aware of it. The parable of the wise virgins is so important – always to have the lamp filled, the wick trimmed, waiting without grasping for the moment when one falls through the crack into all truth.

In my beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and Word was God. And light came into the world, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. In all our beginnings is the Word and it is with us for ever.

In the evening my step daughter, Laura and her husband Toby tell us they are having a baby. This morning I wrote this:

every conception an Annunciation

every mother a Virgin

every child the Word made flesh

every life a crucifixion and a resurrection

in each one of us the Cosmos created anew

At the moment (however long it lasted, I think no time at all) I fell in to the Kingdom, and I was flooded with the water of life (all the images are true, I felt like a dry desert filled with fresh rains) I wanted to rush off and read all the scriptures, the psalms, the gospels, everything to see the truth that was written in them (and perhaps the falseness too).

All through the retreat, just sitting in the Zendo with my eyes open, they felt dry and gritty. Now they are filled with tears and are refreshed. And so appropriate that it is a Sunday morning, in a garden like the one where Mary found the empty tomb.

Still a question remains. Should I not have got up and shouted at everyone in St Marks, that I have been in the Kingdom and it is here with us all and it’s all true, and that Mother Julian had it exactly right only I would change the tense – all things are well and all manner of things are well and there is no sin in the world, only delusion and ignorance. Let those who have ears hear, let those who have eyes see.

New Year's Day 2014

Almost immediately after I woke up this morning the still small voice said "I" (or perhaps it said "You"), "will never hear from her again."

I hear it quite often. It is quiet, authoritative, without an emotional edge. It is not judgemental or despairing. Sometimes it tells me not to have another drink, to stop doing something, and I ignore it. There are no comebacks. Sometimes it makes quite banal, mundane suggestions, such as "Stop this now" or "Go for a walk". It seems completely real and trustworthy to me. If I ignore it, it doesn't mind - I may beat  myself up about ignoring it, but it never does.

When I heard it this morning, I was sad. Not despairing, or grief stricken (I've done enough of that in the last eight months). I just accepted that it was telling me the truth. Not practically or literally. There will inevitably be some sort of contact, about divorce, or property, or the stuff I've left behind, but that could just as easily be through a lawyer or accountant, or one of my step daughters, on her behalf. But there will be no loving, caring, engaged, email, or letter or phone call.

I was told recently about distinguishing between "coping" and "transforming". Coping is just accepting, putting up with, suffering patiently and willingly, or otherwise. To transform requires us to truly relax and then to enter in to our painful response and engage with it. I realise I have spent a lot of my life, and of the last ten years, coping, imagining that I was surrendering to the flow, being detached. In reality I was just putting my pain or frustration or anger or despair to one side, but not moving through it, engaging with it, and then leaving it behind. Hence perhaps my drinking - numbing myself to the great crowd of supplicants in the waiting room next door.

So I spent the day feeling needy and lonely, unloved. Little new year messages on Skype or Facebook or email seemingly ignored. I worked hard at researching for stories for the next issue of the Transition Free Press, all too aware of how ignorant I am of what has been happening in "the world of media" for the last eight months.

So, at some point, I did sit down to relax and enter this feeling, turn it round, see what else was there, what other perspectives I can take. I understand that in a way I've been living in a sort of daydream for years. Clinging to times of happiness and content, of joy, of deep love, of real companionship, but ignoring or glossing over times of misery and despair and deep loneliness. And then I look ahead. Freedom. A new start. A sort of rebirth. I found my self commenting on someone's blog on Inner Transition (what does resilience, sustainability, permaculture, living lightly, mean for the inner life we lead?). She talked of a cone - the individual at the top, then immediate family, then extended family, then community, then nature, land, the earth at the bottom. How each of these sustains us and when one layer fails, the other steps up. And that sometimes we only have the bottom - nature itself - to hold us. And I realised how much of the last eight months has been about rebuilding and repairing each of those parts of my cone. Finding a new community after 25 years in Wormingford and Coggeshall. Going back to my extended family. Staying close to my children. And experiencing nature, this island, deeply, slowly, and being fed and sustained by it. Just the sheer physical pleasure of bright sunlight and sea, plants and animals, this extraordinary landscape. And until I wrote that comment, and read the blog, I had not even realised this was happening.

I jumped into the abyss (a la Castaneda) on April 29, and entered another world. I’m still falling, or floating, or flying . . .

a cosmos within

Tuesday 5 Jan 2010. I see the field of "stars" - bright pin points of light like dust motes in sunshine, or stars and galaxies. It has been some time since I last saw this, as always it comes like a gift, I cannot hold on to it. The points of light are blue-white, dancing against a deep black. It is quite unlike other visual effects in meditation - as if I am really seeing in to something or some place. It always fills me with joy, makes me want to smile or laugh. Today I googled for lights in meditation but found nothing, or not much, apart from advice to ignore them. Since I cannot make them appear, and they seem to disappear almost as soon as my ego kicks in and I try to grasp or hold on to them, I don't really have much choice. But I am curious. Are they quantum particles, or some aspect of my body (chakras, astral body ooooh ooh ooh - don't go there, that's where the loonies live).