Travelling

My Sweetheart and I recently spent a fortnight on an idyllic Mediterranean island. I did some work while there, but mostly it was a nourishing break.

I don’t really do holidays. I’ve travelled quite a bit, but that’s different. Now I know that many ‘holidays’ (or ‘vacations’ to those who speak American English) also involve travelling. All of mine certainly do. But there’s something about travelling -- in the sense of visiting places you've never been before, broadening your horizons, that sort of thing -- that doesn’t let you completely relax. It's like that song 'Hit the Ground Running' by Bill Callahan:

I had to leave the country

Though there was some nice folks there

Now I don't know where I'm going

All I know to do is hit the ground running

I love to travel. One of the things I love best about it is described in another Bill Callahan song, 'I Could Drive Forever':

With every mile

A piece of me peels off

and whips down the road

All down the road
I should have left a long time ago

The best idea I've ever had
I feel light and strong

I could drive forever

Two years ago I backpacked through Viet Nam, on my own, for four weeks. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, thanks in no small part to the kindness and generosity of spirit of the Vietnamese people. But anyone travelling in a foreign country – especially alone – must always, to some extent, remain vigilant. Pickpockets and hustlers aside, everything is strange and unfamiliar. We don’t know how things work, we don’t understand the language, sometimes we don’t even understand the body language.

The I Ching tells us something about travelling, in Hexagram 56, which is formed of Fire over Mountain. Mountain, on the inside, is stable, strong, and steady; Fire, on the outside, moves. It’s about how to negotiate the role of a traveller; how to keep safe, and maintain your own integrity and roots, while moving through different cultures and situations.

When one is travelling, life is not stable, and everyone is a stranger. Moving from place to place is tiring, both physically and emotionally, and there are dangers. You are a wanderer, searching for something new: crossing borders, just passing through and not staying. You are on the move; the journey is in process, and you haven’t yet reached a destination.

This hexagram is about the need, when in new territory, to be clear and perceptive (Fire), and self-contained and cautious (Mountain).

The Decision is positive, promising good fortune, but most of the lines are negative. Many of them are about the dependence of the traveller on others: because he is at the mercy of others, he must be cautious and careful in his actions. Only two of the lines are really positive, and those are the ones with inherent inner stability and self-containment – and the best one speaks of finding a safe haven and trusted companions.

So travelling is not really about letting your hair down – despite the justified popularity of Full Moon parties (which are, I suppose, a safe haven with trusted companions).

But my holiday wasn’t Travelling. It had some of the advantages of travelling: I was nourished physically by exotic and exquisite food, and spiritually by the breathtaking beauty of the place…clear azure sea, fields of grain, goats grazing under ancient fig trees…

And although in an unfamiliar country, I was in a safe and comfortable place, with trusted friends, and my Sweetheart.

It was bliss.
I could quite easily get used to it.

http://www.ichingconsultation.com/

Watch it!

Lighthouse on Espalmador, Formentera

I recently read Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson. It’s a brilliant book – and it has made me look at lighthouses with new eyes, and hear stories with new ears.

There’s a sort of lighthouse in the I Ching: Hexagram 20, GUAN. The form of the hexagram as a whole has the form of the trigram Mountain, and there are a lot of similarities between Guan and Mountain: they are the two hexagrams of meditation, reflection, and contemplation. Guan is composed of Wind over Earth; it has the deep stability of Earth, and the lightness of Wind, which can go everywhere.

The character is composed of two parts.

• On the left, a heron or owl with wide open eyes. A heron can stay still for hours – then suddenly they’ve got the fish! An owl can see in the dark, through confusion and chaos.
  
• On the right, an eye with a person below it; thus 'to see'.

Guan means to observe or examine; pronounced with a different tonal quality, it can be an observatory (where you watch the stars to see the movements of the Dao), or a temple, where you can observe the Dao through meditation (a temple is sometimes called dao guan). In meditation, we observe: perhaps the breath, perhaps a sound, perhaps our physical sensations…what is important is that our attention penetrates but does not get caught in these things, like the wind moving over the earth.

Guan is a place from which you can see into the subtleties of things, as well as getting a bird's eye view: the big picture, a global perspective without your own small stuff clouding it.

And while you are watching others, others are inevitably watching you: that’s part of the package of being in a position of altitude.

Wilhelm calls it Contemplation; Blofeld calls it Looking Down; Huang calls it Watching; Wu calls it To Observe; LiSe calls it The Heron.

One aspect of this hexagram that I find particularly interesting is the Decision:

Huang’s translation: Hands are washed, offerings are not yet presented. Being sincere and truthful, reverence appears.
LiSe’s translation: Hand washing and not yet sacrificing. Possessing true devotion.

What are they on about? Why do you need to cleanse yourself? Why do you need reverence, sincerity, truth and devotion in order to observe?

We are all of us full of inner voices chattering away: beliefs, desires and aversions – all more or less unconscious and unexamined habits that organize us into who we are. In order to listen – even to ourselves (and three of the lines tell us to observe our own lives) – we must first make a quiet space inside. Daoism speaks of the ‘Void of the Heart’ – a quiet inner sanctum from which we can listen and look, see and hear without being clouded by preoccupation. If you are going to get a call from your higher Self, you have to keep the line clear – otherwise, You’ll just get a busy signal!

So how do we get the beans out of our ears? How do we hang up the phone so the still small voice can get through?

The Decision here describes a ritual. The first part of any ritual has to do with focus and preparation, of simply being present and making a space in which the unknown can become known. It can be as simple as sitting down on your meditation mat, or as complex as you like. It can be the Grace before dinner; the writing of Morning Pages; opening the curtains; clearing your desk before you begin working -- somehow we climb the lighthouse stairs. The magic lies in the reverence, sincerity, truth and devotion we bring to the moment: our open curiosity and willingness to welcome whatever is there to be seen and heard and experienced….what will you see today?