​35 years

India and Nepal

Wise old woman, earth mother, critic, sexy dark Lilith vamp, laughing trickster, wise old man: initially Jungian archetypes, drawn and painted dreamlike figures dissolving as I begin painting and drawing fluid, inner energy of mind weather through abstract shapes, textures, colours and movement. This exploration leads me to India and Nepal asking, Who am I? What is the Meaning of Life? Why do we Suffer? How Can We Be Happy? and other Big Questions, searching for enlightenment or at least some kind of experiential insight. I know, even as I go, that this can reveal itself in completely unexpected ways, messy and not necessarily according to what I imagine, but appearing sideways, through dust and open-ness in moments that undo rather than confirm.

​

In Nepal we travel from Kathmandu to Chitwan Wildlife Park for a few days’ safari, riding elephants and white water, sleeping in a mud hut and crossing a crocodile infested river in an ox cart. Returning to Kathmandu, we miss the bus at Thali Bazaar because our polite, British queuing leaves us standing while everyone else muscles onboard departing in a suffocating cloud of nose-clogging, polluted dust. An hour later, another bus rattles into town. I am hot, have a headache and am getting in touch with my inner stubbornness. “We are bloody well getting on it,” I growl to my second husband. In best Nepali style I push and shove with the chickens into this scrap heap and we are on board.

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Sweltering and rattling over narrow mountain roads for seven hours, I am squashed on the engine mount next to a young Nepali driver who crosses himself and prays while leaning out of the window on every bend checking that the bald tyres haven’t blown. I gaze, terrified, at the churning river two hundred feet below. After a couple of exhausting hours trying to meditate my way out of feeling freaked out, I let go and accept I will die along with everyone else in this rattling bone-shaker. Terror dissolves and I relax.

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Next morning as I contemplate hazy mountains surrounding Kathmandu from our hotel roof, this acceptance temporarily melts all my defensive boundaries into an expansive experience of boundless joy.

 

This is the profound spiritual teaching I have come for.

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​​Learning to Be: Remembering

Sun smiles through tall glass windows as we settle expectantly on chairs and cushions in our pine-clad meditation hall, wondering what our teacher will say about how memory colours thinking, feeling and sensing ourselves and the world. She enters, a compassionate, straight-talking woman who wastes no time in casually informing us that,  “Memory is remembering in the present.”

 

And pauses.

​Huh?

​What’s she talking about? Memory is in the past, isn’t it?

 

This simple statement touches a raw nerve. A door has just been flung open inviting me to step through, feel, remember right now, begin discovering who I really am in the midst of all my confusion. Although this challenges all my tightly held hopes and fears, I’m curious. Years of meditating convince me that I can only ever be in the present. So remembering must also be in the present. 

 

Back home I collapse mindfully into the creaky chair by my old pine desk, stare out of my summer garden window and start by being present while remembering my childhood.​

 

6 months

​Here I am, in this body lying on my back travelling backwards watching mum hands on something pushing. Weird yet exciting things going on around me, past humming brrmmm brrrmmmm to my right (later labelled as traffic?), light and dark, changing shapes on my left (shops?). Feeling left, right, just feeling. Trying to make sense of it all. If she were to turn the pram around, the humming bbrrrrrmmmmm would be on my left and shapes would be on my right. I instinctively feel know bodily that everything is relative. Surprise. Dreamed insight, imagination or memory?

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4 years

In a suburban summer garden with flowers, grass and flies, my smiling face and pudgy arms hold my flared skirt out sideways. “Oh, you are such a cute, pretty girl,” parents croon. I want to please them, but I am irritated. I’m far too earthy and stubborn for that mush. I’d rather take a stool to the end of the garden and sit with my back to the house or colour in my Sooty book.

Maybe I’m not a nice full of sugar and spice little girl? Oh dear. Or I can’t fit in with grown-up bullshit? Either way, will I get told off?

My father seems to get me. When I purposely lock myself in my bedroom, he accepts I want to do that and he lets me. Mum is distraught, as I am not behaving like the good little baby girl she had imagined when playing with her dolls. I don’t fit.

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8 years

We are on the long train journey from Hull to Hove. Mum's weight has plummeted to 7 stone and she can't now cope with three children. Grandpa has encouraged her to leave our father in Hull and bring my brother, sister and myself to live in his large Edwardian home in Hove with him and grandma.

 

I love my Durham-born Grandpa Sydney, maverick son of Latvian Jewish refugees who was a piano player in silent movie cinemas, now turned racing tipster after a career flogging black market chocolates during the war, a not very successful career as he ate most of the chocolates himself. He was always self-employed, apart from one day’s employment as a book-keeper above a fish and chip shop in Hove, a career abruptly terminated by a heart attack, after which he wisely returned to self-employment.

​

While mum is less keen on grandpa's over-protective, bad temper, maybe fuelled by sorrow and guilt at his baby daughter - born prior to mum being conceived - dying, we both bond when he takes one look at me fresh out of nursing home, saying, "Eeee, she's grand!", displaying me proudly, nappy-free,  in his arms at his front gate for all to admire until I pee down his shirt front.

 

Sabbath

Friday night is Sabbath night, even for non-practising Jews like my grandparents. Grandma Rivka makes gefilte fish, a good Jewish dish: moist, grey, lumpy. Grandpa Sydney enthuses, “Eeeee Rivka, that looks grand!” as he surveys the offering before him. 

“And how are her bowels today?” he adds, turning towards my mother. 

“I don’t think she’s been.”

“Oh aye, it’ll be liquid paraffin then.” I groan inwardly.

 

“Yaachchchhrrch”. Grandpa goes puce and pop-eyed. 

I wonder what’s the matter.

“Yeeeaachhhhhhhhh”.

“He’s choking on a fish bone,” groans Rivka, thumping him on the back.

“He’s always choking on fish bones,” recalls mum. 

Grandpa swallows some water and his eyeballs retreat. He seems to be breathing normally. 

Ahh, another family Sabbath.

 

Grandpa buys a 1930’s semi-detached house in a tree-lined road nearby for mum and us children to live in. Three young children and a fragile single mother are too much for an elderly couple to live with. My brother stays with grandpa and grandma, but my baby sister and I move in with mum. My memories of living there are so traumatic that I can only remember it as very dark, cold and scary.

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10 years

Waiting

Hove General Hospital waiting room late October in the early 60’s is gloomy, grim, colourless and cold. Light bulbs in metal lampshades dimly illuminate rows of metal chairs and their hard wooden seats. There is no one else here. I shiver beside my exhausted mother not knowing what to do. A young, kindly man in a white lab coat quietly settles himself on her left side and speaks gently, almost apologetically to her. She looks aghast, but I also sense relief in her. Now she knows. She has pneumonia and pleurisy and needs to immediately go into this hospital. At least it is nearby.

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It all happens so quickly. No, she hasn’t got pneumonia and pleurisy, she has tuberculosis, which explains her extreme weight loss. She must immediately go into an isolation ward at a hospital an hour’s bus ride away. I sit next to her in a taxi to the hospital, where she is admitted and I am not. She waves to me from the first floor ward window. We part. I am not allowed to visit her for 6 months while she receives treatment. Distraught, I weep for days.

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Every other evening my stepfather visits mum on the gruelling, two-hour,  freezing cold round trip to and from hospital. My young sister also has TB and is in hospital with mum. As I do not have TB, I am left alone at home, with a hot water bottle, rug, supper, TV and a candle in case of power cuts, of which there are several in this snowy winter. My brother comes to sit with me sometimes, but not always. I feel lonely, abandoned and terrified.

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There is a certain quality to the gloom of an evening sitting feeling abandoned in front of the telly with a hot water bottle. A central ceiling light bulb is not quite bright enough to be cheerful. Dimness penetrates the mind and body like a cold, damp mist, which as they say here in Suffolk, “It goes through yer, not round yer.” It has taken me years not to be triggered by fear and depression when sitting in a dimly lit evening room.

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Impermanence and loss have arrived on my doorstep. I begin to experience deep suffering, the first Noble Truth as taught by the Buddha.

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I realise some of this trauma has lightened when I come back home following hip replacement surgery a few years ago. A cold February with a seriously foul, orange-alert storm brewing means only one thing in rural Suffolk: power cuts. On my own, hobbling round my pitch-black house on crutches with a powerful torch strapped to my head and bitter wind howling outside, I remember my youthful trauma. To my surprise I realise I’m okay. It’s a nuisance, and my hip hurts, but I’m okay. Simply here. Meditation is really helping.

11 years

Good girl

“If you’re not a good girl, mummy will die,” pronounces mother, while my 11 year-old body reclines naked, vulnerable in the bath. 

“What?” I say. 

I worship her slender, femme-fatale Marlene Dietrich eyebrows, Scarlet O’Hara red-painted lips and rouged high cheekbones, terrified she will die, or faint if I breathe the wrong way.

“If you’re not a good girl, mummy will die.” She milks it, perfectly timing the jugular with narcissistic precision.

 

Mother is now home after six months coughing and making fluffy rabbits in her tuberculosis isolation ward. She has gained some weight but the medication makes her vomit. Home is poverty enveloping us with gloomy black mould, freezing cold, a tiny paraffin heater in a stinking dark hall. Brother is now permanently with grandparents, divorced father remains in Hull, sister has just come home from foster care, stepfather is bent, depressed, caring for us all. Poor guy, mum knows how to wind him round her little finger.

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I pray at night that mum will recover. I have recurrent dreams about scales, hundreds of them with huge black clouds above me, reflecting depression and the black mould slowly growing on my bedroom wall. I keep poking my toes through holes in damp flannelette bedsheets but no-one bothers to mend them or find sheets with no holes. There’s no let up in the ever-shifting sands of uncertainty: just as things seem to be settling, mum has another eruption of spots, faints, is sick or lies around while step-father serves her and I worry she’ll die.

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Mashed jacket potato with lashings of butter is rated top-of-the-line comfort food along with home-made hamburgers and gravy made by my step-father. Banana and custard are good nursery follow-ups. Food is love. No wonder I get fat.

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I am also confused, conflicted. I want to be caring and helpful, but something feels off that makes me hold back. Why is mum telling me I could be a little nurse for her? I never imagined myself in that role but dutifully dress up in the nurse’s costume she buys for me. I am fed and watered but feel emotionally unseen and ignored. My sister looks fed up too, but I don’t have the capacity to relate to her lovingly.

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15 years

Everything is relative

I’ve been discovering art, dance, drama, writing at school with visits to theatres and exhibitions in London funded by Grandma. I begin to express myself creatively. Crouched on my bed staring into our suburban garden, I am birthing an insight, something exciting and new. I still have my fluffy rabbits. When mother enters my room without knocking, I uncharacteristically tell her to bugger off, I’m THINKING about The Meaning of Life. 

Quivering, I feel my body may explode.

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Then I see. Really see how everything is relative, that how things seem to be depends on my state of mind. Reality is a matter of attitude. But I don’t really know what to do with this insight, it’s just a seed, a gift, carried from the pram. Or remembering from another life? Either way it feels momentous.

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”She is getting difficult,” I hear mum say. You bet. I am fed up with her dying swan games and manipulation that go way beyond genuine illness. I refuse to collude. And besides I am an adolescent female and know how to flounce. We both get so annoyed with each other that she slaps my face. I quickly slap her back. I stand my ground.

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Something has changed. We draw our lines.

 

16 years

Brother where are you?

Knock knock. Curled up in agony with a hot bottle nursing period pain cramps I am too feeble to crawl from the back dining room into the hallway to open the front door. Mum has to do it instead. I hear her and a man’s voice as they walk into the front room. Too bleary to care, I fade back into a hot water bottle sleep.

 

Mum appears in front of me frozen like a statue, “I think you’d better come into the front room.” Oh. What now.

Clutching my bottle I totter into the front room. A man in a blue-grey uniform is sitting on the arm of the old maroon 1950’s sofa. Odd.

“He’s from the RAF and has news for us.” Oh crikey, my brother’s in the RAF.

Apparently my brother committed suicide, hung himself. Why? Don’t know.

“It happens quite a lot,” explains the man. "He ejaculated when he died. That’s common too." Oh. Not much else said while I was in there.

 

I am devastated. Mum can’t cope with travelling to the funeral. 

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Impermanence is no longer a house guest; it is a bedfellow and shadow. The world, including family, is not a solid, safe or reliable place. I am a psychological mess, but as there is no therapy or meditation around in 1971, I remain a psychological mess.

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21 years

Stripping

Years of pent-up, repressed energy blow. An 18 year-old, I rent a cheap bedsit in a sleazy area of Brighton above a photography shop where I work. This is not a popular move with my mother, as her compliant little girl has suddenly become uncontrollable and disinterested in maintaining a symbiotic relationship with her.  I am on a roll, experiencing anything interesting and profitable which comes my way. This includes taking LSD, cannabis, amphetamines and being a stripper earning good money travelling Europe.

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Awareness meditation is like peeling away layers of an onion. What are we peeling away? Delusions mainly. Teachers say that when these ingrained delusions soften and dissolve, what remains is boundless, naked awareness, joy, love, compassion, creativity and wise insight. But I’m not quite there yet. My need for money, lots of it, is paramount, so I can free myself from poverty.

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A blonde-wigged burlesque stripper, I pose seductively in a silver lamé gown edged with voluminous white boa feathers fanned out around me, my look-but-don’t-touch phoney smile knowing I will soon be free from poverty. Glamour is only wig and false eyelash deep, but the power of money earned buys me a house. Then I will do something meaningful with my life.

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Life is colourful, if sleazy. I twirl my boa feathers in an Antwerp nightclub run by Big Frank, who is fine with me despite his reputation of being a bastard. My husband and I travel to Amsterdam and stay for a few days in a noisy hotel near the red light district. He decides that a striptease ‘double act’ using a blow-up rubber doll as partner will go down well with continental audiences in Belgium. I am less than enthusiastic, but he insists, so I go along with it. We purchase Esmerelda in one of Amsterdam’s many sleazy sex shops, pack her deflated in a suitcase, then off the three of us go in a train back to Antwerp, hoping the border checks don’t inspect our suitcase.

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My photographer husband drinks like a fish, which doesn’t bother me at that time as I am so co-dependent, but is why I eventually leave him. We live in a studio apartment building in Antwerp, with me going off to work at about 9pm, leaving him to his own devices. That particular night - Thursday keeps coming to mind - I return home about 6am. About to enter the foyer, I notice a dark-haired young man loading a familiar-looking suitcase into the boot of a car parked outside our block of flats. Gosh, I didn’t know you can get these suitcases here, but there you are…

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Reaching our first floor studio flat, I see the front door is open showing our contents in disarray with my husband slumped in a drunken stupor on a chair. The female nextdoor neighbour rushes in, hysterically babbling about a man with dark hair trying to break her door down and how my husband gallantly rescues her by luring him into our apartment with offers of a booze-up. Husband gets as drunk as a skunk, while his new companion is sober enough to raid the apartment and make off with our valuable cameras in our suitcase.

 

I phone the local police station and report the incident, not really expecting to get the items back. A couple of hours later we have a phone call from the police saying that the camera and ‘other items’ have been recovered with the driver being arrested after having drunkenly crashed his car in the middle of town. The police turn up at our flat with the suitcase, cameras, Esmerelda and massive grins on their faces. I am hugely embarrassed and utterly fed up with my husband for his behaviour of ‘if there is a problem, drink your way out of it.’ After we later process the film in the camera, we discover pictures of police having a great time blowing up the doll and laughing themselves silly. I have no idea what else they do with Esmerelda on this, her busiest night of the year.

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This incident leaves me feeling unsafe and vulnerable. I have been so dependent on my husband, believing that if he travelled with me, I would feel protected from the criminal elements of nightclub life. Mistrust and doubt begin to creep into my mind, but I am not yet willing to face that I am with a manipulative, unreliable alcoholic.​​​​​​​​​​

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Light Bulb

“However awful you feel, just be aware,” advises Rinpoche during a retreat. Sitting in a huge tent in northern France, canvas sides open to gentle rural breezes rustling our lunchtime sleepiness, I am relieved to hear this. I now have permission to feel shitty as part of my ongoing meditation practice. I see others visibly relax as well. It is okay not to feel okay, just be aware, be as you are: numb, angry, bored, frustrated, headachey, jittery, dull, brain-dead, blobby, fed up and all the rest of it. Everything is workable, anytime, anywhere.

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To start with, this seems too simple and yet too hard. Just be aware, whatever your experience?

I have no stable experience of this yet, but with an open-minded, “let’s suck it and see” attitude, I go on a week’s retreat in Wales with a very kind, experienced meditation teacher, a monk who knows Rinpoche well. 

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We are a small, intimate group which I find great, both for being able to ask questions and for bonding as a community. My small room serves as a simple crucible for the rollercoaster of meditation practice. Nothing fancy, just a safe space to be. I like to sit on my bed meditating, sleeping, reading, sleeping, journaling and reflecting. And sleeping. A ledge for the all-important tea, coffee, journal, pen and alarm clock. We have four 1.5-hour sessions a day in our rooms, wrestling with what we have been taught and regularly emerging like befuddled hamsters for breaks or to question our teacher.

 

Surfacing from my room, conversations with our teacher during breaks go something like this:

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That's OK, Just be aware you don’t know what you are doing.”

I drink tea, eat a biscuit and trot back to my room to wrestle with don’t know.

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1.5-hours later
I re-emerge moaning, “I can’t do this.” 

“Just be aware you can’t do this.” 

I stagger back to my room with a large coffee and wrestle with being aware I can’t do this.

 

1.5-hours later
I quiver over a cup of tea, “I’m really anxious now.” 

“Just be aware you are anxious.” 

I waddle pensively back to my room and notice quivering.

 

1.5-hours later Lunchtime. Comforting food and drink. Yum. 

Everyone is blinking reflectively. Walk and stretch. Phew. 

Am enjoying this in a masochistic way. 

Real raw rollercoaster stuff, this is meditation, not the serene bliss of internet fantasies about meditation. 

It’s great. It’s real, it's honest.

 

Another 1.5-hour session. 

I regale teacher “I’m getting depressed and fed up.”

“Just be aware you are getting depressed and fed up.” 

I slither back to my room to be aware of depressed fed-upness.

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1.5-hours later I emerge puzzled 

“Oh. Now what?” 

“Just be aware.” 

I reflectively walk to my room to be aware.

 

Another 1.5-hours later over another cup of tea, I have more questions.

“I keep getting distracted by thoughts and forget to be aware.” 

“Just be aware you are distracted, then you are aware again.” 

“Oh.” 

So I trot off again and try being aware that I was distracted.

 

Then again I have more questions. 

“This is sooooooo boring.” 

“Just be aware that you are bored.” 

“I’ve been sitting too long. I need to move.” 

“Go for a walk or cook or move but stay aware.” 

“Oh, wow.”

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Light bulb moment.

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Simply be aware, whatever is happening, nothing is excluded. Like clouds and weather passing in the open sky, sensations, thoughts and emotions arise and pass within the space of my open awareness. Pleasant or unpleasant, liked or disliked, painful or blissful, calm or agitated, noisy or silent, angry or compassionate, anxious or depressed, judging or allowing. It doesn’t matter.

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I feel like a tourist sitting with my espresso in a continental cafe (St Marks Square, Venice comes to mind), noticing passers-by coming and going but not bothering to get up and follow them or wishing they aren’t there. Simply being.

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What Remains? An inquiry

Who am I? Does anything unchanging remain 

When clinging falls away?

Am I this ageing body 

Not the same from one heartbeat to the next? 

If so, this Self must change from one heartbeat to the next 

And does not remain

 

Am I these passing sensations 

Touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting? 

If so, then this Self is just a changing sensation 

And does not remain

 

Am I this stream of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, memories and habits 

Arising and passing changing each second? 

If so, then Self must change each second 

And does not remain

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Am I these passing feelings and emotions 

Arising and dissolving second by second Or lying dormant in the depths of cells themselves 

Changing each second? 

If so, then Self is just a passing feeling 

Grasped at as permanent

And does not remain

Who

Am

I

 

54 years

Letter to My Mum, sent in response to her asking why I want to ordain

Dearest Mum,

As you might be wondering why I want to ordain as a Buddhist nun, I want to explain to you what led me to this decision, and to reassure you that you won’t be losing a loving daughter.

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In the Buddhist tradition, we see our mothers as being kind because they gave birth to us, nurtured us and gave us the body in which we can awaken from the sleep of delusion and suffering. So, from the depths of my being I thank you for having brought me into this world, having fed me and cared for me when I was unable to fend for myself.

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We shared many laughs, which have helped me take myself and life less seriously. We had our share of suffering: when you were in hospital with TB for 6 months and we couldn’t see each other, having no money, the long freezing cold winters, the breakup of our family and my brother’s suicide. It was hard for all of us, but it taught me not to take anything for granted, to have compassion for others and to look more deeply for an understanding of what we are and what the nature of suffering is.

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Dearest mum, you have suffered so much yourself – I can only begin to imagine the effect that being bombed in the war and being buried under an entire building at the age of 13 must have had on you. Feeling your suffering and my suffering, which is also the suffering of many, I wanted to help, but didn’t know how.

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When at 21 the opportunity arose for money and power as a stripper, I jumped at this as a way out of my fears of being poor and powerless. I was able to travel and use my creative talents, so at least I did the job well! A lot of it was about getting money, which enabled me to buy a house. Married by then, I slowly began to realize my husband was an alcoholic. As he became increasingly psychotic using drink and drugs, I became increasingly frightened; I don’t think anyone except his brother understood the unfolding nightmare.

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So, dear mum, I don’t know what you would have done in this situation, but my reaction was to wonder why all this had happened to me. By then I was so fed up with stripping – the utter phoniness of glamour, the night work, being an object of sexual desire. I wanted to find myself and do something fulfilling with my life. I realized that although earning a lot of money solved some material problems, it brought little lasting happiness or insight.

My psychotherapist friend Mary was very supportive. She helped me remember that we create our own reality (something I had intuited at age 15 but not followed up on). She encouraged me to start looking within myself, taking me to courses on psychology, spirituality and healing. These replaced my desire for personal power with a desire for self awareness and to help others.

​​

I stopped stripping off clothes and began stripping off layers of anxiety, fear and trauma and began learning to love myself and discover who I really was. I had some extraordinary experiences showed me that I am not my body. I had psychotherapy and art therapy and started teaching. I learned so much then, but depression and anxiety continued to haunt me and I realized I needed something deeper than psychotherapy. Studying painting helped me discover myself at a deeper level, and this led me to meditation. This was like coming home because it dealt with the causes of suffering and how to find lasting peace.

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Dear mother, I so want to dissolve my own suffering and to help anyone else who is interested to do the same. The more peaceful, wise minds there are, the better the chance of a peaceful world. So, why do I want to be a nun, why can’t I just practice as a layperson? Habits are hard to crack, and I have 54 years worth of habits relying on food, sex, money, entertainment, houses, clothes, career, status, friends, defences for happiness. While these have offered temporary enjoyment, they have not led me to the lasting wisdom, joy, contentment, awake-ness and loving kindness I am looking for.

​

I need more boundaries to help me stay focused and not to be distracted, a bit like corralling a wild horse while taming it, and the vows and robes of an ordained person are a profound boundary. I will live simply at home, meditating, doing art and teaching. Just preparing for ordination I am beginning to feel calmer and clearer. I think this is because I have turned my mind away from always wanting this and that materially, so I am more content.

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You may be puzzled about what this awakened mind is. The best analogy I know of is that it is like unchanging, spacious, open sky, always there behind the darkest of daytime clouds. To discover this unchanging, compassionate, boundless awareness and help others seems to be the best thing I can do with the rest of my life. I will always enjoy the amazing display of the world in all its multiple facets, but I know that any deep, lasting joy can only come from within.

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Dearest mum, I hope that you too are beginning to find some inner peace and joy, and I will always be around for you. I do hope this letter helps you understand.

​

With all my deepest love Denise xxxxxxx

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56 years

As a nun I live in semi-retreat in my house in Suffolk UK. The maroon robes are uncomfortable and fall off if I am not mindful. They force me to stay present, aware of sensations, thoughts and emotions. I shave my head, watch my mind, study, paint and try to help others. It’s a roller-coaster ride with nowhere to hide.

 

After seven years as a nun, I increasingly feel that I need to be more naked by returning to lay life to integrate my ongoing meditation with creative practice, teaching art and everyday life, both for my own and other people’s benefit. A new stage begins. What is this miracle of embodied consciousness?

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