I was initially drawn to Chan out of a sense of loneliness. Two acquaintances were already participants in the Bristol Chan group: Sarah Bird, whom I knew from yoga practice, and Sally Masheder, a neighbour and fellow GP. I liked them a lot and I wanted to get to know them better. I had started meditation but was searching for a method that suited me. I also wanted to protect the planet and people – to be an ‘Eco Warrior’ – but I was afraid, and did not know how to. I recognised that Sally and Sarah were also searching and that they were both finding Chan helpful. Eventually I found my way to the Bristol group’s meeting (those who have been to the Coach House where we used to meet, will understand why it took two attempts to find it!).
Over the subsequent years my political activism and Chan practice have gone hand in hand. They are not separate. Both falter and stumble at separate times, occasionally surge ahead confidently. I have been on several retreats over the years, gradually gaining a deeper understanding of myself that is not a wordy description but more like a body and soul awareness. Through yoga practice I have also been learning body awareness and presence in the moment, meditation and yoga becoming one thing and interchangeable.
Slowly, meditation and work in everyday life have coalesced so that the benefits of meditation have often become present during activity, allowing concentration of purpose, especially at work. To meditate has become easier. However, I have often had little time, or inclination, to meditate, or I have been overwhelmed by daily life.
Continually, I have been searching for a more effective way of activism. I have demonstrated a lot, been arrested at Faslane nuclear submarine base, co-led an effective health professionals’ blockade of Faslane. More recently I have become involved with politics and the Green Party, to the extent of standing for parliament. I have read widely to gain understanding of the influences of economics and the pernicious effects of increasing financial inequality and its drivers, as well as the causes and the effects of war. I have looked within myself and seen the reverberations of these external forces within me.
Standing as Green Party Parliamentary Candidate in the General Election: What I Learned as a Buddhist
This turned out to be a mightily challenging experience and a great way to expose my limitations! The sheer amount of extra work involved was not compatible with continuing my job as a GP. My meditation slackened off, at exactly the time when it would have been very useful and given me more energy, but I became just too tired and life felt too hectic. My deep-seated dislike of conflict reared its ugly head, and at later hustings I heard myself beginning to adjust my responses to questions so that I did not stand out too far from the other candidates. And I was surprised by the inner pressure I felt at times to adjust what I was saying if I knew that my statements would be unpopular.
I began to see some of the pressures that can sway our politicians to do what they may not have done at the start of their careers. It is well known that standing for parliament can be traumatic and I am not alone in being much more reluctant to engage with formal politics after such an experience. In future I have decided to act in keeping with my strengths and passions rather than out of a sense of obligation. This resolve has become fiercer as my meditative practice deepens; in this way I can be both more effective and more able to rise to the challenges in my path.
My First Two Retreats
I am lucky to have been able to attend three Western Chan Fellowship retreats this past year. The first two have helped with the process of looking deep within myself to see what is important, what my limitations are and why they arise, what are the next possible steps. I tend to be introverted and have had to work hard to feel more comfortable during social interactions. The January retreat gave me a deeper insight into how I imposed difficulties with social interactions onto myself. On the second retreat in April came the realisation that I could behave in any way at all, that there is freedom to decide to act any which way. Here is an extract from my April retreat report:
What is here? Sitting, a body. It can do anything, go anywhere. The body is attached to a name: Diana Warner. All is open to it, it is open. There are certain things Diana has traditionally done, and others, like sunbathing, traditionally not. Yesterday I did sunbathe: does that merit a new name? Perhaps not. How about Diana the murderer? Would that require a new name?
I understand Jake’s earlier description of the true person of compassion, just doing, with no thought of compassion as such; like an ordinary-looking stone with a heart of jade, compassionate action results without deliberate attention to a compassionate intention. Action arises naturally out of a compassionate heart from a position of authenticity and awareness.
These insights have translated into action on both a personal and activist levels. I have addressed a difficult ongoing personal relationship with a new openness and honesty, which has been reciprocated. This has enabled me to move forward with greater understanding and confidence. I have responded generously to an urgent request for extra funding by www.jolibatrust.org.uk and I have become actively involved with www.conscienceonline.org.uk.
The Conscience Campaign is pushing for taxpayers to be able to have the portion of their taxes that goes to war diverted to building peace. Quite a lot of my inner work has been trying to come to an understanding of the effects of war on my family dynamics as I grew up, and the long lasting effects on myself. I have awareness not only of the devastating material effects of present wars, but also the less tangible effects on the psyche of all those involved and on future generations. So this campaign is close to my heart. Here is (a part of) my statement of conscientious objection – I feel good that it was quoted in parliament when Ruth Cadbury, MP, read out her private member’s bill (see website):
I am a GP (family doctor). I was born in the aftermath of WW2. Both my parents were psychologically damaged by war. I know how living through war haunts families, affects the way the children grow up and deeply affects the adults the children become.
I insist on the right as Conscientious Objector for my taxes to be used to forge peace and not to be used on the mechanics of war.
My work with the Conscience Campaign has become a vital expression of myself and I am developing ideas to carry the work forward in a way that I may well find challenging. Already I see personal benefits. Allowing myself to be open, vulnerable and honest, towards the end of a longer meditation, and perhaps for the first time as an adult, I thought deeply about my paternal grandmother, who was gassed in a German concentration camp. From this meditation came the following poem, written at dawn. With the writing of it, something I didn’t know existed, that has been troubling me, has been resolved. This is how the poem ends:
In Memory of Anna Lewen, my Grandmother
I open to her pain, her far away passions.
How was her last look at the sky? How was her last breath?
What knowledge was hers, what endurance?
What despair?
Buried deep,
I pull her to the surface.
Mud encrusted, rank, in all her glory.
I breathe into her. She and me.
I have always known the basic facts of my grandmother’s death. Though it seems extraordinary, I have never, at least as an adult, let myself think at all deeply about the reality of her murder, never let myself imagine what it must have been like for her. Opening myself at last to her pain, I realise that I am opening something in myself which has been kept shut away and buried all my life. I realise that this shutting away has robbed me of much of the strength that I need if I am to be a genuinely effective eco activist. I have been asking myself what is important for me and have come to a decision that I am at last ready to become an effective Eco Warrior. Working with the Conscience Campaign in a way true to the Boddhisattva path, without clinging to things or to any goal but committed to enhancing life and to limiting war, seems to be a good start. I now know I can do, and can give, what it takes.
My Third Retreat
A solitary goose flies honking overhead. The business of the sheep farm continues around us. We walk, do our tasks, eat and sit. As Simon reads I relax. There are several koans on the first page that will do. Then Simon reads out my koan. There are parts of it that hold my attention.
The master of Ringeho cottage held out his staff and said to his disciples, “When, in olden times, a person reached the state of enlightenment, why did they not remain there?” No one could answer, and he replied for them, “Because it is not of much use for life.” And again he asked, “After all, what will you do with it?” And once again he said in their stead,
Taking no notice of others,
Throwing her staff over her shoulder,
She goes straight ahead and journeys
Deep into the recesses of the hundred thousand mountains.
Ah, just what I thought, enlightenment is of not much use for life. And I liked the idea of spending the week journeying into mountains.
A communication exercise with a twenty year old fellow retreatant reminded me how vital the work was to me. I responded to her enthusiasm and took up the koan in such a way that I could allow its urgent questions to work upon my practice.
At last I become the enlightened wanderer, taking no notice of others and going straight ahead.
The Chan Hall has become too confining and I take a long hike up into the hills, keeping the fence to my right so no chance of getting lost. I disturb a few ground-nesting birds and navigate my way through vegetation, taste fruit and feed banana skin and satsuma peel to the ground. Afterwards at interview Simon asks me, ‘Who has returned from the walk?’ There is freedom, happiness and laughter but ‘Diana’ is not an adequate description.
That night I dream of my late father and am able to acknowledge him fully, to say ‘Hi’ without emotional upset. I am aware that this journeying is not always going to be so straightforward.
I empty myself of self. Here is freedom and spaciousness. Myself and not self:
Eco warrior, bodhisattva, powerful and true.
