Tag: meditation

Mindfulness of ruined worlds

Contemplating the beauty and serenity of Sable’s ruined world gave me some comfort. On one level, if and when Earth is finally desolate it might at least be peaceful, mysterious, and interesting to its surviving scavenger tribes. There’s something awe-inspiring about thinking on that timescale.

Would the denizens of a post-apocalyptic world be awake to the strange beauty of their situation? Probably no more than we are here and now. But if we could relate to our environment as we do such Ozymandian science fiction, with curiosity and fascination, accepting the world on its own terms, we’d probably be a lot happier.

This might be one of the things mindfulness can do for us. We take notice at the level of simple sensory experience—seeing a crumbling building, hearing a seagull, feeling a cool breeze—all without bending these perceptions into a story about me.… Continue reading...

Personal computing

Photo by Lorenzo Herrera on Unsplash

I have conflicted feelings about computers. As a boy, I loved nature and playing in the garden more than anything. I thought computers were sinister, inherently bad, maybe even evil. Then, around 1990, my parents bought my brother and I an Amiga 500. At first, I was disappointed. What did I want with a computer when I could climb trees? But my parents made seemingly logical arguments in favour of this plastic devil. I could do my homework on it. It would be something to play with on a rainy day. It was fully upgradeable and would go with us through life, a trusted tool and companion. The marketers made big promises.

Well, we did upgrade the machine, doubling its memory from the original 512k.… Continue reading...

The importance of wholesome structures

Matthew Crawford’s book, The World Beyond Your Head, has some important lessons for maintaining clarity and sanity in a world of proliferating distractions.

In meditation circles, it’s common knowledge that prolonged stability of attention can create the conditions for deep insights to arise. However, we live in societies where attention is being monetised and manipulated by the advertising economy. Social media is engineered to foster addiction; newspapers are engaged in a clickbait race to the bottom. The river is flowing fast – away from clarity, insight, connection, and wellbeing – towards attentional degradation. There is a vicious circle in which we no longer have the willpower to do those things that nourish us and so we just scrape along the bottom: clicking, swiping, bingeing.… Continue reading...

The Moon Thief in Urthona

I’ve written a poem in response to a zen koan. The Moon Thief will be published in the forthcoming spring issue of Urthona.

“‘The Moon Thief ’ came out of an encounter with the koan in the poem’s epigraph: the great Zen poet Ryokan, meditating in a mountain hermitage, offers his clothes to a thief but cannot give him a full appreciation of the moon. Mark writes: ‘I was walking home from work and suddenly thought, “there’s another side to this story.” Working in and around the silences of the koan brought many scenes and characters over time.’”

This long poem relates the quest of a drifter and thief desperately seeking a treasure that will heal his inner wounds. He stumbles upon Ryokan, the Japanese hermit poet.… Continue reading...