The closeness and vulnerability of modern communications

A weekend upon which to reflect my links over the past twenty-four hours with people literally all over the world.

I have commented upon a photograph posted in Australia, exchanged plans to meet up with friends in California and New Jersey, discussed details of a pamphlet I have finally completed this week with my contacts in Kyoto and today arranged accommodation in South Africa for a visit in March. Add to that just now a Skype call to a friend in Reading (I am finally getting the hang of it - I think) and conventional telephone calls, mobile phone calls and texts through the day.

I remember vividly twiddling the dials of HF radios during late night radio watches whilst serving in the Rhodesian army in the 1970's and listening in absolute awe at the ease with which civilian radio hams spoke over the air waves to each other. The world seemed a great deal bigger then and yet, in the stillness of the night, we were all so close - they chatting, me listening.

I am constantly amazed by the progress of information technology and how we seem to so quickly take it all for granted. Where would I be without my iPod - my BlackBerry - my laptop or PlayBook (which I am learning to re-love)?

The World Wide Web - that takes me back to my first Apple computer in the 1990's ... now we have Wikipedia in place of the Encyclopedia Britannica (or is it alongside?).

At what point will we or should we stop evolving these electronic communications systems, I wonder? Are we the better for them? Luddites step forward ... I guess so long as we don't forget how to multiply or divide, a desk calculator can't hinder progress; it will be when we lose the ability to communicate without access to electronic power or gadgetry that the problem will begin. Taught as a cub, I at least, can still use semaphore flags!

The space between two pine trees

Researching the different features of the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, I discovered the unusual significance of two, as opposed to three, pine trees. One represents the future and the other the past. Looking through them we see the present. 

Two objects linked together is unusual in the Buddhist faith as three - representing the Trinity or one of the Trinities (for there seem to be a number of interpretations) is the norm. 

A recent television film I watched described the departing aliens as disappearing 'into spaces between time'. What a wonderful concept I thought - not the future and not the past nor even the present.

This had me thinking this morning about the present and the past and how they are linked. We describe the present as 'now' - but then add the descriptive word 'just' for to it to mean both the future - just now - and the past - just now. 

Two old pine trees, I thought, that carry a tapestry of sadness and past joys in the one and a barrel load of hopes and dreams in the other. Linking them is 'now': the present - the space between which only we can fill (or empty) with Mindfulness. 

Now there is something upon which to meditate!

Is that so?

In his inspiring little book "Writings from the Zen Masters" (Penguin paperback), Paul Reps quotes the story of the Zen master Hakuin which goes as this:

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked at the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

Mindful of that story (meditation does work!), I replied today to an email from an uncomplimentary, 'serial' critic, of the work of one of my teams in a most unlikely manner - for me that is. "Thank you" I wrote and wondered if Hakuin would have approved.