Change by consultation or imposition?

My organisation is undergoing extensive change at the moment. Some jobs are going; new systems are being introduced; new offices and in all a general bustle as people look and feel vulnerable with this snippet of information and then relaxed as they hear differently.

Nothing ever stays still - that is the central premise behind the Zen Buddhist proposition of wabi sabi. Accept change and the suffering associated with trying to oppose it will of itself diminish or disappear. We are always looking in whatever business we do, for ways to make efficiencies, reduce costs, simplify our messages and so on.

At a lunch last Friday where this topic was discussed by a small group of colleagues, the consensus was that while morale was low, none could see any other way of effecting change other than in the manner it was currently being approached. However that agreement was conditional: some thought that perhaps the wrong people were being consulted over the proposed changes, that solutions were premeditated and the leadership failing to understand the core business. Trust - a huge word in any organisation - was bandied about.

This notion of managerial ignorance brought to mind the wise counsel of Basho who, when asked how best to write poetry, said: "If you want to learn about the pine, go the pine; if you want to learn about the bamboo, go to the bamboo. When you have become one with them, then your poetry will come by itself."

It is indeed not only arrogant of leaders to impose solutions on those they lead (we know best) but also foolish. The people who know best are generally those who are closest to the service being delivered and, if treated as equal partners in the business of change, will embrace it and even possibly improve upon it.

One man
and one fly in this enormous
guest room.
(Issa)

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.

Autumn arrives

After a summer that will be remembered for the Arab Spring ... and the worst weekend weather, it is now back to serious blogging.

The riots I anticipated as a consequence of the record numbers of unemployed young people did indeed take place. Others have come up with their reasons for them, but I still hold that idle hands, rather than the increasing secularism of our society, was the major driver. Is that the last of them? I am sure not!

My love of haiku continues, as does my study of Zen Buddhism principally as an explanation of the inspiration behind the Kyoto garden in Holland Park that was radically altered earlier this year. I'll be posting a blog later specifically on that stroll garden to accompany the article (edited on my BlackBerry PlayBook whilst being flown across the Atlantic!) that will be appearing in the Friends of Holland Park magazine later this year.


Bee-keeping has joined my list of interests and I'm pleased to see that Holland Park has again produced in excess of 170 lbs. of honey this year despite the strange weather and unpredicted amount of swarming activity.

Photography occupies my walking outdoor moments though it is sad to see so many fine shots ruined by the absence of a blue sky. Clearly I am meant to study sepia or return to black and white compositions!

From haiku, photography and Zen, my attention is now shifting to the actual practice of zazen or sitting meditation. My day now starts with a good half hour of peaceful, mindful meditation and my principle guide is Andy Puddicombe whose book and iPod audio guides - Get Some Headspace - are  highly recommended. Aside from the sitting meditation, I am also endeavouring to take the practice (kinhin) on my daily walks and thrice weekly into the gym. 

And finely, no summer concludes without the results of London in Bloom - my talented team secured no less than seven Gold Awards and two Silver Gilts on top of seven Green Flag Awards: an excellent season in the office!

Zen, haiku, and photography: its about re-learning how to see

Learning a new skill or embarking on a fresh line of enquiry is exciting. I am particularly fortunate to have grown up at a time when the current race for technological progress was probably just starting.

On my recent trip to Australia my brother and I visited a "heritage village" near Cairns that was made up of various old buildings and the artefacts associated with them. A part of the display inevitably focussed on agricultural equipment - much of it familiar to us from our childhood in the 1950's and 60's on a farm in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Gus observed that the reason we had farm equipment from the 1930's was most likely because that was the age that Dad most understood and had been trained to use and repair whilst a student at Seale Haine Agricultural College. The hay making equipment, for example, was made from a mixture of wooden planks bolted together and iron rods - a combination that worked well then, but which would be unthinkable today.

When I was at Springvale, my preparatory school, I learnt how to use a Brownie Box camera, how to develop my own black and white films and, once they were dry, to enlarge and print photographs from them. The heady smell of chemicals, the dull glow of a red light bulb under which we worked and close proximity of everything in the small dark room are abiding memories.

Watching a professional photographer at work and studying his work are excellent ways to re-engage with a childhood hobby. David A.Lee in Palm Springs is both a good friend and excellent photographer and a recent series of photographs that he put up on FaceBook have inspired me to take the plunge and study digital photography.

Great photographs of course do not just happen - they are made by events or the observations of a skilled photographer. Earlier this year David noticed a long line of geese flying through the skies above Palm Springs. True professional and artist that he is, he lifted his camera and made a photograph to share with the rest of us.

Consider then, this Haiku:

kari no kazu                                     a number of geese

watarite sora ni                                migrating - in the sky

mio mo nashi                                   not even a wake.      MORI SUMIO (b.1919)

It is not just the coincidence of geese crossing the sky in a photograph and  a haiku  - but the use of the word "mio" in Japanese that intrigues. In his excellent analysis of the poem (see The Haiku Handbook), William Higginson points out that this unusual word literally means water-tail or wake. Sumio 'borrows' the word normally associated with water to good effect. In this conjunction of the photographic and literary arts, it is just as unlikely to see a wake caused by the passage of geese through the sky as across the desert sands surrounding Palm Springs.

Another great haiku writer, Matsuo Basho (whom I have blogged about before) did not have a camera on his many journies across Japan and during which he wrote the Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin books). He used pen and ink to write his amazing verses and sketch his surroundings. I pause my thoughts to wonder what he have done with a camera here? 

Amongst my current reading are two books - one on how to use my new Canon 1000D camera and the other on the practice of Zen. The former is by Ben Long and the latter a re-print of the seminal work, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. Although both are written by American authors I have no reason to believe they ever met or indeed knew each other. However in both they require their readers (and hopefully followers), to re-tune their mind to see the world through the eyes of a child. Suzuki urges us " to always be a beginner ... The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate it is boundless."  In his more recent book, Long observes that "because the world is a new place for them, they (children) notice every detail of the objects around them. They have to because they haven't yet learned to abbreviate the visual complexity of the world down to simple symbols ...". In short they retain their "beginner's mind" and he urges students such as I to set aside our adult eyes for those of a child.

Haiku and photography are both craft and art striving to represent a moment in an image that tells us a story or conveys a "truth". The spirit of Zen is found in both. There is much to be excited about as I try to bring my love of verse to re-discovering the craft of photography through the lens of a SLR camera. Friends and teachers be warned - there's a child in the room. 

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Bring a still, calm voice, to the Garden . . .

“And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake;

12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

13 So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-18 (New King James Version)

Last year we visited Venice. It is a deeply spiritual place – not just because of the intensely atmospheric architecture and juxtaposition of buildings and sky with the lapping waters of the canals and sea, but also the sheer scale and number of churches. In one such church I was deeply moved by the singing of a catholic priest as he started an afternoon service for visitors with a rendition of “All people that on earth do dwell” (the Old One Hundredth in Anglican parlance).

A few weeks ago we had the privilege of observing Buddhist monks leading congregations in prayer in Kyoto, and again, it was the singing from the front – the person leading the service – that captured my spirit and sent me soaring on a spiritual high!

Since then I have been exploring the internet for more evidence of what Thomas Moore has described as “Zen Catholicism” (see Writing in the Sand). There is plenty, and all of a sudden my fascination with the symbolism and purpose of the Zen Gardens of Kyoto, the role that they play and why they are suddenly so attractive to an enquiring western mind such as my own, has come crashing together in a noisy cacophony of thoughts and ideas much as poor old Elijah must have had to deal with in his mountain side cave. (Did Elijah exist? I don’t care – if he did, that’s great; if not, his story is suitably apocryphal to explain to what I am currently experiencing: oh for a still, quiet voice, and calm!)

In my recent, limited, readings on Zen and Christianity, I am starting to recognise a universality in their paths, their messages of love and peace, their explanations on where to find the Kingdom of God and so on. It does not matter one iota whether we are brought up as Buddhists, or Christians, or Muslims or Shintoists! All seek the same relationship with God, all seek to better Mankind and, if Zen is about thinking deeply about religion and the nature of all things (quite apart from just Man), then we can all can learn from it!

In the bustle of everyday life we never seem to find the time, or the place, to sit and be quiet, to listen to the still calm voice from within: and if we do, the noise from our own minds comes crashing in with everyday concerns and worries. Zen Buddhists use devices such as “koans” (answerless questions – “mu” - and intensely deep ideas to ponder) and gardens on which to focus their minds as they practice the emptying of trite and everyday concerns from their minds as they perform “zazen”.

Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." The Gospel of Thomas.

What am I doing here?

How poor, am I!