Badminton and evensong

Rudra’s approach to religion is the same as that to sports. If you enjoy a good game of badminton fire ahead and play. When you play badminton you don’t look for the meaning of life or enlightenment in it. Religious practice without those demands might be enjoyable too.

Donagh Bird Flies

Rudra attended the wake of Donagh Maguire at his home in Cork yesterday. The brave Donagh had left this cheepy fellow, pickled in grappa, for him. It reminded Rudra of one of his last meetings with Donagh, Jacinta and himself as they laughed like drains at this site. Donagh had promised to contribute and these enigmatic fruits are here to behold.

The place of Donagh's mahasamadhi was both joyful, tearful and above all permeated with the perfume of deep peace. One of his last poems, an ode to the cancer that he endured, was read out and was striking in its honesty, wit and awareness of all the levels that the disease could be interpreted on. Here passed a man of great understanding and fulfilment. His beautiful wife Jacinta was the embodiment of love as were their children and the close knit family around.

Words can only sully the preciousness of those moments, filled as they were with the human contents of a life well lived. The undercurrent that is prescence became palpable in that room. Light and love danced hand in hand reminding Rudra of the book title 'Emptiness Dancing'.

DEATH

Death is not Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu or Buddhist, although often hijacked by these. Neither can it be explained by theories or philosophies. It belongs to none of these. If anything Death belongs to life. It cannot be solved by the mind. This is its beauty and its enigma. Only silence can express the 'Power That Knows the Way' and this statement is of course a concept too.

The fake self that wants to stake a claim for itself in ever more subtle ways would love the consolation and boost of a solution. Of course the real relief comes when the person is found out to be a fabrication and the river flows unimpeded.

Over the rainbow?

Here we are; picking assiduously over the entrails of our lives with such intent and such serious expectation, hoping to amend and fix the details so everything will work out perfectly. This effort is the very antithesis of freedom. Freedom is pre-existent and all these forays are excursions away from it. We can’t work out our lives but life can work through our lives.