 Intro to Wayward Practice
What zandtao knows is that 100% dedication to practice is what is required for the path, there is nothing clearer to zandtao than that - he does not claim to be 100% dedicated but that is requirement. What that 100% requirement could produce he is not sure because he hasn’t done it but dedication to practice is a pure objective. However there is the zandtaomed 3-memes:-
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and here zandtao always stresses the need for “doing the best you can” rather than climbing down rabbit-holes that come from “pure objectives”. Let’s take the pure objective of enlightenment - what is enlightenment? As soon as you describe it you have diminished it. Who do you know who is enlightened? The answers zandtao might have for that would be the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him). .zandtao is unsure whether to include the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) because he is unsure whether Islam considers his having been enlightened, and exemplary life for sure but enlightened - zandtao is not certain. Are there other religious figures zandtao should include as enlightened - he is unsure? In recent history zandtao might include Thich Nhat Hanh, Ajaan Buddhadasa, and maybe Eckhart Tolle; of those he is fairly certain that all 3 did not consider themselves enlightened - even though followers might consider them so. Simply using the word enlightened is hazardous. What does using the word achieve? Debate, doubt and division. Similar is true for all pure objectives so zandtao tries to do the best he can and encourages all seekers to do the same.
But as a measure 100% dedicated to practice is far more measurable - esp by the practitioner themselves. You know whether you are 100%-dedicated, and you know whether you are doing the best you can to try to be “100%-dedicated” for example. There is limited value judgement in 100%-dedication, not like there is in asking “am I enlightened?” .zandtao now even goes so far as avoiding any teacher who claims enlightenment.
Back to introducing his practice and the contents of this chapter. His purpose in this chapter was to promote the need for dedication, and at the same time he felt originally that he could not describe the detailed practice needed without talking of Buddhism and meditation. But then in the end he could not talk of Buddhism - only his experience of Buddhism, and he could not talk of Buddhist meditation only his experience of it. And when you introduce the threshold of autonomy, and where his direction and practice has gone since then some Buddhist followers might be offended if he called what he does Buddhist meditation. So his dedication to practice is not Buddhist even though it is very intertwined with Buddhism.
A seeker needs dedication and by considering how his meditation has changed over his lifetime he hopes to demonstrate how important the component of dedication is. Throughout there is some level of correlation between meditation and insight, this will be considered. Make of this what you can. But the path is not about books and theory, it is not about teachings per se, it is about getting stuck in and cleaning up your mind from the defilement of upbringing and defilement of living in a system-for-the-rich.
Before beginning the chapter contents zandtao wants to note two things. Firstly the writing practice of anatta in which he uses bill, zandtaomed and zandtao. .bill is the early years before zandtaomed, zandtaomed was zandtao’s persona as adviser that mostly finished when crossing the threshold of autonomy, and zandtao is who he writes as now - Wai Zandtao is his zifi writing persona throughout. This is an anatta thing. And finally he apologises for any gaps in memory, it had never been an original intention to write a history of his practice.
Upheaval
Upheaval was an amazing intro to path and practice - or bill should say path as there was zero dedication. Upheaval was a fortuitous response to his Sacred Wound, as Sacred Wound is part of practice it is necessary to be clear about his Sacred Wound. What the system-for-the-rich requires from upbringing is some level of conformity, and bill came from a family that did not question that conformity. But bill’s father gained little from the system-for-the-rich system he subscribed to. When zandtao thinks of his father there is sadness. There is no sob story in his background, just a conforming Sacred Wound that bill gained from, his mother gained a little in later life but a family that conformed within a background of limited materialist success within the system-for-the-rich.
But this limited materialism was not as consequence of a decision to be successful elsewhere; it was simply a conformist upbringing of a conditioned dissatisfied man and a conditioned repressed woman. My father came from conformism and was dissatisfied understandably with his level of success. As happens in many families the love of his life - bill’s mother - was taken away through child-care-duties - bill was the first child, and for most of his life he resented this and attempted to make the most of what he could to be with her - but that meant being possessive.
bill’s mother had her own personal history that meant she was going to be dutiful in bringing up children and being loyal to bill’s father. However she had a deep spirituality that remained restricted most of her life - only beginning to shine through in later years.
This typical conformity turned bill into a deeply repressed immature child - with absolutely nothing remarkable in his childhood life. Basically education and football!! He never dedicated himself to education so conformed his way through the system gaining sufficient but not exceptional qualification. Through his home life he had the paperwork for social success but had no self-esteem. In fact the repression in his upbringing led him to a state of numbness. bill simply accepted the repression, never reacted to it. When he left for uni his memory is that of a young man who was angry at the repression and conformity but he had never baulked at it or made any attempt to be free from it - his response was just to be numb.
In his family love was never on show. Through Inner Child retrospection zandtao saw bill’s father’s love for his mother. How deep was it? It was deep for his father, but showed itself in possessiveness rather than expression; quite simply his father sadly had never learnt to love himself so did not know how to love bill’s mother. And bill’s mother was filled with fear, set her stall by bill’s father, loved her children as much as she could - but she never knew herself enough to love herself so her love was deep in her but not that deep. When bill began to develop his own love he could see some love in her - some spirituality in her but so little actuated. From the outside both of his parents were typical and normal, although his mother was liked.
But zandtao loves his mother because she gave zandtao his spirituality - of course consciousness gave zandtao his spirituality but in the family it was his mother. Zandtao also loves his father because his contribution to zandtao’s Sacred Wound led to the path, how can he not be grateful for that?
So upheaval came from such unremarkable conformity in which neither bill not his parents were in any way fulfilled, and zandtao’s spirituality survived through numbness - that he paid for for a while.
At uni bill learned to be a drunk as did so many students at that time, and apart from being immature his uni time was drunk and unremarkable. In year 3 he became disciplined and worked for his degree, and qualified for an M Sc course - but by the end year 4 he couldn’t wait to leave uni - and particular aspects of the department he was in.
He was fortunate to get a very good job Up West. In the pub later on his interviewer explained that in an answer he had expressed some wise statistical understanding but that was not a wisdom that he showed much of. Drunkenness returned, he enjoyed life Up West and playing football - still steeped in conformity. After a year his lack of work-discipline showed, he was not rewarded, and left angry. This was good for zandtao’s path because he could have been drunk Up West and playing football for a number of years. He joined a sleepy nowhere firm, and failed miserably - eventually rightfully being sacked. There wasn’t huge conflict at work but in his private life there was nothing but drink - and absolutely zero fulfilment, occasional Up West trips to his old work being his only enjoyment.
His being sacked triggered his path and upheaval. He ran to his parents but other than survival and sobering up there was nothing there - no sign of the wonders of his path. He returned to London with a good attitude to work-discipline, and got another awful job in Hounslow moving into the Chiswick loft - his holy place. It was holy because path triggers and consciousness met together through blissful writing and limited meditation. This was his path beginning its practice as a writer, and zandtao never looked back.
Whilst he had some routine there he cannot describe it as practice, his path was simply triggering the release of conditioning through writing. After spending a disciplined but unsuccessful day at work he would return to his holy loft. Sitting down he would just wait for presence as the Muse that duly arrived and he just wrote.
This was path surfacing and triggering, there was blissful presence there, but he was very lucky because he also had the reinforcement of good people. In the Up West form a wise woman had seen something in bill, to this day he does not know how. He must have returned Up West, reconnected with her, and seeing what she had seen she took this reconditioning bill to an Arts Centre. .bill just felt completely at home with these people as together they lapped up bill and his path triggers. Soon after the blissful writing started bill ended his torture of work-discipline (to their surprise) and started working as a houseparent - beginning his work of compassion. At that time his path upheaval had shown him writing and compassion but he was not the kind of writer to have angst or make a living.
There was a last phase in upheaval as he was given the use of a cottage in Belgium. .zandtao is so grateful for this cottage but bill treated his benefactors badly - sorry. For a couple of months he just wrote, it was early z-quests. Reading anything he could get hold of he just wrote and wrote and wrote - writing that has long since been lost along with a great deal of conditioning the writing released.
After a couple of months he returned to London to earn money, began again in child care - a time he enjoyed but a time he drank again. Then there was the forlorn writer’s delusion, he was going to travel the world, gain experience through working and travelling, and come back a Hemingway or Henry Miller. 60 miles from Calais in Normandy. His wad went - either lost or stolen, but instead of finding work he ran back to the UK, and started a PGCE to be a teacher - no more the angst writer.
And more or less that was the end of his spiritual life. His blissful writing and meditation was not based in practice. His path had successfully triggered an end to a great deal of conditioning but there was no practice. At this stage it was all about knowledge - knowledge gained from writing - z-quest release of attached conditioning.
Addiction and Romantic Love
Teaching and addiction started to work together. Whilst he had enjoyed his times in child care, he realised beneath the joy and drunken haze that he wanted the formative process of education. He hoped there would be some spiritual component to education but that was never possible. He enjoyed the deep stress of his first job for 8 years but his fondness for that time was not reciprocated because of his drunkenness he later found out. Teaching was a vocation for bill but it had nothing for his spiritual side, and he slipped into a lifestyle of drink and vocation - as he slowly learned what his work demanded. Because of his spiritual path he resisted aspects of the job and it took him many years to simply accept that all he could be was a good exams teacher.
Drink and practice cannot happen together - at least for zandtao they cannot. For one year he was dry and studied theosophy. He met some good people but he had not excised the numbness of his upbringing so the drink came back. With theosophy he had experienced the benefits of practice as he began to do yoga and meditation but he wasn’t ready. His immaturity meant that he still had much to learn of daily life, and he still sought romantic love.
Spiritually his life developed only during the vacations when there was no vocation. But these were not times of practice, he was seeking knowledge through books, his year of theosophy indicated practice but his lack of readiness meant a return to knowledge - not even wisdom. Eventually he thought he found romantic love but this so disrupted his life and was so unfulfilling that he ended his search for romantic love in pain - and eventually in financial hardship. His pain took him to political activity and much learning about daily life but eventually the hardship kicked in and he started to work in Africa.
.bill maintained contact with the path during these vacations through creativity and nature but that contact was erratic and therefore not a practice for development. There was no way he could forget the creative bliss that came during upheaval, but addiction and vocation prevented access to it. It is important to understand that vocation, however worthwhile within daily life, is dedication; there could not be dedication to practice and teaching at the same time. In the early years of teaching the path was still triggering him leading to the theosophy year but it was difficult for the path to assert itself with the addiction. Eventually contact with the path was minimal maintained through creativity and nature when there was no vocation during vacation.
Vocational interest in creativity was limited and did not occur every year. His skill at writing was used in vocation but the creativity was rare coinciding with a change in jobs. Creativity during upheaval was broad but gradually focussed on science-fiction. The Arts Centre published a magazine, and he wrote Morphon for this; when the Arts Centre closed he maintained contact with some of the Arts people leading to Hexoto - part of which is available here. After that zifi always mattered to zandtao but only erratically. Lidors happened at the end of his first job, and Kirramura at the end of his 2nd job; occasional shorts were also written but he cannot think of any trigger.
He particularly recalls the writing of Kirramura. Armeagh’s walking down from mountains at the beginning of Kirramura was an image he held from a walking holiday in the Macgillicuddy Reeks of Ireland. But the writing of Kirramura he now recalls as presence even though at the time he just saw it as Muse. There was a routine - he would write late at night. It would start with his lying still flat on his back on the bed. Then he would feel the presence coming and he felt himself pushed back into the bed. Around him the room would fill with presence, what he called the guys at the time; it appeared as if there was a small vibration present in the air of the room - the guys vibrating? Once immersed in this it slowed and his mind went to the point he had left off in the story, the computer was ready and the next phase of Kirramura was written; the book was written in a Summer vacation - the Summer of 92 before he planned to leave for Botswana at the beginning of 93. The Muse has been clear as presence since - although the latter stages of his zifi writing had presence but few guys.
It was not surprising that Kirramura was first triggered whilst he was walking in the Macgillicuddy Reeks as walking in nature had become his goto contact as path maintenance. It was usually but not always Summer vacations. Vocation with or without addiction physically drained him, and it would take time before he got the energy to go walking. He can recall a form of walking meditation. He would leave where he was staying walking along some path away from built-up areas. As he walked his mind would still be stewing, churning this or that often to do with the school in his head. As this became more and more frustrating he would come back to where he was, focussing on the beauty, and then determined to concentrate on walking. The walking meditation had actually come from a Carlos Castaneda book - Journey to Ixtlan; zandtao does not know enough of Castaneda with all the doubts and adverse publicity to recommend him as a whole. but there were a number of times that book helped him. And another coincidence - he found it in a 2nd-hand book sale in Botswana MUTT. It was bog-standard walking meditation, focus on where you put your feet - one step at a time. But once he focussed on the walking his mind seemed to switch to nature mode forgetting all the churning.
Tai Chi also helped him during the years of vocation and addiction. Upheaval and the Arts people had turned bill alternative - despite being addicted - to drink and not drugs - and teacher-vocated. This would have been a good contribution to a practice but he was far too erratic with it. He first started Tai Chi in the theosophy year round the back of Euston but to learn the form you needed dedication, and when the drink started again that went. He took it up again after his romantic love ended and he had stopped drinking, but even then he did not have enough discipline to be dedicated. But his body remembered sufficient form that on occasions esp in nature he would do what form he knew. It helped him to know about energy when the time came.
For nearly 30 years there was a search for knowledge, writing and nature with sporadic Tai Chi but never the discipline and dedication to practice despite having had tasters. This began to change with his mid-life review in Africa.
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