The Water Is Warm

by Jennifer Stawska

  In discussion with Mahendra we came to understand that the principle of monotheistic regress, which asserts that everything must have a cause and thus can be traced retrospectively to a single creator of infinite goodness, is facile and contrived; start at the other end, beginning at the beginning and working forwards (and why not?), regress falls apart. It leads, for instance, to the question: what, then, created the creator? It was Mahendra who pushed us to think through what we believed about creation and to move on once we had thought through that and other points of such importance.

  Some points about Buddhist philosophy I thought I would never accept or understand and rebirth was the biggest. But when I told Mahendra that I did not believe in reincarnation, he was not affronted. He just said: ‘May I suggest that you meditate about this, my friend.’

  When we discussed it further with him his answer was to say: ‘If you don’t believe in it, then you can’t seek it. And if you don’t seek it, you don’t want it. Maybe that is the end of your dukkha, the end of your suffering. The end of your craving. Maybe by not seeking it, you ensure that it won’t happen. Maybe, in that way, you have already found the solution.’

  From there it became very simple, again. Mahendra helped me, and Josh, to develop our belief that reincarnation is not about being born again as the same entity. How could Simon Greenwood or Josua Sebastien Ohlsson be born again as another being or physical entity? What process could possibly lead to that? Reincarnation, for us at least, is about our current identities being reflected in what follows our existence. It is what we pass on to others and into God rather than what we retain of ourselves. Said like that it became so very simple and intelligible. Why had I not thought of that before?

  As to meditation, I had never meditated before in my life. So, we tried it and Mahendra helped us. Meditation is not about sitting in an uncomfortable posture in an incense filled room uttering obscure incantations. Nor is it just about sitting in a dark room following your breathing – on the other side of that there is far more to it. True meditation took us to focussed, personal and careful reflection. Clearing the mind by concentrating on breathing, yes, but moving on through that so that our thoughts could turn to the place that we each held in the universe. It is the internalised equivalent of prayer save that it does not involve communication with God since, in our belief, there is no separate and distinct entity with which to communicate. It is about pushing the pause button and really studying what is on the screen. Finding a place.

  Meditation is what led a monk in the Christian monastery of Montserrat in Spain to spend three years in the wild meditating on the concept of love. It is about Samadhi, the stilling of the mind and the resolution of essential thought. It is a process by which an individual rids his mind of things that do not matter and, by doing so, achieves tolerance and compassion. It also creates space for many other essential concepts, including joy.

  Despite all the seeming complexities of Buddhist teaching and philosophy Mahendra would often say: ‘I believe that the purpose of our existence is to find happiness, satisfaction and fulfilment.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather superficial?’ I asked when he first said that.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Keep things simple and be happy.’ Again, it was as straightforward as that.

  ‘Can you let go of your sadness?’ Josh asked me. ‘Let go of the past? Move on?’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Not on my own.’

  Josh and I learnt to meditate in silence to begin with, concentrating on our breathing and each scanning our bodies in thought. When I started I would often fall asleep part way through. But then we learnt to talk each other into meditation using our voices to settle each other into silence and after that, to meditate on concepts and images. It brought peace. Often, after meditating, I was left with an overwhelming love for Josh, a sense of utter calm, of silence and peace. A sense that my body and mind were emptied of impurity – that I knew where I belonged and had found it. It was like waking in the warm sunshine after a long and peaceful sleep. I know you felt the same. We would just fold into each other.

  ‘Yes, I can be happy. I want to be happy.’ When I said that I remember Josh cupping his hands, looking at me and then blowing into them as if blowing away dust. Then he moved his hands apart and opened them up.

  ‘Our sadness. Gone. Let’s never forget that. Let’s move forward. Can you do that?’ He looked at me.

  ‘Together, yes. On my own, no.’

  ‘Then you must never leave me, Simon.’

  Simple.

  Simple too was the understanding that we developed about what love really means. Love is not about slush, chocolate boxes or roses. We learnt that it is not just an emotion. It is also a state of mind and meditation took us there. To the westerner that state of mind is usually portrayed as being romantic, uncontrollable, emotional and adult. The love of which we learnt is much more than that. It is a universal love, a sense of being where we belong, which, through meditation, we came to understand as bearing its own definition and leading again to compassion and tolerance, those two words to which things kept returning. We learnt that love involved an expectation that we would respect the things around us because they are as much a part of us as our bodies. It is what made Mahendra smile so much and it is far from weak – it takes great strength, self-discipline and self-challenge to maintain it. And that understanding of love led us to be complete and led me to be secure for the first time since I was a child because with you I found a place, a reasoned place, not just among other people but also with nature. I suppose I have to say I felt at peace with the world, but it was more than that.

  It was more than that because we learnt about our own mortality, a very harsh lesson for us both but also one that made us face up to what we genuinely believed. It also threw everything back on to our relationship, the fortress within which everything had to be resolved.

  We both think that, if worldly identity does continue after death, then everyone should be a fundamentalist, a crusader, because this life is no more than a staging post and is governed by absolute right and wrong – this life should be led by an absolute creed from which any deviation is a sin. It is no more than a preparation, or testing of our fitness for, eternity – and eternity means eternity. It means forever. It means infinity. So, if we mess up this life then the few years we spend here on this earth fix our individual fates forever.

  So, we really looked hard at that. We asked ourselves, how can there be personality after death and if we don’t retain individual personality how can we be said to retain identity? How can there be individual taste, hope, sight, smell, wishes, feelings, connection, character, emotion, affection, colour, purpose, endeavour, variation, happiness, sorrow, interest, goodness, badness, boredom, possession, family, friendship, loss, gain, grief, bodily definition, appearance, attraction or any other defining aspect of an individual that is retained after death? There cannot be. And without those, what does it mean to say that any one single entity, any one individual, continues after death? How could I be thought of as Simon Greenwood if I am sanitised of every aspect of my being that differentiates me from other beings? What is the driving force of the spirit if there is no engine, no brain, to operate it? If there is a God who rules the universe as a distinct entity, why does He (or She) not appear and cure doubt – prove the point? To suggest that God already does so, we decided, is utterly facile, a form of make believe.

  And that’s how, not through teaching, not through reading, but through quiet reflection and shared journeying we both reached the conclusion that the monotheistic perception of God is fiction and that there is no afterlife by which we retain our identity. No one individual continues forever. To establish that and mean it, for it to be fundamental to our faith was painful and hard. It was also a huge relief - to let go of fiction once and for all. It meant that we both understood the importance of enjoying our lives and finding happiness. It also taught us not to waste a minute because everything in this lif
e is temporary.

  And, yes, I do know what all that means for you now. It was so easy to talk about it all in an academic way, about life the universe and everything, when you were alive but now I have seen your death, the very thing about which we talked so much, it is different. It’s no longer academic, it’s for real. I know that it means that there is nothing left of you in the form that you were. There is nothing left of the man that I loved, there is nothing for me to hold and there is nothing left for me to crave other than your image and the feel of you. Josua Sebastien Ohlsson, who was born on 15 November 1965, died on 15 February 2008. I do know that, however much I may hate, really hate, writing that. I have studied those words.

  For me, there is only one place where you can remain in existence, where I can hold on to your image - in my head. Only in my head. That’s where you belong and that’s where I am keeping you for now. And that is precisely why I am writing this – to make sure that your place within existence, your mark on life, is not lost. My one craving is to try to honour our life however badly written this may be.

  Is that OK? I hope so, because I really have tried and I know that you would understand that. I think it will have to do for now.

  Time for a break from this.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  I often used to find it helpful to have an object upon which to focus my thoughts when meditating and I have returned to that while taking a break from writing. I have gone back to where my thoughts are safe, to a stained-glass window that I had known from my childhood. It is in a church in Devon. It is in brown, yellow and green glass and I used to look at it, as a child, as the sun shone behind it. It showed Christ on the cross, looking down, his fingers outstretched in the agony of crucifixion. After my father died it reminded me of him in the agony of his torment, it made his suffering real, something that I could see and focus on. I described it to Josh and told him how I used to speak to the image of that window in my mind, explaining how I felt and how I asked Christ to care for my father and look after me. But then I had left those thoughts behind, dropped them, closed them down as I allowed my life to be swept along by a rip-tide of achievement and ever increasing expectation.

  Well, I have stopped that now and I can think about that window again. Surely the picture it showed is suffering, surely it is compassion - for a living being, a real man aged thirty-three as Christ was, to endure all that he did in the name of principle. We talked about that stained-glass window often and I now carry it again in my mind’s eye, always. It symbolises what I mean and, I realise, it takes me to the one ambition, the only ambition, that I now have. If Christ could give up his suffering on the cross before death, then why can’t I do the same thing?

  Speaking in images helped Josh also. It allowed him to open up his love of Christ again, a love that had meant so much to him as a cleric and which he retained within him – the love for someone who had principles of compassion and rightful living. We made a cross out of drift wood and kept it in our shack. I encouraged him to find Christ again, to speak to Christ again as part of the God we found and to really think what it meant to follow Christ’s way. The only way that I can describe this is to say that he found Christ again within himself and I know well how much it meant to him that I urged him to find that love again in his life and that I did not feel threatened by it. Josh loved Christ and the example that Christ gave of how man should be; there were no half measures in that love and, as I came to understand, there was no reason why Josh should not love Christ since there is no better example to follow. Having found his own way, Josh taught me the true love of Christ also and we sought to follow Christ’s example, not as a God but as a man. For us, although Christ’s life as now expressed is surrounded by fable and myth, the underlying compassionate divinity is undeniable.

  We thought about and discussed what it means to say that Christ was the son of God and realised that it does not mean that he was the natural son of God – how could he be? To us, it is obvious. It means that he was a manifestation of God’s compassion; a man who showed us all how we should be, so much so that he resembled God as if he were his son - that he became a manifestation of God on earth. We understood that the ascension into heaven is just a story, representing someone who became one with God, part of God, and his return to earth being the way in which the continuation of his message is expressed.

  So, we used to fire images into each other’s minds about what we saw when we spoke of God. We spoke about God often and kept on speaking of God until we knew what we meant, what we believed. I am not letting go of that now.

  Having a belief, a faith gave me a new confidence that I had never known before. I discovered a spiritual aspect to myself that, only a short time before, I would have shut out completely. It is very easy to say, as I used to, ‘I hope, rather than believe.’ Rejecting faith is much, much easier than finding it and sticking to it.

  One big question, though, that we both had to face in our quest for understanding was whether our physical relationship was wrong, a denial or contradiction of rightful thinking. Josh had grown up thinking his sexuality was sinful and I had entered a new world in which I had to reshape not only such beliefs as I had but also my self-image. It was a big issue for us. Once we felt confident enough to ask Mahendra, we did so. He listened carefully to what we both said, realising that it was hugely important for us. His reply, which we should have foreseen, was ‘Think about it. Find your own way. I cannot give you an answer, but you will find one. Think about your relationship and whether it is rightful. Think about how your relationship affects other people. Think about how you treat each other and examine your own thoughts. If they are rightful and you do no harm to other people, then who is to condemn you? If they are not rightful, then you will find your own answers.’

  Put in that way, the answer again, we decided, was easy. There was nothing wrong in what we were doing, it was part of our being and, as long as it remained in the same context of how we felt about each other, it was rightful. I did not want anyone else or even feel attracted to anyone else – man or woman; only you. I still don’t and never will. I am not gay, bisexual or heterosexual. I just love you.

  We have done no harm to anyone by being together and we intend no harm either. The understanding that our love for each other was not wrongful or sinful was another breakthrough in the balance between the two of us and meant that our faith could enter every corner of our lives. It brought a further gentleness and softness to how we were together; it made us complete and unified without fear or shame.

  So it was that we did join Mahendra in teaching the children about religion. We listened to him teaching them the basics of Buddhism and encouraging them in the rightful way of life but we also told them stories from the Bible. Stories about Christ’s suffering and how he found enlightenment or, in Christian terms, returned to divinity through death on the cross. Stories of Christ’s love and devotion to drupai chopa and as we taught the children, we taught ourselves. And, with all that, I learnt to be happy with a depth I had never known before.

  Happiness is like an elephant, you know it when you see it. It is the uncontainable feeling of walking on air and wanting to sing. It is how I used to feel when we were swimming in the sea, watching the sunlight dancing under the waves, riding the bike in the sunshine, lying by the waterfall near Belihuloya, looking at the stars or just knocking down conceptual hurdles that stood in the way of our advancing beliefs.

  It was easy to be happy in the life that we led because happiness surrounded us and despite the suffering that also surrounded them, the children that we taught had a hunger for it and we found its expression with them, too, in many ways. But I want to mention one way in particular – song – because it has played such a large part in what I have written. I got hold of a guitar which a worker at the camp kindly donated and I set about committing Buddhist teachings to music. Because Josh had such a beautiful tenor voice we were able to work together to write music. He and I even created a very happy,
clappy tune for part of the metta sutta, the writing on loving kindness in the holy Buddhist book called the Pali Canon. Like all children’s songs, in print and without music, it looks sickeningly ghastly but when sung by a classroom of eager children we thought it was magical. The first verse went like this:

  As a mother watches over her child,

  Willing to risk her own life to protect him,

  So with an open heart should we value all living beings,

  And fill the whole world with our loving kindness.

  [Chorus] We cherish all things, with our loving kindness.

  We also taught them lots of noisy Christian songs for children. At Christmas we did a nativity play and each disguised ourselves as rather sweaty and strangely dressed versions of Santa Claus or Jultomten as he is called in Sweden. I taught them some equally ghastly French carols.

  We even went so far as to teach them verses of the great Swedish hymn, O Store Gud, as originally written in 1885, including this verse which Josh and I particularly wanted them to learn, despite the near impossibility of the Swedish vowel sounds for them:

  När vestanvindar susa öfver fälten,

  När blommor dofta omkring källans strand,

  När trastar drilla i de gröna tälten,

  Ur furuskogens tysta, dunkla rand;

  Då brister själen ut i lofsångsljud:

  O store Gud! O store Gud!

  Då brister själen ut i lofsångsljud:

  O store Gud! O store Gud!

  And when we walked later in the mountains of central Sri Lanka and lay by the waterfall at Belihuloya, that is the song that reverberated through my mind and which I got you to sing to me because it tells of our unity with God – with God who is great, because there cannot be anything greater. It tells of joy and it tells of the environment which surrounds us and which we have to protect not just for this generation but for all the generations that should be able to follow us.