I have had a couple of bread-making disasters, but I’m now able to produce a tasty fluffy loaf that won’t break my teeth or get stuck halfway down my throat. While meditating the other day I had a loaf in the oven and the smell was permeating the house as well as my mind – distracting, but not unpleasant.

Then I had an insight; not into bread making per se, but how our practice and study is the method by which we bake our faith. I had an image of my first loaf pop into my mind – a heavy little number with a dark black crust you could barely crack with a log splitter, and a chewy doughy centre you could stick bricks to a wall with. This was the result of not proving the dough properly, and too hot an oven.

Like unproven stodgy dough, if we try to rush into faith without gradually proving our practice, then we are going to remain heavy and small instead of expansive and fresh in our outlook. The oven, is like our approach to the world – too much study and isolation is like an oven that is not hot enough. Even the lightest dough will produce a dry, pale husk of a loaf that will not tickle anyone’s taste buds. On the other hand, dogmatic practice, including pious proselytising is like an oven which is too hot, creating a loaf with a burnt hard exterior hiding raw innards that will just give you a stomach ache when digested. Like ranting about one’s particular brand of Buddhism to all and sundry as being the “way” when one has only just begun practicing is to be a burnt loaf – dogmatic and impenetrable to other people’s hearts because it is hiding raw innards.

When the oven is just at the right temperature, a perfect combination of study (knowledge) and practice (wisdom) is applied over time to slowly cook the innards – consolidating the light texture – and creating a pleasant but not impenetrable crust that easily soaks up the soup of life! And of course, there are many recipes for a good loaf!

Then, he thought to himself that it was a little selfish to remain flying with his new friends all day while everyone else was still suffering on the ground. As he looked down at those still suffering on the ground, he thought it would be compassionate to share his wonderful discovery with everyone. That way everybody else could fly too and avoid having to endure the sharp rocks that covered the earth.

So, he decided to regularly land on the ground, and deliver teachings in the various towns and villages. He was wise enough to know that should he talk about his flying experience to uneducated people then they wouldn’t believe him – they would probably think he was crazy and refuse to listen to him. This would be a shame, because they would be doomed to suffer the pain of sharp rocks under their feet forever.

So, the next day he set about teaching people about flying using his skilful means. He told them that the ground is full of sharp rocks. He told them that because they are heavy, the pressure of their feet upon the rocks produced more pain. He taught that they might suffer less pain if they were not so fat and greedy. The people began to lose weight, and found that their lighter footsteps hurt their feet less, and they were happier.

He then showed them how the wind can make a kite fly. He showed that by building a large kite and holding onto the cord in a strong wind that you could skip lightly over the rocks with hardly any pain at all. The people understood him and became good at building large kites. They would enjoy flying the kites, skipping over the ground feeling hardly any pain in the their feet at all.

He then revealed that it is possible to build a flying machine big enough to carry a man into the sky, and avoid the pain of walking on sharp rocks altogether. Everyone was enthralled and wanted to know more. However, the wise man insisted that in order to experience the pleasure of flight, that the student must first build his own craft and learn to fly it.

Over the next 40 years, the wise man slowly taught his friends about each part of his flying machine. People followed his teachings with great enthusiasm. Some were better carpenters, and some were better at needlework and sowing the fabric for the wings, but few were good at everything straight away, and nobody knew how to actually fly! But this was fine, because the carpenters also produced strong homes and barns, and the needleworkers also produced lovely warm clothes. Although they were not flying yet, the people were already much happier.

The years passed by and the people became more skilful, but they remained desperate to know what it felt like to fly in the sky. One day, the people beseeched the old wise man to explain how to fly, but the wise man was not sure they were truly ready to hear how incredible it felt to fly, and so he refused. The people asked him a second and a third time, until the wise man finally agreed to share his most valued knowledge. However, he found himself in a dilemma. How could he describe the incredible feeling of flying to people who had never flown? It was still too fantastical for them to accept.

Rather than actually describe the feeling of flying, he set about teaching that everyone had the capacity to learn to fly and would ultimately become pilots. He called his teaching, the Wonderful Law of Flight. He felt this was more compassionate because it taught everyone that they had the potential to enjoy being a pilot. He taught that this was his most supreme teaching because it offered hope and salvation for everyone from having to walk on sharp rocks, and encouraged them to continue studying his teachings in future. He revealed that all of his previous teachings were merely preparatory and were only intended to lead his students to the great adventure of experiencing flight at first hand. Soon after he gave this teaching, the wise old man passed away.

The people then began to use the teachings of carpentry, needlework, and the other skills required to build their flying machines. They had studied hard so knew their flying machines well. They knew how fast, how high, and how steeply they could safely fly their machines. They understood the nature of the wind and weather. Most of all, they enjoyed sharing this knowledge with others to help them achieve the same skills and escape the sharp rocks upon the ground.

Gradually, one by one, the more proficient craftsmen would take themselves to a local hill, and waiting for the right wind, would step off the edge and begin flying – swooping, soaring and looking for more villages to teach how to fly.

However, the people were impatient, and soon they started to make shortcuts, and this created flying machines that fell apart in the sky, or wouldn’t fly at all, not to mention their clueless piloting. Then, some of the most proficient craftsmen, seeking fame and notoriety, developed their own style of flying machines and started to spread their own teachings. The people became confused, and as a result more and more useless flying machines were built and more and more people failed to fly.

At this time, there lived a sage in one of the villages who read the teachings of the wise man, and he was well impressed, particularly by the wise man’s Wonderful Law of Flight. The sage decided that he wanted to become the wisest man in all the land, and to save his people from having to walk on the sharp rocks of the earth. Knowing his people were impatient, and knowing that the wise man’s final teaching declared itself to be supreme, he set about creating a magic spell from it to create flying machines from thin air. The sage devised the magic spell “I Honour the Wonderful Law of Flight” and as long as he kept saying it, a flying machine appeared for his use.

The sage told everyone that by repeating this spell, they wouldn’t need to learn carpentry or needlework, or even understand the contents of the Wonderful Law of Flight or indeed, any of the wise man’s teachings. He told the people that their flying machine would simply appear before them and they would be able to fly it without any training at all!

People in the other villages learnt of this and tried to warn the people of the sage’s village saying that they mustn’t go flying without understanding fully what they were doing. However, the sage admonished them severely, quoting passages from the Wonderful Law of Flight which classified the wise man’s previous teachings as “preparatory”, and that the Wonderful Law of Flight stated that it alone was the supreme teaching.

And so, the people of the sage’s village started to say the spell and their flying machines appeared before them. Wanting to fly straight away they took themselves to the hillsides and started jumping and running about. Some would fly for a while and crash. Others would glide down the hillside but have to walk up it again. Some would soar into the sky and fly so high the sun burned their wings and they fell in flames. Some were carried off by strong winds. Some would tell tales of great flying adventures when in fact they had not flown at all. Occasionally, someone would ask the sage to teach the wise man’s older teachings in the hope they might learn to fly more effectively, or learn to build their own flying machine so that they wouldn’t need to keep repeating the spell, but they were told those teachings were too difficult, and should only use the magic spell, over and over.

News spread of this sage, and soon the rulers of the land became annoyed. They didn’t want everyone flying this way and that. They wanted them to be working their fields and factories. While they didn’t believe the sage’s magic, the rulers believed his teaching threatened their control, so they devised a way to murder him. They sent their soldiers after him, and he was captured. The rulers of the land threatened the sage to stop showing people how to create flying machines, or they would throw him off the top of the highest mountain. The sage refused, announcing himself as the saviour of the people. This made the rulers very angry indeed, so they had their soldiers drag the sage to the top of the highest mountain and throw him off the top. As the soldiers prepared to throw the sage from the mountain top, the sage’s followers looked on with doubt and fear in their hearts – They were sure the sage was going to die. Just as the soldiers threw the sage from the mountain, he began repeating the words I Honour the Wonderful Law of Flight, and a superb flying machine instantly appeared, which the sage hung onto. His followers looked on from bellow fearing for his life – nobody had ever jumped off such a high mountain and survived.

The sage was not afraid, though. He had read all of the wise old man’s teachings before he had invented his magic spell. He knew about carpentry, and needlework. He knew how strong the wings were, how fast he could fly, and how steep he could turn without crashing to the ground. In short, the sage delivered a spectacular display of flying that impressed his followers and the rulers mightily – so much so, that even some of the rulers wanted to have a go. After all, the magic spell alone had saved the sage’s life – hadn’t it? So why would anyone need anything more?

As a result, to prove their faith in the spell, the sage’s followers took to throwing themselves off mountain tops. Some of them survived, learning through their own wit and perseverance, but many could not fly their machines safely, and fell into the dark forests below the mountains never to be heard from again. Such people were conveniently dismissed as lacking faith in the sage’s spell. And so it went on, until the skills to build flying machines, how they worked and, more importantly, why to fly them became lost forever due to the peoples’ impatient and selfish desire to become pilots.

The challenge of the middle way

The challenge of walking the middle way is that extremists on both sides only see their enemy behind you

This thought came to me while taking a shower – not sure why, but probably as a result of being misunderstood and misrepresented by both sides in recent discussions I have had regarding Science vs Faith. Zealots on both sides have been so bound up in their own points of view that in each case, I have been perceived as representing the opposition.

Science, or more accurately, scientists (also many athiests – more accurately described as anti-religionists), still predominantly regard matter (physical phenomenon) as the ultimate reality. This mind set believes we are independent of one another, that boundaries exist between us, and that when we die there is nothing but oblivion.

On the other hand, there are those who believe the ultimate truth to be that nothing really exists outside the mind’s faculty of discrimination – that phenomena fade in and out of existence constantly, depending on causes and conditions, and that existence like the perception of the flickering picture on a TV screen is only perceived to be solid and real. The only thing that is eternal (yet constantly changing) is our karma. This nihilistic view can be overwhelmingly negative.

Thanks to Nagarjuna, we have a cohesive understanding of our lives in the Buddhist middle-way philosophy that posits reality as we experience it in human form displays both of the above aspects – conventional reality, and emptiness, or sunyata – like two sides of a coin. It’s fascinating to see that as modern quantum physics has unfolded how similar notions of interconnectedness, non-reality, relativity, wave/particle non-duality etc. initially confronted with doubt and resistance, have come to be accepted. Thats is to say, phenomena (that are in themselevs an ultimate truth) manifest different aspects depending on our relative observation.

Bruce Springsteen had to leave the Hyde Park stage in silence when his microphone was switched off. Photograph: Jim Dyson

In an article about turning poison into medicine I recently wrote about the Blade Wheel (Or Wheel of Sharp Weapons), an ancient buddhist text of apology and renunciation. In it, the reader is effectively chastised, or reminded that all of the sufferings that befall him are the actions of the Blade Wheel (once thrown against others) returning to cut away at the ignorance of wrong thoughts, views, words and actions.

The musicians, the “Boss” himself, and predictably, London mayor, Boris Johnson (like some cuddly feudal overlord) all launched scathing attacks on the ‘jobsworth’ who ended the concert at Hyde Park so abruptly.

Live Nation, promoters of the concert – part of the Hard Rock Calling festival – said on its website: “It was unfortunate that the three hour-plus performance by Bruce Springsteen was stopped right at the very end but the curfew is laid down by the authorities in the interest of the public’s health and safety.

I expect this was also to protect the promoters against any claims for damages (I doubt the promoters would have worried too much about the noise or public safety had their permit lasted into the early hours). And there is the blade wheel in action.

Consider this. If everyone in the crowd :

• was subjected to the noise of a concert they didn’t want to attend, maybe if they were caring for an elderly relative in the last hours of their lives at home, would any of them complain (or sue)?
• were parked at a red light and rear ended (just enough to bend a fender) and despite being perfectly uninjured, would they feign a neck injury to the insurance company?
• slipped in a supermarket, would they sue?
• basically respond in kind to anyone or anything that impinged on their peace of mind?

The decision to switch off the mics was not spontaneous – it didn’t just occur to someone to “spoil the fun”. The decision had causes and conditions that led to it’s manifestation. It was not right, or wrong – but it was inevitable.

I would argue that anyone who was annoyed, angry and upset by the turn of events should look no further than themselves for the answer to why this occurred.

We all want the world to be more fun to live in, more caring, considerate – more humane. Yet, what are WE doing to make OURSELVES more so?

However, there’s another story behind this, which is infinitely more important. Engelbert has been around a while – 76 years in fact. He’s had a career in music for longer than I’ve been around full stop. Despite his professional image being questioned by the media he said, ‘I had a great time, a very wonderful time. I hope everyone listened to the song… we shared the song with every generation. I sang it from my heart.’

Pop musicians in recent times have become so utterly precious and egocentric that none of them would dare to put themselves up for a Eurovision failure. Yes, he got exposure from it, and why shouldn’t he – but at least he put his love of performing ahead of his fear of public/media opinion and slander. For him, at least, his behaviour was “pure”. Good on yer Engelbert!

Emptiness is one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to get my head around. Even at the most mundane level, trying to grasp its ramifications in our daily life is a struggle to comprehend, let alone explain to anyone.

While working the other day I came across a customer’s website that caught my attention. It made me consider what a vase is, exactly. More to the point, it made me question the validity of my conception of what a vase is.

Emptiness theory suggests that the vase’s existence cannot be truly independent of the rest of the universe. This existence also extends to our conception, and labelling of things, be they material (such as the vase) or metaphysical (concepts and opinions).

When does the vase become a bowl - Courtesy the wonderful Eliza Bott

Terms such as best, foremost, worst, superior are all relative truths. They have to be, because we came up with them. The ultimate truth of the vase is simply that it is a collection of minerals, and will gradually degrade to dust (impermanence). The relative truth might range from it being the vessel to contain beautiful flowers, or it might be the weapon that gives someone concussion, or even a doorstop (no offence to the artist!) – these are all conceptions. If it was given to us by an ancestor we might cherish it dearly (attachment and clinging), but if it was seen on a landfill site would se rush over to capture it? There simply is no vase – there is only what we make of it.

Nichiren taught that desires are enlightenment, which is a step away from “sufferings are nirvana”. After all sufferings are the result of our ignorant desires. Perhaps what he was getting at is that desires are essentially the manifestation of attachment and clinging – of our ignorance of emptiness. Therefore to ensure that any desires we generate are based on the compassion and wisdom of the Bodhisattva way, we must awaken our Buddhastate. We cannot be a Buddha 24/7 – but by awakening it during Gongyo, we are allowed enough clarity to practice as Bodhisattvas of the earth in daily life.

If all this is starting to sound like the child acolyte in the film Matrix, who bends the spoon, and then says the secret is to realise there is no spoon – then hopefully you realise how tricky this can all be

My initial reaction was to shake my head at the pictures of the security forces tackling an innocent but enthusiastic photographer into the gutter to avoid a potential threat to the olympic torch. It caused me to question the nature of the torch, or more specifically, the flame – and what it was the security forces are actually trying to protect.

Sadly, this event isn’t that surprising. As a pilot I’m already well aware of the massive exclusion zone, called R112, around London’s airspace, and the consequential threat of interception, being shot down, or being sent to a dark place for many years as a result of blundering into it without permission. That’s if the ground to air missile installations being planned don’t get you first.

So, what has all this to do with impermanence – or more importantly how our ignorance of impermanence leads to suffering (in this case, someone being tackled to the ground)?

Well, a few days ago, another news article was on TV that showed what looked like some mining/davie lamps on an aircraft. The volume was down, but it became apparent that these lamps were transferring the olympic flame to the UK on a special flight.

It struck me that the Olympic flame is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of impermanence. All manifestation is simply the coming together of various causes and conditions to produce a temporary effect. What is more temporary than fire?

The notion of keeping the Olympic flame alight is I think, in Buddhist terms, completely contradictory. Is the flame the same flame from moment to moment? Sometimes powered by gas, at other times, oil and wick, the flame changes constantly, by burning different atoms of fuel.

When the flame is transferred from the oil lamps to the gas powered torch bearers the flame doesn’t jump to the torch, and leave the lamp. Nothing is transferred at all – just some heat allows a new flame to initiate.

If a torch bearer stood behind a tree and blew out the torch, and relit it with a match, it would be utterly impossible using any scientific method known to humanity to determine if that flame was lit by the official Olympic Flame™ or by a cigarette lighter or a match.

It is the clinging to the notion of a permanent, unchanging fire – attachment to ego, and the pride of the organisers to maintain a permanent fire that formed the causes for the poor (if misguided) photographer to be pushed to the ground.

It reminds me of the ancient superstitions of Rome and the Vestal Virgins and their job to keep the sacred fire burning. How they, and Rome, suffered!

ANGER is fundamentally an arrogant state of mind. People in the state of anger are attached to the illusory assumption that they are better then others and direct their energy toward sustaining and embracing this image. To ensure that others think of them in similarly glowing terms, they can never reveal their true feelings. Instead, they act obsequiously while a burning desire to surpass all others is their exclusive focus. With their inner feelings and their outward appearance out of accord, they don’t speak from the heart. Buddhism teaches that the heart is the most important. Of two people making comparable efforts, the results will differ greatly if one person is motivated by a value that transcends the self — good, beauty, the well-being (and happiness) of others — while the other is motivated by ego (the self).

Daisaku Ikeda has said:

A higher religion does not negate rationality. No religion that suppresses human reason can earn the trust of humankind. Buddhism, the “religion of wisdom,” is an extremely rational religion. In fact, it is so rational that many Westerners even question whether is can be classified as a religion, since it does not teach the existence of a supreme being in the image of humankind.

I believe what is needed today is a cohesive philosophy for peace and tolerance that will spread from human heart to human heart without the fetters of suppressive dogma – a philosophy that embraces change and discovery.