Water divining

Water diviners and astrologers are welcome in Erleichda, together with mediums, sorcerers, magicians, tarot readers… but not sceptics. Sceptics are not welcome. 

We encourage scepticism, but if you're a sceptic, don't come knocking on our door. Sceptics have a kind of meaness of spirit that we choose to do without.

Graeme set me up for this one when we had a water shortage and he showed me how to divine water.

"Take this piece of wire," he said, handing me a length of rusty fencing wire which he had twisted into an "L" shape, with a rather long vertical. "Now grasp the short bit in your hand, and let the other end point wherever it wants to. Just hold it firmly."

So there I was, holding a piece of rusty fencing wire shaped like an "L", with the long bit pointing out straight in front of me.

"Now walk across there," said Graeme, so I did. I walked a hundred metres or so, the wire still pointing in front of me, when all of a sudden, it started to twist. Not gently - I was holding it quite firmly, and it twisted the flesh of my hand. To stop it twisting took real effort. "Just hold it firmly and let it point where it wants to point," said Graeme, "and follow where it wants to go."

So I followed the wire, and Graeme told me that if I sank a well or a bore anywhere along the track the wire and I traced, we would find water, so I did and we did. The trouble with sceptics is that they would probably still be telling me why drilling for water on the testimony of a rusty piece of wire is irrational. Or that I was deluded, or tricked. So let's have a nice cool glass of water while we discuss their limitations.

A few years ago, some sceptics got together and offered a hefty reward to anyone who could divine water in an experiment they designed. They buried plastic pipes under the ground, and some of them had water, and others didn't, and none of the silly diviners who took up their challenge collected the money. Only the sceptics were happy.

"Now what they proved," Graeme informed me, "is that a certain group of people couldn't divine water flowing through plastic pipes in an area where nature never intended water to flow."

"It's all very well for you to say that," I countered, "but what about all the times divining fails, and where's the scientific evidence?"

"How do you explain what happened to you?"

He was right, I had no explanation for the way that wire twisted in my hand. All that proved, of course, is that a wire twisted in my hand, and by the way, continued to do so every time I walked over that part of Erleichda. What is also true is that when I drilled for water in that location, I found water.

What it does not prove is that water divining is possible.

I started to realise that scepticism is valuable, but being a sceptic is not. That's when I developed another part of the Erleichda philosophy, which makes all sorts of wonderful magic possible in Erleichda, because we all choose to have this belief: It is not necessary for me to have a belief about that.

This is how they train fleas for a flea circus: they put them in a box. When the flea jumps too high, it hits its head, and gets a flea headache, and soon learns how high it can jump. When it tries to jump too far sideways, its bruises itself against the sides of its box, so it soon learns not to jump too far sideways. The flea very quickly learns the size of its world, and not to venture outside it, and soon you can take the box away, and the flea will not stray. The flea is a sceptic, and is now ready to perform in your circus. And it will not venture outside the centre ring of that circus until you prove that the outside exists.

Human sceptics are far smarter than fleas, and able to defend the limitations of life far more eloquently.

In Erleichda we prefer to say "It is not necessary for me to have a belief about that", and we step out of the circus and experience what is there to be experienced.

Many of our critics say that is childlike. They are right.

The first thing that we say about interesting phenomena is "What would happen if that were true?" and our universe and its possibilities keep expanding, and our world is full of magic. Childlike.

Killing day

Thursday is killing day in Erleichda.

Because it is a special day I always rise early, and spend some considerable time sharpening my knives, of which I have two - a straight one and a curved one. Sharp knives make both the killing and the dying easier.

Usually I will have an audience for the killing, for we encourage our children to be aware, and new residents are encouraged to attend. It is important, we believe, for everyone to acknowledge that for us to live, something must die.

The straight knife is for killing sheep and cattle, the curved knife is for pigs.

To kill a sheep, I hold it by the front legs, and sit it on its rump, with its back to me, as if I were about to shear it. With my right leg between its two back legs, I lie it down, and bend its head over my left ankle, stretching and exposing its throat. Then, as quickly and as powerfully as possible, I cut its throat, and snap the head backwards to break the neck, and death seems to be virtually instantaneous. Cutting the throat ensures that the animal bleeds properly, enhancing both the flavour and keeping qualities of the meat.

Cattle are too big for me to manhandle in such a fashion, so I use a .22 rifle to shoot them in a spot between and just above the eyes. This stuns the beast, which falls to the ground, and I then use my straight knife to cut its throat, ensuring proper bleeding, as with the sheep.

I use a special implement, something like an axe, but with a blunt point instead of a blade, to stun pigs before I kill them. As with cattle, I aim for a point between and just above the eyes, and if I am accurate, the animal is immediately stunned, and I can proceed with the killing. I must remain calm, and swing accurately, because if I miss the correct spot, I will only hurt the pig, which will then tend to panic, making my job much more difficult.

When the pig is stunned, I use the curved knife to cut deeply through the skin and fat in a longitudinal incision from its chest along its throat, and then I thrust the knife deeply into its chest, piercing the cluster of veins and arteries above its heart. Again, this ensures a speedy death and a thorough bleed.

I can then leave it to my assistants to hang and butcher the animal for our consumption. Everyone in Erleichda is rostered from time to time to be my assistant, because without this process, Erleichda could not survive.

In assisting, and ensuring that the killing proceeds as humanely and quickly as possible, we pay the same respect to the animals we kill as do many hunting societies. Like them, we kill to survive, and we feel a bond with the animals that die that we might live.

Nor do we delegate the killing to others, to slaughtermen we can denigrate, pretending that we are not responsible for the killing. We have this belief: How can you respect life if you pretend that death does not exist? How can you stop the killing, if you avoid your responsibility for the slaughter?

Sh'am Buddhism and atheism

Ch’an Buddhists renounce the desire to achieve Nirvana, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in it. To say that Ch’an is to Buddhism is what atheism is to Christianity is not accurate. Ch’ans don’t go around telling everybody that they don’t believe in Nirvana as atheists go around telling everybody they don’t believe in God.

Sh’am Buddhists have much the same attitude to God. We find that it is not necessary to have a belief about He/She/It. This is not atheism.

Sh’am Buddhists, in common with most world religions, believe that God is unknowable, so what’s the point of worrying. To say that you know that God doesn’t exist seems incredibly arrogant – just as arrogant as saying that you know that God exists, and know precisely what is on his mind.

It depends on your definition of God, of course. The God that atheists don’t believe in is the same God that believers do believe in – flip sides of the same coin.

Religions, it has been said, are invented to keep people from knowing God.

Having renounced the necessity of God, Sh’am Buddhists are open to experience God. We can choose to believe that there is an ultimate order to the universe, and that this order is what people call God, in accordance with what they experience.

Observation is revelation.

Searching for God

I leave my friends debating the existence (or otherwise) of God. I decide to go and find him.

I fly past Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and at last Pluto (was that a planet I just flew past?), more than 4 billion kilometers from home. Because I can fly at the speed of light, it’s only taken 7 hours to get here.

I’m not even out of the Solar System yet. Another two light years to go. Then another 4.3 light years to Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbour,  then 4.6 light years to Sirius and so on. The average distance between stars is something like 30 million million kilometers, and there are somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is our home galaxy, and there are probably another 140 billion galaxies.

I’ve been flying now for 13 billion years, and with distance I’m beginning to develop perspective, and I’ve certainly had enough time for contemplation. But I can’t begin to comprehend the enormity of these numbers and distances, and I doubt that you can either.

But if there is a God, he, she or it understands it all - by definition, being the creator. Perhaps he can’t, but the chances are she does a better job of comprehending me than I do of comprehending it. Arguing about the existence or otherwise of God seems arrogant and a waste of time.

Just choose – it doesn’t really matter. Your choice will not affect the being or non-being of God.

I fly on, and after approximately infinity kilometres, off in the distance I see a familiar sight. It’s my two friends, right where I left them, debating the existence of God. They haven’t aged a bit, nor have they reached a conclusion.

At the very edge of the universe, it’s just the three of us. Perhaps there’s a message in that.

After my trip, I realize that Einstein predicted the outcome years ago. It seems that there is an order to the universe. I choose to call that order God. It’s a comforting notion, and that’s why I choose it. To choose to believe in God is just as comforting as being aware of his presence.

My mission in life is to find that order, and in yielding to it, find eudamona.

Being a leader

Melinda has a passion for marching. She is President of the Birriboola Marching Association, and several girls and one of the boys from Erleichda are enthusiastic members.

“Used to be called marching girls,” Melinda told me, “but now it’s marching association, because now we have male members too. But it’s not a sport that appeals to many boys.”

“Do you know what I like most about marching as a sport?” she asked me. “We work as a team, everybody works for everybody else.”

“Like cricket or football,” I said, although marching didn’t strike me as being a sport.

“No, not like cricket or football or baseball or just about any sport. I’ll tell you why. Like most sports, most of us like to excel, and to represent at district or state or country level. Most teams at representative level comprise the best individuals from the various teams in the competition, so members of those teams are always competing with each other, and trying to stand out so they’ll be chosen.

“But in marching, it’s the team that’s chosen, and the team wins and goes on to higher levels of competition as a team or not at all. So all our team works as a team, they support each other, they work together. They don’t compete against each other, they compete as a team.”

That made me think. That’s how I like to think of Erleichda, as a team, working together with a vision we can share. What Melinda said next made me think even more.

“We used to have leaders, you know, who’d march out front, but we don’t any more. People used to compete to be leader, so they’d try to stand out from the other members of the team, and that meant that they detracted from the team’s performance. I mean, in competition, we’re judged on precision and coordination, how together we are as a team, and someone who tries to stand out... well, they spoil the whole thing. So, no leaders.

“We’re judged, in competition, not so much by how high we step, but on whether everyone steps at the same height, swings their arms to the same level; you know, it’s about looking good as a team, and working together.

“And anyone can do it!” Melinda was warming up. “We’ve got a girl... she’s... well, she’s a large girl. And she’d gone to dancing classes, and the teacher told her she was too fat to be a dancer. Can you imagine a teacher telling a young girl that! But here, she fits in, everyone helps her, and she loves it. Because what’s important is not her physical appearance, it’s her... her precision, her neatness, her ability to work with other people, her enjoyment! Not everyone wants to stand out, you know. Lots of people blossom in a group. In a team.”

I want Erleichda to be like a marching team.

Saving the world

It was one of those meetings that set out to change the world. All of us had the same altruistic objective: to make the world a better place, not only for ourselves, but for everybody. We didn't want anybody to be oppressed, or poor, or hungry, or unable to fulfill their highest potential. 

We were New Age people, and we met to discuss ways and means of achieving whatever it was we wanted to achieve. On this night somebody wanted the group to agree on an action plan to do something. That something was to be based on a book doing the rounds at the time, a series of speeches which set out the author’s ideas on how to achieve what she called "a civil society".

It was full of wonderful glittering generalities, like "social capital", a phrase with which everybody agreed but nobody could define. Everyone had their own definition, which they thought was obvious, and certainly beyond the need for discussion. This allowed everybody to seem to agree on something without rigorous investigation of what that something actually was, but everybody knew that it was good, whatever it was, and so nobody could argue against it without appearing to be very Old Age indeed.

Political correctness is at its best when practised by politicians, who know that if they can fill a speech with politically correct generalities, they can get everybody to agree with them, even although they bitterly disagree with each other. As long as nobody tries to get at the meaning behind the words.

It seemed that everybody had there own special glittering generalisation, which formed the sine qua non of their position and therefore the action they thought was needed to save the world.

A generalisation is a statement that may apply to a subset of a group, and is then extended to include all members of the group. It is taken to be so obvious by the generaliser that no discussion is necessary or indeed to be tolerated. One of our members made the generalisation that ever since white people had landed in Australia, farmers had raped the land for their own greed, and hence were pillaging the “social capital” of the country, and had to be controlled. So he was for government control of the farmers.

Another was of the opinion that the banks controlled the world by creating credit, and that the only answer was for the government to take over the banks, and how if they did, this action would increase the “social capital”.

This “social capital”, they advocated, should be measured in some sort of Social Capital Index, to be published and used as an indicator of the performance of government. Everybody seemed to be for this concept, although no-one offered any idea of what the index would actually measure.

Well, not everybody agreed, just the majority. But those of us who disagreed were fairly silent, seemingly stunned for the moment by this deluge of self-righteous generalisation, our thoughts self-censored by the political correctness of it all.

I was going through various emotions, which included rage, sorrow and wonder. How well, I thought, would Hitler have rated under this proposed index? Here were a group of well meaning friends and acquaintances of mine, intelligent and caring, and what they were proposing was the most outrageous intrusion of government into the lives of the community since the Russian revolution, arguing that it was necessary for our survival.

But for the time I felt that to argue against it would be like arguing against motherhood and apple pie, which is how I often feel when confronted by political correctness. So I said nothing for the whole meeting, until the very end.

Robyn said something. We had to vacate the premises, and it became necessary to form some conclusion, which, of course, was impossible. So Robyn, bless her, said that often she felt overwhelmed by the immensity of the size of the problem, and had decided that it was beyond her to fix it, so she worked locally, on smaller problems for which she could take responsibility. Lighting grass fires, she called it.

What she was saying was exactly what Robert Pirsig said in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value."

Robyn said: "Next time you are down at your local shopping centre, and you see a Rotarian, or a Lion, or an Apexian, selling raffle tickets for a good cause, I suggest you buy one." Most of the group looked to be puzzled by this remark, but there were one or two smiles.

Robyn would be welcome in Erleichda, but I really don't want people who want to save the world. They have caused enough problems over the centuries, and they totally overwhelm me.

The power of positive thinking

One day, as I sat on a rock by the river that runs through Erleichda, I heard someone singing. I had been listening to the birds, and the multitude of voices of the Australian bush on a hot summers day. Watching the birds in the trees, an old man goanna hoping for food, and a rare sight indeed, not one but three or four platypuses in the water below me.

The river runs straight for about a kilometre or so through Erleichda, from south to north; it swings in from west, and out to the east. Around the corner he appeared, a young man in a canoe, paddling slowly with the current, and singing.

As he drew nearer the life around me disappeared. No birds, no goanna, no platypuses; the songs of the bush died, leaving only the sound of his singing. He was happy, his song strong and in its way beautiful.

I realised as he passed, not seeing me, seeing only scenery, that he was surrounded by, enclosed in, a sphere of silence of his own creation. 

Soon he passed by, then out of sight where the river turned to the east, and as he passed, life in the bush resumed.

Positive thinking can be like this. You create a world that encloses you, at the expense of seeing and hearing what is really going on. Sometimes it is best just to float along with the current, and acknowledge another reality.

My 20,000 year plan

This morning I sat and watched the leaves marching across the ground. Well being marched, actually.

Yesterday I trimmed some growth from an ironbark tree, and I laid the trimmings on an ant nest. I didn’t want that nest where it was; a couple of metres in diameter, right in the middle of my lawn, and a scary thing for the children. Go anywhere near it and you will be covered with ants, and although their bite is not painful, it’s definitely uncomfortable.

Today the ants are carrying off those ironbark trimmings, leaf by leaf, and when you look at the ground around the nest it looks as if the leaves are moving themselves. Sometimes you can’t even see the ant that is carrying it, the leaf being so much bigger than the ant.

At first glance you don’t see any change in the pile of clippings. But look closer and you will see branches bare of leaves, and then you notice ants demolishing the network of branches. You have to look closely to see any activity, but when you do you can see that the tiny contribution of each of the workers assigned to this task of clearing the trimmings from the nest will result in the disappearance of the trimmings. Possibly, probably, this will take a week or so, but it’s a foregone conclusion, and the ants don’t mind how long it takes.

I have a 20,000 year plan for Erleichda. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll see the plan come to fruition. It just means that I don’t care how long it takes, which removes a lot of the stress involved in achieving it.

I got the idea from some Aboriginal people I know, who live outback a few kilometers downstream from a cotton farm. When that cotton farm pumps water from the river to fill the dams from which they irrigate, the river runs backwards, and the land is being sucked dry by the cotton.

But the people say “Those cotton farmers will leave in forty years at the most, because they will have worn out the land. This is our land, and we have been here 20,000 years. So we can wait forty years, and then fix it.” So they fence off the river, and do their best to feed water back into it. In times of drought, when the river runs low and the waterholes dry up, they shoot the odd huge Murray Cod trapped and dying in the sun, and wait for rain and for the cotton farmers to leave.

A 20,000 year plan can be changed quite readily. It does not consist of a series of five year plans, for example, rather a series of projects which may or may not be completed. You evolve these projects by sitting and listening to the land, and seeing what it wants you to do, and you never know where that’s going to take you. So I don’t know what lies at the end of this plan, only that it will evolve if I keep my eyes and ears open, and listen carefully to what I’m hearing and pay close attention to what I’m seeing.

Sometimes you can be blinded by a plan, and you can tend to forget what your real objective is.

Come to think about it, I’m not even certain where today’s project is headed, so I might just sit here and do a bit more looking and listening.

Being enlightened

Erleichda is a community of Sh’am Buddhists, whose beliefs came to Erleichda from India via China. Here’s how it came about:

As Buddhism spread eastwards from India, it was influenced by the religions of the regions in which it was practiced. In China, under the influence of Taoism and the like, a sect arose known as Ch’an. They asked themselves the question: If the way to Nirvana is by renouncing desire, what then is the last desire to renounce? If desire leads to suffering, and I have overcome my desire for wealth, status, sex, food, drink, air and life itself, what is left to renounce? Why, they realized, it’s the desire to enter Nirvana! So the Ch’ans decided that this would be the first desire they would renounce, which seems to have taken a load off their minds, because Ch’an Buddhas always appear to be very contented.

The opposite of Nirvana is Samsara – the endless cycle of life and death. If I give up the desire to reach Nirvana, then I’m choosing to believe that there is no real distinction between Nirvana and Samsara, and therefore I’m already in Nirvana. There is nothing to be realized, I’m already enlightened, I can just get on with life.

 The Ch’an Buddhist, having renounced the desire to enter Nirvana, chooses instead to re-enter Samsara. This is the Boddhisattva, who realizes that all there is, is the sum of our illusions, and that the enlightenment of one does not equal enlightenment, which belief maintains the illusion of the individual. True enlightenment is the enlightenment of the universal Buddha-mind, the cosmic sum of all consciousness.

The Boddhisattva returns as a teacher, there is no enlightenment until everything is enlightenment, and everything is everybody, so it’s all or nothing.

The character pronounced “Ch’an” in Chinese is pronounced “Zen” in Japanese. It comes from a Sanskrit term meaning meditation. Ch’an Buddhists don’t believe in meditation, but spend a lot of time meditating, pondering the thought that meditation does not lead to enlightenment. That comes from the Taoist belief that meditation, or total absorption, can be part of any activity. Life is a meditation. Maybe.

In effect, in renouncing the very concept of Nirvana, Ch’an is to Buddhism what atheism is to Christianity. Or is it? More about that later.

When Ch’an reached Erleichda, it came under the influence of Christianity, the Australian disapproval of leaders, and a few good ideas I picked up from George, an Aboriginal resident, and evolved into my version of Buddhism, Sh’am. This acknowledges that I’m not really a Buddhist, but agree with a lot of what the Buddha has to say.

Ch’an masters believed that they should never tell anything too plainly – each person should reach their own conclusion. Which Sh’am Buddhists also believe. Perhaps Sh’am isn’t sham Buddhism at all! 

There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. You should not say 'I know what Zen is'. Or 'I have attained enlightenment'. This is the real secret: Always be a beginner.

What is a Contrarian?

The prevailing view of things can be assumed to be wrong, and… its opposite, being its image or shadow, can also be assumed to be wrong… There are other ways of thinking, for which better arguments can be made.

-          from “The Death of Adam” by Marilynne Robinson

 

The renewal of civilisation has nothing to do with movements which bear the character of experiences of the crowd; these are never anything but reactions to external happenings. But civilisation can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.

- Dr Albert Schweitzer.

The masses, the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines nothing can prevent disaster ... The [Classical] Liberals gave the world Capitalism, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people. But the pioneers and supporters of capitalism overlooked one essential point; a social system, however beneficial, cannot work if it is not supported by public opinion.

– Ludwig Von Mises

"Difficilis, querulus, laudatus temporis acti si puero, castigator censorque minorum." (Difficult, a grumbler, a eulogiser of past times.)

- Horace

About the groundrules

I created the community of Erleichda because I could.

I could because the universe gave me the money, and I made the right decision. When you have money, you can use it to make more money, or you can use it to live the life you always wanted to live if you had the money.

Because it was my community, I made up the rules.

This is the first rule: If you want to live in Erleichda, you have to agree to a single condition. You have to agree with this statement: I am 100% responsible for my own life. I choose to believe that everything in my life is there because I chose it, and I chose it out of love and wisdom for myself.

That way, I get to live with people who aren’t victims, which is important for me.

 

Judith was more than a little upset when I told her that if she wanted to come and live in Erleichda, she would have to accept and obey my rules.

"Your rules?" she hissed. "Your rules? Who on earth do you think would want to live their lives with you laying down the rules?"

"Well that's the way it is," I said. "If I say you're in, you're in, and if I say you're out, you're out."

"No-one will come, and no-one will stay." Her anger was tangible, intense, and expanding. "That's against everything I believe, and I've decided on a personal level that I won't accept that sort of shit from anybody, especially bloody men with self-inflated egos."

That’s Judith for you. She doesn’t like to be tied down. Judith is always late, and she always has an excuse. I’m not interested in her excuses, only that she is always late. I get sick of her excuses. I would get along a lot better with her if she would just take responsibility for her tardiness and stop wasting time with excuses. Instead she’s a victim of her own habits.

I don’t want victims in Erleichda, so I made up the rule. If Judith doesn’t like it, that’s her prerogative.

Naturally only a madman would agree to such a rule, so it helps me to qualify potential residents very simply and very quickly.

In most villages you don’t know the rules, and whether you’re in or out seems to be quite arbitrary, or a matter luck. In Erleichda, everybody knows the rules.

The Basics

The origins of Sh’am Buddhism

Thousands of years ago, as Buddhism spread eastwards from the Bodhi tree where it all started, it absorbed elements of other cultures and religions. In China, one of these influences was Taoism. The locals, who became known as Ch’an  Buddhists,  pondered the question: “If, to reach Nirvana, it is necessary to renounce all desire, what then is the last desire that one has to renounce?”

The answer, they concluded, was the desire to reach Nirvana, and this then, would be the first desire they would renounce. The answer lay within, not without, and enlightenment and true happiness (eudemon) lay within themselves. When you see a statue of a Ch’an Buddha, he’s always a happy looking soul, carrying a swag and a lamp.

When Ch’an Buddhism reached Japan, it became Zen.

It was commonly thought  that Ch’an Buddhists were to Buddhism what atheists are to Christianity – an idea I’ll probably explore further later on.

But the starting point of Sh’am Buddhism is that Nirvana and Heaven are pretty irrelevant really, to the task on hand, which is getting on with life in the best way possible, by discovering yourself, possibly with the hope that all may be revealed in the future. But not in this life.

I’m not a real Buddhist. So as far as being a real Buddhist I’m a sham, really. But I like the ideas of the Ch’ans, so I’ve chosen to call myself a Sh’am Buddhist. This is a position, I believe, of which Buddha himself would approve.

The meaning of eudemon

Our society has been very influenced by the ideas of Aristotle, who believed that we all should seek happiness. But that English word ‘happy’ doesn’t describe what he meant. Being Greek, he spoke Greek, and the word he used was “eudamonia”. Eudamonia  can possibly be best defined as a contentment arising from a flourishing and fulfilling life. That’s the meaning we have adopted as Sh’am Buddhists. Our objective is to achieve a state of eudemonia, our mission is to explore ways of doing that.

Being a contrarian. 

Contrarians are seen by some people as being automatically opposed to anything. It’s a charge that is very difficult to deny. You can’t just say “No I’m not!” But those critics are wrong, of course.

In the opinion of Marilynne Robinson, who invented this term, the prevailing opinion about things is generally incorrect, and therefore the counter argument is also false. The answer is usually to be found by asking a different question.

Sh'am Buddhists give a lot of thought to asking the right questions.

Being a Lennonist

If you choose to believe, as Sh’am Buddhists do, that everything in your life is there because you chose it to be, it is not possible to play the victim with any conviction. Politics is about making people believe that they are victims so that the politicians can rescue them, and in the process it is necessary to create a persecutor from whom they need to be recued. It’s about abdicating responsibility. Delegating responsibility is acceptable, abdicating isn’t.

When people deny responsibility for things in general, things tend to go wrong.

The late John Lennon said lots of wise things, but nothing wiser than what we call Lennon’s Law: “Everything the government touches turns to shit”. Midas touch in reverse.

Politics is where the rubber hits the road, and Sh’am Buddhists do not shy away from the issues. We accept responsibility for the way things are. If some things are best done by delegating responsibility, then we support that, but reluctantly.

Erleichda – a virtual community

This is a community I have dreamed into being. Because everyone agrees to be responsible for their own lives, there are no victims, so conversations are more enjoyable, creative rather than reactive, and that’s the way I want it to be.

Obviously it’s a community of mad people, because no sane person could really believe that everything etc. We don’t mind that, because we’re not interested in being right. We’re only interested in whether it works. It works if it makes us eudemon.

The people I will describe as residents of Erleichda exist only in my mind. Any resemblance to any living person is probably coincidental, but may not be, because there are others out there who share my beliefs – to a greater or lesser extent. Madmen, lusty women and poets, someone once described such people.

You are most welcome to join us!

We choose to believe...

There’s no point in arguing with us. We know we’re not right, we know we’re insane. But that’s our choice, and we understand that you have made different choices. If we choose to change our beliefs – and we may well do that – then we will. Until then, we won’t.

Love us or leave us!

Introduction

Welcome to Erleichda, the home of Sh’am Buddhism.

Here I seek to live a life that is eudemon.

Philosophically I am Contrarian, politically I am a Lennonist.

Erleichda is a virtual community, so it doesn't really exist.

Some explanation is probably needed, and is forthcoming.

Briefly:

Erleichda is a term borrowed from Tom Robbins, who says that it is an ancient Anglo-Nordic word meaning “Lighten up”. I think that’s a great name for a community concerned with the serious business of life.

Sh’am Buddhism is, as the name implies, not really Buddhism at all, but it is inspired by the thinking of the Ch’an Buddhists. Ch’an is a step in the evolution of Zen, but more of that later.

Eudemon means happy, sort of, but truly happy, in the Greek sense of the word.

Contrarian is the idea of Marrilynne Robinson, American philosopher and author, and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Lennonists believe in Lennon’s Law, which is “Everything the government touches turns to shit”, as originally expounded by Beetle John Lennon.

Being a virtual community means that there is, at the moment, only one of me, Peter McCloy, and the community exists only in my mind. But you are more than welcome to join me in Erleichda if you choose to adopt the Sh’am Buddhist Creed: “I choose to believe that everything in my life is there because I chose it to be, and I chose it out of love and wisdom for myself.”

Each of these paragraphs probably demands further explanation, and each will be the subject of at least one of the chapters which follow, in no particular order. I’ve been working on Sh’am  Buddhism for thirty years now, and it’s still a work in progress, which is just another way of saying that I’m still learning. Or that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

So it would be unreasonable to expect you to arrive at a similar state of confusion in a short time. You have to work at it. Confusion and paradox are simply symptoms of something that is still in development, but is at least moving – a very eudemon place to be.

Welcome!