It doesn’t really matter

Fact: All of us consist of 99.999999% of empty space


Some people love tinkering about with cars, others love to spend their time creating wonderful treats in the kitchen, whereas I have a fascination with the world of the infinitesimally tiny, in fact so tiny its invisible to everything but the most advanced microscopes. I have a profound interest in the sub atomic world, a world that, once you get to grips with, continues to blow you away with its sheer illogicality. This is a world which, if you want to step inside, you have to leave your everyday logic at the door. Here things are not what they seem, you enter an Alice wonderland in set up where things are not what they seem, a place where you can’t know both the position and speed of something at the same time, a place where things can be in two different place at once. And in this world the every day laws of physics break down. Its even possible for particles in this worked to be two different things at the same time. Talk about weirdness!

All matter, that is you, your computer, sofas and tennis balls, consist of millions upon millions of atoms. To give an idea of the size of one atom, it would take 10,000 million laid side to side to stretch from one side to the other of a full stop on this page! Each atom has in its middle a nucleus, which, is 100,000 times small than the complete atom. Spaced around each nucleus are clouds of electrons, these electrons whiz about at great speed, and are viewed more as clouds then object’s, it's also quite impossible to say with any certainty, where one of these electrons is at any one moment, all you can do is estimate its probable location. 
What gives all matter its sense of solidity is just the opposing attractions of elections and the nucleus. Elections possess a negative charge whilst neutrons, which reside into the atoms centre or nucleolus, possess a positive charge, these two opposing charges mean that the electron always keeps a certain distance from the nucleus, it were not so, and electrons fell into the nucleolus then what we see as solid master would not be possible, it would be easy to put your hand through the table, and you wouldn’t be able to stand on solid ground for instance.

Getting back to the opening fact, all matter does indeed consist of over 99% of empty space; the only mass to be found in an atom is that inside its nucleus. If all of the empty space could somehow be squeezed out of our bodies, then the entire population of the earth could be squeezed into the space occupied by a sugar cube! Now, isn’t that amazing?

I know that most people find physics are just too intimidating and boring to bother about.
And its true that to properly appreciate this weird and wonderful world does take a bit of time to grasp, yet the subject isn’t half as complicated inc e you grasp the basics. Well in that sense it isn’t that far removed from car mechanics or even cooking is it!

I haven’t even gone into the even weirder world of light wave/particles duality. That can wait for another time.

Who wants to be a Zeroaire? I do.

With several ‘Happiness and Wealth,’ books and reports appearing in the media these past few months, the ‘chatterarti,’ have been given much food for thought. Yet, whilst the liberal wing of the media are at last beginning to grasp the notion that wealth can never bring real contentment, they only understand it from an intellectual perspective. They can’t really grasp the reality of it. This was brought home to me recently by a letter to one of the papers. The writer was responding to an article about the Spending Review cuts, “apparently it now seems that money doesn’t bring happiness.” This person had obviously read a a review on one of those reports, and was trying to come to terms with the idea. The point is though that he didn’t feel it himself, he only believed what the article told him. That’s the trouble with many people; they will only believe something when they are told it is so.


We’re out of touch with our inner selves, our true nature; we have lost the understanding that that real happiness cannot be bought. This should be as clear as daylight to us, it should be a gut instinct. After all, the most liberated and enlightened beings throughout the ages have only achieved real awakening once they have grasped that desire is but hindrance to enlightenment.

The key here though is to understand that avoidance of something can be just as much, if not more of a barrier to liberation, then attachment. There is nothing wrong with money and material wealth per say, it’s just that we have come to see materialism as the be all and end all of existence. Our delusions encouraged and cemented by the machinations and manipulations of a very cleaver and all-powerful marketing machine. A machine whose role is to constantly churn out the dogma of materialism. ‘Buy, buy buy,’ it shrills, ‘don’t miss out on this amazing offer, this sofa, car, plasma wide screen TV etc.. etc.. etc can be yours for ONLY/JUST £599.99. Hurry, hurry, while stocks last!’

The early 20th century mystic Gurdjieff once observed, that the inhabitants of planet earth are asleep and so most of them are. Try to convince someone digging about in the dirt in some for a few seeds and weeds to feed their family in many parts of the world that you are 'poor.' And observe their reaction

It’s time to come out and be proud to be labelled ‘poor,’ to dispel the stigma that having little money, equates to a life of misery and a lack of ambition. Those of us who are 'poor,' can show others, that there is all to be gained by living a life where one happily forsakes the trimmings of consumerism.

If the writers of those happiness reports and books really want to understand that contentment is available here and now, and not just an intellectual proposition. They only have to spend 10 minutes in the company of any truly liberated being.

Who wants to be a Zeroaire?

Buy Nothing Day

Everything we buy has an impact on the environment, Buy Nothing Day highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of consumerism. The developed countries - only 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth's natural resources, causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage, and an unfair distribution of wealth.


As consumers we need to question the products we buy and challenge the companies who produce them. What are the true risks to the environment and developing countries? The argument is infinite - while it continues we should be looking for simple solutions and Buy Nothing Day is a good place to start.

No purchase necessary!
Saturday November 27th 2010 will be the next Buy Nothing Day (UK). It's a day where you challenge yourself, your family and friends to switch off from shopping and tune into life. The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from shopping and anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

People around the UK will make a pact with themselves to take a break from consumption as a personal experiment or public statement and the best thing is - IT'S FREE!!!

Unbelievable!



Add caption

 The above image is part of a series of photos that featured in Italian Vogue, July 2007 issue. The feature was, believe it or not entitled 'SuperMods Enter Rehab!'



I'm lost for words! When I first saw it I thought, that it was a photo of a group of young women with serious health issues receiving treatment, But no, It's actually a part of a fashion spread!!

No wonder young women suffer from negative body images, when this sort of nonsense in magazines fashion, Ironic or not! The world is indeed insane.

Happy to be Poor

Whenever I delve into the media, I cannot help noticing an ongoing debate as to whether or not consumerism can ever bring about a state of lasting well-being! Their fixation with the question takes up endless column inches and provokes heated discussion in the comments sections

The ‘happiness question,’ is becoming a neurotic fixation with many journalists

Personally, I know what the answer to this conundrum is – Real happiness and therefore contentment, can only ever be found within oneself, and not through anything external – Owning property, wealth, cars, or a wardrobe full of clothes, is of little importance - what causes continued unhappiness is attachment to craving and desire. The continuous quest for more and more, and the fear of losing what we already have, whether you are a millionaire or a pauper is beside the point, what is important is how attached you are to ‘stuff!’


The Buddhist points directly at the cause of our constant frustrations, and informs us that suffering is caused by desire, only by understanding desire and how it holds us in its tight grip, can we ever hope to free ourselves from its tentacles and achieve real peace of mind.


There is an old Buddhist saying worth taking note of: ‘we need warm clothes, a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, the rest is just desire!’ Unfortunately though, many of us are seduced into the whole consumerist merry go round! We are constantly drip-fed a media diet of desire, whenever we turn on the TV, internet or open a paper, we are beguiled and seduced by slick marketing, constantly trying to seduce us into buying products, we could quite easily live without. The power of advertising lies in its ability to make us believe that we need such and such a product, that we can only be successful and complete if we own Brand X. It’s just sheer stupidity really!

We even have a term for this kind of disorder; we call those who can’t stop consuming, shopaholics! What’s depressing here though is that anyone with this condition is seen as ‘one of us,’ as if those who are unable to stop spending, are normal! Perhaps they are! Never mind that most of the goods bought, only end up in landfill within a year!


So much of society is geared to the creation and accumulation of wealth; wealth is said to be what keeps the whole economy turning! No politician would dare to discuss any economic scenario, which precluded constant growth! We live a mass deception, unable to see any other way forward, never understanding that it is just this continued drive for growth that is the root cause of many of personal and environmental problems we see all around us. It isn’t a coincidence either, that religious enlightenment is usually accomplished by those who live a simple life. A reading of the biographies of the Buddha’s, Saints, Sadhu's and Holly men and women, of all paths will reveal that they achieved liberation when letting go of desire and attachment to wealth and materialism.

But enough is enough;
A clearer understanding of the term ‘poverty,’ would be helpful here. What I class as poverty may well be very different from someone else’s definition. My understanding of the term implies a state of destitution, an inability to be able to afford even the basic necessities for a healthy life. A state of being very difficult to emulate in this country, where state benefits are a universal right for everyone unable to work


Poverty is a relative term! Yes, there is a basic level, where poverty means real, grinding hardship, where, due to whatever circumstance, a person found themselves in, it would be very difficult to escape from. Yet, even here, informed choices to be made, where some of the misery can be alleviated at least!


There is no need to become sanctimonious, to develop an ‘holier than thou,’ attitude to poverty either. To many spiritual seekers, being poor is seen as a necessary aid on the road to god. Indeed many religious orders actively encourage a life of poverty, in the pursuit of holiness. What I think is missing here, though, to realise that money per say is not the problem. Whether you are a millionaire or a pauper is beside the point, it is how attached you are to 'stuff.'


I want to be clear though; I’m not suggesting that everyone who finds themselves in destitution should meekly accept their situation. A mark of any civilised society is surely when all of its members alike, receive an adequate income, to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families! Far too many people face a daily existence of misery, through sometimes, insurmountable, financial problems. I do not want to belittle anyone who lives in this sort of gruelling hardship. There are still far too many who find it almost impossible to lead any kind of normal life, due to the debt trap.


It is entirely possible, if one is careful and expedient, to live a life of contentment, and well being, whilst being relatively poor. If you are able to extricate yourself, from the trap of materialism! It means first of all you have to re-evaluate your priorities, and to wake up to the fact, that a wardrobe stuffed full of clothes, the latest technological gadgets, or eating junk foods, does nothing to further ones situation, and can be happily left behind! Do we really need to live on a diet of factory made packaged foods, when we can find cheaper and healthier wholesome alternatives?

More ways towards a better world

A little while ago, I wrote a blog where I talked about three exciting innovations that promised to provide positive answers to some of the problems we face as a population living in a world with very finite natural resources vastly over used its finite resources. The three technologies I reported on seem to me to be examples of what is needed if we are to stand any hope of surviving on this planet in sustainable manner, which no longer does damage to the earths eco systems


The three examples excited me tremendously, I reported on a treatment plant that is turning sewage water into fresh drinkable water, a company who are talking waste of all sorts and recycling it into items such as garden compost and timber substitutes. And a company who are making a thin plastic film which turns sunlight into electricity that will heat a home or power electrical equipment.

With this blog, my intention is to explore many of the possibilities open to us, once we have let go of our blinkered and conditioned ways of seeing. Once we have let go of the nonsense that is fostered onto us from all sides, in society, and once, we have truly liberated our minds from the clutter and junk that normally resides in it, we are open to the many wonderful ways opportunities that are there waiting to be tapped into. The blogs title Beyond Materialism, reflects that my way is as much about the inner religious process as it is about the outer way. Of course, in reality there is no distinction between inside and outside, these two dualities being artificially created by our minds in the first place.

I’ve now come across more individuals who are working to transform the way we live. People who are no driven by the profit motive and who care enough about the environment to want to make a positive difference to the way it is nourished


These people by their foresight and vision are offering us opportunities to move away from the usual conditions that govern our lives.

Michael Reynolds: Architect extraordinaire!
If you were to think of a house built entirely out of waste products, the chances are that you would visualise a rickety, contraption help together with bits of rusting metal. However, the homes that Michael Reynolds constructs couldn’t be further from that nightmare scenario. His homes which he calles Earthships, look like and are, state of the art places anyone would be delighted to live in. These houses are fully integrated sustainable structures that look fantastic and are aesthetically pleasing on the eye

What is amazing is that Reynolds builds houses out of what other people call junk; tyres, cans and plastic bottles and clay are all features. And each house only uses renewable energy. Water is collected from the roof and used four times. Electricity is produced with by a photovoltaic / wind power system. This energy is stored in batteries and supplied to your electrical outlets. And the houses reuse all household sewage in indoor and outdoor treatment cells resulting in food production and landscaping with no pollution of aquifers. Toilets flush with greywater that does not smell.

Michael Reynolds is a self-described "guy who's trying to do some sustainable housing for the future." He is a passionate advocate for sustainable living. He believes our consumerist society is destroying our natural resources and eco-systems and that the only "logical" thing to do is to use the discards of our currently unsustainable lifestyle to create sustainable housing. When asked about the common misconceptions of his work, he replied, "When we started, some people just thought we were building out of recycled materials. Then others began to see we were building sustainable buildings out of recycled materials." It is this "logical" paradigm for building that Reynolds has been advocating for more than thirty years. "We need to live in an entirely different way and that is what we are hoping to find and present to people.

He created the alternative word Biotecture to describe "the profession of designing buildings and environments with consideration for their sustainability. A combination of biology and architecture." Michael Reynolds builds Earthships and teaches anyone who wants to learn how to build them, too. He describes an Earthship as "a fully sustainable building made with biproducts of our society. It is a building that will take care of you in every way: food (year round green house), heating, water, air and sewage disposal. "Earthships are the living model of the future that goes far beyond house and architecture."
His earth ships can be built anywhere in the world and won’t cost a lot to make either. The homes use totally sustainable methods to generate energy.

Tyres are the foundations stones
“Everything we are doing is a response to the mess we find ourselves in. We know that we were running out of fuel and water. I was inspired to create a way of life that responds to those problems. There are mountains of tyres around the world, and no one knows what to do with them. Hawaii actually ships its used tires to California." Michael's Earthship designs use discarded tyres to create incredibly strong foundations. After filling the tires with earth and stacking them like bricks, the resulting walls are so thick, they aid in temperature retention. Coupling this feature with year-round greenhouses allows each earthship to maintain a temperature of 72 degrees, regardless of where it's located. "Once I added the concept of thermal mass by beating dirt into a tyre I created a low-tech, readily available and easy-to-learn method of building. I couldn't have conceived of a better material than tires to build with."

Cradle to Cradle

I watched a fascinating documentary film recently called Waste = Food, which dealt with our insane throwaway culture. Humans are the only creatures that produce landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill. But there is hope. The film showed how two men with a shared vision came together, to create one of the most exciting and promising ways we may find to produce and reuse the endless items that fill our lives, items which up to now, have mostly ended up laying in landfill after use. The German chemist, Michael Braungart, and the American designer-architect William McDonough are fundamentally changing the way we produce and build. If waste would become food for the biosphere or the technosphere (all the technical products we make), production and consumption could become beneficial for the planet.


A design and production concept that they call Cradle to Cradle. A concept that is seen as the next industrial revolution. Design every product in such a way that at the end of its lifecycle the component materials become a new resource. Design buildings in such a way that they produce energy and become a friend to the environment.

Large companies like Ford and Nike are working with McDonough and Braungart to change their production facilities and their products. They realise that economically seen, waste is destruction of capital. You make something with no value. Based on their ideas the Chinese government is working towards a circular economy where Waste = Food. An amazing story that will definitely change your way of thinking about production and consumption.


In the Cradle to Cradle model, all materials used in industrial or commercial processes—such as metals, fibers, dyes--are seen to fall into one of two categories: "technical" or "biological" nutrients. Technical nutrients are strictly limited to non-toxic, non-harmful synthetic materials that have no negative effects on the natural environment; they can be used in continuous cycles as the same product without losing their integrity or quality. In this manner these materials can be used over and over again instead of being "downcycled" into lesser products, ultimately becoming waste. Biological Nutrients are organic materials that, once used, can be disposed of in any natural environment and decompose into the soil, providing food for small life forms without affecting the natural environment. This is dependent on the ecology of the region; for example, organic material from one country or landmass may be harmful to the ecology of another country or landmass.

Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life

Dzogchen is the natural, primordial state or natural condition of the mind, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition. Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is a central teaching of the Nyingma school but can be practiced by any one of any other Buddhist school, or indeed any other way or religion. For Dzogchen is simply a natural state of mind, where all worries and distractions are left behind.


Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was born in the Denhok Valley at Kham Derge, Eastern Tibet in 1910 to a family directly descended from the ninth century King Trisong Detsen. He is regarded as having been a great teacher of teachers, a realised being, who was also remarked upon as being a genuinely good human being. His entire life was devoted to the preservation and dissemination of the Buddha Dharma and he is still regarded with awe and amazement throughout the Tibetan diaspora, and western centers of Tibetan Buddhism. This was an article written by Rinpoche.

Dzogchen is the highest and most definitive path to enlightenment


The everyday practice of Dzogchen is simply to develop a complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit. We should realise openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.

We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole. This practice releases tremendous energy, which is usually constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points. Referentially is the process by which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.

Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.


When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.


We shouldn't make a division in our meditation between perception and field of perception. We shouldn't become like a cat watching a mouse. We should realise that the purpose of meditation is not to go "deeply into ourselves" or withdraw from the world. Practice should be free and non-conceptual, unconstrained by introspection and concentration.

Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of being - the beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of awareness in the primordial state has no bias toward enlightenment or non-enlightenment. This ground of being which is known as pure or original mind is the source from which all phenomena arise. It is known as the great mother, as the womb of potentiality in which all things arise and dissolve in natural self-perfectedness and absolute spontaneity.

All aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open and unobstructed - everything is mutually interpenetrating.


Seeing all things as naked, clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain or realise. The nature of phenomena appears naturally and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness. Everything is naturally perfect just as it is. All phenomena appear in their uniqueness as part of the continually changing pattern. These patterns are vibrant with meaning and significance at every moment; yet there is no significance to attach to such meanings beyond the moment in which they present themselves.

This is the dance of the five elements in which matter is a symbol of energy and energy a symbol of emptiness. We are a symbol of our own enlightenment. With no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or enlightenment is already here.

The everyday practice of dzogchen is just everyday life itself. Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced state."

To strive for such a state is a neurosis, which only conditions us and serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons - we are naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing. When engaging in meditation practice, we should feel it to be as natural as eating, breathing and defecating. It should not become a specialised or formal event, bloated with seriousness and solemnity. We should realise that meditation transcends effort, practice, aims, goals and the duality of liberation and non-liberation. Meditation is always ideal; there is no need to correct anything. Since everything that arises is simply the play of mind as such, there is no unsatisfactory meditation and no need to judge thoughts as good or bad.

Therefore we should simply sit. Simply stay in your own place, in your own condition just as it is. Forgetting self-conscious feelings, we do not have to think, "I am meditating." Our practice should be without effort, without strain, without attempts to control or force and without trying to become "peaceful."


If we find that we are disturbing ourselves in any of these ways, we stop meditating and simply rest or relax for a while. Then we resume


our meditation. If we have "interesting experiences" either during or after meditation, we should avoid making anything special of them. To spend time thinking about experiences is simply a distraction and an attempt to become unnatural. These experiences are simply signs of practice and should be regarded as transient events. We should not attempt to re-experience them because to do so only serves to distort the natural spontaneity of mind.


All phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique and entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future. They are


experienced in timelessness.

The continual stream of new discovery, revelation and inspiration which arises at every moment is the manifestation of our clarity. We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or play of the universe. By this symbolism, the inner teacher reveals the profound and ultimate significance of being. Therefore we should be natural and spontaneous, accepting and learning from everything. This enables us to see the ironic and amusing side of events that usually irritate us.

In meditation we can see through the illusion of past, present and future - our experience becomes the continuity of nowness. The past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as


soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?

We should free ourselves from our past memories and preconceptions of meditation. Each moment of meditation is completely unique and full of potentiality. In such moments, we will be incapable of judging our meditation in terms of past experience, dry theory or hollow rhetoric.


Simply plunging directly into meditation in the moment now, with our whole being, free from hesitation, boredom or excitement, is enlightenment.