Beshara

News from Chisholme

• Details of the new 2010 Program for the Chisholme Institute are now available. The seminars and the series of Open lectures at the Beshara School in February and March are described below.
• 'Self Knowledge and Global Responsibility' – Towards a Unified Vision
  Symposium 2009, was held at Chisholme House, in the Scottish Borders, 9-11 September 2009. More information
  
• Sustainable Energy – Chisholme Institute signs up to the 10:10 campaign.

•Seminars

13-14th February, 2010: Discovering a Modern Metaphysic – A weekend of intensive enquiry into the possibility of a new metaphysic for our times with Colin Tudge, including a talk by Jane Clark: "He rules the world by the world : secondary causation in Ibn 'Arabi's thought." Brochure and booking form (pdf file). Book soon – space is limited.

13-14th March, 2010: Action from the Heart, with Scilla Elworthy. Brochure and booking form (pdf file). Book soon – space is limited.

• Beshara School Open Lectures 2010

The Art of the Insoluble

with Colin Tudge, Saturday Feb 13th at 9.30 am. (Part of the 'Towards a Modern Metaphysic' seminar)

I want to discuss what religion really is and is not; and what science really is, and is not. The agenda of religion, properly defined, is to embrace everything within one coherent narrative: what the universe is really like; how it is proper to behave within it; and how we can find out the truth and know what is true. At the heart of this endeavour is the concept of transcendence – the feeling that there is more at work in the universe behind the scenes than we can see and measure. The ambitions of science, properly construed, are far more limited – which is why it seems to succeed as well as it does: scientists ask only those questions they think they can answer ("The art of the soluble", as Peter Medawar put the matter). The insights that science provides are impressive and necessary but as the basis for a philosophy of life they are dangerously inadequate.

Colin Tudge was born in London in 1943; educated at Dulwich College, 1954-61; and read zoology at Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1962-65. Ever since then he has earned a living by spasmodic broadcasting and a lot of writing – mainly books these days, but with occasional articles. He has a special interest in natural history in general, evolution and genetics, food and agriculture, and spends a great deal of time on philosophy (especially moral philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the relationship between science and religion).

Beyond Dogma and Doctrine

Some non-Eristic thoughts on reading Plato and Ibn 'Arabi with Peter Coates, Monday February 15th at 10.45 am.

Peter Coates graduated from Lancaster University and researched at Keble College, Oxford. He is a father and grandfather and is a retired academic, formerly Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Psychology, University of Lincoln, UK. His academic teaching interests were the philosophy and psychology of the self and the philosophy of science. Since 1980 he has been a co-director of the Beshara School at the Chisholme Institute in the Scottish Borders and was instrumental in its recent approval by the British Accreditation Council. He has lectured at Symposia in the UK, Australia, Morocco and the USA on the work of Ibn 'Arabi. What he cherishes dearly are those times when he has supervised and given talks to students at Chisholme on the Six-month residential course: he regards this as the highest of privileges. His main work to-date is Ibn 'Arabi and Modern Thought published by Anqa Publishing, Oxford, Second Edition, 2008. His main loves are moorland and coastline walking, good company and family life.

"He governs the world through itself"

Ibn 'Arabi on secondary causation, A video presentation by Jane Clark, on Sunday, February 14th at 9.30 am. (Part of the 'Towards a Modern Metaphysic' weekend)

This presentation will explore the way in which Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysical vision and the understanding of contemporary science can be correlated. The matter of causation is crucial to our understanding of ourselves and of the world, and takes on particular importance in our present global situation. Jane Clark (B.Sc (Hons), M. Phil. (Oxon) has been engaged with the works of Ibn 'Arabi for more than 30 years. She studied at the Beshara School and University of Oxford, and is an active member of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, working particularly on the Society's project to create a digital archive of the most important Akbarian manuscripts. Originally trained in science, she has a particular interest in Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysics and their relevance to contemporary art and science; she was the editor of Beshara Magazine, a founder editor of "The Journal of Consciousness Studies", and, with Willis Harman, editor of The New Metaphysics of Modern Science. She has given many lectures and seminars on Ibn 'Arabi's thought, and works as a teacher in Oxford.

If there is no self, who is there to realise this?

With Dr. Brion Sweeney, Saturday, March 6th at 4.30 pm.

Brion Sweeney works with individuals and groups in both private and public practice and is currently employed as a consultant psychiatrist to Eastern Health Board Addiction Services in Dublin, Ireland. He is a co-founder along with Akong Rinpoche of Tara Rokpa Psychotherapy. He trained first as a Family Physician before specialising in Psychiatry. He has been a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists since 1983. In 1986 he obtained a Medical Master degree in Psychotherapy from University College Dublin. Brion has a 20-year-old daughter.

Tara Rokpa Psychotherapy is a process of inner development and maturation that combines Eastern and Western understanding of the mind. Its basis is understanding oneself and the development of compassion towards oneself and others. Tara Rokpa uses methods from Mahayana Buddhism and Western psychotherapy methods to develop the potential and the true inner value of each human being. This method always relates to our direct experience and works to develop awareness and insight on all levels - through play and fun just as much as through challenge and effort. "We understand only what we see, and what we understand determines what we see. The more expanded, open and inclusive our view of reality, the more valuable our lives will be."

Character and Values in Education Today

With David Lorimer, on Sunday, March 7th at 10.45 am.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a writer, lecturer, editor and educationalist. Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of twelve books, including Whole in One – The Near-Death Experience and the Ethic of Interconnectedness, David is Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network and has edited Network Review since 1986. He is the originator of the Learning for Life Values Poster Programme, which has reached over 40,000 young people in the last four years.In addition, David is Executive Vice-President of Wrekin Trust, a charity concerned with adult spiritual education. He is Vice-President of the Swedenborg Society and of the Horizon Research Foundation (The International Association for Near-Death Studies UK). He has a longstanding interest in the perennial wisdom and has translated and edited books about the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov. David is also a member of the International Futures Forum and has been editor of its digest, Omnipedia - Thinking for Tomorrow.

Action from the Heart

Reflections on the relation between contemplative practice and public service, with Scilla Elworthy, on Saturday, March 13th at 9.15 am

Scilla Elworthy Ph D founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from peace-builders in conflict areas; awarded 'Best New Charity' at the Charity Awards 2005. Previously she founded the Oxford Research Group in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. It is for this work that she was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003 and nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She helped found the Market Theatre in South Africa in 1976, long before it was legal for multi-racial performances to take place. From 2005 she was adviser to Sir Richard Branson, Peter Gabriel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in setting up The Elders initiative. In 2007 she was appointed a member of the World Future Council and the International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy. She has designed the Leadership Course in Conflict Transformation for the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, and is co-founder of 'The Pilgrimage' – a 24-hour intensive course that enables participants to make major shifts in consciousness and perception.

The suggested donation for all open lectures at the Beshara School is £9 including refreshments.

Listening on the 4th Plinth (Trafalgar Square)

I have been a student at the Beshara school for 25 years and am currently studying Intermedia Art at Edinburgh College of Art. I like working with environmental sounds and recently have become intrigued by silence and how to integrate it into my practice. On Friday 2nd October 2009 I spent one hour on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley's "One & Other", the 2114th of 2400 participants who occupied the plinth for 100 days and nights uninterruptedly. Gormley says he hopes this project is about making a new order, about expressing our hopes and fears now for what is possible. We as people make an idea reality, as an image of ourselves and simultaneously a portrait of humanity, on the plinth as a lens and an elevated point of view. This is maybe an indication of what the place of art can be. Antony Gormley also talks about how each of us would express what we care about. For me this meant to sit in silent meditation and be the quiet centre for the surrounding sounds and noises. Silence not as an absence of sound but including all of them through listening. A public sound piece within this special space and project, and a metaphor for being alive and awake in this world. Perhaps that is what the composer Robert Ashley meant when he talked about "a music that wouldn't involve anything but the presence of people."

Listening to the sounds that surround me has always held great attraction, I literally live in a soundscape, and yes, in a city. Paradoxically, this listening started as a way of dealing with incessant so-called noise, by letting it be, being attentive, rather than trying to block it out. John Cage said: "Open your window – music!" And isn't meditation above all listening? Listening with all you got, all you are?

On the day of the plinth there was, amongst many preliminaries, an interview. My interviewer mentioned how most plinthers talked about themselves and then seemed to go off doing something totally different on the plinth. This remark struck me deeply, and with the sudden recognition that for me it was the opposite: in that one hour 'who I am' and 'what I do' were to be identical. And it also struck me forcefully that this was something I had been missing, I had been longing for. Finally up on the plinth – removed from normal surroundings, totally on my own, and yet not alone at all, since I knew that friends were tuning in, and maybe strangers as well, each in their own way – watching, listening, meditating etc. Later I would write in the visitors' book: "an ocean of sound". And that was going to be my overwhelming and abiding memory of the hour – being totally immersed in an ocean of sound. An unrelenting, complex, ever-changing, churning sea, structured by currents, some small and fleeting, others huge and powerful. Immersed, yes, but not as an object in water, rather like a position, a place, of recording, of witnessing. Except that this place had no dimensions, was itself motionless, and presented no obstacle whatsoever to the endless waves passing through it. Sometimes sounds arranged themselves very briefly into soundscapes. The voices of a class of schoolchildren in the distance together with the sun on my face and the sound of the fountains became a fleeting summer beach scene.

Did I say earlier "be the quiet centre for the sounds?" Was there such a place, an empty space in the middle? It comes as no surprise that after letting everything in, whatever was there before gets washed away, including ideas of 'there', 'centre', or 'quiet'. Trafalgar Square was special in many ways, a special hour, in a special place. What it made clear is that the ocean – of sound or otherwise – is here, now, whenever we stop, are still, close our eyes and are attentive to what is – anywhere, any time.

I recorded the sounds on top of the plinth with a small dictaphone in my pocket, you can listen to a small sound sample here: Trafalgar Square 3 Minutes (mp3)

Webcam can be watched at: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Evelyn