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On the Threshold (2006)

upekshapriya — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 10:06:19 +0000

Following on from the success of Big Sister in encouraging people to volunteer to knock on people’s doors, Manjuka and I made another video about Karuna fundraising and taking our Buddhist practice out into the world. The still (chosen by Google Video) shows Manjusvara (one of the fundraising trainers) encouraging us to avoid the prison of perfectionism.

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“Consisting of interviews with twelve fundraisers and trainers from three Appeals, On the Threshold presents a frank and honest exploration of the fears that can arise when we try to communicate from our Buddhist values. It’s a film about the desire we have to realise our connectedness with others and a moving testimony to the joy that comes when we manage to step out from behind our limitations and realise that connectedness.”

“Something had freed up. Some sort of kindness I would say. And all I could do was share that, there was more than I needed, so it sort of flowed over onto the door.” Karuna Fundraiser

Karuna Trust

Lotus in the City (2006)

upekshapriya — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 09:19:32 +0000

For this video Maitreyabandhu and I interviewed about forty people around the London Buddhist Centre to show newcomers the breadth and depth of practice as well as the activities in the Buddhist village of Bethnal Green. It was lovely working with Maitreyabandhu again, great fun and very harmonious too.

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“The London Buddhist Centre (LBC) is one of the largest urban Buddhist Centres in the West. It opened in 1978 and has quickly become the heart of a thriving Buddhist community in the East End of London. ‘Lotus in the City’ is an entertaining and moving film celebrating the life of the LBC and the surrounding ‘Buddhist Village’ through the impressions of some of huge range of people who benefit from it.” Blurb from DVD cover

And a couple of sections that didn’t make it to the final DVD:

Arts

Early history

Big Sister - a dharma documentary (2005)

upekshapriya — Sun, 21 May 2006 17:49:27 +0000

I really enjoyed making this video with Karuna Trust last year.

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“In 2005, we made a film about how Karuna Trust has turned fundraising into a spiritual practice. “Big Sister” is an intimate documentary about five women and their stuggles, laughter and learning on a door-knocking Appeal in London.” Karuna Trust

The Making of the Triumph of Life (2003)

upekshapriya — Sat, 20 May 2006 00:03:26 +0000

The Triumph of Life opera about the last days of the Buddha was an incredibly ambitious project produced in under a month by a group of people around the London Buddhist Centre who amazingly had never done anything really like it before. They were wanting to communicate the ideals of Buddhism in a very different way by engaging in the world creatively, collaborating with a school, with musicians and singers who normally wouldn’t necessarily be interested in working with Buddhists - getting out of the Buddhist Centre and into the community - how much it achieved that was debatable but it did get noticed in the local press and even nationally. We at Clear Vision were asked to produce a record of the performance and also to do the ‘making of’ documentary, which proved quite a mamoth task in the end - twenty five hours was boiled down to just over half an hour. It doesn’t give you the whole picture because there were interviews with the major participants and a news video (from the FWBO Newsreel) (see the Newsreel story below) also included on the DVD of the performance.

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and the Newsreel story

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Sex Elvis Boy (1993)

upekshapriya — Sat, 13 May 2006 15:25:17 +0000

A short video inspired by some music a couple of friends were making at the time.

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“Inspired by adventures in public places, Sex Elvis Boy takes us to London’s Hampstead Heath. Released in the U.K. as part of a package of gay short films, Boys On Film 4. ” PlanetOut PopcornQ Movies

The Truth Game (1990)

upekshapriya — Sat, 13 May 2006 14:58:35 +0000

This was my graduation film from filmschool and travelled the world going to over 23 film festivals - taking me with it a few times.

“Paul, 18, is gay and wants to tell his father. They go on holiday together and with the aid of a video camera play the truth game. Observing the tensions between a gay father and son, the film surveys the “forbidden space” between love and the erotic.” PlanetOut PopcornQ Movies

Two Men (1989)

upekshapriya — Sat, 13 May 2006 12:10:25 +0000

The first video I ever made ‘on my own’. A bit more revealing, in many ways, than the title indicates.

Reflections on the holiday romance of John and Joao on the Algarve.

All Out! Dancing in Dulais (1986)

upekshapriya — Sat, 13 May 2006 07:00:28 +0000

Radical queers at the time were involved with supporting the miners in the 1985/5 Miners’ strike and we in the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ Group made a record of our involvement with a mining community in South Wales.

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“The South Wales miners’ strike of 1984-1985 saw the formation of a curious alliance between a plucky group of young homosexuals from London and miners in Dulais Valley. In Dancing in Dulais, an initial wariness on the part of the young gays, the miners, and the miners’ families gives way, through sometimes delicate interactions, to a loving and purposeful solidarity. The unembellished videography captures well this fascinating-to-witness union of two disparate yet ultimately kindred groups. The “Pits and Perverts” benefit concert features the Bronski Beat.” PopcornQ Movies at PlanetOut.com

Framed Youth - the revenge of the teenage perverts! (1983)

upekshapriya — Sat, 13 May 2006 05:41:31 +0000

I joined the very ad hoc Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project in 1982 and we (about 25 young lesbians and gays) made this video about ourselves, our friends and some strangers(!). We were challenging the ways that conventional documentary makers were showing lesbians and gay men on television documentaries and so wanted to include ourselves as makers and as subjects, not in any way trying to be balanced. We found ways to film each other that helped us feel comfortable and we did loads of experiments using the new VHS and Betamax cameras. When the editing came to be done the new technology of the freeze frame helped disguise some dodgily shot interviews but also had the great effect of helping the viewer to concentrate on what was being said. So what with adding in clips of tv and films as comment and videoing what we shot in the street on a monitor (to highlight the outside ’straight’ world) we were throwing away all the conventions in the book, not to mention chopping up what we said underneath all the freeze frames to make it sound better - we ended up getting an award for Best Documentary from the BFI in 1983 and being shown on Channel 4 (at midnight in a youth slot) in 1986.

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“Made by, for and about young gay people, with rising stars of the time Jimi Somerville and Isaac Julien among a host of others, Framed Youth won the John Grierson Award for documentary. Television hadn’t seen such real lesbians and gay men talking honestly about their lives. Offering instant 80s nostalgia for an alternative club scene and a pop video informed exuberance.” 17th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

“Cheeky British lesbian and gay teenagers hit London’s streets with video cameras and microphones to confront normals’ views on homosexuality. The results are both humorous and revealing. Produced by the teenagers themselves, Framed Youth features a segment by Bronski Beat’s Jimi Somerville.” PlanetOut PopcornQ Movies

To sleep or not to sleep

upekshapriya — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:58:00 +0000

I just don’t seem to want to go to sleep at night. So many evenings I say to myself that I am going to get a reasonably early night and I find myself later still up way after midnight. It doesn’t make any sense. I get really tired and still I don’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes I am so tired I can hardly walk and yet I still try and stay awake. It often seems like madness, a fever that won’t let me rest. I just don’t want to go to that dark place where dreams live (although it is quite rare that I remember my dreams). I am usually reading and researching, really wanting to finish something I’ve started (like a newspaper, a problem I’ve encountered with software on my computer or trying to find the best and cheapest this or that and doing an exhaustive search on the internet) and rarely do I let it go until I reached a conclusion (or even beyond the end). I so like to know how things work in order to get the computer (usually) to do what I want it to, even though I’m often flailing around at the beginning with no idea at all. I’m stubborn and persistent and the old saying my mother used to repeat often - ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again’ - has gone into my personal folklore from an early age and when I think of that phrase an image of my infants’ school comes to mind, which dates it pretty early in my life.

So, I like to stay with what is, at that moment, whatever it is, and don’t really want to move on to the next thing. Although I am sure that not going to sleep sometimes has that view behind it it’s not the only view being expressed. Of course I never wanted to go to bed when I was a child when my parents told me to. So there’s rebellion in it, which isn’t really a surprise, and when I did go to bed as a teenager (with some resistance I might add) I would regularly listen to late night phone-ins on local radio under my bedcovers with the earpiece in my transistor radio - particuarly to discussions about the paranormal, ghosts, astral projection, astrology and suchlike. An old habit is there, however I think there is more. There is some fear attached to being alone and going to sleep (and I’ve definitely connected with something there because I am feeling an increase in adrenalin thinking about this) and at the same time I really like being asleep. It’s not that I sleep badly once I’ve gone to sleep. I extremely rarely wake up with nightmares and in fact my most disturbing recurring dream involves not being able to stay awake; I am in a fairly ordinary situation, say with some friends or walking down a street, and I find my eyes closing involuntarily and the uncomfortable part of the dream is that I really don’t want to go to sleep, not that anything terrible is going to happen if I do - it’s just that I must stay awake. I have such strong physical sensations that my eyes are closing I believe completely in my experience and eventually I do succumb to the compulsion. Now then what can happen is that I dream that I wake up in my bedroom, get up out of bed (in the dream), start my day, only to find that my eyelids are heavy again and won’t stay open. Sometimes at this stage I have a realisation that I am not awake after all and am still in a dream going again towards uncontrollable narcolepsy, although this lucid moment doesn’t seem to halt the process and I can even find myself ‘waking up’ again and discovering that my experience is still in a dream a number of times before I finally emerge from sleep. Again trying to be awake.

Of course it may or may not be a co-incidence that I have become a Buddhist, a follower of the Buddha’s way. The word ‘Buddha’ literally means ‘one who is awake’, although normally translated as ‘Enlightened One’, and Buddhists ideally are striving to be awake to the Truth, to Reality or the ‘Way Things Are’, but not running away from anything, not from any fear. I didn’t become a Buddhist because I wanted to be Enlightened, though, and I’ve never really striven for Awakening since I realised that I am a follower of the Buddhadharma (that’s a bit of a confession). It’s more that it seems so true to me that I can’t ignore it even though I’d be quite happy ‘dreaming my life away’ (as my parents occasionally warned me against and I’m sure I still do). I have found that meditation is something I can enjoy, but I believe it keeps me sane; it injects a positive experience of being in the moment (occasionally) and reminds me of my most ecstatic experiences (completely unrelated to drugs). Since a period of depression over ten years ago when I knew that meditation was an answer but couldn’t motivate myself to practise; as soon as I felt better I began a daily sit, which I almost never miss, bar illness.

Now it probably wouldn’t surprise anyone that the issue of sleep has surfaced in my meditation. Not always by any means but there do seem to be a few conditions that promote it. Of course the obvious one is not getting enough sleep, which given what I’ve said already is not uncommon, but unexpectedly it is not a major factor unless I am completely exhausted. I can have had only four hours sleep and be as bright as a button when I sit on a cushion to meditate - although that brightness can contribute to ideas proliferating around my mind. The main circumstance that seems to contribute to me falling asleep while I am meditating is group meditation, especiallly in a quiet place (although not exclusively). Ironically I didn’t really discover this until I started living with other Buddhists and was meditating regularly (every day) in a group of six or seven. I had moved to a residential Community in Manchester from my own flat in London, where I had been getting into my meditation every morning, with a bit of yoga and other exercises and I don’t remember falling asleep. I wasn’t working full-time at that juncture and so I wasn’t rushing to get up in the morning and could meditate when I’d had time to adjust to the day. In the community, however, we had a ’sit’ at 7am every morning, and I usually rolled out of bed into the shrine room a few minutes late. So I wasn’t at all shocked that I was, nine times out of ten, nodding off, often coming to only if I felt so embarrassed that I had dribbled down my front! It was also a new situation, meeting lots of new people, working full-time for the first time in over 10 years and, of course, not going to bed early enough for a good 8 hours sleep.

I was confused though when the same thing happened a number of months later when I was on a retreat, because I was getting to bed early, there was plenty of time to rest and loads of time to meditate. Now I reflected on the curiosity of this and I remembered that when I first started to meditate I had always found it difficult - and I was usually on retreat or in a Buddhist Centre shrine room at a class. It was only later that I had gone to live on my own and started to meditate at home and found that it wasn’t so difficult after all. Of course I had assumed that meditation was getting easier because I had got better at it, because I had more experience and knew more what I was supposed to be doing. But now I was confronted with the same difficulties, the same sleepiness that had plagued my sits in the Community and on my early retreats. Recalling that I had never normally found myself in a sleepy state on my stool at home in London I decided to do an experiment; I would leave the group and go and find a place to meditate on my own. Luckily enough the retreat community had their own shrine room, but they weren’t using it during this retreat because they went into the main shrine room with everyone else. So I snuck off there on my own, feeling a little bit guilty because I wasn’t joining in with the group (and actually a bit wary of being discovered - like I was doing something naughty - don’t ask me it’s bizarre to me as well that this kind of thinking goes on in me). I didn’t fall asleep! Hurray. I could meditate after all! I continued the experiment when I got back home and found that, given other right conditions, I didn’t usually fall asleep on my own, but as soon as I went back in with the others I was noddy again.

It’s been several years since then and the issue hasn’t gone away. I now normally meditate on my own and even come to dread situations where I might be ‘forced’ to meditate with others ie if there is nowhere else to go and I’m sharing a room on a retreat with someone who doesn’t always get up in the morning and there’s no spare shrine room for me to in habit. I’ve not really worked out what is going on in all this time, except for one thing - that I have realised that I am quite an introvert and enjoy time on my own more than I ever thought I did. I’m sure this is not the whole answer by any means and I have had discussions with numerous meditators about this phenomenon and come to a few theories, but none of them really complete the picture any more than being a dyed in the wool introvert. It could of course be that there is no one answer but it might also be that all of the issues around sleep and being awake I have discussed (and more) are linked and if I have an insight about it all the old habits will drop away. In my dreams maybe. I would guess that reflecting about it all like this may have an effect especially if it is released in the wild, which is the point of a blog after all. So I am putting it out into the universe and will see what comes back.