David Bennett

Shiva Lingam

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The Shiva Lingam is a symbol of the Hindu deity Lord Shiva, epresenting Shiva’s infinite nature and creative energy. It is often seen alongside a yoni, symbolising the Goddess Shakti, representing the unity of the masculine and feminine principles in creation.

A man I met on a bus in India told me about a pilgrimage to a Shiva temple in the hills above Rishikesh. We decided to go together and I couldn’t tell you now whether there were one hundred people or five hundred people making the pilgrimage but I think we were the only non-Indians.

I remember a woman in a palanquin carried by probably four men, and thinking how humorous it was, a palanquin on a steep path with stone steps in part, winding up into the hills.

Sitting at a big way-station for a drink, my companion was worried that the people there were intent on something bad against us. But that was in his head, it seemed to me, and I told him everything was OK.

It was the hash weaving ideas in his head, I thought. In the event, nothing happened and we walked on. It was quite a trek and took hours.

Something with a sting – a wasp or a bee – flew into my lips as we came to a flatter part of the path. It stung me on the lip and I shouted out ‘But I am allergic!’. It was very funny, my impossibly nonsensical cry of unfairness out into the void.

And then we arrived. And it was the strangest place I have ever seen. It was the strangest by far and the strangest I imagine I will ever see. But who knows.

Water was pouring down over rocks all around into the courtyard far below. And we were on a covered walkway made of wood and wire. The top was covered over by wire and open to the sky and we were many feet above the courtyard. Above us on the roof of the walkway men with sticks kept everyone moving along.

At least one other walkway crossed ours, and others above or below. It looked like an impossible Escher drawing.

Then we came into the shiva lingam temple. My companion banged his head on the lintel of the door.

The lingam was in the middle of the very small room and a man sitting crossed legged looked at me. It was my friend Laurie, or so it seemed.

The lingam was maybe three feet tall and dark stone – curved in a tapered cylinder shape like a torpedo.

And then we were through and out of the other door and that was it. I don’t recall what we did then until the point when we started down again. Then we were going downhill and it was tiring but we had energy.

After a long while of walking down the steps I saw a cave and man sitting inside near the entrance. He had a big chillum and he smiled and I sat down and shared it and we looked at each other and he smiled and laughed. It felt very pleasant. I forget where my companion was but he must have been outside the cave waiting because we went on together.

Now the path was stepped with big stones and we had lots of energy and pounded from one step down to the next and on and on.

When we set off in the morning we passed a big open air restaurant and I looked in as though it was unbearably risky, with food sure to upset my stomach or worse.

But now, more or less at the end of our journey and hungry as hell, we sat down. A waiter was walking around with a huge plate piled with rice, on his shoulder. As he passed a table he grabbed a handful of rice from the plate and dolloped it down. I nodded for rice and took it with pleasure and ate. I was as happy as could be.

It was the same restaurant on the way up and on the way down – but what a different attitude. And as they say, that made all the difference.

Lotus unfolding

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The arc of history is plainly the emergence of the individual and the individual’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter. And as long as the adventurers could find new ground big enough to contain their egos, then the world could go on spinning.

Now the world is small and we are bumping into one another with nowhere to go.

So the race is on whether we mutually destruct or find the benefit in truly thinking outside the box of our own heads and join together.

For which we have to ask ourselves, for whose benefit are we acting?

From the accumulation of what desires, actions, and impressions do our current desires arise?
How do we step off this speeding wheel of accumulated desires, actions, and impressions that determine our thoughts, actions, and desires? That is assuming we even know we are on this speeding wheel or want to get off.

Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk said:

If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. But if I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you.

If I present to you a face made up of what I think you want to see, where my object is to satisfy my desires and your desires are irrelevant to me except insofar as they help me achieve my desires, then we never meet.

If I hide inside of you, or you inside of me then we do not meet.

If you are you and I am I, then the conditions are met for meeting, provided one thing.

The philosopher Martin Buber speaks about it in I And Thou. By looking at the way we relate to inanimate objects we can see to what extent we do the same with other people. And to the extent that we do not treat people as objects to be used but recognise them as essentially us, and connect, then a different experience of existence opens up.

And Buber says, God is what is felt when we connect. When that happens there is no future, just this moment for as long as we can hold it.

Whistleblowers in British Institutions

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Once is an event, twice is a maybe, and three suggests a pattern.

One

When consultants at a hospital in Britain came to the dawning suspicion that Lucy Letby, a nurse, was murdering newborn babies, they told the management. And as they describe it, the management made them feel like creeps. Management even went so far as to require them to apologise to the nurse for saying about her things that were plainly not true.

Except of course they were true.

We know that because the nurse was convicted of murder. Some people say that there has been a miscarriage of justice. They say it wasn’t Letby who did these things. They say no one did and that it was natural causes exacerbated by poor hospital standards.

But let’s leave that aside.

The point to draw from this is that the management at the hospital just didn’t want to know and they didn’t want to investigate. They just didn’t want to upset whatever the system was that was in place. The system had been trundling along and they simply wanted it to continue trundling along, even if babies died. Apparently.

Two

Employees stole 1,500 artefacts from the British Museum. It turns out that it’s been going on for many years. It might have gone on longer had not somebody unconnected with the museum told the British Museum his suspicions. He saw an artefact or more than one item listed in eBay and put two and two together.

In response, the British Museum ignored the complaint and continued to ignore it for years. In fact, they even accused the whistleblower of something underhand. I don’t know what it was that he was supposed to have done, but whatever it was, he was innocent of it.

Eventually the truth came out, and now the police are investigating.

Three

Rebecca Wight, a nurse with sixteen years experience raised what she called concerns of life and death with the management at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. In an external memo, the Trust wrote that “We are grateful that RW raised her concerns which we took very seriously and used to improve the service. When RW raised concerns with her consultants, changes were made to the service and additional supervision was provided…”.

Internally the CEO Roger Spencer wrote “We are disappointed The Christie is once again the subject of untrue allegations made by Ms Wight.”

What Conclusions To Draw From This

I have said for years that there is a ‘sweep it under the carpet’ culture in Britain. What’s important is that it looks like the right things have been done. Less important is that the right things have actually been done.

That carries into not wanting to do anything about anything lest it upset the current state of affairs. I haven’t made this up. The TV series Yes Minister made a running joke of it.

The problem is that the aim and purpose of these institutions is to help. So it’s painful when the management circles the wagons and denies that there are any problems. In the hospital cases I would guess the managers are not themselves doctors. And in the case of the museum, managers who are not curators.

The function of a manager is to run an effective ship, and if anything happens on their watch, then their skills as managers are called into question. That risks their salaries and perhaps their jobs. What is needed is somehow to decouple what the managers are responsible for from any bad actors on the staff.

Of course, the range of bad actors is broad. Let’s stay with people trying to do the best job they can but with a side order of self importance or rank or forceful personality.

In operating theatres at a leading hospital in New York or Washington DC. (on’t hold me to the details) surgeons overrode nurses who raised the alarm. For example, a nurse would say that the surgeon had left a swab in the patient. The surgeon wouldn’t listen and the patient would suffer in consequence.

To correct this the hospital made a rule. When anyone in the operating theatre sounds the alarm, they must stop and they must investigate. There is no fault and no blame. Everyone is responsible and has a voice and works together to solve the problem.

That rule would change situations from ‘them and us’ to one united and involved unit with one purpose.

Why Jeff Bezos May Turn Out To Have Been Wise

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For those who believe in people power, as in a lot of small people rather than a few big people, then the arc of this American election may turn out to be the perfect story.

The perfect adventure story is when the young huntsman sets off to find the prize, and is faced with a villain who at first appears to have been defeated and then comes back stronger. And then in the end is defeated. And that’s how the story will be seen to have gone if Kamala Harris wins.

If that happens, then everybody who votes for her and a lot of those who didn’t vote for her will breathe a sigh of relief. The story will have been the very best story it could have been.

This is a stronger story than if Harris had come on the scene and Trump had simply faded.

This way everybody has a satisfying feeling in the pit of their stomach, in their hearts and their minds and in their vision of the future. Back from the brink.

And of course the baddie in the story is Trump. But the even more evil baddie is the man, Musk, who represents what happens when someone who is good at business thinks they’re also good at politics.

In the end instead of Musk motivating a lot of individuals he was simply seen as a very rich man who pushed or tried to push the election one way.

I think we’ll look back and we’ll see that Jeff Bezos who’s been accused of failing to endorse either candidate will seem to have been the wiser person. Unlike Musk, he doesn’t have a political agenda. And when called, because he is big and important, he said no.

In time, and unlike Musk he will be seen as a person who saw that he is a businessman. He runs businesses. The day he starts getting into politics is the day he’ll lose his way.

I may have written this before, but in the 1930s the Communists in Germany thought they were going to win big in the elections. Inflation was through the roof and Germany’s social fabric was pulled to breaking point with riots. Trotsky told the Communists in Germany they were fooling themselves. When danger lurks, he said, the population runs to mummy’s apron strings.

It’s not a parallel because America is not on the ropes economically, but the world is uncertain and dangerous. So the question is – which is mummy? I think it is the good old, same old system that Harris represents. Trump is too wild, to uncertain in uncertain times.

If people need to translate that into something they can say they voted for, then two issues stand out. Reproductive rights and immigration. Well the next couple of weeks will see how well I predict this presidential race, which is a clear win for Harris.