Highland Zen
011203: Dunbeath Photographs, (likely to be of interest only to near-fanatics).
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Neil Miller Gunn was born in Dunbeath, Caithness on 8 November 1891, the seventh of nine children. His father was a fisherman and his mother a domestic servant. Gunn left Dunbeath in 1904 to live with his sister and her husband in St John's Town of Dalry, Kirkcudbright-shire where he was privately educated in preparation for Civil Service exams which he passed in 1907 and he moved to London where he experienced new political and philosophical thinking. In 1910 he became a Customs and Excise Officer and held a series of temporary Highland postings including C & E officer in Inverness with responsibility for distilleries. While stationed at Kinlochleven he began to write. During the First World War his duties routing ships around minefields exempted him from call-up. In 1921 he married "Daisy", the daughter of an Inverness jeweller. They settled in Inverness when Gunn was appointed permanently to the Glen Mhor Distillery. His later years were spent on the Black Isle near Inverness. The Black Isle, incidentally is the former home of Alistair Stobbart. |
In the 1930s Gunn was closely involved in SNP politics in Inverness and was subsequently asked to serve on the Commission of Inquiry into Crofting Conditions (1951). In 1937 after the publication of Highland River, he felt sufficiently established to resign his job and live by writing. The strath where Kenn plays and the idea of exploring the river to its source provide him with an alternative education, sustaining him even during wartime. Highland river with its narrative innovations and "golden age" themes is a modernist classic. Gunn's novels open with gloomy accounts of the effects of Highland economic stagnation in The Grey Coast (1926) and The Lost Glen (1928) but the memories of Dunbeath and its strath engender optimism in the lyrical Morning Tide (1931) and the mature Highland River. Highland life is explored historically in Sun circle (1930), Butcher's Broom (1934) and The Silver Darlings (1941), set respectively in the time of Viking incursions, the Clearances and the prosperous herring fishings of the nineteenth century. The later fiction combines popular forms with universal themes. In the detective story Bloodhunt (1952), good triumphs over evil. In the dystopian The Green Isle of the Great Deep (1944), Highland values prevail over authoritarianism. These metaphysical themes, always present in Gunn's fiction, are inflected in later works by an interest in Zen Buddhism which he outlines in The Atom of Delight (1956), an unconventional autobiography. A great exponent of Highland life, Neil Gunn died on 15th January 1973.
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"In the 1930s Gunn was closely involved in SNP politics.." Skip the rant which follows?
Seven years of my schooling took place in Mid Wales where the extraordinary enthusiasms of certain schoolteachers for the Urdd Gobaith Cymru served only to fuel my great aversion to nationalism. Conversely (if not perversely), I've found myself greatly at odds with globalisation. We can't fail to learn the language of the logo, yet I feel sure there would be some benefit from having one real language in common. And even so, I have no yen to learn Chinese, nor do I have much idea how one might balance humanity's almost innate xenophobia against the apparently very necessary and desirable embracing of cultural diversity, but certainly, if war is worldwide, so must be dialogue. It is trade, industry and acquisitiveness coupled, or not, with war and religion (often very much the same thing, of course), which have tended to be at the forefront of what is generally considered to be human development. This is not to say that the growth monsters are right, of course. Empire builders have always imposed financial strategies and today it seems highly unlikely that global land-control, global courts, global taxation and a global war-machine can be imposed upon the entire world without globalised economical power as well. It's impossible to separate the globalisation of trade from the global movement of people. However much governments clamp down, both immigrants and immigration are here to stay. Immigrants bring new customs, new foods, new ideas, new ways of doing things. All the European Union's governments want to be seen to be doing is condemning immigrants, treating them as badly as we treat battery chickens. If I am entitled to be a world citizen, why should anyone else not be? Environmental destruction today is done, or caused, by multinational corporations which can simply move operations if one government becomes too difficult. What international body oversees them, or sets rules for their behaviour, or holds them accountable when they transgress? The neo-liberal economic policies being foisted upon the world, primarily by rich Northern Governments and the international institutions they dominate, are failing people and the planet. (Or is it, Mr. President, the institutions which dominate the governments? Of course it is!). |
Inequality is increasing and poverty in many countries is getting worse. Forests, minerals and fossil fuels are being exploited at an ever increasing and utterly unsustainable rate.
Democracy is being eroded as economic power is concentrated in fewer hands. Environmental standards, biodiversity and cultural diversity are all under threat. Small wonder there are immigration issues.
Let's get back to Neil Gunn:
He became greatly interested in Zen Buddhism and discussed it in his autobiography "The Atom of Delight" published in 1956 (the year I was born). He certainly held a most sceptical view of conventional western religion and felt a great concern, hardly any less relevant today, about nuclear war. It is by no means derogatory when I say that in The Atom of Delight Neil Gunn, the "thinkist", seems to me to have found a way through to some clear light at the far end of his mind's exhaust pipe.
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My introduction to the works of Neil Miller Gunn was in 1963 when his Young Art And Old Hector was serialised on BBC Radio. The readings, I assume, have been long since, or immediately, lost. I was six or seven years old and living 250 miles south of the Scottish border (a relatively long way on our relatively small island), but I think that even then I was enormously impressed by Neil Gunn's portrayal of elemental ways of living, elemental values and by his apparently instinctive, x-ray view of many things which might seem minor, but matter enormously. That Christmas my parents gave me a hardback copy of Young Art And Old Hector and I still read it almost every year. |
Despite both writing marvellous adventure stories, Robert Lous Stevenson, D. K. Broster and super-snob(?) John Buchan had played major parts in building my misconceptions of Scotland and its people. These were based on an overly romantic, almost nonsensical, almost Victorian outlook, bolstered mainly by stories of fiercely and, nowadays nonsensically, loyal, very occasionally victorious, often tartan-clad heroic underdogs.
Over the years I managed to find just a few more of Neil Gunn's books, but most were out of print. It was with very limited success that I trawled through second-hand bookshops for more.
| In 1996 (aged forty.......,
I
know, it is hard to believe), I started to make better progress:
I was cycling from Lands End to John o' Groats on a borrowed tandem propelled mainly by a southwest wind and Matthew Betts (who is much younger, stronger, thinner, far more determined and fitter than I, but try as I might I can find no good reason not to mention him).
I'm told that the current record for cycling from Lands End to John o' Groats is an almost unbelievable 43hrs. The minimum distance is 874 miles. You'd surely need some Zen in your legs to beat that! (We finished at midday on day nine). |
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My very early and mistaken assumption had been that all Neil Gunn's stories were set on the west coast. The extreme northeast of Scotland is a long way from almost anywhere and it lacks the obvious scenic grandeur of the Western Highlands and Islands. With much of my body wrapped in neoprene support bandages and aching, blistered or both, many curious thoughts along the lines of "Zen And The Art Of Tandem Journey Maintenance" (thankyou, Mr. Pirsig), had occupied my mind over the previous 800 or so miles. At the end of Day 8, a mainly grey day, we got a lift from our B & B in Berriedale to a cafe in Dunbeath for our evening meal. (On no account must you be tempted to make a connection between Tibetan Buddhism and the llama farm at Berriedale, five miles south of Dunbeath!!). Enormous mental whirrings took place within me as I very suddenly realised (though I cannot properly explain how), that the strath we'd just crossed was the one to which Neil Gunn refers so often and that the beach at which I was staring was that from which many of his characters' adventures had started.
Neil Gunn's first book was "Grey Coast". Our last miles to John o' Groats were completed in a miserable rainy haar (a fog from the North Sea). Through the haar we very frequently saw ruined "white houses". Each of these had probably been built to replace a chimney-less "black house". At the side of many of the derelict white houses was an unfinished and abandoned modern bungalow. Next to each bugalow stood an abandoned static caravan. Perhaps The Clearances have changed, but not finished?Unlike many authors Neil Gunn wrote honestly of the shame of the Highland clanspeople. Their chiefs sold land to English or other foreign landlords whose employees, in advance of, if not strictly ethnic, certainly most unethical cleansing, forcibly removed the native people in order to profit from farming sheep and hunting deer, and in that process they very greatly altered the Highland landscape.
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| 270103 - At first glance,
there would appear to be a strong element of toff-bashing in the Land
Reform Act that has just become law in Scotland. Two-thirds of the
country's 19 million acres are owned by 1,252 people 22 per cent of
Scotland is in the hands of 66 landowners.
A roll-call of the great lairds, led by the Duke of Buccleugh (130,000 acres), the Duchess of Westminster (120,000 acres), and Captain Alwyn Farquharson (125,000 acres) scarcely suggests they are representative of classless Britain. Add to the list the names of arriviste types such as Mohamed Fayed, Peter de Savary and Sir Tim Rice, and one begins to understand why Scottish MPs so cheerfully passed their new Bill by 101 votes to 19. The Scots are cheerful about most things, but class and the English seem to upset them most. For centuries, there has been resentment that all but a handful of moneyed people, many of them non-residents, have control and access to most of the land. For this reason, legislation that would cause serious alarm elsewhere in the United Kingdom has been passed without significant controversy. Not only does the Land Reform Act provide a universal public right to ramble and offers local communities first refusal on any land that comes onto the open market but, most remarkably, it will force a landowner to sell land, with its fishing and mineral rights, if the local crofting community decides at any time that it wishes to take possession.
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| In June 2001 I
went back to
Dunbeath and in the excellent Heritage
Centre was able to buy many of Neil Gunn's books
which I'd thought were still out of print.
The Heritage Centre's web site is absolutely superb, so informative as to be compulsory, especially the Archeological Survey. The dedicated staff seemed happy to allow me to take up their time with more questions than at first I'd known I had. A walk up the strath (photographs), past the mill, the broch and the hazel trees and a short distance onto the moorland was in many ways like walking through a film portrayal of many of the books which I'd read or had yet to read (but better than a film). |
Grey Coast (1926); Hidden
Doors (1929); Poaching at Grianan (1929-30); Morning Tide (1930);
The Lost Glen (1932); Sun Circle (1933); Butcher's Broom (1934); Whisky
and Scotland (1935); Highland River (1937); Off in a Boat (1938); Wild
Geese Overhead (1939); Second Sight (1940); The Silver Darlings (1941);
Storm and Precipice (1942);
Young Art and Old Hector (1942); The Serpent
(1942); The Green Isle of the Great Deep (1944); The Key of the Chest
(1945); The Drinking Well (1946);
The Shadow (1948);
The Silver Bough (1948);
Highland Pack (1949); The Lost Chart (1949); The White Hour
(1950);
The Well at the World's End
(1951); The Atom of Delight (1956);
Selected Letters (ed. J.
B. Pick, Edinburgh, 1987).
As well as the titles listed, Neil Gunn wrote a number of radio and TV documentary scripts and wrote for several British and American magazines. He died on 15 January 1973 after a short illness. June 2005: I've recently managed to buy several more (used) books from Amazon UK. |
Should you feel so inclined these web sites, here and here will provide you with a lot more information about Neil Miller Gunn.
 Buddhism,
a major world religion numbering around 300 million followers (exact
estimates are impossible since Buddhism does not preclude other
religious beliefs). Early Buddhism developed from Hinduism through the
teaching of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and his disciples, around the
5th century BC in northern India. Under leaders such as the emperor Asoka,
who converted to Buddhism and encouraged its spread, the religion provided
a stabilizing political structure throughout India. Offering a way to
salvation that did not depend on caste or the ritualism and sacrifices of
the Brahmin priesthood of Hinduism, and strengthened by a large,
disciplined monastic order (the sangha), it made a very great impact; but
by the end of the 1st millennium AD it had lost ground to a resurgent
Hinduism centring on devotional worship, and the subsequent Muslim
invasions virtually extinguished it in India. Meanwhile however, monks had
taken the faith all over Asia, to central and northern areas now called
Afghanistan, Mongolia, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam; and in south and
south-east Asia to Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and
Laos. The final phase of Buddhist expansion, after the 7th century, saw
the emergence of Tantric (Vajrayana) and Tibetan Buddhism.
Owing to its linguistic diversity and geographical extent, Buddhist teaching, scriptures, and observance are complex and varied, but certain main doctrines are characteristic. Buddhism recognizes no creator God with a monopoly over knowledge and power. Instead it puts forward the doctrine of dependent origination, or conditioned arising, which states that all phenomena are linked together in an endless chain of dependency. Buddhism teaches that the suffering of the world is caused by desire conditioned by ignorance, but that by following the path of the Buddha, and breaking the link of desire in the chain, release from the cycle of rebirth (samsara) can be achieved. During the centuries following the Buddha's death, many different schools emerged, usually grouped into two 'vehicles': the Mahayana, 'the great vehicle', dominant in North Asia, and 'the lesser vehicle', Hinayana, of which the only form now remaining is the Theravada, 'the way of the elders', of south and south-east Asia. This, the most conservative form of Buddhism, persists today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos. The Theravada scriptures, the Tripitaka, summarize the basic teaching of the Buddha: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold path. Although this teaching is common throughout Buddhism, the analytical and monastic approach of Theravada is less widespread than the teaching developed by the Mahayana school, which arose between 150 BC and AD 100. It is now the largest grouping within Buddhism, dominant in China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. There are many religious and philosophical differences between the various schools and sects of the Mahayana, which include the Pure Land School and the Zen sect, but they all differ from the Theravada in giving a greater status to the Buddha, who is sometimes seen as an eternal and transcendent being rather than a man, and in making it the aim of all Buddhists to become not an Arhat, an individual saint, but a Bodhisattva, a being who works for the salvation of all. The last two centuries have demonstrated the resilience of Buddhism and its ability to communicate across cultural barriers. It has had to contend with the breakdown of monarchal patronage, communist revolutions, Western technology, and commercialism. In turn it has claimed its teaching to be in tune with science and psychology while at the same time its ancient meditation techniques have maintained their appeal. Attempts to revive Buddhism in India are indebted to the impetus of the Theosophical Society, the zeal for education reforms by the Mahabodhi Society, the spread of neo-Buddhism, particularly among the outcastes by Ambedkar and, in recent times, the presence of Tibetan Buddhist refugees. The Scriptures have been edited on more than one occasion from the Council called by King Rama I of Thailand in 1788 to the Sixth World Council of Buddhism at Rangoon in 1954-6. In Thailand, Buddhism continues to enjoy royal patronage, and the work of the sangha is seen as an important factor in social development by neighbouring Buddhist states. In Sri Lanka, there have been efforts for over a century to restore its position as the leading Theravada country. Buddhism has survived even in communist China, while in Japan, although new religions have flourished, the Pure Land sects of Mahayana Buddhism remain popular. Like Zen, they are also represented in the USA and Europe. |
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Zen (Chinese, ch'an, from Sanskrit, dhyana, 'meditation'), a Buddhist sect of major importance in Japan. Strongly influenced by Daoism, it originated in China in the 7th century and spread to Japan during the Kamakura period (12th century). In sharp contrast to popular sects such as Pure Land Buddhism, it seeks salvation through enlightenment--revelation of the Buddha-nature which, it says, is innate to all people. Enlightenment is not achieved through scriptural texts or ritual worship, but through satori, a sudden enlightenment experience, which is usually achieved under the guidance of a teacher. Meditation under a master, intellectual exercises, and physical endurance are stressed. Different branches of Zen teach different methods of achieving enlightenment, such as mediation on paradoxical statements (koans), and seating posture (zazen). With its strict discipline it appealed to the samurai. It flowered under the Ashikaga, when its masters, emphasizing harmony with nature, had much influence on aesthetics. It was associated with such refinements as the tea ceremony, which emerged under the Ashikaga. Some masters were active in affairs of state and had extensive contacts, often through trading missions, with China. |
Buddhism Basics
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The
Three Treasures Buddha Dharma and Sangha
The
Six Paramitas
The
Four Noble Truths
The
Eightfold Path
The
Five Hindrances |
The
Ten Grave Precepts
The
Four Attachments
The
Four Major Causes of Suffering
The
Five Skandhas
The
Three Facts of Existence
The
Three Pure Precepts |
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To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by the 10,000 things. (Zen Master Dogen, 1233) |
Closer than you thought? |
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