2021-07-31 The Life and Teachings of Russel Williams 1
6:05PM Aug 13, 2021
Speakers:
Sensei Amala Wrightson
Keywords:
felt
horses
life
russell williams
people
day
thought
war
elephant
gave
called
suffering
realized
died
shapiro
nature
fear
knew
airfield
dog
Today is the first day of winter sesshin 2021, first of August, and we're going to take up a text called Not I, Not Other Than I: The Life and Teachings of Russell Williams, edited by Steve Taylor.
Russell Williams was born in 1921 on the 29th of June, so his 100th birthday was just a few days ago. And he died in 2018. He was still alive when this book was written was 94. And the editor Steve Taylor, is one of his students spent two years working on the book and spent much of that time with Russell recording his recollections of his life story. So we have a lot more detail about the life of this teacher than we usually do. And it may take us that longer to get through it. But it's it's really quite extraordinary, an extraordinary story. So even though we'll only only be able to touch on certain aspects of it. There's a lot to it.
In this in this, these accounts a`re in the first person so he's Russell Williams is speaking. He says I remember being born very vividly, it was more of a sensation rather than thinking or identifying. I was in a darkish room and high up on the walls were long, narrow windows, and there was gas lighting. Though obviously, I didn't know what it was at the time. It was painful to my eyes. After being in the dark, the noise of the equipment being put down was shattering. I remember the sensation of the cool air after the warmth of the womb, taking it into my lungs. So it felt cold inside and outside. It was a devastating experience emerging into all of that after the safety and warmth of the womb. It goes on to say that he has also his memories of before his birth. Having had glimpses of a number of his previous lives. And notably, mostly what he remembered actually was not so much his life previous lives, but previous deaths. Some years ago, an older man came to the center with a manual sort of a manuscript which he wanted us to keep for him. And it was a series of accounts of his own, what appeared to be previous lives. And that was the same with him that quite a few of the accounts were of deaths experience of dying, as if these particular experiences impress themselves on the mind particularly. But it gets it's fair to say that most people don't remember the birth, let alone the previous lives or days.
He talks about his parents, both of whom he remembers as being wonderful kind people.
And he says about his parents, they had a good relationship. And between them, they were charitable people, although we had very little, we were very poor, that we didn't know it, because we had a full life as an integrated family. That gave us a richness in the 1920s work was very scarce. And my father would take whatever was available, which was why he kept moving around. That was why I went to so many different schools 17 altogether. He had one one older brother and one younger sister. And he was the the the introverted of the family who preferred to be alone. I didn't associate with other people, I felt more comfortable with animals. I always liked to be in the countryside felt at home in nature, much more so than in manmade places. In my early years, we were in a country setting. So I spent a lot of time exploring the fields with my dog. My dog and I were practically inseparable. I slept in the kennel with him. If I went missing, they would call the dog because they knew I'd be there with him. It was a happy existence. I was contented. It also relates that he in his whole life. He hasn't ever hadn't ever experienced fear. Even when he was in the wharf and expected to be killed, he says he wasn't afraid. He would be disturbed by the suffering he witnessed, but did not feel fear. And again, this is perhaps indicates that His
understanding of things later blossom, as we'll see here the first time, he says the first time he realized that he had no fear was when he was about five. And he was staying with his grandfather and grandmother who ran a tea rooms on a main road was in it still in the 1920s. And
to their amazement, two elephants turned up one day, the gray one and a white one. And they were on their way to London Zoo from from, presumably from a shipyard. And they were gifts from the king of Siam, to the King of England. And especially, of course, the white elephant is something very rare, but they had sent along another elephant with the white elephant to keep it company. And they had to walk them from the docks to London Zoo, and pass by this this place as tea rooms and tethered the elephants there for the night. He relates our dog Tinker ran out and started barking at the elephants that made one of them angry, it coiled up its trunk lifted up, Tinker and threw him into the air. I dashed up to the elephant and pummeled his legs with my fists. The elephant wrapped its trunk around me and lifted me into the year and put me down again. The adults were horrified. But I didn't feel any fear at all, just anger that my dog had been thrown. But this this early, idyllic life was to come to an end. One of those father's Jobs was in, in Palestine. So the whole family traveled there. But her mother, his mother got seriously ill. And his father would have to borrow a car to drive up to a sanatorium where she was staying just once a month to see her. And he says, It was around that time that I had a powerful realization at the age of nine. Because my mother was away and we were on our own so much. I was doing the cooking, preparing food for lunch, looking after the house, looking after my sister. I thought that my mother about my mother, and how hard our lives were. And it occurred to me that there was something strange about all the suffering I was witnessing. I knew there was physical, physical suffering, but this was deeper than that. And I was sure there had to be a reason for it. Even though it was beyond my understanding at the time, I was determined that one day I would find out what it was.
This is of course, the central question. In Buddhism, it was the central question for the Buddha Shakyamuni. suffering and way out of suffering.
he recounts how another odd thing about His childhood was how many times he came close to death. could say maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was fearless. But he recounts several near drownings. Each time he was he was obviously rescued once in fact, by his dog.
He says I was well aware that I could have died, but I wasn't concerned there was no panic or pain, just quiet acceptance. I remember thinking if that's the way it's going to be Soviet.
They came back to England. His father got a job as a groundsman at a think of like some kind of Call it a club with golf course and other activities there. And then but he came, became very ill and got pleurisy and died. And Russell Williams was was just 10 at the time. The family's circumstances got very straightened. And his mother was having to work several jobs, just to keep them going. And when he turned 11 Russell got dispensation from the local council to leave, leave school so he could also help with supporting the family. And he got his first job and an engineering factory cleaning away the cuttings from lathes. And he was expected to do this with his with his bare hands. He goes on to describe a series of really hard jobs that he had. And things continued to get worse when only 18 months after his father died. His mother also died. So he was left with his his sister, who was just nine years old, has his older brother had had joined in the Navy, which still taught children at that point. were young, very young people. And so he was trying to try to support his sister. He says after they died, his parents, I was desperate and virtually half starved. I was very frustrated. Not so much because of their deaths. I knew they weren't really dead anyway, once or twice I even since their presence, but without them to support me life was very hard. I took drugs with a friend and his family, but 10 shillings a week was nowhere near enough to live on. So I did part time jobs in the evening. It was exhausting six days a week, all the hours from morning till bedtime. On Sunday. I just spent the whole day flat out on my bed exhausted, it was just an existence, not a life. After struggling along like this, somebody suggested that he should go on a trawler, which he did. And again, an extremely physically hard life. There's just a little fragment of the story here. Just to give get a sense of it. It was winter, so it was very unpleasant. We had a few storms with waves as high as this house. There was one dangerous situation when we hit took shelter in the lead of an island. The snow was building up and freezing, we had to take access to chip it off the rigging. Otherwise, we would have turned turtle capsized rope that was as thick as your wrist became a foot wide. But again, I felt no fear. I accepted this situation and did my best to help alleviate it. I didn't feel any emotional pain, just the physical discomfort of being cold and tired.
Eventually, someone advised me to go to the Salvation Army working lads hostel. They put me up, looked after me and found me a better job. That's how I came to work with one Benjamin Shapiro, a Jewish man. He was a Polish refugee from the previous war, the First World War who was running a little Taylor's outfit, manufacturing coats and and ladies mantle's for the big shops in London. He was a very kindly gentleman, I remember him with great affection. So he worked there for a couple of of yours, and it was a much better better arrangement than he had had before. He was a sort of general General factotum for the tailors business, taking close to the to the big stores where they were sold and waiting while they were checked, carefully checked before being accepted. And carrying a needle and thread with him so he could fix anything that needed to be repaired. He says I'd been there only six weeks making these weekly trips to big block stores in London. When Mr. Shapiro asked me to collect his checks on Saturdays. I had to cash them and then take the money over to his house and Stepney in retrospect. I Can't believe he trusted me with all that money after just six weeks. When I took the money back to his house, he would put it all on the mantelpiece. He wouldn't touch it until Sunday, because it was the Sabbath. I worked on Saturdays, and they worked on Sundays, I'd arrive about lunchtime and his wife would give me a cold meal. She didn't cook on Saturdays, of course, it was very pleasant. For the first time in my life, things to be getting seem to be getting a little easier. And then the war came. It's not it's not so surprising that this Mr. Shapiro might trust Russell Williams, because if he was a good judge of character, he wouldn't he would see his his Guile lessness. And his honesty,
it was c into into his nature and know that he could trust him.
The next chapter of the story is about the war. And again, we can only just touch on some elements of it.
After the after the war was declared. Russell Williams volunteer for the army and was, was quickly enrolled. He lived his work with Mr. Shapiro and went for some very, very basic training.
And
later in in May of 1940, almost accidentally he got caught up in the evacuation of Dunkirk. He was he was on one of the small boats that went to rescue people and was doing so in as the as German planes were coming in and bought and bombing as the rescue was underway. He says we loaded the soldiers on the big ships then went back to the shore of Dunkirk for more men, back and forth, back and forth all night and day. We kept going for three days and nights. Every now and then the cooks of the ships will appear with a huge corned beef sandwich and a mug of cocoa and a can of fuel for the boat. It was desperate, we saw people get hurt and blown up bits of bodies floating in the water. I was swiped in the face by an arm that had been blown off. All the time, we had the fighters machine gunning, and the shells coming at us flying over constantly. I remember seeing some sailors in a rowing boat like sitting ducks and I thought they've got no chance. Fortunately, the sea was like a Mill Pond. I've never seen it so calm, hardly a ripple apart from the boats. But the pain and suffering is impossible to describe. The whole situation was so extreme, from the best of human nature to the worst.
He was also in London during the Blitz right from from the beginning of it to the end.
Later on, during the war he was he was just he was discharged from the army and then got a job on an airfield and sorry. After I'd been there for a year or two, I was instructed to go and check the power plants, which was a little brick open top building with an iron gate where the power came in from the mains. It was it was transformed down from 33,000 volts into our circuit. Then we transformed it down again. I went into this area to check it. It was was going rusty and needed some paint, but since it had been installed, no one had ever bothered to look at it. Nobody knew that the insulation had broken down. As I went in, I gently brushed against a cable as thick as my arm is And it hit me. I was literally thrown across the power line with three cables fit into the transformer to bring them to 250 volts. I felt a mighty surge of power. And my last thought was quite casually, oh God, I've had it. This is the end. The next thing I knew I was out, not unconscious, but way out in space. Totally conscious, but not conscious of me. Nobody perfectly at peace, no sense of individuality. I was 1000 miles up in space, and I wasn't a person anymore. There was just a consciousness there a glowing light, it was so serene, so peaceful. I recognized that there was a huge amount of dark space. But there was light within it. And I was that light. And then there was a knowing not something I was told. But something that I was just aware of, it became known that there was more which had to be done, my role wasn't finished. I was very content to be where I was out there in space, with that wonderful feeling of peace. But I realized that it was necessary to go back then I could see a tunnel, a tunnel through which birth could take place, and I would return to the world again. But that would take too long. And what needed to be done was urgent. I didn't want to wait to be born again. So I looked back at my body lie across those three cables and thought, that's a mature body, it will save a lot of time, if I can only get it going again. It was the hardest thing I had ever done to draw one single breath in my body to allow the energy to start up again. My body was virtually paralyzed, but I managed it. I found that my clothing was charred, and the soles of my boots was scorched. But my body wasn't touched. Not a Mark from 33,000 volts. I staggered out of the plinth bumped into the wall behind came out through the gate and lay on the grass outside, looking at this beautiful sky with the white cumulus clouds thinking What the hell is going on. And my boots was smoldering, that I was perfectly all right. Apart from being shocked. It was another insight another piece of awareness that there is a bit more to life than appears on the surface. I didn't understand what it meant at the time, of course.
Next chapter is hated wandering and transformation.
During all those years, especially as a teenager, I was full of anger. I was angry with myself because of my ignorance. I was aware of suffering in the world. And I knew that there was some meaning behind it. But I couldn't get close to understanding it. And so it filled me with frustration. And my anger manifested itself as aggression. I had no time for other people, no patience or empathy. Other people irritated me. And if they crossed me, they were in trouble. To make things worse, I was very strong too, with a hair trigger temper a dangerous, comfortable combination. When I was working on the farms, I could pick up a sack of potatoes in each hand 100 weighed and just throw them. Plus I had no fear. I was never afraid of anything. I had a lot of fights, and I could easily have killed someone. The anger burned inside me for a long time.
But lady says I was a wreck at the end of the war, emotionally amiss, weary and fit up. I've been battered around so much I felt broken down. And this includes more injuries and broken bones and things which I didn't mention earlier that are in the story. So he was he really was had been broken down several times physically, not to mention the mess of electrocution. When you added all these experiences together from the beginning to the end of the war, plus all of the suffering I'd experienced earlier in my life, there wasn't going to be a quick recovery from all that. I felt Like I'd had enough, all I wanted was to get away for myself. After D day, I resigned from my position at the airfield straightaway, I took a job as a handyman at a school for evacuated kids out in the country. I'd made plans with a colleague at the airfield to start up an electrical business. That was the plan. At the end of the war, there was so many repairs which needed doing so electrical work. So much electrical work that we thought there was an opportunity there. But as we were about to do this, I had a realization. It was a Sunday, I remember, I felt as though I needed to think about what was happening in my life. I asked myself, What do I really want in life? I was only in my early 20s. But I've been through so much misery. The only part that had been reasonably happy was the early part of my childhood. Since then, there had been nothing but horror. So I asked myself, What do I really want out of life? And I answered myself, I want to be happy. And I realized that if I followed this path, starting up this business, it wouldn't make me happy. There were several different paths I could have taken. But a part of me said no to everyone. Something inside me told me, all of these aren't going to make take me where I'm supposed to be going. They go to take me further away. I was in a dilemma. I couldn't go on as I was. The only thing left was to walk away, literally, and hope that something would show me where I was supposed to be going. So I lived with just a few shillings in my pocket. It was the summer of 1945. I started walking and carried on walking and walking. I lost track of time. It could have been weeks or months. I slept under haystacks and hedges, washed clothes and little Brooks and lay them out in the grass for the sun to dry. Every now and then I mended an old fence for a sandwich and a cup of tea. I remember pulling a Swede out of the ground and chewing it because I was so hungry. But most of all, I remember the sunshine. The sun always seemed to be shining. One day, I was walking across the Moors, and came across a showman with a broken down bus. He was sitting on the stoop of the bus with a pot of tea in his hand. I came up to him, I must have locked in a desperate state. He looked up and said, You look like you could do with one of these. He made a pot of tea, and I sat down with him. Then he asked me, when did you last ate? I don't know, a couple of days ago, I think he gave me a meal that after we chatted for a while he said, Do you want a job? Yes, I'll do anything. Tell me what you want me to do. And I'll do it. You know anything about horses? No. All I know is that you feed them in one end and the crap out of the other. Well, it doesn't really matter if you can get a new key by seven in the morning. There's a job for you. They're looking after horses. He gave me half the ground and sent me on my way, UK was about 70 miles away. How I managed to get there I don't know. I left at five o'clock that evening and arrived there dead on seven in the morning just as they were beginning to pull out a small circus with a few trucks and horses following behind. So he handed over a note that the man had written and they put him on a horse and gave him another one to lead. And he was he had his new life beginning in the circus. Just Just like a, like a community circus with a few with a few animals, acrobats, clowns, and
he was paid for a pound a week and had fooled and had food and importantly somewhere to sleep. So this was this was the beginning of his new life. Working with horses.
I grew to love the animals. I felt a strong connection with them. It was impossible not to living with them 24 hours a day. I was determined that I was going to understand them wholly for what they were and realize that the only way to do that was through observing them and you I wasn't going to get the knowledge from reading books. So I set my mind to watching and observing every detail every moment of the day for days on end. After about three months, as I became more concentrated on the horses, I noticed I wasn't thinking anymore. My mind had gone quiet. I realized that knowing and thinking are two different things. And that you could know without thinking, I wasn't forming opinions or jumping to conclusions anymore. I began to do things spontaneously, to live in the moment, I had a strong feeling that I was finally going in the right direction, that this was my path. And I should keep going with this carry on observing the animals so intently. It wasn't until much later that I realized the exercise I'd given myself was mindfulness meditation. In effect, I was meditating about 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for three years, completely absorbed in caring for the horses. It was a life of continual service, with no thought for myself.
Then it happened. I woke up one morning, and looked across at the horses, watching the steam rise out of the nostrils the way it does on a cold morning. The next thing I knew, I wasn't just absorbing the horse. From the outside, I was the horse. I was looking inside it, I was it. I couldn't look through its eyes and its mind. I was aware of its true nature. I was aware that all things are one. There was a sense of profound peace within me. It was a revelation. I looked at another horse, and another, and I was inside them as well. I looked at one of the dogs and saw it in its true nature to I saw everything in its true nature. I went outside to look at the lions. And it was the same with them, looking from the inside out, not the outside in. We were all the same nature, all arising from the same source. My own nature was just as theirs was in a different form, with one conscious linking us all together. They were only separate in terms of form and structure. It was the same essence, the same emptiness and all of them in all of us. I went outside look at the trees, and they were the same nature. Then I looked at my own body and inside myself, and there was nobody there. My normal sense of self had disappeared. At that moment, there was no anger, no frustration, just a sense of peace. There was no desire, no aversion, everything was as it should be.
I think how Akin this this experience that Russell Williams has, is to what is described by the advisor, divan, Vedanta teacher nisargadatta, who also came from very humble beginnings. don't recall now with a with a he was I think he was from Bangor is passed away now but some, some people may be familiar with his book, I think it's called I am that this is what he says. I find that somehow by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at. And I experience the kind of consciousness that has I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness love, you may give it any name you like. Love says I am everything. wisdom says I am nothing between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space, I can be both the subject and the object of experience. I express it by saying I am both in Neither, and beyond both.
So the next next chapter is called horses and healing.
This new state was odd, but one became attuned to it in a way that wasn't other than itself. It was very difficult to explain. I'd never expected to experience anything like it. I thought about telling other people about it. But I realized that I couldn't, they'd think I was mad. Think of flora Courtois. American woman who had an a spontaneous awakening and at a young age, and for years and years and years, she tried to find some context for it. And when she described it to other people, they would just gave her blank blocks and didn't understand at all. So much so that she felt very isolated, but at a certain point gave up even trying to explain what had happened until she put us to sleep, found a Zen group and in Los Angeles in the 60s, and eventually had her experience confirmed by Yes, tiny Roshi.
It stayed with me, I felt like I wasn't myself anymore, and began to wonder if I really existed. Because it was such a different existence, I had the same body was still doing the same work, but with a completely different nature of mind. It was a new life without a future. I felt a sense of oneness towards everything, there is nothing which is not of the same nature. Now I can understand the biblical aspect of this. In the beginning, there was nothing, no thing, just emptiness. Out of that emptiness, things began to materialize. That's why space is the most important quality in the whole universe.
I've been looking for happiness. But now I began to realize that happiness is a delusion. It's based on having certain things or achieving certain things. It depends on external circumstances which can change at any moment. It is conditioned. But the contentment I found then and still have now is unconditioned. It doesn't require anything, it doesn't matter what you have, or whether you have anything at all. Just to be is a state of well being. In this state, everything is interesting. You're never bored. Everything is interesting, because it's all part of the same consciousness. And there's nothing selfish about this. We don't find contentment through gaining anything, but through losing ourselves.
This this is so important and and and it's a teaching that we we can revert resist very strongly. We can come to our practice with what one torture teacher called the gaining mind. The quisitive attitude. When what we need to do is to lose, to lose our cherished opinions about ourselves and the world.
It's one of the reasons why it's so important to go deep in the practice to to find one spiritual home and to plunge into the work from that place to dig deep
At the same time we're never lonely. Even if we're alone, loneliness never arises. Because we see all things as part of ourselves. There is no separateness, and no fear, no separateness, no objectification, he
kills most stories of of near brushes with death that he had, including being struck more than once by lightning.
33 times in one storm being struck by lightning, I, when I began to put things together, I thought, I'm not being allowed to die, I was being looked after I had almost died so many times, the times when I was poor pulled out of the river, Thames, the times when the policeman pulled me out of the sea in Palestine. Then, when I was electrocuted on the airfield, and here on the cliff top, I didn't know what or why, but I felt that I was being kept alive for a reason. Well, we can just stop here and recite the four vows since an ex few stories will take us take us to
all the things without number two liberate endless blind to brute Dharma, gaze beyond measure, to penetrate the great way, Buddha to attain all beings with a number to liberate and less by tomorrow, ta da, da is beyond measure, to penetrate the right way, Buddha to attain all the things without number to liberate and glassline passions to operate, again, beyond measure to penetrate the Buddha