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Opened up this morning.

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and.

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Winton: as usual, take it off in a slightly different direction, but still

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Winton: hopefully.

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Winton: There is a continuity there. In fact, I'm pretty sure there is. So I want to start off with

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Winton: and really

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Winton: interesting book that was published 3 years ago by

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Winton: Martin Hegelund. a Swedish

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Winton: philosopher, who works at Yale University in Connecticut.

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Winton: and the book is called this Life Secular Faith and spiritual Freedom.

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Winton: and he certainly gives each of those terms a really good shake out in the book. It's a very, very interesting book.

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Winton: and When he talks about secular faith.

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Winton: he is contrasting it to religious faith.

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Winton: and I'm grateful just there because it really annoys me when

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Winton: I hear people say, we welcome people of all faiths and of no faith.

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Winton: and I think they imagine that secular people have no faith. Well.

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Winton: it's 1 one of the many virtues of Hegel's book is to lay that one to rest.

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Winton:  what is that means by so faith is that it? It refers to commitment. loyalty, fidelity.

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Winton: and it's it's often confused with belief.

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Winton: but they're 2 entirely different things. Faith is really about

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Winton: about commitment and loyalty and reliability.

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Winton: You know, you talk about a faithful friend that doesn't. That doesn't mean they believe something, but they you, but they're people you couldn't rely on.

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Winton: So our secular faith is about committing wholeheartedly

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Winton: to a mortal life. to a time-bound life to a life that is fragile and vulnerable

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Winton: and unpredictable, and the only thing that is utterly predictable is it will. and within a finite time.

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Winton: So often. You see, this sort of idea referred to

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as finitude.

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Winton: Venitude is the bottom line, if you like, of secular faith.

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Winton: And he's saying, you know, this is this sort of life is the only sort of life that one should commit to, because it's always at risk. It's always at stake.

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Winton: and it really needs care care to sustain and care, of course, to

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Winton: to project out to those people and those things who make that life meaningful.

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Winton:  as it as against that. He talks about religious faith as being

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a commitment to life elsewhere, or after this life.

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Winton: a commitment to things that are supposedly eternal and permanent, that are not at risk

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Winton: that are not at stake. And these things would go on whether we've assuming we believe in them, they'll go on whether we have any faith in them or not.

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Winton: as it's important to realize that these 2 conceptions of faith pure models!

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Winton: He's not talking about religious people as opposed to secular people.

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Winton: He's referring to different ways in which we commit spiritual quest

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Winton: in this life. And so a number of his examples

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Winton: of secular faith

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Winton: are, in fact, prominent Christian figures, like Augustine and Martin Luther, and closer to her own time. Cs. Lewis, who

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demonstrated their secular faith.

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Winton: With the through the intensity of their mourning of lives that were lost to them.

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Winton: In Augustine's case. a close friend in Luther's case

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Winton: his daughter Magdalena, and in CS. Lewis's case his wife and CS. Lewis wrote a very moving book called A Grief, observed, or a morning observed, I can't quite remember the exact title.

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Winton: but he's saying, if you, if you, if you were to take religious faith seriously

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and exclusively, then you you wouldn't be

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Winton: moved by the death of death of mortals close to you, because your

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Winton: eyes and your

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Winton: your loyalty would be elsewhere. But he said that all these people found these 3 found it impossible

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Winton: to sustain that kind of religious faith in the face of the predicaments. We human beings face

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Winton: life on earth. So one of the and getting back to the survival issue, he's saying.

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Winton: instead of thinking about or worrying about or working towards eternal life.

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Winton: we should be

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Winton: instead concerned with living on. So saying, instead of eternal life. the aim should be to live on. Our

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Winton: our lives are measured out in time.

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Winton: and and we should try and extend that life

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Winton: as much as we can.

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Winton: I, in my own internal

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Winton: working vocabulary.

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Winton: I think, in terms of how long I can remain a going concern. A friend of mine once said she had a 94 year old dad, who was still a going concern, so that meant, you know, he could still walk around. He could still

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Winton: talk and read books, and have a conversation and a beer, and and you know he was. He was contributing and participating

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Winton: in in life.

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Winton: So I'm hoping to extend

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Winton: my

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Winton: status is a going concern as long as possible, and after that all bets are off. But

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Winton: but it's a it's it's together with that is the concept of distension of life. It's actually

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Winton: an idea that comes out of August day

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Winton: when he was writing his multi-volume

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Winton:  memoirs, or, as he called them, confessions, and they are an extraordinary moment in Christian writing, because he he's he put so much labor and so much ink and vellum into

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a minute.

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Winton: They

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Winton: recall

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Winton: of his life his life as a child, and so on.

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Winton: and

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from Hegel's point of view this is important to

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Winton: to

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Winton: to not only extend one's life by living on, but by but by living it intensely.

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Winton: and looking back on it

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Winton: in order to really figure out what was going on, and and to understand

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Winton: oneself. So and there's been a and a number of

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Winton: people who have done this, who've who've distended their previous

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Winton: previous lives. Marcel Proust is a classic example, and Carlberg, now scored, is another. The contemporary Norwegian.

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Winton: Novelist!

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Winton:  So one of the things that canal score says is, one must pay attention.

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Winton: Festa Blicken

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Winton: it. It means, you know, we again, this, this, this theme of intensity of life, and the intensity of attention to it, comes out

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in his work and that of many others. In fact.

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Winton: a few years ago someone called Peter Watson

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Winton: wrote a book called The Age of Atheists. how we have lived since the death of God. and I was referring to

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Winton: the death of God in 1881 earlier on. But it's that insight of Nature's name, nature, insight, not on God's mortality, but on the fact that people had

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Winton: began began to

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Winton: neglect God as the starting point of their ruminations about the meaning of life.

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And it's unleashed a whole literature in

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Winton: fiction, in philosophy and art, etc. About where do we find meaning now

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Winton: that we can no longer find it

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Winton: in the Bible? And there are many, many answers. But, as

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Winton: Watson points out, there is one common theme in this death of God, literature, and that is

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Winton: the the need to live intensely.

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Winton: to fasten the gaze. As Carlos Gordon says.

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Winton: and Headland is making the point that our loves and lives only makes sense

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Winton: in the light of mortality. Our most most intense human attachments are intense, precisely because they are vulnerable.

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Winton: because, you know, they really are at stake. We can lose them.

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Winton: We can't take them for granted.

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Winton: and this is rather an old insight.

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Winton: How

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Winton: one of my favorite writers is Thomas Cranmer, who wrote the Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England after the break with Rome

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Winton: and in the burial service. He was a great liturgist and a great poet. There's this wonderful sentence

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Winton: in the midst of life we are in death. so death is always there, giving meaning to life.

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Winton: And this is a fundamental point that

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Winton: that Hegel and he's making.

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Winton: And so one of the

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Winton: more interesting things that.

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Winton: becoming an octogen octogenarian is this, this all

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Winton: becomes sort of silent

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Winton: and

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Winton: the! As as I moved into the 80 s.

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Winton: I had a sense of danger.

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Winton: No wheels have fallen off, or you know any particular red flags appear on on the blood test. But but you know.

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Winton: you just have to look around and realize that

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Winton: it's a bit of a mine mine field. At this stage 2 of my old friends and colleagues have died in their sleep.

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Winton: have, for you know, with completely, unpredictably, and you think

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Winton: is the less than happy repo coming after me at some stage.

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Winton: But preparing for it

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Winton: means that we that that

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Winton: one becomes particularly

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Winton: interested in this issue of lineage that we were dealing with this morning. and the issue of

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Winton: of of having a sense of you know, not just little old me, but of that there are all these ancestors.

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Winton: That

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Winton: I represent, or and who have prepared to pass for me. And that means, of course, that

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Winton: I've got to prepare to be a good ancest.

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Winton: If you've read to the end of the handout, you'll see that

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Winton: Steven says talks about it's striving to be a good ancestor

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Winton: for those who are not yet born. and I think that's a really important

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Winton: task.

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Winton: and certainly one that Hegeland also goes into. I've seen oneself as part of a part of a continuum part of a human continuum in first instance, probably

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in family terms, but by no means

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Winton: just in those terms. So we all

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Winton: are going to be ancestors to people who

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Winton: who we're not related to

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Winton: so we're all kind of in training to become ancestors where

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Winton: the ancestors of the future.

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Winton: And one of the things I've been doing then is is

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Winton: what there's a wonderful Swedish concept of durst deadening, as it's called in Swedish means.

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Winton: Tidying up in contemplation of death.

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Winton: Hum! Durd means death, and steadening is tidying up the house.

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Winton: and so next month I'm going to pull out of

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Winton: our shed. Our storage shed the 8

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Winton: boxes of what I regard as memorabilia or my archive, and I'm going to reduce it down to about half of one plastic box, because I've asked my daughters, who are in their early forties.

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Winton: What say would like me to leave behind by way of physical Memorabilia.

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Winton: and they have told me very clearly that a few significant letters and a few photographs, and that would be more than ample.

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Winton: So all all that memorabilia from my own. from my own childhood family will make its way to a museum, or a

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Winton: or a landfill, or to an antique shop, or something like that.

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Winton: It seems it will be a useful spiritual exercise. I will have to

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Winton: confront my fetishization of physical objects deal with my nostalgia, and I've had a lot of help with that with that wonderful

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Winton: book by Svetlana poem called The Future of Nostalgia.

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Winton: So My nostalgia won't have a great deal of future, I think, after January.

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Winton:  so

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Winton: the another way of

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Winton: thinking about it is, you know, who who are we? There's there was a a great book published many years ago, called Who Dies

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Winton: and the issue who dies? Question Mark.

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Winton: and a Buddhist book, and it was sort of about

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Winton: as you as you have approached death, or as a lot of people approached death. Thoughtfully and mindfully

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Winton: they begin to get, have less of a sense

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Winton: of the drama and tragedy of

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Winton: one individual death. And I had a tremendous teaching in this regard.

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Winton: 2 years ago, when

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Winton: a good friend of mine died of cancer she'd been. She died. She died about

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Winton: 9 months

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Winton: after diagnosis. And she was a very energetic person, with lots of causes. She was a physiotherapist. She did a lot of work around domestic violence, and she was a member of

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Winton: our long-standing writing group.

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Winton: So you know, and that this writing group was also the a

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Winton: scene of very close friendships of great trust. and as she was dying she did what I suppose a lot of dying people do. They let go of more and more people in their lives, and the circle around them shrinks.

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Winton: And that's quite.

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Winton: you know. It still seems to me a skillful thing to do, and and when it had reached a certain stage she called

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Winton: a meeting.

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Winton: and she asked each of her networks to send one representative to it. So we in the writing group selected one of our number

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Winton: and the other group sent theirs, and they met over tea and coffee. And you know we could deliver our last messages, and she could respond

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Winton: And then as As death approached, she, the people around her shrank to her daughter and 4 or 5 really close friends who were looking after her. 24, over 7,

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Winton: and at her funeral

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Winton: these people

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Winton: reported that she kept saying to them in the last days, this is not about me.

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Winton: So yeah. When I heard those words, I thought.

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Winton: Wow, now, that's a teaching.

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Winton: you know that it's obviously what was going on in those last days

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Winton: was about them.

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Winton: all of them, about their relationship, about the meaning of

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Winton: what was happening. And of course they were there then, at the funeral to report

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Winton: on how these how these last days had unfolded

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Winton: so

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Winton: That also seemed to me you know that what she was getting at was that that it is these relationships that is so important that we are, after all.

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Winton: about our relationships. This is what

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Winton: being a fragile, vulnerable, mortal human being is about. And

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Winton:  Then there's this question of ancestors.

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Winton: and and

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Winton: just to dip back into ancient Greece for a moment there was a and yet another philosopher. contemporary contemporary of the Buddha, called Biogenes, who was the founder of

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Winton: the philosophical school of Cynics.

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Winton: and Diogenes said.

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Winton: when I die

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Winton: I just want you to throw the corpse over the city wall, so the vultures and other carrier, needing creatures, can have a bit of fun with it, and that will that will dispose of it, and that's the end of it.

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Winton: The corpse has absolutely no meaning. It's just

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Winton: a lump of inanimate biological matter.

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Winton: and in a magnificent time by Thomas Lacur he begins with this story, and then says.

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Winton: every known human culture

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Winton: violently disagrees with Diogenes

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Winton: that the care of the dead is really important. and his book is called The Work of the Dead.

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Winton: a Cultural history of funerary Practices.

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Winton: and the point that he's making is that that every human society takes care of.

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Winton: I was a dead

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Winton: because they have work to do. Their work is to is to be

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Winton: the stable foundation for the community of the living. and that is why, you know, however, they do it.

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Winton: These societies do take care of the living and keep them close.

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Winton: So one of the most fascinating aspects of his discussion was the

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Winton: the the gradual decline of churchyards

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Winton: and the rise of cemeteries. I'd never, ever thought of the distinction. But a churchyard like the one next door

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Winton: is really for the people of the parish.

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Winton: The people of the of the immediate community, defined in terms of their

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Winton: religiosity, of their religious adherents, and being members of a parish. So you know, in Britain, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century there was an enormous amount of litigation going on about who had the right.

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Winton: You know whose corpse had the right to be told through the gates of a churchyard and buried facing Jerusalem

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Winton: and because, you know, some people inconveniently died outside their parish, or they had decided to become Protestants or something like that, and they were

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Winton: initially denied

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Winton: access to a burial club. The other problem with churchyards was, they filled up, and you had no.

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Winton: you know you could be dug up after 50 years. What was left of you and someone else could

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Winton: be buried in your place. So that went meant led to the development of cemeteries

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which were good capitalist commercial operations. Where you could buy

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Winton: a plot for yourself or for a loved one, and you owned it, and and it didn't matter, you know, whether you belong to the parish or not, or didn't belong to

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Winton: anything, you know you're the the entry ticket was money

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Winton: so oh, yet it was still important. It was still important. And and the book Thomas liquor is an American historian, but he's really onto Rookwood, our huge necropolis in Western Sydney, which was

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Winton: designed and built in in the late nineteenth century, is now

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Winton: approaching capacity.

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Winton: But is, is an extraordinary place to visit in terms of the you know, as as a sign of the the growth of Sydney.

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Winton: the diversity of people that you know this. There are

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Winton: sections, special sections for all manner of

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Winton: faith, some people and historic characters who obviously didn't belong anywhere, so

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Winton: it it again, it is making.

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Winton: What will occur is that the point that liquor is making is the

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Winton: extraordinary importance of

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Winton: how the ancestors

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Winton: looked after and kept in sight. as it were. And of course there are

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Winton: quite a few cultures.

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Winton: and where ancestor worship is A

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Winton: is a formalized and very important practice. So

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Winton: I'll just end on the note on the importance of

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Winton:  going into training as future ancestors.

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Winton: even though we're still on the road to survival and living on.

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Winton: Okay, we've got quarter now for some questions.

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Winton: Comments.

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Yeah.

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Winton: thank you very much, Winton, and just to to to

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Winton: to say something about the good ancestors. This is an idea that I borrowed from

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Winton: a writer called Raymond Kushnerik, who's a philosopher in Oxford.

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Winton: and he's written a book called Good Ancestors.

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Winton: which I haven't read in its entirety, but I've had a look at it, and I was recommended it by my friends in Japan.

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Winton: Who have been in contact with the Raymond Schnarick.

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Winton: He was even invited to the meetings we had last month in in Japan.

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Winton: and one of the things that really struck me during the last month, where well, the whole of October, we were there in Japan. Was it November? Where are we now? December.

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Winton: November

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Winton: last month. Whenever that was, that was the extent to which

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Winton: Buddhist temples effectively serve as

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Winton:  places where the ancestors come to rest. and they're very much honored and held.

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Winton: And there's, I think, a much, much deeper sense

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Winton: in these in these. But Buddhist temples of the importance of the ancestors

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Winton: that, I think, is also reflected in East Asian culture, Chinese, Korean, Confucian, Japanese. And it really

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Winton: struck me very powerfully. This idea and the project that I'm involved in in Japan is called the Camphor Tree Village. Ruriko, who's in the group online in Brisbane.

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Winton: very much involved in that, too. And this is again really an attempt to sort of

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Winton: come back to this importance of

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Winton: becoming good ancestors, to try to somehow tease out the implications of what that idea

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Winton: really means for us, rather than just a kind of a cultural habit of respecting grandpa. And I think what you said very much illuminated that very idea.

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Winton: And

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Winton: so just to say that really and to thank you for somehow having picked up on that idea.

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Winton: got the second question on premise and one in the cloud the second.

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Winton: Thank you very much, Minton.

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Winton:  It

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Winton: feels as though it could be a bit of a flippant comment. But it's

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Winton: it's not living on raises the big existential

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Winton: question of

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Winton: To what end? Why.

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Winton:  and that's all I wanted to say.

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So.

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Winton: James, you can go

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James: just to quickly follow on from what Steven was saying. Because I'm I'm in Japan, which is where I live, and it's very typical to have a a small shrine in your house for departed family members.

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James: So, for example, when my, when my daughter visits her Japanese grandmother's house we go in, and we like some incense. And we we say hello to her, her Japanese grandfather, who passed away a number of years ago. And it's it was interesting that when, because my daughter, you know, I'm British, so she sort of straddles both cultures.

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James: And what was interesting was that when her British grandparents passed away. Everyone on my side of the family coped how commented on, how well she coped with it, and and how and I don't just mean in a sort of a stoic, got through it way. She she genuinely seem to have some sort of understanding and acceptance of what it was, and I do think that the point Stephen makes actually feeds into how people accept and understand death as well. It's

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James: I think it does go beyond just a sort of a cultural ritual, and it does actually influence one's attitude and understanding of death.

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James: But just a sort of a personal

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James: add on to Steven's point. Thanks.

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Winton: just continuing that theme, Sivan, you said, it's not just about being a good grandpa.

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Winton: but actually, I mean in the limited connection I've had with cultures where ancestors are important for most of them. It's not for having been remarkable people or done good things. It's just for having been ancestors in the lineage.

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Winton: and I suspect that's a little bit different from the sense in which we might strive to be good ancestors by leaving the globe in a better state. So I wonder if either of you might want to comment on whether

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Winton: there really is quite such a strong connection between the ancestor link in traditional cultures

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Winton: and what we might think of here.

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Winton: Well, I certainly think there's a distinction to be drawn there that if if one is honoring ancestors just

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Winton: because you've inherited their genes as a word.

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I think that's

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Winton: That's that's not usually how we think of ancestors in the West, but we rather think of them, and in terms of

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Winton: how they have somehow embellished the life we're living now.

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Winton: and I guess that that is part of the aspiration of being a good ancestor is.

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Winton: as they used to say in my school, to leave

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Winton: leave the world a better place. So there is a kind of a performative aspect to being a good ancestor

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Winton: in the West. At least, that may not have been the case in

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Winton: other societies.

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Winton: I'll just briefly add, in a couple of points.

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Winton: first of all, Diogenes of Sinope, who you referred to. did end up with a grave in Corinth. which apparently was placed right by the main gateway of the Agora of Corinth. It was a pillar, and on the top of it was a dog.

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Winton: because the cynics were basically the dog like people. That was their idea.  but I think it works both ways, Gowan. I think it is, on the one hand, an acknowledgment of

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Winton: you know your love of your grandparents or whatever.

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Winton: But I also feel that in these cultures there's an acknowledgement of the fact that I wouldn't be here if it had not been for them.

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Winton: And that goes further than a kind of cursory acknowledgement that I've got the same genes.

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Winton: I think it also brings to mind also, maybe your living parents, who are very old, or whatever it it it it calls you to reflect upon those who have gone before, whether or not. They were good or bad people, or you liked or didn't like them.

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Winton: Nonetheless.

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Winton: without them you would not be the person you are, but also, of course, it means that people we do, you know, in a sense.

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Winton: hold in high regard.

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Winton: They're still around, in a way. When I was in Kamakura we went to the the grave of Dt. Suzuki.

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Winton: who was buried there. When we were in Kyoto I went to the grave of a

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Winton: kooky Shinzo. who, you probably haven't heard of.

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Winton: but he was the person who most influenced Heidegger in his

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Winton: understanding of East Asian thought.

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Winton: And, in fact, there's a late text of Heidegger, in which it is a dialogue between Heidegger and

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Winton: Kooky Shinzo. So I wanted to see his

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Winton: grave, and it turns out

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Winton: this was completely by chance that his grave was in the grounds of the temple where we were holding our dialogue.

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Winton: and then, as we were walking away from Kukie Shinzo's grave.

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Winton: We looked at. We saw another one just behind, and it turned out to be the grave of Tanya. What's his name?

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Awesome?

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Winton: Go, Africa, Junichiro Tanasaki. who wrote the very famous Japanese novelist.

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Winton: who I also greatly admire. So it serves both purposes. I think it serves as the ancestral

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Winton: referring to the ancestors of your own lineage, but also the ancestors of your own culture, your ancestors of the

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Winton: of of of of you know, who who somehow give meaning, not through any blood connection, but through serving as a spiritual ancestor. In a way.

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Winton: Hi, Judy, here, can you hear me? Okay. yeah. Probably really leading on from the earlier question living on, why.

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Winton: really, I just want to raise the question about assisted

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Winton: dying, and in terms of legislation has just passed in New South Wales to enable assisted dying, and I think it's the last state in Australia to do that and

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Winton: and maybe assisted dying. Where does it fit in the framework? Or is that a personal, a personal question based on your own circumstances? How you wish to? You wish to have a choice over the end of your life.

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Winton: So was that, were you asking a question about that? Yes, does it? The does, the I guess the practice, or the making a choice about assisted dying? Does that fit into the framework? Is it part of the framework in terms of the concept of living on living intensely, or or it's not really a question for the framework, because it's just a personal question that you answer for yourself.

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Winton: Well, in

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Winton: terms of my own framework, the going concern framework. I think it's I think it's

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Winton: it should. It should be a right issue, and and the the current legislation hardly scratches the surface of that, because you actually have to be diagnosed with a terminal illness.

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Winton: So you know, Parkinson's, for instance, is not a terminal illness. And yet it's it's an appalling, especially in advanced stages. It's an appalling condition to have, and I think it certainly should be

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Winton: that that voluntary assisted, dying so it should be available to people

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Winton: in that situation, or any other situation where they feel.

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Winton: you know that they are no longer going concerns. Oh, it's absolutely too too painful to try and be one. I certainly think that you know that right should be should be extended to all those sorts of people, not just ones with a

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Winton: you know, a certain category of of disease. I think it has not only has to be a terminal disease, but one where you expected to die within 6 months, or something like that.

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Winton: Thanks, Mitchell

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Winton: over to Margaret. I think my first is an online, I think, or would they please?

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Winton: We're not online.

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Winton: We call that a 9 region.

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Winton: What's your name? Bruno?

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Winton: Rena? Rena? Oh, Rena! Hello.

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Winton: Reena! Are you going to speak to us? I see. Maybe she. You're on mute, Raina. You need to unmute yourself.

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Winton: We'll we'll come back to reader in a minute, maybe. Can you unmute yourself, Rena?

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Winton: She's still muted.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Why don't you go, Margaret? And I got it. I got it. I got it.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Let me just add to this conversation on ancestors. I come from culture my ancestors have been. I talked about every day in my life, in my childhood because of the story of the family coming from Armenian background and

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rena czaplinska-archer: continuous string of migrations, forced and otherwise from originally Cowcast Mountains. I don't know anybody in my family that came came from there, but the last ones that I heard about were in Turkey. That's before the holocaust in Turkey genocide happening in Turkey.

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rena czaplinska-archer: I and

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rena czaplinska-archer: My

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rena czaplinska-archer: just wanted to say that

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rena czaplinska-archer: our practice at home as Catholics, active Catholics, was not going to church, but going to cemetery.

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rena czaplinska-archer: And I was. I was

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rena czaplinska-archer: sort of quite like this, because that was at a weekly every Sunday, a walk to the cemetery to talk to grandmother.

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rena czaplinska-archer: My mother had conversations with her mother

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rena czaplinska-archer: and we were witnessing, not not officially, not doing priest things is like us. But let's pick up some flowers for grandma.

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rena czaplinska-archer: and that gave an opportunity to the whole family to go for a walk and park.

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rena czaplinska-archer: and what can talk often was about the ancestors, and otherwise about whatever. When I went to London, came back from London. I had to report during those walks

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rena czaplinska-archer: what happened there.

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rena czaplinska-archer: I have

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rena czaplinska-archer: I have since I semi around over 70 now and have semi-retired. I have

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rena czaplinska-archer: if well.

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rena czaplinska-archer: first of all, I have been part of the writing group as well, which has been with Joyce, which has been focusing on ancestor stories for ever, and I have really enjoyed itself, being part of that for about 15 years.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Every month. Once a month, we meet and write about stories from childhood, and from what we remember my sense about when the various rumors were happening in my life has always been

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rena czaplinska-archer: asking the question, throwing it at the net. I call it like a cobweb cobweb of ancestors out there, and I have in my improvised theatre performances which I have been doing for the last 1015 years with my group of people, I have actually used that

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rena czaplinska-archer: imaginary situations of my ancestors getting on the boat and troubling

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rena czaplinska-archer: up to

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rena czaplinska-archer: past Africa, which I don't know anything about, but I know that there was ancestors from from S,

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rena czaplinska-archer: from Strasbourg, who were very involved in Prussian prank of Prussian war, and which caused me to then become very interested in the history of that.

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rena czaplinska-archer: discovering lots of things, and wanted to spend time during covet. Now, what I am doing is I have been

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rena czaplinska-archer: well, I've been teaching in architecture, faculty, design, and history, and so on.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Think that I became very interested in is teaching art and drawing. The art of seeing, I call it the art of seeing, and part of these courses was always about

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rena czaplinska-archer: identifying that what we draw, what our hands draw.

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rena czaplinska-archer: and not just coming out of us, as with saying, those bones have been formed by generations of ancestors, and when you turn your line this way or that way.

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rena czaplinska-archer: they speaking

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rena czaplinska-archer: and

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rena czaplinska-archer: Some people who have done this, I have had people from different countries coming to my workshops who have really

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rena czaplinska-archer: commented on the fact that when we were doing those exercise very simple exercise, but gestural jetral response to what we drawing

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rena czaplinska-archer: from the imagination or otherwise? That suddenly the room filled in with

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rena czaplinska-archer: the room filled in with with ancestors, and they felt very different. I do myself now what I have been doing for the last few years, 4, 5, 6 years

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rena czaplinska-archer: is going to the desert. I have found this whole thing about English

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rena czaplinska-archer: adopt by by accepting Australian passport. I have accepted the Australia, the English.

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rena czaplinska-archer: the English. Oh, sorry.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Somebody's calling me no can you hear me.

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rena czaplinska-archer: Can you hear me? Yeah. So by accepting Australian passport, I have actually

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rena czaplinska-archer: got myself

391
00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:39.690
rena czaplinska-archer: into the mud of what the English

392
00:44:39.730 --> 00:44:43.590
colonists have done coming here. and my

393
00:44:43.620 --> 00:44:47.610
rena czaplinska-archer: my questions with my friend Maori about my

394
00:44:48.410 --> 00:45:06.800
rena czaplinska-archer: racist attitudes, who, I was thinking, oh, well, the aborigines that I worked with asked me to work with them because they called me clean skin, which meant I didn't have these stories. But my Maori friend was saying, Well, you you better check it out. Not necessarily that you killed anybody or did something nasty, but

395
00:45:06.910 --> 00:45:12.159
rena czaplinska-archer: starting, and so I'm digging it up. I'm going to the desert. I have just come back from

396
00:45:12.470 --> 00:45:31.050
rena czaplinska-archer: Flinders, which I have been first time. Otherwise I go twice a year to file this gap, which is a research station where I search for a history of aboriginal background by looking up local people and their stories, and looking at the stories of the

397
00:45:31.090 --> 00:45:34.839
rena czaplinska-archer: explorers, which are quite like fairy stories.

398
00:45:35.120 --> 00:45:36.950
rena czaplinska-archer: not as good as Tolstoy.

399
00:45:37.240 --> 00:45:48.640
rena czaplinska-archer: It's very superficial the way that they were put together, and quite strange and and kind of trying to find myself with all my network of

400
00:45:48.840 --> 00:45:55.120
rena czaplinska-archer: Drasnette, whatever it is, cobweb of my ancestors in here and find somehow.

401
00:45:55.910 --> 00:46:01.040
rena czaplinska-archer: yeah, like looking. Who am I with in that sort of soup is a soap

402
00:46:01.060 --> 00:46:21.379
rena czaplinska-archer: which I which I'm now that I have been more time I'm spending. I go to the desert painting, so that's the reason. But the painting gives me opportunity. I run workshops there for people who are interested I call call it desert calling. The the desert is calling. It's not just the desert is calling. It's ancestors calling.

403
00:46:21.490 --> 00:46:25.289
rena czaplinska-archer: and not necessarily, you know. It's like we are in their land.

404
00:46:25.490 --> 00:46:32.979
rena czaplinska-archer: and to discover what they saying and to actually discover who you are, who we are.

405
00:46:33.110 --> 00:46:35.769
rena czaplinska-archer: We need to get into conversation.

406
00:46:35.800 --> 00:46:41.579
rena czaplinska-archer: maybe, with Buddha. I've done that for years 10 years at the what. But maybe.

407
00:46:41.750 --> 00:46:53.570
rena czaplinska-archer: you know, bit more grounded in the reality of where I am now, which is file is gap broken heel every we every year, every April, every September.

408
00:46:53.770 --> 00:46:55.909
rena czaplinska-archer: October. I am there for 3 weeks

409
00:46:56.350 --> 00:46:59.949
rena czaplinska-archer: and the questions I've been asking is

410
00:47:00.130 --> 00:47:05.820
rena czaplinska-archer: desert calling. Why is it calling? What does it say? And

411
00:47:05.960 --> 00:47:11.839
rena czaplinska-archer: II just wanted to contribute this because this conversation has really stood up my

412
00:47:12.130 --> 00:47:18.280
rena czaplinska-archer:  kind of intuitive sense about what I'm doing there

413
00:47:18.740 --> 00:47:19.809
rena czaplinska-archer: and here.

414
00:47:20.080 --> 00:47:23.060
rena czaplinska-archer: and my sense of feeling

415
00:47:23.110 --> 00:47:24.900
rena czaplinska-archer: been lost in all this.

416
00:47:24.920 --> 00:47:27.240
and my sense of finding something

417
00:47:27.270 --> 00:47:28.780
rena czaplinska-archer: finding myself.

418
00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:34.659
rena czaplinska-archer: And now suddenly the conversation about the ancestors gives me a whole

419
00:47:35.050 --> 00:47:42.450
rena czaplinska-archer: bunch of people in the room, sinking on similar wet wavelengths and helping me to articulate it

420
00:47:42.620 --> 00:47:48.730
rena czaplinska-archer: probably a bit better. So when my right, my next flyer for next April fifteenth.

421
00:47:49.090 --> 00:47:56.760
rena czaplinska-archer: it might actually say more clearly, why, we're going there, and what we are looking for. Thank you. Thank you, Rena.

422
00:47:57.500 --> 00:47:59.110
Winton: It was.

423
00:47:59.690 --> 00:48:06.890
Winton: I'm just wondering whether we should we, whether we should break, and we come back to Ben.

424
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:09.879
Winton: Margaret. Hmm.

425
00:48:10.140 --> 00:48:13.810
Winton: okay, so you'll be the person

426
00:48:14.200 --> 00:48:26.750
Winton: horses off the rain close Texas, off the rank. Okay? So let's come back in. let's get come back in 25 min. It's 3, 30.

427
00:48:29.330 --> 00:48:30.969
Winton: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

428
00:48:31.070 --> 00:48:39.249
Winton:  so we had some questions left over from

429
00:48:39.490 --> 00:48:43.300
Winton: before the break margaret Tim, yeah.

430
00:48:43.710 --> 00:48:45.930
Robert, migrant. aye.

431
00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:49.989
Winton: the question for your own.

432
00:48:50.120 --> 00:48:56.009
Winton: I just wanted to say something about

433
00:48:56.820 --> 00:48:59.529
Winton: the importance of cultural heritage

434
00:49:00.070 --> 00:49:02.650
Winton:  taking

435
00:49:03.020 --> 00:49:09.900
Winton: the Japanese music as an example. I've been studying the

436
00:49:10.320 --> 00:49:16.799
Winton: Japanese bamboo flute, the Shakohaci in the last 20 years, and

437
00:49:17.340 --> 00:49:23.860
Winton: there are a number of lineage, and they're taken very seriously. So

438
00:49:23.980 --> 00:49:34.119
Winton: the repertoire, the the similar repertoire, but each lineage plays the style and the approach is quite different.

439
00:49:34.370 --> 00:49:36.160
And

440
00:49:37.060 --> 00:49:52.119
Winton: for my the lineage I'm studying with. We're kind of a new lineage, but but actually, for every lineage you know who the masters are who started it, how it's evolved.

441
00:49:52.330 --> 00:49:55.010
Winton: and with ours.

442
00:49:55.540 --> 00:49:57.109
Winton: We

443
00:49:57.220 --> 00:50:04.780
Winton: with my teacher. I'm constantly reminded of how Peace Teacher

444
00:50:05.030 --> 00:50:13.659
Winton: and his teacher's teacher taught. and what their philosophy was, and what their approach was.

445
00:50:13.780 --> 00:50:30.370
Winton: and the gratitude is always there that some how this lineage was started? Wasn't our teacher a genius? How he managed to transcribe the music because it was all a

446
00:50:30.600 --> 00:50:41.650
Winton: it wasn't a written tradition to start with. Yeah. So lineages are really important. And I'm just thinking that

447
00:50:41.770 --> 00:50:44.930
Winton: much the same in the Buddhist

448
00:50:45.060 --> 00:50:51.440
Winton: lineages and we may be forming a lineage right here.

449
00:50:51.910 --> 00:50:52.630
Thank you.

450
00:50:53.870 --> 00:51:00.440
Winton:  and winton, we have someone in meg's household over there

451
00:51:00.460 --> 00:51:16.930
Winton: fe for everyone still appreciate it. Makes household. There are 6 people, one from Japan, 2 from New Zealand, one from Queensland, one from New South Wales, and one from South Australia, so they've got their own little workshop center. Hi, everybody! We could see all you waving to us, and we're kind of waving back.

452
00:51:16.940 --> 00:51:22.769
Winton: so you'll have to tell us the name of the person who's asking the question, so we can relate to

453
00:51:22.790 --> 00:51:31.719
Meg: thanks with, yes, I'm the one from adelaide. In this

454
00:51:31.890 --> 00:51:53.810
Meg: we yes, we're really delighted to have our Sangha here all together, and being able to zoom in into this talk that this week, and thank you all for the great talks, and so on. So my question is in relation to the notion of the ancestors. And

455
00:51:53.870 --> 00:52:01.310
Meg: I speak as a person who is part of what Rena refer to before Colonial.

456
00:52:01.410 --> 00:52:06.189
Meg: You know a colonial society I live in. I'm one of those settlers, and in my

457
00:52:06.370 --> 00:52:12.149
Meg: my family. We never talked. All the ancestors, I,

458
00:52:12.740 --> 00:52:17.830
Meg: you know, disappeared, and there was no speak speaking of them.

459
00:52:17.840 --> 00:52:25.009
Meg: and secondly, the in a way. I'm sad about the lack of ancestors, too, I think.

460
00:52:25.190 --> 00:52:31.190
Meg: with the referendum those of us who live in Australia had

461
00:52:31.330 --> 00:52:36.480
Meg: had an opportunity in a way to and and deepen the connections

462
00:52:36.490 --> 00:52:48.220
Meg: with the people of this country peoples of this country. And and it said that we, you know, find ways around with what to do with that.

463
00:52:48.590 --> 00:52:59.959
Meg: And that's part of my question is, I understand from what you've been saying. Winton, and also others have been saying, too. Is that in part? Yes, it's not just one's blood kin.

464
00:53:00.180 --> 00:53:22.830
Meg: But I have this experience of once knowing a man from Cairo who he, you know he was a Coptic. And he said to me one time, you know, it means I. That's what he's told me, anyway, that it was like 6,000 years old, and I said, Do you have any idea what it means to be outside? You've got that, and you know, for mine. I don't know, he said.

465
00:53:22.970 --> 00:53:25.879
Meg: Decades, or maybe a hundred years at most.

466
00:53:26.580 --> 00:53:34.900
Meg: I understand, too, that what you're saying is, it's the ancestors, in a sense, that we acknowledge who have contributed.

467
00:53:34.940 --> 00:53:38.039
Meg: but it feels to me something really

468
00:53:38.630 --> 00:53:44.779
Meg: fragile about that creation of the ancestors. There is a sense

469
00:53:44.840 --> 00:53:51.259
Meg: in which the blood ancestors or the long standing cultural ancestors

470
00:53:51.680 --> 00:53:58.800
Meg: kind of have a strength that the ones that I might recognize as my ancestors of the

471
00:53:59.250 --> 00:54:08.210
Meg: you know of the feminists, for example, who, I feel really strongly, have been ancestors for many and contributed

472
00:54:09.140 --> 00:54:11.730
Meg: world I now inhabit.

473
00:54:12.090 --> 00:54:24.199
Meg: I I'd like you to talk a little bit more, if you if you would, about the experience of being, you know, in the mud of the colonial but in the and in its sort of

474
00:54:24.510 --> 00:54:25.190
okay.

475
00:54:25.480 --> 00:54:35.409
Meg: you know, a lack of opportunity to claim, you know, to live with that as part of the conditions of our

476
00:54:35.470 --> 00:54:38.159
Meg: how wise of living now. Thanks.

477
00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:41.519
Winton: thank you. Suzanne.

478
00:54:41.760 --> 00:54:52.640
Winton: as she was speaking at theory, jumped into my head. That one of the I mean II have the same experience. I mean, I'm fifth generation

479
00:54:52.680 --> 00:54:56.629
Winton: born in New South Wales. And

480
00:54:57.220 --> 00:54:57.930
but

481
00:54:58.210 --> 00:55:06.750
Winton: there's something incredibly discontinuous about my family history. My parents

482
00:55:06.840 --> 00:55:24.019
Winton: never talked about their parents. They never showed us with our where their parents were buried, and it was. It was as if they just sort of full fallen from outer space, and

483
00:55:24.050 --> 00:55:40.340
Winton: I mean, my theory is that it has to do with but as so much else in this country, with the aboriginal genocide which has been very effectively swept under the carpet.

484
00:55:40.620 --> 00:56:01.889
Winton: You know the the bill standards coinage. The great Australian silence. Comes to mind, you know that that you don't really want to talk about, for instance, what our ancestors were doing in the nineteenth century, because it was horrendous.

485
00:56:01.950 --> 00:56:12.950
Winton: and in the 19 forties. There was quite a campaign, you know, to to, as it was put very genteelie

486
00:56:12.970 --> 00:56:21.220
Winton: to draw avail over the past. Because the past was very upsetting.

487
00:56:21.450 --> 00:56:23.480
Winton: And

488
00:56:23.740 --> 00:56:43.780
Winton: it it. This is. This is a very common post genocide situation. It it's a very you know. It's a very clever like clever. It's probably not the right word, because it suggests intention, but but it is a very effective way of denying.

489
00:56:44.000 --> 00:56:50.069
Winton: What what has happened often think of

490
00:56:50.180 --> 00:56:59.259
Winton: you, the the the kind of counterfactual of what the what many progressive Germans have done

491
00:56:59.320 --> 00:57:06.129
Winton: with the movement of what they call the gang and hearts for Beltigum, which is

492
00:57:06.230 --> 00:57:11.089
Winton: coming to terms with the past in a way they had no choice.

493
00:57:11.130 --> 00:57:13.960
Winton: That, you know, is after the Neurovote trial.

494
00:57:14.190 --> 00:57:27.999
Winton: It was absolutely clear beyond any doubt what had happened. During the Nazi period there was no room for denial, and after the Cold War, when

495
00:57:28.590 --> 00:57:36.289
Winton: the Western Allies allowed it, they could actually look at their past, they could actually try and come to terms with it.

496
00:57:36.410 --> 00:57:46.350
Winton: and, you know, often look for signs of a if the Gangenheart's Vaveltigum here in Australia, it's some of it's coming up now.

497
00:57:46.390 --> 00:57:51.750
Winton: you know, with Dean Ashton's book last year on my old town.

498
00:57:51.800 --> 00:58:00.440
Winton: Hometown, Tennant Creek, and then, more recently, David Mars account of his great great grandfather's mass murders

499
00:58:00.450 --> 00:58:04.630
Winton: in in Queensland, and

500
00:58:04.790 --> 00:58:11.679
Winton: but it seems to me that that you know our our set of colonial ancestors

501
00:58:11.710 --> 00:58:17.469
Winton: may really be a very disruptive influence if we

502
00:58:17.570 --> 00:58:32.409
Winton: let them, if they let if we let them speak, if we if we get their stories out. And so maybe you know this, this may be something that's common to other settler Colonial society

503
00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:45.839
Winton: in North and South America, but I don't know, but it certainly seems to be the case here that that our nineteenth century ancestors might be very dubious characters.

504
00:58:45.890 --> 00:58:59.020
Winton: and we really don't want to know. You know, they used to say in in the Goon show. I don't wish to know that. and I think it might be that may have something to do with it.

505
00:59:00.120 --> 00:59:04.019
Meg: So thanks, Wynden, and so what do we do in the

506
00:59:04.130 --> 00:59:06.070
Meg: no, that's it.

507
00:59:06.240 --> 00:59:09.380
Meg: What we do in the face of that, of course, is

508
00:59:09.990 --> 00:59:17.999
Meg: it? I think you're? I think I just wanted to add to it. I think we are in a much better position away that people are doing the work.

509
00:59:18.140 --> 00:59:29.189
Meg: and and people like Linda Ryan, as well, you know, are doing doing that work of bringing those stories to live, but those in in this context, where we want to use your own.

510
00:59:29.240 --> 00:59:33.900
Meg: the value of being able to honor ancestors.

511
00:59:35.330 --> 00:59:38.469
Meg: we end up being very selective about them, don't we?

512
00:59:38.600 --> 00:59:40.200
Winton: Yes, yes, we do.

513
00:59:40.370 --> 00:59:41.080
Hmm.

514
00:59:41.310 --> 00:59:42.330
Meg: thank you.

515
00:59:43.770 --> 00:59:46.860
Winton: And I'm Carol. Thank you.

516
00:59:49.260 --> 00:59:53.370
Winton: Tim. Tim wants to. Tim's been wavering

517
00:59:53.500 --> 01:00:05.240
Winton: all this to make you feel better. Sorry. I just listening to Rina, speak oh, and a few others reminds me of

518
01:00:05.250 --> 01:00:08.890
Winton: kind of a turning point in my life when I

519
01:00:09.730 --> 01:00:21.190
Winton: had this experience of speaking to my descendant, if you like. It was one of those Joanna may see workshop things where you had to sit in pairs, and

520
01:00:21.870 --> 01:00:25.259
Winton: the person opposite me had to act like.

521
01:00:25.350 --> 01:00:36.140
Winton: you know, she was born in 2090 or something, and she had to read out. She had to speak to me about what it was like living in my time.

522
01:00:36.540 --> 01:00:47.550
Winton: and she said, Oh, you know, ancestor, you know I'm alive now. We we don't have anywhere near as many species that you had on the face of the earth.

523
01:00:47.590 --> 01:00:49.569
Winton: You know we have

524
01:00:50.120 --> 01:00:53.939
Winton: very limited water supplies, but we have them.

525
01:00:53.990 --> 01:00:58.719
Winton: you know. Our our forests are very diminished, but we we still have them.

526
01:00:58.810 --> 01:01:08.900
Winton: And anyway, you can get the picture she describes what their life is. And she said, You know we we heard that during your time.

527
01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:19.630
Winton: It was a time of great, the great turning where life on earth was threatened. and it looked like it would become extinct.

528
01:01:19.800 --> 01:01:31.700
Winton: But we hear that you and or your the people of your generation got together and prevented this great destruction, this great echo side.

529
01:01:32.070 --> 01:01:38.890
Winton: And I just want to say I'm grateful for that. We we have a very changed world. But

530
01:01:39.020 --> 01:01:42.409
Winton: some of us are still here, and

531
01:01:42.870 --> 01:01:54.199
Winton: but what I want from you is to hear, what did you do in order for the world to be still here, and all these creatures not to be extinct. What did you do?

532
01:01:54.630 --> 01:01:58.939
Winton: And this was back at the dharma gathering in. I don't know 2010, or something.

533
01:01:59.450 --> 01:02:05.299
Winton: and you know I still get shivers thinking about it, of talking to this younger person than me.

534
01:02:05.340 --> 01:02:10.229
Winton: saying, What did you do to save the world. and all I could say is, I recycled

535
01:02:10.550 --> 01:02:16.530
Winton: and rode a bike occasionally and signed petitions. You know it was.

536
01:02:16.730 --> 01:02:27.060
Winton: It just got me in the solar plexus. And I tell you often I fantasize about that. I imagine my descendants

537
01:02:27.360 --> 01:02:33.809
Winton: saying to me, I'm getting emotional thinking about it. What did you do, you know. And

538
01:02:34.290 --> 01:02:39.050
Winton: I wanna say I've got arrested multiple times.

539
01:02:39.480 --> 01:02:40.300
Winton: Philip.

540
01:02:42.390 --> 01:02:43.840
I don't take them

541
01:02:43.990 --> 01:02:53.370
Winton: alright. Thank you.

542
01:02:53.910 --> 01:03:02.280
Winton: There's a 2 part question. Okay, is there anything in the Buddhist literature being a data bank that forbids

543
01:03:02.790 --> 01:03:03.880
Winton: suicide.

544
01:03:06.020 --> 01:03:07.989
Winton: No, in fact.

545
01:03:08.120 --> 01:03:10.890
Winton: let's put it back. No, in

546
01:03:11.630 --> 01:03:17.070
Winton: Stephen might correct me about this, but there were a number of cases in the parley cannon

547
01:03:17.260 --> 01:03:18.389
Winton: where people

548
01:03:18.560 --> 01:03:21.720
Winton: did as it was called. Take the knife

549
01:03:21.940 --> 01:03:27.849
Winton: that means presumably slash the wrist and I did so

550
01:03:28.180 --> 01:03:28.930
have

551
01:03:29.670 --> 01:03:32.110
Winton: apparently with the with.

552
01:03:32.550 --> 01:03:34.450
Winton: without any

553
01:03:34.880 --> 01:03:48.460
Winton: objection from the Buddha, because they were incredibly sick and and in pain, and they had. They were, in my language, no longer going concerns, and they were in in extremists, and they

554
01:03:48.570 --> 01:03:53.729
Winton: took the knife. And indeed, there was a case of someone whose influence.

555
01:03:55.030 --> 01:04:04.909
Winton: I suppose now to Vera, who did? Who? Who committed suicide because he was in an impossible situation

556
01:04:05.520 --> 01:04:16.130
Winton: that was in 1965 memory. So there's there's there's no Clearly there would be

557
01:04:16.140 --> 01:04:23.250
Winton: a Buddhist objection to someone who was fully functioning and okay, committing suicide. But someone

558
01:04:23.270 --> 01:04:29.229
Winton: who was in a position like the ones you know, recent legislation

559
01:04:29.260 --> 01:04:44.730
Winton: who want to type, use voluntary, assisted, dying services. I can't imagine to be any Buddhist objection to that. Sorry I can't imagine there might be institutional Buddhist voices raised against it. But I don't think there's anything

560
01:04:44.770 --> 01:04:48.099
Winton: in the Buddhist tradition that would object to that

561
01:04:48.880 --> 01:04:53.260
Vivien Langford: the second part of the question is is based on that is that

562
01:04:54.260 --> 01:05:00.670
Winton: with the difficulty of exercising your own personal choice about your death.

563
01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:04.649
Winton: mostly based on Christian

564
01:05:05.260 --> 01:05:09.920
Winton: values. Okay, of preserving life, no matter what

565
01:05:10.810 --> 01:05:18.810
Winton: isn't there the option possibility of freedom of religion and using Buddhism as a way of

566
01:05:20.270 --> 01:05:23.199
Winton: getting choice in how you die.

567
01:05:25.020 --> 01:05:25.870
Well.

568
01:05:26.220 --> 01:05:27.510
Winton: II think

569
01:05:27.770 --> 01:05:32.749
Winton: the choice your ability to choose is not going to be based on

570
01:05:33.030 --> 01:05:39.080
Winton: religion, anyway. It's going to be based on, you know, secular law.

571
01:05:39.170 --> 01:05:46.140
Winton: and and really your own personal. your own personal ethics. I mean it it.

572
01:05:47.170 --> 01:05:53.200
Winton: I unless you're unless you're really rusted on, adherent to some

573
01:05:53.660 --> 01:06:00.469
Winton: religion or or other, in which case it really really matters to you. I don't see why

574
01:06:00.670 --> 01:06:04.159
Winton: religious attitudes should play in at all

575
01:06:04.990 --> 01:06:15.759
Winton: like I just went through a a a year and a half struggle with the administration over taking a particular drug.

576
01:06:19.570 --> 01:06:27.370
Winton: and it was horrendous, all right of knowing that the drug was very, very beneficial and slightly dangerous.

577
01:06:27.540 --> 01:06:31.160
Winton: No amount of me

578
01:06:32.230 --> 01:06:36.910
Winton: signing off responsibility, nothing, nothing was changing their mind.

579
01:06:38.920 --> 01:06:43.089
Winton: and I can imagine what that's like. If you've got somebody that's

580
01:06:44.910 --> 01:06:47.059
Winton: personally knows that there.

581
01:06:48.220 --> 01:06:50.809
Winton: what? For whatever reason, their life is

582
01:06:50.820 --> 01:06:57.760
Winton: at an end, and wanting to end it before it drains the family ex bank account.

583
01:07:01.060 --> 01:07:03.080
Winton: and that there's no way to do that

584
01:07:04.260 --> 01:07:07.039
Winton: legally. I'm sure there's lots of

585
01:07:07.400 --> 01:07:08.669
Winton: times where the

586
01:07:09.150 --> 01:07:15.510
Winton: morphine pump was left on the patient's bed. Okay, that kind of thing. But there's no legal way

587
01:07:16.090 --> 01:07:23.569
Winton: to end your life that doesn't require a terminal illness. 2 doctors approval, and 6 months.

588
01:07:23.710 --> 01:07:24.440
Hmm.

589
01:07:26.780 --> 01:07:28.130
Winton: and there are, should be.

590
01:07:29.930 --> 01:07:39.760
Winton: And it this should be, you know, if you ask most people about what their preferences is they? They want the choice to be able to choose when it's time for them to die.

591
01:07:40.390 --> 01:07:42.539
Winton: So what is stopping

592
01:07:45.830 --> 01:07:48.010
Winton: that overall

593
01:07:49.250 --> 01:07:54.610
Winton: population desire to get those kinds of laws in effect.

594
01:07:55.090 --> 01:08:00.409
Winton: And and is Buddhism, who, as is it? Part of the Buddhist

595
01:08:02.060 --> 01:08:06.709
Winton: part part of their Buddhism, is that there is no

596
01:08:08.990 --> 01:08:15.030
Winton: what? There's no laws. There's no rules that says you can't commit suicide.

597
01:08:15.820 --> 01:08:21.810
Winton: No? Well, as I said, is, I don't think there's any inhibition in. There's no inhibition

598
01:08:21.830 --> 01:08:29.190
Winton: built into Buddhist doctrine that would say, you can't. You can't take your life when

599
01:08:29.240 --> 01:08:34.799
Winton: your life has become unbearable, and you know there is no

600
01:08:35.020 --> 01:08:41.509
Winton: worthwhile future to it. As to why there aren't laws what laws

601
01:08:41.560 --> 01:08:51.459
Winton: are against it, I mean, that's just a really religious lobby. It's a what the religious mob religious lobby. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean

602
01:08:51.600 --> 01:08:56.049
Winton: Australian Christian Lobby, for instance, which is held held up

603
01:08:56.080 --> 01:09:11.409
Winton: these voluntary assistant dying laws for years and years and years, because they they command a sufficient number of votes to worry legislators that they may not be re elected if they passed

604
01:09:11.500 --> 01:09:16.689
Winton: the appropriate legislation. Eventually, I mean, this was despite the fact that for

605
01:09:16.870 --> 01:09:24.340
Winton: for a long, long time a majority of the population has wanted these laws according to opinion polling.

606
01:09:24.510 --> 01:09:34.180
Winton: But lobbies are very powerful things, you know, when they're when they're well organized. And the the Christian lobby held things up for quite a while. Yeah.

607
01:09:35.090 --> 01:09:36.970
okay, that is good.

608
01:09:38.180 --> 01:09:46.960
Winton: I just wanted to give a a different take on the ancestors. So a couple of years ago, I did a short course on the origins of life on Earth

609
01:09:47.100 --> 01:10:05.949
Winton: and how the earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago by 3.9 billion years ago did cool the enough for life to start developing and looking at self physiology. The biologists, the self physiologists, biologists that concluded

610
01:10:06.300 --> 01:10:12.009
Winton: that everything alive to day has descended from one

611
01:10:12.060 --> 01:10:29.950
Winton: individual cell. That was our single ancestor, that the first, the first primitive cell that actually gobbled up a vitro Chadrian kind of set the scene for the cell biology cell physiology that were all descended from that first cell.

612
01:10:30.080 --> 01:10:41.260
Winton: And so we share 50% of our genes with bananas. We we, we share 99.9 point something of our jeans with chimpanzees.

613
01:10:41.280 --> 01:10:46.180
Winton: And so our ancestors go back to the beginning of life.

614
01:10:46.350 --> 01:11:01.030
Winton: and we are related to every other life form on this planet. And I kind of you know, when you think of the interconnectedness of all things and our relationship with all things that's just such a beautiful perspective to actually understand.

615
01:11:04.840 --> 01:11:08.180
Winton: Thank you. And we will go to Vivian online.

616
01:11:09.040 --> 01:11:17.049
Vivien Langford: Yes, Hi, Winton, I'm a bit alarmed at your bonfire in January, January.

617
01:11:17.270 --> 01:11:28.890
Vivien Langford: We had a big bonfire in our family several generations ago, and there's no letters or diaries or photographs from some of my ancestors which I would love to have now.

618
01:11:28.930 --> 01:11:42.640
Vivien Langford: So, no matter what your daughters say, make it a bigger box, that's all I can say to you. But I also think this thing about. Like David Ma, writing, you find things you don't want to see, and we're well hidden for several generations.

619
01:11:43.230 --> 01:11:46.030
Vivien Langford: There's not just holocaust. It's all sorts of

620
01:11:46.080 --> 01:11:52.919
Vivien Langford: since, you know, the Empire Building. An Empire was terribly destructive, and people just patched it over.

621
01:11:52.970 --> 01:12:12.860
Vivien Langford: but I found that a way around that is sort of writing fiction, because I don't have so many documents of my family not just have this intuitive thing, even though part of me thinks there's going to be no future ancestors, they may be not many generations ahead. That's what I really feel. Looking at at the way things are going. So

622
01:12:12.940 --> 01:12:21.029
Vivien Langford: I have amused myself in the library, and the archives reading around where my ancestors came from, and what they

623
01:12:21.730 --> 01:12:34.619
Vivien Langford: what they would have been doing, and I've sort of constructed them as a series of letters to each other, you know long lost letters that were never received. It's sort of addressed to me in a way, and I'm sort of channeling.

624
01:12:34.930 --> 01:12:45.390
Vivien Langford: and some of them were missionaries. One of them was Black Bird, from the islands to the Queensland gold fields. No sugar fields, and I'm just trying

625
01:12:45.700 --> 01:12:54.090
Vivien Langford: to do that. And it's it's very instructive, because I find a huge compassion for all of them, because trying to look at the historical context.

626
01:12:54.230 --> 01:12:57.520
Vivien Langford: reading the newspapers of those days. And it's really.

627
01:12:57.830 --> 01:13:01.379
Vivien Langford: I just sort of realize we're all wandering in a sort of a

628
01:13:01.940 --> 01:13:12.579
Vivien Langford: a mist. Don't you know people in their own time don't get it. What they're doing, really. I you know this culpability is so easy to judge when you write history.

629
01:13:13.020 --> 01:13:22.369
Vivien Langford: villains, and so on. But I just feel if if you're looking back trying to think what the ancestors were trying to send to you.

630
01:13:22.680 --> 01:13:26.080
Vivien Langford:  There's a lot of room for compassion as well.

631
01:13:28.050 --> 01:13:32.750
Winton: Yes, I'll just to put your mind at rest. I won't be.

632
01:13:33.290 --> 01:13:41.509
Winton: you know, burning anything. I live in a flat, so I can't third anything anyway but the but the

633
01:13:42.270 --> 01:13:49.620
Winton: I won't be burning anything that of, you know historical words. But if you read

634
01:13:49.770 --> 01:14:05.180
Winton: David Marr's book killing for country about his great great grandfather. and look at the sources he's used, you you can certainly find out what they were up to. You know, he he used a lot of

635
01:14:05.390 --> 01:14:16.870
Winton: Yeah, archived local newspapers. You know that these newspapers quite frankly, recorded the massacres that

636
01:14:16.970 --> 01:14:21.299
Winton: great great granddad had perpetrated. And

637
01:14:21.310 --> 01:14:25.620
Winton: and and it's all there in black and white, you know, I mean people how

638
01:14:26.090 --> 01:14:30.299
Winton: they weren't covering their tracks

639
01:14:30.470 --> 01:14:35.650
Winton: back then. But I think you know, even when you've got innocent

640
01:14:37.240 --> 01:14:42.990
Winton: and antecedents, you can find out what was going on in the newspapers, I mean, I dug up from

641
01:14:43.010 --> 01:14:47.240
Winton: Trove a few years ago.

642
01:14:47.450 --> 01:14:50.589
Winton: an anonymously long article about

643
01:14:50.610 --> 01:15:11.699
Winton: how would my grandfather cease to be the town clerk of Naranda and the mayor and the local member, and everybody had a big dinner party, and there were speeches which were jet just were, which were recounted more or less, word for word in the local Reg, and it's on trove, you know. It's it's like

644
01:15:11.740 --> 01:15:22.199
Winton: so there's there, there, you know, no matter how much of personal stuff you burn, it's probably on trove, anyway.

645
01:15:23.560 --> 01:15:30.629
Winton: Oh, thanks, thanks very much. Yeah. I want to talk about the the ancestor

646
01:15:30.990 --> 01:15:48.670
Winton: ideal concept in in relation to chosen family, where, as I do. I'm married to a woman. We have 2 daughters who are not genetically related at all. And so we have kind of constructed our own family, and we have a a broad network of people who

647
01:15:49.220 --> 01:15:52.269
Winton: constitute our family. And just

648
01:15:52.600 --> 01:16:01.909
Winton: again. don't burn too much in the box, or whatever you do with it, because because the the sort of those kinds of

649
01:16:03.180 --> 01:16:08.669
Winton: that kind of information and knowledge can get lost really easily when there is not the sort of conventional genetic

650
01:16:08.850 --> 01:16:13.790
Winton: thread to follow. And just one of the things that's been really kind of

651
01:16:13.990 --> 01:16:40.550
Winton: fantastic. Certainly in Sydney is the gay and Lesbian archive which has got this incredible trove of of material. There's been donated by people, and I was just talking to Amy talking to Amy earlier. You know just just about how much, how much history there, which which is about things, you know, shared history like the Aids crisis, where? Which was an absolute coming together and creation of family that was non-biological where people were caring for people. And it's just.

652
01:16:40.940 --> 01:16:43.630
Winton: I think those sorts of

653
01:16:44.200 --> 01:16:54.839
Winton: archives also, whether whether they're familiar and then get get donated to something like the gay and lesbian archive. It's it's just such a crucial history. And I think increasingly in in, you know, this, this

654
01:16:55.030 --> 01:16:58.500
Winton: gender fluid non-binary

655
01:16:59.160 --> 01:17:14.680
Winton: world we are developing. That is developing where, increasingly, people are choosing their own families. I think maybe there'll be new ways of of recording those sorts of lineages. And yeah, I just so, yeah, I just wanted to.

656
01:17:14.990 --> 01:17:21.350
Winton: yeah. put that on the table as something that's really, really kind of important to to factor in.

657
01:17:21.670 --> 01:17:26.160
Winton: Yes, thanks, Jessica. And arena online.

658
01:17:26.550 --> 01:17:29.940
rena czaplinska-archer:  am I unmuted? Can you hear me?

659
01:17:30.980 --> 01:17:31.959
rena czaplinska-archer: Can you hear me?

660
01:17:32.190 --> 01:17:32.870
Hmm!

661
01:17:33.610 --> 01:17:37.770
rena czaplinska-archer: We can hear you. Oh, good! So

662
01:17:38.220 --> 01:17:47.399
rena czaplinska-archer: I just wanted to go back to something we talked about yesterday which was or maybe couple of days ago, about connection to country

663
01:17:48.120 --> 01:17:55.749
rena czaplinska-archer: and our disconnection from country. our disconnection from the earth, our disconnection from the body

664
01:17:55.990 --> 01:17:57.160
rena czaplinska-archer: disembodied.

665
01:17:57.470 --> 01:18:08.320
rena czaplinska-archer: There! There is a lot of practicing which I benefited from sitting for years at the what. And all this meditation practices, where

666
01:18:08.780 --> 01:18:15.060
rena czaplinska-archer: first thing was mindfulness of the body. I really liked it being hyperactive, I had a lot to watch

667
01:18:15.160 --> 01:18:21.110
rena czaplinska-archer:  a lot of movement and and I took it further. But

668
01:18:21.250 --> 01:18:27.449
rena czaplinska-archer: My particular interest in desert is that

669
01:18:29.340 --> 01:18:32.549
rena czaplinska-archer: And aboriginal culture is

670
01:18:33.400 --> 01:18:34.920
rena czaplinska-archer: that

671
01:18:35.770 --> 01:18:39.420
rena czaplinska-archer: that disc! I have found myself

672
01:18:39.670 --> 01:18:47.050
rena czaplinska-archer: really suffering, disconnect, severe disconnect. coming in here again as an adventure

673
01:18:47.070 --> 01:18:53.209
rena czaplinska-archer: at the age of 31. With a phg. From from Europe, from London, and

674
01:18:53.360 --> 01:19:00.080
rena czaplinska-archer: and in architecture and history of architecture. And so I'll just play.

675
01:19:00.100 --> 01:19:16.799
rena czaplinska-archer: But I found myself grounded in here and now this is my country, and I'm wanting to befriended and to befriended. I need to put bit more roots and to put bit more roots. I want to sense it. What it is. I don't want to put my roots into some stuff that I don't want to be.

676
01:19:17.020 --> 01:19:29.330
rena czaplinska-archer: but of course I have no control over that. But you know, we we choose where we live and how we live. I have written about problem of heritage, and people

677
01:19:31.060 --> 01:19:35.100
rena czaplinska-archer: having problems with heritage. They have people have heritage.

678
01:19:35.520 --> 01:19:51.550
rena czaplinska-archer: a background when they come from Italy or Greece, or somewhere. They like the stories of their families, but they find very hard to relate to heritage here now, when I when I've been dealing with Heritage and here people were telling me oh, you know that prison that's a heritage building. I'm not interested in

679
01:19:51.680 --> 01:19:53.599
rena czaplinska-archer: doing anything that's prisoners

680
01:19:53.610 --> 01:20:13.289
rena czaplinska-archer: or portals or something else. I'm more interested in modern architecture, and also in just ideas about this thing. But in particular, all these things. I just wanted to also mention the aboriginal welcome that we have been reciting every time is that we respect for eldest past.

681
01:20:13.510 --> 01:20:15.410
rena czaplinska-archer: present, and future.

682
01:20:15.950 --> 01:20:24.210
rena czaplinska-archer: So this is aboriginal. Traditional knowledge. Aboriginal knowledge is being aware of the ancestors

683
01:20:24.410 --> 01:20:25.519
rena czaplinska-archer: all the time.

684
01:20:27.010 --> 01:20:29.630
rena czaplinska-archer: and the biggest one is the earth

685
01:20:31.480 --> 01:20:33.860
rena czaplinska-archer: where I have just been in

686
01:20:34.070 --> 01:20:36.230
rena czaplinska-archer: Flinders, there is

687
01:20:36.240 --> 01:20:40.469
rena czaplinska-archer: a point of I can't remember what's called plates moving

688
01:20:40.820 --> 01:20:45.629
rena czaplinska-archer: and so there's a small graph recording around wiping out pan.

689
01:20:45.660 --> 01:20:53.920
rena czaplinska-archer: Just sort of old volcano. According to some, according to aboriginal, is not, according to aboriginal people. This is where the first

690
01:20:54.780 --> 01:20:57.149
rena czaplinska-archer: living cell was formed.

691
01:20:57.690 --> 01:20:59.840
rena czaplinska-archer:  and

692
01:21:01.050 --> 01:21:06.240
rena czaplinska-archer: the geologists are researching it, and they are actually confirming.

693
01:21:06.860 --> 01:21:11.389
rena czaplinska-archer: I can't remember. I thought it was 4.5 billion or 5 billion years ago.

694
01:21:11.880 --> 01:21:24.770
rena czaplinska-archer: And I'm going to those places. And I tell you what, something else like the echo echo is big, very, very, very different. II really like the idea that Stephen was talking about.

695
01:21:24.840 --> 01:21:26.580
rena czaplinska-archer: And that is a big

696
01:21:26.940 --> 01:21:30.450
rena czaplinska-archer: perspective, big perspective.

697
01:21:30.910 --> 01:21:39.910
rena czaplinska-archer: global view round the earth part of the whole creation. I'm yeah.

698
01:21:40.340 --> 01:21:49.749
rena czaplinska-archer: and the other thing is, somebody was talking about, how do we? How do we apply it? How do we apply our caring for the earth.

699
01:21:50.710 --> 01:21:56.020
rena czaplinska-archer: though caring for the earth when we don't? Yes, it.

700
01:21:57.340 --> 01:22:04.580
rena czaplinska-archer: Yeah. We have to. We have to experience and feel it. We have to fall in love with the earth.

701
01:22:04.810 --> 01:22:14.240
rena czaplinska-archer: and then, if we can, if we have no answers in here, we nobody told us we we slowly, slowly, and we might get it. That.

702
01:22:15.460 --> 01:22:28.319
rena czaplinska-archer: and of course one of the ways of doing it is Buddhist practitioners is sitting silence in an empty place. Not so empty, cousin. You found out you find when you go in the desert. It's not that empty at all. It's full

703
01:22:28.400 --> 01:22:36.800
rena czaplinska-archer: full of sounds and insects and everything else, but it allows their bigger perspective to reach me to touch me.

704
01:22:37.190 --> 01:22:43.479
rena czaplinska-archer: And there is this sense of the earth being able to whisper through my feet.

705
01:22:43.620 --> 01:22:56.819
rena czaplinska-archer: and I get something. It doesn't come straight. It doesn't come logically, doesn't have a good grammar, and doesn't don't know what language it is, but it comes. Something comes, and II don't know what it is, but something is talking, and I am really

706
01:22:57.020 --> 01:22:59.930
rena czaplinska-archer: wanting to share

707
01:22:59.940 --> 01:23:01.520
rena czaplinska-archer: learning that.

708
01:23:01.590 --> 01:23:09.239
rena czaplinska-archer: But because one thing is sitting on my own, I'm going crazy, perhaps because it's pretty kind of different.

709
01:23:09.410 --> 01:23:16.350
rena czaplinska-archer: When I come back from organizations. I am very much feeling different. Coming back to Sydney, I think. What

710
01:23:19.640 --> 01:23:22.020
rena czaplinska-archer: by comparison, you know.

711
01:23:22.440 --> 01:23:26.030
rena czaplinska-archer: it's anyway, something like that.

712
01:23:26.890 --> 01:23:29.730
Winton: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, rayna

713
01:23:30.770 --> 01:23:32.530
Winton: natissa

714
01:23:33.810 --> 01:23:40.170
Winton: I thank you, Rina, for that. I

715
01:23:40.260 --> 01:23:53.770
Winton: that was very powerful for me, and I want to thank. It's okay for what you said as well, I've carol beg your pardon. I've really struggled with this idea of ancestors. I was at a conference where

716
01:23:53.990 --> 01:24:04.629
Winton: 2 of the main speakers, who was a Compassion Conference, and they they were really into ancestor practice, and they put up these pictures of their grandparents, and they spent a long time

717
01:24:04.740 --> 01:24:15.219
Winton: talking about their grandparents and their history. And then they put up pictures of their kids and talked about their kids. And and you know how important parenting is for them.

718
01:24:15.550 --> 01:24:29.050
Winton: And I was at a table with on one side of me was this incredible transgender woman who'd been kind of severed from their family, and I don't have ties to my grandparents because of the

719
01:24:29.230 --> 01:24:39.450
Winton: complexity of family life and history, and I felt really excluded from the conversation about ancestors. Cause I was like, well, I don't know mine, and

720
01:24:39.570 --> 01:24:56.439
Winton: I don't have descendants directly, and it's felt really sad for a while, and I think something that's really landing for me, especially with this idea of like a deep time. Perspective on ancestry is giving me a lot of solace

721
01:24:56.560 --> 01:25:02.640
Winton: and making me feel again like I have a place, or I can belong in the chain of

722
01:25:02.780 --> 01:25:10.729
Winton: belonging or existence without it needing to be a kind of a personal family or an individual

723
01:25:10.870 --> 01:25:16.240
Winton: place, and I think. sort of responding to what Reno is saying, like

724
01:25:16.800 --> 01:25:42.030
Winton: coming back to a sense of kinship with like the more than human world, or decoupling our human centric way of thinking about ancestry and descendants for me opens this big kind of floodgates to well, then, you know I can be part of all of it, and my impact is can be part of all of it, like the big kind of misty everything.

725
01:25:42.350 --> 01:25:51.200
Winton: And that for me is like thank God, you know, because I think my grandfather was a real dickhead like.

726
01:25:51.640 --> 01:26:05.959
Winton: And I, yeah, that less human centric view, I feel is part of the answer to the question. Maybe Reno is giving about, how do we care again? And how do we bring

727
01:26:06.020 --> 01:26:09.410
Winton: life all of life into our moral circles?

728
01:26:11.150 --> 01:26:13.629
Winton: Yes, thanks very much for that. Yeah.

729
01:26:17.700 --> 01:26:19.270
Winton: thank you.

730
01:26:19.370 --> 01:26:25.380
Winton: It kind of follows on from Tessa and various people's comments.

731
01:26:25.440 --> 01:26:31.310
Winton: But it it's also getting back to. It's a question for both Steven and Winton. I guess.

732
01:26:31.570 --> 01:26:44.169
Winton:  something that you talked about, Steven 9 years ago when you were here quite a bit in quite a lot of your talks. You talked about having a sense of urgency.

733
01:26:44.430 --> 01:26:52.699
Winton: even when you sit down to sit like there's this minute, and only this minute. And then there's this minute and a sense of urgency.

734
01:26:52.810 --> 01:27:13.160
Winton: and I never, I guess, because it wasn't a talking retreat. I never got to really tease apart the essence of that. But then, hearing your your talk. both yours, Steven, and and your talk today, Winton, I guess my question is for for both of you, in whatever order you choose, is is really

735
01:27:14.140 --> 01:27:15.670
Winton: to what extent.

736
01:27:16.030 --> 01:27:18.670
Winton: in terms of being

737
01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:26.210
Winton: a good ancestor. Do you do? You have a sense of urgency.

738
01:27:26.810 --> 01:27:30.530
Winton:  still

739
01:27:30.730 --> 01:27:48.400
Winton: relative to 9 years ago? Or have you just sloped off and said I might just, you know, I'm gonna bow out, and that's it. Or is that sense of urgency? Now, to be good ancestor, and to think about your legacy and and your teaching beyond just your lin, your direct blood lineage. But

740
01:27:48.510 --> 01:27:49.540
Winton: to

741
01:27:50.200 --> 01:27:52.779
Winton: the world?

742
01:27:53.340 --> 01:28:04.100
Winton: Do you have that sense of urgency to be a good ancestor? And what what does that feel like being a sprightly 56 year old. I don't. I don't understand what it's like to be a

743
01:28:04.200 --> 01:28:07.290
Winton: septo. And Octo.

744
01:28:07.700 --> 01:28:19.179
Winton:  of course I don't actually remember what I said 9 years ago, so II have to take your I take you for your word.

745
01:28:19.950 --> 01:28:23.620
Winton: II mean, I'm sure I did say those things.

746
01:28:23.710 --> 01:28:26.110
Winton: I don't think I'd use that language now.

747
01:28:26.830 --> 01:28:35.329
Winton:  I think I'd probably use the language that Winton brought up this life. The idea of living life with greater intensity.

748
01:28:36.120 --> 01:28:40.819
Winton: That is something that I think becomes more and more

749
01:28:41.170 --> 01:28:43.749
Winton: urgent if you wish, in other words.

750
01:28:43.770 --> 01:28:48.159
Winton: and I don't think it's something that I consciously think about at all. I just find that

751
01:28:48.360 --> 01:28:54.570
Winton: think it has to do with the approaching of death. And of course the

752
01:28:55.040 --> 01:29:05.570
Winton: we have no idea when it's going to happen. and that was an idea that was drilled into me by my Buddhist training at a very young age. His certainty of death, uncertainty of his time.

753
01:29:06.370 --> 01:29:15.269
Winton: and that's the practice. I mentioned this morning that it probably had the greatest impact on me of all the meditations I did as a young Buddhist monk.

754
01:29:15.830 --> 01:29:17.810
Winton:  And

755
01:29:17.980 --> 01:29:26.010
Winton: I would explain that now I would express that now far more as just a deep sense of the

756
01:29:26.030 --> 01:29:34.240
Winton: of the, of the, of the preciousness of life. and the sheer wonder and mystery of being alive rather than not being alive.

757
01:29:34.710 --> 01:29:39.130
Winton: That to me is is very central to my practice, as it were.

758
01:29:39.160 --> 01:29:40.570
Winton: again

759
01:29:40.880 --> 01:29:45.259
Winton: refined and enhanced by my Zen practice. You know. What is this?

760
01:29:45.740 --> 01:29:50.100
Winton: I don't know. and the more that I do those practices.

761
01:29:50.170 --> 01:29:53.160
Winton: however, I formulate them that

762
01:29:53.510 --> 01:30:06.050
Winton: leaves me with, really a sense of joy in many ways. At the sheer extraordinaryness of having this opportunity to be here at all.

763
01:30:06.600 --> 01:30:12.680
Winton: and in terms of my work. I no longer think so much in terms of

764
01:30:13.210 --> 01:30:23.070
Winton: of of writing a particular book, or making a particular collage, or whatever it might be. But I do see my work now as a body of work.

765
01:30:23.270 --> 01:30:32.179
Winton: and I don't really see it is lots of separate projects. I see it now as a kind of home of a continuum.

766
01:30:32.420 --> 01:30:37.100
Winton: and I'm beginning to see where the end of that continuum might be. Actually.

767
01:30:38.310 --> 01:30:39.540
Winton: And so

768
01:30:39.550 --> 01:30:45.000
Winton: I do have a sense of urgency in the sense that I you know, I want to complete that body of work.

769
01:30:45.720 --> 01:30:53.159
Winton: But I also realized that if urgency becomes a kind of a putting, a putting myself under a lot of unnecessary pressure

770
01:30:53.370 --> 01:30:58.290
Winton: that's actually going to be counterproductive. And that's, I think, the probably the

771
01:30:58.710 --> 01:31:03.559
Winton: reticence I would have about using the word urgency, as it can often lead to kind of

772
01:31:03.960 --> 01:31:11.109
Winton: forcing a pushing that actually prevents the flow of life itself from

773
01:31:11.260 --> 01:31:15.760
Winton: doing these things in its own time, and allowing me to trust that

774
01:31:16.380 --> 01:31:20.459
Winton: that that's, you know. That's the way it really should be.

775
01:31:20.630 --> 01:31:27.739
Winton: I don't want to interfere in that process, and I'm letting go of that urgency in some senses I feel now.

776
01:31:30.640 --> 01:31:36.559
Winton: Yeah, II agree with all that, and I think the reason reason why I feel

777
01:31:38.610 --> 01:31:41.220
Winton: that that that I wouldn't

778
01:31:41.630 --> 01:31:52.179
Winton: enter into a feeling of urgency is that that disregards process, and I think the process is important. If I can go back to

779
01:31:52.430 --> 01:31:57.319
Winton: Canal scored, you know. 6 volume

780
01:31:57.370 --> 01:32:03.090
Winton: memoir, my struggle. One of the things that's interesting about

781
01:32:03.440 --> 01:32:09.780
Winton: how he did that was that he he was living his life while he was writing it. So

782
01:32:10.100 --> 01:32:12.340
Winton: you know, while he's having

783
01:32:12.400 --> 01:32:27.119
Winton: flashbacks, he's also dealing with you know problems it that are going on while he's writing. so he isn't. He doesn't putting his life on hold. But, on the contrary.

784
01:32:28.140 --> 01:32:34.769
Winton: the the life in in the present is helping him to sift

785
01:32:34.830 --> 01:32:36.430
Winton: and interpret

786
01:32:36.670 --> 01:32:39.790
Winton: what what happened in the past.

787
01:32:39.820 --> 01:32:42.600
Winton: and when Hegelund talks about this, he

788
01:32:42.650 --> 01:32:45.369
Winton: it contrasts that with Proust, too.

789
01:32:45.480 --> 01:32:47.700
Winton: who more or less went to bed

790
01:32:47.750 --> 01:32:52.560
Winton: and wrote to put his life on hold while he wrote.

791
01:32:52.800 --> 01:32:59.360
Winton: So while he was writing about the past there was virtually no present

792
01:32:59.470 --> 01:33:01.510
Winton: happening, and that

793
01:33:01.740 --> 01:33:03.059
Winton: didn't really

794
01:33:03.100 --> 01:33:10.180
Winton: help the help the process at all. So I mean, I haven't made much more of a sense, I mean, the intensity

795
01:33:10.260 --> 01:33:15.780
Winton: remains where I think the intensity is important. But there's a sort of

796
01:33:15.870 --> 01:33:23.300
Winton: unfolding that is going on when I mean of I'm writing memoirs to nothing like.

797
01:33:23.610 --> 01:33:31.790
Winton: But I'm I'm writing, you know, selective memoir memoirs of specific events, so

798
01:33:31.890 --> 01:33:33.750
Winton: specific topics.

799
01:33:33.820 --> 01:33:52.959
Winton: And it really does need to unfold it needs to, it needs to emerge. And every I mean just on a practical level. When I've written 3 or 4 5,000 words, I take it, to the right's group and kick it around, you know, and that helps me to get a

800
01:33:53.490 --> 01:33:54.680
Winton: get a foothold

801
01:33:54.770 --> 01:33:57.940
Winton: on the next on the next piece.

802
01:33:58.210 --> 01:34:06.930
Winton: So I think. Yeah, the intensity. Yes, I don't have a bucket list. I'm very happy not to have a bucket list to get in the way

803
01:34:07.100 --> 01:34:12.680
Winton: so you know, I and it could all end anytime.

804
01:34:12.780 --> 01:34:27.579
Winton: And obviously, that's okay. If it wasn't okay, would be okay no choice but there's but this kind of I don't really have.

805
01:34:28.350 --> 01:34:33.410
Winton: and horizon in terms of my my production. Obviously, I've got a

806
01:34:34.030 --> 01:34:43.360
Winton: you know, a horizon in the sense that in a recent conversation with my GP. She said, well, you can probably manage yourself

807
01:34:43.580 --> 01:35:01.289
Winton: well enough to get to 90, but after 90 all bets are off, you know, dropped it on the street. You can spine your sleep. We wouldn't have a clue what was going on, so you know I've got that sort of horizon. But I don't have a sense that

808
01:35:01.360 --> 01:35:05.510
Winton: that is that that any that I've got to complete anything.

809
01:35:07.940 --> 01:35:12.630
Winton: We've got 2 people online that have got a question first, is Leanne

810
01:35:15.810 --> 01:35:22.579
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): so thank you, and gratitude for being in the company of so many wise voices.

811
01:35:22.860 --> 01:35:29.649
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Really inspired with the depth of the conversation today.

812
01:35:29.750 --> 01:35:32.200
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): With

813
01:35:32.320 --> 01:35:37.590
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): talking about ancestors, and then, of course, following on from Renner's

814
01:35:37.920 --> 01:35:44.050
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): experiences. And the what I've interpreted

815
01:35:44.490 --> 01:35:50.839
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): from listening to her to day, and also based on experiences I've had. Is that transmission that's possible

816
01:35:50.950 --> 01:35:53.470
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): when? You

817
01:35:53.480 --> 01:35:56.339
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): on country? In nature.

818
01:35:56.610 --> 01:35:59.069
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and very receptive

819
01:35:59.350 --> 01:36:08.220
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country):  Years ago, when I started working in the Northern Territory with aboriginal communities, I read this book called Why

820
01:36:08.740 --> 01:36:11.209
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Warriors Lay Down and die.

821
01:36:11.870 --> 01:36:16.989
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And one of the things that really struck me about that book was

822
01:36:17.130 --> 01:36:32.449
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): about language, and how, with the loss of language, is the loss of the intellectual knowledge, and that spiritual knowledge. That high knowledge, whether a a. And like we've been sharing a lot

823
01:36:32.560 --> 01:36:36.900
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): through the philosophers here.

824
01:36:37.090 --> 01:36:40.750
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and or the reference to many philosophers here.

825
01:36:41.310 --> 01:36:42.270
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and

826
01:36:42.410 --> 01:36:48.410
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): moving on to something that happened recently, I was at Bob Brown. Gathering

827
01:36:48.510 --> 01:36:56.030
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Bob Brown foundation gathering for end for us and native forest logging.

828
01:36:56.230 --> 01:36:59.089
and Sue Higginson was there, and

829
01:36:59.200 --> 01:37:09.389
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): John Seed was there, and Bob Brown was there. But the day started with a local band, a group of musicians led by

830
01:37:09.610 --> 01:37:15.630
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country):  one of our local aboriginal men.

831
01:37:16.080 --> 01:37:23.970
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and they were singing in the Gambangia language. and I had never experienced

832
01:37:25.050 --> 01:37:26.000
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that

833
01:37:26.100 --> 01:37:28.780
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): in in a live performance before.

834
01:37:29.110 --> 01:37:30.300
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I was up

835
01:37:30.480 --> 01:37:43.610
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): the back of the Marquis sort of very sort of indiscriminately under the radar starting to move like I've I've and I couldn't stop the movement in my body. It was like, you know, the the great

836
01:37:43.670 --> 01:38:02.610
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Dream Time Serpent Razor, the great rainbow serpent was actually moving through my body, and I couldn't have stopped that movement if I wanted to, and it was quite an interesting experience, not an an unfamiliar one, but it was interesting in that I hadn't had it for a while, and

837
01:38:02.820 --> 01:38:05.680
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): as a result of that

838
01:38:06.300 --> 01:38:22.800
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): language, and that those rhythms, and you know the moving through my body. I felt something on a cellular level. You know, there was this activation on a cellular level, and there was a transmission of something which has

839
01:38:22.960 --> 01:38:27.509
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): changed me in the last month. With regards to my commitment

840
01:38:27.630 --> 01:38:29.799
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and my willingness to.

841
01:38:30.540 --> 01:38:41.100
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): as a solo traveller, integrate back into community and society and and really take this next step forward.

842
01:38:41.130 --> 01:38:51.219
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So I just wanted to share that experience as once again. you know, one of the ways where the change can be

843
01:38:51.340 --> 01:38:53.340
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): catalyzed.

844
01:38:53.770 --> 01:39:01.770
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and that Gambangia language, and that music did it, and it was it bypassed all

845
01:39:01.800 --> 01:39:05.679
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): thought process. It was happening from the ground up.

846
01:39:05.850 --> 01:39:07.150
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So thank you.

847
01:39:08.400 --> 01:39:10.280
Winton: Thank you very much for that.

848
01:39:10.720 --> 01:39:16.289
Winton: Lina. Yeah. Lena had one question as well. If you have got time.

849
01:39:16.490 --> 01:39:17.360
Winton: Okay.

850
01:39:17.610 --> 01:39:25.830
Lena: yes, II just wanted to go back to what Rena said. I really related to

851
01:39:25.950 --> 01:39:32.579
Lena: what you said, Rena. and your experience of the outback. When I

852
01:39:32.780 --> 01:39:49.240
Lena: when I first arrived in Australia, I lived my first year in Montisa. and I had a lot of contact with the Royal Flying Doctor service, and I went out to mine small mining communities

853
01:39:49.340 --> 01:39:56.179
Lena: and aboriginal settlements, and particularly one

854
01:39:56.230 --> 01:40:02.870
Lena: that was fantastic was going to Mornington Island. and I

855
01:40:03.380 --> 01:40:18.960
Lena: I felt like this is for me. This was real Australia. That's what I've found, because when I first arrived I came to Sydney, and that felt very strange to see, and a a sort of European city in the middle of Asia

856
01:40:19.340 --> 01:40:34.980
Lena: and I've stayed for a few months in Sydney and Melbourne, and then went to Mount Isa. and I thought that I was ready to leave if we didn't. If I didn't go to the outback

857
01:40:35.980 --> 01:40:37.720
Lena: and

858
01:40:38.880 --> 01:40:43.890
Lena: yeah, I had some wonderful experiences up there.

859
01:40:44.180 --> 01:40:51.130
Lena: and felt that sort of made me feel more connected to Australia as such.

860
01:40:51.180 --> 01:41:06.069
Lena: and but also when I bent back to Stockholm to visit and longing for my country. I'm longing for that nature as well, which is so different. It's completely different. And

861
01:41:06.070 --> 01:41:21.529
Lena: I stay so I feel like not disconnected. I used to find, you know, when I mean one play place. I'm disconnected from the other, but I also have my now in in both it feels

862
01:41:22.070 --> 01:41:28.240
Lena: and but II did think that I could. I really got also the

863
01:41:28.590 --> 01:41:39.320
Lena: how the aboriginal feels so connected with a nature. When I went back to Stockholm to a city, and I walked my childhood streets, and I think in

864
01:41:39.340 --> 01:41:48.559
Lena: when I Miss Sweden it's not so much the people. It's the nature it's being, you know, just being there, in a sense.

865
01:41:49.700 --> 01:41:51.160
Lena: And

866
01:41:51.710 --> 01:42:02.240
Lena: well, now, what what I do now is just in a very small way. Oh, what what was that? It felt like? I had magnets in my feet when I was walking the streets.

867
01:42:03.010 --> 01:42:12.929
Lena: and and that's when I felt it in my body, how it feels being so connected to the earth, even what? Even though I wasn't a city.

868
01:42:13.650 --> 01:42:28.280
Lena: And now I'm very involved in land care in the area where we live in Pyramont with that group. So that's just a small way of trying to care for the

869
01:42:28.730 --> 01:42:33.359
Lena: for the earth and where we live, even though it is in the city

870
01:42:33.390 --> 01:42:36.620
Lena: we're trying to bring back the bush to the city.

871
01:42:37.220 --> 01:42:43.010
Lena: So I did. That was just my comment, I don't have question.

872
01:42:43.630 --> 01:42:46.639
Winton: Thank you, Lena.

873
01:42:47.250 --> 01:42:53.499
Winton: it's a time to be free. Free time.

874
01:42:54.010 --> 01:42:57.820
Winton: so. and a

875
01:42:57.950 --> 01:43:03.739
Winton: guys waving at me. What? What? Yeah, I just wanted to make a quick announcement. All right. Okay,

876
01:43:04.200 --> 01:43:22.170
Winton: At the on the last day of the retreat a number of us are travelling back to Sydney by a train, and I'm sure a number of us are also heading back to car, are heading back to Sydney by train, and will be going past Wyong. Sorry Gosford train station. I put a sheet up on the board there

877
01:43:22.170 --> 01:43:36.579
Winton: for people to put their name down, either as someone who would like a lift back to Gospel station, or would be driving past Gosford Station, and could take one or more people with you and drop them off on the way. So if people, if they can

878
01:43:37.400 --> 01:43:50.130
Winton: take care of that, have a look at that. If you see people, if you can sort it out yourselves. Just cross your name off the list. In a couple of days time I will see who's still on the list, and talk to people and arrange. But if you can sort it out between monks yourselves

879
01:43:50.310 --> 01:43:51.240
Winton: right?

880
01:43:54.690 --> 01:44:02.499
Winton: Well, if you're driving back to Sydney, the most direct route is via Gosford Goss. The trains leave from Gosford, and go via Wild to.