The Bodhisattva ideal seems to me to be one in which one's viewpoint is turned inside out – from seeing the primary purpose of existence as care for self, to seeing this primary purpose as care for other. In the process “or more accuarately, moment” of my release from addiction, this is exactly the turning inside out process that began to take place – though I wasn't by any means aware of it at the time, and still struggle with the implications now.

This moment of understanding, that came while walking shakily along a corridor at the psychiatric ward in Truro, turned on the matter of trust. It was a sudden and quite unexpected realisation that the way to live was to trust life rather than hide from it – trust the process of change rather than strive to stop it. This coming to trust was probably the first time for many years that I had considered the other as anything more than a resource for the self, as having an existence of it's own – a realisation that I lived with others and an environment, that these others had feelings just like me, and that the environment supported us all alike.

I think feelings like these had been part of me in my childhood and youth, as I had a strong sense “one which grows, and which I am exploring” that the change in me was revealing a previous state rather than producing something new. Over the years this previous state had been hidden in alcohol and pills. Old ways die hard, but there was a noticeable lessening of anxiety in my first few months in the hostel. Before I'd been ranting and raving at my partner to get the house sold so that I could have my share and get myself properly settled. but now I noticed a patience to let things run their course.

I spent the time settling myself in these first few months, meditating, getting back into my music, and above all spending as much time as possible out in the countryside, especially in the area just west of Truro where my family comes from. There was a definite feeling of getting back to roots, back to a childhood state – as I done as a child, I now found special places out in the woods and fields and valleys which seemed important to me.

Gradually the notion crept on me that I would live my life very differently in the future, finding ways to keep myself settled as well as ways to help others – in a sense I felt lucky and wanted to give back what I had received. Not that I let go of the past easily – I kept finding myself hanging on to things that provided comfort. But circumstances forced me to let go of these things when the time was right – old relationships “including that with my partner – that I have still not fully let go of – not that I expect it to be resurrected, just that I still miss it deeply”, old ways of working, old priorities – all these started to move away.

I began to feel a certain absurdity in my old self–serving ways, and could only see real value in being of some sort of good to others. This state of mind in which other became the primary concern was not, however, entirely altruistic – I've come to see that my own change of mind simply led me to feel that different things were satisfying to my needs. Before the need was to help and protect myself, now it was to help and protect others. In a sense I was no less self–centred now than I was before – just that this self–centredness was doing good to myself and to others, where before it did good to myself at the expense of others. Obviously this made for a more compassionate state in the environment around me, and I wonder if the Bodhisattva ideal may not be seen as coming to this situation.

Eventually I left the hostel and had to face up to the question of what to do next. Part of this was answered by being able to take a lodger from the hostel at my house in Chacewater, and alongside this was the invitation to be the Service User Representative on the management committee of the hostels. I took the immediate decision that my house would be open to anyone who came along and, to the dismay “at first” of some of the neighbours, this involved several hostel residents dropping in for meals, coming to help “or just sit” in the garden, stay overnight if there was a problem etc. I found myself mixing with, being close to, people I would have positively avoided in the past. I also took to visiting the Truro hostel once a week to offer myself as an ear for residents problems – for the most part they don't have any, at least not ones I could help with – but once in a while I could do something useful, give a lift, help with a move to a new flat, just occasionally be a sounding board for someone going through a relapse or other serious problem.

All this is still going on “except the lodger – the house simply isn't big enough to allow someone else to live their own life here”, and as from next year I'll be visiting all the hostels “the St Petroc's Society runs four in various parts of Cornwall” once a month. The thing that struck me most in all this was how little I could actually positively help. I went in with grand ideas of really doing some good, but quite soon got the message that the best thing was just to be there – open, empty and listening – at best tacitly offering conditions and opportunities. I certainly didn't mind this fall from grandeur – in fact it seemed entirely right. If I listen to my own experience over the years, I can realise that the people who helped me most were not the ones who interfered, but the ones who silently offered me the opportunity and conditions for growth and change – the ones who allowed me to be me.

Indeed one of the primary feelings of my recovery is that I am now much more myself than I was before – so much of my past behaviour now seems to be to do with something I thought I was or was trying to be, rather than what I really am. I see this in those recovering in the hostel too – a gradual peeling away of facades and poses until the real person shines through. Perhaps I can help in this situation simply because I've been there myself and am now here. In other words I keep seeing myself in the people in the hostel – a reflection. It's a double reflection too in that I not only see myself in them, but also see myself in their stories of how they came to where they are as the protagonist of their suffering. I think perhaps suffering of this sort propagates itself through the generations until something changes its course.

I have a close relationship with Mike, the manager at the Truro hostel, and we have frequent discussions of addiction problems. Over the past three years the hostel has become almost solely a place for homeless people with addiction problems “the other hostels are not so specific in their intake”, and there is now a home de–tox scheme in operation at the hostel. The policy now is that no–one arriving at the door who wants to deal with their addiction problem is ever turned away – sometimes there are 8 or 10 people sleeping all over the place in the 6 bed hostel – and you're only asked to leave if there's no sign of any effort being made. The hostel is now quite a supportive community and environment for recovery – often residents will spend 6 to 9 months at the hostel – and the atmosphere is a mixture of quite stern regulation “there tends to be self–regualtion among the residents as well” and the warm atmosphere of a family home.

Care extends to ex–residents as well, and I've taken on some limited responsibility in this area. However good a hostel is as an environment “and the Truro hostel is a model of comfort and friendliness” it does become claustrophobic, and provokes a strong need sometimes to get away for a while. I certainly noticed this myself while I was in the hostel, and in the others who were there with me. For some while I'd been looking for a small area of land to cultivate, and this idea had gradually gelled into finding somewhere that would also serve as a meditation centre for the very disparate Buddhist groups in the area, as well as a place where residents and ex–residents of the hostel could come to get away for a while to work or relax in a very different environment. In January of this year, quite by chance, I came upon a one acre field with a derelict old agricultural barn on it – for some obscure reason I could see possibilities in the chaos, and bought it.

The barn itself was a set of telegraph poles loosely held together with flapping pieces of variously couloured and rusting corrugated iron. A large portion of the roof had fallen in, and the whole building – 60 feet long by 30 feet wide by 15 feet high – was jammed to the roof with an assortment of rubbish – sheets of rotting chipboard, old furniture, several wrecked bathroom suites, dozens of rotting doors. In the midst of all this was an old mobile burger–bar, and growing up amongst it all a forest of brambles. On the road side of the building was a rectangular wooden plinth, all that remained of a chalet that had been put up at the site without planning permission; and beyond it all a field of shoulder–high thistles. People, in general, thought I was mad.

Now some limited order has emerged from the chaos. The rubbish has all been removed from the building “though there's still a bonfire's worth lying around on the site”, the walls have been repaired or rebuilt with corrugated perspex and bituminous sheeting; holes in the roof have been stopped; a 30 foot by 11 foot meditation room has been made in the western section of the building and this now has weatherproof walls and roof, and a wood plank floor; and the burger–bar has been opened up and cleaned out as a very basic kitchen. The broken area of roof has been taken down, which provides a sunny courtyard at the east end of the building, and the chalet foundations have been largely dismantled to provide wood for the floor of the meditation room “the remaining section forms a terrace at the south of the building”.

There's still a large area of roof to be repaired, toilet facilities to put in, and absolutely no serious work has been done on the land – but the transformation is enormous, and people don't seem to think I'm quite as mad as they used to. The remarkable thing though isn't so much that the work has been done, but how it's been done, the ethos that has grown up around the place, and the genuine fulfilment that has been gained from doing it. So far the work has been done entirely by a few residents and ex–residents of the Truro hostel, a handful of local Buddhists, and a couple of other friends. As little money as possible has been spent “perhaps £400 on new materials and equipment”, and we've generally become very adept at putting scrap material to new uses. The backbone of the work force has been two ex–residents of the hostel, Tim and Dennis, neither of whom seems to have the slightest qualms about health and safety, torrential downpours, or working on into the half–dark of an autumn evening “though I do, on all three counts”. Both of them have said to me just how much they value the companionship and fulfilment that the place gives them – though neither of them would think of meditating or coming to a retreat or study group.

Only half–a–dozen hostel residents have come to the site, and those only quite sporadically – interest may increase or decrease as time goes by – but again it is a matter of providing conditions and opportunity, rather than interfering, that seems to be the right way to go. But perhaps most important at Concord Barn “as it is now called” is the ethos that has developed at the place – one that I can feel just by going there on my own. It's hard to describe, but inclusive and non–judgemental are the terms that spring to mind. It's become a place where anyone can go and just be themselves, within the parameters of the five precepts they can do just as they like. No–one tells anyone else how to behave, no–one is forced into a Buddhist or any other mould – everyone just becomes an equal human being just like everyone else when they come to the place – there is mutual respect and acceptance, a feeling of loving co–operation.

I think this may be coming close to compassion, and this spirit is something I value deeply at the barn. For me all this has felt like a time of great change – though I suppose in reality the rate of change remains constant, and this feeling of great change is just me catching up on the change that I tried to stop happening in the past. There's been a change from self–concern to other–concern, a realisation that caring for others is perhaps the best way to care for myself – or maybe there's no difference between the two. I've tried to learn the lessons of my own recovery – to see what helped and what hindered – in order to find a way of quietly offering conditions and opportunities for others to take up if they wish, and the few small good results of this have been hugely valuable. In the midst of all this there's a temptation to see myself as standing still, as sort of recovered – it's enormously important to me to see that I'm just part of the process too – still recovering “a process that no longer seems to me a straight line” – and very often nowhere near as recovered as some of the people in the hostel or up at the barn.

There's a temptation too to believe in a childish way that there might be some end to the suffering of the world one day – if only everyone was a Buddhist, or “most fearful” if only everyone was like me. If I can do my little bit to provide the conditions for joy, that's good – but perhaps better just to be with others wherever they are – and that's just what seems to happen at the barn – we're all with each other wherever we are. For me this state spreads tentatively outside the barn, and the hostel, and the meditation groups to begin to be with others in the world at large.

Maybe for others the same happens, if so there may be a little good going on. So where does this leave the Bodhisattva ideal in the modern world? I feel the clue is in the word “ideal” – ending the world's suffering, bringing everyone to awakening seems noble as an ideal “it's an ideal I very much subscribe to”, but as a reality it makes me uncomfortable. It's heartening to see people transformed by the Buddhist path “I Know several”, as by the Christian path, or the AA path. or the therapy path or whatever – but just as many try one or all of these paths and end up just as they were before – for me it was not so much a matter of one path or another, but rather a change in myself. I have a feeling that there will always be suffering, that the best I can do is to be with other people as they are, and offer conditions and opportunities for them to grow and change into themselves – human being just like any others, with similar joys and sufferings, of equal value. This I believe is compassion.

S.P. Hancock
November 2000