BUDDHIST MONKS PICK UP SOME BAD OUL’ HABITS

CURSE ZEN

IN the interests of a good story I once suggested that a monk from Belfast called Moonflower ‘Degsy’ Dodds had managed to win the highly coveted All Tibet Yoga Championship, scoring a remarkable 64.3 for serenity.

The column also claimed that the Belfast man achieved Total Unity with his Consciousness in a world record 7.2 seconds.

This, of course, was invented for humorous effect.

I then added, for further comedic value, that the monk paraded round the monastery chanting at the top of his voice, “I’m the serenest monk round here... I’m the serenest monk round here...”

I only mention this because I was intrigued by a (real) Buddhist monk’s response to critical reviews of his monastery. The Sekishoin Shukubo guest house, situated in an ancient temple in Mount Köya, Japan received a cluster of negative reviews on Booking.com, many decrying the ‘basic’ amenities.

In response, Daniel Kimura, a resident monk and an official Shingon priest, berated the tourists who had complained about meagre portions of food. The reply they received from the monk was less than serene: ‘It’s Japanese monastic cuisine, you uneducated f***,’ he said.

The monk has since apologised, admitting that bad language is ‘contrary to right speech, one of the steps on the Noble Eightfold Path’.

To really get to grips with the Eightfold Path, and indeed for more luxurious monastic accommodation, you need to head for India. The Shreyas Yoga Retreat is a boutique resort and luxury ashram in Bangalore that will instruct you in the whole spiritual lot – yoga, self-discovery, meditation, reincarnation.

Not cheap – €1992.50 for five nights. But hey! You only live once.

BOGGED DOWN

AFTER a long dry spell our bogs are returning to their normal squelchy self. But if you’re walking in the country you may notice oily deposits in some of the pools.

Don’t worry – no need to alert the authorities. Pollution hasn’t come a-visiting, and neither have you discovered a Dallas-type rich oil seam.

It’s just that plants in the damper reaches of our island are paranoid about drought, so when water levels drop they extrude an oily substance to prevent evaporation.

These bogs are the des res for one of our carnivorous plants – the red, glistening sundew. This species is particularly good at extruding oily stuff. It’s also a very efficient killing machine.

In a year one sundew plant can account for thousands of insects – carnage on an industrial scale.

But in the boglands of our country, you do need to be careful; stray too far off-piste, and you could sink into an oily morass.

So here is my guide to survival. Come to think about it this advice applies across the board... in fact I’m going to make it a special present to the British PM. What to do if you get stuck in a swamp (anything from a bog to Brexit.) 1. Don’t panic. 2. Insist you know the way out. 3. Quietly assess the situation. 4. DO NOT leave the bog. This is the same as admitting you’ve made a mistake.

5. Ask others to join you in the bog.

6. If even your best friends refuse, never mind: continue in the same direction, going deeper into the bog.

7. Talk about something else. Don’t let the conversation be dominated by bog talk.

8. If things don’t improve, hand over to someone else in the bog.

BY DEGREES

DESPITE the hot summer in these latitudes, the record high for Ireland remains at 33.3 degrees Celsius, recorded in Kilkenny in 1887. Back then it would have announced itself as 91.94 Fahrenheit.

In Ireland it took us nearly 300 years to go from a German system to a Swedish one, and many are still not converted.

Some people, indeed, are ‘bilingual’ in temperature matters, preferring the excitement of the Celsius scale in winter – ‘the mercury has plunged below zero’ – to the extravagance of Fahrenheit in the summer: ‘the high eighties’ etc.

Daniel Fahrenheit, second picture circled, came up with the idea of calling 32 degrees the freezing point of water in the first place. But in 1742, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, first picture circled, pointed out that if the freezing point of water was pegged at 100 degrees and the boiling point at zero degrees, then this Centigrade scale could be divided into a hundred – a very easy calibration to work with. After the death of Celsius, another Swede, Carolus Linnaeus, reversed the scale so that zero became the freezing point and 100 degrees the boiling point. Linnaeus was the botanist responsible for the naming system for all living things, giving us the likes of Trogladytes trogladytes for the wren and Garulus glandarius hibernicus for the Irish

jay. Amazingly enough Linnaeus boarded with Celsius in Uppsala for a time. One can only imagine the conversation of an evening between these two scientific overachievers. Picture, if you will, Carolus leaning against the kitchen table, idly chewing on some gum, or Gummi masticulorum, as he doubtless called it.

Fish fingers may have featured on the day’s menu: ‘I say Anders, do you fancy some Pisces digitalis for your dinner?’ ‘Well, certainly, Carolus dear chap, but only if we cook it at a temperature of 60 degrees.”

WRONG PONG

IN England, a smell of cannabis that drew complaints from residents was eventually traced to the Thatchers cider factory in Sandford, Somerset. Turned out the whiff came from 12,000 tons of blackcurrants being made into concentrate for Ribena.

But the residents should be commended for being on their guard. Should you detect a suspicious smell from the neighbours, the quickest way to determine if it’s cannabis is to get as close as possible to the source, and breathe in deeply.

If you’re still worried — then it wasn’t cannabis.

But smell is on odd thing. It’s the most quixotic of the senses, capable of transporting you across the decades as quickly as the most evocative music.

For me, one of the most intoxicating smells is at the start of the Six Nations rugby championships – that heady tang of linseed oil being worked into bruised skin; old leather boots being polished for one more encounter – and that’s just the hot dog stand.

Lately my nostrils have been treated to the smell of rain on the grass.

Surely one of the most alluring, scents of Ireland? Think again, soppy suckers!

According to the New Scientist, the smell is given off by Streptomyces bacteria, a genus belonging to the Actinomycetales order of gram-positive eubacteria.

NEXT WEEK: the awful truth about the scent of turf fires.