Satyalila.cx

One important aspect of the long Akasavana retreat last summer which I haven’t yet written about is The Story of the Fankle. Fankle is a wonderful Scots word, introduced to me by Jayavardhini. It doesn’t appear in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, but its meaning is “to get in a mental knot” about something. In Buddhist terms it describes “propantia” or mental proliferation – something with which I am, sadly, very familiar! During the course of the retreat I reflected on this wonderful word, fankle, and found it very useful in my practice. Time and again I found myself “getting into a fankle” about something… only to spot it and then try, patiently and kindly, to unravel it.

We had a special Vajrasattva puja one day (led by Jayavardhini and Nagarakshita) and I realised that this was a great opportunity to ritually let go of my habit of getting into a fankle. Not only is Vajrasattva the figure on which I meditate, he is also associated with purification, so I decided to make a fankle to offer at this puja. As soon as I had the idea, the visual image of the Fankle appreared fully-formed in my mind. It involved a lot of rusty, twisted wire and rainbow coloured wool (which I had, of course brought with me on the retreat…) At the “heart” of the Fankle was a glass pebble (symbolising my “essential diamond nature which is the essence of sunyata” – ie the idea that we are intrinsically pure, but that that purity becomes obscured by defilements – which in this case are tangled thinking, represented by the wool and wire) I wrapped the glass pebble in a sheet of paper coloured with turquoise scribbly writing (not unlike the original draft of this story!) Then I wrapped the paper bundle about with rainbow wool which gradually wove in and out of the big tangle of rusty wire about 10” by 12” (left over from the building work). Round and round the tangled web of the rainbow wool wove, in and out, sometimes round and round and round one single strand of wire which caught my attention – like thoughts harping on a single subject.

The Fankle was done and the next afternoon I carried it ceremoniously into the silent shrine room for the special puja. Eyes glanced, askance. “What’s that?!” Someone whispered. “A Fankle!” I replied – and the silence dissolved into muffled snorts and giggles.

After the puja it seemed that the Fankle culd not just be thrown away – tho’ I was taken with the idea of hurling from the terrace outside the shrineroom and naming the place “Fankle’s End” (“Dun Fanklin’” being another possibility…or a name for a future abode.) However, I could not, in all conscience, hurl my “essential diamond nature” (still at the heart of the Fankle) away over a cliff. (And anyway, I pretty soon realised it would have landed in Ratnadharini’s tent, a couple of terraces below!)

So a place had to be found for it. Earlier in the retreat, when I’d been fretting about (my lack of) contentment, I’d had a good talk with Padmasuri sitting on high on a rocky outcrop above the Shrine Room. As I mentioned in another post, we’d rather taken to naming bits of the landscape, so she and I decided that this, henceforth, would be Contentment Rock. Where-else, therefore, could the Fankle possibly come to rest but on Contentment Rock? And so it was that ritually, on Dharma Day (on the blue moon of July) that Jayavardhini and I (with Vijayasri in attenance) carried the Fankle from the shrine room and laid it on Contentment Rock, thereby creating “Fankle’s Rest”…..