This is an extract from a novel called The Buddhist CEO which was published in 2022 and written by a member of the lay Sangha, Thane Lawrie. The main character Hamish, is a deeply committed Buddhist; the story details the struggles of practising in the workplace and as a householder, and is loosely based on Thane’s own life and career. Several chapters are set at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey. All names in the book are changed, for reasons of privacy.

The story below is part of chapter 7 in the book, and describes Hamish attending the Segaki retreat as he searches for a peaceful antidote to his stressful life.  More details about the book follow the article.

Segaki

Breathing in, breathing out

Moving forward, moving back,

Living, dying, coming, going—

Like two arrows meeting in flight,

In the midst of nothingness

Is the road that goes directly

to my true home.

‒ Gesshu Sōkō (Death Poem)

Seven years into my CEO journey, I felt jaded. Despite making positive changes to the company, on every level I felt underappreciated and frustrated.

Those staffing issues never seemed to end. I was continually disappointed and surprised by senior and junior colleagues’ conduct and behavior. Is it too much to expect people to be positive and kind to each other? I began to think it was. Did I really want to do this anymore?

I hadn’t felt this burnt-out before. I needed a break and some inspiration. I looked at my holiday calendar and could see I still had a lot of holidays to take. I knew what I needed to do, and that was to head to my spiritual home, Throssel Hole. I checked their website to see if they were hosting any organized retreats in October, and thankfully they were holding a week-long retreat called Segaki. I had always wanted to attend Segaki, although I had never made it down in the twenty years I’d been practicing. But this was going to be the year.

Segaki is a Japanese word that means “feeding the hungry ghosts.” In Buddhism, hungry ghosts can mean a few things. Gakis are often depicted in Buddhist imagery of the six realms as beings with large bellies and long, thin snouts for mouths. It is said that these beings died in confusion, and although they are hungry for the truth and for peace, they cannot consume the Dharma or any form of sustenance due to their long, thin snouts. The snouts represent their ignorance and lack of understanding of how to nourish themselves spiritually. Because of this, they cannot hear or understand true spiritual teaching, and they remain hungry and confused.

The gaki, as well as representing a being who has died in confusion, can also represent confusion in this life. Sometimes we try to consume experiences or material objects, but no matter how much we consume, we never seem to satisfy our hunger for peace and contentment. With the way I was feeling about work, I could certainly identify with a gaki.

I phoned the monastery and spoke with the guest department, who gave me more details about the retreat. Essentially it was going to be sesshin, intensive meditation, focusing on our thoughts and feelings about death, culminating in a beautiful ceremony for the hungry ghosts. I signed up there and then, and I only had four weeks to wait.

I needed silence and peace. I finished work on Wednesday, which gave me a couple of days to relax and to spend time with my wife Beth before I headed for the sesshin. Saturday soon arrived, and it was time to leave. Beth got up early with me, and we ate a cooked breakfast together before I departed. Beth kissed me goodbye.

“You deserve this retreat, Hamish; you really do. Make the most of it.”

I always feel a bit awkward heading off to Throssel on my own without Beth, but she makes it easy. She knows how much the place means to me. I left at 9 a.m. on the Saturday and drove slowly and mindfully down the A90, heading for Edinburgh, which marked the halfway point on my journey. From Edinburgh I headed for Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. I stopped at the town of Lauder, about twenty-five miles south of Edinburgh, and took part in what has become an Aberdeen meditation group tradition. This tradition was started by one of our long-standing members, Martin McLean. Everyone stops for a break on their way to Throssel at the Flat Cat Gallery in Lauder. Martin told me this before I first traveled down to Throssel, and I’ve kept the tradition ever since.

The Flat Cat serves up beautiful food. Its walls are adorned with art from local artists, much of which depicts landscapes and birds, which I love. I sat by the window and let the world drift by for thirty minutes or so. I felt my CEO life slowly dropping away and Throssel’s presence drawing ever closer. It sometimes felt like Throssel called out to me, as if it knew when I needed to go. I felt it calling once again.

After finishing my lunch, I browsed through the shop, and my eyes were drawn to a necklace—a silver chain with a circular pendant, which had an intricate tree in the center of it. I was sure Beth would like it.

It had taken me about two hours and forty-five minutes to drive to Lauder, and I had about as long still to go. I enjoyed the drive through the Borders and then headed into Northumberland in Northern England. The North of England has a unique beauty. The mountains are not as high, wild, or rugged as Scotland’s, but those rolling, undulating, heather- and fern-covered hills, barren and foreboding, welcomed me.

I arrived at 3 p.m. after about six hours driving and was met by Reverend Claire and Reverend Hubert. They both gave me a warm welcome, and it felt great to be back in the presence of the monks once again. After exchanging pleasantries, I was shown to my room and told that the retreat would start with a medicine meal at 6 p.m., and I had free time until then.

Most trainees sleep in the meditation hall, but there are about twenty rooms for guests as well. I had felt so tired and drained that I asked the monks if I could have a room to myself.

The room was small with a single bed, wardrobe, small chest of drawers, table with chair, a kettle, and a selection of tea bags. There was a simple white cup and a comfy chair by the window. The Zen tradition emphasizes keeping life minimal. This room was comfortable, tidy, and warm, but it was certainly humble and austere by modern Western standards.

In the far corner was a small altar with a statue of the great and compassionate Bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara. This Bodhisattva is often depicted in female form and stands in her robes, holding a water vase from which she pours forth the waters of compassion on all beings that call for her help. There was also a candle, water bowl, and an artificial plant. The candle illuminates the altar and signifies the light of the Buddhist teachings, the water bowl signifies the purity of the teachings, and the plant represents all living things. I used the matches on the bedside cabinet to light the candle and bowed to the altar, making an offering of the candle to the Bodhisattva. It is said that Avalokiteshwara is the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion who hears the suffering and cries of the world. I asked her to hear my cries and to help me find peace this week.

I then decided to go for a walk in the monastery grounds. Throssel sits on a very steep slope with a spread of about 500 feet of elevation between the bottom of their grounds to the top. I walked slowly up to the very top where I found a stone seat, and although it was cold, I sat for thirty minutes and took it all in. The roofs of the various monastery buildings protruded from the tall trees below, and all around were the rolling hills of the Pennines. There was no wind, and the world was quiet, not a sound.

Quite unexpectedly, a tear rolled down my cheek. I let the tears flow for a minute or two. Enjoying the moment, the peace, I sensed that I felt ready to let go of something. I had a strong impression that my dog Fudge was with me. Is he one of the reasons for me coming to Segaki? I wondered.

I’m not one to get too excited by tales of mystical experiences, but meditating for twenty-plus years has taught me that occasionally strange things do happen. Amongst other strange incidents, I’ve had moments of release where it feels that something heavy has left me. Discussing these with the monks, I was always told that they’d had similar encounters, but the key was to just be in the moment with them and move on and not get caught up; this would only encourage clinging to the experience.

However, one other meditation experience that stuck out for me over the years also related to Fudge.

My parents brought my brother and me up to have a deep respect and love of nature. We were an outdoors family, always hiking in the hills and fishing as children. We spent family holidays in Assynt, in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, where we would camp or caravan in far-flung, remote places like Achiltibuie and Clachtoll. I developed a deep love of nature as a child, and today I still hike and birdwatch. My dad and grandpa were both peaceful men who respected nature deeply, but interestingly, they both had a strong dislike of dogs. As I grew older, this seemed rather incongruous to me. Why did they dislike dogs so much when they were such nature and animal lovers?

This dislike of dogs had passed to me. When Beth first met me, she was amazed at how dogs reacted to me when we walked together. I could be minding my own business in the park, and a dog would run up to me out of nowhere and start barking aggressively. I was never outwardly cruel or hurtful to dogs; I just didn’t like them, and somehow, they knew.

A few months after I began meditating seriously, I started seeing an image of a dog in my mind, feeling its presence when I meditated. At first, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. But the dog remained present for several years, and I realized that I wasn’t imagining this; the dog was trying to tell me something.

One day I told Beth that I felt we were meant to have a dog. She was, of course, surprised to hear me of all people say I wanted a dog. Eventually the kids reached a certain age where they too started to ask for one. Beth had grown up with dogs and was keen to get one. We discovered that a local farm bred pedigree working cocker spaniels, and we were fortunate enough to be given the first choice from a recent litter.

One dog stood out to us all. There was this beautiful, dark-brown puppy sitting in the middle of his four siblings, who were all black with a little white. I knelt and lifted him out of the litter and held him up so Beth and the boys could see him. He was ridiculously cute. On closer inspection we could see that he was not completely brown; he had white on his chest and a small white patch on his nose. The boys looked at him, delight in their eyes, and said in unison, “I want that one.” Beth and I both smiled; it was decided. This little dog was going to become the latest member of our family. We had to wait a few weeks to pick him up, but it was not long before we took him home. We all fell in love with this beautiful creature, and the boys named him Fudge. They were eleven when we got him.

Fudge became the centre of many of our weekends. The working cocker spaniel is bred to be a gun dog spending long days out in the hills, so it is hardy and full of stamina and energy. Fudge liked nothing better than to go on long walks. The longer, the better. We took him up hills and mountains and marvelled at his energy as he sped off like lightning to chase after birds and rabbits. He never seemed to tire, and we all loved his company. He rarely barked, was great with strangers, and was very obedient. He would sit, lie down, roll over, and stop when commanded. He was simply the perfect dog.

My relationship with dogs changed instantly. When I walked Fudge, other dogs didn’t look at me anymore. When I was out walking on my own and came upon a dog, they didn’t bark at me or act aggressively. At the same time, dogs stopped appearing in my meditation. I can’t explain this rationally; it was like something had left me, and I had a strong intuition that I’d cleansed a karmic inheritance related to dogs. I wanted to find out more about why my dad and grandpa had developed this dislike of dogs in the first place.

I asked my dad about the origin of this aversion, especially considering his clear love for Fudge. He explained that he’d never really thought about it before but that his dad had always been very wary and dismissive of dogs. I asked why, and my dad suggested that I speak to my grandma about it. My grandfather had died six years before we got Fudge, but my grandma was still alive and in good health. Though I often went round to see her, I hadn’t been in months; work got in the way. But today I wanted to ask about my grandfather.

I was always slightly nervous speaking to her about my grandpa, in case it upset her. They’d been deeply in love and enjoyed a sixty-year marriage together, and she still missed him deeply. When I arrived at her house and rang the bell, I was met by a beaming smile and a huge hug and kiss on the cheek. This was a smile that I’d loved all my life, and I still delighted in being in her presence.

She was small, about five foot two, and very thin but not frail. Her beaming face was kind and friendly, and a youthfulness shone through her sparking blue eyes. As I expected, a plate of cakes and biscuits awaited me, and she shuffled off into the kitchen and came back into the room with a pot of tea, which would be served in fine china cups. We sat sipping our tea, and she asked me how I was getting on, how Beth and the boys were, and how work was going. Once she’d finished telling me all her news, she asked, “But what brings you round, Hamish? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“This might seem like a strange question, but I’ve been wondering about why me, Dad, and Grandpa all have, or in my case had, a dislike of dogs.”  My grandma looked a bit surprised, and I could tell she was intrigued. “My goodness, Hamish, what on earth got you thinking about that?” she laughed. I explained my story about the dog appearing in meditation and how dogs used to act aggressively towards me and how this had stopped now that I had my own dog.

My grandma knew that I was a Buddhist, and she was quite supportive of this. She had her own Christian faith but was interested in any story that had a spiritual dimension. She was fascinated with my theory about some sort of karmic link between me, Dad, Grandpa, and dogs. I explained that when we got Fudge, it was almost like this link was cleansed, and whatever this thing was with dogs, I had let go of it for good. Did she know why Grandpa had such a dislike for dogs?

“Ah yes, now, that’s true. Your grandpa did not like dogs. Now I hear you say it out loud, I suppose it does seem odd.”  Her smile extended at the edges as she thought of the man she loved, but there was also sadness in her eyes. “He loved birds, just like you. He could name them all, and he loved plants and trees, and he would have walked in the hills every day of his life had he not had to work.” She took a deep breath. “But I think I can enlighten you as to where this dislike of dogs came from.” I sat upright, eager to hear the story she was about to tell.

“You know your grandpa George fought in the Second World War and he served as a solider in the Gordon Highlanders regiment?” I nodded. “Well, he fought in a famous and terrible battle at St. Valery in Northern France in 1940. It was a terrible and brutal battle that he rarely spoke of.” Her voice broke as she recalled these events, and a tear ran down her cheek. She touched my hand and smiled. “Hamish, I want to tell you this story as it makes me proud of him. He came through a lot, and I admire him for it. War is upsetting, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak about it.”  I sat back and listened.

“He went off to join the army at age nineteen. He had no choice; all able-bodied men were conscripted.”   “How did he feel about that? It must have been awful,” I said.

“It was a strange time for us both. We had only met about a year before, in the summer of 1938, and we fell deeply in love, and life seemed wonderful, but then there was talk of war with Hitler.” Her voice broke again, and tears flowed down her cheeks. She paused for a moment. “I haven’t talked about these things for some time, Hamish. It’s amazing how strong the memories still are. I remember those days as if they only happened yesterday.”

She continued, “I remember when Chamberlain, the British prime minister, announced to the nation that we were entering war against Hitler. I sat round the radio with my family, listening intently, and my heart sank when I heard Chamberlain say that all able-bodied men between the age of eighteen and forty-one were to be conscripted into the army within the next few months. I thought of George and wondered how he was feeling about the news. We met later that evening and cried together at the thought of being parted.”

My poor grandma was truly upset now, and I felt uncomfortable, so I offered to make tea. As I made a pot, Grandma dried her eyes and visited the bathroom. I felt awful for putting her through this, but she seemed determined to continue, and I was riveted by her story. We finished our tea and cake, and she looked refreshed and composed and keen to continue her moving story.

“My George was such a quiet, kind, and peaceful man, I just could not imagine him fighting. He would do anything he could to avoid a fight, and here he was, going off to war. It just seemed incredible and unfair. We had a life to lead and dreams for the future, and now the prime minister was telling me that the man I loved was being taken from me to go and fight a war that had nothing to do with me or George. It was awful, truly awful.

“At the time, though, there was a strong sense of patriotism and that going to fight was doing the right thing for the country. I suppose we would call it propaganda now, but lots of messages on billboards and in newspapers were telling young people how brave they were to go to war and that they would be heroes. Although your grandfather was scared, he got caught up in this nonsense about being a hero and doing the right thing for Britain. I went along with this as I didn’t want to dent his spirits before he left me.” Tears streamed down her cheeks again as she said, “I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, and I wanted us to part on good terms.”

There was a long pause before she continued. “We got married three weeks before he left for the war.  When the day came, off he went. Little did I know then that the only thing I would hear of him for the next five years would be a letter, smuggled out by the Red Cross, I received from him in 1942, saying he was still alive and that he thought of me every day. Then, in 1945, at the end of the war, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive until I heard a knock at the door, and there he stood in his army uniform. If memory serves me right, I fainted when I saw him.

“He told me about his time in the war over the first few weeks after he returned. It was like he needed to get his story out. Once it was out, though, he rarely spoke about it ever again.

“George told me something of the fight at St. Valery. Fourteen thousand Gordon Highlanders were ordered to defend the town to let other British troops retreat to Dunkirk from the advancing German army. Fighting raged for several days until the Gordon Highlanders were overrun and had to surrender. Of the fourteen thousand troops, only ten thousand still stood at the end of the battle. He told me that all the troops were rounded up and taken down to the beach. He was then taken to Poland as a prisoner of war, to a camp, I think it was called a stalag, near the city of Lodz, where he was forced to build roads for the next five years.

“This is where he encountered dogs. As he was marched to Poland, he had to walk a lot of the way, and was only put into trucks or buses for parts of the journey. As the soldiers marched, he told me that they were constantly marshalled by guards, who all had Alsatian dogs. These dogs would bark at them, and if someone got tired and started to lag, the dogs would bite their legs. George said there was no respite from these dogs, and they were always watching and looking for weakness.

“Once he arrived in Poland and was put to work building roads, they were set to work at 6am and they worked until about 6 or 7pm before they were bussed back again to camp. George said that guards stood by all day, watching them as they worked, and most of them had these fierce Alsatian dogs. As soon as someone paused or stopped for a break, the guard would approach with his dog, and it would snap and bite the prisoner. He said all the prisoners hated these dogs.”

Grandma finished her story, and we both sat in silence. Her eyes were red from crying, and I felt a tear in my eye too. We let the pause continue comfortably for a while, sipping our tea and composing ourselves. Eventually she broke the silence.

“Hamish, that’s all I can tell you about your grandpa just now, but I’m fascinated by your question and this connection to dogs you think has been passed down to you. You said that you thought it had left you now?”

“Yes,” I replied.  “Good. Well, I hope it’s helped my George in some way too,” she said.  I thought of this conversation as I sat at the top of the monastery grounds, but I grew cold and headed back down to the monastery…

 

*          *          *

The chapter continues with Hamish joining the Segaki retreat, and finding his mind beginning to quieten. He reconnects with his practice on a level he has not experienced for some time.  He questions his life – especially work; how did he get into the position of being a CEO, with all the stress that comes with it?  Deep down he realises his strongest wish is to practice the Dharma.

The Buddhist CEO is available from thanelawrie.com or directly from Amazon, Blackwells online or Waterstones online, or from Barnes and Noble in the US.