MY grandfather Tommy Liddy was born in Dublin. He met my Granny, Annie Blake, in Dublin, fell in love. got married and moved to Belfast. Tommy was a tailor and a musician and he opened up his own tailoring business in Union Street Belfast. This was the same building that housed the Musicians’ Union.
The union was the meeting place of Belfast’s best musicians. I remember visiting my granddad’s workshop, as he called it, and I would find him seated cross-legged in the full lotus position on top of his tailoring table. Granda was also a proficient saxophone and clarinet player.
It was Tommy who taught me to practice, practice, practice and I realise today that it’s practice that pays off in the end. His tailoring taught and inspired me to be present for every stitch and, as we all know, a stitch in time saves nine. I’m sure he must have practiced yoga to be able to sit in that posture for hours on end.
His workshop for me on a Saturday was like entering another world, a timeless zone filled with the smell of Belfast town gas and cigarette smoke and the sound of musicians practicing their scales over and over again. Fast forward forty years and I’m sitting cross-legged in the San Francisco Zen Centre sowing my rakasu, aka the Buddha's robe.
Sewing the robe is a great teacher when it comes to practice and for me I wanted my robe to be for Ireland as it was going to be the first Belfast robe. I asked may I sew with green thread representing our green fields. Sewing the rakasu is a teaching in itself. At times you just want to pack it in and I suppose life can be like that.
If the sewing isn’t approved by the teacher, it’s ripped up so you have to start all over again. I believe this is what attracted me to Zen: practice, practice, practice, and the knowledge that you can always start over again. The wisdom of imperfection – rip it up and start again, as the song says.
When it comes to music jazz is Zen, transcending the norm, thinking outside the box, paving new pathways that anyone can tread and, in doing so, alleviate suffering. Less is more and Zen teaches us that. Minimalism is the way, and what we tend to forget today is that the greatest gift of all is that we have got each other.
Maybe we are the tailors of this rich tapestry called life, together we blend into one not two. In Zen we say that one and one is one. This works for me as I’m aware of division and how we all can be divisive at times, and if we get it wrong we rip it up and start again.
There is amazing hope in the knowledge that we can start all over again, and if we get it wrong we can get it right next time.
