Hermes in Bethnal Green

Atula talks to Esther McKinney about becoming a psychotherapist, rebuilding the derelict London Buddhist Centre in the 1970s and other dreams

On the way up to Atula’s flat, the stairwell windows are full of plants. The flat itself looks out over the rooftops of Bethnal Green. Statues of archetypal figures on windowsills and tables include a Fisherman, Aphrodite and several Buddhas. The afternoon sun, filtered through the trees outside, makes shadows dance on the walls. The indefinable Hermes, the Greek God known as a trickster, a joker and a guide to the underworld, sits on a ledge behind Atula.

Atula’s name was given to him at ordination in 1976. ‘In Pali, “A” is a negative prefix and “tula” means balanced. So it could be “un-balanced” but it also means it cannot be weighed against anything else: a bit of a one-off.’ And he is a one-off, managing to be at once unassuming and unsettling, he has something of the 70s TV detective Columbo about him.

He has been running dream workshops for many years. People bring their dreams, typed or scribbled on a bit of paper, and put them in an old battered tin next to a vase of flowers. A candle is lit and a large hour-glass ritually laid on its side before a session begins. Someone will pull a dream out of the tin and read it out three times. The dreamer is anonymous and the dreams become part of a collective experience when shared and discussed.

Atula tells me a recurring dream of his that began after his father’s death in 1974: ‘I was walking along wearing an old builder’s donkey jacket like my father would have worn. I put my hand deep into the pocket and pulled out my father’s severed hand. The wrist of the hand was bloody. It horrified and terrified me.’ The bloody hand took him out of his comfort zone. It was an invitation.

As a child, Atula was seriously ill and spent a long time in hospital. There was no long-term children’s facility so he was in a ward with a variety of grown men. One of them spent time teaching him to read, using the bible as a textbook. One day Atula had a dream-like experience looking out the window onto the gardens outside. While a nurse was fussing round him, making his bed, he saw three angels outside dancing round the pond amongst the flower beds. ‘I can see some angels!’ he cried out. It caused a stir in the ward. The nurse was trying to quieten him. The man in the next bed got angry, blaming the man who had been teaching Atula to read, shouting and swearing that he should have given him a comic, not ‘fill his head with nonsense.’ Atula was terrified by the commotion.

His childhood home was on the coast and the sea was often a threat to their town, which was below sea level. One night the North wind brought a flood that took over the whole town. Some fishermen saved the day by using their boats to help people and bring food.

Some time after this, Atula was alone on the harbour. From the sea mist, a fisherman called out to him, asking him to catch his line and tie his boat in. The heroic figure promised to take him out to sea one day. This meeting stayed with Atula and he made a little shrine to the sea in his family’s rarely-used front room.

Atula’s father had been a talented tradesman but was crippled by the memory of the depression, when men walked from one end of the country to the other with their tools on their shoulders, looking for work.

In 1970, Atula arrived in London with not much more than the clothes he stood up in, a bag of tools and a debt that he was running away from. He had worked as a carpenter and joiner from the age of fifteen. Once he had found work, he started to educate himself and among other things, he read about Buddhism, started meditating and joined in at a Buddhist Centre, which was looking for a new home.

They found a derelict fire station in Bethnal Green and moved in. It had no hot water, no electricity, no heating and the roof leaked. It was a building site. The wind used to blow through it. If they wanted a bath they would go to York Hall around the corner.

Sukhavati, the name of the community they built, is also the name of a mythical land where conditions are perfect for Buddhist practice. Completing the London Buddhist Centre was like entering a dream they had created collectively.

Some time after that he began to train as a psychotherapist and to explore dreams with groups.

We both look out of the window suddenly, disturbed from our tea and chat by a loud noise outside. Atula has a bird feeder fixed to the overhang of the roof and a pigeon is trying to land on it, despite being designed for smaller birds. It flaps and makes a fuss then gives up and leaves the feeder swinging madly.

Much later in Atula’s life, his psychotherapy supervisor asked him an unexpected question about the hospital memory. ‘What did the angels look like?’ This question completely redirected his work as a therapist because it surprised him out of his comfortable interpretations. Rather than establishing a fixed idea about what an image meant, he learned to simply pay it attention and to let it speak for itself.

It’s time to go. The hour glass will be placed back upright and its sands will trickle once more. As I go to get my jacket, hanging next to Atula’s duffle coat in the hall, I think: We all need to reach into our pockets, to see what’s in there. ■

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