In Part One we stopped to take a look at mindfulness and in Part Two we found many different ways of understanding what mindfulness is.
We considered different forms of consciousness that can be considered mindful. What, however, of yet other forms
Read more…In Part One we looked at mindfulness as punctuating the day with times of immediate, here and now, bare awareness, appreciating beauty. Thich Nhat Hanh equated mindfulness with “seeing deeply”, by which he meant that when you hold a cup in your hand
Read more…The practices that now go under the heading of mindfulness are not new but they have taken on a special relevance as we have become more and more conscious of stress.
Early in the twentieth century William Davies wrote a poem that became famous...
W
Read more…A correspondent recently wrote to me as follows:
"When you talk to me about grief you never say stuff like 'This is all just a figment of your deluded conditioning. Grief isn’t real. Well, it’s only real in relative terms anyway. If you could just
Read more…A view that I encounter repeatedly in Buddhist circles is the notion that in order to be enlightened one needs to have a correct idea of… emptiness, interbeing, oneness, the real nature of Amida, nonduality… you name it.
One is told that when one full
In this item I would like to bring together two ideas. The first idea is that of an implicit contract in the couple relationship. A contact is an agreement of the "If you do this, I'll do that" variety. There has to be some complementarity between tw
Read more…Here is an interesting article on relationships
The two main points are
1. that there is an important distinction between wha
Read more…I have been reading a very useful article by Paul Graham which points out in detail how "US politics is much more polarized than it used to be. Culturally we have ever less common ground. The creative class flocks to a handful of happy cities, abando
Read more…I recently read an article that argued that (a) there is no necessary relationship between meditation and mysticism and that (b) the purpose of meditation is purely the cultivation of positive moral traits. Given in support of this was the observatio
Read more…The attempt to fit Buddhism into the secular, technical, reductionist mindset of modernity often has the effect of turning the matter on its head. Thus, we now find Western schools of practice – I hesitate to call them schools of Buddhism – in which
Read more…I recently read the description of a presentation by Scott Miller "Over the last 40 years, thousands of research studies and how-to books on psychotherapy have been published. Presently, hundreds of treatment approaches exist, each claiming to contai
Read more…Each school of Buddhism has its favoured texts and its favoured practices. Thus, for instance, the Soto Zen Shu favours the Diamond and Heart Sutras, (and was once based on the Lankavatara) and emphasises the practice of zazen, while the Pureland sch
Read more…I got back to La Ville au Roi last night. It is cooler than when I left ten days ago. Autumn has arrived.I shall have an easy day today after travelling. Unpack the car - I have brought various things back - a chair, a bed, some plates, other small i
Read more…The year is turning, the leaves are going yellow, wind and rain break up the sunnier times.
My trip to Korea proved to be a great success. Last year I was unable to go due to illness, so it was good to get back into the swing of the work and the prog
Read more…The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a report suggesting that the UK economic model is "broken", that since the financial crisis what economic growth there has been has gone into profits rather than earnings resulting in "the longest period of ear
Read more…It is such a turn around from when I was young - now it is the leader of Russia who speaks common sense while America goes in for calculated hysteria. What has the world come to?
CNN report on speech by Vladimir Putin:
Russian President Vladimir Put
Read more…Here is a list of seventeen major forms of conditioning that shape our lives. Included are the factors that tend to keep us trapped in samsara and also those that make an escape possible.
Root Relation This refers to the presence in or absence from t
Read more…Mindfulness is remembrance of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is most easily done by saying and hearing the Buddha's name. Hence the practice of reciting the name has become widespread in the Buddhist world. Reciting the name when something happens,
Read more…It used to be the case that if one was married to somebody from another country you were welcome in either country. However, it now seems that even if one is married to a UK citizen, been in UK some years, and expecting a baby you can still be deport
Read more…There is much debate inside the EU at the moment about the rules that govern labour mobility. Macron wants to change these, the East European members want to keep present arrangements. The richer countries are finding their high wages undercut by che
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