In history there seem to be cycles, or, perhaps, pendular swings might be a better term. For quite a long time we have been in an era of 'globalisation' and it has rather seemed to be as an inevitable and unstoppable linear progress. Although there m
Read more…Today, Elja went to Clermont ferrand to collect her foster daughter. I drove her to the station in our neighbouring small city of Moulins and spent the day there until they returned.
Q: People suffer from any different kinds of issues. Although they are different and each, perhaps, needs a different remedy or therapy, all seem to involve attachment. How should we understand this?
A: There is a Chinese story about a man who goes s
Read more…Q: How can one attain illumination?
A: How can one expect to receive more teachings when one has not yet put into practice those that one already has? The angels are queuing up to provide more wisdom, but just as a waiter does not serve the dessert u
Read more…Q: What do the wisdom traditions say about equality?
A: Individual karma being unique in each case, it is self-evident that no two people come into the world identically equal in any respect. Therefore, to expect that competition between them shall b
Read more…Fridays we go to Oasis. This morning Patrick had placed a lovely magnolia flower on the table beside where I sit in the meditation hall, so when it came time to give my Dharma talk, I talked about beauty, impermanence and the fragility of life and a
Read more…Wildlife
'Our' hedgehogs have all three disappeared. We are hoping that this means that they have moved on and not that they have come to grief. I can imagine that they might well have decided that there are better places than our garden since here t
Read more…We have a lot of forest paths at La Ville au Roi. Keeping them open can be a big job.
The forest is at different stages of growth in different areas of the terrain
Sometimes there is a complete canopy giving the path the feel of a tunnel
Sometimes it
Today Adam and I were once again working in the Aphrodite Field clearing thorn bushes while the three women were all working together in the kitchen making chutneys. Thus we had an old fashioned gender role system in action. When one lives in a place
Read more…Lama Wangmo, Cedric and their daughter came to visit us at Eleusis. It was nice to show them round and then all to meet for a sumptuous dinner. A good deal of work has been done since Cedric's last visit and this was Lama Wangmo's first time to see a
Read more…This is out of context, but it contains some points that others might find interesting or might like to comment further upon thus enriching the conversation.
Correspondent: I never asked myself the question why fundamentalism exists. You are right,
Read more…This morning we went to Oasis. Normally, on Sundays, we have a service here at La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) and sometimes people from Oasis come here, but today we went there as they were having a special day. Lama Wangmo gave a Dharma talk in the hall.
Read more…Adam and I spent much of today mowing half of the Aphrodite Field. It is a beautiful spot and something of a suntrap. The weather recently has been hot so the usually lush grass has all turned yellow. There is a perennial problem in this field of inv
Read more…This morning we went to Oasis and it was a very nice gathering with four people from Oasis and four from Eleusis and, between us, French, British, Russian, Dutch and Hawaiian. As usual we had a service and then sat outside drinking coffee, chatting a
Read more…This morning I gave a talk at Oasis. I spoke about Shantideva and his famous text on the Way of the Bodhisattva. In particular, the text, like most Mahayana texts, begins with a homage to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. It is possible that many western
Read more…In the practice of spirituality, there is always an interesting tension between form and spontaneity. Too much form can easily become empty hypocrisy whereas too much spontaneity can easily become self-indulgence and dilettantism. The sage Kuya once
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I’d like to write a poem
but the muse has deserted
without asking my permission.
It seems rather careless to wander off like that
leaving blank pages
gaps between words
muddled concepts and broken images
scattered around -
not even enough to make a
Working
Yesterday we collected Jan from the train so there are noe four of us here and already it feels like a well integrated community as though she had been here for months. We have all been out working today, weeding the strawberry patch, shreddi
Read more…Having had an interval from it I went back to editing the draft book manuscript about Dogen's text Genjo Koan. Satya has kindly done some copy editing and it is good to gradually work through her very useful comments. We also spent some time comparin
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