We had a quiet day of reading, writing and chatting, in part due to the continuance of the wet weather. It seems as though it has not stopped raining this year. There are occasional small outbursts of sunshine but quite quickly it clouds in again and
Read more…We are all aware that some objects have more power over us than others. If I ask you to describe a room that you are familiar with but are not in at this minute - your bedroom, say - then you will provide, probably, a fairly good description. If I th
Read more…My reorganisation of my quarters is progressing and it ia great joy to me personally to have the great majority of my books arranged where I can find and get at them. The downstairs room is now much more functional. There remains quite a bit to do up
Read more…I spent spent most of the day making this from an IKEA kit, assembling approx 450 items in a kind of three dimensional jigsaw. The picture instructions are pretty good explaining it all in about 50 steps and I only made one mistake along the way whic
Read more…QUESTION: Dear Dharmavidya, I've just read your writing on Contrition. As usual,you always know how to get right into my heart! Contrition is indeed born from honesty. Admitting our Bombu reality is so freeing. However, I'm caught in the Self-power/
Read more…Innumerable are sentient beings: I have harmed them all;
Uncountable are the holy precepts: I have broken them all;
Unfathomable are the Dharma teachings: I have offended them all;
Immeasurable are deluded passions: I have indulged them all;
Uncondit
A Reflective Season
Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. The day before was my birthday. The day before that was New Year’s Day. This is generally a rather emotional time of year for me and this year no exception. The middle of the cold part of the ye
I've been cleaning out my room - a slow job in which it gets worse before it gets better. The trouble is that one finds interesting things and spends time browsing them rather than getting on with the job - but then, that is half the fun. Enjoy life.
Read more…The Amida Order is a Buddhist religious order practising nembutsu. It is Buddhism in the Pureland style emphasising the relation between the ordinary person - fallible, vulnerable, mortal - and the Buddhas. There is an associated congregation, Amida
Read more…One of Those Mornings
Today I decided to make mulch to put around the roses that were planted the other day in order to give them some frost protection. In the morning i shredded all the blackthorn and rose cuttings that had been lying in a heap in t
I know you are not supposed to plant roses in December,
but this is no ordinary December. It feels more like September. Anyway, it was good to get out in the fresh air and exercise some muscles and get some more of the flower bed turned over. I had
Perhaps as a complement to the discussion area on Melancholia, here is a space for us to review the question of Happiness. You might find the article by Robert Ellia at http://www.middlewaysociety.org/the-happiness-delusion/ interesting.
Read more…This is a space in which to discuss and share matters relating to depression, sadness, grief, melancholia, and related phenomena. There is a relevant paper posted in "Pages" listed in the right margin of the group page.
Read more…Today i had a quiet day writing as i have a couple of assignments that i need to get done before the end of the year. Elja was doing a variety of domestic tasks. Between times we had some nice conversations. An easy day. Namo Amida Bu.
Read more…I'm splitting this discussion of the meaning of love out as a separate discussion since it is a tangent to the original which was aboput man-woman communication and how the sexes understand things that get said. All the comments in this post were put
Read more…When i came down to make breakfast this morning i checked my mail and a former lover messaged me on Facebook. It was lovely to hear from here. I felt all soft inside. She told me that when we had last met, a while back, her feelings for me had been r
Read more…Included in the selections from the Parinirvana Sutta posted in the Buddhism Group is the following:
22. "Now there are eight kinds of assemblies, Ananda, that is to say, assemblies of nobles, brahmans, householders, ascetics, of the Four Great Kings
Read more…We had a day mostly devoted to Aphrodite. We took our new statue to be blessed in the Buddha hall and chanted a lot of nembutsu...
After a snack we went out to Aphrodite's sacred field, enjoying the warm sunshine and did some clearing toward th
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