The last couple of days have followed what has become my regular rhythm of writing in the morning and doing woodwork in the barn in the afternoon. In addition, Adam and I have sung the praises of the Buddhas in the hall and I have started reading to
Read more…The rain has finally stopped. Hurrah! Everywhere is still sodden. I expect that the water will gradually go down now. I swear the grass has grown inches in the last three days. Most of the plants seem happy enough. There are a lot of buds on the rose
Read more…Departure
This morning Jnanamati left Eleusis to travel to UK. We were a bit worried that he might meet with difficulties due to the strike action currently going on in France. I took him to the station for 6am and there was a coach waiting rather th
Read more…Breakfast Discussions of Relationships
Breakfast in the community is often one of the most interesting times. This morning was no exception. A long discussion grew up about relationships, especially polyamorous ones, and we talked about the tensions
Read more…Weather
We are having exceptionally wet weather all of a sudden. It has rained virtually continuously for about 48 hours and the ground is saturated. All holes have filled up and turned into little ponds, the yard is like a paddy field, and we even h
Read more…QUESTION: Derrida is famous for saying that "there is nothing without a context" and I wondered whether his thinking partly overlapped with dependent origination.
SHORT ANSWER: Definitely, but... not everything is impermanent.
LONG ANSWER: Buddha's t
Read more…My days all follow a pattern at the moment: writing in the morning and practical work in the afternoon. However, the weather has no such routine and after a few days of summer we are back into wind and rain in some quantity.
Another routine is that,
Read more…There are many ways to live and die. We can pass through in a daze or in endless confusion or we can dedicate this time to something that we deem worthwhile. Nowadays there are many people whose lives have never been grabbed by anything. This may, in
Read more…Dharmavidya's Teaching at Oasis de Longue Vie
27 May 2016
recorded & transcribed by Annette
Dharmavidya: I was reading a passage of Dogen - Dogen Zenji, the great Zen master. It says when you are enlightened, you are getting more enlightened all th
Read more…Oasis
Today started overcast, but the sun soon came out. In the morning we went to Oasis and had a very nice service with our friends there. I try to give my Dharma talk partly in French so as to be understood by everybody. Sometimes I am struggling t
This evening I lit a fire for Artemis. She is the goddess of wild things. On our land she has dedicated to her the most wild part, the forest area including 'the Enchanted Wood'. There is something unreachable about Artemis - especially if you are a
Read more…Second Hive of Bees
Yesterday evening Robert arrived with the news that he had been phoned buy a family that had a bee swarm in their garden in a neighbouring village. Did I want to go with him? This was certainly an experience I did not want to miss
Read more…My Zen teacher, Kennett Roshi, often talked about the danger of quietism. By this she meant that it is no good thinking that one has arrived at the perfect understanding or the perfect organisation or the perfect practice. There has to be an endless
Read more…Yesterday Elja had her operation in the hospital in Netherlands. However, a mistake was made during the procedure and she has suffered some additional bone injury as a result. This means that her rehabilitation will take longer and be more difficult
Read more…QUESTION: What did the Buddha say about obedience?
SHORT ANSWER: Pay heed to the Dharma
LONG ANSWER: The definition of a Christian monk is a person who lives a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Poverty and chastity are important values in Buddhi
It has been a very wet and windy day. I therefore spent most of it indoors working on writing projects. However, in the afternoon the weather eased a little so I took advantage of the inclement conditions to go out and cut the grass in proximity to t
Read more…The big news is that we now have some bees in our hive. They arrived care of our neighbour Robert yesterday evening. He had collected a swarm and brought them in a plastic box. We coaxed them into the hive and hopefully they will be happy there. Howe
Read more…Dharmavidya's teaching at Oasis de Longue Vie
Friday, 20th may 2016
recorded & transcribed by Annette
Sometimes, we say Buddhism is shila, samadhi and prajna.
Shila is the moral precepts, behaviour, right behaviour. Samadhi is meditation and prajn
Read more…QUESTION: As I read the sutras from the Nikayas much of what the Buddha teaches seems to be very self-power - try hard to concentrate, do this, don't do that - I'm having trouble squaring this with the Pureland teachings and wondered if you think the
Read more…This morning we went to our neighbouring Buddhist group at Oasis. It is lovely to join our friends in a Buddhist ritual and then in refreshments and friendly talk afterwards. I gave a short talk about the fundamental Buddhist principles of sile, sama
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