Category: Personal Stories
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KEEP SWIMMING
This summer I went swimming,This summer I might have drownedBut I held my breath and I kicked my feetAnd I moved my arms around,I moved my arms around. Loudon Wainwright 111 “Swimming Song” Greatness in Small Things After contracting polio as a baby it was deemed, thankfully, that swimming would be good therapy for me.…
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HELLO FROM GOA
AUGUST 30, 2017 in ARTICLES, PERSONAL STORIES. Hello from Goa, land of blue skies, sunshine and palm trees swaying in the balmy breeze. But lest you think that Liz and I are living the languid life of lotus eaters (okay, occasionally…) we are of course as trumped and brexited as the rest of you – but in…
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Each Morning You Awake…
Each morning you wake and begin your inner story about the day ahead. Much of this story is a repetition of the thousands of stories you have spu in your life. What if you could birth a new story, completely untouched by your old stories? Would it take you somewhere you have not been before? …
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Bardos
‘Live and let die’, a reflection on the summer camp Summer Camp 2018: I had my first experience of the Bodhicharya summer camp this August. It was a life changing experience in many ways. The theme of the camp was ‘Bardos’, which translates to transitions. Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, who I’ll refer to as Rinpoche from…
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5 Reasons Jews Gravitate Toward Buddhism
In Jewish and Buddhist circles, there is the story of the Jewish woman who schleps to the Himalayas in search of a famous guru. She travels by plane, train and rickshaw to reach a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. When she gets there she’s shvitzing and exhausted but she is committed, and thankfully she is wearing…
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Faith and Reason,
In my book, Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of Our Suffering, I hypothesized the reason for there being so many instantaneous enlightenments reported when reading about the life of the Buddha or of Zen Master Benkei. I said that people back then were more open to blind faith, to the promise of religion. …
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When No Place Feels Like Home
REAL PEACE IS POSSIBLE – WHEN WE ALLOW EACH OTHER ROOM TO BE THE BEST WE CAN WHEN NO PLACE FEELS LIKE HOME In SACRED WORLD by Cristina Luhmann11/24/2017Leave a Comment Since I began this life of a modern nomad, one of the things in time you start to get used to, is the ability to detach…
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Through the Gateway of the Senses
When we cleanse our perceptions of grasping and attachment, we experience a universe that is infinite, awakened, and full of delight. Francesca Fremantle on sight, sound, touch, and other miracles. David Gabriel Fischer William Blake famously wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite, for man…
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The Emptiness of Curtains: Some reflections in retreat.
We need to make a practical decision – where to sit Donal our facilitator. The choice is limited to beside a door or in front of a window on the north side of the room: and we choose the latter. Then, another decision – should the curtains behind him be open or closed? These are…
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A Rabbi on Holy Isle
RABBI ADAM KLIGFELD | PUBLISHED AUG 21, 2017 | OPINION I’m a rabbi. I have experienced hundreds of Shabbat celebrations with Jewish communities of all sorts, in synagogue, at camp, as part of youth groups, leading youth groups, with my family. So how did it come to be that the most unexpectedly joyful, meaningful and deeply spiritual one I…
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SATURDAY MORNING
On Saturday morning I was on the coach early to get to Brighton in time to hear Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche teach on Santideva’s 9th chapter. It was just after 6am. I pulled out my new dharma book The 6 Perfections by Dale Wright (an excellent book) and tried to read the section on tolerance. It…
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HELLO FROM GOA
Hello from Goa, land of blue skies, sunshine and palm trees swaying in the balmy breeze. But lest you think that Liz and I are living the languid life of lotus eaters (okay, occasionally…) we are of course as trumped and brexited as the rest of you – but in true Indian style. Luckily…
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JOURNEY TO ASSAM: GUWAHATI PART 2
Sign in Haflong, Guwahati There’s something wonderfully hedonistic about an alarm that goes off at 5am and you lie in bed for another hour in that half dream-like state. This is India; and lateness is a fine art that requires a last minute scrabbling for the prize – a seat on the bus or train;…
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JOURNEY TO ASSAM: PART 1
Day dawns. Early morning standing in the doorway of the little courtyard of Shinji Butt. Outside, pigs are grunting about in the mud. A little boy squats and defecates while a multi-teated sow waits behind for him to finish. A goat, wearing a yellow sweater, its front legs inserted into the arms, munches grass…
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LIFE AND DEATH
We Buddhists talk about death a lot. For me, that’s the main attraction – there’s no shying away from the truth in Buddhism. I’ve always known death. I’ve always said that Life is death and death is life. When I was 14 months old, my sister was born terminally ill and died 18 months later.…
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TECHNOLITERACY
+ I first felt the onslaught of the digital tsunami in my engineering days. My job as an apprentice toolmaker was to set up capstan lathes in a small factory in Glasgow that made bespoke accouterments for submarines: salinometers, micro-valves and custom tools for cutting gears. Crockets was the name of the company. After two…
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Game Changing
Somehow 2016 feels like a game-changer. The fatigue of decades of political non-speak and spin has taken its toll this year with Brexit and Trump. The social scientists at work were wondering what they’d missed in their analyses of the political ailments that returned us to Germany in the 1930s when the news of the…