Category: Personal Stories
-
FOX DIARY
Dusk, a tub full of freshly picked Autumn raspberries, a warm moody sky, and you appear out of nowhere!
-
A Musical Ramble
Music has been always been important in my life. One of my earliest memories is, as a child, hearing Johnnie Rae singing “Cry”. The lyrics meant nothing but the melody stuck in my head. I would sing along with it but a three-year-old trying to copy the song must have looked and sounded a bit…
-
Tribute to Jack Niland with Love
The whole story is a fairy tail and as such, it took place in quite difficult circumstances for both of us. But first we need to roll up in time, because the story starts in 1977.
-
Summer Days on the Allotment
“…Just had one of those cuppa teas I didn’t want to end!”… A past statement by a friend echoed in my mind as I quenched my thirst. The temperature has gone up by ten degrees since seven o’clock this morning. Every movement seems an effort, it’s hot, it’s humid, it’s June. I’ve seen three butterflies,…
-
Byken Matsukawa
Personal stories are always interesting, especially when they are within living memory and their veracity hasn’t been eroded through time. Below is a series of photographs which tells a story about David Russell’s father, Byken Matsukawa, a Japanese national interned in the UK during the second world war. The photos are preceded by a short…
-
Black Friday
When you realize it’s black Friday You are at home doing homework and your pencil snaps so you go to sharpen it but your electric sharpener is broken and the next day is BLACK FRIDAY!!!!waiting and watching the commercials and for once excited for the violence to start.Checking the clock every 5 minutes and you…
-
New Day
Today we cannot do, behave, or think the same way as we did yesterday about tomorrow. Today is truly the first day of the rest of our lives. Yesterday’s actions, habits and strategies will not work the way they work before COV-19. The world is at war with this virus and I’m sure that we…
-
Crazy Wisdom
First Thought : Best Thought. Wherever I am, wherever I go, there are many roads to choose from. And sometimes, one of them is the best. We are experiencing an amazing moment in history, a time to sit and meditate. In a country under national containment because of a world pandemic, many of us are…
-
REMEMBERING LAMA TSERING PALJOR
I thought it would be fitting at this time of year to remember Lama Tsering Paljor, a personable friend who passed away 6-years ago. It didn’t take long in his company to realise what a genuine and heart-warming person he was. In 2012 Donal Creedon led a one month retreat in BMC in Sikkim. He…
-
THESE FOUR WORDS
One day you will express four words. And these four words will set you free. The words are: This Is My Truth. You will speak, write, sing, dance, laugh, act on, remember, celebrate, feel, dream, and live these words in endless ways. These four words will clarify your relationships, illuminate who means what in your life.…
-
Tashi Deleg House: Yeshe Dorje
Tashi Deleg House Samye Ling, the oldest Buddhist centre in Scotland. Summer’s end brings a breeze that blows the leaves from the trees. Flurries of light rain precede a heavy, slanting downpour that drenches in 5 minutes the clothes that you wear. The room we’re staying in has been refurbished with milk chocolate coloured…
-
KARMA SONAM RINCHEN
I’m not at all sure how we all in the Bodhicharya Sangha developed the merit to be able to meet Rinpoche in this life – but somehow the good fortune has come to us, each in our own different way, and I think now we just have to see how much further we can clarify…
-
STORIES OF REINCARNATION
A conversation with Erlendur Haraldsson: Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Iceland, Reykjavik. Sitting round a table at the back of a dining hall with several others, Professor Erlendur Haraldsson is explaining his research into reincarnation and the world of the dead and dying. At the hour of death, people who are about to die…
-
ERNIE BUCK: AN INTERVIEW
When and how did you first discover Buddhism? Oh heavens! In a conventional sense I would say by accident. I started doing TM in about the early nineties or late eighties. I had a quite stressful job at Bradford Chamber of Commerce; lots of squabbles and small ‘p’ politics, that sort of thing. I…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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? …