Category: Personal Stories

  • LEARNING A LANGUAGE

                                                                                                          Me with a rather distracted-looking…

  • GUESS WHO

    GUESS WHO!         J      Where were you born? ?     I was born high up in the mountains. J      What brought you to Scotland? ?     My husband is from Scotland.  I married a Scotsman. J      Where did you meet him? ?     I met him in my own country. J      Do you have a…

  • LAMA NGAKPA: DIVINATION BY DICE

       Lama Ngakpa in his room Keeping an open mind, I decide I would like to have my prospects foretold by a Lama.  The idea of rolling the dice, reading the tarot, seeing angels in tea leaves, stirring the entrails of a dead goat, laying silver on the palm of a chiromancer or allying the state…

  • NOSY MANGABE

      Who would have thought that in the seventeenth century, on a tiny island in the Bay of Antongil in the north east of Madagascar Dutch sailors would be carving the rocks and leaving long detailed messages for one another.    The’ post office’ at Nosy Mangabe is on the tourist trail, but it is also…

  • Daily life at the Monastery

    This is the third article in the series by Ani Rinchen Khandro published in the New Statesmanin which she relates her experience at the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastry in Scotland. If, after having encountered a realized spiritual master of authentic and unbroken lineage, one wishes to become a Buddhist the next step is to ‘take refuge’. In the…

  • MEETING THE TEACHER

        Having made my first visit to Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Buddhist Centre with the express purpose of attending a talk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, my second visit, a few months later, was to find out more about the Centre itself. Driving through the soft, green rolling hills of Southern…

  • APPROACHING BUDDHISM

    DETAIL ON THE BASE OF STUPA AT SAMYE LING   Ani Rinchen Khandro recounts years living in South-East Asia and her life as a Buddhist nun at Kagyu Samye Ling monastery. When one encounters anyone born in the west who is a Buddhist, the likelihood is that they were not born into the faith, but…

  • THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL IN INDIA by UPASANA POKHRIYAL

      I want to use this opportunity to write to you about some safety guides for women travelling in India. India is called Incredible !ndia for so many reasons. Its incredible because of its varied culture and religions that are followed by so many Indians: and still they live in peace and harmony. It’s incredible because this land…

  • GHANTAKARNA by Dr Sangeeta Rajbhandary

    घन्तकर्न Ghantakarna (Gathemanga in Newari)   Buddhist/Hindu Newar Festival to mark the death of the Demon       Gathemanga is celebrated in Kathmandu Valley in July which signals the end of the rice planting season and marks the beginning of the autumn festival season. The festival represents a ritual detoxification of the city or…

  • AKONG RINPOCHE

      I am shocked and shattered to know that Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche has passed away at the hands of murderers in Chengdu on 8th of October along with his nephew and driver. I feel so helpless and lonely without his strong and courageous presence. I knew Akong Rinpoche since I was 9 years old.

  • A TRIBUTE TO AKONG RINPOCHE

          ‘Only the impossible is worth doing’[1].  Choje Akong Rinpoche was indeed, as described by Colum Kenny in the Irish Independent newspaper this week, a remarkable man:  tulku, father, husband, lama, teacher, labourer, refugee, politician, healer, soothsayer, pure visionary, founder of Samye Ling and the Rokpa and Tara Trusts.  A trusted guide to…

  • ART SKILLS TRAINING WORKSHOP IN KENYA

    Art and the Teacher’s Eye: Arts Skills Training Workshop for Teachers, Kenya. On Tuesday the 8th of October I will be in Kericho, one of Kenya’s main tea plantation towns in the upper Rift Valley region, to meet up and make art with twenty secondary school teachers from four schools in the area. The teachers…

  • WATER: THE ESSENTIAL SPIRIT OF PLACE

      Deep inside us we all know that the challenges we face as individuals and as a community are not merely of an economical and technological nature. They concern our basic values and our fundamental conception of what it means to be human. This is the story of the substance that makes life on earth…

  • AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIEN GRYPE: NEW LIFE THAILAND

         JULIEN GRYPE, CO-DIRECTOR OF NEW LIFE THAILAND  We’re sitting in an airy little room at the end of a row of units used as accommodation for the volunteers and residents of New Life Thailand. This room is commonly used for counselling, life-coaching and therapy. Julien sits across the table looking calm despite his busy schedule…

  • THE THREE INTERRELATED Ds

    The Three Interrelated Ds: Death, Dan, Development                                                           A funeral procession in Boudha, Kathmandu   Death is the theme of today. Mark died ten days ago in a dramatic incident on the then…

  • Mindfulness and Me

    Mindfulness and me I was born in India to Buddhist parents. My father was a Buddhist priest. However, I have never been a devout Buddhist.  In fact, I was sent to a Roman Catholic school in India and I learnt more about Hinduism and Christianity than my father’s religion. I have heard a lot about…

  • Holy Island

      HOLY ISLAND: THREE PERSPECTIVES You can’t come to Holy Island and not be impressed! For the naturalist, there is an abundance of wild plants including bluebells, primroses, wild strawberry, wild thyme, bog myrtle, the curiously-named quaking grass and pale butterwort, an insectivorous perennial that gets its nourishment from various flying bugs. As well as the…