Seems like we need to make up stories about how things work to make us feel good and keep the chaos at bay. Just thinking about two of...

Christopher Perry and Rupert Tower, two Jungian analysts, are about to have published a book of essays entitled, Jung's Shadow Concept:...

During a filmed conversation between the late Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu and H.H. the Dalai Lama, His Holiness said we should forgive but...

A member of our mindfulness group said that she felt fundamentally flawed and it made no difference how much she sat with it, the feeing...

Is it really possible to understand Buddhism the way a Tibetan does? Talking with a new friend about translating from the Tibetan I am...

Here's the thing. In an earlier blog I tried to work out the relationship of a felt-sense (by which I mean the simpler definition of...

You know how when you listen to the Beatles extraordinary Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band you suddenly realise that you could hear...

Zen This is our last session. We will have a peek at Zen and its origins within Chinese Buddhism. I have found a strange paradox in Zen,...

Dzogchen, the Great Perfection As we saw last time, Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, is the pinnacle of the Nyingma nine vehicle system...

Sex and Violence – Tantra 2. Now for something quite different. From its first tentative emergence sometime during the second century...

Mahāyāna & Tantric Buddhism 1. This week we are going to look at an exciting development in Buddhism – the emergence of the ‘Mahāyāna’ –...

Theravāda Buddhism and the way of purification Nothing remains the same and this is also true of Buddhism. After the Buddha died his...

The Way of the Śramaṇa – Early mindfulness I love the word Śramaṇa, it means ‘ascetic’ but a more fun way to translate it is ‘spiritual...

Realisation So at last we come to the end of Sutta which is a prediction of how long, if we practice, it will take to become awakened...

Investigation of Dhammas The Four Noble Truths So finally we come to the last Dhamma section – the four noble truths. This may seem a...

Mindfulness of Dhammas The Awakening Factors It seems that so much of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta has been about being mindful of our crazy...

Mindfulness of Dhammas The Sense Spheres If the last satipaṭṭhāna concerned how we add an unnecessary ‘self’ to the experience of who we...

Mindfulness of Dhammas: The Aggregates On a personal note finally understanding what the Buddha was getting at with his concept of the...

Mindfulness of Dhammas This is the fourth and final Satipaṭṭhāna consisting five sections on the hindrances, aggregates, sense spheres,...

Mindfulness of mind – Citta The third pasture of mindfulness is contemplation of the mind – for which the Pãli word is citta. In this...