Dharmavidya

Live Your Life - why not?

Many people flinch from living their life, thinking that they have to do something else first. Their mentality is that their life will start properly at some other time when the conditions are right or when they have accomplished something or other. In fact, they are at war with reality in their heart. They say to themselves, "My life should not be like this." But the fact is that "this" is "my life", I have no other, so this statement cannot be true.

3rd-4th March Day seminars at Sukhavati in London

This weekend we held two day seminars

# The Real Meaning of Mindfulness

# The Spirit that Creates

Visiting Britain: travel, teaching and a birth

I'm visiting Britain. My first day here I visited Susthama Kim and Damian. Susthama is a member of our sangha and her partner is one of our trustees. It was a lovely visit. Susthama is on the verge of giving birth to a daughter and the drama of impending new life has been a continuing excitement throughout the nine days I have been back. 

After seeing Susthama and Damian I visited The Buddhist House which is currently run by the Tariki group, and saw a number of the students. This was emotional and difficult for me as I currently no long teach on this programme as a result of organisational difficulties that I feel out of tune with. It was important to see some of the people, but it under-lined my sense of alienation from what is happening.
The following day Jnanamati and I went out to Suffolk and conducted the wedding of old friends Ali and Geoff. It was a lovely occasion in the beautiful setting of a former priory that is now a restaurant in the midst of wooded country.

Thursday and Friday I spent on organisational matters and Friday afternoon Jnanamati and I set out for Malvern in the West of England where we then stayed the weekend with Kaspa and Fiona. On the Saturday we held a retreat day which went extremely well. Again the setting was very conducive, this time a large house of decaying graneur with huge rooms, wonderful accoustics for chanting and a view of the Malvern Hills from the garden. I've recently been integrating some of the practice that I have become familiar with in Spain with my customary way of doing things and this was my first chance to try this out with a group in UK and it was pleasing to see the result.

Sunday night we got back to London. Monday evening I lectured to humanists in Richmond and Tuesday drove up to Sheffield to see more sangha members Sundari and Bhaktika which proved to be another delightful visit. We have some very rich converstion, much of it following on from my encounter with humanists concerned with the claims and limitations of science and reason. This led me to some new lines of thought which I was then able to incorporate into my lecture the day after at Leeds Metropolitan University on Buddhist Psychology. I was pleased with the lecture and it was good to see colleagues at LMU again. 

Then, Wednesday afternoon, I drove on to Newcastle in the north of England where I visited sangha member Sujatin and, this morning, philosopher and old friend Mary Midgeley, with whom I always have fascinating conversations. Mary is currently exercised with the ideas that surround the possibility of extending human life, possibly indefinitely - what effect this would have on society, on individuals, on reproduction and so on. We also discussed a wide range of other topics, including, extensively, the apparent human need to have enemies in order to generate cohesion in human groups that are necessary for survival.

Finally I drove down to Narborough and on arrival checked my mobile phone and discovered that Susthama and Damian's baby Selena was born today at 5pm. Susthama and baby are well. Nice that she arrived on my saint's day.