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Is Tonglen Dangerous?
Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice that trains the mind to breathe in suffering and breathe out comfort and ease. This is, of course, the absolute opposite of what our minds habitually do. We have been trained our whole life to cling to pleasure and push suffering away. But paradoxically, this makes us suffer more. The Tibetan practitioners realised that if we can reverse that polarity, then we become fearless. We have already accepted the painful, so when it comes it's n

Alistair Appleton
Jun 294 min read


What is Cornish Buddhism?
📍 What is Cornish Buddhism? It started as a joke really, when I was thinking about how we fetishize Tibetan Buddhism, and you get all these Westerners dressing up in Tibetan robes and traveling to the Himalayas, when of course, the essence of Buddhism is everywhere in the universe, and the Sambhogakaya qualities, the energy of enlightenment, is just as much apparent in the Rockies as it is in the Himalayas, or in the Amazon, or in the outback of Australia. Yet, to be a Buddh

Alistair Appleton
Jun 282 min read


Leaving Yanguary Behind..
A lovely new friend of mine was pondering the pile-up of stress that comes with the traditional New Year on the 1st January. She realised that in the West, the year started too soon. New Year’s resolutions kick in before the 12-day Christmas feast is over. And the dark, Yin time of the year gets hijacked by the Yang energy of doing and productivity. Yin-uary becomes Yang-uary. The traditional seasonal rhythm of dying back and patiently waiting for life to stir is disrupted.

Alistair Appleton
Feb 183 min read


10 Festive Dos and Don'ts
I just wanted to run through some of these do's and don'ts. So these are things I've collated over the years in my work as a therapist,

Alistair Appleton
Dec 24, 20246 min read


Surviving Family Christmas – the mindful way (2024)
You're not going to look like these guys, but you might be able to feel like them! This is an old post from 2 years ago but I always like...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 17, 20244 min read


We Two Boys together Clinging /Walt Whitman
I promised myself to read more Walt Whitman this month. I always had a slight allergy to his loose-limbed lines but inspired by my visit...

Alistair Appleton
Sep 10, 20241 min read


From Justine / Lawrence Durrell
Again, like my selection from Gravity’s Rainbow this ‘poem’ is actually prose. A little chipping from the strange crystal that is the...

Alistair Appleton
Sep 4, 20242 min read


Beingfulness vs. Abhidharma - Slicing Up the Meaty, Messy Pie of Our Experience
I was doing this practice with Mingyur Rinpoche, and he was teaching what's known as the Abhidharma, which is a very old form of Buddhism.

Alistair Appleton
Sep 2, 20243 min read


Kindness / Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye is an American-Palestinian poet who lives in San Antonio. Her poetry is much garlanded and she has been Young People’s ...

Alistair Appleton
May 28, 20242 min read


Allerseelen / Paul Celan
Where to start with Celan? A Holocaust survivor whose pulverising poetry stretched the oppressor's language into transcendental shapes,...

Alistair Appleton
Mar 27, 20242 min read


6 Tips for Accessing the Emotions on the Cushion
This is an excerpt from the session on emotions on Monday (25th March 2024) where I give some tips about accessing the second field, the...

Alistair Appleton
Mar 26, 20243 min read


Fricatives / Eric Yip
This poem is shortlisted by the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 2024. And it's got it all: sexuality, race, power, language,...

Alistair Appleton
Mar 19, 20242 min read


from XIVLINERS / Tom Raworth
I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the English (post?) modernist poet, Tom Rawoth back in 1990 when he was midway writing his great...

Alistair Appleton
Mar 12, 20241 min read


Symbiosis / Em Gray
Em Gray is a neurodivergent poet from Brighton and this haptic, ticklish poem was commended in the Forward Prize this year. Simple as it...

Alistair Appleton
Mar 5, 20241 min read


Eliza / Liz Berry
This beautiful Queen-Mab-like poem is from Liz Berry's collection Home Child describing the life of a 12-year-old orphan, Eliza Showell...

Alistair Appleton
Feb 27, 20241 min read


from Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon
GR is, of course, not a poem. It's a 900-page novel. Fifty years old this year. But I was so bruised, amused, amazed by it that I wanted...

Alistair Appleton
Feb 20, 20242 min read


Oh Do You Know the Flower Man / Kizziah Burton
Kizziah Burton lives and works in Hollywood. And this poem - shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2024 - is awash with florescence. And...

Alistair Appleton
Feb 13, 20242 min read


What does Buddhism have to say about sexuality and gender?
New member Fran, coming from a progressive Islamic mosque in Canada, was interested in Buddhism’s stance on gender and sexuality and so I...

Alistair Appleton
Jan 31, 20245 min read


Worrying is NOT caring
This is an edited transcript of a lovely discussion we had this Tuesday in our anxiety/stress class on Zoom. We were discussing the...

Alistair Appleton
Jan 25, 20244 min read


Discipline 2: The Fragrance of Shila
This transcript is from our 2nd exploration of the paramita of discipline or in Sankrit, shila. From the outside, these disciplines, -...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 6, 20233 min read
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