This is part 3 of a long essay I wrote back in the Noughties about my discovery of Buddhism. I’ve travelled quite a long way within the Buddhist landscape since then but it’s a lovely snap shot of that bright, excited space of being a new Refugee in the Buddhist community… Part 3: Finding my […]
Another blog from Brazil, probably back in 2006. Again the emphasis on the ‘left-hand’, tantric path: embracing all the darkness and pain as a gateway into the luminosity of reality. This trip to Brazil was significant on a number of scores. It was the first time that we had run a session on the completed […]
[This is a second excerpt from the recent ‘Tender Heart’ Scarborough Retreat held in March 2019. The first is here. This is a transcript from day 3 looking at the ego phase we all need to grow through… Alistair has just been talking about how when things feel ‘too much’ in meditation we lurch towards […]
[This is an excerpt from the recent ‘Tender Heart’ Scarborough Retreat held in March 2019.] Q: You mentioned the Earth being already enlightened and that it was the Earth that made us enlightened, not our own efforts, Can you elaborate on that? A: The truth is that the thinking mind, the ego, can’t get anywhere […]
The need to be a ‘know-it-all’ I have a problem with teachers. When I was little – for various reasons I won’t bore you with – I always felt that I had to know the answer before the question was asked. The possibility of being wrong or not being ‘perfect’ was a big problem for […]
Friends whispered that Winter on the Island was the most magical I’ve been going to Holy Island for almost two decades – sometimes twice or three times a year. But until this January I had never been there in the Winter. Most of the Mindsprings retreats take place in the Summer and Autumn when vivid-green […]
A failure to empty the dishwasher correctly amounts to a War Crime There’s a great Milan Kundera quote: “The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.” This is something that I have – in a slightly more buoyant fashion – been contemplating […]
Moving from field to field It is a week since we packed up and left Croydon Hall in Somerset. That was the location of Reggie and Caroline’s UK retreat for Dharma Ocean. A 10-day experience of blistering intensity and also beauty. It was called “Fields of enlightenment”. The day after tomorrow I head up to […]
This is a new gallery of pictures of Holy Island. They’re mostly taken from the Mindsprings summer and autumn retreats. There’s views from Lamlash and on the ferry over. There’s Sarah and Jane, Kirsty and Alistair. Rainbows, cute animals and food! If you’d like to experience it for yourself then please come. It’s a […]
This summer (and again in October) Mindsprings is hosting our annual Scottish Meditation retreat on Holy Island. So I thought I’d take a moment to wax lyrical about this most special of places and most special of events. It’s like a vast granite crystal. And the power of it throbs up through your feet when […]