I am feeling anxious today. My life is in a period of massive and unexpected change. Just over two years ago I experienced a period of massive, but expected and planned change. One big change was that my daughter finished school and began a gap year on her way to university and leaving home. The…
I had another experience of impermanence this weekend. I was anticipating a weekend at home, but then I found out on Thursday afternoon that I might be needed to stand in for the first half of the Insight weekend three which was taking place at Samye Ling. This was confirmed after lunch on Friday, with…
Let your eyes fall easy upon me, And gaze without intention or preconceived idea of what I am. My shape is not me, as yours is not you. There is more to it than that. More to it than meets the eye, or the precept. Think more of what I may be, of what I…
Kristine has been providing us with her wonderful Words of Wonder. Duncan and I are inspired by this and have decided to share some of our favourite poems, and those of our tutors and members too. This week we have a wonderful poem by Danna Faulds. This was introduced to me at my very first…
I very much enjoyed Charlie Morley’s keynote talk at the Mindfulness Association conference last month. His topic was stress and trauma related sleep problems and how to address them. For more information about his work, please see his new website. This was of interest to me as I am not a relaxed sleeper, but a…
I was on retreat last week at Purelands retreat centre near to Samye Ling. The retreat was led very skilfully by Lama Zangmo and the main theme was impermanence. The problem with us humans is that we believe things will stay the same and don’t generally like change. We also believe we can control our…
I had a wonderful time at our conference earlier this month. It felt like a coming of age. We were our own keynotes, without needing to import big names in from the US. We acknowledged our roots with warm and insightful sessions with Rob Nairn. We acknowledged the success of our Masters students and their…
Reflecting on the Mindfulness Association Conference last week – feelings of warmth and happiness flood my body and a smile appears on my face. I’m sitting here looking through all the photos that I took over a few days – and again I see laughter and happiness reflected in the images before me. So I…
So, this is a tricky one – it’s present, so here goes. Recently I have noticed my sense of unworthiness coming up more frequently than I’d like to admit! Tara Brach talks about “the trance of unworthiness” that we can find ourselves in! My teacher, Lama Yeshe tells me to “keep doing the weeding”. What…