A few weeks back I wrote the blog post Is Secular Mindfulness Shoehorning in the “Other” Seven? in which I bemoaned the fact that secular mindfulness courses included most of the parts of the Buddhist Eight Fold path but only claimed to include one of them. Last week BBC Radio 4 – Beyond Belief was…
Read More Implicit vs Explicit Ethics in Mindfulness Teaching
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I went to a set of evening lectures at the University of Edinburgh last week called “Mindfulness for Depression: Theory and Practice”. It was a really good evening as an introduction to the subject. Prof. Stephen Lawrie presented an overview of depression and what a bad thing it was both to the individual and to…
Read More Is Secular Mindfulness Shoehorning in the “Other” Seven?
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Life can feel as if it is made up of a series of episodes; as if we are living from moment to moment. This is an illusion. There is only one, all encompassing moment. We are fooled because we don’t pay attention to it the whole time. This one, absolute moment is our True Home.…
Read More Walking Home: What I do when I do a Mindfulness WalkWe construct the notions that we name as things (e.g. this computer, this desk, me, you, the cat) as a way of dealing with reality. It is not that stuff doesn’t exist “out there” and that we are just making everything up. It is that we model the world by dividing it into more or…
Read More World View -> Right View -> CompassionThis is the First of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing: Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist teachings as guiding means that help…
Read More 1st Mindfulness Training: OpennessI am fortunate to have teenage daughters who occasionally point out incredibly positive contemporary music videos. I think the last one was Macklemore & Ryan Lewis “Thrift Shop” . Normally I’m a traditional “shut that noise off” dad. I listen to BBC Radio 3 if anything. Today they managed to get me to watch the…
Read More Buddha Dharma in Pharrell Williams “Happy”I really enjoyed watching this documentary from back in 2003. Some really insightful comments but maybe slightly over simplified the historical perspective on Tibet. What a shame the BBC cut the Everyman documentary series.
Read More Richard Gere’s Buddhism BBC Everyman DocumentaryThe 27th February saw the launch of the latest set of figures from the 2011 Scottish census. I had been waiting for this release partly because it arrived in time for my birthday on the 28th but also because I had been in correspondence with the census team and they had kindly agreed to put…
Read More Scottish Buddhists: Few but diverse and growing fast
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I just had my letter to the Guardian Weekly published. I was responding to Zoe Williams article “Come on, atheists: we must show some faith in ourselves” which took the very narrow view of religion vs atheism that seems to be popular at the moment. You can see my letter on the letters page along…
Read More Many kinds of atheismWhen I first heard of Engaged Buddhism I made a common mistake. I presumed it was all campaigns and demonstrations. I didn’t think it was for me. I’d been on a few demos and sat on some committees but they all felt far too confrontational for my newly developed sensibilities. Now I had a family…
Read More Living as an Embedded BuddhistSuch a frustrating programme on Radio 4 Analysis. The quantified self: can life be measured? The “quantified self” movement promises that life-logging and data-tracking can make us smarter. Frances Stonor Saunders asks whether by measuring what we do we miss who we are. You can listen to the MP3 Podcast Here. In this programme we…
Read More Quantified Self – Back To FrontAs with many of the best things I can’t remember how I stumbled on it but a few weeks ago I came across a TED talk by Simon Sinek called “How great leaders inspire action“. I was so impressed with this simple idea that I went on to buy Simon’s book “Start With Why“. The…
Read More Practicing Back To FrontI would like to reconnect with my photography but I would like to do it in a way that is informed by my Buddhist practice and that becomes part of that practice. This topic has been in the back of my mind for some time but has now crystallized into this manifesto for action. A…
Read More Mindful Portrait Photography – A ManifestoStumbled on this and really liked it: The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Elie Wiesel (1986) This chimes with my practice. It is easy…
Read More (Untitled)I recently had a couple of exchanges on the ONS StatsUser Discussion Forum on measuring Well-Being particularly on the relationship between wealth and well-being. This is really stuff of blog posting not forum contribution. I should write a blog and link to it from the forum not the other way around – bit late now…
Read More Wealth and Well-beingI just finished reading Claudia Hammond‘s latest book “Time Warped“. Claudia is a psychologist who presents programmes on health (particularly mental health) on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. Chief amongst these is All in the Mind and my favourite Mind Changers. Time Warped is a fun read. I start quite a few popular…
Read More Time Warped Addendum: MindfulnessI was trying to explain the Buddhist notion of not-self or anātman to a friend and found myself using a new metaphor that I haven’t heard before – the self as telephone conversation. Hinduism has the notion of Ātman. Jainism has a similar notion (same word) and, of course, the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and…
Read More Anātman as a Telephone ConversationI have just returned from a ten day Goenka Vipassana retreat at Damma Dipa in Herefordshire. It was a challenging, rewarding and inspiring experience and I am finding it something of a challenge to write a blog about it. Firstly a description of what a ten day Goenka Vipassana retreat is. These retreats are taken…
Read More Goenka Vipassana Washes WhiterMy pamphlet “A Brief Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation” is now available on the Kindle store worldwide. There has to be a nominal charge for it but it does make it available to a wide audience. Visit the UK or US Amazon stores to purchase. In other territories you will have to search for it I…
Read More Brief Intro To Mindfulness Now Available on Kindle StoreToday I launch the first version of my “A Brief Introduction To Mindfulness Meditation” pamphlet with a massive print run of fourteen! Plus availability on-line and the possibility of printing as many as needed of course. Download a digital copy to read and freely distribute from the downloads page. Near the end of 2010 I…
Read More A Brief Introduction To Mindfulness MeditationWe took the camper van to France in the summer and, as we were passing, decided to visit the grave of my uncle Eric. I say my uncle but I feel uneasy calling him an uncle. He died a good twenty years before I was born and would have had no knowledge even of my…
Read More Remembrance not RememberingLast winter, whilst exploring ideas for a possible research proposal, I wrote a prototype desktop web application to help people learn the Mindfulness of Breathing. It formed the basis of an assignment that you can read about in a previous blog post. The application, BreathFollower, is still running on Google App Engine at http://breathfollower.appspot.com/ .…
Read More MindfulnessTree: Support Your Practice With Your Smart PhoneEdit: 2014-04-24 ~ Three Years Later ~ A friend just pointed out that this post is now coming second on a Google search for “Bangor Mindfulness”. I am somewhat amazed at this and slightly disturbed. It makes the post appear far more significant than it is. I considered taking it down but that seems a…
Read More Why I am Quitting the Bangor Mindfulness MSc
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Find attached my fourth and final assignment for the Bangor Mindfulness course. This one is for the Research module. It is supposed to be a description of a research project that you intend to do later in the course in a form close to what would be suitable for submission to the ethics panel. Research_Assign_Two_blog_version.pdf…
Read More Bangor Mindfulness 2nd Research AssignmentAttached is my second assignment from the Bangor Mindfulness course which has now been marked. This is the document as submitted but with my name and copyright information added. Foundation_Assigment_2_blog_version.pdf. I got 64% which translates as a ‘B’. The marker made some kind comments about my “highly original ideas” but rightly points out that this…
Read More Bangor Foundation Assignment 2 ResultsIf I start to talk about how the world is and therefore how we should best live there is a danger you will dismiss what I say as either playing with ideas that have no relation to real life (philosophy) or trying to impose some mumbo jumbo from a possible imaginary deity (religion). Many people…
Read More An areligious (not “A religious”) justification for meditationCognitive dissonance is a wonderful thing. At least it is a wonderful thing once you know about it and can enjoy the way it wags your opions and actions around against your will. It is amazing what we can’t see because it is simply too unpleasant to contemplate. Of course the fun part is spotting…
Read More Being, Doing and Doing-BeingRecently I’ve had a problem with the term “self compassion”. Every time I heard it my toes curled. I tried to explain this to friends and colleagues but it always met with the polite nodding and smiling that showed I wasn’t getting through. I would say that there is no “because” in compassion. You just…
Read More My Problem With “Self Compassion”On reflection one of the reasons I enrolled in the Bangor Mindfulness course was that I felt a need for some kind of accreditation before I could teach. In fact, if I want to teach in the public sector, I probably do need such an accreditation. We are as well to admit the world contains…
Read More Accreditation and Certification as a Dharma Teacher?