2015

Secular Buddhism. – Has a new Buddhist sect been formed in the West?

I recall more than 30 years ago asking Gaia House, the much loved meditation centre, a few miles north of Totnes, south Devon, England, to display only beautiful plants and flowers in the front of the meditation hall rather than a Buddha image. Trustees and co-Dharma teachers kindly agreed. I also requested that we name the meditation centre as Gaia House. Gaia, a Greek goddess, means ‘Living Earth’ and, coincidentally, has the same pronunciation as (Bodh) Gaya, the place of the Buddha’s awakening. Co-teachers and trustees also kindly agreed to this proposal. …

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84 Questions to last a Lifetime

84 Questions to last a Lifetime

Dear Readers,

Here are four questions leading into 80 questions to encourage an exploration of our phenomenal existence. We waste our life if we sleep walk through it. Let us exercise the quiet inner power of consciousness to inquire into our relationship to this field of human being and  human activity. If you wish, read through the 80 questions. There is no single answer to any question.  The genuine answer makes a real difference to your life. …

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Lewis Thompson (1909 – 1949). Hippy, Poet, India wallah,  who spent 18 years in India and died in Varanasi

A Totnes friend, Rob Brown, kindly gave to me a truly remarkable compact book, Mirror to the Light: Reflections on Consciousness and Experience by Lewis Thompson, an Englishman from Fulham, London, who died aged 40 in the scorching summer heat of Varanasi, India in 1949. …

Lewis Thompson (1909 – 1949). Hippy, Poet, India wallah,  who spent 18 years in India and died in Varanasi Read More »

20 Quotes from Pope Francis

20 Quotes from Pope Francis. A Voice in the World.

 

Despite being wrapped up in the conservative tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis does not mince his words when it comes to issues close to his heart. …

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Legalise marijuana. For occasional recreational use and as a health treatment

It is time to make joints (of marijuana)

available over the shop counter and as a health treatment

I first smoked weed (marijuana) in a cave on the Matala beach in Crete with some other hippies in the Summer of Love in 1967. I never looked back from those weeks on that Greek island. I smoked marijuana and hashish from time to time in Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Laos and the rest of south east Asia. Ancient India regarded marijuana as a sacred plant owing to its medicinal properties. Hippies also adopted the tradition of thanking God (Siva) after inhaling smoke from a joint. Boom Shankar (The Sound of Siva).. …

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