Afghanistan

TEN YEARS AND TEN DAYS. A 528-page Memoir. Christopher Titmuss. Life for six years as a Buddhist monk. One circle of the Earth.

I wrote a Memoir of my years overseas between 1967-1977. My mother (1920-2015) kept encouraging me to write the book. She kept the 427 letters and aerogrammes I posted home.
I promised her faithfully I would hand her three or four chapters before she died. I kept the promise. During the lockdown in 2020 and early 2021, I took the opportunity to write the other 80 chapters completing the book in Spring 2021.
The book recalls firsthand experiences includes Buddhist practices, insights and depths of teachings found in the East.

‘Welcome to Afghanistan’ Brief Recollections of travelling across the country in October 1967

‘Welcome to Afghanistan’

For the past two weeks, the ignominious departure of the 20-year-old US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan has dominated the news headlines.

THE GUEST HOUSE – the Buddha probably inspired Rumi’s great poem

THE GUEST HOUSE –

BY RUMI AND THE BUDDHA

Rumi, the 13th century Muslim poet from a Persian family, has deservedly won a place in our hearts for his sublime capacity to nourish the depth of our being with his perceptive insights into love, sensuality, spirituality and intimacy with the immediate world.

His poems strike a chord in the depths of our meditative being. Not surprisingly, insight meditation teachers delight to read Rumi’s poems to spiritual practitioners. One of his best loved poems is The Guest House. The Buddha used the same analogy around 1700 years earlier in two talks entitled The Guest House.

The words of the Buddha probably inspired Rumi to write The Guest House.

THE GUEST HOUSE
by Rumi

This being human is a guest house. …

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