Otherwise known as the six paramitas — There are six teachings I return to again and again when I want to explore my inner life. I have been feeling somewhat burned out and stressed recently and that usually means I am struggling with something inside myself. It also means I am not taking enough downtime for myself…

How do we know what we know? — When my younger son was about nine or ten yrs. old, we went away to Gibraltar together for a long weekend dolphin watching. It was a birthday treat for us both. When we were out one evening having dinner together in a restaurant, he asked me a question which I…

Why this is a world-level issue, as well as personal. — Mindful listening is a huge part of mindfulness practice, yet is probably the least written about. We teach it as part of our mindfulness course for the Plum Village tradition, called Be Calm Be Happy. …

How to celebrate and not add to the problems of the world — There is nothing wrong with any festivity or celebration we may include in our cultural landscape, and Halloween is one of them. This post is more aimed at people whose cultures include Halloween, or similar, and who have seasonal climates. Halloween is based on an old Celtic /pagan tradition, the…

A path to inner peace — Something we all struggle with to a greater or lesser degree is self-acceptance. An acceptance of who we are, where we are in our lives, the challenges we have been presented with and the choices we made. We are all born with a legacy of emotional and genetic material as…

Thanks I guess, it also made it very challenging. — Life has always been an uphill struggle for me. I expect that is true of many people with neurodiversity, that what others take for granted we struggle with, the proverbial swan smoothly gliding and paddling furiously beneath the surface. It was after my diagnosis in my mid-fifties that I started…

Mindfulness for the tough times — As in the above image, mindfulness is so often portrayed as this thing that is all soft and fluffy, perhaps stylish. It is something to aspire to, to be cool with, and it is fashionable. Most of all it is supposed to be pleasurable. Possibly. Sometimes. And sometimes it is…

Building relationships that just get better — I always wanted to find someone I could love forever, but it doesn’t happen that easily. It took me roughly half my life to get there and to understand how to build on it, with a few disasters and sad mis-matches along the way. Undaunted though — I’d got to…

An exploration of spiritual certainty. — During a conversation with a Quaker friend recently, we discussed the difference between silence for Buddhists and silence for Quakers. It’s been asserted to me many times before that there is a distinct difference, as she did. In all my experiences of both kinds of meetings, I’ve never noticed any…