So many words for just one thing: Ground, base, intrinsic awareness, buddha-nature, mind essence, awakened mind, ordinary mind - they go on and on. The problem with all this (for me) is that when I first heard them I instantly thought of them as being about something other than myself. They all in a mysterious way were pointing at something outside and beyond my experience. A bit like the word ‘God’. And by extension I would have to do lots and lots of meditation to get an ex

Our small Sangha has now met for the first time this Autumn and we talked about the notion of the Ground within non-dual teachings. Why it’s important and not just an abstract idea to be quickly passed over. What fascinates me is the insights gained from how the others receive ideas like this and the questions they have about them. Stuff that hasn’t occurred to me because, well, we are just all so different. Several from this evening included; why is compassion one of the Gr

There is a strange resemblance between non-dual meditation and painting abstracts. When we stand before a piece of paper, a board or a blank canvas it is like we are confronted by the Ground out of which may come experiences of nirvanic liberation or the opposite, samsaric entanglement. It is an openness that in that first moment of recognition holds all possibilities. What follows is entirely up to us. This is a good moment to pause and pause for a long time. What do I find

Philippa tells me that when we wake the brain usually ruminates about something bad for the first five minutes – that’s why it’s best to get up immediately and don’t steep ourselves in our same old stories of misery and fear. Why does it do this? Well, as usual it’s about survival. Wake up anticipating threat and the chances of remaining alive are increased. Now, this makes me think about another choice moment that is closely related … Going back to the last blog on the natu

It’s sometimes difficult to find a way to make Buddhist ideas feel like they really touch our felt experience. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this because I want to write briefly about one description of reality that is found in non-dual teachings – it’s called the ‘ground’. You can read about this all over the place and it’s always described as three indivisible qualities that are – and then blah, blah comes the explanation. While I have no problem with this, it’s diff

You know when you see one of those images that can be seen in two ways – look at it one way and it’s two people facing each other and then look again and it’s a single vase – well, it’s much the same with dual and non-dual awareness. I’ll try to explain. When most of us first hear about non-dual awareness we have a fantasy that what we perceive around us will somehow change in a really profound way. I certainly did. And then as the years of study and meditation unfold it be

Philippa is an inspiration. It’s she who almost invariably finds something or someone who gets me thinking outside of my own limitations. What I’m thinking of here is a Dharma teacher called Stephen Bodian - he’s about the same age as me, maybe a bit older, and he has spent his life as a monk, psychotherapist and now as a teacher of non-dual Buddhism. And this is what I want to talk about here but in a very practical way. One of his meditations visits a common Buddhist insig

Within our Sangha we are fortunate to have amongst us a retired professor of psychology who has researched a great deal into the creation of habits and their consequences. During our conversations about karma he has repeatedly said that he just can’t buy it - well, that was true until yesterday when I said that we could think of karma as habit. ‘Oh’, he said with a smile, ‘Well in that case I have no problem’. Afterwards I went away and thought maybe I should check that I had

Karma gets a lot of bad press or maybe, just like any complicated abstract idea, it’s just easy to misunderstand. Sometimes it’s accused of being fatalism - there is nothing we can do about it. And sometimes it sounds like paying off a debt for the bad stuff we have done in the past. Of course, neither of these are true. One very ancient story, going back over two thousand years is in part about karma and how it is actually full of hope. It’s about the demon Rudra. Once upo

This is the story of Garab Dorje. It tells how when Manjushrimitra heard there was a master in the north-west of India teaching a doctrine that went beyond cause and effect, he and six other scholars from the University of Nalanda, started out to confront and defeat the master who taught this heresy. However, when they arrived and received Garab Dorje’s teaching, Manjushrimitra realised he was in fact correct and, in an act of contrition for having initially argued against th

So we have a great big bucket of karma and the question is what do we do about it? The two basic options are alter it so that it becomes good karma that brings about desirable results - like a sojourn within a heavenly realm or best of all, a precious human rebirth, or get rid of it all together - karma free which is the equivalent of being a buddha. Let’s go through these options. As always, different Buddhist traditions have slightly different approaches to this but the bas

In the last piece we delved into the mechanics of karma, how actions that are clearly formulated, intentionally carried out and which cause satisfaction create an imprint which will affect our perception and many events later in this life and in lives to come. Now let’s look at the different places this karma can land us using as our inspiration the very enlightening Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Published in 1973 this book became one of the most influential books on

It’s strange how our understanding of an idea we have known for ever turns out to be wrong. I’ve recently had that experience with the notion of karma and it’s that which I’m going to look at here. So definition first: the word ‘karma’ translates as ‘action’ and what is meant by this is any intentioned action whether it be a thought, word or deed. Although this is a Buddhist idea, the understanding that we live in an interconnected universe where each event is the cause of ot

Is it not odd how ideas that seem incomprehensible are obvious once you understand them? I’ve just had a double whammy with this one. So idea one: according to the Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen buddha-nature expresses itself as the whole phenomenal universe BUT it resides in the heart and may be seen with the eyes where it will - with practice - appear as little mandalas with a buddha sitting at the centre of them. So a bit of a seeming contradiction there. How can something

We are on holiday on the Outer Hebrides island of Harris. Now the admission. It has many small studios where local painters and potters display their work but I usually avoid going into them because I’m very picky and I find it impossible to say something appreciative if in fact I don’t feel it. I experience it as condescending and embarrassing. So you get the picture. Now yesterday, as we paused to look at the map, Philippa popped out of the car to look at a gallery by the s

Last night our small Sangha investigated the experience of having a belief on the level of the felt sense. Interesting! This is quite a difficult thing to get hold of and I was not sure how it would go. It needed a clear distinction between the belief itself and the experience of holding it. What most of us found was that the felt sense varied with the belief: sometimes pleasant, sometimes affirming, sometimes not. These responses were still very much dependent upon the conte

Our small Sangha continues to talk about how our perception is coloured by our previous experiences and the problems this causes. This remains interesting for me because it brings together psychotherapy and the Dharma - which of course is my ‘thing’. How the patterns of our earliest hurts are a big part of what Buddhism calls our obscurations - things that make us unaware of how things really are when we are not distorting them. And I realise that this is a big one - who real

The last couple of pieces I’ve sent out on rebirth and the places we may end up reborn - I think - deserve a bit more time because they are full of interesting ideas and also lots of practical help. So here goes: Last night I was thinking about the Twelve Links that I listed in the piece on rebirth. I thought how difficult they are to read and how easily I get bored just a few in and begin to skip towards the end. Is this just me? It’s a pity because the basic observation is

Paul Williams, Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at Bristol University, shocked everyone when he converted to Catholicism. He was distressed by the Buddhist understanding of death because it meant he would be separated from his beloved wife once he died for ever. No coming back together in their next lives or finding each other in heaven. I tell this story because while Buddhism does believe that we are reborn innumerable times, driven by the compulsion of

Last night our Jungian friend said something that really caught my attention - actually amazed me. She said that sometimes she goes back to a memory and carefully goes through all the details so that she has a feeling of every part of it. Not as a way to explore something difficult but as somethings pleasurable - or that’s how I understood her. Now that picks up something I have been thinking about since writing the last piece on Me, Me, Me that explores the nature of our p