As I complete one book’s birthing, thoughts have turned to what comes next on the writing front: I have many ideas. I sense there will always be many stories to tell along my life path as Buddhist-therapist-educator. Two ideas that I hope to come to fruition* are vying for my attention and affections. I am …
Autumn equinox. A watershed into the ‘next’. What ‘was’ was the summer, and on going back to work that inevitable question “how was your summer?” I have found myself replying “Good, not great”. I could have been answering the inquiry with that typical British phrase of “Not too bad thank you”, but I promised myself …
I wake up a published author: today marks the official publication of my first book “Weaving the paths of Buddhism and Psychotherapy: the practice of human being”. Fittingly, I am in Normandy; staying in the house where much of the book came to be – both experientially and in taking written shape. I was here …
…when she has nothing to write about? I’m not even sure that is true, but it is the outcome thought / feeling I awoke with this morning: Friday, my writing day. In the last blog (painfully, over a month ago) I explained how writing time had been diverted to reading time; and a month later …
If you’ve been following this blog over the past few years you will have witnessed how much more central writing has become in my life path and my work as therapist and educator. It’s come to a kind of a “peak” with the publication of my first book this summer. And I’ve shared previously how …
Last week’s post described some of the experiences in the first half of a four day block of mandala practice: the third out of the four practices of Ngondro. You might recall those first two days had me come face to face with a futility and deep questioning of “what an earth am I doing?” On …
Marking season nearly through, I managed to carve out four days in my week to press on with Ngondro practice. Just in the use of that phrase, “press on” hints at a flavour of something! As I have explained previously on this blog, Ngondro are the four “preliminary practices” a student of Vajrayana does in …
In a post a few weeks ago I mentioned that one gauntlet thrown down by the Buddhist path is to hold simultaneously two, apparently contradictory “truths”. The Tricycle magazine’s website explains… “The doctrine of two truths—the absolute and the relative—holds that there are two ways of viewing the world: as things appear to be, and …
On my recent retreat with Judy Lief in upstate New York, I took a deep dive into the teachings of “Mahamudra“. Literally translated, Mahamudra means “great seal” – and like a wax seal used in days gone by, a seal of authentication. The practices of Mahamudra reveal the ‘authentic’ nature of mind to the meditator; …
It’s not uncommon after a day of working with clients and meeting with supervisees that I sit mulling over how therapy works. My teaching role also allows such reflection; I recently wrote about the nature of change and some thoughts that came to me whilst preparing new teaching material for our MSc psychotherapy course. Today …