I had the luxury of a day to myself yesterday; a chance to bathe in “sabbath” and commit the whole day to my practice. From just after 7am in the morning until 5pm, I alternated between periods of meditation and the fourth of the Ngondro practices: a visualisation and mantra practice called “guru yoga”. As …
The first Friday of the New Year, and true to my intentions I am sat at my desk ensuring I commit to my Friday writing practice! Since the Twixmas* of 2012, I have undertaken the same “end of year review” process inspired by Buddhist teacher, Susan Piver. The same set of questions to reflect upon …
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 …
When I re-read my last blog post, I actually feel a little naive…given the experience of “stay-treat” and how I have come to view it in my rearview mirror. I’m reading a lot of Jung right now, and his explanations of individuation as alchemy has relevance for me: the intentions with which I entered my …
As I sit here at my desk, I realise how fortunate I am to be in a position of ‘retreating’. As a nation, as a global community we face a huge and unprecedented situation; and I am still able to put aside time and space for myself to practice and to do some writing. I …
Here we all are, amidst an extraordinary situation. Even as the Covid-19 virus hit China at the end of last year; even as it started to make bigger and bigger headlines in January, I think very few of us would believe we would be in the situation as we are now. For a few days …