Category: musings
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The Dharma of the sliced thumb
A post shared by Kaspalita (@kaspalita) on Dec 12, 2017 at 12:51am PST It was Thursday evening. I was still recovering from a heavy cold. It had lodged itself in my chest, and although my head was clear and my voice returned I had developed a cough which a friend euphemistically called ‘productive’… I was…
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What’s the point of empathy?
This morning as I took my usual morning walk around the garden I heard a bird call that I didn’t recognise. I looked up and there was a female blackbird, with its mottled brown coat, sitting up high in the copper beech above me. It wasn’t singing the usual blackbird song. A warning call, I…
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Everything can become an offering
Late afternoon on Friday. The sun had already dipped behind the hills leaving the temple and garden in shadow, but the wide Severn valley and the distant hills of the Cotswolds were lit in a dusky gold light. I glimpsed the view, a picture of stillness, through the grubby window of one of our guest…
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Giving up on pefection
I don’t know why I was thinking about perfection. Perhaps it was after spending three hours trying to get a new template for this website to work, before giving up on the idea. I had a design for the site in mind and the more I reached out towards it the further away it got.…
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Paying attention to a world that is falling apart
The clouds are mostly just grey today; a flat sky that only gives up its colour and texture under close examination. I woke up at eight, to the sound of our oldest cat mewing for breakfast. I shuffled through the dark flat, fed him, and the girl cat scurrying after us, and went back to…
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Fragile and Uncertain Creatures
On the top floor of the temple is a long, high ceilinged hallway between the residents bedrooms. The carpet is a mottled beige, worn down the centre. Dim lightbulbs hang from long cords in paper lampshades. Just as you go into the hallway, look up, and you will see a stain on the ceiling and…
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Word of the year 2017
I walked from my office, down the long dark hallway, up the stairs, past the big window that looks over the car-park, answered the door, signed for the parcel, and walked back to my office. Expect I wasn’t walking, I was rushing. My footsteps thudded through the carpet onto the wooden floorboards, creaking and squeaking…
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Finding Peace
I had been searching for quiet. The hills are a gift. I puffed up the muddy paths. The hills were covered in rust bracken, wet brown leaves, rabbit nibbled grass, damp moss… Above St. Ann’s Well the fog thickened. I sat on a wooden bench, next to the path at the ridge, and looked out…
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Dogma, the Kalama Sutta, and a Bad Book Review
Over the Christmas break a book review appeared on Amazon.com that amused me. It was a review of mine and Satya’s book Just As You Are: Buddhism for Foolish Beings. It was a three star review, which I thought that was pretty generous, considering what the reviewer had to say… I’m not sure I could read this…
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Free will, love and freedom
There were a handful of Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. We had spent three hours cleaning the flat earlier in the day. Rain clouds were gathering in the darkening evening sky. I was sitting on the floor, drawing a baby monster for my youngest niece. Satya and the older niece, and the niece’s mother were…