Author: Kaspa
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The biggest frog (how to get things done)
I sat facing a blank page for about an hour this morning. Occasionally I wrote a few words and then I deleted them. They didn’t feel like the beginning of anything worthwhile. I wrote about my oldest cat sleeping at my feet. I wrote about the squirrel stealing peanuts from the bird feeder. I wrote…
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Living with change
Written late spring/early summer Suzuki Roshi was once asked if anything was constant in this life. He replied with one word: change. A couple of weeks ago I watched a wave of hail moving from behind the hills, over the temple and through the valley. Directly above my office, directly above my writing desk, is…
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How accepting ‘what is’ leads to real change
Yesterday afternoon I was tired, and I was grumpy. I was upset with someone for not having behaved how I wanted them too, or how I thought I would have behaved in their situation. I worked over the situation in my mind. I was justifying my upset feelings to myself, but of course this just…
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Taking care of ourselves in a busy world
As autumn approaches we start to feel the first trace of autumn in the air. The nights draw in and the days slowly get cooler. Trees turn from bright summer greens into reds and yellows until the sides of the roads are lined with dried brown fallen leaves. At the same time the natural world…
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How can we begin to grow?
How our relationship with our therapist leads to change Most research that compares different types of therapy, to see which is more effective, reaches the same conclusion: the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist is more important than the style of psychotherapy. Putting yourself into a good relationship with a therapist…
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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…
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Absolute Love —Total Freedom
I became a Pureland Buddhist in 2006. I didn’t know anything about Pureland Buddhism at the time. I had been practicing Buddhism for a few years, and then I met Dharmavidya and the Amida community. I knew that I wanted to join this community and have Dharmavidya as my teacher. That was enough. I learnt…
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Into The Junk Cupboard
. The process of creating this video almost mirrored the theme of the poem. I created an ideal in my mind, of myself as a film poet and of what I imagined the final produce might be (much better drawn than this), and nearly threw the whole project in the cupboard because of that ideal.…