Deepening refuge by Kaspa We come to rely on our spiritual communities. When big changes happen that can be very jangling in all sorts of ways, and it also presents an opportunity to deepen our spiritual practice. Earlier this year Satya and I told you that we would be moving out of the temple some […]
Dharma Glimpse by Chris E-S I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently. It seems as if I am surrounded by reminders of mortality: the news of the death of a friend from another Sangha who had been fighting cancer for many months; the variegated holly bush I had planted in memory of our old
Dharma Glimpse by Philip My glimpse is inspired by the previous week’s dharma glimpse from a fellow book group member. They had written, as I understood and remembered it, about a difficult relationship with some relatively new and noisy neighbours. How their perceptions of, and feelings towards, them had shifted after one of the neighbours
by Alexandra Having been practicing Buddhism since December 2023 and having just started my second book group. I am becoming more aware of gratitude, compassion and the importance of listening in my everyday life. As a mental health professional, I feel that these values are something that I hold in mind and display when I’m
Glimpse by Khema I may have mentioned this once or twice!!!! So in exactly 3 Months as of yesterday -on the 28th of June 2024? I’m going to retire and start drawing my pension. Eeak. And as I write this, it feels deeply strange, exciting, and really scary all rolled into one . I don’t
Dharma Glimpse by Kokuu My Zen friend Sarah told me about the Merlin app for identifying birdsong. I live in a small village in east Kent and one day when I was sitting outside with the dogs, I opened the app to see what birds it would recognise. The most interesting thing for me is
Dharma Glimpse by Chris E-S Looking out into our garden, it’s hard to believe that we are well into Spring. The borders are so wet that there is a natural water feature forming amongst the soggy roses and shrubs. Even the hardy daffodils seem to be struggling to survive this year. However, if it ever
Dharma Glimpse by Jules I was reading an article about how our brains process our thoughts, each thought interlinking, leading to another thought and then another, thus creating chains of thoughts or ‘thought worms’ (as named by Dr. Poppenk and Julie Tseng). It is estimated that we have approximately 6200 of these thought worms a
I really like the wording of our precepts ‘may I be aware of WHEN,’ not IF, but WHEN, which acknowledges our vulnerability and our basic human being-ness. There are many times when we will fail spectacularly to fulfil our precepts, and actually that’s what they’re there for, to remind us, to bring us back, to
Dharma glimpse by Dave As well as being a tenant at the temple, I have various roles that I have taken on here. For a couple of years now I have volunteered to do the flowers in the shrine room, I tend to do these first thing on a Saturday morning before practice with the
