Dharma notebook
This digital notebook is where I capture momentary insights into modern dharma themes; the meaning of Buddhist teachings for our everyday lives and the connections between the dharma, art and culture.
Below is an archive of posts, search for any themes that might interest you.
The tea ceremony is not symbolic
It’s as if something only has worth if it refers to something else. That’s a kind of craziness! It’s always looking elsewhere for what is actually right here.
Designing my day
The more I think about it, the more I’m struck by how planning has its own aesthetics. It’s like curating our time the way we’d curate any visual space.
Making space for anger and sadness
Do we understand that felt anger often does less harm than suppressed anger? Suppressed anger becomes violence. Sadness too has its place, and when suppressed becomes depression.
The innocence of sensory pleasure
Some Buddhist texts say we should be ‘guarding the gates of the senses’. But I would argue that most sense pleasure is innocent - perhaps we can even think of it as a safe refuge?
What if the day of your death is written?
That that the day of your death is written is the kind of idea I would normally reject straight away as not only un-Buddhist but unattractive. That is until you think about it more deeply.
Realisations can only be understood backwards
A realisation recently came into focus. It’s that I now see, in a way that I haven’t before, that everything that’s happened in my life, everything I’ve done, couldn’t have been any other way.
How you know you married the right person
My wife went to the corner shop to pick up a few bits and came back with a gift for me, a squashed tin can. That’s odd, you might think, but not remarkable, that is till you hear the next part of the story…
The aesthetics of work
I love the aesthetics of work, even desk work. It's even better with manual work. Clearing the table for baking bread, the leather apron, sprinkling flour onto the board…
Forget interesting, be interested
Why don’t I do this more often, I thought, go to a rock concert with a crowd of pensioners?
Institutions
When we talk of ‘being in service’, are we in service to living beings? Or to an abstract ideal?
Every asshole is a person
Even when someone is being an asshole, they are still a person, and every person is worthy of compassion.
Thoughts and vulnerability
Are those worrying thoughts in the night just there to protect me from my own essential vulnerability?
Playing our part
You make more of a difference than you think. Why we should gather in big numbers.
Marina Abramović on Talk Art
Notes from an interview with Marina Abramović on the Talk Art Podcast
During the laundry, the ecstacy
Moments of insight can arise at anytime. Often in the middle of the most mundane activity
Why I adore the night
At this time each year I read this piece by Jeanette Winterson. It’s about the night and darkness, but also about winter, the season of ‘nighttime’.
The girl chewing gum
John Smith illustrates the Buddhist insight that there isn’t any essential ‘me’ running the show.