In Buddhism the tendency to continually comment on life is called prapanca, conceptual proliferation. Through it we complicate and distort our world. But it's possible to change the way we think.

For most people at the end of a retreat, there’s usually one question that comes into sharp focus: “How can I take all of this back into my everyday life?” So, how do we take our practice of Buddhism into the nitty-gritty of everyday life?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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…

We each go through a journey to understand what's meant by The Two Truths. We negate too little, then too much, then again too little, till bit by bit we feel our way into the The Middle Way.

The Dharma cannot transform our lives until we’ve made it our own. We have to breath life into the teachings, bring them alive with our own breath. This is the art of living a dharma life.

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…

Why don’t I do this more often, I thought, go to a rock concert with a crowd of pensioners?

Dana means ‘giving’. But deciding how much we want to give isn’t always easy! Here’s how I decide how much dana to give.

Deep truths hidden in a goofy poem from Jack Kerouac

How to make 2024 your most creative year yet! (Or the post where I let out my inner nerd.)

When we talk of ‘being in service’, are we in service to living beings? Or to an abstract ideal?

Even when someone is being an asshole, they are still a person, and every person is worthy of compassion.

Are those worrying thoughts in the night just there to protect me from my own essential vulnerability?

You make more of a difference than you think. Why we should gather in big numbers.

A few, non-linear, reflections on the meaning of death, and therefore, the meaning of life.

Notes from an interview with Marina Abramović on the Talk Art Podcast