What True Leadership Is

We're hearing a lot about leadership: what worked for Alex Ferguson; what didn't work for Stuart Lancaster, and what might work for the individuals aspiring to be the next UK Prime Minister or US President. But what are those elusive leadership qualities and what can we learn from the great leaders of the past? What about the Buddha, Gautama, who started a movement that eventually grew into a great religious and cultural civilisation?



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Our Assumptions and Biases

How do we move forward when past suffering still affects us? Many people face that question in their personal lives, but there's a collective dimension, too, as we've heard in the call for reparations for slavery that have accompanied David Cameron's visit to Jamaica. Back in Britain we've heard incredulity that issues that seem so long past can feel so present. But the issues persist, and we can't avoid the question of how we deal with grievances that are deeply rooted in history........................



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The "Good Children Report"

In this talk Vishvapani discusses the "Good Children Report" just published by the Children's Society. The report finds that British children's subjective view of how good they feel about themselves places the UK almost at the bottom of a list of 15 countries at 14th position.

He asks if the need to compete and the consequent encouragement to compare themselves with others is selling our children short.



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24/7 Shopping, the 4 Noble Truths Alternative

Vishvapani discusses the moves to 24 hour shopping and extending Sunday opening hours and how having more "stuff" is not the solution to our lack of happiness and well being.



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Responding With Compassion

This is Vishvapani's talk from Saturday the 2nd of May which has finally arrived.

In this "thought" Vishvapani relates an incident when he glimpsed, for a moment that his separateness was an illusion which had grown alongside the illusions that education and relative affluence made him special and that the things he looked to for security could somehow hold off his own mortality and vulnerability. He then says how often we turn away from the suffering around us or in the news. But, following the Nepalese earthquake, what happens when we open up?



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Meditation and Prisoners

Vishvapani discusses meditation and mindfulness programs for prisoners and how rehabilitation can benefit from a Buddhist approach.



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Charlie Hebdo

This is Mona Siddiqui's thought for the day on the atrocities at "Charlie Hebdo".

She is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh.



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