The Paris Uprising of May 1968

"When I became a Buddhist as a teenager I found myself around people who were still fired by the radicalism that had inspired the Paris students. They also felt that something was fundamentally amiss in conventional society, but they said that changing the world started with changing people. The revolution they wanted was a transformation in human consciousness.

The Buddha's key insight was that everything humans create, from war and injustice to the belief systems that underlie our societies, express our fundamental emotions. 'Everything we experience,' he said 'is led by mind and produced by mind.' A better world therefore requires better people; and revolutions that don't take this into account risk replacing one form of oppression with another."

Vishvapani




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Responding Skilfully to Whatever Happens

To be ethically skilful in the Buddhist sense is to act with an awareness of one's motivations and sensitivity to their likely consequences. Techniques and rules only get you so far, so Buddhist ethical training means applying principles thoughtfully and fostering the emotional intelligence and sensitivity. From this perspective, what it means to be ethical is no more a matter of subjective opinion than judging mastery of a practical skill.



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Myanmar and the Rohingyas

"When I hear about the horrific repression that's being inflicted on the Muslim Rohingyas, I share many of the outraged feelings that others are expressing. But I feel something extra as well: shame that these things are being done by my fellow Buddhists for the sake of a Buddhist state and with the support of many Buddhist monks.

How did we get here? I don't want to over-simplify the situation in Rohingya, or generalise the responses of all Burmese Buddhists; but the question remains. The Buddha said that 'hatred is never overcome by hatred, but only by love'; so how has the faith he founded become associated with such brutality?"



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The Value of Public Service

Vishvapani talks about the commitment of those in the caring professions.



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Accepting Impermanence in the Digital Age

"Bigger cars don't make us happier................."



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Lord Sachs, Darwin and Change

Lord Sachs the ex-Chief Rabbi considers change and how we need to know where we come from, where we are going and why.





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Our Relationships with Eating

For Buddhism, compulsive behaviour never satisfies our craving. In fact, it encourages yet more craving to develop, and that in turn makes us suffer. That's how food becomes connected with so much else: a desire for a better body, reassurance or stimulation. It becomes a focus of guilt and anxiety and a substitute for more dependable sources of satisfaction.

The Buddha's advice was: "Have a sense of moderation in eating and eat simply for the continuance of your body." Buddhist monks still follow a rule of not eating after midday and some only take one meal. That removes the temptation to wander towards the fridge or the mango grove in an idle moment and frees up time and energy for their Buddhist practice.



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