The Call of the Forest

In this talk, Vishvapani considers the story of how Felix Dennis, the young editor of Oz magazine, following his death left £150 million to establish a broad-leafed forest in Warwickshire comprising 10 million trees.

"Most of us value nature and fear climate change, but often that’s one concern among many, and collectively we’ve been slow to act. For that to change I think we need to know the natural world more fully and love it more deeply. We need to let the call of the forest, which the poets have so often expressed, stir our imaginations with a longing for freedom and simplicity. 

The impulse to restore the forests is a response to the needs of the planet, but it also engages our own spiritual need for wholeness and renewal."



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Appreciation and Gratitude

In this Thought for the Day Vishvapani discusses the rescued boys who had been lost in the caves of Northern Thailand. Less than a fortnight after their rescue, all but one of the boys entered a Buddhist monastery for nine days, following the Thai tradition of temporary ordination.

The point of this custom is to foster a sense of appreciation and gratitude, and the boys are focusing on thankfulness to their rescuers, including the Thai diver who died when his oxygen ran out, as well as their parents and the Buddha, who they consider the ultimate source of protection.



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Climate Change and the Parable of the Burning House

The 2015 Paris Climate Change agreement was an inspiring example of the world coming together to tackle a shared problem. But talks in Bonn on implementing the deal stalled this week with poorer nations saying that the richer ones prioritise their own economic growth above reducing emissions or helping developing countries.

Fear alone can't sustain the slow and difficult changes that will reduce global emissions. We also need compelling images of a sustainable society that's more attractive than the current one, and countless initiatives around the world focus on doing that..................................



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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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