Merit Offering


This was my private alter while I was in Edmonton, Canada. The statue is the Healing Buddha (AKA Bhaisajyagura)and the arrangements is somewhat how we set up alters in our tradition. This must have been taken around holiday time when it’s usual to add a bit more sparkle. I’d often put cards and letters I’d received on my altar for a few days. I particularly liked the flower card. Other traditions have different altars. The spirit, the place such an arrangement has is similar. In the end, and what ever you like to call it, ones private spiritual ‘nook’ is a focus for ones spiritual endeavours. I like ’em’.

In the hand of my statue is a piece of Lapis Lazuli, a gem stone particularly associated with the Healing Buddha. Both the statue and the Lapis were gifts from lay members, making the altar especially significant for me.

This posting is for my good friend in the Dharma who we thought was ‘out of the woods’ in terms of his health. Unfortunately he is back in the woods again, and struggling.

This evening I’m staying at one of our temples near Manchester. Tomorrow, onwards to Telford Buddhist Priory in the West Midlands, near Birmingham.

A Fly in Your Ear!

Here’s a bit of fun picked up from Blue Heron Zen Buddhist Centre in Canada, a Buddhist blog new to me at least.

Many thanks to Pascal for the link.

Medical Ethics

Inside the Ethics Committee. Program 1. Treatment decisions for people who can’t give informed consent. Who decides and how?

I listened to this the other day, the full transcript or the….

Day in the Life

I made a list today oh boy!

I hear a Beatles song coming on…wasn’t it ‘I heard the news today’ from A Day in the Life? Yes, I looked that one up just yesterday. Something about holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire and the Albert Hall. Amazing what you learn about those old songs. I’m no happier and a bit wiser for knowing the connection between Blackburn and the Albert Hall. It’s interesting to know what the source of my youthful singing and humming pleasure was. A newspaper article about holes in the road and how much material it would take to fill them, enough to fill the Albert Hall.

Anyway. I made a list today and worked not so much through it as around, up and down it, now it’s a scribbled out mess. I resort to making lists as a last resort. I find lists basically oppressive but necessary just in order to remember what needs to be done. When there is a lot to be done. Like today. Already I see how disjointed my thinking has become as I write. Lists do it to you. There is help at hand though. Here’s how to stop making lists and get a life.

Go ahead take a look, there is life after lists. A more fun loving one.

For your information I’ll be away from the monastery for a couple of weeks from Wednesday. First stop Telford Buddhist Priory and then onwards to our temple in the Black Forest in Germany. Posting might become irregular, or they might not.

Allow the Sight to Enter

Time to take a long look and allow the sight to enter in. Memorial Photography.

Yes, I have taken photographs of dead people. And yes, there is an odd macabre feeling about the practice. No, I do not regret having taken them.