We had a wonderful day, the most brilliant weather you can imagine, excellent company with many young people, more food than we could eat and good Dhamma! What more could you want?
In my talk I spoke about what we were there to celebrate and what makes the Buddha different from us. As followers of the Buddha we should be going where he went and doing as he did, which means giving up craving and going all the way to Nibbana. And speaking of craving, well you’re only poor when you want more. Stop wanting and you’ve got it all. Not wanting you’re content with whatever you have and contentment, isn’t that wealth and happiness?
I also emphasised how important it is for everyone to care for themselves and I hope that we and this place and the Dhamma we offer will help with that.
We are very conscious of our dependence on all who support us and grateful for all that is offered. At the end of the day it was reported to me that as well as a generous collection of supplies, £574 had been given. Anumodana!

A couple of days of busy preparations for our Visakha Puja Celebration tomorrow concluded with our evening puja and sitting in front of the Ajahn Chah tree. This was the sight that met my eyes as I went out to take my place and begin the chanting.

After we got back from London on the 19th there was a short and special Angulimala committee meeting here and when we’d finished just as she was going through the gate, Samacitta had the bright idea that perhaps she could take the Buddha Rupa for Foston Hall’s Buddha Grove. Dharmachari Samacitta is the Buddhist chaplain to this women’s prison in Derbyshire and the Buddha Grove there has been an ongoing phenomena for three or four years now. Samacitta had already pinned me down to a dedication ceremony on Buddha Day (Visakha Puja) so it seemed reasonable for the Buddha Rupa to go with her that night for everything to be ready in time. It was carefully loaded into the back of her car and off she went. On Visakha Puja Day itself, I with Tahn Manapo, a visiting monk from Australia, Elizabeth and Prang, who drove, sped off to spend the afternoon in Foston Hall where some tea and buns had been prepared for the guests, officials and few inmates who attended. It poured with rain as soon as we arrived but stopped for the ceremony itself. Everything went all right and afterwards we dashed back in time for an evening with a few members of Warwick University Buddhist Society.

Over the last few years I’ve made some friends in the Chinese community in London, some of them students and some who are not but all who share a love of the Dhamma. We’ve met when I’ve been at the annual Buddha’s Birthday Celebration in Leicester Square, when I’ve spoken at the University of London Union Buddhist Association (ULUBUDA) last year, at Imperial College this year, and at again when I spoke at the Vesak Celebration at London Buddhist Vihara a few weeks ago. Some of them have been talking of coming to visit the The Forest Hermitage for some time and on Sunday they made it. They came with masses of wonderful food and a strong determination to make themselves useful. It was the Bank Holiday and what we used to call a typical Bank Holiday, it rained heavily. So they made themselves useful cleaning and polishing indoors. Here you can see themenjoying themselves and being busy. It was a very nice day. I’m so glad they came and I hope they’ll be back soon.

Once again this year I was invited to the annual celebration in London’s Leicester Square in honour of the birth of the Buddha, or rather of the baby who would grow up as a prince then leave it all behind to search for Enlightenment and become the Buddha. It’s always a very friendly occasion this that the Chinese London Fo Guang Temple arranges. I love going to it and after all, as I said to my friend Victor later that day, I don’t get to appear in the West End often these days.
So on Cup Final Day down to London went Tahn Manapo and I with Prang doing the driving. Of course the match at Wembley meant more traffic and so we didn’t arrive in Leicester Square until after the procession through China Town was well on its way. Never mind we had time to sit and catch our breath before they returned and the main ceremony began. All around the Buddha Image in the main tent was beautifully decorated and in my little talk I drew attention to this and the obvious love and respect for the Buddha that it showed. This, I said, is what the Buddha means to us who follow him and so when we see his image and name used inappropriately it worries us. I wanted to make a point of this because sitting in front of me was the Deputy Mayor of Westminster, the very council that licenses establishments like the Funky Buddha Club in Mayfair! I think he got the message.

Afterwards we walked over to the British Museum and spent an hour or so viewing its wonderful collection of ancient Buddha Images.

On these annual trips I try to include a visit with an old and very dear friend of mine who lives in a tiny flat overlooking China Town. But he’d told me he was away and wouldn’t be back until late that afternoon, too late for us to meet. We were just emerging from the underground car park to come back to Warwickshire when my phone rang and it was him. He’d just got in. So up the road we went to another car park and then for the second time that day threaded our way through the crowds and across Leicester Square. But this time it was to Newport Place and Victor’s tiny flat that we went where we chatted and were entertained by this wonderful man who firmly believes in living in the present. Victor Spinetti and I worked together nearly forty years ago when I was an actor at the National Theatre and he came to direct a play composed of John Lennon’s verse, and we’ve been friends ever since. We don’t see each other often but I’ve kept in touch with him unlike other former friends and colleagues because I felt he understood what I’m up to, at least so far as the practice of trying to live in the present is concerned.

Again and again, I either see for myself or I am told of yet another example of the Buddha or Images of the Buddha being used to promote clubs and bars, or advertise things so contrary to the life and message of the Buddha. And if it’s not that it’s the image of the Buddha used as decoration or fashion item: candles, on place mats, on bags of rice, on shoes and swimwear.
In the course of his life the Buddha was himself subject to abuse and taught that it should be endured, that in time it would pass and in any case that one should be glad that it hadn’t been any worse. Not only that, but even if one were being hacked apart, limb by limb, one should not cease to have loving-kindness for one’s abusers. But he also taught that to respect those worthy of respect was a great blessing and we Buddhists obviously believe the Buddha to have embodied the highest and best that any being can aspire to and therefore to have been the most worthiest of respect. The Buddha Image reminds us of all this. It reminds us too of a mind purified of all greed, hatred and delusion.
If we do nothing about the misuse of the name and image of the Buddha, how are we going to feel when we wake up to discover that people around us are associating the Buddha not with purity but with greed (the Greedy Buddha Restaurant in London’s Wandsworth Bridge Road), with alcohol and intoxication (the Buddha Bars) and with sex (The Kaz Bar, a strip club in Stratford-upon-Avon decorated with Buddha Images). Don’t think it can’t happen. I don’t suppose the creators of those lofty Buddha Images in Afghanistan’s Bamian Valley all those hundreds of years ago ever thought those images would be deliberately reduced to rubble but it happened. And I don’t suppose that anyone in Asia a century ago ever thought that that most ancient and revered symbol of the swastika would ever be associated with evil, and yet now hardly anyone in the West thinks otherwise when they see it and in some countries it’s banned altogether!
What then can we do? Unfortunately, not much. Here we’ve tried using the Warwick Faiths Forum to take our concerns about the Kaz Bar to Stratford Council and it’s emerged that unless the presence of the Buddha Images in that club are likely to cause trouble no action can be taken!
All that’s left and I feel we must do it is to make our concerns known and continue to explain the meaning and importance of the Buddha and how contrary to his example and message are many of these places that are using his image and name.

I had accepted an invitation from Venerable Seelawimala to speak at the London Buddhist Vihara’s Vesak celebration and so on Sunday down to Chiswick I went again.
The title of my talk was The Challenge of the Dhamma. While I got a few laughs for them, the stories I told focussed on how the Dhamma challenges our defilements, our views and our conduct. And I spoke pretty directly on the importance of having the courage to rise to the challenges and always to do the right thing and to keep growing. Naturally, I spent some time on the Five Precepts, and encouraged my listeners to not be afraid of being particularly careful of the fifth. The questions that followed showed what a raw nerve that exposed. I assured them that doing the right thing and leading a moral and decent life is in the end always respected.

On May 2nd I chaired a meeting of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) which was kindly hosted by my friend Venerable Seelawimala, the Acting Head of London Buddhist Vihara. This meeting was attended by representatives of 14 Theravada Temples and brought together monks from Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and Great Britain. The intention so far is for TBSUK to be a contact point and network linking the Theravada Sangha in the UK. I rather hope too that on occasions it will be a voice through which the opinion and expertise of the Theravada Sangha here can be heard. But it’s early days and clearly time and patience are both needed for it to grow and succeed.
I am grateful to Venerable Seelawimala for so warmly welcoming us and providing the venue and the tea.

A week ago we were asked if on Monday we would take our meal at the Thai Twig Thai restaurant in Leamington Spa and give it our blessing. Naturally we agreed and so yesterday morning shortly before ten a car came to collect and convey us to a corner of central Leamington that I don’t recollect having seen before. This is an English owned but Thai staffed restaurant and it was the staff who were anxious that the traditional ceremony of merit making and blessing should take place. It was they then who greeted us and made us welcome before receiving the Refuges and Precepts and listening respectfully while we chanted the Parittas. Then they served us with excellent food. Afterwards I told them the true recipe for a successful restaurant: honesty; courteous and friendly service; and delicious food. And we concluded with the sprinkling of holy water.

News & Musings before May 2007 and since it started in April 2006 has been with Opera and can be found here.