Category: Uncategorized

This week began for me like most with little to do on Monday until the evening. Then I had to teach at Warwick Uni Buddhist Society and immediately after our Monday evening group at The Forest Hermitage, for which I’m afraid I was rather late. For the last few Mondays Ajahn Manapo has been away at Bradford on Avon, so I’ve been on my own here. Tuesday was out to prisons as usual but then Wednesday was rather different – I had to go to London.

That meant an early start and an early meal. I had to be at the MoJ building in Petty France by 1:30. The reason was a meeting of the Prison Service’s Chaplaincy Council. That sounds rather grand but the reality was an assorted group of people of different religions crammed round a table in a sort of glorified and airless cupboard, which I believe they call a meeting room. I was stuck in there for three hours and I wasn’t in the best of shape by the time I escaped. It’s this strange addiction to air and breathing that I have that was the trouble! And the content of the meeting didn’t help. I suppose it was all necessary stuff – some people seemed to be able to get quite enthusiastic about it – but you could never have called it creative.

Once I’d escaped, Luke appeared to pick me up and run me over to Soho, to Dean Street. Had you been strolling through the heart of Soho on Wednesday evening you might have glimpsed this Buddhist monk, quick as a flash, disappearing down a darkened alley next to Quo Vardis. Had you followed you would have found yourself in a little Court and seen me disappear into a studio run by Giles Forman. Until that evening I had never met Giles, although we had spoken a few times over the phone. His studio is where he trains young actors and Giles himself was taught at Drama Centre where I went fifty years ago. I was received by Giles with great courtesy and introduced to some of his young students as having been in Group One at Drama Centre – they all seemed to know what that meant. And for anyone reading this who doesn’t know what it meant, well there are previous entries to this blog that will inform you. Coincidentally, Christopher Fettes, who taught me at Drama Centre, was there that evening and still teaching at eighty-four. The purpose of my going there had been to meet Giles and to talk about how we might in this fiftieth anniversary year of the founding of Drama Centre honour it and the teachers who taught there and especially the great and wonderful Yat, who died eleven years ago. So Giles, Christopher and I had a brief discussion until Giles had to go off and take a class.

I’ve never forgotten how one day, around fifty years ago, I heard Christopher describing Yat as a creative man. I suppose I knew that already but I hadn’t heard it said. I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone called that before and it struck me then as such a wonderful thing to be, to be a creative person. It’s stayed with me. And that evening with those two people and their young students I was reminded of that and the contrast between what I sensed there and what I’d been through that afternoon was almost overwhelming.

What is done in that studio and what I used to do over forty odd years ago and what I do now is all linked. Yat’s work is described as the Psychology of Movement and what I learnt as a student and as an actor with Yat and Christopher and all the rest has a great deal to do with what I do now, and with what Buddhism has to say about the human condition, our suffering and the cause of our suffering. Life and living and dealing with our difficulties has to be a creative process. You must try to be a creative person. I do and if ever I’m called that it will be for me one of the greatest of compliments.

We had a marvellous day with something like two hundred people here – three coaches and thirty cars, they say. Khun Peter from Two Point Restaurant was the main sponsor and he and everyone who came, they were so generous. And the weather too was good to us, the rain cleared and the sun shone. New robes were offered, and an assortment of supplies, there was plenty of good food and around £3,500 was collected – Anumodana!

There are more pictures here. And pretty much the same on Facebook, here.

This afternoon a meeting of the committee of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) was held at The Forest Hermitage. The purpose of the meeting was to take forward the proposal, agreed at our last General Meeting in August, to develop TBSUK as a professional registration body for Theravada Sangha members in the UK.

This was a well attended meeting with almost a full complement of committee members present. Only Venerable Seelawimala of the London Buddhist Vihara was unable to be with us.

For the benefit of Ashin Pannobaso who was not at the last couple of meetings and to remind other members, I briefly related the circumstances that had led us to consider the advantages of having all Theravada monks and nuns in this country properly and professionally registered with a responsible and known association or body, just as is the case with practically all other professions. I explained that this is not to be disrespectful of our various origins in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma, or wherever, but to develop for the UK a body not unlike what we have in those various Buddhist countries that registers, regulates and to some extent governs, represents and protects the Sangha. Furthermore nearly all our monasteries and temples in this country are small and it’s obvious, especially with some of the problems we have in common, that what each of us on our own can achieve is relatively limited but when we come together so much more can be done. A recent example has been the Immigration problem and I’m sure it made a difference when I was able to say at a meeting with the Immigration Minister that I was representing fifty temples. Registration will be voluntary and will take time and so I believe we should get on with it as soon as possible.

I’m pleased to say that we had a very useful discussion and now the work begins.

When our main business had concluded, Ven. Chao Khun Phrapanyabuddhiwithet (Ajahn Laow) raised two matters that he had brought from a recent meeting of Thai monks in Europe. The first concerned a so called work of art in Munich that features a large Buddha-Rupa on its side. This has caused a lot of offence and there’s been quite a bit about it I believe in the Thai press. But the protests have all been ignored. And the second was the refusal of Belgium to recognise Buddhism as a religion and in consequence of this there have been some difficulties put in the way of monks going to there. I don’t think there’s much we can do about the first matter but regarding the second I said I would make some enquiries about what EU law has to say about it.

All in all it was an excellent afternoon and I’m so grateful to everyone for going to the trouble of coming here.

Much of my fortunate and fascinating life, when I’m not at the Forest Hermitage, is spent in prison. I’m usually out about three days a week teaching Buddhism and meditation in up to five or six prisons. Some I go to regularly and some as the need arises. Lately I’ve been going back to the Isle of Wight, to a couple of prisons now clustered as one, that were amongst the very first I went to in 1977 when all this prison stuff began for me. It might seem a long way to go but it’s not a bad drive, then a pleasant cruise on the Solent, and an afternoon of agreeable company practising and discussing the Dhamma, before another cruise and the drive back. Not bad really!

There are naturally departures from this routine, for instance attendance at meetings of the Prison Service Chaplaincy Council and times when I’m teaching in other places, like Khun Peter’s restaurant on the first Sunday of every month and during term time, every Monday evening at Warwick University. I’m also the longest serving chaplain at Broadmoor Special Hospital and lately I’ve started going to Wellington College.

I’m also occasionally reminded of my formative years at Drama School, that’s especially been the case in the last week or so because tomorrow, on September 30th, it will be fifty years to the day since we opened Drama Centre, London. By then I’d already been a drama student for two years. I’d been accepted at what is now the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama a week after my seventeenth birthday and there I spent two amazing years studying with the most extraordinary combination of teachers. We were utterly devoted to all of them but one of them, Yat Malmgren who is almost always known just as Yat, we held in special esteem. Then shortly before the conclusion of our second year, with one more year expected to go, we were dealt a cruel and unexpected blow. I can still to this day vividly remember the Principal, a rigid, unbending woman with one glass eye, which meant you could never work out who she was looking at or talking to, telling us that she had dismissed Yat and that John Blatchley, the Director of our Stage course and the rest of that extraordinary team had in consequence resigned. We were just expected to accept this and carry on with whoever else they managed to employ for the following year but we were having none of it. Furious, we met together and decided to ask Yat and John, if we could find the place and the means, would they give us our final year and they said, yes. So we left Central and set about the formation of what was to become Drama Centre, London. Since leaving a year later and since a small company that some of us formed collapsed, I have had practically no contact with my former fellow revolutionaries. Most of them I’ve never seen again. But two days ago I met one of them in London. A couple of years ago, Patricia Grant, was googling the people who had meant most to her in her life and came upon a piece about Yat, which I had written and published on my blog. And so she found me. Since then we’ve been in touch and now while she’s over visiting from Canada where she lives we’ve met again and on Friday we paid a nostalgic visit to the old building, the previous Methodist church in Prince of Wales Road, Chalk Farm, that used to house the Drama Centre.

This weekend, yesterday and today, at Wat Buddhapadipa in Wimbledon, there have been ceremonies and chanting to remember and honour, at fifty days after his death, the late Somdej Phra Buddhacharn (Somdej Kiew), the Abbot of Wat Saket in Bangkok and Chairman of the monastic panel acting on behalf of the Sangha Raja, the Supreme Patriarch. Somdej Kiew passed away on August 10th. He was 85. I had known him for almost forty years and he had been very kind to me so I was both honoured and pleased to be there yesterday and to be asked to say a few words as a tribute to him and the kindness he exemplified.

In the second week of September, the glorious summer weather we’d been enjoying and which had appeared to be set to go on and on and on, suddenly, changed and that week the forecast for Sunday, September 15th was that we were to expect the first great storm of the autumn. High winds and lashing rain were supposed to sweep the country. This was not the news I wanted to hear for on that very Sunday we had chosen to hold our annual celebration at the Buddha Grove in HMP Spring Hill. This is when every year members of the Thai community come into the prison and cook for all the prisoners and for the Buddhist inmates and staff next door in Grendon Prison. First we have a gathering with prisoners, staff and invited guests at the Buddha Grove, which is of course in the open air, then everyone troops down to the dining hall where the food is served, and when that’s done we come back for a candle-lit circumambulation at the Buddha Grove, again outside. This has been going on for over twenty years and we’ve always been lucky with the weather but this year for the first time I began making contingency plans for an event indoors. On the day itself, the morning looked promising but as the day progressed the clouds gathered and when we drove into Spring Hill at a quarter to five that evening the promised storm appeared to be on its way, the wind was rising and at intervals flurries of teeming rain lashed the hillside. We waited and watched. I went down to visit the kitchen and admire all the good work being done there. I arranged for the serving of the food to be delayed as long as possible. Then I went back up to the main building and the Buddha Grove and we watched and we waited. Guests gradually arrived. And we waited – and the rain eased off – we decided to go for it. It was a bit damp, a bit blowy – we couldn’t light the candles, at least they wouldn’t stay lit, but we managed – the chanting, the speeches, after the food the circumambulation – everything! It was great.

As he is every year, Lord Avebury was there, you can see him speaking to us in the right hand picture above. The current Governor and two previous governors were also present. And this year we were particularly honoured by the presence of the Minister from the Thai Embassy, Mom Rajawongs Sukhasvasti.

And as always, thank you so much, everyone who helped – everyone, in small ways and big ways – to make this the great success it was. Anumodana!

At 3pm on August 7th at Wat Pah Santidham, The Forest Hermitage, we held the latest biannual General Meeting of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) under my chairmanship. Present were sixteen monks representing Wat Mahathat UK, Wat Santiwongsaram in Birmingham, Wat Sanghapadipa in Wales, Amaravati, Wat Phra Singh UK in Cheshire, Sri Saddhatissa Temple in Kingsbury, Wat Sri Ratanaram in Manchester and of course Wat Pah Santidham, the Forest Hermitage.

I had emailed notice of the meeting to all the temples for which I have email addresses and posted notices to those I haven’t, in all fifty Theravada temples. I have had one posted letter returned, addressee gone away or address incomplete, from Wat Santiranaram in Kent. And one email to Saraniya Meditation Centre in Manchester bounced. I had had one apology from Venerable Bodhidhamma and another from Sister Candasiri in Scotland. Concern was expressed that again we had no Burmese monks present and only one Sri Lankan temple represented. There was a short discussion about how we might remedy this in future and widen and improve the representation of the Burmese and Sri Lankan Temples.

Every year at our August meeting it is necessary for one third of the membership of our Committee to stand down and either stand again for re-election or be replaced. This year it was the turn of the Burmese monk, Ashin Pannobaso, and the committee’s Thai secretary, Phra Bhatsakorn Piyobhaso, and both were unanimously re-elected.

Next on the Agenda was the ever present Immigration problem and I took questions and commented on the report that I had already circulated of a meeting I had with Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, in March. The main points from that were that there can be no change to the English language requirement for Tier Two and no movement from Tier Five to Tier Two. Tier Five must remain by its nature temporary. It was confirmed that there is no requirement for the resident labour market test to be met when applying for a visa under Tier Two and no need to report authorised absences or to keep copies of passports for unsponsored residents. And it is possible for Buddhist monks and nuns here under Tier Two (Minister of Religion) to claim settlement and they will be exempt from the £35,000 threshold which will apply to workers in other Tier Two categories from 2016.

Then we talked briefly about the conviction and imprisonment of the Head of the Thames Vihara for sexually molesting a young girl. He has appealed and the appeal has not succeeded. The extreme seriousness of such matters both within the framework of the law and of the Vinaya was emphasised and no matter how shameful if might be temples should not even think of trying to cover up behaviour of this kind. It cannot and must not be tolerated. The problem of the lay supporters not knowing and not understanding monastic rules was also spoken about.

This led onto a discussion on the upgrading of TBSUK to become an authorising professional body. In Buddhist countries the Sangha has some sort of governing body but here we have nothing of the kind and I said that I felt that it was time for the Sangha here to grow up and begin to take care of itself rather than be endlessly referring back to Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka. I went on to quote the late Venerable Saddhatissa who when we came to England in 1977 Luang Por Chah told Ajahn Sumedho and myself to respect as we would the Sangha Raja. Venerable Saddhatissa once made the point to me that it is incorrect to refer to the Thai Sangha and the English Sangha and so on, properly there is just the Sangha and within that we should drop all worldly conventions of class, caste, rank and nationality. I have just registered with the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplaincy which is seeking to promote and raise the status of chaplaincy in healthcare and I believe it would be advantageous for Buddhist monks and nuns to be similarly registered. I believe it would be a support to Sangha members, it would give a recognised and proven authority as to who and what we are, it would expose fake monks and fraudulent activity, it would help us to maintain and even improver standards, it would enable us to deal effectively with bad behaviour and it would help justify the faith and confidence that our lay followers expect to have in us. I do not see this as another religious power block but as a simple and effective way of ensuring the growth and stability of the Sangha in this country far into the future. Obviously to begin with it will have to be voluntary and I recognise that it will take time to develop and I believe the sooner we get on with it the better.

So then we decided that the Committee should take this further and for that reason meet here on October 16th at 3pm.

Next concerns were raised about the recent reports in the media of the Buddhist attacks on the Muslims in Burma and the video of a certain Thai monk living it up on a private jet that had gone viral on the Internet. My answer was that these are more good reasons for upgrading TBSUK. If we were properly established and well known we would be able to answer our critics and publish statements that would make the position of the Sangha clear. When things like these happen the media would learn to come to us and we wouldn’t have to remain silent and put up with all this damaging publicity.

Our next General Meeting was then set for March 5th next year at 3pm at Wat Buddhapadipa in Wimbledon.

Our amicable and productive afternoon then wound up with the Asking Forgiveness ceremonies and the all important photo calls.

At 3pm on August 7th at Wat Pah Santidham, The Forest Hermitage, we held the latest biannual General Meeting of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) under my chairmanship. Present were sixteen monks representing Wat Mahathat UK, Wat Santiwongsaram in Birmingham, Wat Sanghapadipa in Wales, Amaravati, Wat Phra Singh UK in Cheshire, Sri Saddhatissa Temple in Kingsbury, Wat Sri Ratanaram in Manchester and of course Wat Pah Santidham, the Forest Hermitage.

I had emailed notice of the meeting to all the temples for which I have email addresses and posted notices to those I haven’t, in all fifty Theravada temples. I have had one posted letter returned, addressee gone away or address incomplete, from Wat Santiranaram in Kent. And one email to Saraniya Meditation Centre in Manchester bounced. I had had one apology from Venerable Bodhidhamma and another from Sister Candasiri in Scotland. Concern was expressed that again we had no Burmese monks present and only one Sri Lankan temple represented. There was a short discussion about how we might remedy this in future and widen and improve the representation of the Burmese and Sri Lankan Temples.

Every year at our August meeting it is necessary for one third of the membership of our Committee to stand down and either stand again for re-election or be replaced. This year it was the turn of the Burmese monk, Ashin Pannobaso, and the committee’s Thai secretary, Phra Bhatsakorn Piyobhaso, and both were unanimously re-elected.

Next on the Agenda was the ever present Immigration problem and I took questions and commented on the report that I had already circulated of a meeting I had with Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, in March. The main points from that were that there can be no change to the English language requirement for Tier Two and no movement from Tier Five to Tier Two. Tier Five must remain by its nature temporary. It was confirmed that there is no requirement for the resident labour market test to be met when applying for a visa under Tier Two and no need to report authorised absences or to keep copies of passports for unsponsored residents. And it is possible for Buddhist monks and nuns here under Tier Two (Minister of Religion) to claim settlement and they will be exempt from the £35,000 threshold which will apply to workers in other Tier Two categories from 2016.

Then we talked briefly about the conviction and imprisonment of the Head of the Thames Vihara for sexually molesting a young girl. He has appealed and the appeal has not succeeded. The extreme seriousness of such matters both within the framework of the law and of the Vinaya was emphasised and no matter how shameful if might be temples should not even think of trying to cover up behaviour of this kind. It cannot and must not be tolerated. The problem of the lay supporters not knowing and not understanding monastic rules was also spoken about.

This led onto a discussion on the upgrading of TBSUK to become an authorising professional body. In Buddhist countries the Sangha has some sort of governing body but here we have nothing of the kind and I said that I felt that it was time for the Sangha here to grow up and begin to take care of itself rather than be endlessly referring back to Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka. I went on to quote the late Venerable Saddhatissa who when we came to England in 1977 Luang Por Chah told Ajahn Sumedho and myself to respect as we would the Sangha Raja. Venerable Saddhatissa once made the point to me that it is incorrect to refer to the Thai Sangha and the English Sangha and so on, properly there is just the Sangha and within that we should drop all worldly conventions of class, caste, rank and nationality. I have just registered with the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplaincy which is seeking to promote and raise the status of chaplaincy in healthcare and I believe it would be advantageous for Buddhist monks and nuns to be similarly registered. I believe it would be a support to Sangha members, it would give a recognised and proven authority as to who and what we are, it would expose fake monks and fraudulent activity, it would help us to maintain and even improver standards, it would enable us to deal effectively with bad behaviour and it would help justify the faith and confidence that our lay followers expect to have in us. I do not see this as another religious power block but as a simple and effective way of ensuring the growth and stability of the Sangha in this country far into the future. Obviously to begin with it will have to be voluntary and I recognise that it will take time to develop and I believe the sooner we get on with it the better.

So then we decided that the Committee should take this further and for that reason meet here on October 16th at 3pm.

Next concerns were raised about the recent reports in the media of the Buddhist attacks on the Muslims in Burma and the video of a certain Thai monk living it up on a private jet that had gone viral on the Internet. My answer was that these are more good reasons for upgrading TBSUK. If we were properly established and well known we would be able to answer our critics and publish statements that would make the position of the Sangha clear. When things like these happen the media would learn to come to us and we wouldn’t have to remain silent and put up with all this damaging publicity.

Our next General Meeting was then set for March 5th next year at 3pm at Wat Buddhapadipa in Wimbledon.

Our amicable and productive afternoon then wound up with the Asking Forgiveness ceremonies and the all important photo calls.

June began for me with a very busy weekend.

On Saturday, June 1st we had the second of this year’s quarterly Angulimala workshops for Buddhist prison chaplains. This particular one was rather special because our guest for the afternoon was Nick Hardwick CBE, HMI Chief Inspector of Prisons. We have been fortunate in the past to have had the three previous Chief Inspectors, Judge Stephen Tumim, Sir David (now Lord) Ramsbotham and Dame Anne Owers come here to speak at our workshops and I was pleased that we were able to continue the tradition with the latest holder of the post. I must say that Nick Hardwick was very generous with his time and gave us a very enjoyable, useful and inspiring afternoon.

These workshops are long days for me because not only is there the preparation but then the meetings run from 10 o’clock in the morning right through until 7 or 8 in the evening. So you can imagine I might prefer to take it easy the day after but that’s not always possible and on June 2nd I had to leave early for my first Sunday of the month Dana and Dhamma Desana at Khun Peter’s restaurant near Baker Street in London. And when that was over I had to make a pretty swift return in time to be at Coventry Cathedral for a service to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. So, you can see it was a busy weekend.

A few days later on June 4th we had a visit by Luang Por Kumpong, a senior monk of Wat Pah Pong, who came for the meal with a group of monks from Amaravati. I have known LP Kumpong since 1973 when newly arrived he was still in white and sent over by Luang Por Chah from Wat Pah Pong to Wat Keun to spend his probationary period with us there. It was a pleasure to see him and to welcome him to The Forest Hermitage, Wat Pah Santidham.

I’m mainly only setting down here the principal events of these few weeks, you can take for granted that every week on usually three days I am out and about with my prison visits and odd moments here are also occupied with Buddhist prison matters. It was after one of these visits on June 19th, which just happened to be the first anniversary of the death of my old friend Victor Spinetti, that I called on his brother who lives not far from here and we spent a lovely couple of hours remembering Victor. Then the next day I was off down to the Isle of Wight to visit the Buddhists in the two remaining prisons there.

Then we had Ajahn Cittagutto come for a week. He was the first monk to ordain here and now lives in Northern Thailand. Every year he visits his family in Germany and comes over here to see me. The day he left, Ajahn Manapo embarked on another tudong walk. We packed him off on a train down to Weymouth where he was met and driven to his starting point somewhere nearby. At Bradford-0n-Avon he ran into the owner of a Thai restaurant who with others is in the process of creating a small temple in an old building near the river. He stopped there for two nights and while he was there I went down to see him and the place and meet the good people setting this up. The result of this chance encounter is that from September Ajahn Manapo will be going down there every Monday for five weeks to teach meditation and then we’ll see what happens after that. His walk ended a few days later back here in time to be here before Tahn Nyanavisuddhi returned to Amaravati. We very much enjoyed having Ven. Nyanavisuddhi here and I hope he’ll be back.

By this time we were well into July and the following week was a birthday week. Khun Ting’s was on the 16th but she invited us to her restaurant in Nottingham on the 15th. That was also the day that work began on the new gate. Then it was my birthday on the 17th and as usual people were very generous. There was one huge cake presented when we were at Khun Ting’s and another on the day with cards and presents. Really, it’s amazing! I have to pinch myself to remind myself that at 69 I am now in my seventieth year!

That evening and the next day it was back to prisons. In the evening of the 17th I was at Rye Hill and on the 18th I went all the way up to the Lake District to see the Buddhist group in Haverigg Prison. Afterwards we had a little drive around Lake Windermere which was nice.

Of course my special reason for making that extra effort to go to Haverigg and at other prisons as well as here was because we were celebrating Asalha Puja or as it’s sometimes known now, Dhamma Day. This is the anniversary of the Buddha’s First Sermon. The actual day was Monday, July 22nd with the Entry to the Vassa the following day but our celebration at The Forest Hermitage was on Sunday, July 21st and a very lovely day it was too.

June began for me with a very busy weekend.

On Saturday, June 1st we had the second of this year’s quarterly Angulimala workshops for Buddhist prison chaplains. This particular one was rather special because our guest for the afternoon was Nick Hardwick CBE, HMI Chief Inspector of Prisons. We have been fortunate in the past to have had the three previous Chief Inspectors, Judge Stephen Tumim, Sir David (now Lord) Ramsbotham and Dame Anne Owers come here to speak at our workshops and I was pleased that we were able to continue the tradition with the latest holder of the post. I must say that Nick Hardwick was very generous with his time and gave us a very enjoyable, useful and inspiring afternoon.

These workshops are long days for me because not only is there the preparation but then the meetings run from 10 o’clock in the morning right through until 7 or 8 in the evening. So you can imagine I might prefer to take it easy the day after but that’s not always possible and on June 2nd I had to leave early for my first Sunday of the month Dana and Dhamma Desana at Khun Peter’s restaurant near Baker Street in London. And when that was over I had to make a pretty swift return in time to be at Coventry Cathedral for a service to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. So, you can see it was a busy weekend.

A few days later on June 4th we had a visit by Luang Por Kumpong, a senior monk of Wat Pah Pong, who came for the meal with a group of monks from Amaravati. I have known LP Kumpong since 1973 when newly arrived he was still in white and sent over by Luang Por Chah from Wat Pah Pong to Wat Keun to spend his probationary period with us there. It was a pleasure to see him and to welcome him to The Forest Hermitage, Wat Pah Santidham.

I’m mainly only setting down here the principal events of these few weeks, you can take for granted that every week on usually three days I am out and about with my prison visits and odd moments here are also occupied with Buddhist prison matters. It was after one of these visits on June 19th, which just happened to be the first anniversary of the death of my old friend Victor Spinetti, that I called on his brother who lives not far from here and we spent a lovely couple of hours remembering Victor. Then the next day I was off down to the Isle of Wight to visit the Buddhists in the two remaining prisons there.

Then we had Ajahn Cittagutto come for a week. He was the first monk to ordain here and now lives in Northern Thailand. Every year he visits his family in Germany and comes over here to see me. The day he left, Ajahn Manapo embarked on another tudong walk. We packed him off on a train down to Weymouth where he was met and driven to his starting point somewhere nearby. At Bradford-0n-Avon he ran into the owner of a Thai restaurant who with others is in the process of creating a small temple in an old building near the river. He stopped there for two nights and while he was there I went down to see him and the place and meet the good people setting this up. The result of this chance encounter is that from September Ajahn Manapo will be going down there every Monday for five weeks to teach meditation and then we’ll see what happens after that. His walk ended a few days later back here in time to be here before Tahn Nyanavisuddhi returned to Amaravati. We very much enjoyed having Ven. Nyanavisuddhi here and I hope he’ll be back.

By this time we were well into July and the following week was a birthday week. Khun Ting’s was on the 16th but she invited us to her restaurant in Nottingham on the 15th. That was also the day that work began on the new gate. Then it was my birthday on the 17th and as usual people were very generous. There was one huge cake presented when we were at Khun Ting’s and another on the day with cards and presents. Really, it’s amazing! I have to pinch myself to remind myself that at 69 I am now in my seventieth year!

That evening and the next day it was back to prisons. In the evening of the 17th I was at Rye Hill and on the 18th I went all the way up to the Lake District to see the Buddhist group in Haverigg Prison. Afterwards we had a little drive around Lake Windermere which was nice.

Of course my special reason for making that extra effort to go to Haverigg and at other prisons as well as here was because we were celebrating Asalha Puja or as it’s sometimes known now, Dhamma Day. This is the anniversary of the Buddha’s First Sermon. The actual day was Monday, July 22nd with the Entry to the Vassa the following day but our celebration at The Forest Hermitage was on Sunday, July 21st and a very lovely day it was too.

And now for the very, merry month of May and to carry on from where I left off last month, I was out of action for a week or two, nothing serious, just some bug or other but it meant that despite at the last minute saying I would go to receive that honorary doctorate from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, at the very last minute I cancelled – a bit disappointing but never mind – and now I’ll have to wait until I go in January to receive it.

But not going to Thailand did enable me to fulfil another important and long standing engagement. Off and on, for years it seems, and encouraged by a former pupil, there has been the occasional contact between me and Wellington College with a view to my talking to their students and perhaps providing some Buddhist chaplaincy support. At last I had a date to speak there in chapel, it was agreed long before I knew about receiving the honorary doctorate and it was the same weekend. Had I gone to Thailand Ajahn Manapo would have stood in for me – and might well have done better than me – but not going meant I could do it. So I was there to give a ten minute address in chapel on Sunday evening, the 12th May and the following Thursday I was back, again in their magnificent chapel, to give a longer talk followed by questions, which was very stimulating and enjoyable. In case you don’t know, Wellington College is a large, well-endowed public school in Berkshire that used to be I believe for the sons of military officers but is now a modern co-ed establishment with a branch in China. It’s not far from Broadmoor, where I’m the Buddhist chaplain, and was founded by Queen Victoria at around the same time as Broadmoor in the mid nineteenth century and named after the great Duke of Wellington.

The Sangha presence here has been boosted for a while with the welcome arrival of Tahn Nyanavisuddhi who has come over from Amaravati to stay for a couple of months. When I was there at the end of last year for the memorial for John Coleman and at that time on my own here, he very kindly offered to come and help me out and even though Ajahn Manapo unexpectedly came back in February he still came but it is only until just before Vassa which he has to spend at Amaravati.

Usually in May falls the full moon of the ancient lunar month of Vesakha when we remember the Birth, Enlightenment and Final Passing of the Buddha. The Pali scriptures record that each of these events occurred on a Vesakha Full Moon with the Enlightenment, according to traditional dating having taken place 2,551 years ago when he was thirty-five. This year the Vesakha Full Moon was on May 24th and on several days before and after I was involved with Vesak celebrations in the prisons, at Chithurst and at The Forest Hermitage. I hadn’t been to Chithurst since June 1999 but this year I was invited to go for their Vesakha Puja day and give the Dhamma Desana, which I did. That was on May 19th and the week after it was our turn and a very good day we had too with an impressive turnout of students from Warwick Uni, friends old and new and particularly, as every Vesak, our old friends who for years have run the Liverpool Buddhist Society. More pictures are here.

Otherwise, everything carries on as normal.

And now for the very, merry month of May and to carry on from where I left off last month, I was out of action for a week or two, nothing serious, just some bug or other but it meant that despite at the last minute saying I would go to receive that honorary doctorate from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, at the very last minute I cancelled – a bit disappointing but never mind – and now I’ll have to wait until I go in January to receive it.

But not going to Thailand did enable me to fulfil another important and long standing engagement. Off and on, for years it seems, and encouraged by a former pupil, there has been the occasional contact between me and Wellington College with a view to my talking to their students and perhaps providing some Buddhist chaplaincy support. At last I had a date to speak there in chapel, it was agreed long before I knew about receiving the honorary doctorate and it was the same weekend. Had I gone to Thailand Ajahn Manapo would have stood in for me – and might well have done better than me – but not going meant I could do it. So I was there to give a ten minute address in chapel on Sunday evening, the 12th May and the following Thursday I was back, again in their magnificent chapel, to give a longer talk followed by questions, which was very stimulating and enjoyable. In case you don’t know, Wellington College is a large, well-endowed public school in Berkshire that used to be I believe for the sons of military officers but is now a modern co-ed establishment with a branch in China. It’s not far from Broadmoor, where I’m the Buddhist chaplain, and was founded by Queen Victoria at around the same time as Broadmoor in the mid nineteenth century and named after the great Duke of Wellington.

The Sangha presence here has been boosted for a while with the welcome arrival of Tahn Nyanavisuddhi who has come over from Amaravati to stay for a couple of months. When I was there at the end of last year for the memorial for John Coleman and at that time on my own here, he very kindly offered to come and help me out and even though Ajahn Manapo unexpectedly came back in February he still came but it is only until just before Vassa which he has to spend at Amaravati.

Usually in May falls the full moon of the ancient lunar month of Vesakha when we remember the Birth, Enlightenment and Final Passing of the Buddha. The Pali scriptures record that each of these events occurred on a Vesakha Full Moon with the Enlightenment, according to traditional dating having taken place 2,551 years ago when he was thirty-five. This year the Vesakha Full Moon was on May 24th and on several days before and after I was involved with Vesak celebrations in the prisons, at Chithurst and at The Forest Hermitage. I hadn’t been to Chithurst since June 1999 but this year I was invited to go for their Vesakha Puja day and give the Dhamma Desana, which I did. That was on May 19th and the week after it was our turn and a very good day we had too with an impressive turnout of students from Warwick Uni, friends old and new and particularly, as every Vesak, our old friends who for years have run the Liverpool Buddhist Society. More pictures are here.

Otherwise, everything carries on as normal.

Even seven hundred years ago such was the fame of April for its showers that Chaucer opened his Canterbury Tales with the memorable line, one of the few that I remember from my school days, ‘Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote.’ But this year there have been few sweet showers and the unseasonably cold weather has persisted so that at The Forest Hermitage, at the very end of the month, there’s hardly any blossom, the hedges are still not green and there’s been no sound of the cuckoo yet.

One of my main concerns at the end of last month and the beginning of this was with one of my tortoises. One day I discovered Speedy, the smaller and younger of the two, with something terribly wrong with his eye. It looked like something had given him real bash, it was swollen and bloody, so off he went to the vet. After a week or so of daily drops there was no improvement so then he had to have a minor operation for which he had to be anaesthetised. Still for a while there was no improvement but then all of a sudden his eye opened and he got better. I’m so pleased. He’s been with me nearly nineteen years and I love him dearly. Charlie, the other one who’s much bigger and older has been with me just twelve years and of course I love him too. Tortoises fascinate me and I do enjoy watching them. A recent improvement here has been to what I call the Tortoise Park where these two live. We’ve enlarged and improved the surround and reseeded it with grass and suitable weeds for them to graze and I’m ever so pleased with it.

April of course is when Songkran, the Thai and also the Burmese, Sri Lankan, Cambodian and Lao New Year falls. So we celebrated. First was at Khun Peter’s restaurant near Baker Street, when Ajahn Manapo accompanied me for my regular first Sunday of the month appearance there, this time to celebrate Songkran and to remember Khun Peter’s mother who had recently passed away. Next, the following Saturday, April 13th, we were at Khun Yod’s restaurant, YodSiam, in Nottingham. We do this every year but this year without Khun Yod who’s gone back to live in Thailand. We managed however and had a good time. As soon as we got back that afternoon it was all hands to setting up here for the following day. It was still cold but on the Sunday we did have some sun and a shower or two. The weather wasn’t good enough for the fairly liberal bathing of each other that usually characterises Songkran but we had an impressive turn out and another very good day. I was especially pleased that M.R. Adisorndej Sukhasvasti, the Minister from The Royal Thai Embassy was able to be with us.

The next thing I had to do that was a bit out of the ordinary was make an unexpected visit to Maidstone Prison to take a Memorial Service for a Buddhist prisoner who had recently died. On the way back I must say there were moments when I wondered whether the memorial for me might not be too far off. I knew the night before that I didn’t feel right and before we set off for Maidstone I reckoned I had some sort of flu–like thing hanging about me but I was all right on the way down and while I was there. The journey back was something else and I was jolly glad to get in and curl up in my kuti. And I’ve been poorly ever since, which is making it unlikely that I’ll be going to Thailand in May to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. But we’ll see.

This March is going to be remembered for being very cold. We’ve had snow and night after night of freezing weather. It’s Easter and the snowdrops are still out and there are no daffodils. Summer time begins tonight but there’s been practically no sign of Spring yet.

Despite the cold we’ve carried on as normal with prison visits and some school visits and everything else we do here. The new sewage treatment plant is finally in and working and the ground around it has been roughly sculpted. It just needs a dressing of top soil now and some grass seed to ready it for the warmer weather that we still hope for.

On March 13th I went to Wat Santiwongsaram in Birmingham witn Ajahn Manapo to attend the latest meeting of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK). There was a good attendance from the Thais and from English that as well as Manapo and I also included Ajahn Amaro from Amaravati and Venerable Bodhidhamma of Satipanya Retreat. But there were no Burmese monks and only Ven. Seelawimala for the Sri Lankans. As usual our agenda included a discussion about the problems with Immigration and I reported that Lord Avebury had got a meeting for him and I with the Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, that so far had had to be postponed twice but would now take place a week the following Tuesday. Then we moved on to discuss the imprisonment of the Head Monk of Thames Vihara who has been convicted of sexually abusing a child and been sentenced to seven years in gaol. I argued vigorously for us not only to do something about this but be seen to be doing something. Of course we have no power to disrobe him or anything much except to declare him persona non grata and make abundantly clear that what he has done is despicable, utterly unacceptable and as well as illegal, a very serious offence in Vinaya. Thinking about what to do has led me to consider upgrading the status of TBSUK to something like that of a professional body that all Theravada temples and all Theravada monks should be registered with. In the meeting there was a certain amount of opposition to making a strong statement public because of a suggestion that he might appeal and win his appeal. While that could in theory happen, the rude and inescapable fact is that he has been tried in a British court of law and found guilty. Well, we did eventually agree to begin the process of upgrading TBSUK and we did agree that the short statement that I included in my blog last year could be used in temple newsletters and the like. Unfortunately we don’t yet have a national Buddhist newspaper or even blog so how far this will go I don’t know. The statement I wrote last year, by the way, was this: While we don’t want to jeopardize his appeal, nevertheless the Head Monk of the Thames Vihara has been found guilty of molesting a child and is in prison and we cannot ignore it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular case we felt it important that we reassure our lay followers and supporters that behaviour of the kind of which he has been accused and convicted is totally unacceptable to us and as well as being against the law is a very serious breach of monastic discipline (Vinaya) from which neither age, seniority nor alleged attainment can absolve any bhikkhu.

On Tuesday, March 26th, with Luke driving, I went to London accompanied by our Thai nun here, Sister Khema, for the meeting with Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister. We were met at the Peer’s Entrance of the House of Lords by Lord Avebury and had time for a chat with him before proceeding through a maze of corridors to emerge eventually in Westminster Hall. Then down on the left, just past where the new stained glass window that was presented to the Queen last year is displayed, Lord Avebury led us through another door into a corridor of meeting rooms where Mark Harper was waiting for us flanked by three civil servants. It turned out to be a surprisingly useful meeting and when it was over and we went for a cup of tea we felt pretty pleased with our afternoon’s work. We didn’t get all we wanted but we got some and I’ll be reporting on this later after an exchange of correspondence. Afterwards Sister and I called at the Thai Embassy to brief the Minister, M.R. Adisorndej Sukhasvasti, and let him know how our meeting had gone.

Two days later I was in London again. This time it was prison stuff and I was attending a little conference about the National Prison Radio, a radio station run by prisoners for prisoners. It was a good afternoon with some interesting and entertaining presentations, notably an interview with Jonathon Aitken. He was very amusing and admitted that his imprisonment had been a great learning experience, so much so that when he got out and had to fill in his Whose Who form, for Education he put Eton, Oxford and HMP Belmarsh! The conference was held in the most amazing place, the home of The Magic Circle. That’s an association of professional and amateur magicians founded in 1908 and now with about 1500 members that includes many famous names including the Prince of Wales. Its HQ is down a grubby side street just off the Euston Road. It looks like an old warehouse, until you step through the door when you suddenly find yourself transported into a world of magic and illusion. There’s a pretty little theatre and a fascinating museum. I don’t know which I enjoyed more, the conference or the place.

The big event in February was Magha Puja which we celebrated on Sunday, the 24th. It was an impressive turnout that included a lot of Thai students from Warwick Uni and we were especially honoured by the presence of the Thai Ambassador with his wife and son. It was also a special occasion because just a few days before Ajahn Manapo had returned from sixteen months in Thailand and so it was a day too to warmly welcome him back.

The photo includes the Ambassador and his wife with Ajahn Manapo in the background.

In January I had almost three weeks away, when I went first to Cambodia with Ajahn Manapo, Joob, Palm and Ant for a quick tour of Angkor Wat.

Then we crossed back into the NE of Thailand in time for the Ajahn Chah Memorial day at Wat Nong Pah Pong and a few days at Wat Pah Nanachat.

Then it was down to Bangkok to give a talk at Sevanakarn building in Wat Patumkongka where I also met my old friend Sathienpong Wannapok as well as Matthew Richards and his wife Pen.

And that was followed by a few days looking at the sea,

before returning to Bangkok to give another talk and pay my respects to Somdet at Wat Sraket and then dashing to Ajahn Jundee’s impressive wat for Patimokkha just hours before getting the plane back to chilly London.

At Amaravati’s Royal Kathina.

A Kathina is the ceremony that may take place where suitable conditions are in place during the month that follows the Vassa and involves the presentation of robe cloth or a robe to the Sangha that then offers the robe sewn from the cloth or the robe to one deserving monk. A Royal Kathina is when the robe is offered by a monarch. This year in England a Royal Kathina was offered by His Majesty the King of Thailand in Devon on Sunday, November 18th and another a week later at Amaravati. During each ceremony a blessing is recited for the King and that is supposed to be done by a monk with the rank and title of a Chao Khun, which is why I was invited to both occasions. I had never before been to Hartridge Monastery, often referred to as the Devon Vihara, and so after the ceremony which was held in a local village hall I was pleased to spend an enjoyable hour there as well. Both occasions were well attended and raised impressive amounts of money, at Hartridge for the extension they are planning to build there, and at Amaravati to help meet the huge expense of running such a large and popular temple. I was well received at both and thoroughly enjoyed both occasions, and I was pleased to be of some service.

At the Devon Royal Kathina.

In an earlier blog, World Faiths & A Day in Wales for Victor Spinetti, I wrote  about taking Victor’s funeral in Wales, a private, family affair back in July. A memorial that they called A Life Crowded with Incident, a Salute to Victor Spinetti was then arranged for a wider gathering of his friends and fans in the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden for October 2nd. And for that, determined to be there if it was the last thing I did, I raised myself from my sick bed and went. And I’m so glad I did. It was a cracking afternoon. I was made so welcome by Victor’s family and sat with them in their reserved pews. Looking through the programme while we waited for it to begin – a delay we were told later that was caused by Ronnie Corbett getting locked in the lavatory – I saw that tributes were to be read by Ron Pickup who I’d worked with in my years at the National. At first, looking round, I couldn’t locate him but then I suddenly realised that that old man over there was him! I forget that I’m getting on a bit myself and some friends of my youth are even older. After that I was peering carefully at the elderly around me trying to see if behind their old masks there was someone I’d once known. Just across the aisle from me was an empty seat into which soon after it all began was ushered Sir Paul McCartney. Later on he had a nice story about Victor and his talent for making clouds disappear. I remember Victor telling me about the book, ‘How to Make Clouds Disappear’, he’d once found in a second-hand bookshop. Basically you just choose your cloud and stare at it. Sir Paul said that as he’d come out that morning he’d thought of Victor making clouds disappear and tried it, he’d selected his cloud and he looked at it, and looked at it, and looked at it – and it had got bigger, and bigger, and bigger! Another contributor was Barbara Windsor who told how she’d leapt to Victor’s defence when Joan Littlewood was having a go at him when they were in America with ‘Oh What a Lovely War!’ Hers was the first f word of the afternoon and at the end the clergyman hosting the show commented he’d never before heard so many f words in one afternoon in his church. Actors! When it was all over I had a word with Paul McCartney and asked him if he remembered me. Well, of course he didn’t but he was very nice and a bit later on before he left he came over and had another chat with me. I also had a word with Barbara Windsor who said to me, ‘Victor’s told us all about you.’ She, of course, had been to see Victor just a few days before he died when it had already been decided to ask me to take his funeral. Luckily the word had been put round for the ladies not to touch me – actors are very affectionate – so I didn’t have to avoid any hugs and kisses. Being back amongst a crowd of actors like that for the first time in over forty years I was struck by the camaraderie, the warmth and friendliness of everyone. The other thing that impressed me was that no one was recording it. I’m so used these days to seeing people videoing and photographing everything, anxious to store it all up for later and not living it as it’s happening! I don’t know whether it’s a generational thing, or the effect of a life in live theatre or what but at a tribute to a man who lived for the moment it was fitting – and a relief. Victor was proud of never having owned a watch and one chap who spoke said he could never understand how Victor knew what time it was. When he asked him, Victor’s reply, if I heard it correctly, was, ‘ the time is NOW – and I am in it!

Last Wednesday I had to attend a meeting of the Prison Service’s Chaplaincy Council and Regional Chaplains at a very nice Christian conference and retreat centre called St Katherine’s near the famous dock of the same name in the East End of London. Being not far from the Isle of Dogs, afterwards it took only a few minutes to nip through the tunnel and arrive at the big electronically operated gates that bar the entrance to a huge block of well appointed flats on the north bank of the river just along from Canary Wharf and close to where Brunel’s SS Great Western was built. Never having worked out how to operate these gates I did as I always do and slipped through behind someone who did and then made my way up to the seventh floor where my old friend and mentor from far-off student days was waiting to greet me.

Christopher Fettes was one of an extraordinary group of teachers who I found myself being taught and inspired by when at the tender age of seventeen I entered the Central School of Speech and Drama at Swiss Cottage to train as an actor. The head of my course was John Blatchley and when he had been forming his team and sought to recruit the maverick Stanislavsky teacher Harold Lang, Harold had made his acceptance conditional on Yat Malmgren being included, and with Yat came Christopher Fettes. Central at that time ran various courses and the whole place was presided over by a tall, elderly, ram-rod straight woman called Gwyneth Thurburn, who eventually, jealous of our devotion to Yat, dismissed him. John, Harold and Christopher then all resigned. By that time I was just ending my second year. When we heard the news we were devastated and resolved to try and persuade John, Yat, Harold and Christopher to somehow give us our final year. They agreed and less than three months later Drama Centre, London opened its doors in the halls of an old Methodist church at Chalk Farm.

Yat was unquestionably a great artist and a wonderful teacher and it was he and his work on the psychology of movement that made that place special. He died in 2002 at the age of 86 and there is very little on record, especially on the web, about him and his work. Fortunately Christopher has recently completed a book on Yat’s work and has agreed to my putting something on the web, so I hope this brief account and these photographs of Yat that Christopher gave me on Wednesday will be the beginning of a more complete and suitable tribute to a very remarkable man to whom I shall forever be indebted. These photos are of Yat towards the end of his life and as a young man.

I had better add that Yat’s work and example profoundly influenced me in the direction that I follow today. I remember in the flat at 1, Belsize Avenue forty-five years ago finding and looking at a book on Buddhism. Then in a letter that he wrote to me shortly after Yat’s death, Christopher said, “As I’m sure you recollect, Buddhism had affected him (Yat) profoundly at various stages in his career; never more so than towards the close of his life, when he had lost the school and with it an active career as a teacher. … Our school was about craftsmanship and its relation to art on the one hand, to life on the other; about the possible meaning and purpose of art itself. All that, it may well be said, has little or nothing to do with the world of ‘show business’. But practically everyone in the crematorium that afternoon was to some degree exercised by such ultimate questions. That they owe to Yat, who was one of those rare beings who clearly exemplify what they teach. You could put out your hand and touch goodness and integrity.”

On Sunday, September 13th, we held our annual celebration at the Buddha Grove in Spring Hill Prison. This was the first and by far the finest and most ambitious of the various Buddha groves and gardens that have been created in a number of English prisons. Some unfortunately have not lasted very long and have been dismantled or damaged but this at Spring Hill was built to last and has been in place since 1992, when on a bitterly cold night at the end of October, a large gathering that included the then Director General of the Prison Service assembled for its opening and dedication. Having sampled the soup that the prisoners made to warm everyone up, the Thai people that evening asked if in future they might be allowed to do the food and so ever since our celebration has included a marvellous Thai vegetarian meal for all the prisoners and guests as well as the Buddhist prisoners in the adjacent Grendon Prison. This year our Thai friends and supporters cooked for four hundred.

On Sunday, just as he was seventeen years ago when we opened the Buddha Grove, our Patron of Angulimala, Lord Avebury, was there to grace the occasion with his inspiring example of selfless service and dedication to the relief of those who are oppressed and in trouble and as usual offered us some wise words to reflect upon.

We were fortunate too to have the support and presence of monks from the Thai Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, the Oxford Vihara, the Kings Bromley Temple, Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey and of course the Forest Hermitage. And we were delighted that Professor Richard Gombrich was also able to be with us.

In in my speech I once again told how the Buddha Grove came to be built. Then as I try never to miss an opportunity to tell the story of Angulimala, after whom our Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy is named, I related how this awful mass murderer was tamed and converted by the Buddha, not by violence but by persuasion and especially by example. This amazing story reminds us that whatever terrible things someone might do or have done, it is not only that that they do and that that they’re capable of. People can and do and will change and everyone bears within them the seeds of an Enlightened being.

It was a marvellous occasion and I am so grateful to Peter Bennett, the Governor, to the prison staff, to the inmates, to everyone who worked so hard and who went to so much trouble and especially to Khun Yod and all the Thais who gave of their time and expertise and who worked so generously all afternoon in that kitchen. Anumodana!

We’ve just had a busy Angulimala weekend with the latest quarterly workshop for members of Angulimala’s team of Buddhist prison chaplains on Saturday and the annual celebration at the Buddha grove in Spring Hill Prison on Sunday.

At the workshop we had a short and successful AGM in the morning and then in the afternoon Martin Stephens from NOMS Interventions and Substance Misuse Group spoke to us about the courses that many prisoners have to complete. A very lively and useful exchange followed and our chaplains were able to express their concerns and criticisms of some of these programmes that do not sit well with Buddhist principles and practice.

A fortnight ago we had an early meal and then Tahn Manapo and I were driven down to London, to Richmond to be precise, where in an hotel on Richmond Hill we conducted the naming ceremony for little Thea-Marie, the late John Garrie’s great granddaughter. Then following the naming, Tamsen, John’s granddaughter, was invited to be the little girl’s parent-guide.

In the picture, standing to the right of Tahn Manapo, is Graham, John’s grandson and the father of the child; then, sitting on the floor, is Graham’s mother and John’s daughter, Gail; then next but one is Tamsen, Gail’s daughter and John’s granddaughter; finally, seated with her back to the camera is Calleigh-Marie, Thea’s mother.

John Garrie had been amongst the first Buddhists I ever met when sometime towards the end of 1966 I stumbled into the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara on Haverstock Hill. As I was then, he was also an actor but older than me and already well established in his Buddhist practice. At that time I didn’t get to know him terribly well but when in 1977 after almost six years in Thailand I returned to London and to the Hampstead Vihara with Ajahn Chah, who should appear on the doorstep but John. By then he had begun to establish himself as a Dhamma and meditation teacher in his own right and with a growing body of students had established the Sati Society. He rapidly hit it off well with Ajahn Chah and soon we were seeing quite a lot of him. Later on, after Ajahn Chah had returned to Thailand, he invited me for a few days to his Summer Session at a decaying private school that he had hired for the purpose in Sussex and even later on when I had moved to the Isle of Wight he came and stayed a few days with me there. John had been an admirer of Ananda Bodhi and so when the Burmese monk who had ordained Ananda Bodhi in Rangoon came here to build the pagoda in our garden John and his students came over to lend a hand. Particularly now, at this time I think of him because tomorrow is our annual celebration at the Springhill Buddha Grove and it was after such an occasion in 1998 that I saw him last, in hospital and just two days before he died. I liked John immensely and got on well with him and so I was so delighted to be asked to conduct this ceremony and to meet his great granddaughter, her mother and John’s grandson, his granddaughter and to see again his daughter, Gail.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had the honour of a visit from the Buddhist Television Network from South Korea. They have been visiting various Buddhist places, first on the Continent and now in England, filming for a documentary on the development of Buddhism in Europe.

The Buddhist Television Newtwork (BTN) was established in Seoul in 1994 and began nationwide broadcasting in South Korea in 1995. In 2005 they began broadcasting in the US as well as extending their broadcasting hours to a full day in Korea. In 2006 they expanded their US broadcasting to a full day and this year began Internet broadcasting.

They were with us for about four and a half hours and in that time, after some lunch, they filmed an interview with me, then filmed various parts of the Forest Hermitage, before going across to Bhavana Dhamma to film a day retreat that was in progress over there. It was quite a small team of three, the producer, a cameraman, and a very competent young woman called Emi, who was the Director of the Production Team and also the interpreter for the other two.

I can’t now remember all the questions that they put to me in the interview but I do remember that it began with them asking how I had become interested in Buddhism and how and why I became a monk. Then they had observed that Buddhism in Europe, unlike in the East, was largely lay led and they asked me what I thought about that, which led me to express my concerns and reasons for founding TBSUK. They asked me a bit about what I teach and I told them that as well as meditation I encourage the observance of the Five Precepts.  And I told them how sorry I am that amongst some Buddhists I’ve become almost notorious for advocating abstinence from alcohol and drugs as a proper interpretation of the fifth, especially when we have a world-wide drugs and alcohol problem causing untold harm and misery to millions and costing an unimaginable fortune that could be solved at a stroke by proper observance of the fifth precept. All right, not everyone is going to do it but at least the Buddhists could.

The sun shone and when we went over to Bhavana Dhamma the garden there was so beautiful with earnest meditators silently padding up and down their meditation paths.

It was a lovely afternoon and I was so pleased to be able to welcome the Korean Buddhist Television Network to The Forest Hermitage.

The Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) is committed to two meetings a year, one in March and the second in August and both this year have been in Birmingham. The March meeting was at the Burmese Birmingham Buddhist Vihara and this week, on Wednesday, August 12th, our second meeting of the year was at the Sri Lankan Maha Vihara.

Representing eleven temples there were present Thai, Sri Lankan, Burmese and British monks, sixteen in all with one Nepalese.

We were given a very warm welcome by the head of the Maha Vihara, Venerable Kassapa and once the formalities were over we had a good discussion that ranged over a number of matters. One of course that comes up at every meeting is the new Points Based Immigration System (PBS). Some temples reported long delays in the processing of their applications to be Registered Sponsors and inevitably that has meant complications for some monks needing to renew their visas. There was also still confusion about some of the details of the system and concern that the Government still intends to have an English language requirement for Tier 5.

The next meeting will be at the Burmese Temple in Wembley at 3 pm on March 10th, 2010.

On Wednesday Maureen started her car without realising it was still in reverse, in a flash it sprang backwards and connected rather violently with a substantial railing. Luckily no one was injured but the car is a write-off. Never mind, another lesson in impermanence and suffering.

Below is the damaged railing and another car in the lay-by where Maureen’s was just before it sprang backwards and rearranged both the railing and the back of the car.

All those years ago at Drama Centre I remember the basic rule was Respect for the Work. And that included respect for and care of the workplace. I can’t be sure now but I think it was Stanislavsky, the great Russian director, who talked about the discipline of sweeping the stage before you began rehearsal.

That dictum, to sweep the stage, came back to me the other day in a prison as I waited in a dirty room for my group to arrive. There’d been no time for the chapel orderly to clean up for us so remembering ‘to sweep the stage’ I looked around for the hoover. In the event the men came in before I’d done anything and so they got the job and with it a little practical instruction in respecting their workplace.

Then last week, on Wednesday, in the middle of the seven-day retreat he was teaching, Tahn Manapo had his weekly group as usual and asked me to fill in for him and sit with his retreatants at Bhavana Dhamma. So I dutifully plodded over there in the rain and did as I was asked. Needing to get myself ready for the wet return journey I asked the retreatants to leave the Shrine Room building before me and then it was that I observed some of them just getting up and leaving their cushions and stools where they’d sat. Well I’ve seen meditation and shrine rooms before resembling abandoned campsites where meditators have gone for their breaks and stood up and left, letting the blankets they’d draped themselves with fall from their shoulders and leaving their stools, their cushions and everything else just where they were and I don’t approve. That is not how you respect your meditation work and the place where you do it. So I had those cushions and stools collected up and put away.

Here too it’s ‘Respect for the Work’, and the workplace.