Just over a week ago at the Angulimala Workshop I told the story of an afternoon several years ago when I was sitting in the chaplaincy office at one of our major prisons looking up the list of Buddhists. While I was doing that, at the same time most of the Christian chaplains of various denominations were also in that rather large office and for a few minutes I was distracted by a conversation that had sprung up amongst them. It concerned the Ten Commandments. Now, as a schoolboy trying to be a devout Christian I could have recited all ten of those commandments and so I couldn’t help being pretty surprised that afternoon to hear that collection of diverse Christian chaplains that might have numbered as many as ten unable between them to remember all ten of the Ten Commandments. I remember thinking how unlike Buddhists who then I would have expected to have had similarly important lists of Buddhist precepts and teachings at the tips of their fingers, so to speak.

But times have been changing and with the New Age influence and perhaps a change in the way people are educated I notice now that many who attend Buddhist classes are not so inclined to commit things to memory and probably regard the lists of teachings that they might hear or come across in Buddhist texts as dry, unattractive and somehow apart from the feelings of love and peace that they’ve somehow come to associate with Buddhism. But Buddhism is not about feelings, or at least feelings however nice are not what we are trying to promote and certainly not what I want to draw attention to at this moment.

No one needs to learn everything that can be found in the manuals of Buddhism but to get anywhere you need to have some idea of how to get there and the better you know the way the quicker you will arrive, that’s obvious. So let me encourage you to learn and memorise at least some of the essential teachings and not to be afraid of the lists, they are invaluable mnemonic devices and useful too to contemplate and flesh out with your understanding and imagination.

URGENT NEED for a Live-In Helper

Rob, who will have been with us for just over a year cooking and driving, is to leave at the end of July to visit and care for his father in Zimbabwe.

By then we are anxious to have someone to take over cooking and general housekeeping. If that someone can drive that would be an advantage but Tom is set to return for the driving.

We offer accommodation and food, a beautiful place to stay and a great opportunity for some worthwhile practice.

If you think this might suit you, please get in touch as soon as possible.

Up late and up early again preparing for the day.

Around 7:45 took Ben for a quick and rather wet walk in the fields out of our back gate.

At 8:30 had my meal, not too much, didn’t want to be heavy and sleepy.

By 10 o’clock it was time to call everyone to gather in the Shrine Room for chanting and meditation. A pretty good attendance with 23 Buddhist prison chaplains here for the day, or most of it. We ended with a few minutes of metta-bhavana.

Then at 11:00 it was into the adjacent room, sometimes called the small shrine room, for the first of our meetings. This was mostly fairly mundane business, updating everyone with the latest news of things that might affect them. I also had a few words to say about why we do what we do and it shouldn’t be for money, although I appreciate that people have bills to pay. Then I said that while I don’t want to interfere too much I nevertheless do have to endorse everyone who becomes a Buddhist prison chaplain and I do need to ensure that they all know enough about what they have to do. I told them that I was thinking of adding a Buddhist quiz as a regular feature of these workshops and I was pleased to see how well that was received.

While we were talking the hands of the clock travelled round well past 12:30 and by the time of the break for lunch Juliet Lyon, our guest speaker for the afternoon, was already here. Lunch was the usual buffet and gave everyone ample time to chat. I managed a quick coffee and also did the rounds.

We resumed just before 2pm when we welcomed Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, to the hot seat. She talked for about an hour about PRT and a number of prison concerns that we share. And then she took questions that really could have gone on and on but somewhere just before 4 o’clock I called for a tea break. Then, when we eventually got everyone back, we concluded the afternoon with the report-in, when we go round the room and each chaplain speaks for a few minutes about what they’ve been doing and how things are for them and the Buddhist inmates in the prison they visit. I think that went on until around 6 o’clock. Juliet stayed for that and when it was over Rob drove her over to her mother’s in Henley in Arden where she was going to spend the night.

Next was the committee meeting but before we began I asked another Rob who is Buddhist chaplain to some of the Kent prisons and a retired vet to have a look at Tommy, my little old Jack Russell. Tommy hadn’t been right for a day or so and was by then breathing heavily. Rob diagnosed heart failure and so I asked Tahn Manapo to ring the emergency vet. We had to wait for our Rob to come back with the car before we could take Tommy in to see the vet. The committee meeting got under way and we’d almost finished it when Rob returned and Tahn Manapo and I then set off with Tommy for the vet’s surgery in Warwick, leaving the rest of the committee to discuss the last item.

We got Tommy into the vet’s at a quarter-to-eight and it was Mrs White who was on duty. I hadn’t seen her since she came to treat one of our goats in 1988. She weighed and examined Tommy and confirmed that it was heart failure, congestive heart failure I’ve learnt since. So he had to have an injection and a course of pills.

When I got back to the Hermitage the committee meeting was long over but Natasha who I had asked if she might be interested in taking on Buddhist chaplaincy at Lewes Prison was waiting to see me. So then I sat and talked to her until nearly 10 o’clock. Then it was back to my kuti and back to my unfinished newsletter and a determined attempt to have it ready for a big mailing planned for the following afternoon that would include details of the Snowdon sponsored walk in aid of the Bhavana Dhamma (Wood Cottage) debt. It was several hours before I briefly hit the horizontal, but I made it and all went out as planned.

Tan Manapo, or perhaps really we ought to be calling him Ajahn Manapo since he does so much excellent teaching now, was away for a week on retreat at some remote and beautiful place in Scotland (I did get a postcard) and so I was left here cared for first by Ex and then by Guy.
Fortunately it proved to be a relatively quiet week and at last the yobs left us alone. This might have been because of the letters some of them will have received from the police, or maybe because the police have stepped up their presence in our lane or perhaps because Ann, Tan Manapo’s mum, has been driving up and down outside as well as periodically sitting in her car in the wood gateway opposite ready to have a word with anyone making any trouble for us. Quite which of these did the trick I don’t know or it could have been their combined forces but whatever the reason we’ve had no trouble for a week now.
Still our additional fortifications have slowly taken shape and sometime next week the fencing that supplements the new gate will be complete.
Tan Manapo and Rob got back from Scotland yesterday and almost immediately a short weekend retreat at Bhavana Dhamma began.
Now, after my busy week without A. Manapo, I’m enjoying a pleasant and sunny afternoon.
By the way a young man from a Thai restaurant in London came here today with a bag of coins – 175 quid’s worth of tips that he’d saved to offer. Anumodana!

The Forest Hermitage has a new gate.

Actually it’s the old one made so that you can’t see through and inside. This gate started life as quite a modest barrier but because of trouble had soon to be made bigger. Now again, after recent weeks of disturbances almost nightly and sometimes several times a night, from young yobs we’ve had no alternative but to go to the expense and trouble of increasing it again. Fortunately it’s only at night and when the farmer drives his sheep past that it has to be shut and perhaps many of you won’t notice it. But there it is, these days we have to live with a culture of disrespect.

Celebrating Visakha Puja in various places towards the end of last week I several times described how the Birth, Enlightenment and Passing of the Buddha had each not only occurred on a Full Moon of the ancient lunar month of Visakha but also they had all taken place out in the open, shaded by great trees. Then last Sunday, for our Visakha Puja Celebration here at The Forest Hermitage, so glorious was the weather that after we had circumambulated the Image of the Buddha beneath the tree three times, we felt compelled to stay seated in the open, not all of us too well shaded, but just as it had been for the events we were celebrating, in the open, for the remainder of our celebration, the Dhamma talks and the blessing.

Today we had our meal early and then set off for London and Leicester Square where we were to join the Bathing of the Baby Buddha Celebration organised by the London Fo Guang Temple. This is an annual event and as I said in my short speech, it’s one of the highlights of my year. This time I took the opportunity to reveal one of my latest ideas, one that has become a dream that I would love to see come true. In this great and marvellous city, in London, which isn’t just the capital of the United Kingdom but a major city of the world, we as yet have no major building that honours the Buddha. We have a few that dishonour him, the Buddha Bar etc, but no place of national importance where Buddhists can gather, where celebrations like this one in Leicester Square could be held and where the great festivals of Buddhism could be given the national significance and respect they so richly deserve. I said that I had thought to call for the building of a Buddhist cathedral but then I had come round to thinking that cathedrals can be pretty deadly places and that what is really wanted is a Buddhist powerhouse. Which led me to think of the place that once supplied London with electricity. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if Battersea Power Station could be transformed into a Buddhist powerhouse!

Lord Avebury also attended and my old friend from far off theatre days, Victor Spinetti, perched himself outside and listened before signalling that he was off home and would see us later. Victor lives nearby in a little flat overlooking China Town and that’s where we repaired to afterwards for jasmine tea and to be marvellously entertained with anecdotes and tales from Victor’s rich and varied past.

We got back to the Forest Hermitage just in time to see that all was ready for our celebration tomorrow.

This was the scene at the end of our meeting on Monday of the Armed Forces Buddhist Chaplaincy Endorsing Authority. From the left, Lama Jampa Thaye, Rev. Saido Kennaway, myself, Dh. Sunanda and Colin Ash. We met as we so often do in the London Fo Guang Temple near Oxford Circus. They’re very kind to us there and look after us very well with tea and refreshments.

The purpose of this group as it was originally conceived is to endorse and support the Buddhist chaplain to the Armed Forces. It was properly constituted as an independent body and successfully lobbied for the original part time appointment of the Armed Forces’ Buddhist chaplain to be upgraded and become full time. Unfortunately there was a totally unconstitutional attempt to get rid of four of us and reconvene a new committee with a different membership. That was of course unacceptable to us but apparently not unacceptable to the Ministery of Defence despite the two successive ministers concerned repeatedly saying that the provision of a Religious Endorsing Authority for the Buddhist Civilian Chaplain to the Armed Forces is a matter for the Buddhist communities to agree on. Although by now it should be plain that we do not agree with the MoD’s appointment of Ron Maddox as the Buddhist Religious Adviser to the Armed Forces they stubbornly insist on retaining him. More importantly this whole business brings up the vital question of how the Government and its agencies contact and consult with the Buddhist communities. It is plainly ridiculous to hang on to the Buddhist Society, a lay organisation of limited membership, run by a small inner circle in SW London, as the recognised primary point of contact. I think I only know three people who belong to it and probably most of the Thais, Burmese and Sri Lankans who come here have never heard of it.

Most of our time on Monday afternoon then was occupied with how we might resolve the current impasse and move things forward.

You can find more details under the tab Forces Chaplaincy.

At last I’ve begun to get back up to speed. For the first two weeks after we got back from Thailand I couldn’t do very much because of the weather, then I got some sort of virus that I seemed to shake off pretty quickly, but that was followed by trouble with a tooth and when I went to the dentist I came away minus two old friends that must have been with me for well over fifty years. The next day I felt dreadful and so then I had more than a week of coping with an infected cavity. But that’s all over now and the last ten days have been pretty active.

A week ago Saturday we had an Angulimala Workshop that was very well attended and which appeared to go extraordinarily well, especially as there was no guest speaker and they had to put up with quite a lot from me. One of the things we discussed was the creeping appropriation of Mindfulness practice and techniques by psychologists, psychotherapists and the like. I was at pains to point out that what Buddhism teaches is Right Mindfulness which is mindfulness skilfully directed and invested with Wisdom and Virtue.

On Monday I visited a Regional Secure Unit for a meeting about a patient who I know there.

On Tuesday I had an early meal then set off for Send Prison in Surrey where at 11:15 there was to be the opening of the new Multifaith building. Fortunately we managed to avoid a traffic problem on the M40 and arrive in good time. The guest of honour who was to cut the tape was Penelope Keith. When I got to have a chat with her I asked her if she had seen Felicity Kendal lately. They had both starred together in a well-known series years ago and even further back I had known and worked with Felicity. Well that led on to a discovery that we’d had one or two other mutual friends. I got away from there around one o’clock and soon after getting back I took my wonderful old cockerel to the vet who it seemed was able to sort him out. Larry the cockerel had been poorly for a few days and had had an earlier trip to the vet the week before. Then in the evening I went to Grendon and Springhill prisons.

On Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting of TBSUK (Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK) at the Birmingham Peace Pagoda Temple in Birmingham. That went quite well and was well attended. The main subject of discussion was the new Immigration Points Based System (PBS) which means that temples wishing to invite monks and nuns from overseas or renew visas for those already here must register as a sponsor with the UK Borders Agency. There have been mixed experiences with this. Afterwards I chased down to Heathrow to meet Ant who has been working in France and who that evening was off to Thailand for a computer science conference on Phuket. I had some things for him to take for Sister Khema who is now in the NE of Thailand.

On Thursday it was off to Holloway where our Prison Service Chaplaincy Council was to meet in the afternoon. Holloway was one of the first prisons I went to back in the summer of 1977. It’s changed a bit since then. The meeting was not a happy one and not particularly productive. Afterwards Rob and I drove through Hampstead past some of my old haunts of many years ago.

On Friday I didn’t have to go anywhere which was nice and I did little apart from some tidying in my kuti.

On Saturday morning I let my dogs out as usual and opened Larry’s hutch. He was sitting there looking very comfortable and looked at me. He had been gradually recovering and the previous day had been out walking about and eating. I came back in and a few minutes later I was disturbed by a noise that I took to be a squirrel trying to pinch his food. I went out and discovered that it had been Larry’s last struggle. My poor wonderful cockerel was dead.

On Sunday after the meal I was presented with an electric toothbrush. Then I wrote an update for the section of this site that you’ll find under the Forces Chaplaincy tab. It is a brief summary of the ongoing problem with the MoD and includes a copy of a recent letter from Kevan Jones, the Minister. Do take a look.

And later today I have to go to Holme House Prison near Durham.