Mostly my weekly newsletters for prisoners

At the end of last year I came down with some kind of flu type virus and bronchitis. The plan had been for Ajahn Manapo to go on ahead of me to Thailand and so for our New Year celebrations I was on my own and not at all well. Fortunately, by Monday, January 5th I was on the mend and able to go to Khun Ting’s restaurant in Nottingham for an occasion that not only celebrated the New Year but also remembered her father who had recently passed away. There were still a few days left before my own departure for Thailand and by the time I left on the Tuesday of the following week I was feeling all right but looking forward to the warmth and a rest.

Because I’d been anxious to teach Warwick Uni Buddhist Society’s first meeting of the term I had to fly out on January 13th, arriving in Bangkok the following afternoon and then flying straight on up to Ubon where Ajahn Manapo was waiting for me. I needed to be in time first for a meeting on the 15th of the committee that oversees the publication of Ajahn Chah’s talks and the media use of his image and then, naturally, for the big day itself, the Ajahn Chah Memorial Day on January 16th, the twenty-third anniversary of his passing.

All went smoothly enough and around midday on the Friday I and other Western monks staying at Wat Pah Nanachat made our way through the crowds and the traffic to be in Wat Pah Pong in time for first of all the sermons, one for monks and another for the laity, and then the procession and partial circumambulation of the Ajahn Chah Chedi. As usual it was an amazing occasion and I frequently think how rare it is for people to gather in such large numbers for something so good. In the evening I was persuaded to get up in the sermon seat and give a talk in English. Although I wasn’t really on form I did speak at some length about the fifth precept and the harm that comes when it’s broken.

Our remaining few days in the North East were spent visiting old friends and then Ajahn Manapo and I flew down to Bangkok and from there were driven to Chantaburi for a couple of days. On our second evening I was persuaded to talk to an enthusiastic group of followers of a very old and well-known monk. Of course I had to speak in Thai and thankfully managed well enough.

Then it was back to Bangkok and the next day after a meal at Khun Yod’s factory we were driven to Cha’am and a few days rest by the sea.

At the end of that week it was time for Ajahn Manapo to return to Warwickshire and at the weekend I went back to Bangkok and then on the Monday flew to Udorn for the day to attend the funeral of Khun Ting’s father.

Tuesday and my last day was spent in Bangkok, part of it at an exhibition where Ant and Joob and their team were showing off their latest apps, then it was time to pack, get ready and steam off to the airport. And another trip was over.

There’s an album of photos here.

On November 17th, a young lady called Louise came to see me. She had graduated from Warwick and was now working for the online newspaper, The Huffington Post. Her purpose in coming to The Forest Hermitage that day was to interview me for a series she was doing called Beyond Belief, which was intended to chronicle the remarkable lives of Britons who’ve taken on their faith to create a force for change.

The result of our meeting that afternoon was published in the Huffington Post a little over a week later, first under the heading From Stage to Sage and then later as The Monk Who Gave Up Acting With Laurence Olivier To Lead Buddhism In British Prisons.

As well as the chat, some stories and a few fairly recent shots of me it contains, published for the first time in nearly fifty years, a couple of old black and white photos of me with the National Theatre at The Old Vic in the sixties.

If it’s still live, you can find it here.

On Monday the 13th, the morning after our big day here, I had to have an early meal in order to be in the car before ten to be on my way to London and Lambeth Palace for the licensing of the Revd Canon Mike Kavanagh as the new Chaplain General and Archdeacon to the Prisons. Despite the rain and occasional hold-ups we made pretty good time and got there shortly before noon, when the service was to begin. It took a a couple of minutes to persuade the ill-tempered gatekeeper to open the massive wooden doors into the palace courtyard and then once out of the car and in the palace itself another few minutes passed while I was escorted down a couple of huge corridors with portraits of former Archbishops beaming down from the walls on either side. When I arrived at the ancient Archbishop’s Chapel the service had just begun and the Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking. Unfortunately, from where I sat I could barely hear him and certainly couldn’t make out what he was saying. It was a bit like that for much of the twenty-five minutes or so that remained, some parts were audible and understandable and some were not. Whether it was the acoustics or the inability of the participants to project, I’m not sure. During the procedure, Mike had to swear his allegiance to HM the Queen and promise to obey the Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Wales. At the end the various Faith Advisers and Chaplains present were invited to recite together this Affirmation:

We come from many Faith traditions: together we care for all those people held in our prisons.
We commit ourselves afresh, as friends and colleagues, to provide opportunities for all to grow and develop into men and women of integrity who are strong and confident, learned, wise and truthful; free from crime, from the fear of crime and from anxiety.
We are united in our desire to work for the common good and to continue to work together in trust, in peace and in harmony, in a spirit of friendship and goodwill, in confidence that it will bear fruit in the lives of many.

Afterwards there was a buffet lunch, which, of course wasn’t much good to me but I enjoyed holding a glass of water and chatting to people while they balanced their plates and drinks and ate – and occasionally dropped a forkful on the carpet. At pudding time, a gong was sounded and Faith Advisers were invited to take their puddings in the Pink Drawing Room and sit round the table in conversation with the Archbishop to give him a sense of some of the key people supporting multifaith prison chaplaincy in England and Wales. When I had a chance to speak I told of my long involvement in prison chaplaincy and expressed my concern for the continuing development of multifaith prison chaplaincy. I explained that I didn’t see it as appropriate for Buddhist chaplains to be employed. I am happy for them to remain sessional and I see no reason why that should diminish their place within a chaplaincy team but I said that I have always felt that were I a prisoner I wouldn’t really be able to wholly trust a chaplain who was tied into the establishment of the prison. It was soon over and on the way back and since I’ve had much to think over of what I saw and heard in those couple of hours.

It doesn’t seem possible that thirteen years have passed since we last assembled in the Archbishop’s Chapel for the licensing of Mike’s predecessor, William Noblett. That was two Archbishops back as well!

Every year during the month following the Rains Retreat or Vassa, the Buddha has permitted what is known as the Spreading of the Kathina. What this means is the offering of cloth to the Sangha by lay devotees, which is then ‘spread’ by members of the Sangha who cut, sew and dye a robe. That robe, which has to be completed before the following dawn, the Sangha then formally gives to one deserving bhikkhu. Since the minimum number of monks required to form a quorum for the Sangha is four, it follows that for a Kathina to be enacted at least five monks must be present. In forest monasteries it’s generally understood that those five must have spent the Vassa together in the one place. Nowadays, in many temples it is a made-up robe that is offered and the Vinaya interpretation followed allows the necessary number to made up with monks invited from other monasteries – but that remains controversial. The Wat Pah Pong practice that I endeavour to maintain has always been that for a Kathina we must have at least five monks who have spent the Rains together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens at The Forest Hermitage, especially in recent years and so, as this year, we don’t qualify for a Kathina.

An alternative, which so far as the laity involved is concerned is almost the same, is for there to be an offering of robes and requisites, the robes being deemed ‘forest cloth’ – in other words, cloth that has been discarded and has no owner. And that is what happened again this year at The Forest Hermitage on Sunday, October 12th. Once again Khun Peter was the principal sponsor and thanks to him and his team and the two coaches that he organised from London, we were packed and had a wonderful day. Not only were there two coaches from London but another from Warwick Uni organised by the Thai Society along with members of the Warwick Uni Buddhist Society and naturally, plenty more people came by car. Mercifully, it was a dry day, albeit a bit misty and damp and not quite as warm as we would have liked, but no rain. These great Buddhist events should always express Dana, Sila and Bhavana and that day abundant generosity was on display, with people taking the chance to renew their Precepts as well as enjoying the opportunity to profit by listening to some Dhamma. And everything, it has to be said, was conducted in an atmosphere of fun and friendship.

As I’ve got older, so tears have come more readily to my eyes and as I watched people streaming in through the gate with their bags bulging with food and all manner of things to offer and share, and taking such pleasure, such joy, in coming all this way to spend a few hours doing what was good and wholesome, I couldn’t help myself, my eyes moistened and the tears began to flow. You wonderful people! In a world that can be so ghastly, you showed where it can be so good. Anumodana!

Watch a video here or take a look at some pictures here.

A fortnight ago I was driven down to London and into the West End, to the heart of theatre land. I was dropped off in front of the Coliseum and promptly disappeared down a little passageway at the side, the narrowest alleyway in London. As we’d turned into Monmouth Street and approached St Martin’s Lane I commented that this had once been familiar territory to me but that was around forty-five years ago. Forty-five and nearly fifty years! I can hardly believe it. It seems almost like yesterday. Of course there have been changes. Monmouth Street looks much more prosperous than I remember and there seem to be so many more people around. Most of them, sadly, spilling out of the pubs and bars and standing with glasses in hand, drinking and crowding the pavements. It looks awful. You never used to see this. It was like it even down that narrow alleyway where with some care I had to thread my way through the throng and discover the door and doorbell of where I was to meet with two eminent men of the theatre.

As nearly everyone reading this will know, a very long time ago I used to be an actor. What you might not know is that I had the privilege of training under an extraordinary team of gifted and creative people, first at the Central School of Speech & Drama and then at Drama Centre, London, which I helped found. I was just seventeen when I went to Central and quite unaware of what I was letting myself in for but within weeks I had become one of a loyal and devoted band of students of that unusual group of teachers. Leading them as Director of what was known as the Stage Course was John Blatchley and with him on the team was the great Harold Lang who taught Stanislavsky’s method, and the jewel in the crown, the wonderful Yat Malmgren who taught Action and the Psychology of Movement. Each had their assistants and with Yat there was Christopher Fettes, who, when Drama Centre opened, was to emerge as not just a teacher but easily as the most intelligent and creative director that I ever encountered. The performances he could draw out of young and inexperienced students were unbelievable. At the end of my second year at Central when I was barely nineteen, Gwyneth Thurburn, the Principal of Central, dismissed Yat, and then the rest of the team resigned. When we students were told we were furious and we went too. And out of that little student revolution, Drama Centre, London was born. It was to talk over how we might tell that story that that evening I met with Christopher and another former student of Drama Centre, Simon Callow.

I had never met Simon and although I’d heard of him I’ve never seen him on stage. I knew that he’d studied at Drama Centre and I believe that was nearly ten years after I left. I knew too that during my time at the National Theatre, he’d worked there in the box office. He’s also in that book on Olivier that I get a mention in. So we had some common ground and quite a few memories of bygone days to share and get us talking. And then we got onto the beginnings of Drama Centre and the student revolution that succeeded. The three of us talked non-stop for nearly three hours and at the end agreed that this was a story that had to be told. So, the plan is that later this year or early next, we will film some conversations with Simon, probably in Christopher’s flat.

Now, you might ask why am I involved with this. The theatre is after all a world I walked out of long, long ago. But you see, it can’t help but remain part of me and that early training has informed and affected all that I have done since. Yat’s extraordinary work on the psychology of movement still surfaces in my thinking and perception. And Buddhist investigation into the nature of being is echoed in Stanislavsky’s approach to analysing and portraying a character. For example, Buddhism speaks of the volition or intention that lies to a greater or lesser extent behind what we say and do and Buddhists are encouraged to be aware of that and to investigate those intentions. Similarly, Stanislavsky requires the actor to continually ask of the text, what is the character trying to do? Then, Yat had an interest in Buddhism. I think the first Buddhist book that I ever thumbed through was one I found in his flat. Ten years ago, after Yat’s death, Christopher wrote to me and said of Yat that, ‘Buddhism had affected him 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.’ So, you see, this story is a part of my story.

We’ll have to see what comes of it but at the very least, it was a great evening.

The other evening, after a long meeting of the Prison Service’s Chaplaincy Council, I was visiting Christopher Fettes, one of the remarkable men who taught me over fifty years ago, first at the Central School of Speech and Drama and then at Drama Centre. I told him that among the presents I got for my recent 70th birthday was a copy of a new biography of Laurence Olivier that the monks of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery gave me. One evening I happened to be leafing through it and glanced at the Index and to my amazement saw my old name. I quickly went to the page and there there were a couple of lines quoted from a letter that Olivier had written to me on May 30th, 1969. I’d never kept the letter and had completely forgotten about it. Well, that led on to us talking a bit about my life long ago at the National Theatre with Sir Laurence and Christopher’s remark that I’d had such an interesting life. And I have, and I’ve met and worked with some wonderful and remarkable people, and so people do say to me from time to time that I ought to write it all down but I’m not much of a writer and anyway I rather deplore the modern passion for recording everything instead of living it.

But inevitably I have memories and the death the other day of Lauren Bacall took me back to one evening sometime in the summer of ‘69 when I went to see Sir John Gielgud in Alan Bennett’s play ‘Forty Years On’ at the Apollo in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was marvellous and a joy to see Sir John reborn and enjoying himself after that dreadful and wholly uncreative experience of Peter Brook’s production of ‘Oedipus’ at the National that he and I and others had had to endure through the summer of ‘68. Afterwards I went round to see him in his dressing room. He received me with his customary courtesy and I remember him saying that the year before at the National he thought he just couldn’t do it anymore. We chatted for a few minutes and then the door opened and in stalked Lauren Bacall. Sir John introduced us and we shook hands. She had her daughter, Bogie’s daughter, with her. She was icy and imperious and after a few minutes and with the likelihood of more visitors for Sir John, I said goodnight and withdrew.

I was pleased she left plenty of money to ensure her little dog will be looked after.

Well I made it. July 17th finally arrived and I was seventy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s nothing much to it really, all you’ve got to do is hang around and thanks to the inexorable march of time, the birthdays notch up. But for all that, it was a great day and people were so kind and thoughtful. I had lots of greetings, some lovely things said about me. I had birthday cakes and presents and I had a lot of monks come to see me in the afternoon. The next day I was exhausted.

In the evening we planted three trees to mark my seventieth. They are now part of the Great British Elm Experiment. One is in front of Bhavana Dhamma and the other two are in the grounds of The Forest Hermitage. They are young elm saplings from trees that have survived the scourge of the Dutch Elm Disease that wiped out millions of our beautiful elm trees fifty years ago. They are part of a hope that one day the great elms of England will rise again.

My thanks and anumodana to everyone who helped make my seventieth birthday such a special and moving occasion.

Early on Wednesday morning of the 16th, we set off for West Bridgeford on the outskirts of Nottingham for a Merit Making organised by Khun Ting at her restaurant to celebrate her birthday and mine. It was a beautiful morning, lovely food, good company and over a thousand pounds was raised towards our renovations appeal. Anumodana!

On Friday, July 11th, it was Asalha Puja, the anniversary of the Buddha’s first sermon when he set rolling the Matchless Wheel of Dhamma. The day after we entered the Vassa, the annual Rains Retreat. And the day after that, on Sunday the 13th, we held a modest celebration in honour of both occasions.

We celebrate our most important Buddhist festival, known variously as Vesākha Puja, Wesak, Buddha Jayanthi or Buddha Day, annually on the full moon of the ancient lunar month of Vesākha, which falls usually in May or some years in early June. This year it will be on May 13th and we will celebrate at The Forest Hermitage on May 18th.

Traditionally at Vesākha Puja we celebrate the Birth, the Enlightenment and the Passing of the Buddha. Early Buddhist scriptures state that all three occurred on various Vesākha full moons. However, it is probably the Enlightenment that remains the principal focus since it was that that transformed Gotama the ascetic, known prior to his Enlightenment as the Bodhisatta, into Gotama the Buddha, the One Who Knows, the Awakened One. In the days and weeks leading up to Vesākha Puja, it can be useful to contemplate why he did what he did.  How he woke up to the awful realities of life, of ageing, sickness and death, and as a consequence felt compelled to renounce and leave behind his wealth, position and family to seek the unborn, the unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, undefiled supreme surcease of bondage, Nibbāna.

The Enlightened state, achieved first by the Buddha, alone and unaided, and then through his example and teaching by many disciples since, is known as Nibbāna (Pali). It is achieved when in the mind of a person, through seeing the true nature of all things, attachment is let go of and all greed, hatred and delusion extinguished, which means that for the Enlightened there will be no more rebirth.

The precise year of the birth of the child who was to become the Buddha is uncertain but is believed to have been 623 BCE and the Buddhist Era commences eighty years later, counted from the year of the Parinibbāna or the Buddha’s Final Passing.

There are some slight cultural and local differences in how the various Buddhist groups and nations celebrate but broadly speaking devout Buddhists try to attend their local temple for at least part of the day with some remaining for the whole day and the night. The occasion will be marked with ‘the making of merit’, which means engaging in doing good and skilful things guided by the Buddhist principles of Giving, Virtue and Cultivation. It is said that one should not be slow to engage in merit since doing merit cleanses the mind.  Giving usually involves bringing food to the temple to offer and share, as well as supplies and symbolic offerings for the Shrine. Virtue is observed by reaffirming commitment to the five moral precepts, and for some, for the day and the night, the eight.  And the practice of Cultivation includes participating in chanting, meditation and listening to sermons.  Buddhist festivals are generally cheerful and happy occasions, expressive of loving-kindness and support in the Buddhist life and training.

Three months ago when I was relatively new to this unusual medical condition that I now have to manage, I thought that semi retirement or more was pretty definitely on the cards and I prepared myself for that. I certainly thought that by now I would be doing much less than what I am. Although I am still sometimes disappointed to feel so tired and below par and have to remind myself that I am not as well as once I was, I’m still doing all right and I appear to be getting better. By Friday and Saturday this week I was pretty done in but I’d had a busy few days and a good time and squeezed in much more than I would ever have managed a few weeks ago.

Monday was relatively quiet but on Tuesday I was off to Gartree and Stocken prisons. For these two I have to leave at around two o’clock in the afternoon and I get back soon after nine at night. Both are enjoyable groups and the drive, especially at this time of the year as we begin to enjoy the long, light evenings, is a pleasant one.

On Wednesday morning I was interviewed on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire local radio about the Coventry woman who was arrested and deported from Sri Lanka for having a tattoo of the Buddha on her shoulder. Of course i said it was a bit over the top of the Sri Lankans but it gave me an opportunity to speak about respect and what I call the growing culture of disrespect, and our concern at the way the Image of the Buddha and the word Buddha itself are so often misused and abused.

Wednesday afternoon and evening again involved me with two prisons but with the first there was a difference. Some prisoners manage to make something of their sentence and seize the opportunities to address their offending behaviour and improve themselves, not only by practising Buddhism and meditation, but with education. Some, even manage a degree with the Open University. And that, I may say, is a considerable achievement because prisons are generally far from being ideal places in which to study. And for some the path to that degree has had to begin with fairly basic studies that most of us have taken for granted but which they for some reason have missed out on. So, on Wednesday at the invitation of a chap I’ve been seeing for a few years now I went to Grendon Prison to attend his Graduation ceremony. He had gained a BSc in something to do with Pure Maths. I can’t remember the details because it was all a bit beyond me. It was marvellous to see him in his gown and to hear his short speech, which carried a powerful message, because he spoke about how in another prison, some years ago, he had been inspired by someone who had talked about lifelong learning. Academic learning was what was meant but the idea that you should keep on learning resonates with me because I go on all the time about the need to keep on growing and never to stop, with the understanding that everything is teaching us.

On Thursday I was off again to another two prisons. Well, officially they’re now one, HMP Isle of Wight, but actually they’re two separate sites, Parkhurst and Albany, and they were both amongst the first prisons I ever visited back in the summer of 1977. People think it’s a long way to go and it is a long day but I always say it’s a pleasant drive and then a little cruise on the Solent. The weather was good and I had an enjoyable time with both groups.

On the way back we called at my parents’ grave. My father died fourteen years ago and my mother seven years ago and on Thursday my mother would have been a hundred, while my father’s hundredth birthday was a week before on Thursday the 17th. As my mother used to say, ‘I’m not a cemetery person.’ But I thought that for their hundredth anniversary I ought to take some flowers and tidy up the grave a bit, so that’s what I did.

And that was the week that was!

It was the Queen’s eighty-eighth birthday last Monday and I felt I’d like to pay a tribute, particularly for her part in bringing peace to the relationship between this country and Ireland.

After centuries of violence and discord between England and Ireland and between Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland, three years ago the Queen went to Ireland. There she paid her respects at the memorial to those killed in the independence movement and to the amazement of her listeners, at the formal banquet in her honour she took the trouble to open her address with a sentence and greeting in Irish. And then this year she not only welcomed the current President of Ireland to Windsor but also shook hands with a man who is believed to have been seriously implicated in the IRA’s campaign of violence against this country. A campaign that murdered her own second cousin and uncle to her husband.

There comes a time when the hating has to stop. As the Buddha said, ‘Hating doesn’t stop with hating, hating stops with not hating.’

Songkran, the Thai, Burmese, Cambodian and Sri Lankan New Year was celebrated at The Forest Hermitage (Wat Pah SantiDhamma) on Sunday, April 13th. And the day before in Nottingham at Khun Yod’s YodSiam Restaurant.

The 13th dawned bright and sunny and we had a marvellous day with an impressive and international turnout of people from all over the country. Yod and Nid had flown in specially from Thailand, first to host the Songran at their restaurant the day before and then to be with us on the 13th. And Khun Peter not only organised most of the food but also most generously provided a coach from London.

As I had the day before in Nottingham, in my talk I explained that the bathing of the Buddha Rupa, the monks and elders and then of each other was really meant to be a sign of respect and I emphasised the importance of respect. After all, without respect there can be no harmony in society and our individual ability to learn, to grow and to develop is seriously impeded.

As always, people were very generous and as well as various supplies and food for the day, £3,177.82 was collected and offered. The day before at Yod Siam another £605 was raised. For that and all the hard work of preparation and cleaning up afterwards, Anumodana.

I doubt whether my powers of description can possibly do the day justice and so I’d rather refer you to this video.

Any day now I ought to tweet a reminder about our Songkran next Sunday, which reminds me that last time I tweeted a reminder about an event here I made a mistake. For several days no one commented, or perhaps even noticed, that I’d given the wrong date by a whole month, until one of our neighbours kindly sent me a text pointing out my error. Now I could have tried to cover it up and perhaps even suggested it was a teaching and demanded to know why everyone had been so unobservant and unaware and why it had taken so long for anyone to notice. Covering up and not admitting to errors is what small minded people often do but a long time ago I learnt how a big man handles a mistake.

It was when I was a young actor and in my second year at the National Theatre. I was really excited when the legendary Sir Tyrone Guthrie joined the company to direct two productions and I was cast, albeit in a small way, in one of them, in Volpone. I remember one day I was in the rehearsal room, I suppose waiting to get to a scene I was in, and idly watching Guthrie work with the two actors playing Volpone and Mosca. It soon became apparent that there was some difficulty with the scene they were rehearsing and that Colin (Volpone) and Frank (Mosca) were cautiously trying to suggest that it was Guthrie’s interpretation that was at fault. Now remember, Sir Tyrone Guthrie was one of the great men of the theatre, a director of immense experience and international renown, and he had already been responsible for umpteen productions of Volpone and these two were trying to tell him that he’d got it wrong! Imagine. Suddenly, Guthrie caught on to what they were trying to tell him, stared at the text and without missing a beat exploded, ‘Good God! You’re absolutely right. Change it!’

That’s how to do it. That’s how to admit to a mistake.

So it’s about two and a half weeks since I returned from Thailand and over the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to resume my prison visits. In each of those two weeks I’ve managed two days out and three prisons visited. I’m pacing myself. My medical condition and my age are good enough excuses for doing a bit less running around now. But I’m not stopping, just reorganising and being a bit sensible with my time and energy. At least that’s the idea.

One of the exciting things I look forward to when I get back every year from Thailand is the re-emergence of my two tortoises after their winter hibernation. I was reckoning on it being today or tomorrow but then suddenly, just a week after I’d returned I heard a noise that for a little while I couldn’t place. Then it hit me. It was the tortoises moving about in my loft where they’d been asleep. I got up there and sure enough they were both wide awake so the next day, down they came and into their heated home, where they’ve been pretty active.

Having not done very much to maintain our property for years, over the last few months we’ve been having some much needed repairs and refurbishment done, mostly to the roof, the conservatory and the bathroom. And there’s still more to be done. But last week the latest improvement was the replacement of our old, rather pathetic and expensive to run, oil fired AGA with a newer, second-hand electric model that heats up overnight on Economy 7. We’ve only been trying to do something about the old AGA for about the past ten or twelve years so it was quite a relief when it all suddenly fell into place: we found what we wanted, supplied by a chap we liked and someone came up with a hefty anonymous donation. Anumodana!

Of course nearly all our attempts to improve things cost money and so it was a bit of a blow this week when walking back from my night time stroll with my dogs I noticed the silhouette of one of our leylandii fir trees bordering the lane leaning at an awkward angle across the road. I could see this could cost us a bit! It turned out it had split but it’s fall had been arrested by other trees so it was being held just clear of the telephone cable that supplies us and all the other properties further down the lane with phone and broadband. Very fortunately the tree surgeon we know responded very quickly and the day after we phoned him he and his assistant were here to deal with it. It was six hours hard work in wet and not very nice weather. But they did well and I’m so glad they got it done because the day after there blew a gale and that tree would never have stayed where it was. So we were lucky, very lucky, but it’s still going to set the temple back about five hundred quid. Never mind, that’s life, no one was hurt and it could have been a lot worse.

 

Yesterday, I read it was the 50th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral and I saw that on Monday, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were performing together in a concert to celebrate 50 years ago when the Beatles took the States by storm. So that all means it’s 50 years since I first set foot in the US with Theatre Group 20 for a four month tour. I remember it was at our first stop out of New York, at a hotel in Maryland, that Churchill’s funeral was on television. I didn’t watch it but I remember my friends who did being pretty shocked with the interruption, ‘Now a word from our sponsor – Winston cigarettes!’ Can you imagine? I’ve never forgotten arriving at that hotel. I got out of our coach – well a big Greyhound type bus that carried all our gear, props and scenery, as well as us – and as I strolled to the hotel entrance a group of teenage girls started screaming. I couldn’t quite believe it, so I quickly thought of an excuse to go back out to the bus – and they screamed again. And again when I went back into the hotel! I found it was to happen quite often on that tour but pretty modest compared to the Beatles. Another thing I remember at that hotel was seeing our advance manager open his suitcase and there was his gun. I’d never seen anyone wandering around with a loaded pistol before. Fifty years! Hardly believable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sitting here in Thailand with practically nothing to do I‘ve looked at my blog. Well, I knew it was ages since I wrote anything for it but I hadn’t quite realised how long. So, now for a long overdue update.

It’s pointless trying to remember everything that’s happened since the last posting in October and then deciding what of that’s worth writing about or needs to be included. I’m not even going to try, I’m just going to tell you where I am now and what that might mean for the future.

Yes, I’m in Thailand and as I write this I am by the sea with sound of the waves in the background at Cha’am. In a little over an hour we leave for Bangkok where we are to eat at Khun Yod’s factory. Then Ajahn Manapo will leave for London and I will remain in Bangkok for another night. On Monday evening I will attend the chanting for Somdet Phra Sangharaja who died recently. Then shortly after midnight on Monday I too return to the UK.

I have had a marvellous two weeks. I flew out of London a fortnight ago tonight and on the following Tuesday I was received with much ceremony at Mahachulalongkornrajavideyalaya University where I was presented with an Honorary Doctorate. Then Ajahn Manapo and I were driven at some speed to Ubon where we were to stay at Wat Pah Nanchat for a few days. On the Thursday it was the big day at Wat Pah Pong, the Ajahn Chah Memorial Day, and there I took part in the annual circumambulation of the Ajahn Chah Chedi. After that I had the chance to visit Peter and Tipawan and to see my old friend and mentor, Luangpor Dang, before flying back to Bangkok and driving South to Cha’am. While in the North East for some of the time we were in the enjoyable company of Ant and Joob and when we went for tea at Peter and Tipawan’s we surprised them by turning up at their house with Matthew and his wife. And throughout our trip, from time to time and much of the time, we have been looked after by the loyal and admirable Ken.

Throughout I have been shown care and kindness and I’m afraid I’ve needed it. In fact I‘ve been lucky to have made it here this year and in the procession circumambulating the Luang Por Chah Chedi I was almost shedding tears of joy.

You see, in December I became rather unwell and was eventually diagnosed with Temporal Arteritis or Giant Cell Arteritis. Fortunately my GP was onto it pretty sharpish and there has been no damage to my sight. I am being treated. It is incurable but does sometimes go into remission and I am optimistic. I’m all right. But I shall have to take things easy, or at least easier and do less than before. But I don’t mind that, after all I’m not exactly in the springtime of life!

So there you are. Now you know. And I’ll try in future to reform and update this blog more often.

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.