Mostly my weekly newsletters for prisoners

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.

A few weeks ago we had too much rubbish for our wheely bins and had to put out some in an old fashioned dustbin. When the bloke who collects the rubbish arrived to empty them Maureen just happened to be there and hear the polite refusal to even touch our dustbin. Apparently it was more than the chap’s job was worth because if an agent in an unmarked car snapped him laying a finger on our old dustbin he would be sacked. So when he’d emptied the wheely bins this strapping fellow stood there and watched while seventy-nine year old Maureen emptied the dustbin into a wheely bin which he could then empty into his dustcart or whatever you call it now!

All conditioned things are impermanent, including pretty little Jack Russells. Last Wednesday in the middle of a busy week – I was in and out of six prisons in five days and attended a Burmese memorial in London on Saturday – my little Tommy Trouble died. It was just six and a half weeks since he had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and eleven years and four months since he had come into my life on March 17th, 1998. He was a frightened little chap then and not at all used to people. The slightest thing would alarm him. I couldn’t even raise my voice to call him, if I did he would run away. I’d got him because Oscar, my big Doberman was so upset at the loss of Toby, the first dog I had here, and I couldn’t bear to see Oscar so depressed. But Tommy was clearly in Oscar’s eyes no replacement for the friend he’d worshipped. Poor Tommy, he was such a pretty little fellow but clearly had had not the best of beginnings. He soon got the measure of me and later had no fear of me whatsoever and whether it suited me or not would do as he pleased. He so much wanted to be accepted and loved and yet he could be so difficult. He had various nicknames, Tommy Trouble was one and another was Ajahn Tommy because he could be such a teacher of patience. As Oscar aged and shortly before he died I acquired Ben and then Ben and Tommy would play together. It often seemed that Tommy would egg Ben on to pull something down that was well out of his reach and then the pair of them could rip it up. I would come back to find all kinds of mayhem but the worst was when Ben had taken the discarded and full hoover bag out of the flip-top bin and they had had a whale of a time trashing it! He gave me some frights too. Once, late at night, I was walking him and Oscar in the long grass by the river and Tommy was having to keep up by sort of bunny-hopping through the grass. The trouble was he couldn’t see where he was going and all of a sudden with a loud plop he landed in the river at the bottom of a steep bank. Fortunately I was just able to reach him with my stick and hook him up the bank to where I could grab him. I’ve often wondered how I would have felt if he’d been swept away and I’d had to come back without him. He was a very independent little chap and life without him is already quite different. In the lead up to his passing he obviously wasn’t well but for the most part he didn’t seem too uncomfortable and I’m glad to say he didn’t appear to suffer overmuch.

So thanks Tommy and have a good rebirth.

This was the last picture I took of him, lying in the sun the morning of the day he died.

Made it! Sixty-five today.

The other day I said to some schoolgirls who asked me if we celebrated birthdays that there was a time when I didn’t bother much with my own and used to feel rather self-conscious about it. I only changed as my birthdays began to be something of an achievement. But after this one I think I’ll go back to trying to ignore them. The contemplation of aging is healthy and useful up to a point but if you think too much about getting old, you get old and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

Forty years ago when I was in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at the National Theatre, I remember Guildenstern used to ask the Player King, “Whatever happens to old actors?” “Nothing,” shot back the reply, “they just go on acting.” Now when people ask me what happens to old monks I borrow and adapt that quotation a little. “Nothing,” I say, ” they just go on monking.”

I must say, I’ve had a very nice birthday. I had a few cards and many birthday wishes, especially on Facebook, and a couple of nice presents. So thank you all very much.

Asalha Puja, the anniversary of the Buddha’s first sermon when he set rolling the Wheel of the Dhamma, fell this year on July 7th. And on the following day we entered the Vassa for this year. The Buddha’s first sermon is important not just because it was the first time he attempted to offer others the fruits of his Enlightenment and guide them towards a similar experience but also because it contains the Buddha’s essential messsage, the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.  The Vassa or Punsah is the three month long Rains Retreat that the Buddha ordered all bhikkhus to observe every year. It was originally his response to complaints that the growing number of bhikkhus were damaging the crops as they wandered from place to place but as the years have passed it’s grown into a time of stability for Buddhist monasteries when more formal instruction and practice can be observed. As usual our publice celebration had to take place on a Sunday and we chose the Sunday after, July 12th. Perhaps because the weather seemed not to be able to make up its mind, the turnout was not the largest we’ve known but the sun did finally agree to shine and we had a very lovely time of it.

As well as the customary supplies, £375 was collected towards the day to day expenses of the monastery and there as a useful discussion about what it costs to keep the place going. Anumodana!

Last Saturday about forty supporters of The Forest Hermitage led by Ven. Manapo toiled up Snowdon in atrocious weather on a sponsored walk to raise funds and help see off what is still owed over the purchase of Bhavana Dhamma (Wood Cottage). Not wishing to show any of these young people up by beating them to the top and in any case, not having been invited, I stayed behind to mind the monastery.  Here, apart from the threat of a shower or two, the weather was lovely, warm and sunny, but on Snowdon, apparently, it was another story.  They all got very wet and the cafe at the top was so packed that when he got to it poor Tahn Manapo couldn’t get inside, so he had to do the return trip back down the mountain without the benefit of the hot drink that others had enjoyed.  Fortunately no one came to any harm and most I think had a pretty good time facing the elements and watching their minds I hope.  Certainly it was a great achievement and a tremendous help to us to keep the Buddha’s precious Dhamma available here.  I am aware of course that a number of those walkers had also been on retreats at Bhavana Dhamma and know what a precious place it is.  We don’t know yet how much was raised as money and cheques are still coming in but I’ll keep updating the total in the page under the Latest News tab.

Well done everybody and Anumodana!

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.