June began for me with a very busy weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June began for me with a very busy weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, everything carries on as normal.

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, everything carries on as normal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Amaravati’s Royal Kathina.

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

At the Devon Royal Kathina.

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