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.