At last week’s Angulimala Workshop there was almost universal dismay when I announced that because the importers had gone out of business we had no Buddha Rupas for chaplains to take away and offer their Buddhist prisoners. The next day I decided something had to be done. So I sat down to some determined Googling and eventually turned up a site that displayed a picture of a Buddha Rupa that looked identical with the type that Security at the Prison Service gave their blessing to and which we have been giving out for a number of years now. I rang the lady and learnt that they were expecting a container delivery of these and other things from Thailand on Wednesday. On Friday we went to have a look and discovered a wonderful Aladdin’s Cave of fabulous Buddha Rupas of all shapes and sizes as well as other treasures mostly from Northern Thailand. And only an hour and a half from here! As you can see from the pictures Roots Emporium is only a little shop, but next to it there is a lean-to building and both were crammed, floor to ceiling with hardly space to move around and look at the fabulous things they contain. What was remarkable too was that it hardly felt as if you were in a commercial establishment. That meant a lot to me because I really don’t like seeing people making money out of Buddha Rupas and Dhamma books. Not only that but we were offered a very generous discount. And so we came away laden with small Buddha Rupas of the kind we were looking for and some much larger ones for Buddhist shrines and multifaith rooms in some of the prisons.

As I said in my last post, last week was big for Buddhists throughout the world and a pretty busy few days for me too. As you might have read in the previous post, on Saturday, May 17th, we joined the London Fo Guang Temple for their annual celebration in Leicester Square and then raced back to make sure everything was ready for our big event the following day. Thankfully, Samanain and a few trusty helpers had done a great job and apart from a few last minute adjustments the next morning all we had to do was hope that the weather would buck up, dry up and the sun would come out.

So, last Sunday we held our celebration of the Birth, Enlightenment and Parinibbana of the Buddha. We had a good crowd, plenty of good food, and after the almsround and we’d all eaten we circumambulated one of the Buddha Rupas in the garden. In the picture we’re just setting off after I’ve finished trying to persuade everyone to be meditative, mindful and to please not get lost.

In the afternoon when it was all over we had a meeting of the committee of the Buddha-Dhamma Fellowship, that’s the outfit that formally looks after the place.

Then in the early evening Tahn Manapo and I jumped in the mean green machine that is the monastery car and set off for Oxford with Larry, who’d come to stay and drive for me for a few days, behind the wheel. We were going to a fund raising event for Save the Children in Burma that Aung San Suu Kyi’s son and a handful of Burmese and friends had organised at a school on the outskirts of Oxford. They’d asked me to say a few words which I did. I’ve heard since that they raised about £6000.

Monday was of course the actual Visakha Puja Day. I had accepted an invitation to join a celebration at Haverigg Prison in the evening, so I left Tahn Manapo to take the Monday sitting and shortly after 2 pm Larry and I set off for the southern edge of the Lake District. As you might imagine the M6 wasn’t much fun but the last part of the three and a half hour drive was quite beautiful. I got there just in time for the six o’clock start and I was made very welcome by the Governor, the chaplaincy and the men who packed the place out to enjoy the occasion and to hear me tell the story of the Buddha and afterwards the story of Angulimala and his meeting with the Buddha. It was a great evening but over all too soon and by eight o’clock we were back on the road for another three and a half hours.

On Tuesday, it was off to two more prisons, Gartree in the afternoon and Stocken in the evening.

Wednesday I didn’t do very much and Larry went back to Wales.

Thursday was again a quiet day pottering about in my garden and office. Then in the evening Nui took Tahn Manapo and I to a meeting of Warwick University Buddhist Society. It’s exams time and so attendance was practically rock bottom and it might have been the last meeting for this term and the academic year. A pity.

On Friday a very nice chap called Tom came to see me about helping with some driving and we agreed that he would start by taking me to Grendon and Springhill Prisons on Tuesday. So on that front, what with him and Larry, things are looking up at last. Then in the evening Maggie Dou, a very nice Chinese girl who used to be at Warwick Uni, came up from London to stay for a couple of nights at Bhavana Dhamma. She’s now qualified as a solicitor and later this year having joined a London law firm that has branches in China she will be going back to Shanghai. Our loss but Shanghai’s gain.

Not much happened on Saturday. Just the usual, a few phone calls and stuff to do with prisons and the Buddhist Chaplaincy for the Armed Forces Endorsing Authority.

And today Hema Hirani and her sisters came to see me. That was nice. Hema is also ex Warwick and formerly part of a fairly notorious group who used to run the WU Buddhist Society. They stayed chatting for a bit, then went over to Bhavana Dhamma for tea with Maureen. Later on they came back, said goodbye and then Hema successfully manoeuvred Mark’s little red car out of the carpark and down the drive and off they went back to London.

And that was the week that was!

After an early meal we raced down to London this morning to attend the Annual Buddha’s Birthday Celebration in London’s Leicester Square. Like last year we were delayed by the crowds converging on Wembley for the Cup Final and so we arrived too late for the procession through China Town. Actually we didn’t mind that as it was raining and we got wet enough nipping through the pedestrianised bit from where we had jumped out of the car in St Martin’s Lane. I had been asked to give a short address and I focussed mostly on the hope that the Buddha’s message brings us for a better and happier life. This, of course, is a big weekend for Buddhists throughout the world. Theravadans like us celebrate the Birth, Enlightenment and Passing of the Buddha, while for some other schools it’s the Enlightenment only and for our Chinese friends of the London Fo Guang Temple it’s the Birth that they celebrate at this time. And their way of doing it is to ceremonially bathe the images of the child who later grew up to leave his princely estate and eventually win full Enlightenment to become the Buddha. We were each of us invited to go forward and bathe an image. The images of the child prince show him pointing to the earth and to the heavens as he declared that this would be his last birth.

Nui, who works at the Butterfly Farm in Stratford, brought us a present of a chrysalis. There it is on the right, that silver pod. And next to it you can see what came out of it. We haven’t given it a name and we don’t know if it’s a he or a she, nor do I know the species but I’ll find out. If we want to give it a name we’ll have to hurry as it won’t long be with us, it can only live for a few days. How about this for a rebirth, it has no mouth!

I’m in a bit of a mess!

I should have been setting off for Grendon Prison about now but Nick, who usually once a week takes time after work to drive me, sent me a text to say he couldn’t leave the office this evening.

I’m lucky that I’ve got Ian and Nick, who between them usually manage a day and an evening each week, and lately Tomasz has been able to help with an evening, but I’m afraid it’s not enough and my prison work is really suffering.

I desperately need a man to drive for me three days a week. They could be three consecutive days with whoever’s driving staying overnight here for two or three nights, or if it were someone more local whatever days suited, or it could be more than one person between them making up the three days.

If there’s anyone out there who thinks they could help or knows someone, please get in touch.

I’m sure that many friends of The Forest Hermitage will be sorry to hear of the death on Thursday of Rosemary Alcock.

Before a long stay in hospital where she caught one of their infamous bugs, Rosemary had been a bright, cheerful, lively lady who brought so much fun into our lives. Her generosity was boundless and we often joked that if ever she heard or believed we needed or would like something at the factories producing it all leave would be cancelled and the staff would be put on overtime to meet her demands. After her health deteriorated she could only manage to get out here once a week but her sense of humour and plain speaking never left her and even in hospital she had some wicked things to say about the larger members of staff.

Her input here in years gone by was huge. She was a real diamond. And it’s been sad to see her fade but there it is that’s what we have to face and accept as we age and our bodies begin to fail.

Her last couple of months were spent in a home near Cambridge where she could be cared for and be close to her sister. There, at first, she brightened up and seemed much happier but the damage was done and by the time I saw her last Sunday she was very frail. She would have been eighty in December.

It’s been wonderful to have known her. Rosemary has brightened all our lives and I hope that through all the care she has lavished on others and all the good things she has done she will enjoy a favourable rebirth and in time come to know the secure peace of Nibbana.

Songkran is known to most visitors to Thailand as the Water Festival. In fact it’s the Thai, Burmese and Sri Lankan New Year. Its origins go way back to ancient India where it may have been a sort of Spring festival. As such its timing resonates well with us and the fresh, new growth we’re beginning see around us, the greening of the hedgerows and the blossoming of the rich variety of fruit trees in our gardens. To mark this renewal the Thais traditionally pay their respects by bathing their elders, beginning with the Buddha and it’s from that that the well-known water throwing progresses.

It’s become a tradition for us to celebrate Songkran both here at The Forest Hermitage and in Nottingham at Yod and Nid’s YodSiam Thai Restaurant. This year the Songkran Day fell on a Sunday so Yod decided to ask us to go to him the day before and then the next day we did it all again here. Both were wonderful days, even if the slightly chilly weather did reduce the water spillage somewhat!

There are pictures here of the day at YodSiam on the 12th and here of our celebration at The Forest Hermitage on 13th of April.

At the Prison Service Chaplaincy Conference last week I was invited to give a two minute ‘reflection’. I don’t write my speeches nor do I have anyone else write them for me so I can’t report now exactly what I said but I’ll try and give you some idea. You may remember from an earlier entry back in February that the theme of this year’s conference was ‘Trusting the Journey’ and while I was determined not to utter those words I accepted that what I had to say had somehow to chime with that theme. This then is roughly what I said.

There was a time when for me a journey was simply something I had to endure in order to get somewhere and home again. In those far off days my journeys were nearly always about work and my need to be somewhere on time to do what I had to do on some stage or film set somewhere or other. My journeys then had an objective; I had something to do, I had to be somewhere. Later, when I decided to go east and take my Buddhist interests and commitment a stage further I felt that I should make that journey a pilgrimage. At the time I had little idea of what a pilgrimage was but I took off and by various means made my way overland to India where for two months I wandered around the Buddhist holy places. The pressure was off, I had more time to look out of the window and I wasn’t so concerned about when I was going to get there but still I was journeying with the aim of getting somewhere. Then I went to Thailand and made my way up to the North East, to that corner bounded by Laos to the North and Cambodia to the East. There I joined a famous and wonderful teacher called Ajahn Chah and became one of the forest monks. The forest monks include monks who wander, who go on journeys that have a purpose but no objective. They might say that they are going in search of peace or a peaceful place but they are not travelling in order to get anywhere, and certainly not on time, or indeed to be anything. There I began to understand another kind of journey, one that has no objective but is done simply for its own sake.

Yesterday, the last speaker, talking about the latest developments within the Prison Service and the direction and journey it’s now taking, quite candidly admitted that no one really knows where this is going to take us. We could make fun of this or be quite cynical about the Prison Service off again, driven by yet more bright ideas and still not knowing where it’s going to be this time next year! But in truth we never know where we’re going to end up. We can’t possibly tell what’s going to happen or how things are going to turn out. On any journey it’s only this that we can really know about, just the placing of this foot in front of the other, now, at this time, that’s all. And if only we can do that well.

Doing it for the sake of doing it, doing it without wanting to be or gain anything, doing it without really knowing or bothering too much about where it’s going to take you, but doing what has to be done and doing it well, acting skilfully and virtuously, is not only the way to approach chaplaincy, it’s the way to approach life.

There’s talk of evaluating chaplaincy. And who thinks they can do that? The guys in suits who only talk money? But what about the inmates? At this conference there has been nothing from the prisoners but at the last conference we heard from two former prisoners. One of them, Bobby Cummins, I used to visit twenty years ago when he had long hair and was very angry. Remember what he said of you chaplains? ‘You’re diamonds.’

When you love the unloved, when you care for the uncared for and rejected, when you befriend the friendless, you’re diamonds.

Thank you.

At 3 o’clock in the morning of Sunday, April 6th, I saw that snow had begun to fall. When I looked out a few hours later it had stopped and to my amazement we were under a good six inches of snow. It was very wet, stodgy snow that clung to the branches, weighing them down and making everything utterly beautiful. When the sun came out it was even better. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen snow in April.

That day, Khun Dang, who had turned 60 the day before, was due here to lead the offering of the Tort Pah Bah that she had organised to mark her birthday and fifth cycle. As people began arriving small snowball skirmishes kept breaking out – a snow variation on the water fights that usually characterise Songkrahn. Of course this wasn’t supposed to be a Songkrahn celebration, we’re having that next Sunday but it was close enough to be in people’s minds. I gave the Refuges and Precepts then instead of an alms round outside everyone queued in the Shrine Room to put food in our bowls. After the meal came the offering of the Tort Pah Bah and then I spoke a few words of explanation and I hope, encouragement. Because I knew that some people present wouldn’t be able to make it next week I announced that we would have a mini Songkrahn and again everyone queued, this time to bathe the Buddha Image and then our hands.

It was a great day and made even better by an offering made towards what is still owed to the bank for Bhavana Dhamma (Wood Cottage) of a total of £3,861, made up of £200 from Thailand, £200 collected here, £240 that came in the post and £3,221 that was brought on the day. Fabulous! This week, with Khun Dang’s help as she’s turned 60, we’ve brought the debt down £6,000 to £73,000. Anumodana!

And for Khun Dang, Happy Birthday!

There are some pictures here.

For some sort of handbook I’ve just been asked to list ten things about Buddhism that I would want someone who knows nothing about it to know and this is what I’ve come up with.

Buddhism is what we call the original teachings and discipline established by the Buddha as well as the family of separate but related movements that have grown out of those early beginnings and spread in a vast and complex diversity of forms throughout the world.

1. The Buddha is the One Who Knows or the Enlightened One and is the title assumed by the former Prince following his Enlightenment at the age of 35.

2. The Buddha lived and taught in Northern Central India about 2,600 years ago.

3. What the Buddha taught addresses the problem of suffering by explaining its cause, its ending and the way to end it.

4. That path or middle way is a training in the gradual perfection of virtue, meditation and wisdom.

5. Buddhist morality is underpinned by the principle of harmlessness and for the laity is expressed through the Five Precepts that enjoin a person to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, untruthfulness and taking alcohol and drugs.

6. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion that has no God, creator or saviour.

7. Nor is it a belief system, dogma or faith based religion (generally Buddhists would not refer to it as a faith) but instead invites one to come and see and know for oneself.

8. The Buddha taught that there is no self or soul, rather we and all phenomena arise dependent on causes and conditions and are without any abiding self, soul or substance.

9. Much is made of merit, the doing of good deeds and the development of generosity, loving-kindness, compassion, non-attachment, truthfulness and patience.

10. Dependent on the intention, actions have results and it is how one has lived this life that after death conditions rebirth.