How To Stop Suffering – The 8 Worldly Winds

I’ve been talking with a friend who is on a course looking at a teaching of the Buddha’s called the ‘8 Worldly Winds’ and it gave me the thought for today’s essay. Buddhism loves lists! But this is a useful […]

9 Year Anniversary

In April 2009 there was an article in Boyz about a new group for gay men that had recently started in London. It was the first in a new section they were launching called ‘passions’ where gay men shared what […]

The Fifth hindrance to meditation: doubt

The Five Hindrances The mind states that disturb the natural clarity of our heart-mind have been described as the five hindrances. Each hindrance has its own flavour and over this set of five emails I’ll explore each hindrance. But first, […]

The Five Hindrances

Last week I was talking about dreams and how we can wake up within the dream to a state of lucid awareness. In the previous weeks I’ve been looking at how we can bring greater clarity to our emotional world […]

How to be happy: the four noble truths

This week we come to the question of happiness! The Buddha’s teachings assert that happiness is our true nature, that when all of the struggle, fear and worry are seen through there is simply luminous, clear consciousness – unborn, uncreated, […]