Dear Blog Readers, I am delighted to share the Introduction of my new book, Buddhism for Pet Lovers: Supporting Our Closest Companions through Life and Death. This chapter sets the scene for a book that is very close to my heart. In this blog I have also included in a few very personal photos from the...
For most of us, the opportunity to spend time in the natural world is rare and fleeting. If we are fortunate, we may enjoy regular walks in the park or by the sea. We may get out of town on the occasional weekend. The very lucky get to go on Mindful Safari to Africa! But...
An idea that challenges, confuses and sometimes even angers people is that each of us could be reborn as an animal. When I recently blogged about karma, quite a few of the comments asked more about this subject. So, what is the Tibetan Buddhist perspective? It’s important not to be encumbered with ideas from Western culture and society...
Take the following example of how we empower negative vs positive thoughts in everyday life. You bump into a friend, Mary, on your way into the coffee shop. ‘I like you hair,’ she smiles. ‘Oh, thanks,’ you say. ‘I had it cut yesterday.’ ‘Looks great!’ Mary confirms. ‘Bye.’ For a few moments, waiting in the...
It seems to me that, whoever we are and whatever our convictions, there is a single question we all need to answer. The way we answer may well underpin how we live our life. The question is seldom made explicit, but is often implicit in both scientific and religious beliefs. For my own part, I...
Having moved from the Renaissance idea of mind as soul, through the materialist notion of mind as brain, Western scientists are now deepening their understanding of mind as a flow of energy, capable of consciousness and cognition. This explanation shares certain elements of the previous paradigms, while dealing with their more evident flaws. Like Descartes’s...
The most obvious problem with claiming that mind and brain are the same is the lack of an explanation as to how consciousness can arise from matter. In the past, some scientists adopted the denial strategy, saying that mind and consciousness didn’t actually exist. The American behaviourist B.F. Skinner went as far as to say...
René Descartes, sometimes referred to as the father of modern philosophy, summed up his famous views on how mind and body are separate in his book Discourse on the Method, published in 1637. In it, he explained the reasoning behind his seminal dictum ‘I think therefore I am’: “From this I knew I was a...
I am often struck by what I think is one of life’s greatest paradoxes: even though our entire experience of reality depends on our mind, most people have no idea what mind actually is. Everything we perceive, think and feel arises only with mind’s participation. That being the case, wouldn’t it be useful to have...
One of the most stress-inducing ideas, when we’re crazy busy, is the one that we just don’t have time to relax. We’d love to push back for a while. In fact, we’re desperate for it. But we put the idea out of our mind because we’ve still got a pile of work to get...