How can drawing engages with the present moment, and what can it offer our wellbeing and mental health? Last week I picked up a pencil and, for the first time in many years, I started to draw. I was co-leading a retreat with an artist friend that combined meditation...
On Retreat with Wordsworth & Coleridge William and Dorothy Wordsworth lived at Alfoxton in 1797–8, near their friend Samuel Coleridge, who lived with his family in nearby Nether Stowey. In that year each of them wrote some of their finest work – the volume of...
Mary Oliver: Wild and Precious Verse Mary Oliver was the Poet Laureate of mindfulness, and many Buddhists felt an affinity with her themes of nature, appreciation and the importance of present moment awareness Mary Oliver: wild and precious Verse by Vishvapani |...
Harold Bloom’s writing on literature and religion is a remarkable mix of almost supernatural erudition with a deep concern with spiritual life. He’s controversial and unfashionable, but I constantly read and reread his works. I think Bloom’s approach has much in...
Lest there be any doubt about Buddhism’s arrival in western culture, consider an advert from a few years ago showing a room full of meditators. The copy reads, ‘If you are going to follow the breath, it may as well be fresh. Eat tic-tacs.’ If tic-tac eaters can...
