We have been holding Death Conversation Cafes at the West London Buddhist Centre for over three years. Why? Death Cafe is an initiative set up by Jon Underwood, a psychotherapist, in 2011. Jon had the vision to create an informal space for people to come together to talk about any matter relating to death and…

We are into our second series of webinars on the Abhidharma’s analysis of the mind. The material, based on Subhuti’s Mind in Harmony, is frequently insightful and thought provoking and provides useful distinctions and connections between mental states. In our latest session we have been looking at hatred and goodwill. The Abhidharma lists rage, resentment,…

In these unusual days I find myself wanting to reflect a little on what a strange thing it is to be alive at this time in the journey of humankind. While it is a fundamental truth that change is one of the defining characteristics of ‘reality’, which of course, includes all aspects of the human…

Dear friends, I heard this week that Vajrasadhu died on 26th May, aged 74, after four weeks in hospital following a stroke. Very few of our sangha knew him as he was based at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre and his contribution to the West London Buddhist Centre was behind the scenes rather than upfront as…

Due to furloughing, I’m having to write this blog nineteen days in advance of publication. If I trace back nineteen days I get to the start of lockdown in the UK. It’s a different world now compared to then. We’ve been getting used to the vista changing with every hour – a bit like the view…

I arrived in London fifteen months ago after a decade of living in the countryside. At the time I wondered how I was going to adjust to my new urban existence, no longer living under canvas in green fields for eight months of the year immersed in nature. It turns out that the rich busyness…

In the next months our weekly Saturday morning Buddhism-in-the-City class addresses a pressing need in these times of lockdown, isolation, anxiety and loss: Buddhist methods for relating to difficult emotions and for developing positive emotion. These classes are a mix of presentation, meditation, talking in smaller groups or pairs and some discussion and inquiry in…

In daily conversation, on social and mass media, we are getting used to a new and unsettling vocabulary – ‘lockdown’, ‘self-isolation’, ‘social-distancing’, ‘furloughing’. Other more familiar words ride piggyback – ‘crisis’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘war’, ‘frontline’. This is all a language of uncertainty and the natural response to uncertainty is fear.  The Buddha speaks to times like…