The Sound of Silence

A colleague has just e-mailed me, saying ‘I need to find some space within my head so that I can breathe amidst all the noise.’ It is a cry one…

I want to quote Etty Hillseum once again. She writes: ‘One must keep in touch with the real world, and know one’s place in it. To live fully, outwardly, and…

I was once sent by an American-Chinese artist with whom I had been corresponding but never met, two brush paintings which have always hung in my bedroom. The first is…

Over the past year, I have been unable to get to sleep until four o’clock in the morning. A few weeks ago, therefore, I decided to book an hour’s appointment…

A colleague of mine recently started some Buddhist meditation classes, but was quickly put off by the smugness and complacency of the regular attenders who, having found a kind of…

When the Buddha sat beneath his tree, deep in meditation, he encountered feelings of anger, despair, jealousy and fear and realised that each of these is the cause of suffering…

In meditation one goes into an inner space, within oneself. It is not unlike the wardrobe in C.S.Lewis’s Narnia books which opens into another realm, that of Being itself. As…

‘Silence is the perfect’st herald of joy: I were little happy if I could say how much.’ Shakespeare, as always, says it most memorably. All too often we mar a…

A wise old owl lived in an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can’t we all be like…

In the Western world yoga tends to be taught primarily as a fitness technique; but it originally evolved as a spiritual discipline designed to integrate mind, body and spirit. The…