In his marvellous book “Happiness”, Matthieu Ricard told of research that showed how someone lying beside a path, seemingly in distress, attracted the attention of only 15% of passersby. But once he put on the jersey of the local football side 85% stopped to help. The research concluded that people are much more inclined to […]

I was fascinated last week to hear the news that Australian woman, Elizabeth Blackburn, had won the Nobel prize for her work in molecular biology. The work she has been doing for many years is certainly groundbreaking and the world owes a debt of gratitude to such dedicated and talented people. I applaud her, and […]

The figures move a bit with the years of research, but on the evidence it is fair to say the universe is a little under fifteen billion years old. The first vestiges of life on earth seemed to appear some one and a half billion years ago. Hominids have been around for less than ten […]

The plane is doing its approach to the airport. There’s a small crosswind and the aircraft sideslips onto the runway with a bit of a jolt. The left-hand wheels are on the runway now and gravity soon ensures that the right wheels touch down soon after. There is a dramatic braking and we are thrust […]

The Australian psychologist, Dorothy Rowe, who has written extensively on the issue of depression, makes the point that depressed people manufacture prisons for themselves – not to keep themselves in, but to keep the world out. Whilst this is a phenomenon taken to extremes by depressives, it seems to me that it is something we […]

Way back in July, I quoted T S Elliot, from “Little Gidding”.. “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” We have a prescience here, that something profound has been conveyed to us. It has […]

In last week’s blog I quoted Alfred Lord Tennyson from his Memoirs. “A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name three or four times to myself silently, til all at once, as […]

Alfred Lord Tennyson, the nineteenth century English poet wrote this famous passage in his Memoirs. “A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name three or four times to myself silently, til all […]

The originator of Taoism is thought to be Lao-tzu. Lao-tzu lived around 500BCE and was a contemporary of Confucius. Alan Watts, with his usual insight wrote, “The essence of Lao-tzu’s philosophy is the difficult art of getting out of one’s own way – of learning how to act without forcing conclusions, of living in skilful […]

In Chapter 13 of Augustus Finds Serenity, the sage Takygulpa Rinpoche has been asked to give advice to a religious community. Among other things he tells the assembled throng: “Do not take life too seriously. The glue that holds our communities together best is made from shared joy and good humour. Just as we are […]