Many years ago before I was ordained as a monk, I believed that wisdom came from experience. So I left my home country of England for India, roaming around and gathering life experience in Europe and Asia. The more difficult it was, the more I liked it because I felt that difficulties helped me to know myself better, and that was beneficial to my life. But the overland trip to India was a little d…

It’s very attractive to think of a Messiah coming and saving us because there’s a feeling somehow that’s the only thing that can work now. One can be quite depressed with so many things going wrong in the world, so many problems – you know that feeling: ‘Please let the Messiah come and straighten up the mess we’ve made.’ But we can realize that we have to straighten up the mess we’ve made in ourse…

Venerable Ajahn Buddhadasa gave some good advice (on the topic of work): “We need to work with no feelings of upadana or grasping.” When I work I am not worried about anything or think much at all. I just keep doing the work, only in order to do something that is in some way of use to the community. That’s all. I don’t think about whether there is a lot to do or not – that only causes one to worry…

When monks and novices are ordained they are encouraged to begin with sense restraint, to guard their senses and be self-composed, to receive sense impressions mindfully. Mindfulness nurtures wisdom and understanding, preventing greed, hatred, and delusion from arising; the mind thus abides with wholesome states. This mindful reception of sense objects, and the prevention of unwholesome states fro…

As human beings we have no choice but to engage with the four basic requisites of life: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. If one looks at the monks’ training one sees that it begins with an awareness of how to properly use the four requisites, which is considered an aspect of moral conduct (sīla). It may not have occurred to some people that knowing how to eat or consume is a part of morality…

There’s something very sensible, magical, and confusing about working together. Sensible because you get more done that way and you learn from others; and magical because it makes work into a recreational activity: you get to feel part of a group in a comfortable rather than conformist way. The confusing thing is that, although it makes sense, it doesn’t happen so often. Despite needing other peop…

Back at Cittaviveka, we’ve just concluded the forest work month, which amounts to three weeks of work in our woods – cutting coppice for fuel, stacking logs, planting new trees and heather, and building boxes for bats to live in. This work has been going on since 1986; gradually a self-sustaining woodland has come into being. The desolate silence of a commercial monoculture of non-native trees has…

Earth represents solidity. It represents form and structure, that which resists pressure. It’s what forms the physical structure of our own bodies and the world that we’re a part of. We assume the earth is solid and predictable. We can stomp on it and say, ‘Yes. There it is. This is the Earth.’ But when we start to look more closely and consider the quality of solidity, we realize it’s only relati…

We live in so many worlds. There’s the world of work, the world of our family, the world of our imaginations. When we meditate, we’re creating a world apart, one that’s not involved in the other worlds. We start out by focusing on the breath. As the Buddha said, you focus on the body in and of itself. In the case of the breath, this means simply being with the sensation of the breathing as it come…

Monks intent on the path of practice have always been drawn to forests because secluded environments support the development of sense-restraint, fewness of wishes, contentment, love of solitude and introspection – the core virtues of a monastic vocation. Living in nature demands care and respect for one’s surroundings and a patient acceptance of a world over which one has only limited control. Whi…