Alistair AppletonDec 15, 20216 minBuddhismLike worms towards the motorwayThe sixth of the blogs from 2014. This one is quite self-contained and doesn’t require many annotations from 2022. There is a Nibbana...
Alistair AppletonDec 3, 20216 minDharmaIntention destroys the zombie mindContinuing my excavation of blogs from the past. These are my ponderings following a teaching that Ajahn Sucitto gave in Portugal. If you...
Alistair AppletonNov 3, 20216 minDharmaSucitto Thoughts #1Today is the birthday of one of my early Buddhist teachers, Ajahn Sucitto, who was the abbot of Cittaviveka monastery in East Sussex when...
Alistair AppletonOct 28, 20215 minPsychologyIn Praise of Idleness“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.” Soren Kierkegaard This is a very old book review from...
Alistair AppletonJul 15, 20214 minDharmaOn not caring: the creativity of upekkhaFrom the date on the cartoon, this blog was originally written in 2008. An almost mythically long time ago. But the thoughts on caring...
Alistair AppletonJun 18, 20216 minPsychologyThe Prohibition Against Asking for HelpI was on a powerful retreat in the Devon countryside a few weeks back and I had a startling flash of memory from my childhood. I recalled...
Alistair AppletonMar 5, 20218 minDharmaMother Nature doesn’t care about suffering. Buddha does.I have been really deeply inspired by the experience of leading the Dharma Days for Mindsprings. After my initial introduction to the...
Alistair AppletonFeb 19, 20207 minDharmaOn Being a Teacher #3: Emptiness and BodhicittaImpermanence and the awakened heart I’m halfway through my Edinburgh weekend and sitting back in the Salisbury Centre guest room, resting...
Alistair AppletonDec 21, 20196 minDharmaHow I became a Buddhist /1This is a long essay I wrote back in the Noughties about my path to Buddhism. I think when I wrote it I was still practising Theravadan...
Alistair AppletonDec 12, 20191 minDharmaKarma“Karma does not decay like external things, or even become inoperative. It cannot be destroyed by time, fire, or water. Its power will...
Alistair AppletonAug 5, 20191 minDharmaWildflowersIt’s been an amazing Summer in Sussex for wildflowers. It may be because I’m usually away filming in July and August and this year I’ve...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20192 minDharmaBelle & SebastianBelle & Sebastian Simon had free tickets, so we went to the B&S gig at the Astoria. Heard their first album in Berlin, years ago. But to...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20192 minDharmaThe gay messiah is comingTHE GAY MESSIAH IS COMING A title sure to agitate all the rabid Republican Americans out there who froth and fulminate each time I so...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20193 minDharmanothing has changed but nothing's the same / and every tomorrow will be yesterdayI thought I’d missed seeing David Byrne in London and then last week I thought ‘fuck it, I WILL see my teenage hero’, so I sniffed out a...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20192 minDharma“for each time you or I treat images as presentations of something else […] we have smasWent with Rachel to the Anish Kapoor show at the Royal Academy. It’s worth a pilgrimage and I use this word advisedly because there is...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20192 minDharmaa kind of fence-sitting/ Raised to the level of an aesthetic idealJohn Ashbery died. Aged 90,which is a fine innings, and in the arms of his husband – so all-in-all from the outside, not tragic. And if...
Alistair AppletonApr 14, 20190 minDharmahenry moore at kew:”The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire lif