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What is Cornish Buddhism?
📍 What is Cornish Buddhism? It started as a joke really, when I was thinking about how we fetishize Tibetan Buddhism, and you get all these Westerners dressing up in Tibetan robes and traveling to the Himalayas, when of course, the essence of Buddhism is everywhere in the universe, and the Sambhogakaya qualities, the energy of enlightenment, is just as much apparent in the Rockies as it is in the Himalayas, or in the Amazon, or in the outback of Australia. Yet, to be a Buddh

Alistair Appleton
Jun 282 min read
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Beingfulness vs. Abhidharma - Slicing Up the Meaty, Messy Pie of Our Experience
I was doing this practice with Mingyur Rinpoche, and he was teaching what's known as the Abhidharma, which is a very old form of Buddhism.

Alistair Appleton
Sep 2, 20243 min read
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What does Buddhism have to say about sexuality and gender?
New member Fran, coming from a progressive Islamic mosque in Canada, was interested in Buddhism’s stance on gender and sexuality and so I...

Alistair Appleton
Jan 31, 20245 min read
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Discipline 2: The Fragrance of Shila
This transcript is from our 2nd exploration of the paramita of discipline or in Sankrit, shila. From the outside, these disciplines, -...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 6, 20233 min read
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Discipline 1 - The Paramita of Shila
In our ongoing exploration of the six paramitas, we have come to the second which is discipline (shila). We can think of shila as a...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 6, 20234 min read
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Generosity 2: The Pinch Point
This transcript comes from the second week exploring the transcendental action (paramita) of generosity. You can join in the cornucopia...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 17, 20235 min read
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Generosity 1: dana and dzinpa
From the first of two live sessions dedicated to the "transcendental action" of generosity, in November 2023. A recording of the practice...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 17, 20236 min read
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The Paramitas: where the rubber of practice hits the road of reality
If you've been following our Live Sessions of late, you may have noticed this word paramita cropping up again and again. Apologies if it...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 9, 20233 min read
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Going Outdoors to Enter the Presence
I am entering one of my periodic periods of great doubt. I have these on a fairly regular basis - once every five years, perhaps - and...

Alistair Appleton
Jun 29, 20236 min read
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Can we meditate while the world is burning?
A participant in the last retreat I led asked a very good question that often arises in retreats. “It’s all very well us pondering our...

Alistair Appleton
Apr 19, 20238 min read
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The Magic of No Escape
Growing up in a Christian world (I was an Anglican choirboy for many of my most impressionable early years), my mind has been suffused...

Alistair Appleton
Feb 4, 20235 min read
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Like worms towards the motorway
The 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 Appleton
Dec 15, 20216 min read
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Intention destroys the zombie mind
Continuing my excavation of blogs from the past. These are my ponderings following a teaching that Ajahn Sucitto gave in Portugal. If you...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 3, 20216 min read
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Sucitto Thoughts #1
Today is the birthday of one of my early Buddhist teachers, Ajahn Sucitto, who was the abbot of Cittaviveka monastery in East Sussex when...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 3, 20216 min read
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In 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 Appleton
Oct 28, 20215 min read
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On not caring: the creativity of upekkha
From the date on the cartoon, this blog was originally written in 2008. An almost mythically long time ago. But the thoughts on caring...

Alistair Appleton
Jul 15, 20214 min read
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The Prohibition Against Asking for Help
I 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 Appleton
Jun 18, 20216 min read
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Mother 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 Appleton
Mar 5, 20218 min read
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Language #3: Thinking and Language as the Bridge of Love
NOTE: I think in this last blog I am in some sense arguing myself OUT of a position that I have thoughtlessly held for many years. That...

Alistair Appleton
Jan 14, 20216 min read
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Language #2: The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic
In the first part of this blog on language and thinking, I argued that the human experience of thinking is fundamentally grounded in...

Alistair Appleton
Jan 14, 20215 min read
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