We're building the ship as we sail it / Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan is an erstwhile America Poet Laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But what is so delicious about her poem are the mordent...
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Alistair Appleton
May 23, 20222 min read
Sunday Morning / Wallace Stevens
This long poem by the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens is one of my favourites. He was an interesting fellow. High-ranking...
285 views12 comments
Alistair Appleton
May 22, 20222 min read
The two big questions for meditation beginners.
One of the MIndsprings members asked a very pertinent question today about starting out on her meditation journey: Where am I going to do...
366 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
May 8, 20223 min read
Letting the Holy Spirit in my Earphones
Alistair takes time to listen to James Macmillan's dazzling 5th Symphony, Le Grand Inconnu, and feels the Holy Spirit fluttering.
248 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Apr 21, 20222 min read
Finding Adonis
A trip to A favourite London bookshop unearths one of the great poets I’d never heard of.
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Alistair Appleton
Apr 1, 20222 min read
Virginia Woolf: I finally get to the Lighthouse
I must have started and re-started To the Lighthouse three or four times in my life. I’ve always thought that I should love this book....
362 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Mar 31, 20221 min read
River
Just watched mesmerising film by Jennifer Peedom, simply entitled River. in the tradition of Koyaanasqatsi and Baraka it is mostly images...
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Alistair Appleton
Mar 18, 20222 min read
Be Here Now - at night, alone, with earphones.
Sometimes when Daniel goes away, it's a chance for me to do nothing very much. When he's here we hang out or I have to carve time to do...
273 views12 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 21, 20224 min read
Every broken heart is sacred
The final blog in my series of seven from 2013 is perhaps the juiciest of them all. I was all tender from a very intense, heart-breaking...
258 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 5, 20226 min read
No more future anymore
This is a rather epic blog about the future and the nature of stress. Looking back from the vantage of 2022, I can see how the eight...
102 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20214 min read
But now there is a forest
This is the third of the set of seven blogs I wrote back in 2014 following a chance encounter with one of my Buddhist teachers Ajahn...
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Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20214 min read
Playing at enlightenment
The fourth of my re-vamped blogs from 2014. This one on play touches on the vexed question of boredom in meditation which usually...
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Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20216 min read
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...
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Alistair Appleton
Dec 3, 20216 min read
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...
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Alistair Appleton
Nov 3, 20216 min read
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...
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Alistair Appleton
Oct 28, 20215 min read
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...
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Alistair Appleton
Oct 11, 20216 min read
Coming out is (still) good for you
This is an article I wrote almost 10 years ago but it still seems to hit the right note. COMING OUT IS GOOD FOR YOU. This article was...
89 views1 comment
Alistair Appleton
Sep 10, 20214 min read
Our Love for the City
On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I was thinking about how we relate to those events – both at the time...
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Alistair Appleton
Aug 13, 202111 min read
Same world, different sunglasses
This is a transcript from a Mindsprings Practice Space session. I’ve got a great question from one of our community, who submitted it in...
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Alistair Appleton
Aug 6, 20213 min read
Avebury Magic and Anti-magic
Another scoop from the archives. Funnily enough, I may have changed my mind from the rather Puritan stance voiced in this blog in the...
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