I was filming in France, for escape to the country, and discovered – to my delight – thatI was filming in France for "Escaoe" and discovered- to my delight - that our hotel was only 10 minutes drive from Plum Village, the Zen Buddhist community set up by Thich Nhat Hanh. And I manage to visit for an hour or two. The little French "hamlet" was overflowing with visitors on Bastille Day but what a serene and illuminating place. And I could feel Thây's presence in every spot. Especially the bamboo grove and the exquisite lotus pond. To be in a place overflowing with Dharma was magical.

My BBC colleague Ben picked a fabulously sunny day to visit Holy Isle and meet Zangpo and crew. The Island looks stunning of course. I hope it inspires lots of people to make the journey! The island part starts at 33'. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001rmhk(https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001rmhk)

In a single instant, the light of a lamp can illuminate A house that has been dark and uninhabited for a thousand years. Just so, realizing the luminous nature of your own mind for even an instant Will purify an aeon’s worth of negativity and obscurations.

Beautiful calm area, being outdoors and appreciating nature.

Since it was Halloween, we did some practice that involved deliberately scaring ourselves. Deliberately going into the things that annoy, trouble us and swinging back and forth from a safe place into homeopathic doses of over-egged scare. (The Practice will be in the video library later this week) - here's my Halloween thoughts: https://share.descript.com/view/pKemEHE8iwg

… and no broken limbs! This Monday sees us moving the Beingfulness lens to our thoughts and mental formations (the 4th Field). And on Tuesday we’ll be completing our tour of Somatic Practice. And Thursday - fanfare🎺🎺- continues our Satipatthana exploration with the Seven factors of Enlightenment.

We've started a little mini-series of teachings on the Tuesday live session, where our focus is on using simple two-syllable mantras to calm the body-mind. People seemed to respond well, so if you'd like to come along, please book. Here's a taster from the Q&A afterwards: https://share.descript.com/view/xKlZBbjPkCL

Johanna asked me to publish some of the talk we had yesterday - on Bonfire Night in the UK and Election Night in the US - about how we navigate these big global events with an open heart. So here it is: https://share.descript.com/view/tQugrMCxcro

Click the image below to see the video message: https://share.descript.com/view/YQUpfRabq7B Hello. Just a quick note to you lovely members of the Mindsprings community. I am going away next week to Barcelona with Daniel for his 40th birthday. And I will be back the following week. So that is the 28th so we'll start, live sessions again on this Monday, the 28th. And on the 31st, we're going to start a new cycle of Buddhist teaching: We're looking at the four immeasurables, which will be at the later time of 8:00 AM UK time. So we're doing this seasonal switch. So slightly later on a Thursday morning. So the Monday session and that Thursday session, the morning sessions are both at 8:00 AM UK time. Slightly complicated, I think because the clocks go back. So if you're in a different time zone, you need to just be mindful of that. And also to let you know that, Let's just check the date. we're starting our book club. Looking at Mingyur Rinpoche's wonderful "In Love With the World" on the 6th of November. So this is in just in a few weeks time, and that's free, if you're a Baobab member, so many of you have that. Do come along. It's I think it's seven o'clock on Wednesday evenings for, I think we're taking six weeks up until Christmas. So I will send out an email and that'd be a page with some reading instructions for that. coming in the next few days. Anyway, just thought, I'd say hello. And, let you know, what's coming up in the next few weeks. And I hope you're very well. I've got a little bit of a cold, I think I might have had COVID actually, cause I can't smell anything. . Curious. Never had that before. But I hope you're well and healthy. And, enjoying the fall slash spring. If you're in Australia.

Following a lovely exchange with Zana Frood in this morning exploration of the Noble Eightfold Path, we ended up talking about understanding right view (the first thread of the eightfold weave) as a fitting understanding of how reality works (i.e. through constant impermanence/emergence). This understanding then allows us to stop faffing with all the constituent bits of our existence (form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness = the aggregates in Buddhist jargon).