What is Cornish Buddhism?
- Alistair Appleton
- 14 hours ago
- 2 min read
  📍 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 Buddhist practitioner when you live in Cornwall, it makes sense that you embrace a Cornish Buddhism.
Clearly, Cornwall's not a Buddhist country, and so that's a, drawback, because if you've lived in Tibet, where a thousand years of practitioners have charged every nook and cranny of the country with spiritual practice, then that leaves a big footprint that you can bathe in.
But there was spiritual practice in Cornwall, otherwise they would not have built these incredible stone circles or erected these standing stones. So for a very long time - three, four, five, six thousand years - there's been something going on here. But the echo, the resonance is perhaps quite faint now because we have no idea what sort of practices were done in the stone circles.
But it feels that it could be very fruitful as an experiment to bring Buddhist practice, that is, practice that moves towards enlightenment, to freeing the mind from toxic patterns, and seeing what can come from a marriage of Buddhism and the Cornish landscape.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there are many traditions where, sacred places play a huge role in the enlightenment process of individuals. And I think there's something to be said for practicing in cliff sanctuaries here by the sea or stone circles, holy wells, and just allowing the presence of those charged places to inspire us. I don't know what's gonna come out of it.
I don't know whether it's presumptuous to assume that just because you're practicing Buddhism, then the whole countryside's going to become Buddhist. Nonetheless, I think there is something, potent in the experiment, finding a path into our own indigenous spirituality here in England and particularly here in this most sacred corner of England, down in West Penwith, the sea on either side, the Atlantic and the English Channel.
That sense of openness and big sky thinking has, I think, something akin to the big skies of the Himalayas, though on a more smaller scale. Although, of course, the Himalayas don't have the sea, and we do have the sea in spades here. So perhaps a Cornish Buddhism is going to be a maritime Buddhism too.
Anyway, it's an experiment that I'm keen to explore and I'd love your feedback and your comments and anything that you think might be interesting. And, over the coming years, I hope to establish a few retreats here in this gorgeous corner of the country to explore the nascent seeds of a Cornish Buddhism.
You can come along to Mindsprings first retreat on this. In the heart of Penwith this November.
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