good morning

so last night i did the typical insomniac thing. fell asleep reading! woke at about 1a.m. - had probably been asleep for about half an hour. neck at strange angle, slightly drooling, really asleep. yippee, i am sleepy, tired, relaxed. all good things. so i put the book down, turned out the light and... wide awake. completely, totally, mind crystal clear, completely awake. and that was it for another hour or so. oh well, i did eventually sleep. hope you all who read this had a good night and are refreshed and don't look as wiped out as i do this morning.

piccies from college meeting

here are a few more images from the q & a session with bhante. they are not great quality as i took them on my phone!






anyway they give a wee sense of some of the public preceptors during the session.

dhammarati took loads of photos so i will post some more soon.

bhante at college meeting

have just got back to taraloka from our college meeting at tiratanaloka. bhante came for the last couple of days which was lovely. he did a couple of question and answer sessions with us. he was on good form though a wee bit tired the day he arrived as he had just been down to brighton for the weekend.

climate change demo

london nov 3rd.
sanghadevi, khemasuri and i drove down friday afternoon to north london to join other friends for the demo on sat 4th. we started off in the north london buddhist centre meeting with some folk from the no-jo retreat last june and others from the centre.
friday night akuppa gave us a presentation on climate change.

nov 4th
sat some of us started the day with a meditation together at the north london centre and then headed off to meet up with others at Speakers corner. it was a great day, sunny, warm for november (but then that's what we were marching to bring attention to - climate change!). There was a really good atmosphere on the demo, even the local cops were friendly. the speeches were the same old same old I'm afraid but it was great to be there.
the banner worked well, i thought. lost buddhists knew where to head for and it did bring comments and questions. i think we could have had more of a presence if we had organised ourselves better but, actually, i just really enjoyed walking and talking.

sat night we had a great ceilidh in the east london buddhist arts centre. live band and a mixture of scottish dances and some eastern european dances.

sun 5th
we had a day retreat at the north london buddhist centre. 35 people turned up which was a surprise. we based the day on the 4 stages of "the work that reconnects".
for more info on this work see web link for joanna macy below

here are a few more images from the march.

click to enlarge them


i'm working out how to post my flickr badge of piccies but i'm not quite there yet.
watch this space...