One of the consequences of meditating a lot over several years is you start to see how your own mind works. Obviously, this gives you insight into other people's too.If you are feeling down and oppressed by the world, well, how about getting the

Comment left here. My lama says that you should allow your subjective pain to awaken compassion for others that also suffer from whatever condition you are suffering with. Then take the medicine!I no longer need to take antidepressants

Thoughts on reading http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html#N401

Carrying on from last blog, perhaps more coherently

Some notes that may turn into the beginning of my next novel, or may stay what they are.

Birthday Message

Lots of competent people, who think carefully about the problem, making small contributions is how it works. Don't knock it. I'm a bit jealous of people who have made a contribution, which I know is weird of me. At times I feel like I'm trying to do

For those of you who don't know, my father killed himself when I was 8 years old. All I have left of him are his silver cufflinks and the vague echoes of his genes. Nothing else.I was giving Jon a hug today before leaving for work and it hit me that

If you hurt someone else you give them permission to hurt you back because you make hurting people OK. This is quite tricky to understand. It's one of the ways that karma works. Karma just means "action", like Newton's law:For every action

Imagine a world where everyone is the victim of an illusion. Where the apparent separation of subject and object, of self and other, is simply not real. Instead, everyone clings to the illusion because of fear and ignorance, which is in turn masked b

Christ, I dunno One of those things. Loads going on but not space to sit back and think about it. The printing press of life continues to weave some kind of bloody narrative. Bones and guts and living. Things falling apart, not satisfactory. Pushing

Just posted this (but I've also added and moved some stuff for euphony) on http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/read/607125.htm:It's so good to see a different side of the gender debate. I was also really interested in the "war against boys" tha

I was reading http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA518.htm. I loved the line [Michael Howard] jumps on any bandwagon that seems to be going somewhere, then promptly falls off on the first bend. I think this describes most of our political e

A long week getting software into a stubborn target system. 3rd time lucky.  It was infrastructre all the time but I had to convince the infrastructure crew to look again, which was 90% of the effort.I'm a bit strung out; haven't meditated for ages

I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday when I went for a walk in the beautiful sunshine after work. I was thinking about how there seems to be a lot of special days in the Buddhist calendar, you know, auspicious days and not. If everything is empty the

I went to Lama Jampa's Easter teachings in Flumseberg, Switzerland. I really liked Switzerland and the Swiss, I think their taciturn reputation is undeserved. I liked the way everything was so clean, even the smokers would stub their cigarettes out

Had a couple of jobs in the pipeline. One with a very interesting IT based company in Warrington, the other with a bank in central Manchester. The bank were going to pay more but we seemed to have some kind of mismatch on the 2nd interview; I am glad

I'm beyond tired and very fed up with life at the moment. I'm beginning to realise that freedom and stress are quite closely related. Stress makes you do the things you need to do to get things done. But there is nothing worse than the stress you get

Many years ago I was involved in left wing politics and I remember having a lot of arguments on street corners with people who used to say that there couldn't be a society where people shared things because greed was human nature. For some reason thi

Hello, this document is produced by using a my brand-new ViaVoice software; I hope that it makes sense and doesn't come out complete rubbish. Today has been a very difficult day: I'm extremely tired and went to some training on a new piece of softwar

Well, I got paid yesterday, so the bank will get off my back for a while. The consultancy I have CV'd want a phone interview mid Feb so we'll see what happens there. I'll have to tone down my apparent arrogance I suppose, but then I have done a lot i

DharmaA long week, I'm very tired. I went to see Lama Jampa this week, which only took about an hour and a half from where I'm staying but, of course, then I had to drive back. The meeting was very good; he is so wise and I am very lucky to be one of

Crèche in West KensingtonOK OK lots of things have been going on here... I won a bottle of whisky in the charity raffle at work, which was amazing because I never win anything. Here I am feeling pretty good, my Karma is obviously working well. Then

Having fun on christmas day. Very tired. Kids liked their presents, which was good. Nine of us for dinner, which is also good. Not seen Roger for ages and enjoying the crack immensely.Saw my former colleagues for lunch on Tuesday. It's funny how you

This blog comes to you from the car park of PC World in Mansfield. They have a Wifi hotspot and I'm a BT Openzone subscriber so off we go... (well nearly, the signal isn't good enough, it's OK in the shop). WorkI've been buried under work recently un