Peace Run meeting with Oxford Mindfulness
Last week, I helped organise the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run on the day it was in Oxford. In the morning we visited the Oxford Mindfulness centre at the Warneford hospital in Headington, within the Oxford University Department of Psychiatry.
The Mindfulness centre have been offering courses in meditation and mindfulness to help people deal with stress, depression and other life issues. Four years ago, we met with the founder of the Centre – Mark Williams when the Peace Run last went through Oxford. …
National Botanic Garden of Wales – Photos
The National Botanic Garden of Wales is situated in Llanarthney, Carmarthenshire, Wales. It is towards the end of the M4 and took about 3 hours from Oxford. It is well worth a visit. I liked the wide open spaces, well designed grounds and interesting collection of flower, tree, building and nature. It has been designed to promote and educate about biodiversity and sustainability. The waste water is used to fertilise the plants!
We arrived early to set up the the 5km Peace Run race. Early morning is a good time for photos.
It was a great March morning, still, dry and a little bit of brightness.
Several lakes were still with the reflection of trees. …
Photos – Lady Margaret Hall gardens – spring
The great Copper Beech with a sea of daffodils underneath.
The river Cherwell borders the gardens of Lady Margaret Hall. The river Cherwell is a major tributary to the River Thames or “Isis”
The Cherwell often breaches its banks. These willow trees don’t mind. …
Famous last words – Tejvan
An interview from Cycling Weekly, 2011. I talk about my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy, meditation and carrot cake. I don’t think I mention my vegetarian diet, but I like the joke by Rob Hayles to the side.
Q. What do we call people who don’t eat meat?
A. Poor people!
…
Tree in Exeter College garden photos
Tree of the week. Exeter College from Radcliffe Camera. A Horse Chestnut I think.
If you look closely there is an orange plastic bag stuck in a tree.
The Radcliffe Camera is one of the most beautiful parts of Oxford, with some impressive architecture. The trees from Exeter College garden help to frame the square.
Tree in late afternoon sunlight. …
The honest Buddhist
I gave meditation classes, on behalf of the Sri Chinmoy Centre at a local Friends Meeting House (Quakers) in Oxford. It is useful location, and is used by quite a few different meditation groups and spiritual paths. At the back, there is a small private car park, which, in the dark, is not so easy to park in.
Last week, I got back to the car park to find a notice on my windscreen. “Sorry I might have hit your car, if there is any problem, let us know. It included someone’s name and phone number”. I didn’t worry too much; over the years, my car has picked up quite a few scratches and dents. It has been a great car – 120,000 miles and is well loved, but these days, I’m not overly attached to perfect paintwork.
I appreciated the honesty and thought about texting the person back, but I was too busy. This week I arrived and a young women in Buddhist robes was sitting in her car, as if meditating. I parked, and meditated myself for a minute before getting the stuff out of the car. When she saw me, she got out of her car and mentioned she was worried she had hit my car the previous week. I smiled and told her not to worry! I already have enough dents, a few more won’t make any difference! She looked relieved to see a fellow person had non-attachment to their car paintwork. …
The shadow of trees in winter
Sometimes you go through life and at a certain point – you start to notice something, that had always been there, but for some reason you never paid any attention to.
There are many things all around us, that can easily pass us by – but then something subtly changes, and we start to appreciate it. There have been many things, from classical music to meditation and aspects of nature, that for a long time I didn’t recognise, but at a certain point, you develop an appreciation for, and then you wonder why you never noticed before.
Winter
Winter is always that quiet cold few months, where you impatiently wait for flowers to bloom and trees to come into leaf. Winter in the UK can be on the dismal side – grey skies, wet and windy. There is always part of you wishing the winter away.
However, there is a different kind of beauty in winter. Usually, when I’m cycling, I have my head down, training hard – trying to keep the average speed up. But, sometimes I take it easier and have the relaxation to look at the scenery. In winter it can be quite bleak, but this winter, I have become fascinated at the simple beauty of bare trees illuminated against the sky. It is not the abundance of spring or summer, but it has its own beauty of nature’s contrasts. …
The freedom of birds
When I bought a house, there was a separate garage built at the start of the garden. Initially I used the garage to store several bikes and innumerable random bits of bike components, (things which tended to lie around unused for year after year – but without ever able to really throw them away, because in principle they are quite valuable.) Anyway, after much soul-searching, I decided to convert the garage into a meditation room – out went all the oily bikes and in came a new blue carpet and insulated walls.
It is a great boon to have a room just for meditation. An additional bonus is that it makes me go outside, even in coldest winter. Often I go out to meditate at night and see a beautiful moon, it is like on the way to your meditation, you gain a brief glimpse of the Higher worlds – something untainted by the problems of this world.
Staying indoors in the comfort of a centrally heated house, you miss nature’s free show. In the morning meditation, it is a cold journey to walk into the below freezing garden and only slightly warmer meditation room but, as ample compensation, I often eye out of the corner of my eye birds flying through the garden or least chirping noisily in the background. Ideally, I would be fully concentrated on the meditation to not notice the birds, but the feeling of meditating with nature all around is a good experience. I have put up a seed feeder near the meditation window so that I can attract more birds into the garden. When I have finished a meditation, I look quietly to see if the birds are coming for the seeds – this informal bird-watching is a form of meditation in its own right.
…
The music of Blue Flower
There are some very good music groups in the Sri Chinmoy Centre. This is a great selection of a few songs by the music group Blue Flower. I believe these songs are from their second album. They have a wonderful, haunting melody. I have been listening for a few weeks, and haven’t got tired of hearing their songs.
You can also listen to some of their music at Radio Sri Chinmoy.