Photos by @KyotoDailyPhoto

Buddha, by Ajahn Sumedho

Rather than trying to seek for Buddha or truth (dhamma) in terms of some idea or some doctrinal dogma that we might form around the concepts of Buddha and dhamma, the Buddha pointed to suffering and its cause. By recognising its cause as attachment to desire, we let go. When we let go of the cause, then we realise the cessation of suffering. The Buddha was actually teaching the way of nonsuffering. The Eightfold Path is really the experience of nonsuffering, in the present, in the here-and-now…

Opening the Heart, by John Aske

Life in the West is full or problems and traumas, and we move from one to the next like a blind person finding the way along a rope bridge. We can, it is true, refuse to see the ‘bad’ things, or simply live on the surface of life, but that merely produces another kind of unhappiness with the voice of our lost psyche calling us from a long way away, with not only the problem shelved but our humanity and the richness and colour of our lives as well…

And what, Monks, is Ageing? By Sylvia Swain

People who have a religion which provides for after-death welfare, such as in Tibetan Buddhism, are less troubled. But those without such beliefs, can trust to nature’s spiritual intentions for them, as they, like plants, struggle instinctively and unerringly towards the light…