A Sensitivity to Things

A trip to visit a mysterious uncle, whose sagely, intuitive advice proved to be presciently exact (with apologies to Sumangali). While still somewhat new to meditation, and some months before becoming a member of the Sri Chinmoy Centre, I discovered to my great joy my Mother’s sister was a practitioner of this new, seductive art, [...]

Thrift stores, cheap chocolates and masterpieces by Van Gogh and Cezanne—so begins the 16th edition of Inspiration-Letters, magazine style forum for inspired writers of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. A fitting beginning it is too, for all the authors are koan-carrying members of a meditation group espousing a philosophy of merging the heights of spirituality with [...]

Time passed writing about passing time in an airport coffee shop… Travelling. Again. In Melbourne Airport, for four and half hours, but not my final destination, or even second to final in this marathon, budget airline leapfrog across the Pacific, Tasman and Indian Oceans. I am in an airport café sipping the oh so treasured [...]

Karate, kata, perfect form and perfectionism in Japan At the age of seven, the result of an I don’t know from where interest in Japan, I began learning karate, lessons undertaken at my own insistence, my mother’s weary acquiescence. Perhaps she sensed that it would be either breaking blocks of wood or chopping bones on [...]

Still searching for the secret of happiness it seems… Author and meditation teacher Jogyata Dallas suggests however that happiness can be found, and not just torn to shreds by the roadside but within—his Seven Secrets of Meditation tells you how: Seven Secrets of Meditation by Jogyata Dallas.

More a tendency than a genre in its own right, Poetic Realism was a highly influential yet short-lived movement in French cinema of the 1930s, a brief outbreak of lyricism sandwiched between the bludgeoning horrors of two world wars. Unlike Soviet montage or French impressionism, poetic realism was never a unified movement or ideology, rather [...]

There’s a funny saying about things that go around coming around. Usually it’s karma, an eye for an eye and a sow for a reap—the great spiritual law of the universe that dictates bad things for things done badly, good for that done gladly. But inspiration goes around as well, and more like a fire [...]

Six facts about me as a child, with due respect to Pavitrata. 1. No fast fried pleasures, please I never spent my pocket money on junk food as a child. Which is not to say that I didn’t like junk food, or to suggest merely a lack of money, but rather that spending hard earned, [...]

The musical beginnings of British popular artist, vegetarian, practising Buddhist and master of 1980‘s synthesiser-pop Howard Jones were auspicious, although he probably didn’t recognise it at the time. A piano player and teacher from an early age, he was involved in a car accident which left him injured. One of his students—and later wife—Jan Smith, [...]

A visit to the barber in Turkey: flaming swabs, cut-throat razors and a little too much gel. “Please sir, you sit down.” My new best friend motions to something resembling a cabinet covered with a bed-sheet, and impersonating a couch. “Yes, you sit there.” I am in a Turkish laundromat, without a single washing appliance [...]