Over the next two months, Kamalashila is launching his new edition of ‘Buddhist Meditation’ at Triratna centres across the UK. Here’s a list of the dates and venues: Tuesday 17th April – West London Buddhist Centre Wednesday 18th April – Birmingham Buddhist Centre Saturday 21st April – Croydon Buddhist Centre Monday 23rd April – Bristol … [ Read More ]
An interview with Vessantara, author of ‘A Guide to the Buddhas’ and ‘A Guide to the Bodhisattvas”
How would you introduce your two books in just a few words? They’re about our deep potential as human beings. They describe a number of different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that have been meditated on in the Buddhist tradition over hundreds and hundreds of years. But all these figures are just mirrors showing us what we … [ Read More ]
An interview with Kamalashila, author of ‘Buddhist Meditation’
The title of your book is Buddhist Meditation. Why do you think we should want to meditate, or why do we need to? I think, from my own experience, the most basic thing that meditation allows me to do is to tune in with how I actually am – it makes me more familiar with … [ Read More ]
An interview with Jinananda, author of ‘Warrior of Peace’
A number of books have been written on the life of the Buddha. What makes yours stand out from the rest? Warrior of Peace is a historical account of the Buddha’s life, but it is also an imaginative account – it straddles the historical and the mythical, as it were. I wanted to do more … [ Read More ]
An interview with Sara Burns, author of ‘A Path for Parents’
What was the most important message that you wished to communicate through your book? It was the fact that raising children is a perfectly good context for having quite a profound spiritual practice. It’s not necessarily a better context than not having children but it certainly isn’t a worse one either – we don’t have … [ Read More ]
An interview with Vishvapani, editor of ‘Challenging Times
How would you introduce ‘Challenging Times’ to those who haven’t yet read the book? The book is a collection of articles previously published in Dharma Life magazine which ran from 1996 to 2005. All these articles are personal stories about Buddhist responses to a number of different challenging times which had a strong response from … [ Read More ]
An interview with Sara Jenkins, author of ‘Hello at Last’
Hello at Last emphasises the importance of spiritual friendship to Buddhist practice. What inspired you to write a book about this subject? Like many students, I came to a point in my own practice when I realised that being mindful on the cushion is one thing, but bringing this mindfulness out into ordinary life is … [ Read More ]
An interview with Maitreyabandhu, author of ‘Life with Full Attention’
The title of your book is ‘Life with Full Attention: A practical course in mindfulness’. Why would you encourage people to take this course? Why do you think it is so important that we live our lives with full attention? When Sangharakshita was asked ‘What happens when you die?’ he replied, ‘You’ll soon find out!’ … [ Read More ]
An interview with Nagapriya, author of ‘Exploring Karma and Rebirth’
So, Nagapriya, what inspired you to write the book? Well it struck me that everyone has heard of the concept of karma, and everyone has heard of the concept of rebirth, but I find that whenever I talk to people, they tend to be quite unclear about what these ideas refer to. And one of … [ Read More ]
An interview with Bodhipaksa, author of ‘Wildmind’
If you were to sum up your book in a few words, how would you describe it? It’s a practical guide to setting up or deepening one’s meditation practice, and it addresses the most common problems and questions that students have asked me over the years. I intended it to be very much a step-by-step … [ Read More ]
