Posts

Handling the Horrible

 Earlier today, I was walking through Parliament Square in London and - inadvertently - observing the protestors.  The biggest, loudest group was an anti-Brexit protest, pointing out how terrible an idea Brexit was: how it would damage the economy and make it harder to maintain the funding of valued programs. This triggered a bit of a Buddhist response from me: I agree with them on most of the facts, but I still feel this is not a healthy response. Wherefore Brexit Brexit is a strong contender for greatest own goal in the history of the United Kingdom - up there with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.  In one fell swoop, it:  royally buggered up trade with the continent for a protracted period; removed our ability to comment on European regulations, without removing our exposure to the regulations themselves[1]; gave other financial centres in Europe - which could semi-legitimately claim that at least they weren't under the thumb of morons - a chance to steal Londo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Buddhism: A Ridiculously Short History

I'm camped out in Cambridge, UK, for a week.  No particular reason, I just had a week to spare and wanted to wander the streets of my alma mater again.  Cambridge is at its most quintessentially Cantabrigian early in the year: it's cold and wet, but you can taste clarity in the air. That's the theory anyway.  In practice, I've been ploughing through a borrowed copy of a Buddhist text called the Bodhisattvacaryavatara , idiomatically translated as The Path Of Light.  A couple of representative lines: Pondering through many aeons, the Supreme Saints have found this blessing, whereby a swelling joy sweeps in sweetness down the boundless waters of mankind. They who would escape the hundreds of life’s sorrows, who would end the anguish of living creatures, and who would taste hundreds of deep delights, must never surrender the Thought of Enlightenment. ...What the hell? In light of spiritual-sounding purple prose like this, one of my first questions when I came across Tec...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Very Good Place To Start

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland It's 10pm on a particularly dingy Friday in November.  The weather in London is moist with a side of chilly, and I'm sitting in a buzzing cafe-club near Waterloo, staring at my keyboard and wondering what the hell to write. I've spent the evening dining on monkfish and drinking Old-Fashioneds at a ludicrously pricey Mayfair Club with some better-off family members.  Not my usual venue, and I massively over-dressed, but no-one called me on my prized Ministry Of Magic cuff-links so I'm claiming this as a win. Back in the real world: Sunak is out (thank God), but Starmer is proving a bit too keen on "little gifts", and above all the crisis of Trump's second term looms over the world like a small-handed wannabe dictator over a debating opponent.  Giving a fuck has never been harder. Enter the Buddha.
Post a Comment
Read more