When I arrived in India, I quickly realised that I was going to meet many people whose stories deserved telling. This was perhaps not because they were particularly unusual, but because they would demonstrate a kind of tenacious determination that I feel is becoming eroded in the west, where many people have learned to take so much more for granted and where relative comforts have, in many cases, made it easier to accept the status quo. I’m not sure this has always been the case though, and I think we’d do well to be reminded of our potential for self-improvement and social development. I didn’t get to write as many of these stories as I’d hoped; I have learned it takes a good deal of time to research the facts, let alone write such a biography well enough to do it justice, especially when your subject has a busy schedule. That’s before you’ve accepted the fact that everything just seems to take longer in India, too! However, there was one story that I was determined not to leave without writing. This is Neha, who is also the first person whose story I realised really needed to be shared. Neha is also one of the first people connected with Aryaloka that I met when she visited the UK in June of 2016 as part of a trip to Europe, having been commissioned to film a documentary about how people from the Romany Gypsy community in Hungary have found inspiration and strength in the work of Dr Ambedkar. This in itself is indicative of the kind of woman she is; you have to be a pretty remarkable person to get such an opportunity when you’ve started life in the conditions she experienced.

than a testament to the strength of her mother, a generous and kind lady who I have met on several occasions. Her family could not afford treats or gifts and this in itself caused, and was caused by, a good deal of sorrow. ‘A normal child is playing and joyous’ Neha tells me, describing an idea she has of what a young life should be, not wanting for things such as chocolate and toys, ‘our family was not like that’. The sorry reason for the lack of funds will be well known to many. Until the age of 11, Neha’s Papa was heavy drinker. He was regularly home late and drunk, beating her Mama. He was earning, as he still is, as a rickshaw driver, but much of what he earned was spent on alcohol.

door and working in people’s homes. They all put in long hours in order to keep the family of six fed and clothed, despite their challenges. As I listen to Neha describe her upbringing, I can’t help but ask how she thinks the allotted social status of being from a Scheduled Caste (ex untouchable) family has impacted upon their lives. It’s a question I feel slightly awkward asking, and one I feel I have phrased in the clumsy terms of one who really doesn’t understand the hierarchical system they are questioning. It is perhaps too broad a question to be useful, too unsubtle to get to the heart of the matter. At least she does not seem offended by it, responding simply by saying that most of Indian society would dismiss the difficulties her family faced as the inevitable life of low caste status. A ‘put up and shut up’ attitude that does not empower people to develop either personally or socially. This is your lot. Accept it.

Though these circumstances put her at a disadvantage in many ways, Neha certainly learned to be a hard worker, particularly in school and she successfully passed 10th standard, moving on to 11th and 12th with no difficulty. At least she had no social distractions to keep her from her college studies; she was very shy and withdrawn, she recalls. She graduated from 12th class with good marks, but with no friends and few reasons to be happy. As something of a vote of confidence, she was advised by her teachers to train as a chartered accountant, which is considered to be a very good, and certainly well paid job. There is an entrance exam to continue studies in this field though, and while she could certainly have passed, she was not able to afford the course fees so she gave up on this idea and enrolled onto a Bachelor of Commerce degree instead.

One day, a neighbour who knew she enjoyed drawing and painting, called on Neha for company while she enquired about a six month animation course. The course cost 15,000 rupees and her neighbour decided she wasn’t interested; but Neha certainly was! She applied and paid the 1000 rupee deposit with all the money she had and no idea where or when she'd get the rest. Knowing she may be forced to leave after the first month, she studied hungrily and learned fast, often being asked for help by her peers! This also encouraged her to become more social and after confiding in a friend on the course about her uncertain place on the course, she was helped to get a job working as a Photoshop operator in a photo studio. The director of the studio drove a hard bargain, asking why she deserved payment if she was inexperienced and unqualified. She explained her situation, that she only wanted the remaining 14,000 to continue the animation course, offering to work every day if needed. Her enthusiasm, if not yet her skills must have been impressive and so she secured the job and the security of finishing her course. During this time, she rose early every morning to help with household work, leaving at six every morning to attend the animation course before working in the photo studio. Her day also included continued study on the Bachelor of Commerce course as well as office work, and yet more study when she returned home not normally until after 9pm, finally ending her day around midnight. After a month at the studio, the manager was sufficiently impressed that he helped her get a scholarship on the animation course and began paying her an actual wage, which she put straight into supporting her family.

This was not just a time of development and personal transformation for Neha. After attending a one day retreat led by Subhuti at Nagaloka, at which he is reported to have had a bottle of wine conveniently stashed in a nearby bush, her papa stopped drinking. One of Neha’s domestic duties had been to prepare tobacco for her father, rolling it into betel leaves to make paan for chewing; but when he came home from the retreat that day, he did not want paan. After two days, he had stopped drinking and now, she tells me proudly, he doesn't even drink chai, taking only milk in the morning and water throughout the day. Neha and her family had thought they enjoyed the freedom of Papa being away for a day on the retreat but could never have guessed how their lives might change as a result of it; no more shouting, no more anger, no more violence.

In 2007, as he continued to attend classes and events at Nagaloka, Papa met Aryaketu (director of Aryaloka) and heard him discussing various creative projects, including those involving animation; he didn’t waste much time in detailing his daughter’s experience and asking about opportunities for her. Aryaketu was looking for help making a comic about Buddhist teachings and so he offered her a chance to demonstrate her skills, agreeing that if her work was of a good standard she would be paid for it. Now she was involved in the Triratna community, Neha’s drive and potential was beginning to get noticed. By the time Shakyajata was organising and recruiting for the first batch of Young Indian Futures students, three different people, all order members, had separately recommended her, keen to support her progress if possible. As such, Neha became resident in the first community of young women, living and studying at the old building in Indora.

She finished the course at Aryaloka, very happily in 2009, with as much success as one might expect, knowing a little of her determination. She learned English and new creative software such as Maya, also improving her skills in other programmes such as Photoshop. Here, she felt confident for the first time too and made friends with the other eight women in the community, a bigger social group than she had ever previously known. She felt free for the first time too, and even found the confidence to speak with boys, challenging her own preconceptions that they must necessarily be up to no good, realising through this interaction that they were just as human as she, and also capable of good things! Critically, she also learned about the Dhamma and deepened her practice of metta (loving kindness). As the outstanding student of the first cohort, she was invited back the next year for a paid opportunity, teaching animation to the second year of students.

Of course things weren’t always perfect and she recalls the challenge of being away from her family for the first time, at least, she considers, she was not located too far away, which made it easier to adjust and she felt mentally prepared. Making good friends in the community helped too, and though there were quarrels at times, she felt able to stay out of them and not get involved. English was also a challenge for her, though she recalls memories of learning with Shakyajata and fellow UK teacher, Priyadaka, with great affection. She remembers creating a rangoli welcome for Shakyajata and when she finally arrived, such had been the depth of their correspondence by email that she did not feel it was the first time they had met. She vividly describes their first meeting, an emotional occasion where the tears flowed. She laughs at the memory; ‘that time, I am mad! I don’t know why!’ One thing she’s quite clear on though, is the crucial role that the opportunity at Aryaloka played in her development and current life. ‘If I didn’t study there, I wouldn’t be here now’ she states firmly. She didn’t leap straight into employment beyond Aryaloka; however and still faced difficulties turning her knowledge and skills into an income. She travelled as far as Pune, Deli and Mumbai for interviews, with mixed results. For some vacancies, she was still considered too inexperienced, for some, she achieved successful offers, yet her family would not allow her to live alone and so far away. Such is the disadvantage of girls in India, even those with clear talents and ambitions.

Her success in employment is also something she attributes to her time at Aryaloka. ‘I met Triratna, I learned about Buddha and Dr Ambedkar’, she says, learning that she feels she wouldn’t have got at any other institution. She does not believe she would be working at LBTV either, does not feel she would have found this opportunity to combine her Dhamma practice and her practical skills. In fact, she believes even the longevity of her job (she has seen many other members of staff come and go) is thanks to the depth of her practice and passion, which she would not have got from any other college. ‘I wouldn't have been able to afford it anyway’ she reflects.

Her time at Aryaloka has positively affected those around her too. After she began teaching and earning an income, she was able to support them to live much more comfortably. Her commitment to practice has also helped, feeding into and strengthening that of the whole family.

 Colleagues behaved angrily and with jealousy when she achieved recognition for her work and so she had to learn a substantial set of new skills in filming; suddenly finding herself in the deep end with no camera man willing to work with her, presenting the programmes herself too, despite being very shy and having to learn all this completely on the go.

There’s another reason her story is not yet finished too; in fact, she has just started yet another new chapter as a newlywed, to Maitri, also a Mitra who has requested ordination and who works running a shop and restaurant as enterprises offering services to visitors at Nagaloka. Maitri is originally from Arunachal Pradesh, a northern state of India, with different customs, languages,

‘I face difficulties and challenges in my life’ she states, ‘but friendship is most important.’ People, she says, are all the same and we have the same feelings. ‘I know what it's like to be hurt, so I believe in not hurting others. Respect each other. Treat others as you want be treated.’ This, she believes, is what has got her through.

As I near the end of my first stay in India, I think of all the people I am going to leave behind, all the people I shall miss. Strangely, Neha is not among them and I think it is due to the strength of the bond I feel with her that this is the case. I shan’t miss her because in every important way, she’ll still be with me. I’m not sure where, or when, Neha and I will next meet, but I do feel sure that while her story is not over, she is going to somehow play an continued and important part in mine.

The New Year itself started with a flurry of activity that was completely unrelated to any coincidence of the calendar and so the whole event had come and gone with very little recognition. However, there’s a certain English phrase that goes something along the lines of ‘better late than never’ and so it was this approach that we took to the question of the student New Year party. It was, after all, only a week late, which by Indian standards of flexible scheduling is practically early. Anyway, young people rarely need an excuse for a bit of fun, or so you’d think, so we duly shared the various organisational tasks (you buy the fizzy drink, I’ll get the paper cups) and arranged to get started at 6pm on Sunday the 8th.

Now, I’ve a fair bit of experience of trying to organise teenagers into having fun and you’d be surprised how difficult it can be. Sugary snacks, music and permission to not study despite the presence of your teachers, do not a party make. There was a little of the awkward school disco about the first half an hour or so but eventually, once the drink kicked in (I’m talking sugar rush here, of course) things livened up a bit and we even got a bit of self-conscious dancing… which is, after all the best kind. However, it soon became clear that proceedings would not become any more festive of their own accord and so after a good deal of encouragement (read goading?) from both the groups, Mark and I took the floor for some self-conscious dancing of an entirely different kind. If there was ice to be broken, we were gonna smash it into oblivion.

Eventually, the party food was distributed (samosas, what English people will know as ‘Bombay mix’ and salted oily chillies) and I was encouraged to demonstrate my apparently surprising skills of eating chillies that even Indians consider too hot (who knew those days of University Food Dares would set me up so well with the skills I needed for my professional future!?). True to form, once the food was gone, so was the party spirit (food always comes last at Indian functions, it seems) and the boys slipped off into the night to catch the bus. I tried a last bit of dancing with the girls (they’re a bit non-plussed by House of Pain too, sadly) but eventually even that petered out and we were all in bed by ten!

That might sound like something of a party flop by some standards but actually it was for the best as the next day was scheduled to be equally full of jubilation. The other Aryaloka centre in Nagpur where my colleague Mark lives, and which houses the boys community, has been in an ongoing process of construction since day one. The ground floor has been open and functioning since the start but the second floor is only just finished and though we have been teaching (and in some cases living!) in it we have actually been working around a bit of a building site. Last month; however, the toilet cubicle got a door, the kitchen became functional, the impressive new shrine was installed and the shiny tiled floors were swept clear of builders dust for the last time. January then, became the month to celebrate this fact and on the 9th, we held an inauguration ceremony on the new floor.

from bricks of experience, skilfully constructed but perhaps never really finished, so we should try not to limit ourselves prematurely and remember we can always build another floor. It seemed to be well received anyway and several people approached me after the event as well as in the days following to say they had appreciated my sentiments. Of course, no celebration would be complete without full tummies and so after a few more talks from visiting order members, proceedings gave way to a very fine spread, which was enjoyed by all.
So it may not have lined up with the calendar but even if it wasn’t technically a great start to the new year, it was certainly an excellent way to start a new week! Full of promise, blossoming with potential and bubbling with joy!

significantly beneficial act. We heard again of lives set against extreme hardship from the start. If someone is considered ‘below poverty line’ in India, by UK standards it doesn’t even bear thinking about. There is no social security. There are no food banks. There is no formal structure to any kind of social responsibility and if you are foolhardy enough to have been born to such a family then, well, you can assume you deserve all that you get. Or don’t get, in many circumstances. As well as hearing from women with impressive academic qualifications who simply need to get some kind of work, regardless of their abilities, we hear from farming families who cannot afford to stay on their farms all year round and commute to the city to scrape together something of a living outside of the growing season. We hear from youngsters whose father has become unable to work due to illness or injury and leave a family of five or six unfed and unhoused if not for the generosity of an uncle here or there. We hear from bereaved single parent families whose housewife mothers are now eking out a meagre income of 2000 rupees a month (that’s about £26) to feed, clothe and shelter their sons and daughters. We hear from these young people that their modest ambitions for the result of the education that they would simply not be able to afford from most colleges, is not to achieve high earning jobs, or social status, or houses, cars and the trappings of wealth. They simply want to learn, so they can earn enough to lift their loved ones out of poverty. I realise while I jot down their stories, trying not to do so with an air of condescension, trying not to feel as though I am engaging in ‘poverty tourism’, that there isn’t the slightest whiff of self-pity from even one of them. I hear stories of lives that would be considered reason enough to be utterly broken in England, that would be presented as tales from rock bottom, shattered families who would might give their hardships as reason, if not full justification for crime, for mental illness, for dependency on the welfare state. And yet from these perspectives I hear nothing but optimism, the belief that this opportunity, this education that they would not otherwise have access to, is perhaps the greatest gift they could have received, luck beyond all reasonable hope and all the help they need to build their futures stronger and brighter and happier for themselves and those with whom they live. It’s hard not to feel a sense of shame or embarrassment for my own historical excuses or failed motivations as I am cast into the shadows by such radiant self-determinism.
I notice too, that in the west, we seem to have developed this need to appear busy, to be seen as productive at all costs, stress becomes almost a badge of honour. If you’re working so hard, it must be admirable, you must be making a contribution to the world around you, and yet in reality, genuine productivity does not always seem to correspond proportionately to such lifestyles. In India however, I have met people who seem to think nothing whatsoever of getting up at five every morning to carry out household tasks before travelling an hour to college, then on to work and back home in the evening to study more before perhaps going to bed at midnight, on a good day. Six days a week. There is no implied martyrdom. There is no subtle expectation of impressed awe. This is simply how it must be. There is a desired goal, this is the path that leads to it and that is all there is to be said on the matter. Of course, I am coming from an outside perspective and I don’t necessarily pick up on all the finer points of communication or social interaction that might betray less stoical attitudes but still it is impressive and a lesson I can only aspire to learn from.

Though it was a short trip, it was an important one and it will be remembered; if not only for establishing the truth behind the reputedly fierce Chhattisgarh mosquitoes; it may have taken me nearly a fortnight to get this update written but I’ve still got some fading bites to keep the memories of Raipur alive!

It’s not uncommon, indeed this will sound familiar to many teachers, to become involved in issues that students are encountering beyond the classroom. This is a key role of the personal tutor, providing personal support and pastoral care suitable to the needs of the individual, helping them make the most of their studies by being aware of their whole being and not just their academic progress. Even a subject teacher who does not have these tutorial responsibilities will need to be aware of the potential for study to be disrupted by matters beyond the usual classroom barriers, especially when it is clear that there is some problem impeding learning. Sometimes, you get an inkling that a student is struggling for a particular reason and the course team had noticed that one of our female students seemed to struggle with seeing the whiteboard in classes. There are often some simple things you can do to subtly remedy these sorts of problems without making a fuss. In this case, make sure she sits near the front, use a good quality whiteboard pen, ensure you write clearly and that your worksheets are easy to read, to name but a few. Eventually though, if this doesn’t seem to help, you have to make gentle enquiries about her well-being. I’m not sure who took charge of that, probably Sheetal for obvious reasons to do with language, but we learned that she was indeed struggling with her eyes.

As much as we might like to try and do that in England, from within a UK educational system it’s just not possible. There are too many students, money is not free from budgetary restraints for such things and anyway, issues such as physical healthcare are grey areas where one becomes involved in only a distant way for fear of being considered inappropriate or having ones motives scrutinised. How satisfying I find it then, that we can simply cut through all that here. There’s a need. Here’s a solution. Problem solved. A very refreshing perspective indeed; no lenses required to see that!

It seems a strange characteristic of each blog post I’ve written since attempting to become an English teacher in India, that while they’ve featured plenty of English, there’s been very little use of it to discuss teaching. There’s been so much going on in the periphery that has seemed remarkable or exceptional in some way that the very reason for my being here has faded into the background. I suppose the truth is that while there’s plenty about my time teaching here that is novel to my experience, really, it’s been the one thing that hasn’t seemed so exceptional, the one thing I can rely on to be really pretty predictable; an oasis of relative normality in an ocean of experiential shift and cultural upheaval. In all honesty, it hasn’t even factored as a huge percentage of my time here so far. There are only two English classes a day, apart from weekends, when students have a half day of other classes on Saturday, we have our weekly teachers meeting, and a two hour  Dharma class instead (Think Buddhist Sunday School). One of these daily classes during the week is with the young women in the morning, one with the young men in the afternoon and more often than not, it is simply a case of repeating (with a few tweaks and twiddles) the first class with the second group.

Perhaps this sense of obligation is at the root of an apparent trend to overemphasise the responsibility of the teacher in the learning process. To my mind (and this works equally when I am the student), a teacher should be a facilitator of appropriate conditions for learning to take place, but it is the student who must necessarily take a leading role to ensure it actually happens. I’m aware that may sound like a teacher trying to back off responsibility but I do not underestimate how much work or skill is involved in cultivating those conditions; simply aware that the seeds from the ripest fruit in the world cannot grow unless they are embedded in fertile compost that is consistently watered and kept in appropriate light and heat.

A little and often approach to delivering high quality, meaningful information is a very new one compared to my conditioning to churn out lots of content in about half the time really required, which too often results in low quality, sporadic and unreliable learning. Another feature of this temporal spaciousness is that we have plenty of time to revisit, reinforce and repeat. Gone are the days of ‘tick the box and move on to the next thing’ teaching. We move on, when they are ready to. Funnily enough, they do seem to be absorbing the knowledge pretty quickly anyway and we’ve stuck, so far, to our ‘module’ plan.

Perhaps it is partly due to this appropriate pacing, partly due to a genuine sense of progress in themselves and partly due to a generally very grateful attitude to learning in the first place that it has become common for classes to be concluded with a round of applause and happy shouts of ‘Thank you m’am!’ The first time this happened, I had to check they weren’t being sarcastic, but I don’t think that’s really a feature of Indian humour. Is this due to a cultural difference? The fact that these students are so incredibly grateful for any learning opportunities when coming to us form a background where only the high-caste privileged born are able to afford or socially access education? Compared to the UK, where I feel free education to a certain standard has become regarded as such a basic right it’s barely valued. You can lead a horse to water but that’s as far as it goes. Sadly, in the UK, if students aren’t motivated to put in their share of effort on the learning journey it is still more often the teacher who is blamed for not trying hard enough, not differentiating successfully, not being creative, exciting, engaging. I think it must be more complicated than this alone and I know from Shakyajata that it is not always the case that students blindly accept whatever they are given at Aryaloka simply because it’s free and it’s better than the nothing they would otherwise have.

I have been asked to teach Photoshop (what music to my ears!) and hope to start doing so next month. We’ve still got a bit of negotiating to do but I’ve started planning and am looking forward to begin back on familiar ground. It’s going to be a challenge, no interactive whiteboards here to demonstrate on, no Virtual Learning Environment to upload materials and content to, not much in the way of student access to the internet during classes either; but I’ll get there. My first ever taught lesson ended up being painting with only red paint and no brushes or paper. We got through and learned a lot about achieving texture, on cardboard, with various alternative tools. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and that resourcefulness is something that India is very good at teaching. It may end up being a bit unconventional but I don’t think I’ve ever been described as ‘conventional’ anyway. That’s probably just as well!

It often feels that new beginnings are inextricably tangled with old ends and this imminent journey is by no means any exception to that rule. I am where I am now, writing this first blog of a new adventure only because I have shut down and moved away from other phases in my life, which, in their time, were their own new beginnings.

But we build on our experiences, learn from our mistakes and gain confidence from our successes. My ‘old ending’ has a fair share of each of these, a goodly mulch of experiential compost in which to germinate new seeds of promise.

About a year ago, in September 2015, I decided to leave a 12 year career in teaching. You can read in far more detail about the reasons for this in my blog post of the time, initially penned for Education Support Partnership to share on World Mental Health Day. Titled ‘Why I’m Leaving Teaching’, it explains exactly that, but you can guess from the rest of that sentence, the crux of why I left. I then moved 200 miles from where I had been settled for 8 years and started a ‘new life’. In truth, this was less of a new beginning than a holding pattern while I did a lot of very important thinking, a lot of decision making and a lot of not much else. A much needed rest for a battered system. I had a few demons to chat with. I’ve learned recently that fighting them achieves nothing. It’s far better to make peace with them and get them and their energies on your side.

During this time, I deepened and consolidated my burgeoning relationship with a newfound spirituality and came to identify as a practising Buddhist. It didn’t seem coincidental that the only thing my mind kept returning to with any enthusiasm as a possible new direction in life was a Buddhist social project that I had first heard about at a talk only a short time after I decided to hand in my notice. This talk, on Dr Ambedkar day in October 2015 was delivered by Shakyajata, a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order who has been working with oppressed young people in India for many years. Her description the work of the small charity she runs, Young Indian Futures, and their work at Aryaloka Computer Education Centre in Nagpur, offering subsidised education to some of India’s poorest and most marginalised young people, moved me deeply. Her words and the affectionate enthusiasm with which she spoke of the students, reminded me of the true purpose of teaching; a way of improving lives, not a means of paying the rent. Time and again I found myself thinking of this talk and the work being done there, so, in April, I contacted her and we began a lengthy process of getting to know each other, deciding that I would travel with her to Nagpur and together preparing for me to teach English there on a voluntary basis. That is almost as much as I can say in this update about the practical side of it all really! Just a little background to set the stage for what is to come. The events that unfold over the next few months will be of as much surprise to me as to anyone following my updates; I really do not know what to expect. But, where once this would have caused me a good deal of worry, instead I find the open expansiveness of that unknown really very liberating. Anything, could indeed happen, but I’ve no reason to suppose it won’t be entirely wonderful.

During my year of ‘inactivity’ my website has been left largely untouched but as part of preparing to leave the UK, I’ve recently given it a spring clean, something of an overhaul. In so doing I’ve written a few blog posts to update the other strands of my activities, namely arts and running. In these, I’ve had a lot of space for reflection, quite painful reflection at times and have been open about my realisation that one thing I’ve been working through this year is the aftermath of an exercise addiction. Of course, my study of the Buddhist teachings has given me a great deal of support and strength with this, but one thing I have particularly benefited from is a new perspective on how I choose to invest my energy. For a good couple of years, I prioritised running and poured most of my passion for life into it as a source of escape and distraction. This left little of me remaining for anything else. It was part of a broader illness but still did nothing to help me recover. I felt tired. I had no enthusiasm. I had no purpose. The running as an activity was an expression of my anxiety and nervous agitation but even then, I knew I wasn’t achieving anything.

Though there has been much to organise in recent weeks, from visa to vaccines, flights to insurance, lesson planning and packing to domestic duties and farewells, and although I have been perhaps busier than for some months, I feel genuinely refreshed. I feel energised and ready to not just take on but to fully engage with whatever challenges lie ahead. Always, at the heart of this, I aim to maintain an awareness of the finite nature of this energy and to be as wisely discriminating as possible in how I utilise it. My aim, my purpose, is to help others achieve their potential, to reduce suffering, to spread a little love and lightness and laughter. If I can focus my dynamism like a shining beam of light to this purpose instead of squandering it on empty pastimes,  then I have no doubt that a pleasantly coincidental side effect will be my own continued flourishing and development. Over the last few years I have been on a very difficult journey. At times, I wasn’t at all sure it was one I’d get to the end of. There were days when, to misquote a misquote, the light at the end of the tunnel really did seem to be no more than the headlights of an hastily hurtling train. So it’s been tough, but sometimes the only way out is through and now I feel I have the wind on my face again, birdsong in my ears and soft grass beneath my feet. Perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t made that challenging voyage through darkness and apparent disaster. A kind of death. A kind of rebirth. I’m here, I’m alive and I’m ready. And I just can’t wait to get on that ‘plane!

I was recently very fortunate to be invited to volunteer on the team that ran a weekend for beginners at Vajrasana, a beautiful new Triratna retreat centre in Suffolk. As part of this I was invited to speak in a talk titled ‘Why I am a Buddhist’ (you can read or listen to that talk). As well as the much needed boost to my confidence that I found this gave me (I’ve been not been in a classroom for over a year after all and am out of practice with public speaking!) it also gave me the privilege of standing alongside some very strong co speakers and the humbling opportunity to chat with many remarkable individuals afterwards.

In one such ‘post speech’ conversation that particularly touched me, I was advised to listen to ‘This is the Sea’ by The Waterboys, a band I happen to have been fond of for some time. It seems so beautifully poetic, in the context of this song, that I have spent my months of recuperation living on the Thames Estuary and frequently walking (or running!) past the Crow Stone; the point at which the river becomes the sea. This is to me a perfect analogy of the transition I am in the final stages of making and in the words of The Waterboys:

Twelve days and counting... A new beginning awaits!