cool 45 years after leaving school I’m
finding that a number of us who were in
school are really reconnecting in quite
a deep way and it’s that common ground a
shared experience of being at dune which
is allowing us to do that and but when I
reflect back on the young boy of six
five and a half six four joined welcome
boys through to the boy who left doing
it about 16 I actually have quite a lot
of compassion for him I look at him and
I think yes there were happy moments but
there were a lot of dark moments there
was a lot of loneliness feelings of
isolation sometimes bullying stress and
when I look back on that young boy I
think he didn’t know how to handle his
emotions in fact this sort of boys
boarding school had in some ways made
him suppress his emotions in a way so
dumb down his emotions even mute his
emotions and now many years later I am
interesting these things and I find that
I found techniques or methods to look at
my emotions handle them and care for
myself have compassion for myself and I
think this is something which should be
taught in all schools but I thought I’ll
share one of those practices that may be
helpful to you I don’t know you know
school now forty years later is slightly
different but still those issues of how
to handle emotions how to not be
stressed I know there’s a lot of stress
nowadays on young people trying to apply
for colleges of the future careers will
be so how do we lessen that stress how
do we lessen that emotional angst so
what I’ve learnt is really to come back
to the present moment this is something
which I’ve got from my Zen training I
find that the way to come back to my to
my
self in this moment is really to come
back to my breath my body is here with
my mind maybe going all over the place
so as soon as I make my mind a breathing
mind I can help my help my body and mind
come back into the present and when I
come back into the present then I have
some control of how to respond to
anything that may be happening outside
of me or inside of me whether it’s an
emotional rising or whether it’s
somebody saying something hurtful to me
I actually can breathe and actually
absorb to some degree or created is a
gap between the external stimuli and my
reaction or response and I use something
like a bell and this Bell I call a bell
of mindfulness so I’m going to
so I’m going to I’m gonna sound this
Bell and I use this Bell every day for
my meditation and I come back to myself
using the sound of the Bell so when I
invite the sound of the Bell just you
can close your eyes if you want and I
would suggest that you just follow just
three breaths so wherever you’re sitting
just relax your shoulders sit
comfortably in your seats and just
listen to the sound of the Bell and just
come back to your in-breath and the
out-breath in-breath and out-breath
[Music]
[Music]
and this sort of invitation to the Bell
can be done in many ways you don’t
always need a bell
in fact my telephone every time my
telephone rings I call a telephone
meditation I let my bell my phone ring
at least three times and with the first
ring I stopped I stopped I’m doing I
stop I try and stop my thinking and then
with the second Bell I’d come back to my
breath which helps me come back into the
present moment and with the third ring I
smile and the zombie’s ringing me my
wife’s ringing my children are ringing
me my friends are ringing me I’m much
more present for them with that phone
and also the phone has helped me to come
back into that present moment so it’s
not just a tool of communication which
is a great but is deafening out of it’s
not irritation for me if a phone rings
right now in the audience I just smile
it’s my practice in a bit like a
Pavlovian dog you know it’s I just when
I hear a bell I stop but it was
interesting when I was in school the
Bell had a very different conversation
when I heard the Bell
I was anxious I would rung I was late
for school I was something and the Bell
became actually a bit of a terror for me
rather than was something which was
aiding me and now coming back as a as an
old boy of the school I find then of the
bell rings I find it so pleasant I stop
and I become attentive to the trees to
the wonderful surroundings that I never
touched as a student so I think just
shifting your and every our little class
that at least hear the sound of the bell
come back to yourself and and know
you’re rushing and you’re present with
that but many bells ring when you’re
just sitting just pause and just come
back to yourself in that moment you can
really touch the miracle or whatever’s
around you whatever is happening in you
and also understand how your emotions
are how to let that start working
through you in a in a sort of
compassionate way but I thought I’d just
share some sort of wake up moments in
the last few years of my life and how
they’ve really affected me where I am
today so I’m 60 so I left school 40th
more than 40 years ago but I remember in
school there was a man who came he came
to our physics class
and he gave a talk and he said you know
he used to buy amplifiers in a musical
amplifiers which you come in boxes and
he’d open them up and make sculptures
out of them I said wow that’s really
literally out-of-the-box thinking
and I thought you can make a living
through doing something quite
counterintuitive in a sort of way it was
a small wake up moment but the bigger
wake up moments and you know fast
forward to and I’m 23 I’m in England
have a job corporate job fortunately I
there was a lot of luck on my side
Atlanta very good job as earning more
than my parents put together after
working all their lives fancy house and
then driving a sports car in mg sports
car my girlfriend all the right
trappings and the last thing I remember
is the speedometer 110 miles an hour
which is about a hundred seventy seven
kilometers an hour and I’m gone and this
car smashed the next thing I remember is
I’m getting up in hospital and when I’m
waking up in hospital I actually I had
this thing I’m alive I’m actually alive
it sort of got a basic thinking but you
know I didn’t probably expect it and the
preciousness of life hit me and I also
realized a few things while I was
reflecting in the next few days in bed
it was that my main motivation for my
work will not be money which it had
become it was actually that my motor was
very much make a lot of money quick and
I said that is not my deal and I’d like
to make my career based on my ideal of
compassion and lead a much simpler life
and it was interesting good I’d already
suffered myself and I’d seen suffering
but I hadn’t done much about it and I
thought I just died I died so this was
really a second chance for me I do work
in the shoe industry I’d gone back to
working in English company clark’s as to
buy shoes from from
Agra I’d see the you know the job
developed shoe workers earning working
really with it with the skill of an eye
doctor on the shoe making and earning
less than what I was spend and they
turned in a week less than what I spend
in a hotel room for one night
in fact I moved out of my hotel room
started staying with them just to
understand their lives and then when I
went to England also I’d I got beaten up
three times somebody spat in my face
somebody beat me up to my color and that
all sort of suffering that I had
actually was helpful to me to empathize
with the economic and other sort of
discrimination that the Dallas were
feeling and then I decided that I really
need to make some changes I left my job
I want to understand why poor people
poor why rich countries rich what is the
relationship and I went back to
University to study Development Studies
and political economics and I became a
political activist and I became real
halal activist worked with very good
people but really confronting the police
confronting the Army in the case in in
England and going to jail organising
Haruna’s you know this is a sort of
activist politics and one day I remember
in the midst of one of our programs I
sort of just burnt out I really I broke
down and I went to a friend’s room and I
lay down on the ground and I’ve had it I
really didn’t know how to look after
myself here I was trying to make the
world a better place but really not
knowing how to look after myself and so
I sort of realized that I was part of
the problem my aggression my anger was
part of the problem and so I realized I
better become piso be peace rather than
just fight for peace and that was a long
journey party I carried on my work with
social development with artisans
volunteers the UN and the World Bank but
on the other side my parts took me on a
spiritual journey and I went to many
many traditions Sufis Quakers and surly
I found that I was getting more interest
in Buddhism it was actually a Sutra read
called the calamus Sutra where the
Kalama is at the tribe which comes to
Buddha and says this teacher says this
this teacher says this this teacher says
this what is the right teaching
and witnesses don’t believe teachers
don’t believe me you don’t believe your
elders your texts but you try try the
practice and if it gives you a sense of
well-being
it gives well-being to others around you
then it is a good practice if it doesn’t
cause suffering to you and others it is
not a good practice that’s eminently
sensible practice and this this sort of
I got more and more interesting Buddhism
I started meeting teachers from Burma
from Korea Japan and then I was at a
retreat where there was a teacher called
picnic hang who was leading a retreat
for artists and on the second day of the
retreat he was teaching walking
meditation and it is it’s another one
was wonderful techniques where you just
walk but you’re really attentive to
where you’re walking and you’re you’re
walking to walk not to get somewhere and
so this practice of just breathing in
and really imprinted your peacefulness
on the earth and then pausing looking at
the beautiful you know this is in the
lost fatherís Mountains in California so
I was looking out of the mountains there
and what struck me at that moment that
sort of wake up moment for me was I
really touched peace for the first time
of my life I really experienced peace
not as a concept not as an idea but
viscerally in my body I mean it is one
of those sort of moments where you lose
the sense of yourself and the
identification of yourself and this is
combinations of intense happiness
contentment as a rapture in a sort of
way but in a very calm way and I realize
I could do this and this same teacher
technolon who then became my teacher
after that asked he asked me to organize
a pilgrimage for him to the sites
associate with the Buddha in India in
Bihar and you pee so I did that the next
year with him and it was very nice
because I went walking with him
literally and he heard me by the hand
and he brought alive the Buddha is a
human being and you know for me being
drawn up in India to Buddhist I need a
fake slightly superhuman type guy and
suddenly I realized this
man had the same angst he could have
gone to any career anything could’ve
done anything and he chose a career of
awakening a career of enlightenment a
career of compassion that he could help
others and that really had a strong
effect of me and then dick Nathon said
why did you lose pilgrimage every year
so for the last 30 years I go and pretty
much every year and I learn the life of
this man and how he would have made
decisions and how he really built a
community to help this this type of
collective awakening I think what I’ve
also found in the last few years and
this comes back to the whole problem of
handling emotions when I was when we
were when I was young is to try and
bring what I call mindfulness into
school education I think since your
school audience I felt this is something
which now is being recognized as
something which is important for mime
training even for things like you know
cognitive awareness emotional
intelligence but there are basic
techniques of how to really understand
your mind calm your mind and so in fact
the first workshop of this was done with
the dual school in the world by this by
this community in 2008 and we’ve done
well um boys at Woodstock and I feel
that this is a sort of and sometimes say
in the peoples of why is it not taught
and we said because the teachers don’t
know how to do it the teachers were
never taught to do this but now more and
more we are realizing that these sort of
softer skills of understanding our mind
and this inner my inner I’m saying in a
heart and mind is very important not
just for happiness and peace but
actually for creating good community in
schools and schools are places where we
can build community and build a family
and these sort of practices allow us
when somebody does walking meditation
for example he is a bell of mindfulness
or she is a bell of mindfulness for
everyone else when you eat in
mindfulness with that full awareness
that this food you’re eating is a gift
of the cosmos you allow that to happen
to other people too so these sort of
wake up moments that have happened
the the sort of thinking out of the box
the feeling of taking compassion is my
ideal the ideal of compassion is my as
my career option living more simply
realizing that pieces apart pieces away
and also realizing that enlightenment
can be a great practice and a Great
Awakening and I feel that as we go into
this to look at this as the potential of
a collective awakening rather than just
an individual awakening
finding that a number of us who were in
school are really reconnecting in quite
a deep way and it’s that common ground a
shared experience of being at dune which
is allowing us to do that and but when I
reflect back on the young boy of six
five and a half six four joined welcome
boys through to the boy who left doing
it about 16 I actually have quite a lot
of compassion for him I look at him and
I think yes there were happy moments but
there were a lot of dark moments there
was a lot of loneliness feelings of
isolation sometimes bullying stress and
when I look back on that young boy I
think he didn’t know how to handle his
emotions in fact this sort of boys
boarding school had in some ways made
him suppress his emotions in a way so
dumb down his emotions even mute his
emotions and now many years later I am
interesting these things and I find that
I found techniques or methods to look at
my emotions handle them and care for
myself have compassion for myself and I
think this is something which should be
taught in all schools but I thought I’ll
share one of those practices that may be
helpful to you I don’t know you know
school now forty years later is slightly
different but still those issues of how
to handle emotions how to not be
stressed I know there’s a lot of stress
nowadays on young people trying to apply
for colleges of the future careers will
be so how do we lessen that stress how
do we lessen that emotional angst so
what I’ve learnt is really to come back
to the present moment this is something
which I’ve got from my Zen training I
find that the way to come back to my to
my
self in this moment is really to come
back to my breath my body is here with
my mind maybe going all over the place
so as soon as I make my mind a breathing
mind I can help my help my body and mind
come back into the present and when I
come back into the present then I have
some control of how to respond to
anything that may be happening outside
of me or inside of me whether it’s an
emotional rising or whether it’s
somebody saying something hurtful to me
I actually can breathe and actually
absorb to some degree or created is a
gap between the external stimuli and my
reaction or response and I use something
like a bell and this Bell I call a bell
of mindfulness so I’m going to
so I’m going to I’m gonna sound this
Bell and I use this Bell every day for
my meditation and I come back to myself
using the sound of the Bell so when I
invite the sound of the Bell just you
can close your eyes if you want and I
would suggest that you just follow just
three breaths so wherever you’re sitting
just relax your shoulders sit
comfortably in your seats and just
listen to the sound of the Bell and just
come back to your in-breath and the
out-breath in-breath and out-breath
[Music]
[Music]
and this sort of invitation to the Bell
can be done in many ways you don’t
always need a bell
in fact my telephone every time my
telephone rings I call a telephone
meditation I let my bell my phone ring
at least three times and with the first
ring I stopped I stopped I’m doing I
stop I try and stop my thinking and then
with the second Bell I’d come back to my
breath which helps me come back into the
present moment and with the third ring I
smile and the zombie’s ringing me my
wife’s ringing my children are ringing
me my friends are ringing me I’m much
more present for them with that phone
and also the phone has helped me to come
back into that present moment so it’s
not just a tool of communication which
is a great but is deafening out of it’s
not irritation for me if a phone rings
right now in the audience I just smile
it’s my practice in a bit like a
Pavlovian dog you know it’s I just when
I hear a bell I stop but it was
interesting when I was in school the
Bell had a very different conversation
when I heard the Bell
I was anxious I would rung I was late
for school I was something and the Bell
became actually a bit of a terror for me
rather than was something which was
aiding me and now coming back as a as an
old boy of the school I find then of the
bell rings I find it so pleasant I stop
and I become attentive to the trees to
the wonderful surroundings that I never
touched as a student so I think just
shifting your and every our little class
that at least hear the sound of the bell
come back to yourself and and know
you’re rushing and you’re present with
that but many bells ring when you’re
just sitting just pause and just come
back to yourself in that moment you can
really touch the miracle or whatever’s
around you whatever is happening in you
and also understand how your emotions
are how to let that start working
through you in a in a sort of
compassionate way but I thought I’d just
share some sort of wake up moments in
the last few years of my life and how
they’ve really affected me where I am
today so I’m 60 so I left school 40th
more than 40 years ago but I remember in
school there was a man who came he came
to our physics class
and he gave a talk and he said you know
he used to buy amplifiers in a musical
amplifiers which you come in boxes and
he’d open them up and make sculptures
out of them I said wow that’s really
literally out-of-the-box thinking
and I thought you can make a living
through doing something quite
counterintuitive in a sort of way it was
a small wake up moment but the bigger
wake up moments and you know fast
forward to and I’m 23 I’m in England
have a job corporate job fortunately I
there was a lot of luck on my side
Atlanta very good job as earning more
than my parents put together after
working all their lives fancy house and
then driving a sports car in mg sports
car my girlfriend all the right
trappings and the last thing I remember
is the speedometer 110 miles an hour
which is about a hundred seventy seven
kilometers an hour and I’m gone and this
car smashed the next thing I remember is
I’m getting up in hospital and when I’m
waking up in hospital I actually I had
this thing I’m alive I’m actually alive
it sort of got a basic thinking but you
know I didn’t probably expect it and the
preciousness of life hit me and I also
realized a few things while I was
reflecting in the next few days in bed
it was that my main motivation for my
work will not be money which it had
become it was actually that my motor was
very much make a lot of money quick and
I said that is not my deal and I’d like
to make my career based on my ideal of
compassion and lead a much simpler life
and it was interesting good I’d already
suffered myself and I’d seen suffering
but I hadn’t done much about it and I
thought I just died I died so this was
really a second chance for me I do work
in the shoe industry I’d gone back to
working in English company clark’s as to
buy shoes from from
Agra I’d see the you know the job
developed shoe workers earning working
really with it with the skill of an eye
doctor on the shoe making and earning
less than what I was spend and they
turned in a week less than what I spend
in a hotel room for one night
in fact I moved out of my hotel room
started staying with them just to
understand their lives and then when I
went to England also I’d I got beaten up
three times somebody spat in my face
somebody beat me up to my color and that
all sort of suffering that I had
actually was helpful to me to empathize
with the economic and other sort of
discrimination that the Dallas were
feeling and then I decided that I really
need to make some changes I left my job
I want to understand why poor people
poor why rich countries rich what is the
relationship and I went back to
University to study Development Studies
and political economics and I became a
political activist and I became real
halal activist worked with very good
people but really confronting the police
confronting the Army in the case in in
England and going to jail organising
Haruna’s you know this is a sort of
activist politics and one day I remember
in the midst of one of our programs I
sort of just burnt out I really I broke
down and I went to a friend’s room and I
lay down on the ground and I’ve had it I
really didn’t know how to look after
myself here I was trying to make the
world a better place but really not
knowing how to look after myself and so
I sort of realized that I was part of
the problem my aggression my anger was
part of the problem and so I realized I
better become piso be peace rather than
just fight for peace and that was a long
journey party I carried on my work with
social development with artisans
volunteers the UN and the World Bank but
on the other side my parts took me on a
spiritual journey and I went to many
many traditions Sufis Quakers and surly
I found that I was getting more interest
in Buddhism it was actually a Sutra read
called the calamus Sutra where the
Kalama is at the tribe which comes to
Buddha and says this teacher says this
this teacher says this this teacher says
this what is the right teaching
and witnesses don’t believe teachers
don’t believe me you don’t believe your
elders your texts but you try try the
practice and if it gives you a sense of
well-being
it gives well-being to others around you
then it is a good practice if it doesn’t
cause suffering to you and others it is
not a good practice that’s eminently
sensible practice and this this sort of
I got more and more interesting Buddhism
I started meeting teachers from Burma
from Korea Japan and then I was at a
retreat where there was a teacher called
picnic hang who was leading a retreat
for artists and on the second day of the
retreat he was teaching walking
meditation and it is it’s another one
was wonderful techniques where you just
walk but you’re really attentive to
where you’re walking and you’re you’re
walking to walk not to get somewhere and
so this practice of just breathing in
and really imprinted your peacefulness
on the earth and then pausing looking at
the beautiful you know this is in the
lost fatherís Mountains in California so
I was looking out of the mountains there
and what struck me at that moment that
sort of wake up moment for me was I
really touched peace for the first time
of my life I really experienced peace
not as a concept not as an idea but
viscerally in my body I mean it is one
of those sort of moments where you lose
the sense of yourself and the
identification of yourself and this is
combinations of intense happiness
contentment as a rapture in a sort of
way but in a very calm way and I realize
I could do this and this same teacher
technolon who then became my teacher
after that asked he asked me to organize
a pilgrimage for him to the sites
associate with the Buddha in India in
Bihar and you pee so I did that the next
year with him and it was very nice
because I went walking with him
literally and he heard me by the hand
and he brought alive the Buddha is a
human being and you know for me being
drawn up in India to Buddhist I need a
fake slightly superhuman type guy and
suddenly I realized this
man had the same angst he could have
gone to any career anything could’ve
done anything and he chose a career of
awakening a career of enlightenment a
career of compassion that he could help
others and that really had a strong
effect of me and then dick Nathon said
why did you lose pilgrimage every year
so for the last 30 years I go and pretty
much every year and I learn the life of
this man and how he would have made
decisions and how he really built a
community to help this this type of
collective awakening I think what I’ve
also found in the last few years and
this comes back to the whole problem of
handling emotions when I was when we
were when I was young is to try and
bring what I call mindfulness into
school education I think since your
school audience I felt this is something
which now is being recognized as
something which is important for mime
training even for things like you know
cognitive awareness emotional
intelligence but there are basic
techniques of how to really understand
your mind calm your mind and so in fact
the first workshop of this was done with
the dual school in the world by this by
this community in 2008 and we’ve done
well um boys at Woodstock and I feel
that this is a sort of and sometimes say
in the peoples of why is it not taught
and we said because the teachers don’t
know how to do it the teachers were
never taught to do this but now more and
more we are realizing that these sort of
softer skills of understanding our mind
and this inner my inner I’m saying in a
heart and mind is very important not
just for happiness and peace but
actually for creating good community in
schools and schools are places where we
can build community and build a family
and these sort of practices allow us
when somebody does walking meditation
for example he is a bell of mindfulness
or she is a bell of mindfulness for
everyone else when you eat in
mindfulness with that full awareness
that this food you’re eating is a gift
of the cosmos you allow that to happen
to other people too so these sort of
wake up moments that have happened
the the sort of thinking out of the box
the feeling of taking compassion is my
ideal the ideal of compassion is my as
my career option living more simply
realizing that pieces apart pieces away
and also realizing that enlightenment
can be a great practice and a Great
Awakening and I feel that as we go into
this to look at this as the potential of
a collective awakening rather than just
an individual awakening
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