My love affair with Buddhism continues.   There are 2 kinds of mindfulness – both relate to the present moment, but whereas basic mindfulness is about where you are, and what is around you, there is also a mindfulness of the future.  This is to do with how decisions and action have an intention, a…

"Brown eyes are dominant".  Yeees, but…  There are at least 3 genes involved in eye colour, and the main 2 have 2 different alleles, so it all gets a bit complicated.  As a general rule though, blue is always recessive, and brown is always dominant.  Green is dominant over blue, but not over brown.  Got that?

Edmund Burke (18th Century) – "Guilt was never a rational thing, it distorts all faculties of the human mind, it perverts them.  It leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason.  It puts him in confusion."   Shame culture vs guilt culture: your aversion to being seen as having done wrong,…

An old, medieval legend.  In its original version, never finished, so others added and expanded it to give a number of different versions.  I first came across it as the Terry Gilliam film, with Robin Williams.  And now I realise Amfortas, a character in the opera Parsifal by Wagner that I saw years ago, is…

“Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him. And a good man may suffer until his goodness flowers.” The Dhammapada, quoted in the Happiness Project.

"Thou shalt not…" might reach the head; but it takes "once upon a time…" to reach the heart. Philip Pullman [who loathes the Narnia stories, apparently, for their view of childhood as "a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are falling away"]

I am certain all sacred buildings, from the greatest cathedral to the smallest chapel, and in all religions, derive from the natural aura of certain woodland or forest settings.  In them we stand among older, larger and infinitely other beings, remoter from us than the most bizarre other non-human forms of life: blind, immobile, speechless… …

Back in November.

Until the early 1990s, the number of people leaving the UK exceeded the number of people entering.Currently, about 1500 people every day enter the UK to live here; every day, about 1000 people leave.  This is the highest rate of out-migration since records began.  About half of the out-migrants are British citizens.A quarter of the…

Steven LindsayKate NashRosabella GregoryRegina Spektor – yes, the year of tori amos reincarnations, but they're all brilliant!Afroreggae – brazilian beats to african flavoursMatisyahu – never thought reggae could be this goodJo Mango – that amazing mbira song Jamie Woon – singer songwriter to watch, has been supporting Newton Faulkner Ross Baird – singer songwriter from…