Ways of Liberation

The Waterfall   

The year was 1910 and in Japan a young  man called Tempu Nakamura was facing his own death. It was not the first time. As a spy working covertly for the Japanese military in Manchuria, he'd been shot, starved and miraculously saved from a Russian f...

This article was started before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic started to sweep across the world in January 2020. The dynamics behind the spread of this disease and the question of what was and can be done are subjects for another time. In the face of a fair amount of disinfo...

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

- Einstein

It is said that mathematics is the language of God. One of the reasons for saying this is that a mathematical truth is essentially timeless. For instanc...

Always to seek for wider, deeper, transcendental experiences is a form of escape from the actual reality of "what is", which is ourselves, our own conditioned mind. A mind that is awake, intelligent, free, why should it need, why should it have, any experience at all?...

There is never anywhere to go but in.

- Doris Lessing

In the 1960s a psychiatrist working for the Indian Health Service in North America was asked by a traditional shaman - a Hopi Indian called Herbert - what he knew about the mind. The psychiatrist considered some cleve...

There is no magic formula, it's just doing the basic things much better than anybody else. 

- Joachim Low

Be grateful for your mind weeds

- Shunryu Suzuki

What is the Buddha? Dried shit on a stick!

- ancient zen koan  

Have you ever felt - like I often have - that you're st...

Murky water is turbid; let it settle and it clears.

- Lui Yiming, Awakening to the Tao

This may be a familiar scenario: You're feeling in an awful, low mood. Everything requires so much effort. Work is a drag, people are tiresome, even your friends are being a bit deman...

The following talk was given at the 2018 Mental Wealth Festival organized by the City Lit Institute and which took place at the National Gallery, London. Many thanks to the organizers and to all those who attended.

I work as a doctor in Emergency Medicine, but I would s...

Have you ever wondered why, when we talk about reality, we rarely mean something good? 'Real life', for example, usually implies something grim. Then we have 'get real!', 'welcome to the real world' and - the slightly more perky - 'shit just got real'. Then we have a w...

The following is from a talk I gave at the Mother Bear event organized by the Brun Bear Foundation on the subject of work-life balance/stress. Many thanks to the organizers and to those who attended!

'Work-life balance' is a tricky concept to lecture about. By work...