I’ve been contributing since 2006 to Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4’s religious comment slot in the very popular Today Programme. The links include many of these talks, and I’ll be bringing the listings up to date as well as posting new talks on the blog.
The River that has Rights
At Hay Festival this weekend, the River Wye was granted legal rights to flourish and be free from pollution. Walking a river I love, I find a thirteenth-century Buddhist teacher has something unexpected to say about what that really means. An odd group gathered in May…
Buddhist Monks Peace Walk: An Alternative to Social Division
Thought for the Day, 17.2.2026, BBC Radio 4 In a divided America, a 2,000-mile walk by Buddhist monks reveals how mindfulness can transform our response to global suffering and offer radical hope. The worse the news gets, the closer we come to some underlying…
Denying Compassion to Asylum Seekers Harms Ourselves
There is no more vexed issue in politics at present than the status of asylum seekers. It’s a complex debate that understandably focuses on the difficulty of absorbing more people and the struggles of those who are already here. But for now I want to focus on just one…
Suella Braverman & Buddhist Politics
Suella Braverman Is the UK’s Buddhist Home Secretary and a Right-Wing Culture Warrior What can one of the most senior members of Britain’s government tell us about how Buddhists should, or shouldn’t, engage politically?Vishvapani Blomfield Suella Braverman is the UK’s…
Turning Towards the Suffering in Gaza
Turning towards pain and suffering is a key to healing and it’s a key to creativity. Abeer Ameer’s remarkable journey helped me face what’s happened in the Gaza War About ten years ago a young Muslim woman called Abeer Ameer came on a mindfulness course I taught at…
Covid Challenged Our Certainties. What have we learned?
A few weeks into the first Covid lockdown I cycled into the centre of Cardiff to pick up some medicine. The roads were empty, the shopping streets largely deserted, and the few shoppers wore masks. Seeing the strangeness of the world the lockdown had created…
The Healing Power of the Present Moment
How can drawing engages with the present moment, and what can it offer our wellbeing and mental health? Last week I picked up a pencil and, for the first time in many years, I started to draw. I was co-leading a retreat with an artist friend that combined meditation…
Training in the Middle Way
Dressage Champion Charlotte Dujardin’s withdrawal from the Olympics when video footage showed her maltreating a horse raise questions about where the balance lies between discipline and abuse. How can we find the middle way? Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4, 26 July…
Meeting Mara
When an issue has moral clarity, we are quick to outrage. But the story of the Buddha’s meeting with Mara suggests that we are part of the problem Stories like the infected blood and Post Office scandals offer rare moments of moral clarity in public life. The issue’s…
Combating Anger
As society gets angrier, the ancient Buddhist teachings are more relevant than ever Are we getting angrier? A video that went viral last week showed a 60 year-old man pounding the windscreen of a woman who’d honked him. Eyes bulging, spewing profanity, he was seized…
Ending the Middle East Cycle of Violence
As the war in Gaza threatens to spiral into a regional conflict, what light does Buddhist wisdom shed on cycles of violence? After the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus and Iran’s missile strike against Israel, now what? Troubled voices are urging…
AI Struggles Show We’re all Biased, but Mindfulness Can Help
When AI Systems Try to deal with bias they encounter an underlying truth: no one’s perceptions are wholly true. Tackling that starts with ourselves Think of a doctor or a lawyer. If what comes to mind is the image of a white man, does that show your unconscious bias…
Extreme Weather Shows How Conditionality Works
Extreme Weather Shows How Conditionality Works by Vishvapani, Thought for the Day, 16.2.2024 https://www.wiseattention.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/TFTD-16.02.24-Vishvapani.m4a Extreme weather is disconcerting because climate change shows how far our responsibility…
Staying alive to ambiguity in a media storm
Thought for the Day BBC Radio 4 14.07.23 When a storm blows up in the media we get drawn in. Milan Kundera and the Buddha can help us stay alive to humans realities behind the news. One of the many lessons the Czech novelist Milan Kundera, who died this week, urged on…
How to Make Peace in the Culture Wars
Trans debates are just one battleground in the Culture Wars. Learning fromthe Buddha, how can we make peace? Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4 19.05.2023 Andrew,’ I said. ‘You look … different.’ My old friend was wearing a dress and makeup and his hair had grown. ‘I am…
Here’s how a Buddhist relates to the Coronation
I’ll watch the Coronation this weekend, but how can I say ‘God Save the King’ when I don’t believe in God? King Charles philosophy of ‘Harmony’ could make a connection Thought for the Day BBC Radio 4, 4 May 2023 I think I’ll watch the Coronation this weekend, but I…
Seeing Into the Life of Things Retreat
On Retreat with Wordsworth & Coleridge William and Dorothy Wordsworth lived at Alfoxton in 1797–8, near their friend Samuel Coleridge, who lived with his family in nearby Nether Stowey. In that year each of them wrote some of their finest work – the volume of…
Sentient AI is Possible. Let’s Make it Compassionate
Sentient AI is making us ask: what is consciousness? For Buddhism, the real issue is what consciousness is for, and the answer involves compassion Can Artificial Intelligence systems be sentient? Philosophers call consciousness ‘the hard problem’ because we can’t…
Mindfulness & Imagination Online Retreat
Entering the Mandala: Mindfulness & Imagination Online Retreat Seven days of meditation, creativity and ritual in a spirit of mindfulness and inquiry Led by Vishvapani and Vidyamala Friday September 1 – Thursday September 7, 2023 Book a Place Mindfulness is…
Seeing It Better: a Review of ‘After Cezanne’ by Maiteyabandhu
After Cézanne,By Maitreyabandhu,Bloodaxe, 2019 Maitreyabandhu’s most recent poetry collection reflects on Cézanne’s paintings and is a subtle meditation on the possibilities of art and perception The epigraph of Maitreyabandhu’s most recent collection After Cézanne…
How to Survive Being Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
The Oscar Winning movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a parable of life and survival in the age of infinite possibilities Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4 16/03/2023 Blinking my way out of the movie that this week won seven Oscars, I knew it was…
The Dark Side of the Moon: Still Powerful at Fifty
As the classic Pink Floyd Album turns fifty it still resonates as a search for meaning in a hostile world BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, 10/03/2023 I’m sixteen years old, far from sober, gazing up at the star-filled sky and a soundtrack starts in my head. Ba-boom,…
Macbeth is a Ritual. What happens when its demonic energy leaks into the world beyond the play?
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a ritualised drama that summons demonic forces in the hero and the world the play creates. What happens when a production refuses to close the ritual when the play ends? A few years ago I wrote an essay on Macbeth and Karma, calling the play a…
‘The Escape Artist’: Powerful Holocaust Lesson for the Post-Truth World
An account of escaping Auschwitz with a sobering reflection on how deeply we repress knowledge of death: a Holocaust lesson for the post-truth world The usual question the Holocaust raises is: ‘How could this happen, how could people act so inhumanely’. In fact, for…
The Secret of Public Ethics is Ethical Training
As the government and public bodies in the UK face ethical scrutiny, we need to see ethics as Buddhists do: starting with individuals and matter of training Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4 26.01.2023 The Committee for Standards in Public Life, which reported again…
The Karma of Banking in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
I sat down on Christmas Eve to watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ – it’s been a while – expecting a comforting serving of Christmas sentimentality with extra cheese. What I saw was a polemic about banking and a parable about karma and interconnectedness. You may be…
To protect biodiversity we need the Bodhisattva’s compassion
The UN Biodiversity Conference is a last ditch effort to safeguard the living world. We shouldrespond with the spirit of the Bodhisattva Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4. .7.10.2022 What are animals for? Or plants, fish and insects? The utilitarian answer is…
The Queen’s death is a powerful reminder to reflect on impermanence
The Queen’s funeral is a reminder that everything we experience is subject to change. Buddhists reflect on impermanence to focus on what’s most important Thought for the Day, 21.09.2022 Autumn has come quickly this year. Three weeks out of August, it’s still harvest…
How to Teach Wellbeing in the Curriculum for Wales
Wales’ new school curriculum places wellbeing and emotional intelligence at the heart of education. It’s a big challenge, but Buddhist perspectives are helping Weekend Word, BBC Radio Wales 26th August 2020 GCSE results are out, and before long it will be a new school…
Cherish Water in a Drought
We’re in a drought, and caring for our water supply means feeling it’s importance. We need to get wet Thought For The Day 23.08.2022 Across the country record low rainfall and high temperatures have depleted reservoirs and dried up rivers. We’ve seen hosepipe bans in…