Arts
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...
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 is...
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 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...
Peter Brook Created Holy Theatre in an Empty Space
Visionary theatre director Peter Brook created Holy Theatre in an 'Empty Space', echoing the Buddhist teaching of Emptiness and Tibetan Buddhist meditation Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4, 06 July 2022 When I was a theatre student in the 1980s Peter Book, who died...
Bob Dylan and the Buddha
As Dylan turns 80, his an icon of honesty in a world hungry for success rather than truth resonates with the Buddha's rejection of worldly values Prompted by his eightieth birthday, which fell on Monday, I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan and pondering what keeps...
Lincoln in the Bardo – Review
Lincoln in the Bardo, winner of the 2017 Mann Booker Prize, has been widely praised as a remarkable vision of human life and its possibilities that is formally daring but also moving and accessible. It is all those things, but it is also the first truly great western...
Lockdown and the Creative Space
The Covid-19 lockdown is disturbing. But what are the creative possibilities of the space it creates Like so many others, I’ve been deleting future events from my online calendar and, in place of the busy summer I’d planned, there’s a lot of blank space. Those...
Beyond Competition
Thought for the Day 6.12.19 When the four artists nominated for this year’s Turner Prize fell into conversation, they quickly decided that they didn’t want to compete against each other. They asked to be judged as a single collective and this week the Prize was shared...
Bidding Farewell to Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom, a man of letters in the old style and an authentic heir to the great Romantic writers, has died aged 89. He affected me deeply. He has importan for Buddhists and others pursuing a spiritual life in the modern world The sadness I feel at learning of the...
Mary Oliver: Wild and Precious Verse
Mary Oliver was the Poet Laureate of mindfulness, and many Buddhists felt an affinity with her themes of nature, appreciation and the importance of present moment awarenessMany British people, even those who read poetry, might not have heard of the American poet Mary...
Buddhist Shakespeare
Everyone has their own take on Shakespeare, but what happens if you read it as a Buddhist?
Bowie’s Dharma
The response to David Bowie’s death shows his impact. What does his work mean for a Buddhist?
Macbeth and Karma
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an overwhelming account of ambition, violence and their fearful consequences. This essay suggests that, on a deep level, Shakespeare’s vision accords with the Buddha’s teaching of karma.
Richard III and the Buddha
The discovery of the skeleton of Richard III in a Leicester car park has sparked worldwide interest. What does it tell us about our relationship with the figures that shape our sense of history or with the Buddha
Reading Emptiness: Reflecting on Buddhism and Literature
There’s a tantalising affinity between Buddhist views of the insubstantial nature of the self and sophisticated ideas about the illusions created by literary texts. But there are also profound differences between Buddhist spiritual practice and nihilistic deconstruction
Gateways to the Imaginal: an Interview With Harold Bloom
Literary Critic Harold Bloom believes that art, literature and religious traditions can all offer ways in to a realm of intensified meaning and beauty. Vishvapani met him to discuss his ideas and explore affinities with Buddhism.
Six Elements: Modern Poems and Buddhist Reflections
Last week a Buddhist friend organised a celebration of the elements, inviting contributions to his Facebook page. This stimulated me to look out some favourite works, mostly modern and mostly poems. Here is an cento on the Buddhist elements – earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness – with some comments:
Ghostwritten: a Buddhist Novel?
David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten is a novel for the interconnected, globalised times in which we are buffeted among billions; it offers a neural network of thought, not so much an argument as ideas whirring like minds, and interacting like electrons. Was it the first Dharma novel of the millennium?
Shakespeare’s Wisdom: The Buddha and Richard II
What is Shakespeare’s Wisdom and how does it match up to the Buddha’s? In this article I explore Shakespeare’s Richard II as a play about belief and identity, which are core concerns of Buddhism, and suggest parallels between Shakespeare’s insights and those of the Buddha
The Dharma of Dickens
Dickens’ moral vision mirrors the Buddhist teaching of karma: every character is a moral actor, whether they know it or now, inhabiting a fictional world that is imbued with a meaning and where every action has significance.
David Breuer Weil: Radical Visionary
David Breuer Weil is a powerful artistic presence: heir to London-based Jewish like Freud and Epstein. As a new book and exhibition showcase his work, I reflect on my own friendship with David and the significance of his monumental images