Greetings fellow practitioners,

Continuing with our series of The Buddha's Life and central Teachings I am happy to share two more talks with you on this occasion, which were given whilst on Pilgrimage in Northern India last year.

​The Buddha's spiritual following became quite huge even in his day. There were many matters to attend to in leading and training such a large following… and herein lies the importance of Great Disciples.  Venerable Sariputta and Venerable Maha Mogallana were the right and left-hand men of the Great Teacher and their service to their teacher and his following was enormous. I must admit that Venerable Sariputta is a personal favorite 'spiritual hero' of mine… so I am pleased to share some of his life story with you all here in the first talk. As the Buddha first met Ven Sariputta whilst in Rajgir, I gave this talk while our group was staying there. We also review some of the events that took place in and around the Bamboo Grove, (Veluvana) the first monastery.

The second talk and reading was given in Vaisali. The place where the Rattana Sutta was taught. We review what had occurred leading up to the Buddha teaching these great 'protective verses' and explore a fascinating and fundamentally important theme, that is… 'The Protective Power of Truth.'

I sincerely hope that something in these talks is useful to you in some way.

With Loving-Kindness

Greetings fellow practitioners,

The talk that I am sharing on this occasion was given just prior to a session of breath meditation. I talk about the way we can use the breath to maintain a sense of evenness and of 'staying in the middle' with regards the various pheonomena that arise in our minds. Lord Buddha describes breath meditation as the Crown Jewel of all meditation methods. That is quite a statement. In this talk we explore some of the reasons why this is so… and how to go about training in breath meditation for developing both peace (samatha) and Insight. (vipassana)

I hope that you may find something in the talk useful.

​With Loving-Kindness