Tibetan Monks: create a sand mandala in London
Tibetan Monks UK Peace Tour
The purpose of the Lelung Dharma Trust’s Shide-Peace project is to promote peace throughout the world. In order to raise awareness of this mission, the Lelung Dharma Trust has brought a group of Tibetan monks from the Drepung Monastery in South India to the UK. While they are here they are performing a number of sacred activities. One of these is the creating of a sand mandala which I was privilege to witness in St. James’s church in Piccadilly, London.
Buddhism is of interest to me as it promotes a way of living for greater peace and happiness. It considers human behaviour and how we might individually improve our personal behaviour to make the world a better place. It is not about someone else doing something but each of us individually taking responsibility for our own behaviour and in so doing contribute to the whole.
I was reminded this week of how this view is held much more broadly that perhaps we think. I had a consultation with a hospital specialist this week. He asked me what my job was and when I explained we had an interesting conversation about our links to the universe and the ability of mediums to provide life guidance messages. When people are seriously ill, he confirmed that doctors and nurses saw and heard the unexplainable with their patients. He asked me to demonstrate my skills with messages for him. Here was a man of science but he acknowledged their relevance to him and my ability to bring them to him.
Toxic managers can be challenging and also detrimental to your calmness and well-being. I know this from first hand experience. I was a senior executive successfully delivering a business change programme but I had the meanest manager I had ever experienced. He was a short New Yorker who loved to shout and belittle people. He did not respect that I lived in a different time zone from him and would call me late into my evening. Normally a confident person, my self-esteem and confidence hit rock bottom. It was a very unhappy period in my life.
In the UK, the children are returning to school for the start of a new academic year. Parents are busy sorting new uniform and heaving a sigh of relief that they have got through the long summer holiday. I can remember looking forward to the structure the school routine brought back to our lives. Of course my children would probably not have agreed with me.
In our busy 21st century lives, there is a trend towards families eating their meals from trays watching TV rather than sitting to a table and facing each other. Likewise teenagers, if allowed, will take their food and eat in their bedrooms.