The few weeks between my return from Thailand in the middle of June and entering the Vassa at the end of July were particularly full as I did my best to crowd in a number of extracurricular activities as well as keeping up with my usual prison visits and other every day things.
As I reported last month, soon after I got back we were honoured with a visit by a group of senior Wat Pah Pong monks who were over for the opening of the new temple building at Amaravati. They took the opportunity while they were here of having a look at some of the overseas branch monasteries in Britain and Europe. On July 4th, there was the grand opening itself and then the following week we all met again for Patimokkha at Chithurst. Apart from the solemn and significant events that are their real purpose, these occasions are always enjoyable for the chance to see old friends and meet up again with people you haven't seen for ages and ages.
One of the most unusual things I've ever done was in mid July to attend one of the Queen's garden parties at Buckingham Palace. These are, I believe, supposed to be a bit of a pat on the back. Thousands of people are invited, many from charitable and various public bodies. Someone it seems thought it would be a good thing to have some Buddhists there this year so a few of us were selected. Appropriately, on the day I went there were also present some people with prison connections – and I don't just mean those who were former inmates. I spotted the Chaplain General of the Prison Service and an Anglican prison chaplain who I know but didn't notice apparently saw me. I did bump into Sir David Ramsbotham, the excellent and visionary Chief Inspector of Prisons though. There were also quite a number of other religious: a couple of Zen monks, a flock of bishops in their purple and a scattering of fetchingly attired Queen's chaplains in scarlet cassocks.
It was a fairly weird experience to leave the late twentieth century at the palace gates and then as you passed through the inner courtyard to travel rapidly back in time until emerging in the back garden you found yourself somewhere about 1790. The band was playing the sort of things that bands always seem to have played, Yeoman of the Guard were marching about and ladies and gentlemen - mostly the ladies - were parading in the most amazing outfits. Then all of a sudden the band changed its tune and I recognised the now to me rather unfamiliar strains of 'God Save the Queen' and there on the terrace, handbag firmly in position, regally surveying the multitude, stood Her Majesty.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering about. I chatted to a few people - even one couple who had been to the Forest Hermitage, inspected the gardens and occasionally I had a go at trying to see what was going on in the main arena where the Queen was apparently enjoying a well earned cuppa. What the occasional ripples of applause were about I never did find out. Then when it was all over and I was waiting for an opening to join the queue to get out I suddenly noticed an old chap windmilling past me and realised that it was Dennis Thatcher fighting to keep up with the former leaderene herself. Whew!
What did I make of all this? Well, it's all obviously moha – steeped in delusion. One thing you can't help remarking on when you meet or see these rich and powerful people is that they're much the same as anyone else. They've got the same sort of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, legs and arms as anyone else. They have to eat and drink and breathe like anyone else and without the hype, they seldom seem very special. Some have inherited their houses and furniture and some still exercise traces of power stolen by their gangster forebears. And why some should enjoy luxury and privilege while others a few hundred yards down the road, perhaps more talented and even better educated, should be living in cardboard boxes is on the face of it difficult to answer. But with the effects of many of the things we've done in this life and the attitudes we've cultivated not difficult to see, it does seem not an unreasonable hypothesis that similar influences from other lives might have conditioned how we are living now. Although I have no conscious memory of any other life, I personally feel a closer affinity for what I might have been than any ancestors from whom I am descended. After all my life and interests are so distinct from what I know of theirs. Kamma and kamma-vipaaka – action and the result does to me give credible explanation for the countless differences I can observe amongst those around me.
What separates us then are not the slight differences of appearance but our inner attitudes, and what we say and do and the effects of those actions. And this is as true of rich and poor as it is of those who are imprisoned and those who are not. What unites us is that we all have a similar potential. All of us are capable of good and bad things and every one of us can develop and improve and move closer to perfection. That is our hope. That is what we should be wanting for ourselves and that is what we should be encouraging in others.
It's a story I've often told but one that bears repeating from time to time. When we were staying in the old Hampstead Vihara in 1977 and Ajahn Chah had just told Venerable Sumedho and myself that we would be staying, a letter arrived from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight and about the same time another came from Pentonville. What they wanted was someone to be the Buddhist visiting minister to those prisons. On a train, during the Queen's Silver Jubilee weekend, I asked Ajahn Chah what he thought about my responding to these requests and he just said 'Go!' So I went and I've been going into prisons ever since. In 1985, Yann Lovelock and I discussed the idea of getting the Buddhist involvement in the gaols properly organised and the outcome of that was the launching of Angulimala, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation in 1985. For some years we've maintained a team of around forty volunteer Buddhist prison chaplains and covered upwards of two-thirds of the prisons and young offender institutions of England and Wales. The two tiny Channel Island prisons will soon be attended to and after one or two false starts we've this year managed to establish an enthusiastic presence in Scotland. In 1992 two inmates at Springhill Open Prison, frustrated at the lack of a suitable Buddhist meeting place, conceived the idea of a Buddha Grove, a Buddha-Rupa and shrine set in a convenient grove of trees within sight of the Governor's office. By the autumn of the same year it was ready and on October 31st, 1992 we held an opening ceremony in the presence of Lord and Lady Avebury, Joe Pilling, the then Director General of the Prison Service and from the Royal Thai Embassy, the First Secretary, Mr Chalit Manityakul. It was a pretty chilly evening and I remember at the end some inmates produced soup to warm everyone up. I've no idea what it was like but by the following year, members of the Thai community had decided to take over the catering and produce a Thai buffet for the entire prison as well as the guests. Since then it's happened every year and now as I hurry to get this newsletter out to you we're gearing up to do it again.
This year the Springhill Buddha Grove celebration, which will include a Thai vegetarian buffet for everyone and at the end a candle-lit circumambulation of the Buddha grove, will be on the evening of September 12th. If you can help or you want to come do give me a ring. Remember that unlike the rest of you, prisoners can't come to the temple, so we have to take the temple to them. They live in an easily forgotten and secret corner of society where it's important for them to be reminded that there are other ways of going about things and there is hope.
If you are so fortunate as to have Internet access, you will find available to you on the World Wide Web a cornucopia of Buddhist information. Should you not know where to begin take a look at my web site where you will find links to other sites that will start you off on a journey that could easily keep you glued to your screen for hours and hours. Should it be prison information that you need, the best site of all is The Penal Lexicon - www.penlex.org.uk - administered by Steve Robinson-Grindy.
Steve is Vice-Chair of the Board of Visitors for HMP Haslar, a prison for Immigration detainees. He has kindly consented to attend the next Angulimala Workshop on September 18th to give us some insight into the workings of these independent prison watchdogs, said to be the eyes and ears of the Secretary of State.
It made a pleasant change recently to visit Jos and Aye Aye in Portugal and bless their new home. It's called Vivende Metta – the Abode of Loving-Kindness, very appropriate to two good people who spend their time at the North South Centre immersed in issues of human rights and global co-operation. I could only be there a few hours but I think I know where I might go now if I need a break.