Please note, there is no Afternoon of Mindfulness this Saturday 18th May because our room is being used for an event.

However, in the evening from 6:30pm to 9pm, you are warmly invited to our Music and Poetry Evening in our usual venue. Confirmed performances include Charlie Shuttler, Kareem Ghandour, Joe Holtaway, Megan Gray, Anna Wawryzyniak and Tom Manwell.

We ask for a donation of £5 that will go towards the rent of the room and you will receive a free copy of Peace Sounds.

You’re welcome to bring some food and drink to share.

Enjoy these videos from last year’s event!

We hope to see you there. Please email us at info@wkuplondon.org if you have any questions.

Peace,
Wake Up London

March 20 is the UN’s International Day of Happiness. Let’s celebrate this day by coming together and displaying positive messages in public!

Find the Facebook invitation here and spread the word!

March 8th is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women’s past, present and future. It is a day that offers the opportunity for all to acknowledge all of women’s accomplishments and to re-dedicate ourselves to the empowerment of all women and girls around the world.

Join us for a 1/2 hour silent sitting/meditation and hold in our hearts all the great women who have graced our lives and the world at large. May we send our compassion and love to all women who live in the despair of poverty, inequality, violence, trafficking, slavery, and abuse. May we envision a world where no woman is marginalised or abused, and where we can all live together as brothers and sisters, in peace and freedom.

When: Friday 8 March 6:30pm to 7:10pm

Where: In between Gabriel’s Wharf and National Theatre, Southbank, SE1 9PP in the space directly above Thames Beach (see picture: http://bit.ly/130LXgJ)

Nearest stations: Southwark & Waterloo

Bring (optional): Something comfortable to sit on. A candle. Something meaningful to you that honours an important woman/women in your life – eg, a photo. A small gift such as a flower or a handwritten poem/quote to give away to a friend or stranger at the end of the event.

After the sitting, we will have a 10 minute soundbath where we chant any sounds we like, such as Om, Ah, Nah.

This event is open to everyone, women and men, children, people from any religion, faith and culture.

Find out more about International Women’s Day and ways to support women all year round.

Join us on MeetUp for updates on future meditation flash mobs.

RSVP on Facebook

Saturday, 15th of December, 2012
Dharma Cloud Temple
Plum Village

Dear Adam,

Let me start by saying that I wish for you to find peace. It would be easy just to call you a monster and condemn you for evermore, but I don’t think that would help either of us. Given what you have done, I realize that peace may not be easy to find. In a fit of rage, delusion and fear—yes, above all else, I think, fear—you thought that killing was a way out. It was clearly a powerful emotion that drove you from your mother’s dead body to massacre children and staff of Sandy Hook School and to turn the gun in the end on yourself. You decided that the game was over.

But the game is not over, though you are dead. You didn’t find a way out of your anger and loneliness. You live on in other forms, in the torn families and their despair, in the violation of their trust, in the gaping wound in a community, and in the countless articles and news reports spilling across the country and the world—yes, you live on even in me. I was also a young boy who grew up in Newtown. Now I am a Zen Buddhist monk. I see you quite clearly in me now, continued in the legacy of your actions, and I see that in death you have not become free.

You know, I used to play soccer on the school field outside the room where you died, when I was the age of the children you killed. Our team was the Eagles, and we won our division that year. My mom still keeps the trophy stashed in a box. To be honest, I was and am not much of a soccer player. I’ve known winning, but I’ve also known losing, and being picked last for a spot on the team. I think you’ve known this too—the pain of rejection, isolation and loneliness. Loneliness too strong to bear.

You are not alone in feeling this. When loneliness comes up it is so easy to seek refuge in a virtual world of computers and films, but do these really help or only increase our isolation? In our drive to be more connected, have we lost our true connection?

I want to know what you did with your loneliness. Did you ever, like me, cope by walking in the forests that cover our town? I know well the slope that cuts from that school to the stream, shrouded by beech and white pine. It makes up the landscape of my mind. I remember well the thrill of heading out alone on a path winding its way—to Treadwell Park! At that time it felt like a magical path, one of many secrets I discovered throughout those forests, some still hidden. Did you ever lean your face on the rough furrows of an oak’s bark, feeling its solid heartwood and tranquil vibrancy? Did you ever play in the course of a stream, making pools with the stones as if of this stretch you were king? Did you ever experience the healing, connection and peace that comes with such moments, like I often did?

Or did your loneliness know only screens, with dancing figures of light at the bid of your will? How many false lives have you lived, how many shots fired, bombs exploded and lives lost in video games and movies?

By killing yourself at the age of 20, you never gave yourself the chance to grow up and experience a sense of how life’s wonders can bring happiness. I know at your age I hadn’t yet seen how to do this.

I am 37 now, about the age my teacher, the Buddha, realized there was a way out of suffering. I am not enlightened. This morning, when I heard the news, and read the words of my shocked classmates, within minutes a wave of sorrow arose, and I wept. Then I walked a bit further, into the woods skirting our monastery, and in the wet, winter cold of France, beside the laurel, I cried again. I cried for the children, for the teachers, for their families. But I also cried for you, Adam, because I think that I know you, though I know we have never met. I think that I know the landscape of your mind, because it is the landscape of my mind.

I don’t think you hated those children, or that you even hated your mother. I think you hated your loneliness.

I cried because I have failed you. I have failed to show you how to cry. I have failed to sit and listen to you without judging or reacting. Like many of my peers, I left Newtown at seventeen, brimming with confidence and purpose, with the congratulations of friends and the approbation of my elders. I was one of the many young people who left, and in leaving we left others, including you, just born, behind. In that sense I am a part of the culture that failed you. I didn’t know yet what a community was, or that I was a part of one, until I no longer had it, and so desperately needed it.

I have failed to be one of the ones who could have been there to sit and listen to you. I was not there to help you to breathe and become aware of your strong emotions, to help you to see that you are more than just an emotion.

But I am also certain that others in the community cared for you, loved you. Did you know it?

In eighth grade I lived in terror of a classmate and his anger. It was the first time I knew aggression. No computer screen or television gave a way out, but my imagination and books. I dreamt myself a great wizard, blasting fireballs down the school corridor, so he would fear and respect me. Did you dream like this too?

The way out of being a victim is not to become the destroyer. No matter how great your loneliness, how heavy your despair, you, like each one of us, still have the capacity to be awake, to be free, to be happy, without being the cause of anyone’s sorrow. You didn’t know that, or couldn’t see that, and so you chose to destroy. We were not skillful enough to help you see a way out.

With this terrible act you have let us know. Now I am listening, we are all listening, to you crying out from the hell of your misunderstanding. You are not alone, and you are not gone. And you may not be at peace until we can stop all our busyness, our quest for power, money or sex, our lives of fear and worry, and really listen to you, Adam, to be a friend, a brother, to you. With a good friend like that your loneliness might not have overwhelmed you.

But we needed your help too, Adam. You needed to let us know that you were suffering, and that is not easy to do. It means overcoming pride, and that takes courage and humility. Because you were unable to do this, you have left a heavy legacy for generations to come. If we cannot learn how to connect with you and understand the loneliness, rage and despair you felt—which also lie deep and sometimes hidden within each one of us—not by connecting through Facebook or Twitter or email or telephone, but by really sitting with you and opening our hearts to you, your rage will manifest again in yet unforeseen forms.

Now we know you are there. You are not random, or an aberration. Let your action move us to find a path out of the loneliness within each one of us. I have learned to use awareness of my breath to recognize and transform these overwhelming emotions, but I hope that every man, woman or child does not need to go halfway across the world to become a monk to learn how to do this. As a community we need to sit down and learn how to cherish life, not with gun-checks and security, but by being fully present for one another, by being truly there for one another. For me, this is the way to restore harmony to our communion.

Douglas Bachman (Br. Phap Luu)
who grew up at 22 Lake Rd. in Newtown, CT., is a Buddhist monk and student of the Vietnamese Zen Master and monk Thich Nhat Hanh. As part of an international community, he teaches Applied Ethics and the art of mindful living to students and school teachers. He lives in Plum Village Monastery, in Thenac, France.

Due to many of the core members being away on 22nd December, we are unable to run the Afternoon of Mindfulness on this date. We are sorry if you were looking forward to this. We hope to see you on January 12th 2013 for our next session. 

You are always welcome to attend the Mornings of Mindfulness with our sister sangha, Heart of London sangha, which take place every Saturday in the same venue. 

We will no longer be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Saturday afternoons of the month from February 2013 onwards but instead on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. We will continue to send out reminders about this change. 

Next Afternoons of Mindfulness

12 January 2013
26 January 2013
2nd February 2013
16 February 2013

Our next fortnightly Afternoon of Mindfulness is on Saturday 8th December, at our usual time from 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM at our usual venue. We will practice various mindfulness practices in the tradition of our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay, as he is affectionately known.

FESTIVE EVENING – SATURDAY NIGHT 8TH DECEMBER
After the session, we invite you to a festive mindful meal. It will be a wonderful opportunity to spend some informal time with one another before many of us depart for our holidays. You are welcome to bring a vegetarian dish to share with us. Feel free to bring musical instruments and games too.

WRITE FOR RIGHTS
We will also be taking part in Amnesty International’s greeting card campaign, where we will be writing a message of support to prisoners of conscience. You can bring along some prepared cards, or we can make cards on the night.

MEDITATION FLASH MOB IN BRITISH MUSEUM – 14TH DECEMBER
Join us for the final meditation flash mob of the year in the magnificent Great Court of the British Museum, from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM. In the spirit of the festive season, we invite you to bring a handmade gift to give to a stranger or friend afterwards.

Click here for the Facebook invitation

To everyone who came to the meditation flash mob in the Natural History Museum on Saturday – thank you.

Photo: Brian Edwards

You’re invited to a Meditation Flash Mob in the Natural History Museum

Saturday 17 November 5 PM to 5:40 PM

In the Earth Hall

Facebook event page

Around 100 young people gathered together to practice mindfulness as guided by monastic students from Plum Village, international monastery and meditation centre of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thank you to everyone who came! Your practice and openness was a gift to us and made the day feel very peaceful and at ease. A big thank you to the chaplain at Kings College for allowing us to transform the beautiful space into a meditation hall.

You can see pictures of the event here

Also check out the pictures of the meditation flash mob that took place after the workshop.