by martin bradley
F
or me, this year (2021) has turned out to be the year of the Buddha. In February, on my seventieth birthday, I took a tuk tuk to Cambodia’s ancient city Angkor Wat. That magnificent place had been built in the 12th century firstly as a Hindu holy city then, later, as a Buddhist one. I was there, once again, to see those impressive temples (Wats) and walk in the footsteps of the ancients. It was somewhat of a surreal experience as those were Covid 19 times and, luckily for me, there were few tourists. I had the expanse of the ruins virtually to myself and could see more of the city than on my first visit in 2012 . The unfortunate circumstances of the virulent pandemic meant that by September I was back in England. But, fortunately, I was able to visit Colchester’s Mercury Theatre and listen to a sublime extract from ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’ read by none other than the author, Hanif Kureishi, himself. More recently, on one Saturday later in September, it was my first day at the Colchester Buddhist Centre (a charity registered, in May 1995, as The Triratna Buddhist Community, Colchester). The Centre had freshly reopened after pandemic lockdowns and times of physical distancing. I had signed up for a short (6 Saturday) course on ‘Buddhism and Meditation’ at that Centre. I had many reasons to do so, not least to get 96
me out of my semi-monastic life in my rented double room and to interact with real people (as opposed to those wraiths on Youtube or Zoom) and, of course, to learn more about the practical aspects of Buddhism. The time had come, or so I reckoned, to enquire beyond the reading of Ram Dass, Alan Watts and Jack Kornfield. I felt the urge to go back to basics, to actively involve myself in Western Buddhist teaching, and thereby understand a little more about its practice. Some while ago (in Selangor, Malaysia), I had attended monthly meetings with a circle of Chinese Malaysians seeking to practise dayto-day Buddhism. It was helpful, but I couldn’t help thinking that the meetings echoed those of Christian practise, replete with singing to guitar or piano accompaniment which seemed very much like hymns, not to mention the bowing before an idol of Buddha which again felt like the genuflection to the crucified Catholic Christ. That wasn’t for me, but my first day at the Colchester Buddhist Centre was very different. I’d just walked a mile from my domicile to the Centre. I arrived early. Early enough to sit at a bus stop outside the Centre gathering my thoughts. It was the first time that I had interacted in a group setting since June this year. That was when my Cambodian teaching days had ended. Those British Summer months had glided past. With a growing distance from my teaching
