It has been several months since the opposition in Hong Kong swept the board in the District Council elections. The level of violence associated with the protest movement that began more than six months ago has much reduced. However, this may be just a lull before the storm, as the basic problems have not been […]
Graham Lock
On Not Taking Sides
It has been heartbreaking to watch my adopted city tearing itself apart and becoming awash with anger and hatred. The events that have led to this are well known both in Hong Kong and around the world and I am not going to rehearse them here. I did in fact sketch my own narrative of […]
Is Buddhism the Problem?
I have recently been recommending Sam Harris’ meditation app. Waking Up to some of my atheist friends who would not go near anything that smacked of religion. I like this app more than some other secular meditation apps I have come across, mainly because it doesn’t simply aim to help people to become less stressed. […]
Thinking About the Past
I have recently been thinking quite a lot about the past. I guess that’s what a lot of people do as they grow older. I find myself not only turning over events in my own life (as far as I can remember them) but also increasingly drawn to reading all kinds of history books. We […]
Squawking about climate change
When I was in Australia recently, a good friend—someone I know to be very well informed as well as very generous—accused me of “squawking” about climate change, and of being one of those people who go around trying to frighten people by talking about a coming apocalypse, while ignoring the fact that as much is […]
Reading Chinese Buddhist Texts and Honouring Different Traditions
Leshan Buddha. From chinaclickgo.com I have recently co-authored a reader in Chinese Buddhist texts (Lock and Linebarger 2018) . The reader is intended for students who have basic literacy in Chinese but need a lot of help in reading and understanding the difficult language in which most Chinese Buddhist texts are written. I would of […]
Thinking about death and dying
I turned 68 a couple of months ago. That’s just two years short of 70, which to my ears sounds seriously elderly. If I conform to statistical norms, then I can expect somewhere between 10 and 15 more years of life. But statistics are of course just statistics. My father lived to over 90. On […]
Am I Making Progress?
The central metaphor of Buddhism is that of a path – a path that leads from Samsara to Nirvana, and a path that encompasses the cultivation of ethical conduct, meditation and wisdom. Soon after I began to mediate relatively seriously, I was introduced to the mapping out of the path in terms of stages of […]
The Story of the Doctor
I’m going to tell a story. It’s a story that has been floating around in my head for years, perhaps decades. I don’t know where it came from. It’s likely I once heard a teacher tell it. Or maybe I read it somewhere. I’m sure I have also embellished it a bit over the years. […]
On trying not to eat animals
Graham Lock I like meat. I like waking up in the morning to the sound and smell of sizzling bacon. I like the aroma that wafts out when an oven is opened and a leg of lamb cooked to perfection in it own juices is slowly lifted out. I like chomping on pork crackling and […]