Mark Leonard

Student life can be hectic and stressful as has been documented in recent times. Colleges do make provision for nurturing health and well-being.  However mindfulness has not tended to be one of the skills offered in this context.

So it made sense for So-Wide to provide an eight week mindfulness course for Wolfson College in partnership with its sister charity OMC (Oxford Mindfulness Centre).  This was an experiment to see how teaching mindfulness skills could fit into student life and help issues such as student depression, anxiety etc. In turn, this can assist the student in being able to concentrate more effectively on their studies.

Geoff Bamford

Some 50 delegates attended. My fellow So-Wide trustee the Venerable Khammai Dhammasami was in the chair. With Philip Stanley from Naropa University, I helped to moderate.

We spoke of the need to facilitate horizontal exchanges between IABU members. The new website (http://www.iabu.org/) makes this easy.

An IABU Support Fund has been set up. The first priority will be to launch the IABU Visiting Lecturership (VL) Scheme. VLs from a larger institutions can offer significant help to smaller ones. Indonesia has a number of such smaller institutions, which can benefit greatly from the Scheme. For instance, it will help them in gaining accreditation from their government. It was agreed that the scheme should focus initially on Indonesia.

Richard Gombrich

Ven Dr Anil Sakya, aka Phra Sugandho, spent a month this term as Visiting Professor at the OCBS. Dr Anil, as he likes to be known, is a Newar who was ordained in Thailand and since then has mainly lived in Wat Bovoranives in Bangkok, where he has for many years been assistant secretary to the Supreme Patriarch of the Thai Sangha. He also holds teaching positions at 3 Bangkok universities: Mahamakut, Mahidol and Kasetsart.

Dr Anil gave two lectures on the distinctive features of Thai Buddhism in our weekly lecture series, and also spoke on the Nepali diaspora in Thailand to a group of anthropologists. All of these lectures were extremely informative and greatly appreciated.

Richard Gombrich

A few days ago I gave a lecture, which I began like this:
“Once many years ago I was having a conversation with my father, when he asked me to explain the Four Noble Truths to him. When I did so, he responded, “I see. It is like Stoicism.” Over the years I have read quite a few books and attended many lectures about Buddhism. Occasionally the Buddha’s teachings are compared to those of some western philosopher; in my experience the commonest such comparison is between the Buddha’s teaching of no soul and the philosophy of David Hume. But very rarely have I come across comparisons with Western classical philosophy.

Newsletter of the Society for the Wider Understanding of the Buddhist Tradition

• Buddhism and Science Colloquium
• Mindfulness in Schools Conference
• Bhutan Buddhism and Modern Life
• Online Resources Pali Links
• Activities in Oxford Spring and Summer 2010

Full newsletter

Newsletter of the Society for the Wider Understanding of the Buddhist Tradition

• Mindfulness in Schools Conference
• New Centre for OCBS
• Tibetan & Himalayan Online Resources
• Pali Conference Held in Bangkok
• Activities in Oxford January 2010

Full newsletter

Newsletter of the Society for the Wider Understanding of the Buddhist Tradition

• So-Wide's Work (I)
• Buddhist Art Lectur 2nd November
• Tibetan & Himalayan Online Resources
• Taking Mindfulness Back to Asia
• Exploring the Buddhist Classics
• OCBS Monograph Series

Full newsletter

July 2009. News and updates of OCBS and So-Wide: events, developments, a book and more. 

A new section for research articles is now on our website . Most recent article is by Eisel Mazard and titled 'Language Hierarchy, Buddhism and Worldly Authority in Yunnan, Laos, Etc.'

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