It must be hard for the parents of the babies who lose their lives each day in the UK. We live in a modern developed country with an advanced healthcare system. People do not expect to lose a child and their grieving is often complicated by a lack of explanation as to what happened to their child.

I do not want to take away from the painful personal reality of the situation. However, sometimes, unfortunately, people end up turning such hard to swallow facts into a defence that stops them from grieving. Then they might do something like start “Baby Loss Awareness Week”.

Each day in the UK seventeen babies die before term or soon after birth. Each day in the poorer parts of the world 30,000 babies and children under the age of five die because they do not have simple medication or food.

I think fixing the economics that lead to this has a higher priority in the grand scheme of things than trying to reduce further the causes of loss of life in the rich world. Lives all have the same value: one persons feeling,hopes, dreams and fears are realised, or unrealised.

I tried falling in love again recently. The highs of endorphins created by the positive feelings and the tales one tells oneself of “what will be” have worn off now. Indeed the last two weeks has seen me go from full of expectation and elated to dashed and deeply dispirited. My love turned out to be not what she said she was.

It all ended before it began. We chatted on the net and spoke on the phone and, it seems, will never meet in person. Yet I feel as though my heart has been torn out. Convinced this person had in her what I would seek in a life partner, my mind turned it into a fact of sorts. When it became clear things were not OK I was left desperately clinging to any raft.

I’m not clinging anymore. I’m riding the waves a little better. The shock to my system has worn off and my system is recovering. I am meditating again and others are benefitting from that as well as myself. I feel I shall go back to my original plan which, although this may sound crazy, is as simple as “do not ask, do not promise, do not expect”.

Sitting is nice.

Economic monotheism and the war on terrorism go hand in hand. They are the sacred cows of the new world order. Five years on it is time to lay to rest the victims of the horrific attacks in America and the war their deaths was used to justify.

We must do this if we are to live in a peaceful world where 73% of scientists do not work in weapons research, where war is not the number one worldwide industry, where starving children to death does not make economic sense and where innocents at work are not taken from this earth by such unforgiveable acts of violence.

It is the fifth anniversary of September the eleventh and everyone is making lots of noise about it. It was indeed a horrific and unwarranted act, debased and obscene in every way. I do not wish to pretend that it was not that.

However since September the eleventh, 2001 a total of approximately fifty four million, seven hundred and fifty thousand children have died needlessly in the third world because of the economics of market forces that the terrorists so hated.

Hatred does not help. The acts of the terrorists were without doubt misdirected. But so have the efforts of leading western governments since that day. If you want to stop terrorism stop children starving and dying needless deaths from curable illnesses. Stop war in all forms, including the “war” om terrorism. Solve those problems, reduce the anger and start building a world where we care for each other.

This is the political and personal project of freedom that will pay the dividend of lasting peace. Any attempt to control and cajole will only impose economic burdens that create more division, more hatred, more anger and more terror.

It really is that simple.

Western psychology makes much of the conscious and unconscious. The nature of the entities that make them up and the balance twixt the two is forever debated, not least because the solidification of concepts inherent in having the debate creates ficticious walls in the subject.

Buddhist psychology, with its fundamental doctrine of “Anatman” - a sanskrit word that literally means no-soul but would better be read as ‘in reality no solid self-existing ego’ - denies the validity of the discussion.

Buddhist Psychology says neither the unconscious or conscious mind are self-existing or inherently “real”. They are both mind. There is observed mind and unobserved mind. Unobserved mind is troublesome in that it presents to observed mind its desires as overwhelming and fully formed desires. It is inherently troublesome as a category of ignorance. It leads to suffering.

In her excellent book “Working With Anger” Thubten Chodron writes “The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life”.

The unconscious mind is screaming for your attention. You are so busy being your conscious mind, most of which is habitual, you just don’t notice. That is the point of “Shamatha”, Tibetain for basic sitting-calming mediitation, which teaches you to allow identification with thoughts to drop slowly away revealing the sea of impulses which bubble up as “Me”.

This calms eventually achieving peace and then the mind becomes more flexible and stronger and can be applied to conscious thinking meditation to comprehend or see truth. Then the meditator is achieving a dual fruition of peace and understanding. With discipline and effort, patience and generosity comes the natural development of wisdom mind which can then be compassionately applied to all one encounters.

I stood watching the day go by from the window, And the rain came down. Little drops froze in space then jumped backwards as the wind whipped round the corner of the building and dragged them off course. Trying to hold myself on course I meditate as August turns quickly to autumn. The mind doesn’t clear itself unless the right conditions are found. Thoughts drag us off course just like the raindrops. We learn when we pay attention and become more adept. We become stronger and more steadfast.

The rain doesn’t stop falling nor the wind blowing yet these things stop being the influence they were. The habits they triggered become unwoven from the fabric of the person, unweaving and weakening its structure in turn. Each time a habit is experienced and turned around that part of us which grows towards truth grows bolder. And still the rian comes down yet we do not feel bothered by it. It is.

Growing Up Broken is hard. Yet it is easier than growing up whole and being hurt, I guess, or I would not have done it. Fixing yourself seems an impossible task. I have been aware I was damaged goods for some twelve years. Asking for help gets you practicaly nowhere in the United Kingdom. Eveyone is in denial.

The facts speak for themselves: 25%-40% sexually assaulted in some way as children; 90% or so of prostitues, addicts and criminals abused. The problem in our society, the single biggest cost to us all, is sexual abuse of children. And do not think it is strangers doing it. Some is, but most are abused by close relatives meant to care for them and family friends or older siblings.

Growing up broken was hard. Breaking down, mentally, then coming together was tough. Only to have my body injured and untreated by an uncaring and ineffective National Health Service such that it has broken down beneath my healing mind has been a burden and a blessing. I can not imagine I would have the focus of mind I have now without this process.

It seems the National Health Service are trialling marijhuana joint prescriptions for pain relief.

New Labour’s mantra needs careful interpretation. “We are taking difficult decisions for the long term” - on the face of it this sounds fine. But, difficult, in New Labour speak means “we do not understand the issues” and long-term means “we won’t live to see the effects”.

So Mr Blair and New Labour are making decisions they don’t understand the implications of and with which they will not have to live. They are screwing generations to come because they are making the wrong decisions. This is only to be expected from a man and government that backed Bush’s illegal war in Iraq, lied about the logic and then tried very hard to hide the truth.

Pants. The world is pants. Some days you just feel pissed. I like being silly on those days. Rarely does it take long to cheer up and stop being a bore. Today was a great day from the start to the finish. I couldn’t resist the headline