Alexander Stuart

Photograph by Hudson Chow-Stuart. My first meditation workshop in Sonora will be on Saturday April 14th from 1:30pm-3:30pm at the Central Sierra Arts Council , 193 S. Washington Street, Sonora. It is called The Pleasure of Breathing and will explore the role meditation and Buddhism have played in my life for the past 21 years.  I will read beautiful, inspiring passages from some of the books I reflect upon daily, such as T S Eliot's Four Quartets, The Dhammapada (Buddha's Teachings) and the Bhagavad Gita - and I will teach the basic elements of Tibetan anapanasati, or Mindfulness of Breathing, the meditation technique I have practiced most over the past two decades. It is very simple: a matter of focusing your mind on your breathing and using that to slow - and ultimately still - the constant current of thoughts and emotions that assault our minds at every instant of the day, so that we can appreciate more the expansiveness and beauty of each single timeless momen

My offering of the day. Simple - and it's all we need. It also reminds me of one of my favorite David Bowie tracks from Young Americans, called simply, Win . It's very laid back (long, sultry sax sound from the 70s) but maybe it could become an Obama theme tune. Now is the time to use the power of thought and personal energy - and social media - to create a context in which (a) Obama's second term is inevitable and is the result of a landslide; and (b) the GOP continues to fracture, dividing between radical extremes (of which there are many) and so-called "moderates" so that it is out of office for the next 20 years at least.  We create a context in which even the combined might of the Koch Bros' money and Fox News are increasingly wasted and irrelevant.  Now is the time to start creating a sense that Obama and the Democrats are the only solution to the problems that Republican thinking since Reagan has created.

I wanted to revisit one of my favorite pieces from this blog, A Meditation On Meditation, which explains something of what Buddhism and meditation have meant to me for the past 21 years or so... (This piece was originally published on Monday, September 6, 2010.)     It's vital, I think - especially as the father of two young children - to have some moments in the day of silence and stillness, time in which you can be totally "alone" and quiet and reflect on who fundamentally you are, and ask the question: what is this world - this extraordinary and beautiful though sometimes savage - cosmos that we live in? For me, that time is early morning, sometimes very early morning. I especially love the dawn, although often I wake to write much earlier, sometimes as early as 3am or 4am (I also mostly go to bed early and I only ever wake naturally; I would not be so happy getting up at 3am if it were forced on me by an alarm). In summer especially the dawn is a trul

The Naropa Buddha by Joan Anderson and Robert Spellman. I will be starting a mixed meditation and literary workshop soon, both locally and online, mixing my 21 years' experience of anapanasati (Tibetan Mindfulness of Breathing) with my daily readings from beautiful, spiritual works such as T S Eliot's Four Quartets, The Dhammapada (Buddha's Teachings) and the Bhagavad Gita. I call my approach to Buddhism, "Lazy Buddhism" - which may well be the title of the workshops, although "The Pleasure of Breathing" may be another. I hope you will join me for them. More details soon - especially about the online sessions.

Give me an H - Los Angeles photographed from behind the Hollywood Sign by Dwayne Moser. For some reason, I can't post a reply to a comment to a post from Peter Delaunay regarding the High Tower Apartments piece below, so I am publishing his comment and my reply here.  The photograph above is one of a series of spectacular large-scale photographs taken (mostly) from behind the highly iconic Hollywood Sign by our friend and artist Dwayne Moser. All of them are remarkable - not least in the fresh perspective they give on both the sign and the city it has come to represent. First, here is the comment from Peter Delaunay: Great post, Alexander. Very interesting, and so good to know that it's still there! I was briefly in LA in 1980 and have always thought that the Long Goodbye is the film that most pictures the city as I remember it. Obviously it's not the whole of LA - but its a picture that I remember. Is that still the case ? I posted the following o