Angulimala

Springhill

This year the annual Springhill Buddha Grove Celebration will be on September 14th. More later.

Workshops

Angulimala Workshops in the remainder of 2008 will be at 10 o’clock in the morning at The Forest Hermitage on June 7th, September 6th and December 6th.

These Workshops are for Buddhist prison chaplains, otherwise attendance is by invitation and to Angulimala members only.

Needed: more Buddhist chaplains.

Buddhist Prison Chaplains are there to make available Buddhist Teaching and Practice in their prison. They are to encourage the development of Morality, Meditation and Wisdom and to be a ‘good friend’ to Buddhist inmates and staff. I hope they will succeed in making a real Buddhist contribution to the life of their prison. To join our team and be a Buddhist prison chaplain you need to be a committed Buddhist living by a moral standard of at least the Five Precepts and you should be a regular meditator. You also need a competent understanding of Buddhist Teaching and Practice with a knowledge of Buddhist schools other than your own and you must be willing to help those of other schools. I hope that anyone doing this will enter into the work whole-heartedly and will be prepared to devote a certain amount of time and trouble to it. All Buddhist prison chaplains should be members of Angulimala and it is important to our drive to gradually raise the standard of our work as well as to the well-being of everyone concerned that all our chaplains attend at least one of the four training workshops held quarterly at The Forest Hermitage. At these you will find support and advice, resources and training, encouragement and companionship.

Prisons that we are particularly concerned to find a Buddhist chaplain for are as follows:

HMP LINCOLN

HMP RANBY

HMP MOORLAND (Yorkshire)

HMP NOTTINGHAM

HMYOI WETHERBY in W Yorkshire

HMP KIRKLEVINGTON GRANGE (North East)

The former all house men and it’s generally more practical for men to be the Buddhist chaplains but the following are women’s prisons and for these the preference would be a woman Buddhist chaplain:

HMP MORTON HALL near Lincoln

HMP NEW HALL near Wakefield

HMP ASKHAM GRANGE near York

This is not an exhaustive list and the situation changes from time to time, sometimes quite suddenly. Please get in touch with me if you would be interested in serving in any of these prisons or if you would like to support our work and help in any other way.