Do you remember the day you mastered the art of riding a bicycle? Of course you do. For me, it was the culmination of a rather lengthy, and very frustrating process, and but for the perseverance of my father, I might never have learned at all.
I just couldn’t seem to get it. It looked so simple, but the harder I tried, the worse I got. Then suddenly it clicked, I had it nailed, and from that day on I have been able to ride a bike.
Ok, so it’s no huge revelation, but I think learning about Buddhism is a bit like learning to ride a bike.
As you learn, about The Oneness of Self and the Universe, about Karma, about Life-Energy or The Ten Worlds, you also learn to see yourself, life and the Universe in a different way. And just in the way that having learned to ride a bicycle, you never unlearn the skill, once you learn to see the world through different eyes, you never unlearn that either.
Deep in my heart, I know that I am different for having Buddhism at the centre of my life. Some people have noticed that change, others ask what has changed and how I know that it’s a real change, not just a fad, or ‘a phase I’m going through’.
Well as I say, once you see the world differently, you just can’t un-see it that way. It’s a wonderful change, and I’m very confident, not to say delighted, that it’s a permanent change.
If you think about it, although we may not be destined to die five minutes from now, we are all, without exception, going to die at some point. We can count on it 100%. There is nothing surer than this.
I love the way this poem beautifully encapsulates the stages of learning, and the long, long road to enlightenment …
We are all made of the same stuff, in fact everything we know about through science supports my Buddhist belief that we are at one with the Universe, being literally made of stardust.
In the true reality of life as viewed from the enlightened state of a Buddha, one who has broken free of all delusion, all things are equal, transcending distinctions and differences between subject and object, self and others, mind and body, the spiritual and the material. 
Behind our offices in Ringwood, runs the Bickley Mill stream, a small tributary of the river Avon. In winter it can be quite a torrent, but since the long dry summer, that flow has slowed to little more than a trickle. So with a little time to spare first thing this morning, I stood on the bank watching the water moving slowly past.
There is nobody lonelier or more unhappy than a person who does not know the pure joy of creating a life for her or himself.
Every day can be an adventure into the unknown. If we allow ourselves to go with the flow of events, we can find ourselves in new situations, with new challenges.
If you ride a bike on the roads around Britain you’ll know how lovely it is to find yourself on a stretch of nice new smooth tarmac. The lumps and bumps of our older repaired roads really can rattle your bones, so the new surface is a real treat.
Sorting out our life can be a bit like solving a Rubik’s cube, each aspect is like one of the faces, separate but all connected. We work to get one face, let’s say Blue sorted out. On it’s own that task is pretty easy and we complete it quite quickly. So we move on to to the Red face, again it’s pretty easy, in isolation, so we get it sorted and we feel a satisfaction in that. But then we turn the cube back to the Blue side, and it’s all messed up again, because it is connected to the Red side.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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