Foreword.

Foreword.

My life began in a humble home in a little town in Scotland known as Rosyth. Rosyth was not far from the ancient capital of Scotland, Dunfermline where the heart of King Robert the Bruce is interred in Dunfermline Abbey. I went to school both primary and secondary in Rosyth, where I found education and I did not go hand in hand. I found reading and writing not just a chore but a nightmare. Now I would have been diagnosed as dyslexic and would have been given extra help. Then, that was not the case, and I struggled on making slow progress.

I took life as I found it, unlike my schoolmates I did not like football or for that matter sport. This was to change in my middle years when I found that I was able to run long distances and began marathon running.  Struggling with academia I found pleasure in long walks with my father, a very unassuming man with a wealth of knowledge about birds and nature.

From these times of walking, I discovered that I, like him, had a love of nature and wild places. My first real interest had been ignited and I began to learn more and more about nature. I was given the opportunity to learn to read music and to play the clarinet, both of which I found easier than reading or writing. Both of these interests were later to have a changing effect on my life.

I had never had an interest in religion or church attendance either as a schoolboy or when I had left school and began working as an apprentice in a butchers shop. 

It was at this stage in my life that I met for the first time the local Parish Minister, who was to set my life on a new track. He persuaded me to visit the church on a weekday and meet with some young people he had encouraged to get together to write new and modern hymns. I went along and before very many weeks had passed I was involved with them in setting up a group to play and sing hymns that we ourselves had composed.

The minister who had now become a good friend was impressed with my writing of hymns and arranged for me to attend a weekly class within the University of Edinburgh to study and listen to lectures on Theology. 

I had decided to make another real attempt to improve my reading and writing skills and with the encouragement of an older lady I had met in these classes I gave up being a butcher, left home and headed off to work and live in The Abbey Church of Iona. I was to work on the restoration of the building and in return, I would be given a room and food and a place to study to achieve the necessary qualification to enter university to study theology.

I was now well on my journey to search and find the meaning and purpose of life. For the next twenty years, having entered and studied and graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in theology, I became a parish minister.

After ministering in three different parishes, working as a prison chaplain, a hospital and industrial chaplain I went through a real period of change.  I took up running, became a vegetarian soon after. I began running in the wild places reviving my love of nature.

Five years later I left the ministry and returned to university to become a teacher of world religions and philosophy. Now instead of teaching and preaching only Christianity, I found myself teaching Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Judaism along with Christianity.

It was during this period of my life I began to seek a deeper understanding of life and my place within it. I discovered Tai Chi and Taoism. More importantly, I discovered the Tao Te Ching the work of Lao Tzu.

I found in Lao Tzu a seeker after wisdom and the meaning of life. He, like me, had a deep love of nature. It was while living a life of solitude that his teaching took real shape and form and the Tao Te Ching came into being as a collection of his teachings.

Here I found, in his words much of what I had been seeking in my own life. From reading his words, from practising Tai Chi, learning to channel  Chi, the energy of all life, I found a depth of understanding I had found nowhere else.

My first book, Tao Te Ching an Interpretive Translation, I offered a modern translation guided by my meditation and reading of his words. Now I return to the Tao Te Ching and offer my thoughts on each of the chapters as translated in that earlier book. 

I was challenged to paint and have been very fortunate in that my artwork has been appreciated and now hangs on walls in many homes around the world. Over the years I have come into contact with a great many fellow artists and many from other creative disciplines such as wood turning, poetry writing, authors and many more. From this has come this book, taking another look at the Tao Te Ching.  I offer some insight into the work for all who are involved in the creative process. I include those who are involved in knitting and embroidery, anybody at all, who in any way are part of the community of creative people, in its broadest sense.

I offer you, The Tao of Mindfulness. For Creative Minds and Creative People. I hope in its pages you find inspiration and understanding, along with the calm and peace that I have found in writing it.