TPL

Trevor Leggett: Well, this is a path not in the ordinary sense, because in the ordinary sense, a journey is me as I am going to some o’ther place and arriving as I am, but in another place. The place is not moved. The ‘I itself changes. It’s like the path from childhood to adulthood, or it’s like a path from not realizing something to coming to realize something. Change is inwardly. In the book Training the Mind through Yoga, which is the one on which we have these talks based, this phrase is often used. One can be in the kindergarten stage, but very small children in imprisonment don’t feel it confining. Provided things aren’t too bad, the prison area is big enough for them. The wall is not something that holds you back, it’s something to bounce a ball against or to shelter from the wind. They don’t …

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A string of jewels, a string of pearls, is an image used in the Gita. The fact is that if pearls individually and scattered all over the place in dusty corners, have no beauty.    They are of no ornamental value, and of little other value.  But when they are brought together in a string they make a most beautiful necklace. They can be strung together in various ways.  If you see black pearls they are very valuable especially the big ones, but they look horrible. They look like ordinary pearls rinsed in ink, but they are very valuable.  Sometimes the necklace has a big black pearl and two or three ordinary pearls and another black pearl, sometimes all the black pearls are put together and are arranged in gradation of size.  There are many such ways of arranging them on a string to make a necklace. In the same way, …

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The judo teacher. He says, “You may get technical excellence, but it will be of no use to you as a training for life” . When we move from judo to life we have to be able to extend this. In a judo club it’s very important for all the members to take part. Not to have the accounts done by a chartered accountant who is a member, so that he takes over and does them marvellously and the ordinary members don’t do anything. No. The ordinary members too must take part in that, under his supervision, but they must take part in that. And you’ll get somebody who’s more or less fearless. For when it comes to accounts he says, “Oh I’ve never done that. Oh no I don’t think I could do that ! ” You say, “Come on, where’s that fighting spirit you’re always talking about?” Oh …

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Trevor Leggett: My spiritual friend  Wherever I am my heart is my refuge; In the real of existence my heart is king When I despair of reason’s mischief. God knows I am grateful to my heart. -Ustad Khalilullah Khalili- I first met Trevor at Shanti Sadan, the meditation centre set up by his guru, Dr. Shastri, in Notting Hill Gate. Our initial connection was through judo and our shared conviction that judo was somehow more than just a sport. Trevor had articulated this idea in his talks and his books, particularly Zen And the Ways and the Spirit of Budo. I had assumed that Trevor’s interest in Zen and meditation practice had developed as a consequence of his interest in judo as ‘shugyo’, a Japanese term to denote a character building activity, and his judo practice his. In some ways, I placed him in the sort of category of wise …

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An unscripted Dharma Talk – given by Michael O’Neill in January 2017 I’m going to tell a little story that I read in a book from Trevor Leggett called The Old Zen Master.             Just by way of introduction, this really began before Christmas 2016. As we were leaving the Buddhist Society, we met the people from the Trevor Leggett group. They were a very serious group of people, about half a dozen mostly elderly gentlemen who obviously sat with Trevor Leggett back in the day. .             I actually had come across Trevor Leggett already, as most of us have done over the years. I came across him very early on and his was probably the first or second book about Buddhism that I ever read. He also wrote books about judo and he was a very accomplished judoka. So many many years ago I had read Zen and …

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Memories and thoughts about afternoons spent with Trevor Leggett in my student days: Carrying water and chopping wood or rather making tea and cheese sandwiches.  “Look on this time of friendship as a lucky windfall, for after this time has passed, the wheel of heaven will make many a turn and bring another day and another night.”- Hafez  It was a spring afternoon and I had finished my lectures for the day. It was a short walk from SOAS to Tottenham Court Road tube station and then a 15-minute ride to Notting Hill Gate. I have always had an excess of energy and usually ran up the stairs at underground stations rather than using the escalator or the lifts. Today was no different. I bounded up the stairs and out into the street.  I walked into the fishmonger and picked up Trevor’s order of smoked salmon. He ordered it every …

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I first had the good fortune to meet Trevor in the early 1970’s when, with my wife-to-be, we made weekly trips from Kent to London to attend talks given by speakers from Shanti Sadan at the Friends’ Meeting House in Hampstead.  A different speaker was chosen for each talk throughout the six week termly series and as – unsurprisingly, since most members of Shanti Sadan had no prior experience of public speaking – the quality varied greatly, it was always with delight that we saw Trevor taking the chair. And anyone who has listened to the recordings of Trevor speaking on this website will readily appreciate just how much his audiences enjoyed his talks. At that time Trevor was in his fifties with a personality and presence that inspired both awe and attraction.  In our early years as members of Shanti Sadan, although he was always approachable, we spent little …

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Trevor Pryce Leggett was a multi-talented man who excelled in whatever he seriously set his mind upon. His major interests were Adhyatma Yoga, a well-trodden classical path to the realization of the infinite and all-pervasive Supreme Self, and its non-dualist philosophical basis, Advaita Vedanta; Zen Buddhism; Judo and Japanese culture. His creative genius gave rise to the production of scholarly and instructive works, Yoga and Zen teaching stories, practical manuals, Sanskrit and Japanese translations and transcriptions as well as his broadcasts to Japan, in his professional capacity as head of the BBC’s Japanese service. Among the set of brilliant talents that  constituted his personality, two qualities in particular enabled Trevor Leggett to succeed in making a profound contribution, not only in terms of his life’s productive output, but upon the lives of others. His intelligence determined the effort, training and discipline necessary in a given field, born of the ability …

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There is a mediaeval Japanese story about learning which is quite revealing. A man turns up at a mediaeval court, supposed to be about 13th century, and it is noteworthy that the local lords are, in the cheerful, democratic, traditional Japanese way, often presented as  fools. Anyway, the local lord is there and the man turns up at his court and asks for a job of employment. The local lord says, ‘What can you do?’ The man replies, ‘I know the unusual things that other people don’t know’. ‘Oh, oh, well, that might be useful, mightn’t it?’ so the lord takes him on. Well, the man’s at the court and periodically there are court crises when the accounts are miles behind and they ask him to lend a hand. He says, ‘No, no, the accountants can do the accounts, clerks can do the accounts. I do the things that no one …

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