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Having drunk alcoholically from the age of 14 until 39, Vince Cullen sat in his kitchen and poured a glass of lager. He made a promise to himself that this would be his last drink… ever. That was 26-years ago. Since then, he has been associated with Wat Thamkrabok, the famous detox monastery in Thailand and Buddhist-oriented drug and alcohol recovery.

Vince founded and has facilitated Fifth Precept Sangha meditation-for-awakening Sit-and-Share meetings in England, Scotland, Ireland, India, Nepal, Thailand and the USA as part of his ongoing teaching of Hungry Ghost Retreats. He is a board member of the Buddhist Recovery Network and a keynote speaker at Buddhist Recovery Summits as well as a regular teacher for the Mindful Recovery Foundation.

Teachings

March 3rd 2024 — Higher Truths & Advanced Understandings
The Buddha's first official teaching was given to ‘noble ones’, that is the five ascetics who trained alongside Gautama, seeking an end to the suffering of this existence and an end to future rebirths.

The way out of suffering, the Buddha said, was the Middle Way; the middle path between the extremes of sensual existence. The first and most critical step of the Middle Way is appropriate understanding. And the first things we need to understand correctly are the realities and possibilities of being human.

Join me to explore what an advanced understanding of the ‘true’ realities of existence are and what an appropriate response might be in both our mental attitude and our engagement with the spectrum of sensuality.
July 2nd 2023 — The Basic Pattern of Things: Managing Expectations
The Buddha's First Truth or Realisation was "Life is painful and then you die." If this is true, then how do we respond to the disappointments of life and the certainty of death? This session will explore how we are conditioned to protect, promote and satisfy a 'self' which can never be satisfied. As the Buddha says "we are the slaves of craving". Our wise-heartedness meditation will cultivate an appropriate attitude to the vicissitudes of life.
April 3rd 2022 — Looking for the Truth - The 'secret' facts of life hidden in plain view
Human beings are not meant to be ‘happy’. We are compelled to keep chasing pleasure and to avoid pain. The Buddha presented a view of our existence as being a fragile process, ever changing, impermanent, inconstant, uncertain, subject to unavoidable pain and completely impersonal.

And, he also offered us insights and tools that encourage and facilitate the liberating possibility of seeing the basic patterns of things as they really are. But, the choice is ours whether we follow his suggestions or not!
July 4th 2021 — Cabbages and Condoms
Life is naturally difficult and disappointing. All living creatures are programmed to seek security and safety, and as humans, we also seek certainty. As a result, we often live life as unconscious prisoners of fear.

Fear of this world and of a next world, fear of sickness and of death, fear of insecurity and of being defenceless, fear of the unknown and of the unexpected. In short, fear of life itself.

In this month's Academy talk, I hope to explore some links between fear and craving. I will offer some ideas, particularly using the Heart practices including forgiveness, for how we might meet life on life's terms to live a compassionate, confident and fearless life.
February 2nd 2020 — Concrete Beds and Wooden Pillows... Waking Up the Hard Way (or Finding Insight but not Serenity)
Sixteen years ago, I sat my first 10-day silent ‘Anapansati’ retreat at Wat Suan Mokkh monastery in southern Thailand. Wat Suan Mokkh has a separate retreat centre famous for its basic accommodation which includes concrete beds and wooden pillows. There, from a seeming inability to meditate came a small but ultimately profound and eventually life-changing understanding. At the time I might have called this unexpected understanding an ‘Insight’ but right now I would say that it lacked ‘Mindfulness’ and at the time it didn’t lead to ‘Serenity’!

The Buddha says “...for the direct knowledge, for the full understanding, for the utter destruction, for the vanishing, for the fading away, for the cessation, for the giving up, for the relinquishment of hatred, delusion, anger, hostility, envy, miserliness, deceitfulness, arrogance, intoxication these two things are to be cultivated. Which two? Serenity and insight.”

Together, Serenity and Insight can bring an end to greed, an end to hatred and an end of ignorance, including all of the countless other intoxicating inclinations.

But both Serenity and Insight need to be supported by Right Mindfulness.

When we cultivate Serenity and Insight with Mindfulness, we open up new ways of seeing the self, new ways of seeing the world, and new ways of seeing ourselves in the world.

It is said that we are all living in a dream, that we are all asleep, we are all under a spell, an enchantment that blinds us to the inherent biases, distortions and dissonances that are deeply embedded in fundamentally and simply being human; in being ourselves.

The Buddha says that to find liberation, we must become disenchanted; we must break the spell in order to reveal what has been hidden from us. You do not have to sleep on concrete beds and wooden pillows to wake up to how things really are!

Please join me on Sunday, February 2, for some Mindfulness, some Serenity and maybe even some Insight at the Buddhist Recovery Academy.

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