Jim Green
A few words about some of my headline interests as listed on the home page (for an extended exploration of these themes, see the first entry in my Blog - Beyond Boundaries)
WRITING - MEDITATION - MENTAL HEALTH - CRICKET - LIFE
WRITING
I’ve written extensively on mental health, wellbeing and meditation.
Giving Up Without Giving Up: Meditation and Depressions was published by Bloomsbury in 2019.
My forthcoming book is The Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment (Pitch, 2026).
Its ostensible focus is Ben Stokes, captain of the England Men's Test team, so it'll probably be in the Sport section of Waterstones, but it could just as well be in others too: Psychology; Spirituality, Self-Help; Religion...
Earlier publications have included:
The Recovery Book: Practical Help for Your Journey through Mental and Emotional Distress (Mind, 2006)
The Wellbeing Guide: Learning from Life (Mind, 2010)
I write poetry as well. Competitions I’ve won include: BBC Proms Poetry, 2015; George Crabbe Prize, 2017; Café Writers, 2022; Trio International, 2023.
MEDITATION
I first learned to meditate from Buddhist teachers in the early 1980s and continue to be fascinated by the wisdom and the practices of this way of being. The great Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh wonderfully sums up what is on offer:
‘The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.’
It wasn’t until 1999, though, when I encountered the World Community for Christian Meditation (‘a monastery without walls’) that I established a settled practice of meditation as the foundation for every day of my life. I also started to lead retreats and to teach this way of moving towards greater simplicity and freedom. There’s more information about these offering here:
MENTAL HEALTH
I’ve worked for a number of mental health organisations over the years, including Mind, both locally and nationally, Mental Health Foundation, Mental Health Media – and in partnership with the BBC and the Open University. As well as providing one-to-one support services, I produced information and campaigning videos, broadcast documentaries and teaching material, always with the emphasis on progressive and inclusive initiatives: how people experiencing mental and emotional distress can best help themselves and each other.
The emphasis has always been on making sure that the challenges, the losses and the terrors that we all experience don’t get over-medicalised. There’s a place for medical interventions, but an even bigger one for compassion, wisdom and patience. As Ronnie Laing said, ‘The way we treat each other is the treatment.’ And in this regard, what I have learned through psychotherapy and counselling (as a client and a student) has been valuable beyond measure.
CRICKET
This particular sport (ritual, piece of theatre, celebration – there are many ways of experiencing it) got a hold on me back in 1966 and never let go. From then on I watched and listened to all the cricket I could on TV and radio, and was stunned in all kinds of ways when I went to my first Test match – my first cricket match – at Old Trafford in 1968. Increasingly, this game, no longer played by flannelled fools, but steeped in the deep time of tradition, myth and memory, has felt like a powerful metaphor for all kinds of things – mainly life and death, and all the things like winning and losing, success and failure, loneliness and belonging that we take to be a matter of life and death. There’s much more to be said about this perspective on sport, and on this sport in particular. That’s why I wrote the Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment.
LIFE
See all of the above. And much more.
It might just boil down to this: when Shunryu Suzuki, the teacher who did more than anyone else to bring Zen to the West in the 1960s says:
‘Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink’
Does hearing that truth cause us to contract or expand? To retreat or connect? Do we play safe, or do we embrace life? Life in all its joyous, heart-breaking fullness.
