Personal Life
Garry Thomson married, in 1954, Mom Rajawongse Saisvasdi Svasti (known as Noy), the daughter of a Thai prince. They had four sons. Outside of his family and professional life the other consuming interest of Thomson's life was Buddhism, which dated back to his time as an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he started a Buddhist group.
For several decades he was a member of the Buddhist Society of London, one of Europe's earliest Buddhist organisations, serving on its council and as vice-president (1978–88); he also taught its basic meditation class. He gave public talks and wrote articles and book reviews for the society's journal Middle Way, and was a regular and enthusiastic contributor to the society's summer school. Producing numerous talks. Thomson proved a very influential teacher at a time when interest in Buddhist practice was growing rapidly. Not only was he unassuming, kind and generous with his time; he also brought to the practice of meditation a mind trained in science — intelligent, open, objective and questioning.
Read more about this topic: Garry Thomson
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The historian must have ... some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)