For young and Buddhist-curious, a moment of modern mindfulness
Inside, a small group of young adults sat zazen as an ordained member of the Triratna order led them through a mindfulness meditation. 'Be aware of the sounds around you, the quality of the air,' the practice leader said. As if on cue, a bird began cooing in the temple's garden.
The fact that everyone in attendance was on the younger side was by design: The practice is part of the Young Buddhist Initiative, a program designed to help those age 35 and underexplore Buddhist teachings and meditation — no experience needed. Previous sessions have covered topics such as mindfulness, the three poisons (greed, hatred and delusion, the root mental states that Buddhists say cause human suffering) and the meaning of enlightenment.
The initiative is run by the Triratna Buddhist Community of New York and New Jersey, part of the international Triratna Buddhist Community founded in 1967 by Sangharakshita, the British spiritual teacher born as Dennis Lingwood. 'Triratna' refers to the Three Jewels or Three Refuges of Buddhism: the Buddha, Dharma (the Buddha's teachings) and Sangha (the Buddhist community). The fellowship describes itself as bringing Buddhist traditions into the modern world in a way that suits contemporary lives.
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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.
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In the United Kingdom, young people's retreats can attract more than 100 attendees; in the United States, it's just getting started. While the New York-area branch doesn't have a permanent headquarters, it runs regular Zoom events as well as in-person meetings and retreats at various locations, such as New York Zendo Shobo-ji.
Ananta, who goes by a single name and is CEO of the nonprofit Karuna USA, led the recent day's practice, guiding the meditation from awareness of one's breath, body and surroundings to a reflection and discussion on recent actions that participants felt either proud of or guilty about — not to be deemed morally good or bad but to reflect on and let go.
'Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and produced by mind,' he read from the Dhammapada, a collection of the Buddha's sayings. 'If one speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows even as the cart wheel follows the hoof of the ox … If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never departs.'
The Young Buddhist Initiative began out of a desire to create a nurturing space where young people could support each other in their spiritual practice. Ananta came across Buddhism at age 18 through a meditation group at his university in London and knows the value of having a cohort of like-minded peers. 'There are people like you who also have spiritual aspirations andare interested in leading a particular lifestyle. That can be very supportive.'
Tamojyoti, an ordained member of the Triratna community who goes by a single name, agreed. 'We just have a different consciousness than young people. And I think maybe why those young people groups work so well is because that consciousness can flourish,' she said.
One of the attendees at the session, Kizzy Joseph, a 28-year-old therapist from Brooklyn, was seeking to have conversations about spirituality with people in her age group and had been looking for Buddhist spaces across the city. Most groups she found took a too-intellectual approach to Buddhism, skewed older or were predominantly white.
Headed to her first meeting with the Young Buddhist Initiative, Joseph feared she would be the only Black person in the room. 'To my happy surprise, there were three other women of color and another person of color — I think they identify as nonbinary. I was really surprised by how diverse the space was.'
According to the 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion, the average age of a U.S. Buddhist is 52, but survey numbers come with the caveat that gathering statistics about Buddhists is difficult, as many people, like Joseph, engage in Buddhist beliefs and practices without formally identifying as Buddhist.
Protestant by birth, Joseph became unhappy with the rigid religious structure she was raised in and began exploring different approaches to spirituality in her teens. She feels a 'gentle calling'toward Buddhism and finds it less forceful than the faith of her childhood, but doesn't defineherself as a Buddhist. In her personal life, she also practices ancestor veneration and Reiki.
Still, the Young Buddhist Initiative provides something that she hadn't found in other spaces: a feeling of connectedness and emotional safety.
'It's first and foremost about creating an environment where people of all ages, including younger people, feel comfortable and welcome. One of the things I'm noticing is that we have a number of transgender people that are young, and so I think it feels almost like the environment is open and welcoming for everyone,' said Michael King, a 58-year-old New Yorker who has been attending Triratna meetings and practices for four years. (Despite its name, New York's Triratna practice attendee ages typically range from 40 to 60, hewing closely to PRRIs national average.)
The group tries its best to cultivate that environment. Those in attendance at the late June session spoke quietly but frankly about fights in personal relationships or embarrassing moments at work, receiving acceptance, not judgement, in return. A break for tea and cookies in the temple's kitchen made room for casual conversation. When it was time to discuss karma and hypothetical moral situations, we were reminded that it's not about a strict binary of 'good' or 'bad,' but 'skilled' or 'unskilled': that is, aligned with Buddhist precepts and leading to either happy or unhappy results.
The five precepts of Buddhism — abstaining from killing living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication — were also interpreted through a modern lens. Alcohol, for example, was considered not to be bad if used moderately; on the other hand, mindlessly scrolling through social media could become a form of intoxication. The group discussed white lies, supporting friends and power dynamics, never landing on an answer that was considered universally correct.
For Tamojyoti, Buddhism can provide a way to transform the anxiety that many young people feel in response to the state of the world into action. 'Young people want to stand for something, and Buddhism is all about your truth, your values, interconnection, compassion.'
'If we're going to change the way this world is operating, it's going to happen through young people,' King said, expressing a desire for young people to come to the Dharma and make an impact. 'I think a lot of people in my generation have wanted to live more of a Dharmic life, meaning that we're pulling away from those structures. But those structures can't change unless we're in there changing them.'
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San Francisco Chronicle
6 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University, then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. "It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.'
Hamilton Spectator
6 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story. ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University , then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. 'It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty ,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.' Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . 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Associated Press
7 hours ago
- Associated Press
Two London pubs, both alike in riverside locality, keep a civil grudge over which is more ancient
LONDON (AP) — On a charming cobblestone street tucked away in London's East End, a pub proudly hangs out a sign that reads 'Oldest riverside pub in London.' Across the Thames River, a pub with a different name makes the same bold claim. The unofficial title of the oldest riverside pub in the city has long been disputed, with both the Mayflower and the Prospect of Whitby laying claim to the title. The two contenders can be found along a quiet stretch of the Thames, far from the city's crowded souvenir shops and tourist sites, serving up traditional British dishes — from steak and ale pie to sticky toffee pudding — with a side of history. The Mayflower is named after the Pilgrim Mayflower ship, which set sail from the site in 1620 to begin its journey to America. Though it only got its name in 1957, it is said to have some of the ship's original timbers incorporated into its structure. Today, pubgoers who can prove direct descent from one of the Mayflower passengers can sign its 'Descendants Book.' Escaping the skyscrapers Every night, tourists step out of black cabs at the doors of the two pubs, trading the capital's modern skyscrapers for the storied streets of London's East End, lined with quaint terraced houses and red brick warehouses. In both pubs they enter spaces where old paintings hanging on dark paneled walls and other mementos of their histories seem to leave the contemporary world behind. 'There really is a feeling that you might have stepped back in time and could be drinking beer with sailors or pirates or anybody from any Dickens novels really,' said Emily Godwin, a Londoner who has been to both. She spoke while sipping a pint of lager with friends at the Prospect on a recent summer evening. The Prospect boasts a pewter bar – the longest of its kind in Britain — where the infamous 'Hanging Judge Jeffreys' is said to have watched the many hangings that took place at the nearby 'Execution Dock.' Early on, the pub was known as the Devil's Tavern due to its association with thieves and smugglers. A hanging noose outside serves as a reminder of the pub's grisly history. It 'feels like such a pocket of history in London,' Godwin said. 'So much of London's East End feels very new and trendy, and the Prospect feels like it's barely changed.' Challenging times for the pub industry British pubs have always been at the center of social life, with locals coming together over a pint, even in times of war and economic hardship. But the last five years have been challenging for the industry as pubs contended with the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs. This year an estimated 378 venues are set to shutter across England, Wales, and Scotland, according to the British Beer and Pub Association. 'When a pub closes, it puts people out of a job, deprives communities of their heart and soul and hurts the local economy,' said Emma McClarkin, head of the BBPA. Pubs across the country have been forced to find new ways to attract customers. History is a big draw for pubgoers, with a trip to a traditional British pub coming in high on tourists' London bucket lists, raising the stakes of the Prospect and the Mayflower's competition. A 'loving rivalry' The Prospect claims it was established in 1520, with its original flagstone surviving an arson attack in 1666 — the same year as the Great Fire of London. The pub was outside of the city limits at that time and was not affected by the conflagration that gutted the medieval city. Justin Billington, assistant manager at the Prospect, said some people date the pub to its full reconstruction in 1774 after the 1666 fire. But he doesn't see it that way, noting that it operated continuously. The day after the fire, the workers rolled out a barrel of beer that had survived the flames and locals showed up with their tankards, drinking vessels, and enjoyed a drink on the spot. There were several reconstructions in the pub's subsequent history, but none withstood the salt water and shifting foundations of the Thames, Billington explained. Not, that is, until 1774 when the retired captain of a merchant ship called 'The Prospect' rebuilt it using the ship. 'This rebuild held and continues to hold on for dear life,' he said. If the pub was actually established in 1774, that would make the Mayflower — established in the 16th century — older. But there are no hard feelings between the pubs as Billington described their competition as a 'loving rivalry.' 'We compete against each other to be the oldest, and to serve the best food and drink,' he said. The search for the oldest pub in London But the question remains: How can either pub definitively claim the title? Unlike the title of the 'Oldest pub in England,' held by the Porch House in southern England, which is said to date to the 10th century, there is no official certification for the oldest pub in London. Guinness World Records said it has not formally awarded the title because of the complexities created by numerous name changes, relocations and reconstructions. 'There are lots of very old pubs that might make a claim to being oldest, but it could be contested because it could be argued they weren't always in 'London,'' English historian and author Jacob Field said. 'Many pubs have changed name over time, making it hard to claim they are the oldest.'
