Children’s Buddhist Books

To-day the priory received a donation of a book called, Buddhist Stories For Children published by Buddhist Churches of America in 1960.

While looking for an address to write for permission to republish selected stories on a web site I bumped into this site. It has Buddhist stories for children to download, they might be of interest.

The booklet belonged to a chap who is seriously ill. Spare a thought for him.

Sensing the World

There is something special about the air this evening. I’ve just been standing on the front step after meditation, breathing in great gulps of it. Ahhh! Mmmm. Wonderful air, wonderful humid air. And the wind is up, blowing our flags against the guttering. That’s our International Buddhist Flags strung along the length of the house at window and door height. I see that they’re getting frayed as the wind snatches and catches them on the flaking paint. Ahhh, wonderful humid air. We might even be getting some rain soon. Perhaps a storm.

A chap came for meditation this evening. Together we stood on the step, admiring the air. He thought it even smelt clean. He could be right, the air could even be cleaner. Perhaps something to do with the extra moisture.

My discriminating sense of smell rarely comes into play, for the most part there is nothing that grabs my attention one way or the other around here. Nothing either heady and pleasant or heavy and unpleasant. Although there is a local wood mill that, when the wind is from the right direction, sends a cloying smell into this neighbourhood. It doesn’t last.

Now I’ve traveled back to the morning, in Reading England, when it dawned on me I’d just committed to living with sewage! That is, the almost constant smell of sewage. I was outraged. The smell was in the towel I dried my face on, the bedding I’d slept in. Gusts of it blew in around the window and door frames mixing with the incense smoke as we sat for meditation. There was no getting away from it and I was just about to take on the priorship at Reading. A permanent position with a permanent, truly terrible, smell!

Right there and then I had to come to terms with the situation, and accept it. In the process I was forced to look, not for the first time, at how the discriminating mind works together with the senses. Wanting and desiring the pleasant, rejecting and recoiling from unpleasant. There is nothing like entering into an all consuming, all embracing, stink to get ones attention. I grew to be grateful for my time in it’s presence. For one thing I learnt not to complain, make comment or draw attention to ‘it’. Complaining doesn’t make anything better. “It”, by the way, is called the “Whitley Whiff”, named after the neighbourhood most effected.

It is dark now and the wind is gently blowing a twig against the guttering outside of my room. But you should have heard the racket before we cut the branches! A monk once kindly said to me, “Where ever you are there will be sound”. He could have also said; “There will always be smell, sight, sensation, taste…and thought”. What we do with them is our choice. Ay?

Sense: The faculty through which the external world is apprehended.

Life of Buddha

“The Precepts embrace both the goal and the method of spiritual training. The Precepts are seen to be the method of training when we recognize our need for a refuge and an anchor in the midst of the changing conditions of daily life. The effort to keep the Precepts enables us to find this refuge and this anchor. The Precepts are seen to be the goal of training when we have so cleansed body and mind of selfish desire, ill-will and egotism that we live the Precepts naturally without feeling that we are restrained by them. To live thus is to manifest Enlightenment in the midst of daily life. The Precepts are active throughout our training in both of these aspects”.
The Precepts, Rev. Master Koshin Schomberg

I mentioned yesterday I’d point towards some ‘hidden gems’ of Dharma. I guess I’m particularly interested because there are some basic texts from within the Serene Reflection Tradition, as practiced in the O.B.C., that I’d no idea were available on-line.

On May 17th we, in Edmonton, are going to have a modified form of the Renewal of Vows Ceremony. This is when trainees rededicate to keeping the Precepts as well as make a statement of intent to do so in the future. Reading the three files listed here may help prepare those who attend the ceremony on the 17th. And they may be of help for people who don’t.

The Kyojukaimon and Commentary, Great Master Dogen and Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett.
Reading the Kyojukaimon and Commentary, David Powers.
The Precepts, Rev. Master Koshin Schomberg.

The article by David Powers was first published in 1981. At that time both lay and monastic practitioners were encouraged to read the Kyojukaimon and Commentary daily. I’d imagine novices are still doing their spiritual reading on the ‘wing’ in their spare time, as I was. Hum, perhaps that’s a good practice to pick up again for a bit.

Our Scriptures

What a find! I’d no idea that all, or at least the majority, of the scriptures used daily within our Order are posted on-line.

The Dharma Cloud Trust is the web home for Rev. Master Chushin a priest of our Order living and teaching in Newport, South Wales, UK. So, South Wales is where you will find the scriptures.

Rev. Chushin has a special place in my life as it was through a friend of his that I learnt about Throssel. Previous to that I took photographs for a community newspaper he started in a Newport neighborhood. Latter he was the OBC Journal editor at Shasta, and I typed it. A long and happy association. Grateful to him for getting permission and then posting the scriptures.

This link was found by a congregation member in Edmonton, thanks Mike. And tomorrow there will be another link to a hidden gem of Dharma found by him on an Order web site.

In Search of Spring

Monday afternoon with no particular place to go and with the car radio on, I pointed south towards America. I quickly fetched up at an antique’s mall in the small town of Leduc, 30 mins south of Edmonton. Leduc is directly under the flight path of Edmonton’s International Airport, the main north/south train line run past one side of town and the main north/south road runs past the other side. A great town for train or plane spotting, most people just drive past on their way to somewhere else.

After a long wander in an antiques mall and a quick spin around a Dollar Store I followed directions to a lake, Telford Lake. Hiking briskly down the trail beside the lake there didn’t appear to be much of anything going on in the wild life department and everything was brown and still. That’s until I got up close to some catkins hiding their exuberant red new life. Spring is on it’s way, bursting through in unobtrusive and delicate ways, easy to miss if you’re looking for daffodil’s!


Ruffed Grouse


Big Bird


Blue Lake


Flat field