Tomorrow we celebrate the Birth and Enlightenment of the Buddha termed Wesak and the monastery is suitably dressed for celebration. Each year during Wesak week-end parents, together with their off spring, are welcomed into the monastery to mingle and to play. The atmosphere is informal, creative and very active. There was football on the lawn at 4.00 pm, a music workshop all afternoon in the library and a picnic to round off the day. Earlier a crowd did some dry stone walling while others did map making.
Two Jade readers, both called Anne, have articles in the Spring edition of our Order’s Journal. The first Anne speaks of the benefits of staying at Throssel outside of retreat times.
And now, after more times spent there when no retreats are running, the (admittedly, self imposed) lines between Throssel and my home have started to blur as the amount of more ‘ordinary’ experiences at the Abbey interweave with my life in my town, and Throssel seems not only my spiritual home–as it always was–but just like where I live day to day–my home.
The other Anne writes about her journey from the onset of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME) through to her life in Mt. Shasta and her association with Shasta Abbey.
Sometimes I just go over to the Abbey grounds, walk down to the stupa and sit. Or I do some little inconsequential errand that takes me over there, so can feel the difference between the silence of living alone in town and the deep quiet of a spiritual community training together. Underneath my surface unrest, a part of me is deeply content with what is, when self is willing to acknowledge it. “Separate,” one of the monks once said, “but not alone.”
Spare a thought for Anne in America who is having a nasty flare up of symptoms at the moment. A thought for her dog Lily too is appreciated.