Sometimes people drop me a note with follow up thoughts on a posting. Here’s a copy of a recent email, published with the authors permission.

In response to your blog on decrepitness………………..

I once meditated in this Anglican church. Upon arrival an older man in a powered wheel chair was cruising by. I thought nothing of him. Once inside the church I sat in the pew and meditated for some time. I walked outside slowly. Trying not to get swept into the rustle bustle of the city. As I came around the corner of the church where the labyrinth is (one of my favorite meditation spots) I noticed an empty wheel-chair sitting to the side of the labyrinth. I then noticed the man from the chair, (he was) inching his way slowly around the labyrinth every once in awhile sitting back in his chair to rest, then going again.

Something inside me churned. To see so much strength in an old feeble body. So much perseverance*. To this day it reminds me that strength lays inside.

*Persistent determination

I received this question via email from a reader. The answer is published here with the questioners permission and encouragement to share the answer with others.

Rev Mugo can I ask you a question? I hope you don’t think its, well anyways….can a Buddhist be a Christian, or a Muslim be a Buddhist, what I’m asking I guess can you believe in two or say even three paths?? Thanks

Good question. We talked about it at the group meeting last Wednesday night. All a matter of what one understands by ‘being a Buddhist’, Christian, Muslim etc. I’ve had committed Christians come for morning meditation regularly and attended seriously Buddhist ceremonies and that worked for them.

I think one can be open minded to many paths and even walk a ways on several, even at the same time. But as the paths diverge, as they do in quite specific ways, then internal difficulties and confusions can arise. This happens especially as one goes more deeply into meditation/contemplation within a tradition. That’s potentially the case with say a committed Christian taking up theme less meditation. Not sure how that all works for a committed Buddhist traveling another path at the same time.

I tend to keep away from deliberately thinking myself as any particular ‘ist’ although obviously as a Buddhist monk people, including myself, regard me as a Buddhist. Following a specific path these past years has been a great gift for me, one that I keep on re-receiving and realizing what a precious gem I have been given. That’s often the difficulty, not fully appreciating the gem one has because it isn’t shining at the moment and going around looking for a brighter one. All with the utmost of sincerity in the questing for answers to deep questions about profound matters.

Now I read your question and you are asking about ‘believing’ and I have talked about practicing. Maybe it is just a matter of word use. However in Buddhism, as I have understood it, I’ve not felt obliged to ‘believe’ in anything in order to practice. Well, save for believing that the Buddha rediscovered a universal Truth, that what he found has been passed on through a direct connection of master to disciple and the ‘passing on’ is happening accurately through living Buddhist teachers. There we go, Refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

Hope that goes some way towards answering your question. Sorry it has taken a long time to answer, I’ve been a bit more involved with ‘got to do to-day’ things of late.

Sincerely,
Rev. Mugo

This small pot of flowers, pansies, petunias and red ones satisfy my gardening pleasure.

FYI bloodhounds take pleasure in flowers too, they like to eat them! We had one in the community in the 1990’s. When he arrived as a really young puppy his first act, as his paws reached the ground, was to eat a petunia from the flower bed beside him. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world but it wasn’t, for a dog.

An unexpected out-of-town visitor attending the Sunday session brought his mountain bike unicycle indoors. All I could say at the time was, “you are rather late, please come in”! Always one needs to be ready to embrace the unexpected, if not bizarre.

So when a regular member, who usually comes on his mountain bike, trundled out his colourful going-grocery-shopping rig from beside the priory, I was practiced and ready to embrace it, nearly!

Our visiting friend with one wheel, (he said it helped him with staying focused and present), rode off with net curtains twitching probably. And the colourful four-wheeled wagon went shopping.

Over in Japan Iain in a posting titled Foot prints in the Snow, remembers an event in early childhood. He says, an intuitive sense of ‘the transient’ really touched me.