This last couple of months we’ve made a regular routine of reciting the ‘Sandokai’ together at our home altar after breakfast and we’ve been touched by Tora’s evident interest in what is going on. Soon after we begin saying the scripture he comes and sits beside us and often adds a few ‘meows’ of his own.
Felix religiosus? Iain of Little House in The Paddy ponders on the motives behind his cats behaviour. Great photograph of Tora too.
We on the other hand have no bonfire, or tar barrels. Sit and meditate from about 7.30 pm. Before midnight everybody may offer incense and make three bows of gratitude for the past year. Have a sedate ceremony at midnight. Afterwords everybody is given an apple or cake, or similar. Make three more bows asking for help in the coming year. We then strike the big bell a total of 108 times and go to our beds.
New Years Eve can bring on the melancholy (defined as thoughtful sadness) like nobodies business. Years ago that was the case for me. Now? By the time 1.00 am comes I’m just tired.
Where ever you are to welcome in the New Year, take care.
Much of a monk’s life is spent in silence. Much of a poet’s life is spent in silence, too — a poet spends a fraction of his time actually writing poems. Merton was both a monk and a poet, and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also inherent within a poem, like the silences between notes in music. As the great Chinese poet Yang Wan-li said, a thousand years ago, “A poem is made of words, yes, but take away the words and the poem remains.”
This was taken from an article titled, The monk/poet’s journey toward silence, by Frederick Smock. It was written on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, and published in the The Courier-Journal a US newspaper.
This is day one of the winter monastic retreat. I’ll be publishing a photo/poem series for the next week or so. The poem(s) will be from a Chinese layman who lived, probably, in the late eighth and early ninth century. He was known as Han-shan, The Master of Cold Mountain, often depicted with Shih-te known as The Foundling. These two are depicted in paintings as two grotesque little men guffawing in the wilderness. The images, based on a first hand account may not in actual fact be true. Anyway I’ve always had a soft spot for Han-shan and this is an opportunity to air his insights and wisdom.
Please join in this time of silent illumination as you go about your day. A monk once said to me, Where ever you are there will be sound. I understand that to mean silence is not conditional on there being physical silence in order to know silence.
Thanks to Anna for pointing me to the article.
This is how I’ve managed to do it. With a kitchen timer. Thirty minutes writing cards to family and friends (last time I did that was…too long ago to remember.) Thirty minutes reading: Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill. Wonderfully readable and frank book reflecting on a well lived life now moving towards her aging, her old-age. Then thirty minutes writing cards…and so on.
I recommend the kitchen timer for discipline and the book for insight into old age and death. And also recommended is the effort to write those cards to family and friends.
Back in 1994 an immigration officer at the American Embassy gave me unsolicited advice as he granted me my visa. Don’t visit your mother once, come back regularly. I hadn’t thought about her death ’till then. She died a year later. That’s thirteen years ago come Thursday. She’d have been one hundred this year, had she lived on.
Perhaps the cards are a recognition of age. Mine. Theirs. And our passing out of existence.
Quite by chance, on Monday, I saw a chap briefly who I’d met at Throssel before. It was a significant meeting back then since he’d been helping an isolated member I have responsibility for. Turns out he’d been here all week-end, and I didn’t know. That sometimes happens since guests are generally on retreat and the monks help that process by not engaging people in casual conversation. Which means we are not looking about to see who’s here, of course.
If you plan to come on retreat, or to stay, and would like to say hi please drop me a line before you get here. Or say something the the Guest Department monks. That way I can make sure to bump into you at an appropriate moment. It’s always a pleasure and a joy.
Yes, it was a happy meeting on Monday. Not only for seeing a familiar face but for being reminded that he was, and still is a Jade reader! And because our on-line conversation, via the comments section, back some time last year was connected with death I promised to mention the name of a book I find most helpful. And the book is: There’s More to Dying than Death, Lama Shenpen Hookham.
Monday’s meeting was just one more nudge to get more Bodhi Leaf pins/badges made. There are more of you out there gazing at the screen than I had thought. And one more old friend tells me, via email, he will be checking in again. Welcome back! Glad you’re alive.