The truth will set you free.
But not until it is finished with you.
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Food for thought here.
Entangled
Category Archives: Teachings
Great Potential
Going to London for a visa interview at the American Embassy usually leaves a deep impression on me. Most often not a positive one. This time circumstances I met left me feeling philosophical about the whole business. Perhaps because I’m not pressed to get to America and also I was through the whole process in record time. In the past I have been caught in the Embassy for up to five hours!
Picture the scene. The American Embassy in London, the non-immigrant visa section. Having started to que outside at 8.00 along with my follow hopefuls the line starts to move at 8.30, slowly. By around 9.00 I find myself, with more than a 100 others, in a large room facing a huge screen part of which shows a video, with subtitles, of America. The video is selling America. Universities, National Parks, family life, leisure, freedom and above all the potential to achieve ones dream. To be a success. Everybody is young and smiling, there is no rain! This America is indeed beautiful. And clearly we waiting hopefuls would not be putting ourselves through this ordeal if we didn’t want or need a visa to grant us entry to this beautiful country. From Field of Merit – Always Being Buddha.
Merit to those who grieve.
Making Offerings
Today, this afternoon. Jill’s Funeral. And then the interment of a portion of her cremated remains. It is hard to let go of good friends, a good sangha friend. Attaching and detaching flow together through out our entire life. (Quote attributed to Zen Master Dogen). Knowing this to be true does not make living it any easier. It does show that we are human.
Here words at the end of the interment of the ashes spoken on a windy hillside in Northumberland.
We pray that the Pure Mirror of Wisdom will share its light with you and that the True Wind will cover you with the coloured halo so that you can be enlightened in the Garden of the Bodhisattvas and work in the Waveless Sea that is Immaculacy Itself. We pray that you may receive our offerings as we say farewell to you, Jill, within the clouds that hide the heavens from our sight. We bow before the Holy Bodhisattvas and we offer incense to them.
Looking up. Pointing to faith. Bowing to the Bodhisattvas. Grateful that the rain held off long enough for us to all get indoors and have a cup of hot tea. And chat. This is all letting go, moving on.
Always an honour to officiate on such occasions.
That’s Devotion
Talking to a chap this morning about his sewing/pattern making instructor who he obviously admires and appreciates greatly. I’d pass her pins all day! he said. Yep, that’s devotion I thought.
Unfortunately it’s all too easy to miss out on simple devotion born of respect and gratitude. Non of us want to tip over into servile behaviour after all.
A hat tip to the chap who, at 70 has taken up pattern making and fashion design.
Daizui Remembered
The Great Silence
enfolds the world.Who could have guessed
Its tenderness?”
Daizui MacPhillamy
********************
He died in his own bed
Ten years to the day.Shortly before
a snowflake
fell on his face.He smiled,
he was home.
I miss him still, his council in particular. Today alone, driving south I spoke out loud. Telling him about this and that, asking into the thin clear air.
There is that which is not born, and does not die.