It seems that there is a direct correlation between how messy my workshop is and how depressed I feel. I have often yearned for an unmessy workshop – convinced that then everything in my life would be ok (and of course I would then also, miraculously, be amazingly well organised with my time and workload).

So I have great delight in sharing the fact that parts of my workshop are currently a real mess and yet I feel thrilled by it.

Swallows are nesting in the roof beams and there are four baby swallows making one heck of a racket. Swallow parents are in and out every 30 seconds or so feeding. All are totally unbothered by my bandsaw, drills or hammering of chisels.

Any moans about how busy it can be for us on the farm are firmly put into context by seeing the demands on the swallow parents by their four very large babies.

And I have had to remove all items from underneath the nest until they fledge.

No matter what state of mind I’m in when I walk out into the garden on a sunny Sunday afternoon, at least one of my senses is lifted and brought to the fore. My breath catches as I hear the ocean sound shifting north in the changing wind and tide. At the same time my worry scanner is on, sensing garden demands. A plant here that’s a little too dry, sprawling raspberries that have broken free, artichokes colonized by ants. Joy and worry walk with me in the garden. Clearly, worry would like joy to butt out and mind its own business.

Now the sunlight reveals a late-summer slant in the colors it brings out on the zucchini leaves, matched immediately – if not preceded by – the slightly melancholic feeling tone of seasonal change. The wind blows a neighborhood argument in my direction, a dance of vicious words that trails off to be hidden in the ocean. A kaleidoscope of memories arises and focuses on the sound of Sheila Chandra singing: “The ocean, the ocean, accepts all rivers”.

Improvised ambulance.
More from the alpaca front! Checking for birthing alpacas at 7.00am and yes, there is one going into labour. Unfortunately there is another – a 6 week old female – who is lying down when she usually jumps up when I go past. I go to check her and she jumps up but looks a little strange – as though her leg has gone to sleep. Closer inspection reveals a broken leg hanging from halfway down.

So – all hands to decks. Baby lifted into farm buggy and driven to barn. Following consultation on phone with vet it is baby into back of car and off to vet’s surgery. Left with vet while back to check birthing alpaca…

I used to look forward to excitement, now I am not so sure.

But the abiding memory of the day was the deep trust that the injured alpaca had in us. She lay across Julie in the back seat of the car on the way to the vet and across me on the way back. She was perfectly capable of jumping and twisting and wasn’t in shock – she just chose to trust us.

I am finding that the interaction with animals can be a deep teaching. I have no expectations of animals; I am more a ‘people person’. And it seems that the absence of such expectations can leave us open to them sneaking in and catching us.

By the way, all are doing well – though how do you keep a plaster cast on a lively young alpaca clean and dry??

Dear Reverend Master Mugo,

You have asked me to consider writing a regular contribution to your Jade Mountains. With some nervousness, and as usually seems to be the way with these situations, something is saying yes, ok; and then I’m trying to work out what it is I’ve said yes to, and if it is good to do then why is it, and how can it work for us? I know you better than to ask exactly what it is you were thinking of, so here is my go at what might work for me.

The first thing to say is that this clearly can’t just be an opportunity for me to tell people who read your site what I think about things. If I was going to do that then I’d be setting up my own site and doing it directly; and I’m not. So if not that, then what?

Well, I started to wonder what you think might be missing from Jade Mountains as it currently stands. And I came up with a couple of possibilities.

The first is that you’re a monk – and a very well established one at that: however understated about it you may be, you are a Zen Master. It follows that your life and experience may not express many aspects of what Buddhist training might be like for people who aren’t monks – although your honesty and humanity in what you write go a long way to showing that this difference isn’t as great as we sometimes might like to think.

Secondly, and perhaps more deeply, for me a great deal that is important in our training is about the dynamic between ‘teachers’ and those of us hoping to learn something and receive support in our practice. Zen in particular seems to be so much about someone asking a question and an answer coming back – often not the answer we were looking or hoping for but an answer that cuts to the core of what is being asked. Quite a few of your postings reflect this with you sharing some of the letters people have sent you and your responses. And wouldn’t it be interesting to see if some of the dynamic of how this continues over time could be illustrated by me sharing my thoughts, worries and questions with you, and through you with your readers?

So these thoughts led me to wonder – how about me writing to you on a regular basis through your site? Often it could be that no actual response is needed from you – there is something about the act of opening up and asking and sharing that frequently just by itself resolves the question.

When I look at your original request for me to contribute in this light then I can see a possibility of me writing about training and how that impacts everyday life without it being me expressing my opinions, or trying to inform or teach. It would really just be a continuation and development of what we have been doing for years.

You have been around and deeply involved in all of the nearly 20 years I’ve been training in this practice – from being the scary visiting monk who used to come to our home when we were running the London Meditation Group; through the years when you lived in the mobile home in our yard here on the farm; and with our ever evolving relationship with the OBC and the Lay Ministry. This seems like another opportunity opening up – perhaps unorthodox, but I suppose you often seem to find some particular energy in new approaches to things.

As ever I am left wondering maybe it will work? maybe it won’t? and cutting through all this nervousness echoes one of the hallmarks of your particular teaching – let’s get up and try it and maybe we’ll find out.

Does any of this make sense? Is it the sort of thing you were thinking of?

in gassho,

Andrew

How I love maps! And how interested I am to follow the progress of a handful of climbers in Colarado. One of those hardy persons is the brain behind keeping Jade Mountains healthy and functioning. Call it enlightened self interest, I’d just like to see them all up the mountains they intend to climb this week end, and then safely back down again.

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