On a somber spring evening around midnight,
rain mixed with snow sprinkled on the bamboos in the garden.
I wanted to ease my loneliness but it was quite impossible.
I was up late last night preparing the postings for the coming two weeks. Reviewing them this morning I realized that some of the photographs connect with the text. In some cases that is intentional and others it was pure accident. Where the connection seems a bit strange please know, there isn’t one! There is always a danger when words and photographs are used together and my hope is the pictures and text together convey, contemplation, joy, gratitude, humility and all those qualities that come of themselves when one just sits. In fact, just use your visit as an opportunity to just sit. That’s what I’ll be doing for the next little while.
I’ll study Dogen’s works while on retreat. This is something I’ve not done in great depth because I’ve tended to feel, likes so many, that he is too difficult to understand. As you will see as the poem by Zen Master Ryokan develops, Dogen was neglected for centuries and only relatively recently been recognized widely. That’s as a great innovative thinker and a radical in his approach to Mahayana Buddhism. I’m with him already!
Looking towards the lake district.Monks, take to the road. Travel for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world; travel for the good, the benefit, the happiness of men and gods. Preach the Doctrine…
(Vin 1 21)
In the code of discipline of Buddhist monasticism (the Bhikkhu Vinaya in this case) there is no rule which made solitude obligatory; but in the sutta-pitaka solitude was thought to provide a suitable and sometimes essential atmosphere for the practice of meditation. To what extent did the practice of solitude remove Buddhist monks and nuns from society? Where they always alone? (The source of the above text is unknown to me.)
In our Order we take the Bodhisattva Precepts and for the most part live in community. Sometimes, as the early monks and nuns did, we take some time for solitary retreat. I’ve been packing up necessities these last couple of days in readiness to travel. I’ve taken up the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in our Hermitage in Wales. I’ll be alone and surrounded by sheep!
As was the case with the monks and nuns of old, I’ll not be checking email, or blogging! While I’m away on retreat my good traveling companion Iain has agreed to launch daily postings which I’ll be staying up very late tonight preparing. I found a poem by Ryokan, a bit of a hermit himself, who was greatly influenced by Zen Master Dogen. He wrote a poem titled Reading the Record of Eihei Dogen. This will be published in daily installments along with photographs.
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I’m staying two nights at Telford Buddhist Priory in the Midlands before moving on to the Welsh mountains. Rev. Saido, the monk in residence, took many of the photographs that you will see over the coming days. Many thanks.
Visitors arriving at the abbey are more than likely to be greeted by Smudge, a black and white cat with the distinctive facial markings of a cat from a Japanese print. Smidge is officially the novices’ cat.
‘Cloister Cats’, Richard Surman
There is our dear Smudge sharpening his claws on the Ceremony Hall carpet. Next week we are having a new carpet fitted. Nothing to do with the cat, it was just time to replace the old one.
I met Smudge in the lane this evening, he was clearly not interested in having his picture taken. The book is currently on display in the novices common room for us all to take a look at our cat in print. Today Smudge was found sleeping in the sun, on top of the book!