We have a line in one of our scriptures which goes: “Do not travel to other dusty countries thus forsaking your own seat”. When I first started to contemplate a monastic vocation I innocently thought that meant I should not go to California to be a monk! (It is dusty in California after all!) I quickly learnt what this teaching was pointing towards and continually aspire to follow it.
There are many transitions and ‘journeys’ that one makes in life. The important thing is not to forsake ones ‘sitting place’ what every one is doing and where every one is. Hah! That’s the message of ‘Moving Mountains’ isn’t it?
I have been dipping into an interesting book. Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. You may already be familiar with it. The sub title of the book is and other reports from my life with autism. At one point in the book Temple writes of her difficulty with conceptualizing making transitions in her life. She devised a way to understand transitions via actually walking through a specific door where she was living. In this way she practiced making the upcoming transition. Latter, I think, she simply pictured the doorway and was able to then proceed with what it was she was going to do, in practice.
The above link is to an audio file titled Doorways, it lasts just under 15mins. Sometimes you need to press the play button a couple of times and then be patient.
At the moment I’m fully occupied with transferring everything from one laptop to another. So that, in part, is why I haven’t been writing much these past few days. By the end of to-day, if all goes without a hitch, I should have made the transition.
