Yesterday I was talking on the telephone to a long time acquaintance. “How are you”? I asked. “Fine”. “Well, fine except for a huge sleep deficiency“. This had me wondering. Not enough sleep in the sleep account I guess! So how does one know? How to tell the difference between simply feeling tired, which I feel most of the time, and an actual deficit? (See also here for an article on the subject).

Last evening around 8.00 pm after meditation I was having jabs of pain in my chest, generally felt unwell and so went to bed. Couldn’t have done anything else. Eleven hours latter I woke up! Now I know some of the signs of sleep deficit; and now you know the reason why there was no posting yesterday. From now on, if I’ve not posted by 9.00 pm I’ll not post. That’s my blogging resolve from now on.

It is so very easy to burn the candle at both ends. I’m beginning to see that this can be a form of greed.

A visitor from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition told me the other day that his teacher told him that ‘greed’ or ‘desire’ are not strong enough words for the first of the three poisons. He uses the word ‘addiction’ instead. I can understand why. And I can understand why one of the chapters in Rev. Master Daizui’s book, Buddhism from Within, it titled ‘Radical Sobriety’.

Yes, Buddhist practice is about sobering up, radically!

Uh! This is posting number 300, another mile-stone. And speaking about stones, how about that big one balancing in the previous posting? And for those who concern themselves, I’m much rested and fine.

I have often wondered where this rock was since I have received cards with it on but with no reference to location. Now I know, Myanmar formally Burma. Apparently this rock has been balanced in this position for hundreds of years already.

Jaja, a temple elephant in Sri Lanka, had been celebrating the Buddhist New Year the day before yesterday, and got sick as an…elephant!

Around about this time of year Buddhist celebrate the Birth and Enlightenment of the Buddha, termed Wesak. In our Order we tend to go with some time in May for our celebrations. In 1950 at the first Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (W.F.B.), held in Sri Lanka, they resolved that Wesak be celebrated on the full-moon day of the month of May and urged Heads of governments to grant a public holiday for Wesak. In the Gregorian calendar Wesak fall on May 5th this year.

In the end I guess it doesn’t matter which date we choose to celebrate on, enough that we respectfully and joyfully honour the Buddha. Food making and offering, as well as eating, has a big place in this celebration and not only for elephants!

Found in Melaka, Malaysia.

I notice that Walter posted a poem to mark Wesak, on April 8th. Nice poem too. When I was traveling in East Asia last year I consistently managed to arrive one day after the celebrations. Here in Edmonton all of the Buddhist groups come together on May 6th, we will be there.

The point I was making in the article I just, mercifully, sent to the editor of a community newspaper was the infinite interconnectedness and interdependence of every thing; a universe without edges you could say. Thankfully there is the old metaphor which describes this truth. The metaphor, Indra’s Net, is mentioned in The Flower Ornament Sutra, also known as The Avatamsaka Sutra.

“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite”.
The Avatamsaka Sutra, Francis H. Cook:
Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, 1977.
Copied from here.

A few people have asked if I will publish the article on Community and I’m think about doing that. As mentioned yesterday, up until now I have kept away from overt teaching on this blog. One reason is that blogging is an informal ‘come as you are’, kind of format. Where as the offering of Dharma has a more formal, ‘dignified’ feel. So Blogging may not lend itself to passing on Buddhist teaching, perhaps the spoken word would be more appropriate, Podcasting for example. The Blog is fine for implied teaching, as Jim said in a comment “Teach without teaching”, or something like that.

Blogging is characterized by the flowing of time. Each post has a time and date and an imperative to keep talking, keep posting daily. Daily life is where the teachings of Buddhism are put into practice, where one has the most powerful ‘life lessons’. I feel my contribution, in this format, is to highlight this by talking about my impression and thoughts about stuff I encounter in my day. For example the truly cosmic experience of seeing real live Bison walking across a frozen lake! What did I learn? That the capacity to encounter existence with Wonder and Awe is a fabulous gift that keeps one humble in the vast scheme of things. I’m back to Indra’s Net, always a great favorite with me.

Yes, I am in reflective mood, perhaps because ‘what next’ is hanging before me as we prepare for changes in Edmonton. A move to a smaller place in June, and my leaving in September.

These past days I’ve been working away at a very short article for a community newspaper on the subject of ‘community’. The words have not come easily and it’s taken more time than is spare and yet I’ve persisted. The agreement was to produce around 500 words by the 13th April and that’s done, with 45 mins in hand! Deadlines are a blessing because they make one do something that otherwise would get put off until latter. And they can be a problem because of the very human tendency to work right up to the last possible moment before submitting causing a huge sense of pressure.

Writing for this blog is relatively easy, I type what is in my mind and the words tend to flow. Not so this article. The difference is I was deliberately trying to make a point about community from a Buddhist perspective. I rarely try to make a point of teaching while blogging. If there is teaching it tends to fall into place all on it’s own.

My carefully crafted, 475, words will now ‘sit’ over night and be sent in the morning. What it must be like to be an actual ‘writer’ waiting at home alone for ones book to be rejected, again, I cannot begin to imagine. Next time a writing request comes I’ll think twice and perhaps pass it on to somebody who can produce words faster.

It’s been one year and two days since my first posting on Moving Mountains and exactly one year since arriving in Japan. Naturally enough I’ve been reflecting on what has been said here and thinking about the frequency of posting and future directions. Not a bad thing to reflect on ones actions from time to time.