Chaos

Got diverted into backing up old emails to-day. This is miles away from what I’d intended to do however I’ll be ever so grateful should Outlook crash or some other disaster strike in the future. There has always been that question in my mind. “Do I need to, should I, file emails”? Filing however is in my blood, injected at an early age.

In the days when we typist made carbon copies, sometimes up to four of them at a time, we would be filing mad. Or was it go made filing! Office work, making those carbon copies, correcting them, was a craft. Yes and now I think about it there was the use of the eraser, to rub out letters. That was before ‘white out’. You had to rub, not too hard not to soft, almost scrub at the paper. What a life! Filing all of those copies. The contortions to reach up, down, around or even between the drawers of the filing cabinet. Trying to make sense of where to put letters. Hoping and praying you’d be able to find them again.

My laptop arrived soon after the Head of the Order died, May 2003. I still have emails sent from that time, scattered about Outlook. Filing has been low on my priory list, as if I had one. However I have ‘backed up’ from time to time, but that I knew where they were.

Today I did a proper job because in a months time I’ll be handing on this laptop. I really do not want to transfer every single message ever written onto that clean new hard drive. So I’ve dead filed my sent messages into years-worth bundles and put them in a folder, ‘Sentemails’. Zipped them, password protected them, sent them up onto the internet and copied them onto a CD. Copied my .pst Back-up file, password protected it, zipped it, sent it, copied it. The state of Outlook is not perfect, yet better than it was this morning. There’s always maintenance work on filing systems but at least I’m not battling with stuck filing draws, or wading through eraser dust.

I had to smile. All through the day I bumped into the file name Sentemails, and I unfailingly saw sentimental! No, not filing for that reason more perhaps out of habit and a touch of natural pride. I love to gaze at a row of files, colour coded, nestling in their drawer. Seeing icons rowed up neatly on the screen isn’t quite the same yet a whole lot lighter, cleaner, brighter than those metal monsters of my early days.

We have a blessing verse, it goes like this:

We live in the world,
As if in the sky.
As lotus blossoms
Above unclean water.
Pure and beyond the world,
Is the mind of the trainee.
Oh Holy Buddha,
We take Refuge in Thee.

Helpful to remember lest one gets over involved in the refuge of attempting to create order out of email chaos. Oh, and it is always so interesting to look up the meaning of words…

Chaos. (Greek mythology) the most ancient of gods; the personification of the infinity of space preceding creation of the universe.

We teach in Buddhism that the creation of the universe started with the first stirring of the discriminatory mind.

Provoking Thought

It’s late in the evening, too late to write. Then I bump into this blog entry which has me thinking.

Happy Meetings

Well, here are the photographs I took in Taiwan last May. They do not even begin to touch the hairy moments of the journey, or the day of visiting temples with dear DurAn, or the heat… DurAn, wonderful monk, four month ordained charged with the task of showing me around with no common language between us save nods and smiles and waving of hands.

The nun we met had been ordained since childhood. She turned her rosary, constantly. I remember signaling, and using our electronic dictionary, to say something like, “I hope we are doing as well, when we reach her age”! We both could appreciate her commitment, and the hard training of her life. It was a happy meeting for all of us.


Temple grounds, Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan where the relics of Xuan Zhuang are enshrined.

View of the Sun Moon Lake, with incense burner
DurAn with 80 or 90 year old nun who takes care of the temple single handedly.

* * *

This image of Xuan Zhuang, our Buddhist Pilgrim of yesterday, rests in the grounds of a temple in Naruto, Japan. Behind him is a garden devoted to Kobo Daishi. “Is there a connection,”? Or perhaps the question is “why is this image here at this temple, in Japan”? The only connection I can find is that Kobo Daishi traveled to the town, Xi’an, in China where Zuan Zhuang was based, but not at the same time.

For as long as I can remember I have been attracted to this image. The traveling monk I guess.

Long and Winding Road

I have at last managed to return the photograph of the pagoda, taken by Nancy during her recent visit to China, to it’s rightful place in a posting from over a week ago.

Here below is some information about the famous Buddhist priest associated with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. If I have it right, the story of the priest Xuan Zhuang and his journey to India was told in The Journey to the West. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda was both the starting and ending point of this epic journey.

And Nancy saw the actual scriptures brought back from this journey. Wow!

Travels of Xuan Zhuang — Buddhist Pilgrim of the Seventh Century

Xuan Zhuang was born in AD 602. As a child he became already absorbed in the study of the Sacred Books of Chinese literature. While still a boy he was ordained as a Buddhist priest to the Temple of Heavenly Radiance in Hangchow, and soon there after was transferred to the Temple of Great Learning in Chang-an, a community of monks who devoted their lives to the translation of the Sacred Books from India. Listening to the variety of their interpretations young Xuan Zhuang conceived the bold plan to travel to India and bringing back more Sacred Buddhihs Books to China.

Xuan Zhuang traveled between AD 627-643. His detailed account provides the first reliable information about distant countries, terrain and customs. He traveled over land, along the Silk Road west toward India. However, the further west he traveled it became increasingly difficult to cross desert and mountain ranges. Of the Taklamaken desert he reports:

“As I approached China’s extreme outpost at the edge of the Desert of Lop, I was caught by the Chinese army. Not having a travel permit, they wanted to send me to Tun-huang to stay at the monastery there. However, I answered ‘If you insist on detaining me I will allow you to take my life, but I will not take a single step backwards in the direction of China’.”

More here

It turns out that last year I visit the temple in Taiwan where the relics of Xuan Zhuang are enshrined. And wouldn’t you know it, the Silk Road that Xuan Zhuang traveled opened again on July 6th.

More tomorrow…

Rest Debt

This recording is about the need to rest and renew body/mind and in order to spend time ‘doing nothing’, constructively, one needs be open to the possibility that this is a good thing!

powered by ODEO
The audio takes a bit of time before it starts to play. You’ll know all is well when you see small lettering saying ‘loading’. As it often says when dealing with Odeo, ‘be patient’. And this is a very good, free, service too.

For those who are interested this was recorded on a portable source and then uploaded. Yes! This is a success. I’d be interested to hear from anybody who has listened to this recording with a dial-up connection.