Yearly Archives: 2008

Films/Books, Information, Teachings

Inhaling and Exhaling

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If you want to write you have to read;
It’s as essential as breathing.
Breathing in – reading. Breathing out – writing.

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A hut in Idaho, a welcomed rural retreat

How may I improve my writing? I asked. She said, Read!
What can you recommend? I asked. She said, You will find what is good to read? It will fall off a shelf, make itself known. And she was right!

On San Juan Island I picked a book off the shelf hoping to induce sleep. Dakota.
At the rummage sale in Portland last Saturday the same book gazed up at me from the sidewalk. Dakota. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris.

Thanks to Eido-san and to Margaret for your help, encouragement and know-how.

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Illuminated log in the early morning after rain

Information, Out and About

The Grey Dog

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Yesterday as we were leaving Portland on the Greyhound bus the driver, in jolly upbeat mood, made his statutory announcements to the passengers. There were ones about not smoking (anything), not drinking (anywhere), and then to sign off he said something surprising.

Sit back, relax and enjoy yourself. When you get home tell all your friends that it’s not so bad to travel by Greyhound after all.

It turns out that Greyhound has recently been bought out by a British company. The very same company that runs trains from Hexham to Newcastle in Northumberland, trains we use regularly. They are not so bad too!

The night before leaving Portland several of us visited the garden and home of two sangha friends. There is much I could say about our visit, the garden was as ever stupendous, the company inspiring and the food offering gratefully received.

For keen gardeners The Oregonian recently published an article about the garden planting and Marsh and Fear have been busy following the publication of the article. Well done it is not so easy to get this kind of business off the ground.

Thanks to both Gary and Anne for showing us around your paradise, and into your home, kitchen and hearts. A bow to Gary for traveling the Buddhist path with us, starting well before I did.

Teachings

Offering Merit

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Time flies quicker than an arrow
And life passes with greater transience than dew.
However skillful you may be,
How can you ever recall a single day of the past?
Shushogi, Zen Master Dogen.

Here is an extract from an email I sent today which inspired today’s posting.

Very many thanks for the feed back on photos and the site generally. That’s always helpful. I’ve decided to add another category to my postings which is ‘Merit’. We so often think of transferring merit as an offering to beings in trouble or who are suffering seriously. Youngsters are such a breath of fresh air and are for me an inspiration just by being themselves as they are. However I know they have a lot of life ahead of them, involving many ups and downs. They can surely benefit from spiritual merit, as can all of us. So from time to time I’ll write ‘Merit’ postings and it was you and your family who inspired me to do that. You’re all an inspiration.

Information

Ways and Ways Two

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Rarely do I go back and edit old postings. However the original article titled There Are Ways and Ways was the product of a very tired mind and I felt it unskillful to leave it for posterity as was. So if you read the first version you might want to go back and read it again, it’s changed. As has my mind!

I guess there are ways and ways of writing and posting. Doing so while ones brain/mind is trailing several yards behind is not one of the good ways.

Out and About, Teachings

End and Beginning Return Unto the Source

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Wahkeena Falls. Wahkeena is a Yakimar Indian word for most beautiful.

The Wahkeena Falls emanate from a spring 900 feet above the Columbia River in Oregon. Yesterday I walked two miles to its source amidst lush greenery, an abundance of wild flowers and enveloped in welcomed damp cooling air. My walking companion described the flowing water cascading down the cliff side as rumbustious. What a wonderful word and aptly used to describe the boiling, whirling waters as they raced towards the Columbia. The mighty Columbia which in turn emanate from above the Columbia Ice Fields in the Canadian Rockies.

We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life. In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there. Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpool is just the river itself. The stability of the whirlpool is only temporary. The energy of the river of life forms living things – a human being, a cat or a dog, trees and plants – then what held the whirlpool in place itself is altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, re-entering the larger flow. The energy that was a particular whirlpool fades out and the water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool.
From the book Nothing Special by Charlotte Yoko Beck

I liken the traveling life I’m leading at the moment to that of being carried along on a river. The whirlpools the encounters for shorter or longer periods with people, events, animals, temples, homes, business people, a gas station attendant. The list is endless. As with the whirlpool of a life so with these encounters, they are lined with gems of every possible kind.

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On Monday I’ll be riding the Greyhound bus from Portland to Spokane in Washington. The route follows the Columbia for quite a bit of the seven hour journey.

Thanks to Nic for sending the quote. A deep bow to your family for all you have created to help beings these very many years.