We live in the world
and we live in the sky.
Just as the Lotus is not wetted by the water that surrounds it
Pure and beyond the world is the mind of the trainee.
O Holy Buddha we take Refuge in Thee. Words slightly adapted from a blessing verse.
This evening we watched a documentary about William Owen, the First World War poet. Who was William Owen? According to the documentary he seems to have changed the course of war poetry, and poetry in general. That largely came about through his meeting and friendship with Siegfried Sassoon, a poet I read in the 1960’s.
Here is Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est bringing our eye-ear-nose-tongue-body-mind to join with his, in the trenches.
For those who know the Scripture of Great Wisdom (The Heart Sutra) the no eye, ear, nose etc. is pointing out no separate eye, ear etc.
Rent – ripped apart.
…and on the deepest level, there is that which cannot be rent.
A number of gifts today starting with this small cake and candle received soon after the new year turned. As we walked back to our rooms in the dark after our New Year ceremony we pondered aloud on how they were doing in Allendale. We looked in that direction, a glow rimmed the moors above us.
Other gifts: my late Masters birthday today, my late mothers birthday today (would have been 100 years old), a fluke of a meeting with reader and partner and small child while out for a walk (what a joy!), walk with guest and reader to visit her late husbands grave, discover in conversation with a regular here that he is a Jade regular too… Lots of gifts one way and another. And comments-they are a very much a gift too.
Practice Within The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives
