Somewhere in The Threefold Lotus Sutra the gathered multitudes all simultaneous cough and snap their fingers thus signifying that they speak the One Truth and will, I’m presuming, all teach it.
I had to smile when I read about the collective cough. Made me feel so much better about my bouts of mad coughing that well up from nowhere, go on and on and then leave me exhausted. Dignified affirmation of the One Truth? I think not! Sorry for myself? No. Just embarrassed about the explosions!
I’m reading the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Kosei Publishing Co. Japan. It’s a deeply significant work within this tradition with segments of the text used in our ceremonies.
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.
