Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey has just published Buddha Recognizes Buddha written by the Abbot, Rev. Master Daishin. It can be bought for 9.50 GBP through Throssel Hole Buddhist Bookshop – follow this link.
Just in case you missed the offer Sitting Buddha by the same author can be downloaded, chapter by chapter as PDF files from the Throssel website.
Gotta rattling in the boot (trunk). It’s heavy, it’s big (and very very useful). But. It is getting late, getting dark, temperature’s dropping. Driving on, driving.
It’s heavy. The neighbour will lift it. I’m fairly sure the neighbour will lift it. Take it to the kitchen. I’m so happy to have it. Of COURSE the neighbour will lift it.
Nope. No one in. Nobody to lift it.
I lifted it. Carried it. Took it to the kitchen. What is it? A microwave oven!
There is an ever present rhythm in us. Beating out it’s beat. It’s with us constantly but sometimes it misses beats, flutters, speeds up, slows down. And sometimes stops – then starts again. Heart beat. Breathing beat. Waking, sleeping, walking beat. Rhythms. For the most part they go unnoticed until they change, or are changed. Or the presence of rhythm is heard. How did I miss the beat!
This post is for all those very many people, some I know, who every day do not know if there will be another one when they close their eyes.
Light drops like honey from branch to branch
Elders balance their dishes of cream
While fledglings try small quavery leaps
Testing the buoyancy of the air.
Out walking in the sunshine. First sun I’ve seen. This poem carved in a hunk of rock beside the path. Hum. Are we not testing the buoyancy of the air, literally? Then later, the din of collective goose. I look up, eventually, to see them flying over head. Catch them in flight.
All is well as I settle to new circumstances. Life is much the same, although the details are changed.
I have the blessing verse in my mind, the one that starts – The Universe is as the boundless sky…just seems to be there for me this evening. No edges, boundless, complete boundlessness…how else could ‘this’ be? Sit well, sleep well, rise well, walk-on well.
For the next six weeks I’ll be away from the monastery – renewing, resting, reflecting and retreating. And walking and taking photographs and probably posting here too.
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned.
By Alexander Pope from the poem, Eloisa to Abelard. The film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind took its title from this poem.
This morning, and I am not sure why, the dissolving of the snow had Sunshine of the spotless mind playing in my head. The poem by Pope and the film are about love and loss and forgetting. About the pain of letting go. We would be foolish to imagine there would be no pain involved. Would we not?
It is like this. This evening. Not pain. Not sadness. No anguish. No regrets and no love-lost. Just forgetting my father. Dead these past ten years – to the day.
Thanks to Julie for the photograph. Snowdrops will be out in no time.