Worldly ups and downs
should be treated
as lightly as the clouds
gathering and breaking up.

Anon

This is an offering of merit post, for Rev. Master Teigan who died yesterday. Some readers will remember him, as I do, as a kind and benevolent soul. A true bass singer that had the floor vibrating under one’s feet! And for our earth. Mugo

The lovely, late, Emily Levine reads ON THE FIFTH DAY by Jane Hirshfield

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

This evening I received a Transfer of Merit request for somebody struggling to remain alive having contracted COVID-19 some weeks ago. They have been on and then off, and on again a ventilator and their organ system is struggling. I’ll not give the name for reasons of privacy. Merit appreciated. This is a doctor on the front line.
The following article is salutary:

On rounds in a 20-bed intensive care unit one recent day, physician Joshua Denson assessed two patients with seizures, many with respiratory failure and others whose kidneys were on a dangerous downhill slide. Days earlier, his rounds had been interrupted as his team tried, and failed, to resuscitate a young woman whose heart had stopped. All shared one thing, says Denson, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Tulane University School of Medicine. “They are all COVID positive.”

Science Mag – How does Coronavirus Kill?

Here is something to listen to from Julius Welby. He is a long time trainee within the Throssel and wider sangha as well. In this eleven-minute recording, he addresses the training issues around living with and living with other people living with, the COVID-19 virus. So much brilliant teaching/advice accompanied, in the background, by the sounds of birds and geese!

I’m on a walk from my house, standing by a lake. I just made a quick one-take recording to try out microcasting on-the-hoof. I mention the Three Pure Buddhist Precepts. I think most people are already in sympathy with them, so the talk is not just for Buddhists. I hope it may be of use to someone out there.

Thanks to Julius for this, his first attempt at microcasting, and for all the help and support of me and of this site too.