What a find! I’d no idea that all, or at least the majority, of the scriptures used daily within our Order are posted on-line.

The Dharma Cloud Trust is the web home for Rev. Master Chushin a priest of our Order living and teaching in Newport, South Wales, UK. So, South Wales is where you will find the scriptures.

Rev. Chushin has a special place in my life as it was through a friend of his that I learnt about Throssel. Previous to that I took photographs for a community newspaper he started in a Newport neighborhood. Latter he was the OBC Journal editor at Shasta, and I typed it. A long and happy association. Grateful to him for getting permission and then posting the scriptures.

This link was found by a congregation member in Edmonton, thanks Mike. And tomorrow there will be another link to a hidden gem of Dharma found by him on an Order web site.

Monday afternoon with no particular place to go and with the car radio on, I pointed south towards America. I quickly fetched up at an antique’s mall in the small town of Leduc, 30 mins south of Edmonton. Leduc is directly under the flight path of Edmonton’s International Airport, the main north/south train line run past one side of town and the main north/south road runs past the other side. A great town for train or plane spotting, most people just drive past on their way to somewhere else.

After a long wander in an antiques mall and a quick spin around a Dollar Store I followed directions to a lake, Telford Lake. Hiking briskly down the trail beside the lake there didn’t appear to be much of anything going on in the wild life department and everything was brown and still. That’s until I got up close to some catkins hiding their exuberant red new life. Spring is on it’s way, bursting through in unobtrusive and delicate ways, easy to miss if you’re looking for daffodil’s!

Ruffed Grouse

Big Bird

Blue Lake

Flat field

Yesterday I was talking on the telephone to a long time acquaintance. “How are you”? I asked. “Fine”. “Well, fine except for a huge sleep deficiency“. This had me wondering. Not enough sleep in the sleep account I guess! So how does one know? How to tell the difference between simply feeling tired, which I feel most of the time, and an actual deficit? (See also here for an article on the subject).

Last evening around 8.00 pm after meditation I was having jabs of pain in my chest, generally felt unwell and so went to bed. Couldn’t have done anything else. Eleven hours latter I woke up! Now I know some of the signs of sleep deficit; and now you know the reason why there was no posting yesterday. From now on, if I’ve not posted by 9.00 pm I’ll not post. That’s my blogging resolve from now on.

It is so very easy to burn the candle at both ends. I’m beginning to see that this can be a form of greed.

A visitor from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition told me the other day that his teacher told him that ‘greed’ or ‘desire’ are not strong enough words for the first of the three poisons. He uses the word ‘addiction’ instead. I can understand why. And I can understand why one of the chapters in Rev. Master Daizui’s book, Buddhism from Within, it titled ‘Radical Sobriety’.

Yes, Buddhist practice is about sobering up, radically!

Uh! This is posting number 300, another mile-stone. And speaking about stones, how about that big one balancing in the previous posting? And for those who concern themselves, I’m much rested and fine.

I have often wondered where this rock was since I have received cards with it on but with no reference to location. Now I know, Myanmar formally Burma. Apparently this rock has been balanced in this position for hundreds of years already.

Jaja, a temple elephant in Sri Lanka, had been celebrating the Buddhist New Year the day before yesterday, and got sick as an…elephant!

Around about this time of year Buddhist celebrate the Birth and Enlightenment of the Buddha, termed Wesak. In our Order we tend to go with some time in May for our celebrations. In 1950 at the first Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (W.F.B.), held in Sri Lanka, they resolved that Wesak be celebrated on the full-moon day of the month of May and urged Heads of governments to grant a public holiday for Wesak. In the Gregorian calendar Wesak fall on May 5th this year.

In the end I guess it doesn’t matter which date we choose to celebrate on, enough that we respectfully and joyfully honour the Buddha. Food making and offering, as well as eating, has a big place in this celebration and not only for elephants!

Found in Melaka, Malaysia.

I notice that Walter posted a poem to mark Wesak, on April 8th. Nice poem too. When I was traveling in East Asia last year I consistently managed to arrive one day after the celebrations. Here in Edmonton all of the Buddhist groups come together on May 6th, we will be there.