For the Birds

Since I am pointed at birds at the moment I thought I’d share these two photos taken in Montana in 2004 and 2001. The bear was after some fat in a feeder. It did climb up into the tree and afterwards it hung around the garden picking fruit and eating compost until it was eventually sent on its way. Such excitement!

That’s a Kanzeon statue on the feeder. The cat loved to perch there, thus ensuring birds wouldn’t!

Somebody left a comment yesterday asking that merit be transfered to the very many birds dying in Europe as a consequence of Bird Flu. I offered incense for them this morning at the Kanzeon Altar. Feel free to join in the offering of merit.

I’ve been in homes where there is an altar specially set up for remembering animal friends who have died. Performing a short ceremony to remember the creature can be helpful for children and adults alike. On the altar mentioned there was a veritable ‘farm yard’ of animals placed in rememberance. Perhaps I’ll buy a little bird for our Kanzeon Altar.

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3 thoughts on “For the Birds”

  1. Great pictures, Mugo. I myself am famously a big bird lover; we have great birds and trees in Sacramento. [Not so much a cat fancier, as a result, I confess.]

    I am now starting to read “Life of Pi” — I’m not yet to the part with the cat/tiger — and I thought of you when I read this [pg. 6], so I have now gone back to this post to quote it to you.

    “I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.”

    Please don’t misunderstand: I love your hair. But I know when I put your blog on Blogmandu you were interested in other blogging Buddhist Canadians. I can forgive a few Canadians there wind-whipped hair, myself, since it is much compensated by their compassion and intelligence. And, frankly, the compassion alone would do.

    — Tom

  2. Tom.
    So nice you have nice things to say about wonderful Canadians. Too bad I’m not one! I’m originally from England, so that makes me a ‘Brit’. I’ve toggled between North America and Europe for the last 25 years since I was ordained.

    My perminent residence is at the monastery in Northumberland, Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey. Now _there’s_ a place for birds, Lapwings in particular. And a Cookoo who arrives for the spring retreat, to train us not to laugh as it tunes up outside the Zendo as we sit.

  3. Regarding an earlier post, I now know why the cat didn’t show up for the Buddha’s Parinirvana – simply asleep and forgot!
    I do some occasional advisory work in Canada, and like Tom, I enjoy the people very much. Good science too, for the record.
    And Lapwings – Peewits or chewits (?) we called them, you’ve brought back a memory or two.

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