Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness. What a wonderful talk, full of charm and profundity. Also a huge number of comments worth reading are tumbling down the page after the video window.
That’s what my diary told me today was going to be. A Free Day! And it has been a free day, a freewheeling kind of day. Ending now with the Jade blank page which I’ve not been filling for the last few days. Sorry about that.
Sunday found me with a group in Hebden Bridge for a day of sitting together. I’m not sure what happened to time though. The day seemed so spacious with more sittings and gathering times than there would normally be on a day retreat. There even seemed to be time to spare. Anyway….
There was an altar in the room where we sat. And as is customary there was a vase with flowers. They were three daffodils. A bud. An opening bud. A fully opened blossom. Showing the step-by-step, unfolding, aspect of practice within sequential time, simultaneously with the all-together aspect. The not bound by time. Perhaps it was the teaching of the flowers that had the day so oddly spacious. Anyway…..
On the altar, as well as the flowers there was a Buddha image. I remember it was white/cream and highly detailed. Earlier in the day this image came in an email. Hojyo Taashi is a well known paper folder and I hope she or he will not mind me publishing this image. It has to be the very best example of this Origami project. I wish I could say I’d be folding one of these on my next free day, but I’ll most likely be doing what I did today. Free wheeling. Anyway……
You can download previously published articles on Home Altars on the Obc Journal website.
Thanks to those who made Sunday a memorable one. Thank you for your generosity.
When I am about to make a phone call I pause. Sometimes I dial and sometimes I don’t. I don’t because I get the decided sense that now is not the time or the urgency of the call simply passes. What ever the prompt I follow it, for the most part. At other times I’ll find myself drawn as if by a magnet to phone somebody. Unplanned and with no apparent reason, I phone them. Quite often I’ll catch the person I’m calling at a really good time, which is always gratifying. Or perhaps that person was about to phone me! This method is not universally applicable nor 100% reliable.
So communicating by phone, even just the matter of to dial or not to dial is something of an art and a matter of divining if it is good to do. Calling for train times and other utilitarian reasons for using the phone is obviously straight forward. Or so one might think.
In hospitals for example there are many high value calls. Utilitarian ones. This is nurse X, patient B has moved to ward 67. Impacted Nurse, in his blog post Phone etiquette for medical staff there is advice on making and taking calls in hospitals. The basic etiquette can be applied anywhere.
I am proud to see that Ian of Impacted Nurse still lists Jade Mountains, under Non Medical.
‘Respect for others begins by not ignoring their words.’
Elias Canneti
From: ‘The Torch in My Ear’
And I continue that quote thus;
Honour others by not repeating their words. Thoughtlessly.
Amazing what a bit of sun can do. Happened upon the Buddha this afternoon caught in a sun beam. Paused a long moment before chasing down my camera to record the moment, for you.
Amazing what a bit of sun can do. Lifts the spirits. Packed a flask of hot water, milk and a tea bag this afternoon. Climbed up a nearby field and paused for a long moment sitting against a stone wall. Brrr, still a bit chilly.
Amazing what a bit of sun can do. Shafting across the chilled land, picking out the school bus taking children home to distant farms and hamlets. So good to have this chance to sit and drink tea in the company of sheep, and my own non foggy brain!
What ever the level
of light,
pausing long enough
to allow what’s there to
enter in
is a very good thing.
Many thanks to the reader for the link referred to in this post.
This is a follow on post to Pains In The Head.