Many people have been asking me if we celebrate Christmas and I’ve done my best to say what we do and why. We tend to celebrate the Buddha’s Enlightenment later in the month with a special meal on the 25th and we decorate too. Here is an article from the Huffington Post on the subject.

I think of three ways that the traditional story of Buddha’s enlightenment can be reassessed in the light of modern sensibility. The first has to do with Siddhartha’s identity as a man, a prince and a warrior. The second has to do with his intention. And the third has to do with humility.

On Field of Merit I wrote (Time For Celebration) about the intensive meditation retreat leading up to December 8th, traditionally the date Buddhists celebrate the Buddha’s Enlightenment AKA Bodhi Day. Here are some ideas for celebrating the Buddha’s Enlightenment.

Congratulations and celebrations on the event of a long time reader and supporter of Jade Mountains who is getting married this very day. Well done! It is a Buddha Day.

Home Altar An altar can be a focus for ones spiritual aspirations and intentions to walk the Way. This afternoon I gathered items together and arranged them thus. The basic elements would be a Buddha statue/scroll, light, flowers, incense, water. An altar is living, ever changing. I place items I’ve been donated into the bowl on the right. There’s a photograph of my teacher and her teachers and of Iain late of Little House in The Paddy blog. In the middle, close to the feet of the statue is the small container of sands from the River Ganges given to me in August.

There in ones heart/altar precious treasure to let go of, and thus honour.

If you haven’t been over to Field of Merit in the last few hours I suggest you go and read this article by Rev. Alicia. She says it so well, and clearly.

OK, so situations generally need to be resolved, I’m not disputing that. But if we are disturbed or upset by challenging conditions, an annoying person or a malfunctioning object and we think that our peace of mind. our well-being, depends on resolving the situation, we will always be running around trying to fix everything that upsets us and never look at the root of the upset, which lies within ourselves.
It’s not about resolving the situation.

Out and about on a frosty day.Who has not been awake, wide awake, in predawn and find ones mind engaged in plain old worry? I have. The old word for that condition is uhtceare. Doesn’t make one feel any better about it but giving it a name, and outing the fact that this happens to the best of us, perhaps helps with acceptance. Uht = before dawn and ceare = care.

On Book of The Week on Radio 4 there will be readings every morning at 9.45 am from the book The Horologicon, or book of hours. This book is slated to be this years alternative best selling Christmas book apparently. I listened to the reading this morning and it is packed with unpronounceable words describing everyday conditions such as waking up feeling rough – philogrobolized! And we all awaken by something; the central heating, an alarm, the neighbours truck struggling to start. This would be your expergefactor.

Yes, I like words. I don’t necessarily remember them when I come across new ones. Or in this case old ones. However it is the utter playfulness that spills in around words and word use that has me smiling. The author of The Horologicon Mark Forsyth writes a blog called Inky Fool with the most interesting and useful link list. If, that is, you are at all interested in words and writing generally.

The photograph is only slightly relevant to this post however I wanted to test out uploading large files and see how they rendered. I’d not been happy with the quality of photos on Jade for some time. I see an improvement. Somebody pointed out that the photographs can now be seen full size by clicking on them.

Daughter asked me to dog sit today as she was working late. I took the opportunity to use this gorgeous creature as a model for that dog coat I just had to make. She is six months old and, as she is named, completely Dottie!