Remind us of what is important
Link lay and monastic training
Spiritual encouragement
Inspiration
Teaching

This is what one reader came up with when asked about what she saw as being offered here. My purpose in asking was to get a sense of the balance of articles and where it would be good to make adjustments.

What is not mentioned in the list is links to films. Here’s one to be going along with. The Year of the Dog it shows promises. Maybe a candidate for a Dharmaflix review. It’s a film about what it means to devote yourself to something other than your fears and desires, to shed that hard, durable shell called selfishness. It is, rather remarkably, an inquiry into empathy as a state of grace. And if that sounds too rarefied for laughs, rest assured, it’s also about a stone-cold beautiful freak.

Thanks Angie for the feed-back and Mike in Edmonton for the link to the film.

I look at that list above and think, Yep, that’s what this blog offers me! Thanks folks, all of you, for your kind support and encouragement to keep on writing.

Old Mans Beard, AKA Traveller’s Joy

Climbing on the stone wall and tumbling over into the lane this rambling plant graces our walks to and from the meditation hall and main buildings.

I wrote about the concept of the grieving beard back in the spring of 2006. That’s a beard grown by men when they are remembering somebody. When they have finished grieving they shave it off.

Well there is certainly a lot going on in the world that would cause us to grieve. Just sitting with that, in particular the situation in Burma, is the best one can do.

This cat in Montana loved to hang out on the bird table, with the statue of Kanzeon. Bodhisattva of Great Compassion.

Uma, who had a mention a few days ago, died this afternoon. Now we just have Smudge the cat. He was off down the lane in the dark this evening, probably hunting.

The rabbit, a young one, stood motionless in the middle of the lane as I walked to meditation early this morning. Returning a couple of hours later it was on its side, gasping for breath. One of the monks had made a fence of gardening tools, signalling us to take care. Still later in the morning it was gone. Dead, at last, and now buried.

Myxomatosis is here, again. The virus gets into the rabbits gut and it’s only a matter or time, a long slow time, before the infected creature is dead. I remember when, in the early 1950’s, this disease struck the rabbits in our part of Sussex. We were near the Kent boarder where it was first discovered. Spread by accident or design, nobody is sure. This was my first encounter with slow death. I’d seen road kill often enough. Those gasping animals in beside the road left a deep impression on me.

Most of us must have passed the rabbit on our way too and fro to the main buildings this morning. In such circumstances we routinely make gassho and say the three Refuges of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha for the creatures benefit. It’ll be the most blessed rabbit in the valley! As with the foot and mouth outbreak back in 2001 we can’t do funerals for each animal, however we can offer something for the ones we see and keep the big picture in mind as well.

Each time I passed the scene there were thoughts of frustration; thoughts of helplessness in the face of its inevitable demise, there were the feelings of uncomfortableness looking at the raw reality of it all. And also there was the background wanting to DO something. But there isn’t anything that can be done, the virus keeps on emerging. One could think, well it keeps the rabbit population down, which is true.

So, things/circumstances hardly ever come up smelling like roses, from every angle.