Big Day Out

Tomorrow is a Big Day. Shopping at Asda with my home-help, called by one of my carers for whom she also works "The Fairy Godmother". Pushing my trolley transformed by a green plastic shopping basket, I can walk tall and bump my way amongst so many others and each in a dwan, as they say in Scotland.

The highlight of the day is a latte at MacDonalds where the paper coffee cups have collectible stickers on them. Every 6 stickers gets you a free coffee. I guess it's a sign of the recession that stickers are hard to find now except from ones own cup! (Does recession mean stopping again and again?)

At the checkout all my difficulties become obvious-  the garbled speech and confusion, the inability to understand how to put my bank card into the machine and worst of all being shouted at. As though that would help!

l saw a soldier returned from Iraq with terrible spinal injuries. "It's not my disability but my abilities I look at." he said.

Teaspoons

" Life lives between coffee spoons" said TS Elliot in a poem (or something to that effect). Life was indeed like that between coffee spoons and cigarettes in the fifties. I still have a degree of independence but that will go at some point, it must for all of us if we live long enough to complete the circle of life span. Growing old is a gradual erosion of dignity and death is the interesting outcome of all this.

"Dead or alive?"asks the teacher knocking on the coffin lid.
"Don't ask me, I'm not dead yet" replies the master.

Seems to me - but I am just a stupid old grandma - that all our vows and esoteric beliefs are just a kind of life, or should I say death, insurance giving profound comfort and guarantees of survival. So best to put it all into practice this life-time. Must go and have a coffee but I gave up ciggies years ago!

Perfect As It Is

It's not a very original thought - but we are each like a piece of a jigsaw. That is - perfectly formed piece all your own, with all the patterns, lines and colors that are needed to complete the whole picture. We are as we are and perfect for our particular spiritual growth and development. We need to remember and keep remembering that there are no standards to judge by. In fact there is nothing to judge by and nothing to judge by as you are perfect, just okay for your place in the world.

The things that happen to you are perfect for you. My life is the perfect life for me. So we don't need to wish anything to be other than it is. No matter how it looks.

Keep In Touch

Hi Everybody, sorry there hasn't been a blog for a while but after a big fall I am now getting better and beginning to think straight again! Keep in touch. Love Genshin.

Knots And Chains

Here's a tip from my old Art Therapy days. If you have strong feelings about a situation or someone, try doing a doodle when feelings are overwhelming. Then ask yourself "What is this about? And where do I put myself in the picture?" If you just sit first with it, you may transcend it but you probably won't untie any knots or undo any chains but you will spare your teacher some work.

The Most Important ...

It really is important to have a teacher, properly qualifed and acknowledged by his/her own teacher i.e. part of the ancient lineage - bit like the apostolic succession but of course even older. Only the true teacher who manifests the love and compassionate action of ones true nature is able to remove all our barriers so that the great ocean of Buddhism and compassion may flow unhindered.

May you all encounter a true teacher.

Love and gassho, Genshin.

Pandoras Box

Are you depressed after seeing Avatar? Pandoras box, or rather its' contents, bits of Pandora here and there is Pandora. I heard a good joke the other day about 2 blondes calling to each other across a stretch of water. The first blonde shouted to the other "How do you get to the other shore?"The other shouted back "You are already there!" (Thanks to Malgosia Sensei for this joke) The Christians say heaven is right here now and the Buddhist say Samasara is Nirvana, Nirvana is Samsara, so Avatar devotees could say Pandoras Box is Pandora. P.S. Written in ignorance, because I haven't seen the film yet - anybody got a car and a spare seat? :-)