I got back to La Ville au Roi last night. It is cooler than when I left ten days ago. Autumn has arrived.I shall have an easy day today after travelling. Unpack the car - I have brought various things back - a chair, a bed, some plates, other small i
Read more…The year is turning, the leaves are going yellow, wind and rain break up the sunnier times.
My trip to Korea proved to be a great success. Last year I was unable to go due to illness, so it was good to get back into the swing of the work and the prog
Read more…This morning, as most Fridays, we went to Oasis.
Tara met up with the hens
Adam had a splash in the pool
Weather
'Orage' is the French word for a storm, especially the kind of rather dramatic, short, thunder and lightning storms that occur during high pressure periods in summer, punctuating the build up of' la grand challeur' (the big heat) that goes on
Silver sunlight at dawn filtering through the walnut tree makes the washing line into a stream of colourful flags. The settee in the garden is so French. The little cat is already twice the size of when she arrived and her then blue eyes are now near
Read more…We had our usual Friday visit to Oasis this morning and today for the first time did the ritual in French which was very nice. Annette has been doing some great translating work. She has done the whole of our service book and I am now editing it, eve
Read more…I have been back at Eleusis nearly two weeks. I am very happy to be home again. When I arrived it was the beginning of the Anshin Retreat. It was an intensive week and gave me an opportunity to reconnect with the Amida Sangha.
I am very happy that w
Since a couple of days ago I have been back here at Eleusis. It is nice to be home. I had been in Holland for eleven days. This time I was a guest of Yvette, the pilgrim who went on her bike from Den Bosch to Eleusis. Every visit to Holland seems to
Read more…While doing quite a lot of physical work in the course of the day, my mind has been much occupied with the political developments. This is both intellectual and emotional. Like many others I feel a profound sadness at the Brexit vote and each day we
Read more…Today we all went to the summer open day at Oasis. There was a fine Dharma talk by Zen teacher Henri Duran from Moulins. He used the name of the centre "Oasis de Longue Vie" as the asis of an exposition of basic Zen Buddhist principles. There were th
Read more…It was a sunny day here and we all got on with a variety of practical tasks - liming walls, cutting grass, going shopping, taking departing visitors to the railway station. By the end of the day we were six people here looking forward to a fairly qui
Read more…It has been a gentle day. In the morning Elja and I took Maitrisimha and Annetta to the station to catch their train north. We stayed in town long enough to have a coffee at a cafre. We had taken Tara, as we are trying to get her used to car travel.
Read more…This morning I read one or two interesting things that led to me writing a blog post about not knowing what we know.
Meanwhile, outside, the flowers are blooming...
When you are very small and the world is very big and new...
you have to investigate everything carefully...
Retreat Week
The past week we have been in a retreat focussed on the theme of Anshin - settled faith & peaceful mind. We have enjoyed being a Dharma community of eleven people. There is plenty elsewhere on the site about the theme.
This morning we al
Read more…Fruit
Today Elja was picking berries and making jam and syrups while I was sawing logs that Adam was then storing away in the woodshed. All preparations for the colder months to come.
We are still getting plenty of garden produce. Today I harvested a
Read more…We are a community of three once again, now that Elja is back. It is blackberry season and we have been picking berries and she making syrups in the kitchen.
I have been doing some woodwork and the hut in the barn now has a roof, effectively giving
Read more…Our little birds have left the nest. It is empty now. They have joined the dozens of other ones that loop around our years and fly through the refectory, in one end and out the other. I guess they are all hearing stories about Africa and chasing the
Read more…It has been a big day for Tara exploring, finding out how to climb onto the table, attempt the stairs, fight with human feet and even go for as trip in the car.
all of which means that one needs a lot of dream time to process it all
