April Fool's Day and a Friday - how inauspicious ! Nonetheless, it was a good day for us.
It was Modgala's first full day here. Very nice to have her with us. In the morning we all went to Oasis. This was our second time to hold our service/puja at Oasis. We have agreed to do it there every Friday morning for a trial period. It is delightful to practice with our friends and to bring different traditions of Buddhism together. Annette is going to translate some of our ritual into French - then we shall all have to re-learn it! The Tibetan shrine room looked good with our gang of red clothed people in it. At the end of the service I spoke about the meaning of invoking Amitabha, how invoking one Buddha is invoking All Buddhas. Afterwards we went for tea and biscuits at Annette's house and continued our discussions and sharing of news. Elja is still excited about the prospect that we may soon have animals at Eleusis, but also wirried about not having a computer at the moment.
I am currently quite strongly conscious of the term Sho Butsu, meaning "All Buddhas", because of its relevance in Dogen. Much of my time is spent working on a new translation of Genjokoan. As it rained much of the afternoon, I got on with this work, though we were also able to go for a walk around the grounds with Modgala too. On the way I cut the ivy on trees that we passed, rescuing oaks from strangulation. In the evening, Adam was busy making some rather delicious looking brownie cake.
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