TUESDAY 17 May

Today is the end of my first week at Eleusis. Most of the last few mornings I have woken up with blocked sinuses and a headache. For the first couple of hours at least this has effected my visual focus as well as ability to concentrate. I am assuming this is an allergic response to the amount of pollen in the air, what we commonly describe as hay fever, although I don’t know. By mid morning the symptoms have abated somewhat - aside from the residual pain in my nasal passages, a runny nose and occasional sharp pains in my left temple. This morning I wonder if this is the response my system is having to the abundance of new growth that surrounds us here. There must be trillions of pollen particles and micro plankton in the air.

Staying on top of keeping the rapidly growing grass cut in the spaces immediately circling the main house requires a good amount of effort everyday. All three of us are doing our bit. As one looks out one can see the rectangular patches formed by the strimming undertaken on different days. It’s a little like looking at someones head when they are halfway through a haircut.

As I write this I am reminded firstly of Dharmavidya’s recent dharma talk and subsequent teaching posted on the Eleusis website about the meaning of the patches of cloth that make up Buddhist robes, the tradition in the time of the early Bhikkhu sangha of taking scraps from the charnel grounds, sewing them together and dying the completed garment with saffron.

In the shrine room at Eleusis the floor is covered with twenty or so rugs. These have been collected over the years and overlay the rough, dusty surface of the barn. This too is a similar kind of patchwork. Many of the rugs are decoratively patterned and together provide a colourful cushion for our feet as we circumambulate during service.

On Sunday morning I spent an hour or so sweeping this patchwork of rugs. The shrine room – I should say shrine barn – is open at the front and therefore birds, bats and other creatures come in during the day and night. Some birds are just roosting but also there are usually at least two or more every year who use the upper reaches, where the wall meets the roof, as sites to build their nests. So as you can imagine it gets quite dirty, what with the dust blown up by the wind, the activity of creatures during the night and the bird droppings underneath the nests. Whilst I am at work two swallows swoop in and back out again, a group of sparrows bundle in squabbling and a collar dove coos from where it sits on the stone lintel of a window at the very top of the building.

As I sweep each section with a hand brush I think about the correspondence the carpeted floor has with the patchwork of the robe and the variable lengths of grass that form a pattern around the site. There is a resonance here for me to do with bringing some material order to the environments we inhabit that also mirrors a need to give form to our spiritual experience. The Zen devotee is encouraged to see Buddha in all things, in the simplicity of life and our direct physical interactions with the world, in the work that one does as much as ones practice in the mediation hall. Harvesting rice, making tea, washing the dishes, planting seedlings, sweeping the shrine room of dust and so on are all practice. Zazen is also practice and as Dogen tells us zazen isn’t the means to awakening but rather is awakening itself. The kesa in the Zen tradition is perhaps made with a more ordered pattern of rectangles than the robes the Buddha and his disciple might have made from the cloth of the charnel grounds. In the former they, at least in part, also represent the patchwork of paddy fields, a reference to the inseparability of dharma and practice, of sacred and mundane, nirvana and samsara. The Dharma is in all things and our encounter with the phenomenal world is the gate to contact with its vast wisdom.

So how does this fit with the Pure Land tradition? Well I guess there is little difference, all traditions of Buddhism, ways and practices are variable ways of turning towards the same light, the light emanating from the Tathagata. As Dharmavidya reminded us this morning in his talk at the end of morning service one of the key messages of the Lotus Sutra is that all forms used in Buddhism are upaya or “skillful means” and that they recognize the different aptitudes, skills and personalities of human beings. In Pure Land we talk about the bombu being or prthajgana (literally “common person”) in contrast to aryajana (holy person). One way to think about this then is to see the bombu being as an ordinary person who cannot experience the true dharma in the practice he does or see the Buddha in his actions or the material reality of the world. Indeed he is more likely to be troubled by resentfulness when yet again he feels like it is always him that remembers to sweep the shrine room floor. And he sees the depth of his foolishness, his inability to escape the mechanism of his own dukkha in contrast to the wonderful abundance and beauty of the universe that he inhabits. There are times when he is overawed by this contrast and the unfathomable kindness and love that still comes his way. What can he do then but say nembutsu and take refuge in Amida’s boundless wisdom & compassion.

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