living dharma

I’m in one of those moments – maybe you know the one? Where you find yourself working hard just to stay upright….as winds howl and scream the full distance over the tundra – hitting you in the chest….as the desert scirocco scours your soul, leaving you a wondering husk, muttering the words, “what happened, how did I get here?”

It’s one of those times. And as is often the case for us privileged westerners, these leave-you-naked-and-raw winds are largely self-created.

I’ve been trying to make a decision. A series of decisions. Worldly love or monastic vocation. They’re both alive. They’re both so real in me. They’re both in hand. They’re both beautiful and terrifying. They both call for courage and love and generosity and trust and letting go and reverence and diligence and non-self….they’re the same in so many ways. And pretty different too, yes oh yes. The sweetnesses of each are so different. In the essence of the lived experience, the monastic life of Zen and the partner life of intimacy have such very different flavours.

Perhaps they converge in an energetic way – at a measurable brain wave, blood flow through the heart level. I don’t know. They both have the capacity to bring such enormous joy. Their capacity for generating suffering is not so similar though. Maybe not so different in terms of the challenges of living in spiritual community (as distinct from one’s own intensely private connection through Buddha/God/Presence/Nature etc.) and the challenges of being in intimate relationship….it’s all human all the time.

Anyway. It has been a borderline frantic pace in the choosing and vectoring toward one destination or another….me in a robe in the monastery….or me absolutely not in a robe and in bed with a warm loving body.

More chapters to come.

And – as always – in times frantic and less so, I’ll try and come back to my breath. To my slow steps. To gratitude for all that is wondrous, refreshing and healing within me and around me…..can’t hurt, eh?

….I’ll try and get posting photos figured out again soon….I have some very pretty ones I’d like to share.

Since I started working on a book and – before that – after I left Vancouver (again) for the monastery in France…since all that I haven’t been here. Haven’t been blogging at all. And now that I am living in rural New Hampshire, with a quaint old dial-up connection, there are not so many opportunities. But I’m not far from high speed country and sitting here in the library ostensibly working on the book, I thought I would stop by and say hey to whomever might also stop by. There were never many visitors to this blog. It was more of a way to keep in touch with people scattered hither and yon – more that than any kind of social media tool. And it sort of went sideways in some remarkably painful ways, in terms of stuff I wrote and reactions spawned by said stuff.

Anyway.

Maybe I’ll come back and write a bit from time to time.

Why New Hampshire? What happened to moving to Devon and that little Buddhist retreat centre? And what about going back to the Zen monastery in France after the Brits said, “bloody awful what what, but no can do on the work permit” – what about becoming a monk and the inevitability of it all?

Well. I did go back to Plum Village for a few months. Did think hard (too much damn thinking almost certainly) about ordaining. Decided not to, for now. Instead came to New Hampshire to explore living in a new spiritual community founded by a former monk and nun from Plum Village….got here in mid-October, having stopped off in Toronto to meet with a literary agent and talk about a book idea that has been slowly percolating.

So – I’ve mostly been here in New Hampshire since. Working ever so slowly on the book (called A Gift of Ashes….a memoir of sorts I guess). Living lay life, as it is known in the monastery i.e. doing and living stuff that monks don’t live. Aware every day of the part of me that is a monk. Aware every day of some part of me wanting to go back to Plum Village to stay. Grateful for the amazing people I am living and practicing with here in New Hampshire. Grateful for living in a beautiful rural spot, spending lots of pretty much every day in winter magic….snowshoeing, running on hard pack snow, bringing in the firewood, breathing in and out. You know, Zen stuff!

Ok – well….maybe I’ll be back if the spirit moves me. Maybe I’ll save it all for the book….they’re different kinds of writing I’ve discovered….blogging and book writin’…..

Peace out, as the kids say (do the kids still say this?).

Oh – the picture is of a cabin I spend time in….across the road from the pretty house I’m living in…ok….maybe not yet….need to figure out pasting in photos again…..trust me though….really really lovely spot….