Words from the Teachers--March newsletter

Dear sangha friends,

It's been one of those weeks: the dharma talks haven't been recording right, the uploading system for talks hasn't been functioning right, the website email linking function hasn't been working right, I haven't been working right! Have I been distracted by the daily news from south of the border? 

It makes me yearn to practice like the Japanese poet-monk Ryokan, living in a hut, cultivating my garden, visiting neighbours, playing with their children, giving away my poems. Sadly, my calligraphy disqualifies me for life as Ryokan. 

We can smile at what a Tibetan Buddhist teacher dubbed our "bourgeois suffering", but we can also look into our need to re-source, to tap the deep roots of the dharma, the miracles of the present moment, of our life just as it is, in flux, within a matrix of connection with all being. 

My resource has been the snow--I've lost count of how many snowfalls we've had here on Blue Mountain since early December. I go outside and shovel the latest layer, each one a little different in weight and texture, then stop and open to the stillness, the whiteness blanketing the evergreens, the cheeping of the juncos.   

Warm bows,
Myoshin Kate