Nun of Your Business

What happens in your kitchen when you come down for breakfast? I live at a Dharma center which gets a lot of traffic through its dining room, the place where I get my meals. I currently live about 30 feet away from the back door of the dining room. On a quiet morning like today, I can feel comfortable rolling over there at any time for breakfast, but when there is a big group I usually wait until the guests have mostly cleared out before trying to get my tea and cereal. Still, there is usually something interesting happening when I get to the dining room. I'm starting this post, which I will add to over the next month. Wednesday, June 6 Table over by the back door: A group of three works on a musical about Amelia Earhart and George Putnam called Final Approach . They discuss lines and scenes from the script and hum tunes. They discuss famous actors who have ruined their careers by undiplomatic things they have said or done. Table by the front door: I sit down here where

This morning I did something that is very scary for me. I apologized. It was about some difficult communication that happened yesterday. For me, apologizing seems like a superpower, a siddhi , a high attainment to be able to do it. When I hear other people apologizing instantly--without having to think about it, without even needing to be in the wrong--I think, "Wow, they are like superheroes." Anyway, sometimes I am forced to apologize for my own peace of mind. I knew that in this case, I wouldn't be able to rest easy until I did it. Oh, and, also, there was the other person's feelings. I needed to face my fear. I needed to find my courage and just go through with it, no matter how scary it might be. So I prepared my words, wrote them out. Then I did the mantras to bless one's speech. And I made an extra effort to generate divine pride--identifying with one's enlightened self-image. And then I went through the door and did it. Fortunately for me, the othe

H.H. the Dalai Lama wearing a long zen . Do you have a very long robe, such as a full length zen (Tibetan monastic shawl, about 5 yards long), that gets all twisted up when you put it in a washing machine? And then it strangles other things and stuff doesn't get dry when you put it in the dryer? And even if it's a little bit dry it's all creased? Today I finally figured out how to prevent that. I folded the robe over once, and then again, and then pinned the corners with safety pins. It worked. When I pulled things out of the dryer, the robe wasn't all twisted into a knot. Now, the next problem: How to get oil out of cloth? It's almost as hard as getting attachment out of the mind.

Today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 2012, I listened to a recording of the original "I Have a Dream" speech on the radio . I suddenly got the impression of a sadhana--that the speech is a sort of sadhana. Take the King of Prayers --not actually a sadhana but a much recited sutra. It takes you on a journey into other dimensions, possibilities, possibilities where people achieve their highest potential, achieve liberation, come to live in harmony with everything around them.

Why do we recite mantras in a foreign language--Sanskrit--a language that we don't understand? And why don't the lamas usually tell us the meaning of the words in the mantra? I came across this interesting passage in a mystery novel: