Sunday, July 17th
Your body is a telescope. You are looking at the sun of existence. The monastery is an oven and we are the bread. Two days since I wrote, 9 since I read. The mornings are murky at 5 in your head.
We yawn even through a damp tai chi class. Seems I’m yawning, all day long. The sun is more like an orange on a french canvas than a star. It is a globular moon of the dawn. A ripe apricot. We watch it rise above Taiyuan, just beyond the pagoda.
The days pass like states through the windows on a road trip. They are long, and seem to stretch infinitely in every direction. The moods are myriad as atoms. The thoughts can’t hide in shaved hair. Can you spot me in the picture? Just below the podium. That’s Sankalp standing up in the front. He’s from Delhi, and Carl the speaker lived there, so they are friends.
This chapter called Monastery Days is a collage of change. I really am thinking less. The sun is out, or the rain is comin’ down, but either way the war is over. We have peace of mind. There’s that quote, “After me, the deluge,” by Louis XIV. So we are living in the deluge of the past. Well, either way we are free.
1/2 our program at Long Quan Monastery is over. The solitude here is like the floor of the sea.
The temple walls have been here all your life. And longer, so empty your heart from the rafters on down.
They say this funny thing about being reincarnated in this life. Not into a body, but a new state of mind.
what we are stepping into 