A Shining Quiet
I’m out and about with the hound in the bright crispness of an almost December morning. After a week or so where the temperatures suddenly decided to play at summer heat, the seasonal chill in the air is welcome. I sit momentarily, giving the beast sufficient time to meditate outdoors and I think of the Auschwitz winter scenes in Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man which I read just last night. A chill creeps over me, deeper than bone.
More than the weather has been at sixes and sevens in our corner of the world. A home renovation project has caused a tangible amount of upheaval. Lessons have been taught in the garden, studying has been done at various spots away from home. In effect, school has sprung up anywhere that respite can be found from the incessant banging, drilling and dust that have temporarily taken up residence in our dwelling.
One morning last week we all took refuge at Sakya Samten Ling. My daughter and I sat quietly together in the shrine room; everything was silent and right with the world. We stood later in front of the painting of the Wheel of Life and moved from the realm of the gods through all of the scenes of samsaric existence depicted. She gazed and gazed, fascinated in particular by the hungry ghost realm and asked question after question in that wonderfully open and clear way that young children, possessed of a fluid mind, are wont to do.
We sat around the study table later; Duke asleep on my feet with a satisfied dreaming mind. Maskless and free, our sixteen year old and six year old worked away on subjects that children from one hundred years ago or more would have recognised. Contentment and purpose wove their fabric around us while the minutes moved to a steady tempo. I remembered once more the indispensability of continuity, consistency and transmission.
I looked up at the Sakya Refuge Tree and felt that old familiar sense of wonder. The shining quiet truth that Lord Buddha taught, which has been passed down in an unbroken tradition to this very day, is the same now as it ever was. Nothing really changes in these dreams of ours.
