So sleepy and it is barely half nine. But my rhythm is much more aligned with nature here. I’ve only been in the woods for a few days but there’s power here. And when it gets dark and quiet it means it.
The cats scratch and jump about at night, but outside of that slightly comforting distraction it is dead quiet here.
I went for fish and chips for dinner. Just down the road to the local chippy, two busy Poles, loads of people waiting. All wrapped up in paper and dripping with grease. Salt and vinegar all over the place and a shop next door where I bought a bottle of ketchup. I drove back chanting nam myo ho renge kyo, shoved the fish into my gullet and got online in time for my study meeting. We are learning facts in order to take Grade 1 in the study materials applied by the Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhism that either clarifies the teachings of the Shakyamuni through the lens of Nichiren Daishonin, or oversimplifies everything by reducing it all to one sutra and then even further, to the opening line of that sutra, and then even further, to encouraging practitioners to chant the opening line of that sutra on repeat in Japaneseish Sanskrit expressed in kanji and then rendered phonetically.
It’s wilful and I love it. This is the mystic law. Screw the priesthood, let’s all try and achieve Buddhahood in this lifetime, let’s all be the bodhisattvas of the earth. It’s a mildly evangelical structure, as they seek what they call “kosen rufu”, which is Chinese kanji loosely adopted into Japanese as “spread about widely”. It’s probably more widely practiced outside of Japan as a result. I’ve got a scroll in my flat and I can be found in front of it often. I’m picking it back up again these days but it has always been important.
And I’ve been looking at suitcases full of clothes today as well as entertaining the cats. Seems I’ve got lots of army fatigues in here, and some seventies stuff. Siwan and I are gonna get together on Monday and sort this shit out along with all the other stuff and start to work out how to activate it so it doesn’t just live in bags until we die.
For tonight though it’s all back in the bags, I haven’t the means to photograph it well here, I’m gonna make that next week’s work. And I’m going to bed early again and it’s gonna be great. I was up with dawn today, the sun is down now, it’s bedtime. I’ve done enough.
Carlos is next door this time. I might actually get the bed to myself tonight…. Miracles.
AlBarclay 