Click here for today’s photo slideshow from Japan.
Angel Gibson writes:
We’re up good and early today. It’s 5:30am, it’s dark and Rusty is Ready! (OK, this is code and you had to be there for this) We go to Pukoji inner city temple for Spiritual Exercises (S.E.’s.) We get cozy and relaxed (well sort of as it’s very nippy and the floors are hard.) John Morton leads us into S.E.’s. We are flying with his meditative words. Steve Beimel reads to us “Who is the Savior? The one who takes you to the other shore.”
Then we get a western breakfast, Brian Cutchell left this morning and we send him off with hugs galore and then we go to the flea market. This is a treat and we are so caught up in the present – my kimono, my jacket, my mochi. We return an hour later now laden with marvelous finds. I feel like a princess, a queen, in my new gold and white wedding coat and kimono. The Traveler goes to the temple and rings the bell!
Lunch is at the Sake museum. No, we didn’t get free sake but its essence sure seemed to be around us. Next we walk to Saiheji temple. Like little children we sit at tables on the floor in the temple tracing over calligraphy of the hatsutra. Our pens are dipped in ink over and over as we focus with concentration on forming the letters. Then we write a prayer and place this on the altar.
Now we walk to the Moss garden. At every turn there is a new scene – bamboo forest, bridge of stone, green moss carpeting. The Traveler is walking with us. Look up and see the sun shining through the red gold maple.
Time to leave again. Always the scenery is changing; a constant letting go of each beauty in preparation for the next second’s gift. By now we are stunned by the constant flowing of gifts of beauty, love, gentleness, surprises.
Ah, some free time for all of us. I go to the store to get the Macha tea – eureka! The information person speaks English and takes me to the Macha tea. I buy a lot – yum. Hmm, packing will be interesting – oops, I sidetrack to the future. Back to the present.
We walk tonight to Cafe David. Sipping tea, coffee, inhaling the whip cream and biscuit we sit among art treasures and are serenaded by an almost National treasure. How unusual are the tones she voices as she strums her instrument. Her singing takes us along an ancient story that has a happy ending. All too soon we must return. We need to pack for tomorrow’s journey to Nagasaki – a 6 hour train ride. Please keep sending the Light and envision us and all of Nagasaki in healing and Loving Light. God bless us!
Paul Kaye shares:
Today was mostly travel to Nagasaki.
If we can just be,
and we can let that being of who we are come forward,
and we can let our voice and our mind just present themselves,
this being will do away with all the doing that has been our compulsive and obsessive behavior.
-John-Roger
Learn to wish that everything should come to pass exactly as it does.
-Epictetus
Not only did the tea masters enjoy beauty with the eye and contemplate it with the mind, but they also experienced it with the whole being. You might say they comprehended beauty in action. Tea is not mere passive appreciation of beauty. To live beauty in our daily lives is the genuine way of tea.
-Yanagi Soetsu
