WEEK IN REVIEW

It's been a risky week! I opened the third Chapter of a book called "Servant of the Servant", a recollection by a monk named Tamal Krishna Goswami about his times travelling around the US on this Greyhound but turned temple. Along with other monks, it was the pied piper meets the magic school bus. They'd go from city to town to village and practically each time they left, two or three fortunate souls would join up and try to live as monks. He recounts the joys, the transcendental competitive spirits of other monks who admired their bus's adventure and tried to replicate their activities, the rude awakening in parking lots with guns in the window and insults hurling thru the ether, the bitter cold and warm summers, and the care and nourishment of each new soul trying to make his way back home to the spiritual world by accepting monastic vows.

As I read on my yearning increased to be engaged in such a way! Forget everything and just travel and teach. I yearn to meet others with this mentality. In the 60s and 70s that was easy, people were unsatisfied with the ways of their parents and so the Hippie movement sprung up in search of inner and higher truths. Today, time is mostly spent uploading or downloading Ipod stuff, shopping, girl/boy hunting, celebrity gossiping and whatever else us young ones do for fulfilment. Who dare try monastic life now? Very few even think of it. At most, guys and girls sit up all night trying to figure out life's mysteries through the pot peace pipe hole or shrooms or again, whatever else us young...

So in that state of mind I distributed books in downtown Halifax this week mentally recalling all I read the previous nights. Then a funny thing happened. A few guys I talked to started asking questions on monastic life. Even better, this curious eyed guy, full of energy and a spirit of adventure hopped off his bus and had to see what those guys in Saffron robes were talking about. We even invited him and a few others over for supper. pretty cool I thought. But he's only 18- wait a minute! Just one minute there fella :) I was only 18 when I moved into the monastery. Yup, fresh outta high school and wondering what i was gonna do in that college place.

Then there were those Saffron clad monks and Sari clad nuns who caught my attention on that busy day in 1998 in Seattle. The rest is history which pops up every now and then in the pages of blogs and journals.

What else this week....

I got really cold and my bones started to hurt but I ignored it allll day and it hurt still alllll day.

I also realized and decided to learn to respect others who don't share my let's jump in a van and take over the world and turn every one and their moms into monks mood.

I ate spice cake, got marriage proposals from a lady on the street (funny one). I told her no (valley girl accent) and she was like why? and I was like cuz i chose not to and she was like oh my Gosh you so should, and I was like sorry, what i don't use down there I use in my brain, like oh my God she was like so sad, like i don't like get it!