Don’t want to get behind so I’ll keep writing! It’s HOT in here! I’m in the computer room and all the monastics left – think they might have a meeting – usually it’s busy! But I brought my own MAC so I’m not using theirs.
Actually slept really well until 5 a.m. last night. They didn’t start chopping fruit until then!! And it was cooler. It’s really crowded in the room with my two roommates. One is 62, from Munich, had a stroke when she was in her 40s, so her left arm is paralyzed and she hasn’t been able to work since then. On some kind of Social Security disability.
The other is also from Munich so they know each other – same sangha I guess (a sangha is a group who “practice” together, usually once a week.) Then after meditation instead of yesterday’s
qi gong, I tried the bamboo sticks that you stretch over your head and move around. I thought it looked like fun. It was very tiring and I’m having pain in my left shoulder, probably like a little rotator cuff tear or something. Well, this really aggravated it!! So I took two Tylenol and put on some BioFreeze!! It helped!
Doug has been doing Kung Fu for a couple of months. Only the monastics were doing this.
qi gong, I tried the bamboo sticks that you stretch over your head and move around. I thought it looked like fun. It was very tiring and I’m having pain in my left shoulder, probably like a little rotator cuff tear or something. Well, this really aggravated it!! So I took two Tylenol and put on some BioFreeze!! It helped!
Doug has been doing Kung Fu for a couple of months. Only the monastics were doing this.
After breakfast, the morning dharma talk starts with Thay bringing all the children (maybe 20 of all ages) up to the front. Yesterday, he talked to them about meditating on 4 pebbles (he wrote a children’s book about the pebble). Today he talked about seeds – he gave them each a corn seed, had a small corn plant there they brought from PV. He talked about them starting from a seed in their mommy’s womb. He was pretty funny and got a lot of laughs. Like the womb was better and more comfortable than a 10 star hotel. He LOVES gathering children around him.
He did the same thing when we went for a walking meditation outside in the park afterward. I couldn’t see what he was doing with them as Doug and I were too far back. Doug grabbed my hand and we walked together for ½ and hour or so. It was very nice!! I’m sure he did it to slow me down!!!! It’s VERY slow walking! Just kidding!
Doug and I shared an avocado he’d bought in Koln on our way here, some oranges and apples, rather than the lunch. Too much food, 3 times a day. So we ate light!
He was having consultations this afternoon. People can sign up for an individual consult with a monastic if they have issues they want to talk about in private, not in the dharma discussion group. So he was booked up this afternoon. I did my floor scrubbing (back to being a putzfrau! For those who don’t know, in 1965/66 I worked in Munich in a krankenhaus (hospital) as a scrublady along with friends Mary and Betty! No one at the hospital spoke any English so we learned pretty bad German for 4 months. $75/month PLUS room and board! I earned my ticket home, as I had come with $600 and a one way ticket! We spent a year hitchhiking around and visited 28 countries!! That was the start of my passion for travel.
Off to bed!
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