Friday 19 September 2008

Once you had gold

Once you had gold,
Once you had silver,
Then came the rains
Out of the blue.
Ever and always.
Always and ever.
Time gave both darkness and
dreams to you.

Now you can see
Spring becomes autumn,
Leaves become gold
Falling from view.
Ever and always.
Always and ever.
No-one can promise a dream come true,
Time gave both darkness and
dreams to you.

What is the dark;
Shadows around you,
Why not take heart
In the new day?
Ever and always.
Always and ever.
No-one can promise a dream for you,
Time gave both darkness and
dreams to you.


Enya

Tuesday 16 September 2008

A blast from the past

Well i am now 21. What does this mean for one who has gone forth? I guess for people in thw world this is the time for a big party and getting drunk so i guess it is good that i had a little tiny party in the monastery with a chocolate mud cake and chocolate coted strawberries offered for my birthday. Turning 21 means a page in my life and it is also a time to reflect back over the past and to see here i have come from and how far i have come over these years.

I had a visit from one of my old friends, Lolly. we talked and chatted about my life now and also we talked about mutual friends and people we know. Lolly was doing a project for her last year in journalism and she had to do something on the most interesting person she knew and for some reason i am it! you can see pictures of the visit here.


If anyone is interested then they can have a look at my old blog entries from my lay days here.


Spring is arriving. we had one hot day which also rained and then tonight it has got cold again. Now the flowers will come out and Bundanoon will be in blossom.

We had two delightful young Sri Lankan monks visit that day, they are monks from Ven. Nyanananada's monastery in Sri Lanka. they came with large group. We took a long walk of the monastery. Thunder was rumbling and we made it back out just before the downpour. The weekend before was an Open Day.

Renovations have finally started on the main house here. We're so over-crowded, the plan is to take out the interior stairs and open up the second story into one big multi-purpose shrine room/sala/library. The first stage is to build a new stairway at the back of the house, off of a new double-story deck, circular in shape to catch the view. Here are some photos taken from the deck of a double rainbow that appeared one evening, but they don't do it justice, the pictures were taken before the new deck was built.

When they took out the old cement steps at the back, they found a funnel web spider living there. This is the single most poisonous spider in the world. But luckily they're slow-moving and easy to catch and remove. We all got a close-up look while it was in a jar before it got relocated.

After the rains retreat i will be going to Perth to Bodhinyana monastery. It will be an interesting time because it will be the first time i spend a longer period of time in a monastery will a larger group of monks so i guess there will be plenty to learn from from being there. I will be going on Ajahn Brahm's 9 day retreat whilst there, there will be a little Santi group there for the retreat. When in Perth i also hope to visit Dhammasara for a day.

Office work can be a lot of suffering! The amount of people who wish to come here and spend time here and also who want to ordain is far to great for the current amount of space we have, the demand out does the supply of accommodation and as the accommodation monk i have to try to find people and with people coming and going the accommodation book was a nightmare for a while here but thanks to the help of Jackie it much better.

There has been a lot that has happened this rains retreat and i think it will be one that ill never forget.

My close friend Max has been going to stay at Chithurst and Anenja on his summer holidays. I now await his return from Anenja to hear more about it.

Well i guess that is enough for now, we will have to see what happens after the rains retreat and then we will have more to type about!