April 25, 2004

finally!

I finally met my teacher. It only took about five years, but I was finally able to sit across from Geshe Michael and smile like an idiot and have nothing much to say. It was amazing though. I get a little watery-eyed when I think about it. Christie was with him and Christina was with me. They wrote a very nice thing in our book... sung juk, which is Tibetan. It means “union of the two” (wisdom and emptiness; outer and inner training) and it’s also the word for yab yum or “spiritual couple”. It was very sweet.

Their eyes sparkle like the diamonds in their ears. Geshe-la has these amazing blue eyes which are very deep and penetrating. Christie-la’s are brown and soft. It’s something you don’t notice on a tape or mp3 or even a video.

I told them how Jim and Janice send their love and were sorry they couldn’t be there. (Jim and Janice go way back with Geshe-la as they do with most Vajrapani people.) He said, “yeah, yeah, yeah. I got their email. Something about the Dalai Lama being more important.” And we both laughed. I took them to the airport that morning to fly off to Toronto to see His Holiness. He told me to send his love to Ven. Amy who is doing an eight month retreat. I said I would. Then we found out the church needed to be locked up in a few minutes so we cut our conversation a bit short.

I’m going to be heading down to the temple building work party with Jim in mid-May so I’m hoping to get some more time to talk to them both. I was thinking this morning that maybe I’m ready to take the lifetime layman’s vows and maybe even Bodhisattva vows. And maybe I would ask Geshe-la to give them to me.

posted @ 6:36 AM

April 21, 2004

typical day

Seems I spend a majority of my computer time these days either doing things for work or clearing out all of the spam comments to this site. I’m not sure why people peddling over-the-counter drugs feel like this website is the place to promote their business. It’s the most bizarre thing. I, of course, ban their IP address (so they can’t post here anymore) and go through deleting each one of their “comments”.

As for doing things related to work... I’m not going to complain too much. The new job is really great. I’m now the Facilities Manager (I prefer to call it Land Manager, but technically the title is Facilities). I went from seeing a 12 x 12 space of Vajrapani everyday to seeing around 5 to 10 acres everyday... sometimes more (we have 75 acres, but only use a small portion of that).

There are no “typical days” on the job. This morning I had to go up to the power shed and restart the generator at 7:15. Yesterday we patched some drywall in the main building and began work on replacing a ramp on the dorm. It’s great to have the constant variety and to be able to walk around this beautiful land. I’ve been carrying my camera with me, so I’ll be posting some pictures soon.

posted @ 6:16 PM

April 13, 2004

the babe

Whoa! This makes it seem really real...

posted @ 6:57 AM