Memorise

Just over a week ago at the Angulimala Workshop I told the story of an afternoon several years ago when I was sitting in the chaplaincy office at one of our major prisons looking up the list of Buddhists. While I was doing that, at the same time most of the Christian chaplains of various denominations were also in that rather large office and for a few minutes I was distracted by a conversation that had sprung up amongst them. It concerned the Ten Commandments. Now, as a schoolboy trying to be a devout Christian I could have recited all ten of those commandments and so I couldn’t help being pretty surprised that afternoon to hear that collection of diverse Christian chaplains that might have numbered as many as ten unable between them to remember all ten of the Ten Commandments. I remember thinking how unlike Buddhists who then I would have expected to have had similarly important lists of Buddhist precepts and teachings at the tips of their fingers, so to speak.

But times have been changing and with the New Age influence and perhaps a change in the way people are educated I notice now that many who attend Buddhist classes are not so inclined to commit things to memory and probably regard the lists of teachings that they might hear or come across in Buddhist texts as dry, unattractive and somehow apart from the feelings of love and peace that they’ve somehow come to associate with Buddhism. But Buddhism is not about feelings, or at least feelings however nice are not what we are trying to promote and certainly not what I want to draw attention to at this moment.

No one needs to learn everything that can be found in the manuals of Buddhism but to get anywhere you need to have some idea of how to get there and the better you know the way the quicker you will arrive, that’s obvious. So let me encourage you to learn and memorise at least some of the essential teachings and not to be afraid of the lists, they are invaluable mnemonic devices and useful too to contemplate and flesh out with your understanding and imagination.

URGENT NEED

URGENT NEED for a Live-In Helper

Rob, who will have been with us for just over a year cooking and driving, is to leave at the end of July to visit and care for his father in Zimbabwe.

By then we are anxious to have someone to take over cooking and general housekeeping. If that someone can drive that would be an advantage but Tom is set to return for the driving.

We offer accommodation and food, a beautiful place to stay and a great opportunity for some worthwhile practice.

If you think this might suit you, please get in touch as soon as possible.

Angulimala Workshop on Saturday

Up late and up early again preparing for the day.

Around 7:45 took Ben for a quick and rather wet walk in the fields out of our back gate.

At 8:30 had my meal, not too much, didn’t want to be heavy and sleepy.

By 10 o’clock it was time to call everyone to gather in the Shrine Room for chanting and meditation. A pretty good attendance with 23 Buddhist prison chaplains here for the day, or most of it. We ended with a few minutes of metta-bhavana.

Then at 11:00 it was into the adjacent room, sometimes called the small shrine room, for the first of our meetings. This was mostly fairly mundane business, updating everyone with the latest news of things that might affect them. I also had a few words to say about why we do what we do and it shouldn’t be for money, although I appreciate that people have bills to pay. Then I said that while I don’t want to interfere too much I nevertheless do have to endorse everyone who becomes a Buddhist prison chaplain and I do need to ensure that they all know enough about what they have to do. I told them that I was thinking of adding a Buddhist quiz as a regular feature of these workshops and I was pleased to see how well that was received.

While we were talking the hands of the clock travelled round well past 12:30 and by the time of the break for lunch Juliet Lyon, our guest speaker for the afternoon, was already here. Lunch was the usual buffet and gave everyone ample time to chat. I managed a quick coffee and also did the rounds.

We resumed just before 2pm when we welcomed Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, to the hot seat. She talked for about an hour about PRT and a number of prison concerns that we share. And then she took questions that really could have gone on and on but somewhere just before 4 o’clock I called for a tea break. Then, when we eventually got everyone back, we concluded the afternoon with the report-in, when we go round the room and each chaplain speaks for a few minutes about what they’ve been doing and how things are for them and the Buddhist inmates in the prison they visit. I think that went on until around 6 o’clock. Juliet stayed for that and when it was over Rob drove her over to her mother’s in Henley in Arden where she was going to spend the night.

Next was the committee meeting but before we began I asked another Rob who is Buddhist chaplain to some of the Kent prisons and a retired vet to have a look at Tommy, my little old Jack Russell. Tommy hadn’t been right for a day or so and was by then breathing heavily. Rob diagnosed heart failure and so I asked Tahn Manapo to ring the emergency vet. We had to wait for our Rob to come back with the car before we could take Tommy in to see the vet. The committee meeting got under way and we’d almost finished it when Rob returned and Tahn Manapo and I then set off with Tommy for the vet’s surgery in Warwick, leaving the rest of the committee to discuss the last item.

We got Tommy into the vet’s at a quarter-to-eight and it was Mrs White who was on duty. I hadn’t seen her since she came to treat one of our goats in 1988. She weighed and examined Tommy and confirmed that it was heart failure, congestive heart failure I’ve learnt since. So he had to have an injection and a course of pills.

When I got back to the Hermitage the committee meeting was long over but Natasha who I had asked if she might be interested in taking on Buddhist chaplaincy at Lewes Prison was waiting to see me. So then I sat and talked to her until nearly 10 o’clock. Then it was back to my kuti and back to my unfinished newsletter and a determined attempt to have it ready for a big mailing planned for the following afternoon that would include details of the Snowdon sponsored walk in aid of the Bhavana Dhamma (Wood Cottage) debt. It was several hours before I briefly hit the horizontal, but I made it and all went out as planned.