BookTalk.org

Penelope wrote:How great to contact you WildcityWoman!

I also have a lot of Budhist philosophy in me. We have a Budhist Meditation Group here in our little town. Sometimes I go and listen to the Budhist 'Nuns' give us a talk, then let us ask questions. Then they lead a meditation. You can watch people change over the weeks. I go when it is a 'Nun' and not a 'Monk'. Although I don't know why.

We have places you can go but I never get around to it. My daughter goes to a Vipassana retreat centre in a town north of here.

I'd like to go, but the first time you go, it can't be for just a weekend - you have to do a whole 10 days!

Geesh!

Here's the site where I listen to my dharma talks . . .

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks-gil.html

Yes, Penelope, it's good to meet you to - it's good to have somebody you can compare notes with.

Somehow, since I have been practising....when I go to the supermarket, I don't just see a nice clean piece of chicken breast in a nice clean pack. I see the whole bird. And so it concerns me whether that bird has been treated like a cabbage instead of as a sentient being.

Ha ha! I know - I did a chicken on Saturday - right now chicken is available at a decent price here in Toronto - it's probably 'in season', or maybe there's a glut of them right now, and they're chopping heads to keep the population down.

I smoke too. Is it OK smoke while I pray - I asked. No, she said, but it OK to pray while you smoke!!!

Yes - I've heard that story told by the dharma teachers many times - the way Gil Fronsdal (on the site I gave the link to) puts it is to say that a couple of monks went to the Abbot - one of them asked 'can I smoke while I'm meditating'. The Abbot said 'certainly not!'

The guy's buddy said 'hey! you put the question to him wrong - let me do it tomorrow.'

So they went in to see the Abbot and the guy said 'Is it ok to meditate while smoking.'

And the Abbot was pleased as punch - oh yes, he said - always meditate - no matter what you are doing.

I don't think the Buddha ever said anything about tobacco. He just said no intoxicating chemicals.

I drink coffee and alcohol - everything in moderation...Boring innit?

I don't drink alcohol - had a problem with it and had to quit. I haven't drank since Jan 1988 - I quit on Robbie Burns birthday.

In the same way as the chicken in the polystyrene tray - strikes me as the whole bird. Then it occurs to me what I am working toward, at basics, and why. Hence - my abhorence at the suffering for such a useless thing as Ivory.

Now, something like ivory - or wearing the fur of animals in a climate where you don't really need it - that, I don't like. When I was a young woman in my late teens and early twenties, I liked having a suede coat with a fur collar. I thought nothing of it.

Then when I was about 34 there was a group at a shopping mall who brought in a real live baby ocelot - they talked about their plight to save animals like that from being trapped or raised just for that purpose. I never wore fur after that. I even threw out the few rabbit skins we'd collected from one of trading posts when we went up north.

Coincidentally, right after I saw the ocelot demonstration, my boss got a new fur coat - she was an uppity bitch who flaunted her wealth in such a way that it was just plain vulgar - she came into the office with her new coat and it just happened it was 'ocelot'.

She asked how I liked it - I told her it would look better on the cat. She never wore it into work again.

I think Budhism has made me more aware of life's principles. So although it is socially acceptable in this part of the world today to keep some animals in unspeakable cruelty - ie grow them like cabbages - I find that unacceptable. Budhism has disturbed my complacency - Hallelujah!