Watch the weather change...

One of the bright moments of being in China right now is that Garchen Rinpoche is here, and he has a wonderful ability to make you feel better. I am so fortunate to have met this Lama even though I stumble and am not a very good practitioner.

I was really happy to see him yesterday since I wasn't having the best day. Like a lot of other things here, getting home is proving to be difficult. Tomorow I'll be on the bus for a day then going up to the Monastery to get my things and then heading back so I can make my flights to get back home.

It's really a strange time right now...on the one hand I have to accept the circumstances for what they are and aknowledge the way I feel. On the other hand is some fear...fear that I may never be able to come back or that I will end up getting stuck in some mediocre desk job in the states. As I have said before I have a tendency to treat life as an all of nothing battle and not think to far ahead, but when I sit back and look again I can see that the world is filled with possibilities and that I don't know what the future will bring. Most importantly if I'm not happy then there is something fundamentaly wrong. Like if you start adding and you use the wrong figure in your first equation...the rest of your results are going to come out incorrect.

But boy did it make me feel better to see Rinpoche. Some of you know, and some of you know by proxy of your own Lamas and some of you just see a cute older tibetan man in a skirt but there is a completly magical quality about him that is hard to put into words. Although my eyes are clouded by the dust of the world and I can not claim to see him for who he truly is, this is a Buddha walking among us and even if you don't go in for this sort of thing is probably one of the sweetest kindest people you could ever have the pleasure of meeting.

I pray that I can live up to his example and the simple things that he asks of his disiples: study the 37 Bodhisattva Practices (which contains all the teachings of the Buddha in a handy 37 verse booklet)http://www.garchen.net/resources/37practices.pdf and APPLY them in your life, develop Bodhichitta and treat all beings as your own kind mother.

And there are some days lately where it seems like a miracle if I can make it through the day. I'm interested to see whether this will get better or worse once I get home, but somehow I think it will get better. As Ferris Bueller once said "Life moves pretty fast...if you don't stop and look around once in a while you might miss it."