Huvudsida

Janet returned from the U.K. (over my protests) and we eventually moved from Johnstown to Winchester, Virginia, hoping for a better chance for employment, even though none of these small Appalachian towns could offer much. Winchester was only an hour's drive from the Bhavana Society and Bhante G, who was just over the line in West Virginia and a couple of hours from my mother's nursing home in Pennsylvania, so we were able to deepen our practice and at the same time keep an eye on Mom.



My mind calmed down quickly at Bhavana and the time went by quickly. I kept busy felling trees and splitting firewood, working in the kitchen, and later pitching in and helping with the construction of the new meditation hall, and I would have actually remained with Bhante G and ordained as one of his monks had I not wanted to support Janet by becoming part of Amaravati.

"Do you stretch?" I asked while working on his Hamstrings. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" Harvey responded. "Do you stretch regularly?" I repeated my question. "Are you asking if I am stressed?" Harvey couldn't hear my softly-posed inquiry. But he answered the real question I had in mind. I smiled and proceeded in silence.

Massage Therapy is a well-known and well-documented remedy for inducing relaxation and reducing mental stress. In particular, traditional Thai massage with its slow meditative and rhythmic compressions, yoga-like stretches, and passive joint movements seemed to be an ideal tool for someone like Harvey.

MZC: That's wonderful. You are focusing on the individual human being; you are listening and learning as well. You are opening your heart to the retreatants and enquiring with them. You're asking what makes one happy and peaceful in the midst of particular life circumstances. Do you experience that some of the retreatants, even in the midst of problems, which will continue, find some insight into what happiness might be? Perhaps they discover the joy of serving others as well as getting to know their own mind-hearts?

This information is nothing new. The Buddha knew this more than 2,500 years ago when, after much diligence, he successfully found lasting happiness by extinguishing the root of all suffering within himself. The Buddha then dedicated the rest of his life to teaching and spreading a non-dogmatic, systematic method to inner liberation, which he called Vipassana Meditation (Vipassana means "Insight" in Pali, the canonical language of Southeast Asia's theravada Buddhism). During the time since, this method has since proliferated drastically; today its presence spans around the world.

BN: Laughing. We may be getting some goats soon. You know the economics of this? They milk the goats. The female goats give birth to billy goats, but there is no use for the billy goats. So after 40 days, they kill the male goat to eat. So we are going to adopt a male goat. And see from there if we can add more. We do eat seafood here, but I'd like the monastery to become completely vegetarian. We still follow the practice of not eating after noon.