Texas 7
Today was Kimyon’s birthday and he sliced apples for his baked apple and ice cream desert and called me merely a baby because I’m so young. All of this happened after Carol and Mom had their words and their tears. Mom cried a lot. She felt like Carol was asking her to be a slave. I mediated a little bit. I think I helped (or at least didn’t hurt anything). Mom’s making a soup for dinner tomorrow. There are Jesus Christs on crosses all over the place and I am surrounded by buddhists. I don’t think I will ever get ahold of Corey. I have this bulbous blister happening on the side/top of my pinkie toe.
Today I witnessed the Vadrasafta empowerment and it was very strange. All of the buddhists wear maroon-colored skirts and these shawls (that they call zens) wrapped around their torsos and over one shoulder. A few ladies had skirts of velvet. Steve, who is a man with extremely blue eyes (cornflower, blue) and grey white hair who taught English at a university asked me if I think they are some crazy kind of cult after seeing them receive the vow and I said no, actually I don’t. They were all bowing and moving their hands in front of their foreheads, throats, and hearts and then prostrating themselves completely and chanting all the while and at one point we all threw flower petals aroudn the room and the vow was about providing refuge for enlightened beings, maybe? And about committing to not becoming enlightened until all of the other sentient beings were ready also to be enlightened. And the Lama told a story about a kingdom where people were dying of a contagious disease and he was told that there was a kind of fish that, if its flesh was eaten it would cure the disease. So the king jumped from his castle after first envisioning himself being reincarnated as the fish. And so he became the fish and then he made it be known to his people that his flesh was their cure adn the story is meant to show how you can give yourself wholly to alleviating suffering, if you have reached buddhahood.
And Jesus Christ looked down at all of this from his cross and he looked very thin; all of his ribs were sticking out.