A Dharma Glimpse by Angie
I was walking past the alcoves in the garden where the Buddha & Tara rupas are and I suddenly had the desire to sweep them. I enjoyed the action of sweeping and the way the dry leaves moved from place to place, sometimes agreeing to follow the broom and sometimes leaping away and landing in my recently swept bit. I liked the softness of the dust as it gathered and reminded me of sweeping rooms and shrines in hotter, drier countries than the UK.
Then I caught the thin wire of the fairy lights with the broom and it broke and split. I felt stupid, careless and clumsy and quickly started thinking that it could be relatively simple to repair, if I could just work out which wires connected to which!
Another part of me smiled warmly at the situation. At how I couldn’t even perform the simple devotional act of sweeping without messing it up… how endearing, how bombu! It also seemed to reflect the interplay of self-power and other-power. I hadn’t generated the urge to sweep the alcoves, that was other-powered, from the Divine. And in my limited self-powered acting on that idea, I was able to partially sweep the area as I’d been drawn to, and I also destroyed the fairy lights in the process. Another perfect moment of the dharma expressing itself!
Namo Amida Butsu
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