Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

The fine weather continued for the rest of our time in England. We had a couple of days of sightseeing before we went up to Hebden Bridge, and then back down to London, for a final night with friends, a few hours wandering in central London, before a return to the airport – right before the rain was due to roll in.

Over my years of visiting the UK, I have got very used to sitting in trains, more or less fast, crowded, or comfortable, watching the lanscape through the window. Between trains, enjoying a sandwich or a coffee bought from the wide variety of places that have sprung up at railway stations in recent decades, watching people on the move. When it all goes right, and is not impacted by delays, it can be very relaxing – though we realised at the end of our time here, that we have had very little time to stop and rest.

The first destination after my sister’s house was Bath, just an hour away by train. I don’t think I have visited since I ran a cross-country race there in high school; what I remember is that we started half-way up a steep hill, ran to the top, then down to the bottom, and back up to the starting point.

We had chosen a hotel right by the station, and were able to drop our bags and start our wandering of this amazing city. It was one of the hottest days, so we made sure we didn’t attempt too much. Plus we had booked ourselves in to one of the new spa places, with a rooftop pool offering views over the city. It was a little noisy and crowded for my liking, but a lovely and refeshing experience at the end of the afternoon.

Apart from the abundance of history and fantastic architecture, we enjoyed being able to sit in the little squares, under an ancient tree, mostly away from the traffic.

The next day, another fairly brief train trip to Oxford. It was still hot, and there was a long walk from the station to the hotel. Our room was also sweltering, with air-conditioning that didn’t seem able to cool, and a fan that blew air around but also didn’t help to reduce the temperatures; not being able to open the windows did not help. We had a very uncomfortable night of sleep, and I certainly let the hotel know in my feedback.

Apart from that, we again had twenty-four hours to explore,  and I felt that we were able to cover the most important parts of the city, and visited places that had been most meaningful to me. Dinner at a pub where my friends and I had spent many nights in our youth drinking was perhaps not the wisest choice, but we got to watch the current crop of students at play – except for the ones who still had exams the next day.

In preparing for this trip, I had spent a bit of time researching different options for how to get from Oxford to Hebden Bridge, mainly as I wanted to avoid one of the train companies with the worst reputation for delays and overcrowding. The end result was spending the least amount of time possible on their service – which was late and overcrowded – then taking  a fast and comfortable train which would connect us with the Hebden line, having built in enough time not to get stressed at the delays.

It was nevertheless a relief to get to the station at the end of the afternoon, and be met by Rebecca, who drove us to her new  place, which I had not seen before. The tall house, on the canal, is perfectly suited to hosting a group like we had on Friday, for dinner and a study session. 

I felt like I had to take my holiday hat off, and move into teacher mode, but in the end it was an easy transition. It was lovely to see many familiar faces in attendance, and we had a great discussion of one of the chapters of the new Suzuki Roshi book, although I ended up talking about many points that I had had in my notes for the talk on Saturday.

That talk ended up a little rambly, I thought, since I wasn’t using notes. The group sitting was strong in the morning; after lunch we enjoyed a loop of the adjacent woods for kinhin, then I spent the rest of the afternoon session meeting people for practice discussions, with several tender conversations.

The sitting concluded with a Full Moon Ceremony, which I was the doshi for. I have only been in that role once before, at Tassajara, and I had regretted not being able to wear my robes this time. I don’t think it mattered in the end though: everyone performed their roles admirably, and having made sure I had the commentaries memorised, I was happy with my delivery, even with one little mistake.

There was the traditional pub dinner afterwards, though we had a somewhat hair-raising time getting up to the tops: there were some roadworks we tried to avoid, but then the other road we wanted to take turned out to be closed; Maps did a poor job of reflecting the relative size of some other roads. We ended up in an extremely narrow lane at one point, and having to make several very tight turns between stone walls. Following Rebecca down the hill afterwards was much less stressful.

As luck would have it, we arrived at King’s Cross the next afternoon just as thousands of Arsenal fans were dispersing after the trophy parade; the mood was generally joyful, but the crowds at the station and on the trains we took to get across town added to our tiredness. They were still much in evidence the next day, even at the airport.

I’m writing this last part from a hotel outside DC, late at night UK time. Tomorrow some of us head down to the Gen X gathering. That will feature next week.