With the last week of the daily ceremonies, I could feel the end getting closer (only one more early alarm; only three more bussorai…) I was still overheating with the prostrations, but my body was getting a little more used to it. Chanting the names, I started picturing my writing of them on my lineage documents, so they became visually imagined as well as mentally.
I enjoyed the fact that we had a Full Moon Ceremony for the sangha on Saturday morning; it felt like getting the weekend off to an auspicious start.
The culminating ceremonies for dharma transmission were on Saturday evening and Sunday night. There was a lot of free time on those days after the Saturday schedule ended, and I was able to relax and watch the dramatic women’s and men’s race in the cycling world championships over the weekend.
We rehearsed each ceremony – the Saturday one twice, the Sunday one just once. They are largely different to just about any other ceremony, but I could detect some Japanese flavour in them – one part reminded me a little of things that are done during the Mountain Seat ceremonies, with the ritual as a bodily manifestation of the symbolic things that are being celebrated.
It was hard to stay up late on Sunday, but somehow I managed it. In the end we wrapped up right at the stroke of midnight (the traditional time for the ceremony – the origins of which I will illustrate tomorrow). I had set an alarm so that I wouldn’t miss breakfast on Monday morning, but in the end I was awake by 5:30.
After which all that remained was packing up my room, taking my new robes and implements, and saying goodbye and thank you to everyone at Zen Center. Ruth was on standby for jury duty, so was working from home, and was able to collect me – I would never have got the staff or the shippe home on my bike…
Now I am picking up my regular schedule again, starting with the Tuesday morning meditation at Mukunda. The sun having moved since I was last there, it was pouring in towards me while we were sitting. The weather has turned brighter and warmer; our late summer finally beginning just as September runs out.
On Wednesday morning I went out on my bike, and was having a moment of being very aware of moving muscles that hadn’t been worked out with all the prostrations, when I felt a familiar pain in the small of my back. Thankfully it is the less debilitating version, such as the last occurrence, but it was something for me to focus on in my midday meditation, back with some old regulars for the first time in a couple of months.
October is a month or roaming and weddings. I have three Saturday weddings – as well as the dharma talk on the 17th – and then will be in London for my best friend’s wedding on the first Saturday of November as well.
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