Wednesday, August 09, 2017

Yup, at another birth. This momma isn't even acting like she's in labor but she is. Some kind of pain threshold. We're hanging out in the living room while she, her partner and her friends are all in the bedroom talking and laughing. And she's at least 6 cm dilated. Go figure.

Gearing up to go to the Bay area for my next facilitator training. I'm supposed to give a presentation on the lineage we're in. What happened after the Buddha woke up anyway? 400 years of oral tradition, monks and nuns reciting the suttas. In Burma they still memorize the suttas. And there are hundreds of them.

Anyway, I have permission to create a visual aid so I'm gonna make a flow chart with Gautama at the top and then the stream of all the different types of Buddhism. Is this boring to report? Probably. I don't care. Well, the Christians have all their denominations and sects and whatnot. There's vipassana and zen and Tibetan and so forth. And they argue and debate and discuss. When Buddhism came to the US and the West, it morphed again.

As a teaching, there is great flexibility and inquiry in Buddhism. There is so much to know! I do feel like I've been slacking in the studies department. And now, it's all I want to read. There are scholars, mostly monks and nuns who have the time...while I'm staying up all night in other people's houses waiting on their babies.

2 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

Well, I hope by now the babe is snuggled into its parent's arms, happy and well.
I can't even imagine taking on something like the study and teaching of Buddhism. Obviously you were called to it, just as you were called to wait in strangers' houses to make sure their babies come safely and lovingly.

beth coyote said...

Sweet boy that he is. Lovely birth. The momma is Vietnamese and this was HER mother's first grandchild. When the baby was in her daughter's arms, the grandma leaned over and whispered, "Now you're a mother."

X