I Have Moved

My Blog site has moved to the following address;

http://sallyinthewoods.vox.com/

Look forward to seeing you all there :)

What is a Buddhist Trainee?

I received a question about this through my blog site and thought it would be good to share as a main posting. I'm currently living in The Buddhist House, which is the home temple of Amida-Shu, a Pureland Buddhist community. I'm a full time trainee, a resident of the community studying Buddhism and learning the religious life, exploring possible ordination paths. In the Amida-Shu, there are two different ordination tracks, the Ministry track and the Amitarya path. These paths are outlined in the following link;

http://www.amidatrust.com/ordinationpaths.html

Life as a trainee is an opportunity to live the religious life and to see where this leads! It's a bit of a journey into the unknown! As a trainee, one takes guidance from the senior members of the community and duties change frequently. There's lots to be done, such as cooking, housework, gardening, house maintenance and so on. Looking after guests is also part of a trainee's job and being bell master (responsible for ringing the bells in the ceremonial hall during services and ensuring the room is tended to daily). In relation to the question, do you have to live as a trainee to be a Buddhist?, the answer would be no. There are lots of people who live outside of communities/temples and are practicing Buddhists. There are lots of different tracks in Buddhism which is great since people are so diverse :)

Here's a link to the Amida-Shu website for anyone who wants to check it out; http://www.amidatrust.com/

This weekend has been an enjoyable one. On Friday night, me and Lisa had a birthday meal with the community. I received a very very large bar of chocolate in the post from my brother, Simon. 5kg of Cadbury's chocolate! It's an average person's consumpation of chocolate in six months, according to the label! The ascetic Buddhist life I lead! Me, Sudana, Laura and Philip spent Saturday shelling walnuts, brought back from the retreat centre in France. Sunday was a quiet day, and I spent most of my time cleaning the Meditation Hall and doing other domestic tasks.

Sukhavati I travelled down to London on Wednesday, accompanying Dharmavidya, Buddhist teacher and Head of the Amida Order. We took the National Express from Leceister. The Amida Trust has a house in London, called Sukhavati (realm of bliss, sweet realm) where the London group hold their meetings. It was lovely to see Madrakara, Tony and Joan again and to meet new friends. Lots of people arrived to hear Dharmavidya's Dharma Talk, it was a full house. There were lots of questions from an engaging audience and much discussion about Pureland Buddhism, the tradition that the Amida Order follows. Refreshments followed the Dharma talk. That night I slept in the shrine room which was a real treat, it's a beautiful space. The next morning we had morning service and breakfast and headed back to The Buddhist House in Leceister. On return, I had the pleasure of opening up birthday pressies (I'm 27 now!) followed by a delicious dinner cooked by Susthama. This was followed by Meditation for Relaxation, run by Lisa. We did some Quan Shi Yin chanting and then Lisa led us through a guided meditation, which was very relaxing and I felt ready for bed!

A Cute Picture To Start

This is a picture of Jodo, one of the cats at The Buddhist House.

Her name means 'Pureland' which I think she suits very well.

The beginning of the creation of a space. More to follow...