from Lama Shenpen
Dear All
I just want to thank you for all your good wishes, presents and presence for my 80th birthday. It was a day of so many lovely surprises! Thank you to everybody who turned up or was thinking of me on that very special day. My best birthday ever!
Thank you everybody who contributed to the beautiful booklet that Palden created from all the photos and birthday messages that came in. I have been enjoying reading them enormously - and I am amazed at how well I can read all the ones written in German! Listening to Lama Agnes translating for me as I gave talks all those years has paid off! The booklet is bringing back so many happy memories.
You raised so much money for my birthday that even after paying for my wonderful new solid oak cabinet in my shrine cabin. and the installation of a wood burner in my sitting room ready for the next powercut and or fuel outage, and the beautiful framed picture of Bokar Rinpoche there will still be a lot left over! I have some good ideas of what I might do with that - so thank you everyone who contributed.
It has been quite a full-on week and couple of days. I was teaching at the Sadhana of Mahamudra retreat to the 14 people here and another group joined us for the on-line retreat. I found myself so energised by the text and the group that I taught almost everyday for 1-2 hours and lost track of time. I thought Friday was still Thursday and I had another day to go!
A special feature of the retreat was every evening someone read an episode from the life of Khenpo Rinpoche which was very appropriate because the Sadhana of Mahamudra is a text Khenpo Rinpoche spontaneously created as he travelled around North America with Ponlop RInpoche scribbling it down on serviettes as Rinpoche came out with it over a number of days while sitting at the dinner table!
On Saturday a group of us did a pilgrimage from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Tri Ceiri - the hill overlooking Tyn y gors and did a smoke offering. That was a three mile walk on rough terrain and was quite a challenge but I felt very pleased to have done it. Last year we went up the same hill but straight up which was quicker but more taxing! We were fortunate that we had chosen the one sunny day of the week! The next day was back to cloud and rain.
On my birthday after the Shakyamuni puja I started opening presents and cards and greeting people, some of whom had come a long way for the day's celebrations. My sitting room was full of discarded boxes and wrapping paper - and flowers - and things. It is great to receive all of this but I am glad not everyone sends me things - because then I have to work out what to do with it all!
We talk about the sky filled with clouds of offerings, mental and in substance - which is a wonderful image - but the in substance ones have to go somewhere!!!
The feast offering is such a wonderful way of expressing abundance - we eat it all up - sometimes for days afterwards!
The formal birthday offering feast began with the long-life ritual - I love the song we sing as we do that. I sing along thinking all the offerings are for making my Dharma activity strong and that means all our lineage connections strong. After the body, speech, mind, qualities and activity offerings there were trays and trays of daffodils (very appropriate for Saint David's day of course) and Mebar read Wordsworth's poem about the daffodils in Cumbria.....'I wandered lonely as a cloud..'. Loshi had written a beautiful song that Nyima led so we could all join in about a wild wise old woman! Then a round led by Lama Agnes and songs from Luke and Lama Dashon. It was all so joyous. I am sure I have already forgotten some of the magical moments of the day. You can see some of the photographs from the day in these files:
I should mention how at the retreat and for the birthday feast we had a hired cook called Mandy from her own catering company, Rainbow Eats. She did very well and it saved retreatants having to fit in cooking around meditation sessions. Elliot excelled himself by producing two amazing cakes - the biggest was a five layer sponge with white chocolate and Baileys filling! Amazing!
So I just want to thank everyone again for making it such a splendid day strengthening our connections with each other and the lineage and our Dharma practice for the benefit of all beings!
How wonderful!
WIth much love
Shenpen