Samye Ling visit.

                   I spent three nights down at the Samye Ling and got home on Saturday. Felt really exhausted. Three nights is not enough really. You've just settled in, but I'd gone down on a kind of whim (there are no off-licenses at the Samye Ling).

                   Someone in the cafe told me the abbot, Lama Yeshe Losal, was retiring at the end of the Kagyu Monlam on the 17th of  June. I went up to the temple after that for my last meditation before lunch. Quite often in these last meditations (this is a few years ago now!) I've felt something a wee bit special, as if I was getting a sweetie to send me on my way. This time, however, the gift was massive regret. I couldn't help but think that I'd blown it. I was given a fantastic opportunity to make something of my connection with him and I just spurned it, though I didn't really know what it was I was spurning then. Time marches on. Be nice to have some realisation of non-self and emptiness before I snuffed it, but if I'd been able to cement my connection with Lama Yeshe all that would have been done by now.
 
                    C'est la vie. I can try a wee bit harder. I've booked into the Samye Ling for this weekend and I'm booked in for a week for the Monlam in mid-June, but I'll have to miss the first couple of days since I'll be on holiday in Kettle.

                     Once I had what can only be described as a "telepathic" message, asking me if I wanted to see the lama, and I replied that I'd like to see the lama, but didn't think I had anything to talk to him about. So that's really where I blew it! He appeared inexplicably on the path somewhere in the last photie. Most of the trees are gone now, but I took the photie when I was leaving the Samye Ling on Saturday.

                     The photie above is of a dipper, but you might not be able to see it. Pheasants have started hanging about the Samye Ling. One stalks the path leading to the riverbank.