Dear Friend of the temple,
What’s coming
Correction
The memorial day for RM Myfanwy will be Saturday 4th July, the previous newsletter said, “Saturday 5th”.
A reminder of the plan for the day:
Memorial day for Reverend Master Myfanwy.
9.30am meditation
10.30 meditation
11.15 memorial ceremony
pot-luck lunch
walk in Haldon forest (just up the road), or Shillingford Wood (right on our doorstep)
You are welcome to come for any part or all of the day. Please bring food and drink to share if you are staying for lunch. There’s no need to let me know whether you are coming or not.
July Calendar
I will be away in July, possibly for most of the month. I currently plan to leave on the 6th, though that might have to be delayed. I have marked calendar as ‘Temple Closed’ for most of the month. If I do return earlier in the month, I’ll re-open the temple schedule and send out an updated calendar.
Sunday 5th July we will have a steering group/sangha meeting here at the temple and on Zoom, as usual if will follow our Sunday morning meeting.
What’s been
RM Daishin Morgan visited over the first weekend in June. On the Sunday, he gave a talk which can be listened to on the temple website here. I’ve titled the talk, ‘Not Making a Self’. The recording has been split into the talk and the Q&A that followed. We had a good turnout and people brought plentiful food and drink to share. All in all, a pleasant and rewarding visit and a morning of teaching and socialising. Meg, Daishin’s senior Border Collie, accompanied him and became our first resident dog here in the Shillingford temple. Our thanks to RM Daishin for making the effort to travel and offering himself and his experience. We hope that he will be able to come again one day. The following weekend, we had our sangha bimble at Stover Country Park. It was a lovely morning spent in a lovely place. It’s good to get together like this every now and then, in ways that are different to our usual formal practice meetings. There are photos on the Dragon Bell Temple Sangha FB group.In Gratitude
On Sunday 21st, following the morning meeting, Fried Van Doorslaer installed a beautifully made new (Mount Sumeru) altar in Dragon Bell Temple’s zendo. The result of many hours of work over several months, the altar’s size, design and proportions are very pleasing. It turned out to be a much more complex and technically challenging job than I had first imagined. Fried makes musical instruments (a luthier) and his skill with working with wood and tools shows.
The dimensions are significantly larger than our original altar, which will be an advantage for some occasions, such as memorial ceremonies. In general, I’ve felt for a long time that a larger altar, with a natural wood finish, would be a positive addition to the temple, this new one will be a good scale for when our proposed zendo is completed too. On behalf of everyone involved with the temple, may I offer our many thanks to Fried.
Thank you for the recent donations of; log chopping blocks, a houseplant, and all financial support.
Best wishes
In gassho
Willard