Looking out the window in the Hondo before the start of Shodaigyo tonight I saw a young woman walking down the hill. There is an apartment complex back in the direction she came from. A few minutes later I watched as she returns. This time she is carrying a large bag which I suspect was full of laundry; you see there is a laundromat in that direction. It then occurs to me that on her down hill journey she was alternately checking and clutching under arm a purse. As she is walking back uphill you can tell she is struggling, and it is a hot and muggy day; she even sets the bag down a couple of times to catch her breath, and reposition the burden. My thoughts are perhaps she was doing her laundry, didn’t have enough money to finish the drying, and needed to return home for more money.
I am acutely aware of the contrast of my luxury of now beginning sitting in meditation and the efforts just to live made by so many. With Gassho — at Myosho-ji Buddhist Temple
