Happy but Wet

"It's a beautiful day."
"What are you talking about? It's raining!"
"It's still a beautiful day."

I've always liked rainy days. A lot of people whine or complain, but not me. I was happy when I woke up at 6 and heard the rain falling past my 13th floor window. At the moment, it's still raining cats and dog. The rainy season is living up to its name.

The interesting thing about water, at least from my perspective, is that it is recycled. The water you drink today was slurped up by T-rexes several million years ago, was draining from a corpse on a funeral home table last year, and will be carried into the universe on colonization rockets in 50 years or so. You're drinking water, you're drinking history: past, present, and future.

The most precious substance on earth, the one thing we all need to live, and it falls free from the skies. Gratitude to the rain!

After the Buddha died, his disciples carried on his wandering tradition The large group of believers split into fragments and carried the dharma throughout India (and then into the world). They were mendicant monks in old, worn out clothes with no shoes and ratty hair. They had nothing in the world but a begging bowl, a staff, and their passion and belief in the Buddha's dharma. Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by attachment and craving. You can stop suffering, and this is how you do it...

The original disciples and their followers were like a group of pool balls: scattered in all directions. But at one time of the year, they all came back together: the rainy season retreat. During the rainy season, their normal wandering was impossible: roads were washed out, rivers were flooded, and generally life was miserable. All the wandering begging monks gathered together in community to spend the time together.

I sometimes think of them on rainy day during this time of the year. The young monks with their doubts and their fears, the older monks with their experience , and the eldest monks with their memories of the actual Buddha himself, or their teacher's memories, or their teacher's teacher's teacher's memories. I see them now, gathered around a snapping fire, the sound of the falling rain thunderous outside a cave entrance. An old monk, trembling, bowed, arthritic, hard of sight, is led to a high seat and the younger monks gather around him. The Buddha, one asks, tell us about him. And then, in a age-broken voice, the ancient monk begins to talk.