Exposed to the Golden Wind

Saturday turned out to be much less stressful for me than the last one-day sitting, which had been my debut, and I managed to settle down for most of the afternoon. Things happened, of course: people who were expected and didn't come, people who weren't expected and did come, there were a lot of people to try and seat in a way that made sense for the meals, trying to find a replacement for a serving crew, a cell phone that kept ringing in the cloakroom at the end of the hall which certainly tested my patience.
And then there were the windows. Usually we keep one of the upper windows open all the time for a little ventilation. As the zendo was going to be full all day, I had opened a second early in the morning. We have however been having a chilly north-westerly all week here, which was blowing right into the room, and in the afternoon a few people asked me if I could shut them as they were feeling cold. Several things went through my mind: first is a personal preference against stuffiness; then there are memories of exhortations by Dogen and others along the lines of 'if the roof leaks, then do zazen somewhere where the rain does not come in' (Shobogenzo Zuimonki), along with admonitions that monks of old always had it harder and they never complained. But I decided that the compassionate ino should listen to the needs of the assembly and take care of them, so I shut the windows, although I didn't shut one of them hard enough - they are high enough that shutting them involves wielding a long pole with hooks on the end - and it blew open again before the end of the next period...

I noticed I haven't put any photos up for a while, so, even though these are not remotely connected to the ino realm, some pictures of the skies of the last few days, with all the changeable weather that the winds have brought. And to give them a zen flavour, one of my favourite quotes, from Kosho Uchiyama, in his commentary on Dogen's 'Bendowa' : 'Only when I look up at the sky does it preach that there is a world in which we do not need to be excited'.