Take one freezing cold morning, make that a freezing cold Monday morning, then add a cough that just won’t go away and the remnants of the weekend’s fluey thing, what have you got? One set of challenging circumstances. Almost the perfect storm, you might say.
I like to think that, for my advancing years, I’m in pretty good shape. This cough however, is really getting a bit tedious, just ask my neighbours. So despite being a man, never taking medicine if I can help it, always letting nature take its course, I’m off to the doctors tonight.
I don’t mind, that she’s a lady doctor. She’s a professional and it won’t matter a jot to her, I’m just another sickly patient. I’m sure it’s fine, that she studied for her BSc Hons. in this millennium, that’s she’s younger than me, by a couple of decades probably, I’m sure new medical procedures are better than the old fashioned ones, aren’t they?
Now you know I’m kidding, right? My doctor will find out what is wrong with me and take steps to put it right. Never mind that the TV adverts and the posters in the surgery all say that if you’ve had a cough for more than three weeks, it might be cancer, it probably won’t be, but don’t tell me that right now.
Alright, so I’m not completely kidding. I’ve left getting this sorted out way too long and now that is worrying me. But isn’t it me who says that you should address an issue there and then, that leaving it just makes it bigger? Well here I am, hoist by my own petard, chanting for a fortuitous outcome, but wishing I had done something sooner. We will see.
Update ~ The doctor is pretty sure that it’s a simple chest infection … which is very good news.
To my annoyance, I have again spent most of the night trying, and failing, to stop coughing myself stupid. Despite doses of cough mixture and lemon flavoured cold and flu capsules, each time I lay down to sleep, that tickle came back and I found myself having to get up to stop the coughing fit.
What is peace?
After the initial question “do you chant?” we are then asked “what do you chant?” followed closely by “how long do you chant?” and almost certainly “what does it mean?“. After a little practice, no pun intended, most people can master the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, but explaining why we chant it, and what it means may take a little longer.
The Sanskrit word Buddha means “One who is awakened [to the truth].” While the term was widely employed by various schools of the time, it eventually came to be used exclusively in reference to Shakyamuni. At the same time, the word Buddha implies “to bloom.”
When you become submerged in difficult situations, when the way forward looks bleak and less than inviting, it can be tempting to start pointing a finger at others to lay the blame at their door.
My trip up to Bristol today was long overdue. Since early September there has been one less reason to go, and a whole bunch of reasons why I didn’t, but today was set in stone and even the much promised ice and snow wasn’t going to stop me from making the trip.
Since finding Nichiren Buddhism a couple of years ago, even though I have been a Buddhist for nearly twenty years, I still have a huge thirst for learning.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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