After a wonderfully restful, not to say enjoyable week away, it was time to return to the coal face and get back to reality. But with fully recharged batteries, the usual Monday morning drive wasn’t so bad after all. The weather was kind, the traffic was light and the chanting along the way, more than effective.
Getting back behind my PC was not the trial it might have been, the team had done a good job of minding the shop, and the usual pile of emails was not as high as it might have been. I was straight out of holiday mood and had my business head on.
Routine, at work, in life in general and as my practice gives me a solid structure with which to take on the challenges that life presents. Whether that is something as trivial as getting over the first day back at work after a holiday, or some of the more important problems, my practice helps turn the poison into medicine.
As you may have gathered from a couple of my recent posts, I’m getting excited about the prospect of spending the next week on a narrow boat in the middle of nowhere. Although I doubt that there is too much chance of anyone getting sunstroke, it does promise to be reasonably good weather and it will be much quieter than it is in the office.
I offer appreciation to the Shoten Zenjin, the functions in life and in the environment that serve to protect us, and prey that these protective powers may be further strengthened and enhanced through my practice of the Law.
I offer my deepest praise and most sincere gratitude to the Dai-Gohonzon of the Three Great Secret Laws, which was bestowed upon the entire world.
I pray that the great desire for kosen-rufu is fulfilled, and that the Soka Gakkai International develops eternally in this endeavour.
I pray to bring forth Buddhahood from within my life, change my karma and to fulfil my wishes in the present and the future.
Looking back at the events of the past few months, I have issued myself a warning not to rest on my laurels. Buddhist practice is like a dog, for life, not just for Christmas, and must be part of your very being. 
As you might expect, my Gohonzon has it’s own special place in my apartment and although that isn’t the only place I chant, it doesn’t come with me when I travel around. Although chanting isn’t always done alone, being in a strange place, as in new to me, requires me to seek out a little secluded spot to practice.
Whether it was the early night and the extra couple of hours sleep that made me a bit dopey, or whether it was the difficult topic of conversation I was having on my Bluetooth headset I don’t really know. But I wasn’t very proud of the way I dealt with the situation when a chap didn’t stop at the road traffic calming ‘chicane’, forcing me to mount the kerb to avoid hitting him in his bright green Honda Civic.
The challenges we meet in life are often seen as the negative side of our existence. We alone can decide how we deal with them, either we can accept them, tackle them head on, or we can shy away from them and hope they go away. Anyone who has tried the second path will know that it virtually never works, so accepting challenges has to be the right way to go.
So the holiday is well and truly over and I’m back in the office. Although it was never going to be a typical week off, with all the DIY and general work on the cottage, it was, as is often said, the change that was as good as as rest.
It’s a pretty well known fact, that nothing in life that’s worth doing is very easy to achieve. So it is with B’s cottage. It’s the best part of 150 years old, was built before the invention of the right angle and restoration consumes more TLC than money, and that’s a lot.
By now you might be getting the idea that I really don’t like Mondays. It’s always minor mayhem in the office, lots of emails to answer, tons of orders to process, but it’s always been like that. I can deal with the work, as I’ve said before, it’s far better than no work, so I live with it.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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