My First Day as a Buddhist Monk, 2

Well, another day at the temple.  Hope your day was pleasant.  It’s almost bedtime, so I suppose I ought to be brief.  It seems that given the rigors of this particular training schedule, I don’t have time to do much of anything except sleep, eat, go to my day-job, and meditate.  I guess that’s probably the point of the schedule here, to provide a seamless flow of activity so there’s essentially no time to get caught up in personal problems, but it’s exhausting!  I really must be intentional tomorrow about finding time to A. Take a shower, B. Call my mother, and C. by some hand-wipes for after a messy bike ride.  See, I mentioned everything being sort of seamless here, well for me I think that’s particularly true, considering I ride my bicycle to work directly after morning meditation, then ride back, in a big hurry to be back in time for the evening round.  A bicycle is the fast means of transportation to and from work, and the trek takes me 20 minutes.  The time I have to make the journey home before they ring the first bell to begin: a half an hour.  So that means there can’t be any mistakes or mess-ups (or traffic, God forbid) getting in my way.  What this does essentially,  is make me plan out everything very precisely – to the second (which, ask anybody, is very abnormal for me) about where I lock my bike up, which pocket my keys are in, where the pants are that I’ll need to change into once I get back.  It’s all very new, and I’m sure there’ll be ups and downs, but for now – I’m soldiering on. -BV