One time my mother came to stay with me at Amaravati monastery in England. I had returned home from abroad because she was going blind and needed more support from me and my brother. It was early summer and the bluebells were out in the woods opposite the main gate. I took her over one afternoon in a wheelchair and left her to enjoy the scene with the little sight she had left. She remembers it as a precious day, and as her last memory of seeing bluebells. One of the monks at Amaravati called her the other day. She urged him to go to that piece of forest and enjoy the bluebells in her place as an act of remembrance. She asked him to pick one of the bluebells and put it on the monastery shrine as an act of veneration. She could practice sympathetic joy (muditā) for him as he did so, she said. 

It was approaching dusk on a cold winters day at the monastery. The sky was pale grey and there was a stillness to the air. We were on a meditation retreat and the community were gathering for the four o’clock meditation sitting. I was just approaching the house when I spotted a very large bird sitting on a branch just at the edge of the lawn. I approached. Much to my amazement the bird was a very large owl, by far the biggest I had ever seen and as grey as the sky. It was looking towards me with a piercing yet open gaze. It blinked and I froze on the spot. Owls had always been special to me ever since my father had read Winnie the Pooh to me as a very young boy. To me they had become a symbol of wisdom. The atmosphere on this winter’s afternoon was such that this great bird seemed to embody this quality like never before – my mind brightened and fell completely silent. I felt somehow at one with nature and with this place. In the moment the scene appeared to me as though it were a lucid dream, luminous and still yet lacking none of its sense of reality, my hands were cold. 

Anagārika Mischa was approaching along the path towards me, I beckoned to him to slow down, pointing as the owl retreated to a tree a little further back. I gasped at its size and at its slow, silent flight. As I spread mettā to the great bird, it turned its head towards me and flew a little closer. By this time I was completely enchanted. I felt as though I was immersed in a fairy tale. I would not have been surprised if the bird had spoken. I turned to Mischa,

“I think something special must have happened,” I said, much to my own surprise. The words just seeming to tumble out of my mouth on their own.

The owl took flight, passing behind the house and into the forest, out of sight. 

I repeated to Mischa,

“I think something special must have happened. I never say such things but there is something auspicious about this.”

I returned to my hut and did not join the meditation. I stared through the window at the glorious, crimson sunset. I couldn’t stop wondering what might have happened. 

Later that evening I received a mail from a very generous supporter. He had decided to sponsor a sala to be built on the hill behind the house. I was stunned, all I could think of was the owl. I realised it had flown right in the direction of our proposed sala site. I felt a little overwhelmed. I could not resist writing back immediately,

“Did anything happen at your end around 4 p.m.?”

“That’s about when I made the decision,” he replied.

So it seems as though that winter day something special had happened. I hope one day someone will give a very wise Dhamma talk in the new sala, worthy of such a message and such a messenger if that is what it was.  Then it will seem as though the Dhamma had arrived in Norway in a very special way, in a way perhaps acknowledged somehow by nature itself and perhaps we will carve an image of the owl to adorn the new sala in the new style of ‘Norse Theravada’. Or perhaps we will do that anyway.

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I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk



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Two years ago my heart was effected by a flu virus. I don't think I will ever forget lying in the ambulance all wired up to the heart monitor. The paramedic kept talking to me all the way, “Any pain?” “What day is it today?”

I knew the situation; I was at risk of a heart attack or a stroke, that was the reason for the continuous checking. I just kept looking at the skin of my bare chest with all the ECG stickers all over it and surprisingly I felt completely unconcerned. This was so clearly a result of the practice but it still really surprised me that my contemplation of the body had gone as deep as that. I really felt quite happy. I was remembering how a few days ago I had been feeling stressed over monastery administrative stuff and wondering if my practice was starting to weaken with all my responsibilities. I was reassured that underneath I was still alright. I still had my refuge when it really mattered.

Biographical story...

Once upon a time I was a student of anatomy. I used to have weekly classes in the morgue examining preserved specimens of parts of human bodies. One week an arm, the next week half a head...However much I tried to be scientific about it this was always a confronting, emotionally challenging experience. After every session all my colleagues went to the pub. I didn't drink and went alone back to my room to meditate.

One of these days I spent a whole afternoon examining the hamstrings of a dead man's leg, playing with the different tissues to get the feel for their texture so that I could feel for the different structures under the skin of a live patient. This was my most intimate contact so far. I left the session feeling strange, disoriented. As I was walking along the street on my way home I felt my own legs underneath me and to my complete surprise a perfect image arose of the inside of one of my legs, like x-ray vision. I saw my hamstrings working bathed in the most sublime, cool light. For a moment I felt an enormous sense of lightness and freedom. I had never felt happier yet I knew not why.

That moment changed my life. A part of me, a part that has grown and grown, has been looking for that sense of freedom ever since.



I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk/

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Biographical story...
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Many years ago as a layman I was travelling in the south of Chile. One full moon night I had a very powerful, lucid dream where I was kneeling down, sick and covered in warts and my Dhamma teacher at that time, Ajahn Sumedho, appeared and cured me with a great blast of light. The following morning I was walking along with my Chilean companion. I had a wart on my hand that had been there almost two years. I had a habit of scratching it but as I  began to do this, remembering the dream of the night before, it immediately came off.

I was completely stunned and stood there looking at my companion who began to smile. Before I could tell her about the dream she began to tell me how in the night she had taken some threads from my shirt and buried them in the ground, saying an ancient magic spell. She knew me and my scientific background and was pleased to be able to show me there may be more to life than I might have thought. But all I could think about was Ajahn Sumedho.

Many years later as a monk I was able to tell Ajahn Sumedho the story. He laughed out laud and said, jokingly,

"Yes Kalyano, at night I fly around the world curing people of their warts."

I could not seem to get him to take the story seriously but the fact was that the dream and the period that followed had felt like some kind of deep healing and had, in addition, opened up my whole view of the world. It was one of the reasons I had ordained with him as a monk, for the magic.





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​I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk/