I woke up this morning and was really really tired still and really really want to cancel the 8am appointment with my 4th uncle to go to the flower market and then Jin Hai Chan Si, Golden Sea Chan Monastery in Jin Shan, Gold Mountain about a 45 minute drive outside of Taipei by the coast. I decided to honor the appointment and got into the minivan and just shut my mouth and closed my eyes and rested. There were plenty of people in the car to chat with each other to keep each other company. I put on my ear plugs so I can power nap while people chatted. It's good to have long hair, it covers the ear plugs in my ear so people won't find me rude to be in a company of others and plug up my ears.
I had fun at the flower market. I love flowers, all the colors, texture, beauty etc... It just makes me happy to be surrounded by flowers. One of the things I love about traveling is to see the different kinds of plants, trees, flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetable on the native land. It's all just so beautiful to me.
We made it in time to the Monastery for lunch. The monastery is a branch of Ven. Master Guan Qing's monastery also known as The Fruit Master. The abbot who recently passed away was Ven. Master Chuan Bin whom I felt really close to even though we only met a few times. I just feel a close connection with him. He became a monk in his fifties and live to his eighties. He was a trained martial artist before he became a Buddhist monk. During the time of his passing I was not informed of the event. However I did dream of him. He came to see me and asked me if I had any questions. I was happy to see him and had questions but somehow they could not be worded in my tongue. He then turned and walked away and that was his parting of good bye with me.
We brought flowers and florists to arrange flowers as offerings. There was no room for me to help out. I was not recognized as a capable florist and I played off that too since I was very tired and one of the women was angry the whole time. Infact her anger made her top over one of her arrangements in the hall when she put it on the alter. So she had to start over and over as it topped over and over because she arranged the flowers in anger and jealousy and pettiness. Her original arrangement was too tall and not in balance like her pride and ego. Then as she went on in redoing her arrangement every time it toppled over after completion she lost more height and fluff. When she finally succeeded in her arrangement the last time, the whole arrangement was half the size she originally started, however it was the right size for the space she was working in and it was structurally stable. It looked a lot more humbling, so maybe she also had a transformation within and was more humbled. Because of the toppling of arrangements, we ended up leaving 3 hours later than we had planned.
It was raining on the ride back. I thought about the angry florist how easy it is to surround yourself with people who will validate your drama. It seems comforting but it's just a masking of fear and continual denial of what really isn't working and is destructive.
