(no subject)
This sunny saturday reminds me of similar saturdays back in Kelowna when I was seventeen and Hugh and I took Chinese lessons at the Buddhist temple. "Chinese For Children." We were oddities in the temple basement, old and white and trying to wrap our tongues around four different tones. Six year old Davy was the star of the class but his four year old sister Jeannie was a little princess, everyone's favourite. My Chinese name meant "Red Nun."
The sunlight would drift through the windows and the nuns would drift through the temple (I never attended a mass there, just the casual saturday morning language lessons, and they seemed like friendly but remote aunts) and the kids would drift laughing around the nuns and the bodies of their parents drinking tea. I was a foreigner, a red nun, and my eyes carefully and shyly watched everything. Hugh's blue saucer-eyes reflected the beautiful smiles of the nuns, who smiled like I did when smiled at by him. These are my first impressions of Buddhism.
The sunlight would drift through the windows and the nuns would drift through the temple (I never attended a mass there, just the casual saturday morning language lessons, and they seemed like friendly but remote aunts) and the kids would drift laughing around the nuns and the bodies of their parents drinking tea. I was a foreigner, a red nun, and my eyes carefully and shyly watched everything. Hugh's blue saucer-eyes reflected the beautiful smiles of the nuns, who smiled like I did when smiled at by him. These are my first impressions of Buddhism.