Cooking, cleaning, playing, bath time. Waking up together, seeing my son’s smiling face beaming back at me from his crib as his tiny voice says “Dobre ranko Daddy” (good morning in Slovak). I find myself at the sand box every single day, my son’s favorite place on earth, making dirt cookies and driving tractors and dumptrucks over the hilly dunes we make for ourselves in the sand. This is good for me, spending time with my cameras in hibernation, and just enjoying the view as a Dad.
Being home also means I can reconnect with my Dharma Family here in Prague, and as luck would have it, last weekend Sabchu Rinpoche was in NALA teaching a weekend course on Shiné. I’ve said it before, but you’d be hard pressed to find a more eloquent, learned, graceful and modern teacher than he. HIs command of the English language is stunning, perhaps even unparalleled amongst the Tibetan Rinpoche’s I know. His ability to explain vast and complicated concepts in brazenly simply terms is nothing short of amazing. His humor fills the room, and I always enjoy it so much to spend time with him. I actually met Rinpoche almost 20 years ago as a teenager, driving from Paris to Le Bost, and to see his now fully flourished and masterful presence before me is truly something special to behold.
NALA has undergone a whole slew of changes since I’ve been gone. Plans for two stupas. A big expansion of their Gompa to accommodate all the new people who have been coming. A vast kora pathway going around the whole property, and a brand new wall of prayer wheels to top it off. They’ve been busy! So during the lunch break, in the middle of the four sessions a day, Sabchu Rinpoche lead the Rabne prayers to inaugurate the prayer wheels and the new wall, which happens to be bursting full of tsa-tsas, mantra rolls, and blessed objects as well. Such time and care goes in to all of this, in a few short months while I was trouncing around Europe, they created all this. Something special to see, especially when you think back on the humble beginnings of how this center started out. Now bountifully full of flourishing activity, it makes me happy to be a part of it, to see it grown more and more each time I come home. There are big plans for next year, I can’t tell you all everything yet, but there’s plenty to be excited about!
Nadační fond NALA
