House Blessing Tour – From Tree to Zen
Due to warm invitation from Buddha Light International Association (BLIA) south Island New Zealand Advisor John Lai, Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Venerable Abbess Manshin, south island temple supervisor Venerable Jue Xi, BLIA president See Shen, Lee and 4 other BLIA members went to his house to have a Chinese New Year house blessing.
Advisor John Lai experienced in planting lavender and recently he bought a farm land and built a new resident in Avonhead. He plans to continue to plant the lavender and other kinds of plants in this land. Hence, He invited Abbess to share her valuable opinion and experience for his new home and land. Previously, this farm land is a potato growing farm and due to potato having strong spreading roots. After he tryed to clean out the potatoes for his lavender plant and he found that it is not easy to eliminate and need a lot of time and hard work to deal with. Everyone were having fun on digging out the potato, listened the planting plan of Advisor John Lai, viewing the achievement of his plan. Everyone agreed the process and detail for planting is a hard work and complicated.
Abbess experienced in the field of tree and its maintenance, Advisor John Lai used this chance to ask some question regarding tree: like choosing the suitable tree, trees characteristics, trees maintenance, tree that is suitable for house planning and etc. Abbess has shared her experience that would help Advisor John Lai in his future tree planning.
Besides the tree issues, Advisor John Lai also ask Abbess “What is Zen?” Abbess replied that everyone said that “With a straight mind there is a temple” but sometime if we don't look after our mind and attitude, it will become “With a Straight mind there is a War field”. If the mind that wasn’t looked after is a chaos and rough and it will create some problem and at the end war will occurred. Some people won’t admit their mistakes and still argue “I always like that” and they don't want to be correct and pride on their mistake. That’s why our mind needs to be tuned and become more precise, peace, always ready to accept. When these conditions are applied than we can only said “With a straight mind there is a temple”. Zen needs to be train to become natural and when natural approach and there is Zen.
Everyone that listened to this interesting conversation and they have gain benefit from it. Abbess given the Jade Made Maitreya Buddha to advisor John Lai and wish him and family always happy and have shine by the Buddha light.