Rain and Samadhi

It rained today, properly.  It also rain a little yesterday, but only in 10 minute showers. One of them yesterday was enough to start the berm -- the little flood ditch at the back of our yard -- flowing for a few minutes, but it stopped a few minutes later. But early this morning it really finally let loose and rained hard, for about three hours. Fred came into my room about 5, to ask politely "if I minded the lightening and thunder." I said, no, but offered him space under the covers. He stayed for a little while but went back into his own bed.

I lay awake worrying about the ditch, and whether the debris would block it under the fence again, and at about 6am, I got up, and went downstairs and outside into the rain to check that it was flowing. The pool water level was definitely up so by then we must have had already an inch or more of rain. The mud, where there used to be grass,  was squishy under my bare feet and the and the trees seemed to be hissing in the water, but the little berm was flowing fine. So I went back to bed.

So yesterday was the first proper rain since May 19. And in that time, we've had 91 days of temperatures over 100F. (The average for Austin, as I've mentioned before, is 12 days; the previous record was 69.)

Later in the afternoon, I met an American Buddhist monk, in burgandy robes.  We were standing outside two mobile homes, in wet woods up in the hills between Dripping Springs and Austin, at the site of  new Therevada temple which is currently under construction. The monk is Bhikkhu Cintita Dinsmore,  and I met him as part of a community health project I am working on, that involves Burmese refugees in Austin. That is why I was there, and why I stupidly moved to shake his hand, before my acquaintance elbowed me in the ribs and whispered, "you can't touch him". Oh yeah. I'm sure I knew that somewhere along the line.

Ashin Cintita, as I believe everyone calls him, is the abbot of this temple, which is one of several Buddhist temples in Austin, but this is the main one for the Burmese community. We went out there to meet some influential Burmese and to talk to them about our project to help Burmese refugees who have hepatitis B and C, and to encourage them to get treatment. Hepatitis is nowhere near as glamorous as TB, or AIDS, and so doesn't get a lot of attention, but according to recent estimates, more than 1 in 5 Burmese tests positive for HepB, and there is little help for them here, especially once their initial six months of Medicaid runs out.

This project, which is the main focus of my public health practicum (N375-RN at UT, if you're interested) has just about convinced me NOT to pursue public health as a career, which is sad, as I believe it is intended as inspiration. Trying to navigate the US healthcare system at its lowest end, for the poor, ignorant and illiterate, has left me banging my head against a wall.

Lovingkindness Meditation Dukkhapata ca nidukkha Bhayapata ca nibhaya Sokapata ca nisoka Hontu sabbe'pi panino       (three times)

May the suffering be without suffering May the fearful be without fear May those who grieve be free from grief So too may all beings be.    (three times)

There. That's better, isn't it...

And if the rain and the robed American monk and the Burmese enclave in the Texas countryside weren't surreal enough, here is the plan of what they are building:

Wow. The slab is laid, the Dharma house is being framed, and 21 tiny meditation cottages are already built and housing the workers. The gold on the model of the building alone was dazzling. It seems this part of Austin reminds the Big Monk (not my American friend) of the part of Burma where he comes from, and so this has become a Major Project and weirdly -- somehow -- money has been flooding in from Burma to support it.  With a military junta, the monks revolt and Aung San Suu Kyi being the only things I've read about Burma in the past few years, I wonder how this kind of support can be spared.

Ashin Cintita writes a pretty cool blog called Through the Looking Glass, in which he describes how he left his corporate job and family and became a monk. I've added it to my blog roll on your right.