Reading the labels

Inspite of being holed up on the final leg of my Herculean work deadline, I still feel in the "zone", so to speak. It's been sub-zero fun staring at my screen from sunrise to sunset, especially with so many folk on downtime outside, and all so vocally enjoying their free time.

But hey ho. The end of this snarly monster is in sight, at last. I've also chanted like a good girl, and read my daily encoragement online. I recommend these tasty snippets to anyone, as served up by a few good, no-nonsense sites, such as buddha.net. Havng said that, you might want to overlook the strange and sllightly pyschedelic rotating light effect on this site's encouragements. It looks oddly like a neon cyber-siren, somehow attached to the head of a statue...hmmm...nuff said...

Anyway, on account of my deadline overhang, I've missed what would have been a lovely Buddhist get-together, or "chant and chat" as I've been known to call them. If I used the official terminology, you might have a turn and click away before your hand could hit the mouse. But the meeting was called "Gongyo - at district level" can you believe for strange-soundingness?

I guess every organisation has it's structures and it's labels. It's just hard to not notice that, to English ears, this sounds more like a character from Star Wars than a cosy Sunday get-together. Couldn't we invent some cuddly new names for things perhaps? Is it wrong to even ask? I would much prefer to pencil in something along the lines of "All-comers Buddhafest", for instance. Oh, is this the wind of sacreligion I can feel, with me sailing a bit too close to it?

Anyway, moving on. I've gotten to thinking about Macs today. You know, the really cool designer computers, which make boring old pc's look like the lumbering dinosaurs they are rapidly becoming in comparison. Does everyone but me know how amazing the small Mini Mac white hard drives look? And the GIU? And the cute remotes and featherlight keyboards? I've seen some superb kit today and I am bowled over in a way normally only reserved for new shoes or new skis.

Which brings me back to the point about language and labels. I happily surfed away on the Mac site earlier, web-window shopping for a gorgeous Mac Mini of my very own. I wasn't thrown even for a nano-second by the mysterious tecchy speak involved. I'm clueless about pretty much all of it naturally. But I carefully swotted up on how it's got giga-hertz and intel core processing. Not to mention a DVI connector, VGA adpator and even an ethernet, for goodness sake. Hey I'm just getting with the programme, right?

So why then, in comparison, does the unfamiliar language of "Sutras and Gongyo" feel so hard to adapt to? I'm not sure, right now. I can't nail my slight linguistic discomfort, but I know it's all just labels, and they don't affect what's going on on the inside. Or the magic and beauty of the process. They're funny words attached to the outside. So I'm happy just ticking over with all of this, until I'm more fluent at any rate.

Nam myoho renge kyo for now.