Dharma Friends

Several months ago I happened into a lecture by Bhante Vimalaramsi at a local bookstore called Soul Food Books. Bhante V is quite well known in buddhist circles, a practitioner for over 30 years and the first westerner to be invited to address a major buddhist convention in Asia. He's schooled in the forest meditation tradition and stayed in the local Theravadan monastery in Woodinville while he was here. My reasons for showing up that day were completely unremarkable and not at all spiritual, I was bored. The store opened awhile ago and I happened by completely by accident, but quite surprisingly I made a new friend in the parking lot and we've stayed in touch. She's a health worker on the Eastside and has been practicing meditation for awhile. The funniest line in her email was something like "my ex and I ran marriage encounter in *City X* for a number of years". My friend turned to buddhist meditation a few years ago after some personal drama.

We developed a correspondence around dharma homework, questions like "how do you deal with nonviolence in an age of terrorism". She hooked me up with a few local sitting groups. Unfortunately that robs me of the usual excuse of Seattle traffic that keeps me away from the Shambhala Center. Tonight we signed out a room in the Bellevue library and sat together listening to Bhante V's recorded dharma talks and meditating together. Its nice to have a spiritual community again, even a very small one. I've missed that the past few years.