WestVirginiaVille

What happens when you find the monk’s old outhouse has not been used for years in the West Virginia woods? A new chapter of ‘Monastery Nights.’

All I want to do is sit in the angled sun that pierces through the trees. I want to write something about today’s lunch at the monastery, which was personal in more ways than one.

I hear a harp playing. A lovely harp-tastic chord strummed over and over again. Have I died in the night? Is there indeed an angelic host, a Top 40 Angelic Harp Band, which greets you at the gates of Heaven?

If my moods had had their own meteorologist, the weather report would have been regular squalls of anger and whats-the-point-anyway despair followed by thunderstorms of self-pity and flash floods of fecklessness.

“Monastery Nights” is an Occasional Memoir of Visits to the Bhavana Society Buddhist Monastery in West Virginia and Encounters with Abbot Bhante Gunaratana. See new excerpts each Thursday on WestVirginiaVille.com.