Greetings from California!

I'm visiting Val right now, in the vicinity of Santa Cruz, CA. She took me on a tour of a Tibetan monastic community called the Medicine Buddha, which was pretty much out in the woods (like redwoods), with winding paths and prayer wheels and a temple with a big gold Buddha and murals telling the life of the Buddha and children rehearsing for a play. And there are seven special places where there's a wooden sign in front of a bench, and the sign has dharma quotes from a book by the Dalai Lama called Lojong something something. There was also a little pond containing timid little coi.

Then we stopped at a little cafe and got snacks and beverages and took them to the beach, where the water was very blue with white waves along the sand, and we were actually on a cliff overlooking all this, and there was a concrete ship rotting away in view of us, just off a pier. Not a safe place to climb on anymore, rather like a condemned building. I rather enjoyed seeing seagulls and watching doggies playing in the waves.

We went to an idyllic place that's actually a nursery, and it's called the Bamboo Forest (I kept thinking the Bamboo Grove, because that's a place we visited in India, an early monastery of the Buddha's). It had a shop where you can buy bamboo mats and pottery and bamboo fences. There were also paths into the bamboo woods, with a wide range of bamboo--I had no idea it came in so many thicknesses and colors. There was a pond with a waterfall and a gazebo, and in the pond grew what looked remarkably like lotuses. They may have been water lilies, but they sure looked like the lotuses we saw in India.

Tonight I'm going with Val to her sangha, Vipassana Santa CruBhante Seelagawessi who's from Sri Lanka. This is so exciting!

Tomorrow I'll be driving to the Los Angeles area and visiting my cousin Teddi, before I head for Phoenix the next day.