Buddhism

Today has been an interesting day.  It was an early work day, so it started out nice, quiet and relaxing.  With a cup of coffee in hand, I searched the news online and of course Facebook.  When my boss arrived for the day, we set up for our meeting and began a discussion that I never would have thought we would have in a million years.  He is an agnostic when it comes to religion.  This morning he made the effort to attend a Buddhist meditation service just because it was something different and it was being hosted by the Army's first Buddhist chaplain.  He was telling me about the service when he shocked me with a comment.  "I think I am being called to this religion.  It really spoke to me."  We kept talking about the service and he mentioned a quilt that his wife made and sent to him.  It had origami cranes intricately sewn into the quilt.  After the service this morning, the Buddhist chaplain handed him a paper origami crane.  He also spoke about how he has trouble concentrating like he has ADD, but this morning he was able to relax.  The chaplain spoke of a house with five windows.  Standing outside looking at the house and seeing all five windows, a person could look and see monkeys in all five windows, but there is only one monkey in the house.  The monkey is just moving so fast from window to window that the viewer thinks there are five monkeys in the house.  Our minds work in the same manner in that it moves from item to item so quickly, one is unable to focus on just one window.  We need to focus and see there is just one monkey.  (I may have gotten this slightly wrong, but I think you can see the point). It was all very interesting to me.

Our conversation ended rather abruptly when the XO walked in, but you could tell he wanted to talk about it because he brought it up several times throughout the day.

When the NCOIC arrived for work, he carried with him a package from his wife.  Contained within was a tea ball in the shape of a dinosaur, a catapult toy, and silly string.  When the movement NCO walked in, he was immediately pelted with catapult ammo.  We had a good laugh at this and as one of the other NCO's made fun of him, the NCOIC pulled out his silly string and attacked.  I guess he didn't remember that I still had a can of silly string, or maybe he did, but at that point I whipped out my can and shot back in self defense.  And that was how the silly string war began, and that is also how I ended up sweeping the entire office.  Oh well, it was fun.