Well, as of March 30th I formally took refuge as Buddhist, with my refuge name Phuntsok Gelek, Distinguished Auspiciousness. The ceremony was beautiful.

We had Dad's memorial service this past weekend, and that went splendidly. We have an audio tape of the event. I hope to get athat digitized before the sound quality has any chance seriously to decay. I read a section from the Bhagavad Gita and a poem of my own during the event and got quite a bit of praise for my reading of each. Fortunately I had some time to rehearse, for my doing the B.G. reading was a last minute change in the program, and my own poem was missing for a long time and I had to reconstruct a new version for the memorial. Still haven't found the original poem, which was written partially in response to a linoprint that my brother-in-law made, of a Buddha figure 'neath a tree, with the Morning Star in view (the print is titled "Morning Star"), and the figure reminds us all here of my dad and the poem was written with that recognition, of the Dad-likeness of the figure in the linoprint.

My studies with the Bach remedies continue apace. I hope to take a Level I course locally very soon and go through the whole three-tiered learning program and become a B.(ach)F.(lower)R.(egistered)P.(ractitioner). I've gotten a lot of benefit from the Bach remedies, and am already prescribing them to family and friends based on my increasingly extensive reading and increasing personal experience, to be supplemented soon I hope by these courses. Studying the Bach remedies well really requires insight into human nature and is a fascinating field of study. I recommend it.

l8r...