This week, I was listening to Shelagh Rogers on CBC, The Next Chapter. She was interviewing Bruce Kirkby about his book, Blue Sky Kingdom. This coincided with a stop at the Odd Book store. Heather found a copy of Chogyam Trungpa, Born in Tibet.
In the Blue Sky Kingdon, Kirkby and his family spend time at a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Trungpa describes their daring escape from Tibet into India, fleeing the Chinese communists.
Back home, I pulled off the shelf, David Swick’s book Thunder and Ocean: Shambhala and Buddhism in Nova Scotia. I had read it several years ago. From the backcover,
“Thunder and Ocean is the story of an historic union: one old Canadian province and two ancient spiritual traditions”.
Besides asking Jaki Fraser at the Lawrencetown library to request the Bruce Kirkby book, I had the following questions:
Is it possible to separate the religious beliefs from the landscape?
Like Kirkby, do we need to see how these beliefs are practiced in Tibet today?
What is it about the Nova Scotia landscape that attracted Trungpa and his followers?
Certainly, I remember well the trip that Heather and I made to Gampo Abbey at Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton.
Wednesday was a cross-country ski day. Rick and Kathy invited us to their property on the Perotte Road. South Mountain gave us deep powder snow after Monday’s storm. En route, we stopped at the old Post Office for treats, and take out coffee at Lola’s Café, before turning onto the West Dalhousie Road at Lequille.
Postscript
Thinking about Annapolis County. Reading the works of Steve Skafte on Abandoned Roads of Nova Scotia, leads to questions about the history of our landscape. Is that part of the attraction?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rick for the skiing invitation. Kathy, Angela and Jan for the lunch snacks. Edward provided graphics support; Heather for her Shambhala library.
References
Bruce Kirkby, 2020, Blue Sky Kingdom, Simon and Schuster.
David Swick, 1996, Thunder and Ocean: Shambhala and Buddhism in Nova Scotia, Pottersfield Press.
Chogyam Trungpa, 1966, Born in Tibet, Shambhala Publications.
Ernest Blair Experiment 