New member - Lesley

Hello Everyone,I was a member of the lay community visiting Throssel in the 70's with my husband, in fact we were married there in August 1974.
I left Buddhism some time later but my husband became a Lay Minister and now runs a meditation group in Milton Keynes.
I was a Pharmacist for 40 years and brought up a family. Our youngest daughter Liz came with us to some ceremonies which were filmed as part of an advertisment for Throssel Hole.
I have always retained an interest in Zen but have felt stymied by the events of Daiji's leaving and confusion after reading HTGLB. Now I have seen Daiji's own account I feel a lot happier...with gassho, Lesley

Welcome, Lesley, it's very good to have you here.

I hope you will not mind that we move your post to a new Intro thread of its own, to help others see it more easily.

Kind regards,
Watson

Welcome Lesley. I am glad that my postings have helped you - they helped resolve matters for me too. I'm only sorry to have had to wait 40 years. I know that the manner of my leaving caused confusion and distress, as I hav said in other posts I don't think that I handled my leaving and the effect that it had on others particularly well. My apologies for any distress or harm that this may have caused you.

However this forum and the conversations I have had through it have changed my views on those days. I now feel that the major part of the blame for the distress and confusion of those sad days was mainly caused by the events which led up to my leaving and Jiyu Kennet's and the OBC's reaction to it. I do accept the blame for not being totally open with everyone about what had happened, my only excuse is that at the time I did not want to cause a scandal in the sangha. I now realise that in the long run hiding the truth led to more harm than being open would have done.

Hello Daiji,
I do not feel that you are in any way responsible for how the events impacted on me personally. You were only leading your life as best you could in very difficult circumstances as I was.
Now that these things seem to be looked at openly and resolved it will become easier to uncover the deeper reasons which also kept me away from zen training,my own koan if you like..with gassho, Lesley