The significance of silence in the Buddha Dharma

The day began with a really good workout at the gym. I joined the 'Body Blitz' class. I'll confess I made a mistake - I thought I was going to a 50+ keep fit class and anticipated it would be fairly gentle. No such luck! Going to a class like that on a regular basis would soon sort out the extra pounds, I think I'd sweat it off in no time. It's strange how energetic I felt afterwards.

Later I had an appointment with an employment specialist to go through my CV and fine tune it to give me a better chance of getting interviewed. I've sent off applications for 12 jobs so far, received 3 outright rejections and not had any invitations to interview as yet. That contrasts strongly with my previous job-hunting experience. Someone has suggested I'm underselling myself.

In the evening I hooked up the trusty satnav and found my way to the Friends' Meeting House at Woking for a talk on the significance of silence in the Buddha Dharma. (Following the link will take you off this page to the Woking Quakers' website, and you can scroll down to an article about the talk). It was very interesting, but the wooden bench I was sitting on wasn't exactly comfortable for a prolonged sit, and as the time wound round towards 9.45 pm I just wanted to head for home. Eventually I decided there was nothing else for it but to stand up and thread my way carefully past the other attendees (the room was packed and I was sitting just about furthest from the exit). Back in the comfort of the car I re-programmed the satnav to take me home ... but there was a road closed and the diversion took me well off track. Now this is the kind of situation which makes me very thankful for the satnav and ultimately it did get me home safely. You noticed the word 'ultimately', yes? The route was very ... how can I put it ... 'interesting', involving extremely narrow country lanes and a dead end which the satnav seemed to think was an acceptable route. Those bollards looked pretty solid to me! As I turned in the road and drove back, the satnav persisted in instructing me to 'perform a U-turn, perform a U-turn'. I don't think there's a button you can press to tell it it's made a mistake. Oh well, once I'd found my way to the nearest main road, it got me back on track so we're still friends.