Making Choices

I am here at the monastery at a time that I have never been here before, the end of September Fall days.  I always made a choice to go back down valley to begin to work for $$$ in preaching and teaching in front of people, no social distancing.  This Coronavirus season I stayed at the monastery and today was quite a payoff.  This time of year at 8,000 feet in mountain country, the pre-dawn mornings are quite cold, in the 20s, but this gives way to beautiful mid-days of sunshine, blue sky, and hills covered with the color of Fall tree leaves changing from green to yellow, red, and orange.  All these years I had made a choice to leave by mid-September, and this is what I apparently gave up.  Plus, I don't seem to complain about the cold temps inside the monastery (no furnace heat on yet), as I used to.  But my point in all this for you, is to think about what you give up each time you make a choice to do something.  So many times we don't even know what we gave up, from ignorance or inexperience, having made the same old choice over and over.  In this Coronavirus season, you might ask yourself what might happen if you made a different choice.  Instead of doing this, you do "that" and find out what "that" is all about.