Stargate Thursdays and Bodhisattvas

Here’s an update for yesterday, since my post yesterday was actually o’dark thirty in the morning for the previous day.

A friend stopped by my house yesterday for my newly appointed Stargate Thursdays. I’m attempting to induct two old friends from school into the wonderful world of Stargate, and we had a bit of a marathon on Saturday. They loved it so much they said we had to make it a regular occurrence (which had been my evil plan all along). So we decided on Stargate Thursdays. Unfortunately, one of these friends opted out last minute due to family problems, so it was just me and my friend Nikki.

It was a beautiful day, nice cool weather, good breeze blowing, so we sat in my covered swing I have out in my yard for a while. While sitting there, somehow we got on the subject of Buddhism and bodhisattvas. My metaphorical description of them made Nikki laugh. I said to picture Brahma (the creative energy force) as on one side of a doorway, and the material plane on the other side. As each person reaches enlightenment and dies, they become a Buddha and go through the doorway to become one with Brahma. Some people, though, decide they would rather stay behind and help others reach enlightenment. These are the bodhisattvas. They walk up to the door and stand on either side, like ushers (my friend Nikki offered up this description) pointing the way to others. Finally, when everyone has reached enlightenment and passed through the door, the “ushers” check off the last person on their checklist and pass through the doorway themselves, closing it once and for all on the material plane.

My friend couldn’t help but act out a little scene where she stood there with an imaginary checklist, looking around and saying “I think we have everybody, wait…where’s Bob? Bob?” and then from the back of the imaginary crowd Bob would call out “Here” and she would nod and trudge through the imaginary door. Yes it was quite the sight.

We ate some wonderful Chinese food at a nearby restaurant, simple but good. My friend Nikki is a vegetarian, but she was able to get the General Tso’s Shrimp and I just had some shrimp fried rice. But enough of that.

Since only one of my little Stargate club was present, we decided to not watch several consecutive episodes as previously planned, and I merely chose one of my favourite episodes in season one. We watched Fire and Water, and she absolutely loved it. She was practically petting my laptop’s screen every time they had a close up of Daniel Jackson, which wasn’t really a problem, except for the fact that it blocked my view!

Today’s my cat Poppy’s 12th birthday, so he’s going to get a special meal. My other cat, a black cat named Anubis, is very jealous. But his birthday has already come and gone. Well thats all for my update, I have to go try to write another chapter for the fanfic that I’m working on. The audience awaits!