Day Thirty-eight

This stone is literally a gift because Jeanne gave it to me. What is my relationship to it? To hold on gently and persistently. Some gifts are eaten, some are used for cooking, some are to look at, some are to listen to. This one is for touching, I've decided.

I'm grateful to have a set of senses that feel. Although they may need guarding, in and of themselves, they present feeling, which seems to decode a trove of information about how things are. But I am very, very lucky, for the senses and mind which are considered an 'I' become unbound in the gift of another.

Day Thirty-seven

I am touching the stone. The solid earth element of the stone seems to touch the solid earth element of me, my skin, pressed onto the stone with the deeper, more solid bone. And yet I touch the stone as much because it is different from water, and in a specific place in the air, and of a certain temperature. So it is because of the other elements that I feel it. Also, perhaps I feel my hand because of it's fluidity, I can press because it is not entirely solid; blood and other fluids are all part of the equation.

I have contact with things and I feel them. My feelings of them are relational; I feel them this way because they are not another way. They are like this because they are part of something else. And yet I discriminate, as if the stone is permanent, separate, and inherently satisfactory.

Day Thirty-six

Feeling the gravity of the stone, watching my mind refer back to its shape as I last saw it, feeling 'around' it for a circular definition, asking about the heaviness in relation to other things. It is interesting but then more neutral and then staying with that, pleasurable. Holding or touching the stone is pleasant today because I lift up and out of holding on. I am still touching, but the entire experience is more free flowing, more instructive of letting go. There is an end of desire to change the relationship, at least for a moment.

Day Thirty-five

I am recalling Ayya Sobhana's teaching in practice today. She was talking about how she had formed an ill will towards a troublesome student. When she had the quiet to identify it and the courage to name it, it soothed.

I am practicing 'wherever the stone presents itself' just as she taught to locate the breath for a point of concentration. I am also feeling more closely discrete pulses of information from the feeling to perception, and the volition to go toward them, do something about them, make thoughts and so on. Ayya was talking a lot about biology yesterday; how most of our actions are reactions to self-preservation and desire for comfort; and yet we get what we don't want and don't get what we want etc.

She 'saw' her volitional formation toward the student and it came unbound. Usually I don't do that, I'm resistant to discovery of how I've come to see things a certain way. There seems to be a built-in resistance to understanding how volition or will toward things works. Fear of being extinguished I suppose. I can feel it in my meditation. I say "why bother with this" and "this stone is getting you away from comfort" or "this stone is getting you toward comfort" and "you are a closed system and do not have the eyes to see yourself," and "so you are an assemblage of heaps; form, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness.... if you see how volition happens you will become apathetic, there is no special knowledge here, " and "you too were hurtful towards others, you had a right to be, and if you bring awareness of that too close, you will lose something...."

It seems that the whole meditation process is non-biological in terms of its function. Concentration seems simply to be a point of focus where we can look upon our being with some insight, and with a set of information that leans toward liberation.

Day Thirty-four

At meditation retreat today with Sister Sobhana of the Bhavana Society, on Using Contemplation on the Elements to Center Your Practice. I was surprised to know that Earth and Water are more physical elements and Air and Fire more energy-related but it makes perfect sense. After having us consider all of the Earth elements of our body by imagining their removal one by one (hair, skin, organs, muscles and skeleton), we practiced with a more general meditation.

I was pulled to her explanation of the Buddha's pointing BACK from Consciousness, Volition, Perception, Feeling to Form for us to realize the way things are, rather than having us strive to achieve some idea. She explained the skahndas as gears that interlock, and observing closely any one gear can lead to their unbinding. So we worked with form in the element of Earth and asked if these 'solid' things are truly us or mine, as the Buddha exhorted his son Rahula to do in the Maha-Rahulovada Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.062.than.html).
and also the http://www.vipassana.info/028-mahahatthipadopama-sutta-e1.htm , which is the simile of how many animals' footprints fit into an elephant's footprint; likened to how all other teachings, including those on the elements, fit into the four noble truths.

Day Thirty-three

When is my meditation intellectual vs. actual? I guess that's when I'm closer to being with whatever is. 'Arising' seems like an overused term, but to identify that things are compound, made of this plus that and never static in time or space, then it's ok I guess. To be awake with whatever is, to be of pure mind, is a puzzle, because I've an old tendency to contrast momentary insights with the 'junk' of my mind, and therefore be instantly in some idea of a better mind state.

The stone is a single point, or single enough, that touching it is the exercise of purity. All the while, my mind is pulling back to fiddling around with memories, dreams and reflections, but I return again and again to concentration. In so doing, I am engaging that grasping part of myself in an exercise of letting go. I cannot go to the stone without all of me, and yet, coming closer to bare touching, everything else releases, even thoughts of 'Why am I doing this?'

Closer, the stone and I are just about staying awake and nothing else. It is less and less and less to get lost in by letting go of each thing that comes to awareness, each thing to get lost in, until eventually, I am not lost any longer.

Day Thirty-two

It is dark and cloudy tonight. My ears are ringing still from a concert last night. I am tired and shadows are sharp, lights appear in the corner of my eyes, sound is indistinct and therefore suspect in some way. I cannot tell what is true; my senses are not at much ease. Myself and the cat seem real enough, but am I in touch, especially if my mind cannot catch up with sense impressions? Why touch the stone? Why is anything here? Is anything here? And so staying with the worry for a while; it is just that, the concerns about existence of things are possibly more healthy than the wages I pay so often to empty hallucinations that really don't work for me in the end.

I can touch the stone. Perhaps I hear 'touch the stone with a pure mind and happiness will follow', as the Buddha said about acting with a pure mind. I cannot go completely around any problem to get to the stone with purity. That would just be a rambling stream that connects nothing.

I sense something that cannot be written, about the way things are.

Day Thirty-one

Ah, the stone is a monster, cold and heartless, drawing me in and away from life.
The stone is laughing at my foolish distraction towards it.
The stone is nothing, just a stone, upon which I waste my attention and forget my duties.
The stone is unreachable for concentration, it is too vague, offers no place to be.

The stone is here, and I am pulled into a river of thought.
The stone offers one place to be.
The stone offers one unadorned moment.

Day Thirty

I have developed the habit of sitting down and allowing my body to relax. As soon as I touch the stone, I feel the tension in my jaw in particular, begin to soften and smooth. I go there it seems, because I've found things to be consonant with the touching of the stone, that whatever is going on need not be held tightly. My jaw is a simple place to let go of.

After that I ask what practice is for myself. It feels different from a year ago, not so striving, not so foreign. It's as if I'm on the one hand not so concerned with being anywhere else, and on the other hand very clear about how to foster healthy relationships to things, including my own thoughts and feelings.

Day Twenty-nine

Relating to the stone in concentration seems for the most part to be another set of thoughts that make another world, one off from reality. "I am" is a phrase that rattles around the inside of my head, like Oz behind a screen. And yet, I can see that; and return to concentration more simply. I see the struggle to hold on to an imagined control. I have none. Outer and inner noise take on another quality. A dull headache becomes a sword to cut down a curtain.

Day Twenty-eight

I watch how one thought follows another; a similar subject or group of items... sometimes it works in the way I learned, by associating objects with one another to identify them. So they are files, and I notice the tendency to sift through files, to keep the mind busy.

Today, my underlying desires to thought are more broad, a self-identity and an identity of self in the world. So my thoughts spin out of a deeper wheel that is propelled by pairs of opposites, like OK/Not OK or Have/Not have. For a while I notice that and let go of these. Still my mind moves at light speed. I have some success at letting it go, and it still goes fast, but feels energized by looking. The sense of the overwhelming speed of life may simply be holding on, as may be its opposite, boredom. As long as I'm going so fast, why not allow looking to take place with each thing. It has no trouble keeping up, I notice, unless I wrap around something with my mind and take it to be singular, separate, permanent. My worst habit.

Day Twenty-seven

I am beset by tiredness and dreaminess today in meditation. Several of those 'fall forward' sleepy moments. Full of thoughts with a tendency to follow them. Is it an insight to see that I have so little today? I try not to struggle with it.

Day Twenty-six

I reflect after meditation: My son is leaving for college today. I will be sad. How will my meditation serve me?

Not to be anywhere else
To feel the sunlit and stormy turns in the road of our history
To wish him well with all my heart, ah that is sadness without struggle
To just touch him; to know he will touch others

Day Twenty-five

All the stuff of the day in my head feels best gently bid its way through attention to the body. Attention to the stone allows for a base to see where my body is 'buzzing' from its mental and physical business. Shortly, there is just the stone and my attention.

I recognize touch through the mind most of the time. I name 'touching'. I try to let that go and use naming only shortly, to bring me back to touching. Asking 'pleasant, unpleasant or neutral?' also brings me back to touching only.

I come to touching and notice the tendency of the mind to label. I use labeling and the mind panics when letting it go. I keep looking and notice that all the labeling, even 'pleasant' etc is somehow an incorrect subjective view of time and space. In other words, even though I 'feel' with the body alone, this is in a constant flux, and 'pleasant' or 'hard' or 'cool' live momentarily along a vast spectrum of feeling. When considering this spectrum using the mind, the body remains in only one fractional place.

Looking and looking, there arises in the body-only a sense of some more rapidly changing feeling, a pulse of liberation from anything subjective at all except for opening wider, 'pleasant' is still there in some way, but there is also bare and miraculous contact; flesh and stone in a creative meeting that has no name or requirement for result.

Day Twenty-four

Questions from today:

• How to get closer to the pure physical sensation of touching the stone?
• What is the difference between touch and the mental notation of touch?
• Is there a pure physical notation of touch?
• Are there discrete notations of touch?
• What is in between experiences?
• Is there a craving that follows sensation that exists only in the body, if so what, if anything regulates it? In other words, it seems most common for me to use the mind, if only less than fully consciously, to paint a picture of where else to be. And then, would not the mind be the fuel or damper there.
• Are the awareness of body and mind two different awarenesses? Are they only derived from the attention of the mind to the object?

I'll have to work on these, not too fast, not too slowly.

Day Twenty-three

The Stone has a feeling that is immediately grounding. It does not seem to move, as would water, fire or air. Focusing on breathing brings me a sense of movement, of wind, and a sense of being with myself. Touching the stone brings me quickly to a differentiation between myself and the object of meditation, and I seem more of the 'stuff' of movement. It is clearly 'not me' and leads me to feel what 'I' am from some clear vantage point.

But the stone too is in motion, it is changing through touch or air, heat, moisture. This solid element is a temporary property impacted by and impacting upon the other elements.

Of all the things in this world that could fall together, consciousness seems the most fortunate development.

Day Twenty-two

Tiredness. I often panic needlessly when I am tired in meditation. Some dreamlike thoughts swim up naturally to the edge of my awareness, and others are worries about not staying awake or that I will miss something.

Today there is an aspect of it that lets me sink into meditation. Like me and the stone are both made of similar, heavy, earthy stuff. There is a vague sense of coming out the other side of tiredness, not just watching the tiredness of body and mind change into being less tired, but of just being OK without noting everything. Staying with the singular place with some trust, through broad moods, holding gently to one point.

Day Twenty-one

Am I really holding this stone? It is a place to get close, very close to the way things really are. I ask over and over again what the feeling is that I am concentrating on. I feel the feeling. I experience it as the combination of flesh and stone; and that is a small miracle. Thought stops when I return again and again. Instead there is feeling and acknowledgement of feeling.

In returning there is a letting go of following other things. In asking what the feeling is, there is a letting go of I vs It. The world that can be created by one being is as strong as the potential to really be in touch.

This 'unbinding' to experience, this letting go of following is extremely pleasurable.

Day Twenty

I recall so many perceived affronts to the compound idea of myself. I notice that I split things into have/not have or hurt/not hurt, and I see how that complicates things. If I have been shortchanged or hurt I quickly go right back to that time and paint a picture of how things could have been better, different or more. I work with concentration and that provides a vantage point for acceptance.

Acceptance is not just getting away from problems by seeing that they are not all of me, because the same ones keep coming up. They have roots, entangled with biological impulses and other things. Back to concentration.

Day Nineteen

I watch some of my thoughts. I notice how I see many thoughts in a chalkboard or storyboard way. 'Looking' at thought becomes an act of following, an enjoyable act for me, the writer. Feeling the heaviness in the body is different, more curious, discovery, less of a difference between feeling and observer.

Concentration feels like getting closer and closer to no division between observation and observer. Maybe it is an act which mimics the way things really are. Where I can really be a part of things. Maybe concentration allows reality to come in. I get the sense that although there is no division, no separate self, there is also no non-separate self, no static thing to rest in. Acceptance is part of turning back to concentrtion or outward to awareness and has a restless, deepening quality, like it is a fluid.

Day Eighteen

Coming home from work, I have the dubious opportunities of watching baseball, eating frozen brownies, and doing bills. They all have their attraction, but tonight I sit with my stone, at least for a while. I revel in the opportunity to see things from a different point of view, have a different relationship with things. Meditation is a refuge from an endless field of desire.

Not at first, I cling to it, it is 'not desire', it is 'apart from' entanglement, chasing. That feels like holding on. But deeper, it is the opportunity of dharma, the way things are, of the experience of the Buddha, and of the Sangha. Meditation tonight is a vantage point with no advantage, a kind of end of things. The desire to do the night's activities fades in a very satisfying way. It's always that way, I'm satisfied when my desire for something ends, at least for a millisecond. Why and from where do I go out after things?

Day Seventeen

I have a sense of touching of the stone vs. 'everything else', or differentiated from all that is not touching the stone, my body, my plans, my world, the world and so on. Sitting with that, there arises a sense of both being quietly there, less of a 'vs', more of both sitting quietly.

Investigating the world from the vantage point of the stone, all other things have only a relation to me that I can perceive; a direct one from my senses, thought, memory and hopes, and an indirect and vague idea of anything beyond my senses. But there is nothing really there, only that which I have created through interpretation. And so I may become very close to reality with this stone, a chance to stop creating what is not there.

There are crickets singing at the very edge of something.

Day Sixteen

Whether the stone is touched on one point or in most of my palm does not seem to matter for concentration. I can still have a singular place, that place which is different from wandering mind.

Just feeling the stone after the haze of sleep lifts, and the thoughts of the day have not yet taken hold. "What is it like" brings history in. It feels like a bicycle handle after a while. One of a few things I have held for a while at once. How to feel it without history..... It feels a little grainy as if it was made of grains, a kind of sand I can relate to from the beach, or smooth like other stones I remember. The feeling is pleasant today, warm and smooth, like holding tea in a stoneware cup. Yet in another way, it is not 'like' anything. Staying with the feeling of pleasant without holding on too tight begins to lift the history away. It is warm and there is some wanting to stay there. I let go of that and pleasant remains in a new way.

Day Fifteen

I am restless. The stone is still. I think, “If only I were like the stone..” but that is wanting to achieve something, and that makes stillness only an idea. I feel the element of the stone, the solid, heavy energy. I contrast myself with that energy; and too much… I feel my blood and skin and vulnerability. But I would not want to be the stone, it is too solid, cannot form words, cannot deepen its relationship.

When I let go of my many thoughts and desires, it is scary. I give up all my satisfactory distance to things. If I am worried about something, I invent a relationship to it, and wrap around a ‘good reason’ for the way things are. Or if it is clearly more uncomfortable, I wrap around worry itself, thinking that if I can only keep playing ping pong with it, I will figure it out.

What is the measure of the true distance between the stone and my skin; between my self and the stars?

Day Fourteen

I felt cold today from the breeze coming in the window. With concentration as a base, I could more easily look at the feeling of being cold. It was made of the air and my skin, impulses to nerves, and a reaction. I felt the cold and craved for non-cold. I quickly imagined myself in a sweatshirt, or with a wrap, or a closed window. Since that was not reality, I suffered. In between cold breezes was a more definite sense of non-cold, of relief. But that was torn away with a cold breeze, the suffering of loss of warmth.

I pushed gently toward the cold breeze, to intervene somewhere in the process of clinging. I noticed the multiple images of my thoughts, which I believe were arising in a biological way to move me into a warmer spot. And so I might as well agree that warming up was the thing to do, but I am so often like a pinball in life, only bouncing away from each unpleasant sense contact and toward each pleasant magnet; I no longer find that rewarding.

For moments I see the stream of thoughts, the impulse to get away from cold, built by thoughts, and they all disappear. There is just cold, and a kind of sweet release. Then, quickly a desire to maintain release, with each cold breeze, a craving for a more enlightened mind state. But it is the end of mind-states that bring release, the end of craving for anything more than what is. I must keep returning to this end, the end of all that is created above and beyond a simple touch of stone, or wind.

Day Thirteen

As usual, I notice many thoughts at first and craving to be with them, and struggle to let go. I return to touching and let them go. Where do they go? Mostly, they subside, change when my sense of time becomes less tight. It's always better when it's less tight, all of this practice. It helps to see that I hold thought and sensation and create my own sense of time out of it. Letting go has a little fear, but that is just one more thing to notice that I am holding on to.

With concentration, there is space between the distractions. And then my mind is unsatisfied with the touching and wants more complexity. There is the feeling of it in my hand and of my thumb on top of it. Is it enough? Ah, I am at rest with it for a moment. And I am alive because I am the knower of feeling built from stone and body. But that too is changing.

Day Twelve

Today, concentration brings a small sense of “uh-oh”, doubt, or ‘losing’ a stream of doing. I was sleeping or writing or thinking and I can’t do that when I’m concentrating.

I feel sleepiness, restlessness and dreaminess, but they can be seen from the vantage point of the stone. I don’t feel carried away by them. I recognize dreaminess as a quality of sleepiness in which I notice myself flitting from one sense feeling to another, a warm feeling in the body, a sense of colored light outside my eyelids, a vague thought of something pleasant. I notice myself ‘feeding’ off of these things, and actually not resting.

Being more awake at first feels ‘harder’ than dreaming or being carried away. But really, I’m letting go of something I’m getting that I don’t need, which has no inherent reality, no substance, and no long-term benefit. I experience non-concentration as the added, attached state, and concentration as more natural, although not without effort. Easy effort, letting go effort, a kind of effort that is combined with seeing and knowing.

Day Eleven

While meditating I notice my struggle to 'balance out' stessful thoughts with imagined solutions. I try a kind of 'hard' letting go, not so soft. That is, with emphasis; noting the hindrance of attachment to this supposed balance and then noting definitely the touching of the stone, over and over. I feel the release from these things I hold on to and a deeper sense of release at the core, even with my problems, as if there is a concentration available anytime, in the middle of any attachment, concentration itself is letting go, acceptance.

Day Ten

I am wishing myself insights today. Why? To go from where to where? Those are just imagined places.

It is cold this morning. To move ahead with concentration and leave poor visions of warmth and achievement behind are enough.

Day Nine

The feel of the stone: Does it have firm resistance? Or is it the soft thumb with a bone inside that feels? I never feel the stone. Even a property like 'smooth' is the feeling of my hand upon it, a meeting of skin and stone. Even these two apparent elements are made of very many parts.

Apart from that, I feel much neutrality when touching. It feels smooth and firm and somewhat cool, then warming. I wrestle with a neutrality, think I don't like it. But I see there a hindrance, a doubt that there can be benefit in awareness of neutrality, a doubt that my relationship with touching could lead anywhere. I note that, and stop trying to find anything. Doubt fades away without its imagined anchor and goal.

I camped under the stars with my two boys last night. I thought about the earth being a great big stone. Grass and trees look as vivid this morning as did the constellations in the blackness. A bee and its trailing sound cuts a very crisp line across the campsite.