Day Sixty-nine

A quiet afternoon falling asleep over and over during meditation. I can watch that and wait for sleepiness to pass. Often when this happens I feel as if I am getting needed rest, and let myself have it. A kind of easing up on the 'get it done' mentality.

Sixty-eight

Staying with or even going to the stone with attention is often a battle with something else my attention is pulled to. Often it is a sense of comfort I am running after. Some of those comforts are strange; thought patterns and fantasies where I am soothed or in control of something, or wild adventure.

Other times, like right now, there’s just a general restlessness. It manifests as a tight jaw, nervous fingers, fluttery chest. In my mind I feel like either fading into sleep or moving somewhere. Then some doubt. Now touching but trouble staying with it. I have a very general sense of imbalance or incompleteness. It is my mind wrapping around doubt. A little distance and I can see that. What I thought was blocking me is not that at all, it is not a foreign force of any kind. It is me and what I am holding on to.

Day Sixty-seven

When I am agitated, things look agitating. The rock does not fit properly, it smells bad (really, I smelled it, its a bit like gun oil, but more on that later), the meditation bell is dirty and less than imperfect, the silver lamp is sharp and cheap, the large rock has poorly drawn circles on it, the crushed rose tells me I do not have what it represents in my hand, all things pulse like an aura before a migraine.

But these things are surely much more neutral. I sit with the stone and this unpleasantness. I shift first, to a more open awareness; my body softens, my mind holds the thought of neutrality, of being present, of exploration and the objects soften. As they soften I can see more about them, and I notice the words that I have written on them, 'dirty', 'cheap', 'poorly', 'I do not have', 'bad'..... These are strong judgments. I notice that they are there before I speak them, unconscious links to the past.

The objects soften more and become neutral, then friendly, arranged like little mushrooms with something to say, a village, the lamp is cute, the bell has character, the beauty of nature's circles. These words are from history also.

I may choose the present only from among that which I have chosen to see.

Day Sixty-six

Concentration is a strange proposition because most everything that the mind encounters is 'picked up' and perceived as 'mine'. Yet, the objective is to go back over and over again to the stone. How do I work with it without picking it up? What is this form without holding it, redefining it? It is most certainly a changing form, and it does not need to be anything I add to. As it is, it is a place to go back to and each time, to let go of what is happening but keep looking at what is happening. How rarely I do those two things together; usually I am forced to let go; even then I simply make another movie about how things are.

How are things really? They are unbinding in every sense, warm, willowy, a chorus.

Day Sixty-five

In the Sanna Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an07/an07.046.than.html, a short Sutta I was reading on perception, the Buddha talks about the wholesome perceptions of death, impermanence, distaste for that which is inconstant and so on. In considering the stone, I struggle with many perceptions, most of them less wholesome, such as it is cool now, or it is smooth, or neutral now and so on. None of those bring much enlightenment. I can feel myself being pulled in to perception, 'picking up' a sense of self vs stone, simply how I identify it. I can sense how refined, or should I say how natural, a more healthy perception of the stone could be. It is neither permanent or impermanent. It is not a subject of careless rumination, but it could be. I have a choice; either to push through the doubt and craving, or allow them to pull me into mental ping-pong.

In pushing through I see more about how craving is applied to perception and how that is linked to form and feeling. I can't add additional commentary to form without breaking the link to feeling and believing feeling to be independent. Although bare attention appears to see feeling without craving, I get more of a sense that it usually is bound up by ownership and lack of vision, thus supposing that it has bare feeling. But truly bare feeling may need to include the contact with form upon which it rests.

It may not be so much the 'better' activity of the mind which realizes wholesome perceptions, but its perspective.

Day Sixty-four

Accountability to even just being with the stone seems too great. Can I not have my own refuges of doubt, clouds, and anxious espionage? The stone says little, but in silence a lot. I have not been in such a position to have to ask myself these questions, knowing that I must deliver an answer. In the end I have nothing, and were the earth raked by some meteor to a depth of a thousand feet, exposing the granite of stones to be melted, cracked and washed for a million more years, I would have no less.

Old age darkens my once clear vision as it hurtles to crack my knees. Now, I am of blood, skin, bone, touch, and words. I was once made of this stone and I will be again. Whatever I am drifts out the window tonight, leaving a stone I could not trade for a grain of rice, black from the oil of one season of my days.

Day Sixty-three

I sometimes meditate out of the other side of distraction or concern or busy-ness. I await the quality of meditation to deepen. Often, I feel a rush to make it happen, to be quieter, to be somewhere other than where I am but that just adds another step. All of these things can quiet on their own; turning attention, by turn and turn, from holding tigers to touching stone.

Day Sixty-two

Touching and quieting today. I feel restless at first and then sit with that; noticing the tightness of breathing and letting it be. Then tired, letting that be as well, the fog can be watched too, then dreams or partial dreams wake me back to one place upon the stone, staying gently with that.

Leaves fall outside in the wind. Each and every one is brand new, falls perfectly without any need for planning, cuts a space around the tree with the prow of its stem like a little boat. The leaves are in perfect time as well; no one has planned them. The stone sits in its time with me. It is just right, I am just right in being with it, being with my love, being with the round of sleep and waking that gently seeks interruption, a waking that wants to shed its inhibitions, brightly colored as they all fall down.

Day Sixty-one

Touchingtensioncryingsoundcoolstonedesiremovingstayingloudringingringingmovinggentlepushingtouchingaskinglookingwantingrighteoushumblegraspingmemorieswaverestingfallingonespotdoubtbodybubblesupbreathingtastingtouchbeingallowedneithernorpleasantopeningrestingfallllinglikealeafinfall

Day Sixty

A place to just touch. Touching is an exercise in alternately looking at what is blocking touching and looking at touching by letting go of the blocks. New blocks, things to get pulled by in sense and thought, arise constantly. But the stone becomes interesting and a place to examine feeling.

Feeling the stone is pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, but that seems to be only a layer above the self, above the concept of me and mine. Without me and mine, I'm sure there is no particular difference in feeling, or I should say no binding difference. In other words, I experience these feelings but in a more raw form, they are not experienced as held and therefore have no hold. No hold feels scary at first, but then it is more like a way for the mind to open up, to break the chains of dream, to be still here. My what goes by!!

Day Fifty-nine

What is beyond thought? I have more of a sense of what thought is made of; that most of the time it is applied to objects, to other thoughts, to what history is brought in and combined with present experience, categorizing, defining reactions to pleasant and unpleasant (such as "I don't like this", which is a step beyond feeling); more rarely to neutral, although with some investigation it seems that subtle thoughts are going on all the time to categorize that set which is neither pleasant or unpleasant; that set which is neither helpful or hurtful and therefore that set which does not require a following action toward or away.

Going back to touch over and over again pulls me out of thought. First it limits and contains my thought, which brings resistance for a while, but that fades. Then there is often a 'popping out' of the usual stream of thought and the stone is a base from which I have a much larger observation deck. I can see the pull again nonetheless to say "ah here is your base and all these things are yours, pick one and play with it" and so on. But once again going back and back and back to touching there is a communication between the base and looking more deeply at feeling, form and thought.

I'm beginning to think I could assemble a real robot if I can figure all this out. You know, there hasn't been a real robot mind that thought on its own, but if we can make the right components they might take up life. My mind and body, upon investigation, are but component parts. So we could make the component parts, certainly feeling could be made by a sensor and its interaction with things, perception by some register of built up categories, picking up intention, and so on. If we built it right, we'd only have to wait for craving to take place. But it is that sense of self, that fundamental ignorance that leads to craving that must help animate things. And that is so intangible, so hard to analyze, distill, so subtly resistant to study.

Day Fifty-eight

I can feel my body system working very fast. Either this makes it difficult to meditate or not seeing it makes it difficult. It is interesting to me that in many ways, meditation is defined by the removal of that which makes it difficult, that which hinders it. In that sense, meditation is a natural state.

My body is anticipating many things. Even after a period of quiet, it is rapidly salivating, digesting, pumping blood at a considerable rate. I have been especially on the go and I am not sure why. Perhaps I also have a tension like a rush to quiet. This is good to know. I so often contrast meditation with the processes that pull me along. But this is the same body and the same mind either at rest or busy with itself. Then there is recognition of no focus. I know I am not looking, I define looking as loosening around that which I had been tight, the lack of focus and turning toward the object of meditation with intention, consciousness, perception and toward the form. A moment of quiet before turning toward concentration, and a more positive feedback loop begins.

It seems that this troublesome form, this stone, this odd object, becomes neutral, pleasant and unpleasant..... but it has none of those qualities; they are only the result of contact. Ultimately, it is but a little round doorway.

Day Fifty-seven

Sinking into the night in meditation is so different than when waking into the day. There is more of a sense of going from noise toward quiet as opposed to lingering quiet that carries through into the noise. There is the fear of nightmares and all that is uncontrolled by vigilance.

But then, there is discipline of the mind and buoyant release to let the body roll across the sea of sleep with some sort of navigation and cooperation.

I hold the stone and fall into sleep. It does not feel like a place to go, not like another place to strive and file concepts, nor a place to get away from striving and filing.

Day Fifty-six

I am stone. I sit by the parade of your life, and you notice me when you let go all other intention.

No one has ever picked me up without picking me up.

Day Fifty-five

Ah, just going back to touching the stone as an object of concentration. It is so simple and yet fraught with many distractions. I see doubt and aversion and also attraction. I am so restless inside. I benefit from some delight in concentration; a sense of unbinding that makes me want to look around and smile. I see old moods, old habits, old conflicts. They serve to muzzle the store of experiential information that comes from being still.

I was thinking that 'nutriment' to these hindrances was craving, but it is the thing that is tied into craving, really, the coal in the craving firebox; there are four (reading about it again at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html ) ... four kinds of nutriment: edible food, sense-impressions, volitions, and consciousness. It is hunger that stands behind the entire process of nutrition, wielding its whip relentlessly. The body, from birth to death, craves ceaselessly for material food; and mind hungers as eagerly for its own kind of nourishment, for ever new sense-impressions and for an ever expanding universe of ideas.

Analogies to eaten sons and skinned cows round out the common technique of the Buddha to disgust us and thus raise our awarenss of our own ignorance. And so sense impression is the nutriment or nutrition for feeling which is then inclined to lead toward craving. But sense impression here has craving in it; indeed it seems that all of the skandhas can or may not have craving in them. Therefore I must be watchful not to identify with the sense impressions coming from the stone. So rarely am I with anything I do not identify with.

Day Fifty-four

Touching the stone; I reflect that the stone does not have consciousness, but then I wonder if I do. It is something I take for granted. I know it is built out of conditions and so it is just another thing I have. What would I be without it? Well, not necessarily without it but without feeding it? Feeding or providing nutrition to my self concept is in fact my self concept. Not feeding it is a kind of doorway.

I had told myself I would just practice concentration and not look up stuff but I am compelled to do so. I am looking at the five Skandhas at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/khandha.html. I see that they are form, feeling, perception, formation or volition, and consciousness. I also note that 'nutriment' or feeding any of these can happen. I am fascinated by the notion that I can feed form itself. Also, that consciousness is dependent on, or made of formation, moving toward, picking up, holding. I wonder more about what 'nutriment' is.

I hold the stone. I feel it neutrally. I perceive the feeling as stone-feeling. I pick up that perception instantly. That perception leans against something to make consciousness. They are all fed by ignorance. I am not sure if they fade when not fed, it is more likely that they are still there, simply not fed and therefore do not lead to clinging. All that does not lead to clinging and becoming must lead to understanding and liberation. The stone takes on new meaning. Form takes on an aspect of liberation. Form and sense base become feeling. Magically when left alone. Perception arises from past impressions.

But I am not sure of much of this. I touch the stone again. It is preparing to speak.

Day Fifty-three

There is the feeling of hardness or coolness or roundness of the stone but there is much more before these categories arise. While in concentration there is a feeling of touching the stone that is very pleasant and refined, like very special super duper fine stone touching; but that is just a concept that followed the feeling so I let go of that and it is more simple. It is a feeling that directly brings an insight into the nature of feeling; it is ok all by itself, it is singular and yet it is not separate, it is a peeling away of that which is not part of concentration; concentration allows just what is to take place. Consciousness comes back to rest in forms, I think.

Day Fifty-two

I just can't get to the stone without getting to what's in between. Yet sometimes, whatever is hard is also something not so hard to be with. Today, there is an approaching storm and the pressure is low, moist, low energy. It fits with a kind of foggy confusion, dullness physically and mentally. Actually, I see the fog as some combination of several unfinished projects that are due and the slowness of spirit.

The need for energy combined with no energy is devastating. It's ok when if flows downward and diffuse, when less is needed to be 'done' and things roll with whatever energy they already have, expending it. A rolling stone gathers moss when we are trying to have it be somewhere else, do something else. The stone is a good companion; it is certainly affected by things, it is moist, warm and heavy today, yet it is one thing, one place. And so it is one that is not separate.

This view I learn from; it is my projects and my energy. I can do little just now. My energy flows down and around a bend, where there it will become something else with other things.

Day Fifty-one

Sometimes, everything about the stone and me is vague. Touching is here, there, and around it. The point(s) of touch is not in my hand or at the stone, it is here and there, it moves. But that is as much my discursive mind picking away at the object of concentration. There is one point of stone and me, there is one touch. I watch my mind look for entertainment; there is none with the stone; there is truly no here and there, no touching, no nontouching.


Entertainment is never quite there, every agreeable occupation of the mind is either a fading fantasy or one promised to arrive. Mostly I just play games in my mind; "this is me touching or not" or "I can't do it right now but I can soon" or "I am here and need to go there". All of this feels planned, timed.

And there is no release even, or at least, release never seems to take the stage on schedule.

Day Fifty

I know that I am defined by my attachment to things, my contraction around them. I mostly just want to be somewhere else. I will not be a bad person, I cannot stand them, I cannot stand it in myself, I must therefore stay good at all times. I have bound up some sorrow in this.

I stand still and lose myself. It feels dangerous and then sad; it wrings me like a dishtowel. I am infused with being ok just as I am. I am accepted when I lose my definition, my contraction. It is the practice of acceptance, in real time. The touch of the stone is neutral and then very pleasant. Pulses of touching give way to multiple and various feelings; those of fingers alone, of finger and stone, of bone, temperature and pressure. My mind struggles to make contrasts, to define itself; it pulls away from the stone; it tells me the stone is not specific enough to concentrate on. I watch that tendency. The stone is specific; it is touching; the touching does have component parts. The component parts may also have many parts, but the primary components are the stone and my hand, still. The consciousness about the stone is a little 'I'.

Day Forty-nine

With an allergic sneezing fit and an ankle that is hard to put down in sitting position, I am distracted today. I consider sneezing in the sense of larger time. Letting myself be pulled in instead of looking, I am in a 'small' sense of time, that which is bound be either having the sneezind continue or finding relief.

There is much to be said for a larger time, in other words, sneezing never lasts, even if it goes on for a whole day or a whole week. Of course I can take care of it and that will help, but there is no guarantee that it will end. The only guarantee is that it will change. So many problems seem available to pull me into an I vs it or this time vs next time or in vs out or fixed vs broken.

I define problems that way, or I define everything that comes into consciousness that way, as a comparison to something. Touching the stone brings some relief; watching is specific, watching is release; it is the opposite of holding this or that; although..... there you go, right, watching can swiftly become freedom 'from' and then it is just a thought. When it is JUST freedom, it is real, it is in the context of direct experience; feeling.

Day Forty-eight

Touching the stone connects me to the solid parts of myself. I feel the bones in my arms and in the rest of my body. I consider their separateness from myself. They are only a part of me, then they are only bones that act together with many other things to bring life.

I have had the opportunity to 'pop out' a number of times in the past few days, from this or that state of mind. It's very much like being suddenly outside some circle of doing or being. It is unusual to rest there because, well, just because I don't usually rest there. It is full of possibility there and the fear of giving up. The possiblity is at first just an ongoing exploration of other moods that pull me back in. But then there is more space than that.

I return to concentration. Feeling, touching. In any bare contact, without me and mine, there is release. There is a life of release here.

Day Forty-seven

Noticing pull-outs to meditation; I go toward them, sound of birds, view of cat, tiredness of body. They are all there at my senses, but I go toward them. I go back to concentration and their pull lessens. I experience them in a more bare way and concentration deepens; I can let them be, even the thoughts, when not grasped, go their way. Today I am left with restlessness which too fades when I watch myself wanting to pick it up and solve it, interact with it, talk more about it.

Day Forty-six

It is hard to work past aches, pains and projects today. I talk to my clients easily about letting go, but I cannot do it, I work with them to let go, if only briefly, by not holding on quite so tightly, but can't get there myself.

Ah, I see it now, it is always a kind of letting go that is particular to the thing or things that bind; and not just a place of meditation with the stone. Often, I must come out of concentration to identify the blocks.

Then, I need not struggle to remove them, just get close to the feeling and be with it for a while. Then a sharp turn to the stone and both hard and foggy feelings lift or become more pleasant.

Day Forty-five

It is hard to quiet tonight. The wind is blowing and the weather is changing. We've had as much to do as there are leaves around, it seems. The stone waits patiently. I don't need energy, I need to rest. But at first, the only rest seems to fight with things; unfinished things, unbalanced things. How to rest with all that and not finish it, balance it all?

While sitting, letting go and being OK with things does seem a kind of energy, an inner balance, a return to gentle movement inside, a recollection that what is difficult outside will move in time and space beyond anything I can conjure.

Day Forty-four

The stone has no eyes to see, but it sees things without judgement. What is the judgement in me? It is not in the feeling, because my senses have no independent life of their own, feeling happens before any response to feeling. It isn't my mind, because that is just the space to hold perception or thought.

It is the sense of 'vs', of 'me' and 'mine'. It is given some space to rest in concentration. Hindrances of tiredness, anxiety, desire and dislike and doubt do not bring judgement, and yet they are defined by it. What is tiredness to stone? I suppose it would be a hundred years of meditation that had worn it to the size of a pea. Anxiety, just about to be cast into the path of a steamroller. And so on; but in truth, the stone is being worn without fear, and exists most temporarily with no visible signs of cracking.

Tonight, I am a paper doll cast on the river of sorrow, floating by a stone.

Day Forty-three

Observing wanting to be elsewhere. There are myriad forms of it; I'm pulled to all different parts of the body, to the affairs of the day, to a kind of restlessness, boredom; why would I want to be with boredom? It is like a platform, a place to rest.

Antagonistic towards the various kinds of touching of the stone; is it on too many fingers, should I tap it, let it rest on my hand, and so on, even though I have found peace with it many times, I forget what that feels like. Each meditation has to start anew, and some are so much more tangled. Is this just another object of comfort I am pulled to?

Thankfully not, the stone is often neutral but rarely something I have to run back to. And yet, from the perspective of a refuge, insofar as it represents the practice of the Buddha (as much as I know it), an aspect of Dharma (each and every lesson that proceeds from real experience with it), and of Sangha, at least in the recollection that I still myself in the way of other fellow practitioners and so that I might cultivate stronger compassion, stronger concentration, an end to comfort.

Day Forty-two

I sprained my ankle slightly so I can feel much of my energy going toward that spot. The pain pulls in my attention, probably so that I can do something about it. It's an old injury and this one isn't bad but I can feel it. When I really look, it's mostly a throbbing, spreading kind of stiffness and not so bad. There's some fear of getting old, or this not going away, and what to do about tomorrow and all that. It's harder to concentrate on the stone, or is it? Really, in terms of quantity of problems, the ankle is less of an issue than some other things. Sure, it pulls me in (or should I say I reach out and pick it up), but with concentration, I can give it its due. The application of meditation to problems, it seems to me, is really just the serenity prayer, to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

But that's not meditation, that's just one way to experience a particular release. It's meditative in the sense that acceptance and wisdom can come from a still place, a non-entangled place. But meditation is about looking at the process of feeling and craving. The 'looking' is unique because it seems to be more 'felt' than 'looked at', although experiencing anything without resistance leads to the availabity of that looking.

Feeling the process of entanglement, I know I have been working with a lot of that. After that? Working with disentanglement. After that, working with unentanglement, and probably all the entanglements that come with it.

Day Forty-one

Letting go of things to be with the stone, to concentrate. I think of my purpose. For one thing, to still, to quiet, because I have experienced suffering as a kind of noise, a chasing, a movement after things. It is hard to know all the reasons for meditation at the beginning, or at the beginning of a session, but it helps to know that obligations can wait, and that there is positive result from looking.

It helps to have good wishes for all beings. Me, I have to wish myself well first, I mean I have to accept myself as I am, or better yet, allow acceptance, then I can move outward to others and wish them well. A base of being quiet helps, but this helps with quiet in turn.

Tonight the stone is too hard, and then it is too neutral, and then it is just right. But then it is just right in relation to nothing. I feel my heartbeat in my fingers. There is glory in consciousness all by itself.

Day Forty

Candle wax drips and the flame almost goes out in the rush of air from the heat. It is colder today. My son sneezes a lot. There are many cares of the day. It seems there is never 'too much' stuff to get in the way of meditation, it just takes time to settle in. After a while, each problem sits in its place and I go back to the stone.

It occurs to me that my relationship, or how I hold on to it at least, to these difficulties, defines me. It makes me solid, less flexible, more fixed and more likely to break when the inevitable changes occur. I can be the guy who is waiting for the candle to straighten out, or I can observe the pull of wanting to be somewhere else, and instead, be present.

Day Thirty-nine

I feel plenty of anxieties as I pick up the stone; bills, upcoming commitments, unfinished business. I let go of them when proceeding with concentration by asking what can be solved in this moment and giving myself permission to let go. I feel that the problems are still there, but my focus shifts to present feeling in my fingers. Sometimes, when I let go like this, tiredness comes quickly.

Letting go of anxiety seems to turn into tiredness. I go back to thinking about biology; there is so much fighting for survival, being aware of what may be of benefit or harm, that when that is lifted, the body wishes to sleep, to recover. I feel that I am resisting a biological signal with curiosity. And at this point, the curiosity has to be about the process taking place, whatever it is, with enough faith gathered thus far in direct experience being more interesting than sleep (at least at times) and in the possibility that biology (or better yet my relationship to it) is not all there is.

I then get into another dichotomy; holding onto the stone tightly vs. the worry that this is all there is. Or that this meditation is special vs nothing else is special. So many opposites, all spread out in a long line that seems to go nowhere, except that when looking, each set dissolves.