Day Ninety-nine

Doubt, aversion and even thoughts run like foxes away into the woods. All I can see is their tails and they bid me chase them. I sit by the lake quietly and concentration deepens. I am in a place I remember but it is a new place also. There, touching is what I come back to again and again. New thoughts and body states asail me. At some point it all deepens on its own. I am by degrees free of worry about chasing anything. I feel very light. An hour goes by quickly.

Day Ninety-eight

It is a good day to wish others well in addition to meditating on a stone. Wishing others well includes visualizing them and using some concentration on that image, to call them to mind. In doing so, other thoughts about them and myself and things that happened or did not happen and so on, come to mind along with their image. I try to notice that and then bring my concentration back to them. Doubt, never far away, rears up and says that I may not have any effect, or there is too much water under the bridge and therefore who am I to offer kindness, or this or that body state comes up, just as in meditation on something else.

For me, coming back to concentration on a person with specific words, letting go of other dialogue, is not easy, but I do notice a presence of mind much like concentration on breathing or the stone, that opens up my senses, feels lighter, more at ease. The difference for me in concentrating on someone else is the struggle with a sense of inner purity (the how can I be good enough thoughts). When I let that go, I feel loved as well. It's from that space, feeling loved, that I become more sure that what I am doing is helpful to myself and others. And as much as I often wish that someone else could make me feel loved, only I can open the door to my own watchtower.

Day Ninety-seven

Touching the stone. Wondering how much of touching the stone I pull up into thought. Trying to keep with just the sensation of touching. Yet thoughts of being with vs not really being with occur, and thoughts of whether or not thinking is less real than touching. The former, doubts. The latter, a kind of curiosity; too often I second guess myself on insight. I say "I observed that and so what", and yet, if I notice that my thought is not confined to grasping or avoiding, then I have to say that it is at least some reflection of liberation.

It feels that in the realm of thought, doubt is a natural balance to realization. For me, doubt arises when I am quiet. Biologically it is a rare time that I am not ensuring my satisfaction or safety and so doubt can be a good sign. Doubt feels like restlessness in my body, some place I want to go away from. I stay with it and I can touch the stone for what it is. I can touch thought in the same way, as though a fully touched thought is alright, just a pleasant or unpleasant thought, just a thought relative to one of two things: craving or liberation. Also, noticing that thoughts reduce substantially in number when I don't wrap around them, don't follow them, don't run after those thoughts that represent something that is not real.

Touching the stone is mostly an exercise in thoughts, but some of them, at least, are liberating, in touch with the way things are.

Day Ninety-six

I ate almost to bursting today. It is an old habit. Sitting is more difficult when I am this full, but not impossible. Old ways of balancing no longer work so well. I used to eat too much and then exercise too much, but my body is not as pliable. Sitting is an interesting habit; I can do more of it and it never feels excessive. It may for some I suppose, you know a feeling that the world in general is not rewarding and sitting is and so some kind of imbalance arises between the two.

Whatever wraps around the liberation that comes from sitting is very very subtle sometimes. There is such freedom in being with whatever there is and then we contrast it and it is no longer in the moment. It only works in the moment and it is always different.

Sitting works with a full stomach and it works with frustration and it works with interruptions and it works when it is noticing all of these things. Meditation is made of noticing and ignorance is made of non-noticing. I sit with some balance and wait patiently for more balance to settle in. Balance has no definition but for its relation to other things; in other words, I can't really be 'balanced' with myself without working with my attachments and hindrances and so on. Balance is only in the moment as well, but I could get a lot more practiced with it.

I am thankful for the light that brings me Jeanne and my children, my family and friends, kitty, and every change.

Day Ninety-five

Peacefulness again mostly and watching changes in body and energy states. Also, I have left my rock at home and am using an 'emergency rock.' This one is still a natural blue-grey color and not black from body oil. It feels completely different and much more 'separate' from me. In fact, my original rock has a little of me on it, and is much 'warmer' to the touch, smoother, less 'dry' feeling.

I'm wondering if we put a little stamp of ourselves on everything we come into contact with and then, in a sense, feel familiar with ourselves. Even with this stone, it is a tiny bit oily now. Even before, when I looked at a few stones and selected it. I thought "this stone will do", because it had an 'acceptable' look to it in size and shape and then an 'acceptable' feel. When do we ever pick something more difficult to work with to help us grow? We tend to want teachers who will make us feel better, safer. We tend to want temperature, views, smells and thought-makers (books and entertainment) that 'fit' a space we already crave.

How do we set up arrangements for us that are not so set up, in order to help us out of our routine? How do we encounter things as they are, without the instant of prejudice, of comparision, of judgement?

Day Ninety-four

A busier traveling day than I thought. I still feel the need to arrive somewhere physically. The stone is quiet wherever it is. All I can do tonight, all I need to do is let go of struggling with the restless feeling of needing to be somewhere. I can rest with anything, anywhere, like the stone. I am not made of the feeling of being busy, of traveling, of arriving. I take deep, quiet breaths.

Day Ninety-three

Release from a strong sense of self is so pleasant that it is distracting from concentration. Not struggling and watching for a while brings noticing and letting go by degrees of duties and arguments within. What is left is a much deeper concentration and curiosity about who or what is concentrating. Ah but this is concentration's definition, one-pointedness, no attachments or build up on the looking side. But there is effort, often in the middle of great doubt, but then not wrestling with doubt, effort with kindness and balance.

Touching tonight is deep and releasing, a tempting place to park. A place to rest the eye when the true eye needs none.

Day Ninety-two

Most everything I touch in any way, through what I see, smell, taste, touch and think serves to reassure a pre-made sense of self. That self is sometimes scared, sometimes assured, sometimes asleep, but always different and separate. I presume I cannot see but at a distance. But that distance is incorrect, off the mark, designed to see only the inner walls of a house it has built. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, "there is a voice calling to you in feelings and perception....." Usually I am speaking rather than listening.

Day Ninety-one

After all this time I have just begun to stay with the feeling of the stone. In breathing meditation I have sense of allowing it to 'just happen by itself', but touching is less rhythmic, less of an automatic process that is happening all the time. Yet, I do place my attention on a specific place for breathing and likewise with touching. In this case I usually feel my thumb on one spot. Staying with the feeling is easier when I can ask myself it the feeling is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

Often the feeling is diffuse into the thumb and hand and so I concentrate on one spot where the thumb just touches the stone. I lead myself gently back to it many times. Often, I must work with the blocks to meditation and then they dissipate. Neutrality is a hallmark of working with this stone, and then less often, unpleasantness. It rarely feels pleasant. Pehaps I can begin to define my meditations more specifically by these qualities. Also, I feel the need to ask 'what is touching', more often.

Day Ninety

I am comfortable and happy again and so I ask what meditation is. Too often I contrast it with the restless body states, the doubt and the grasping I often have. But being or appearing peaceful at heart can have a subtle grasping to it as well. Like ecstasy, I feel that it is very close to the way things truly are, but the eye tends to shut in a kind of contrast to everything else.

Why shouldn't it feel the same way in its approach to the supposed me as anything else? I think it does when I see it for what it is; another state of mind and body that defines me as separate. It feels uncomfortable to shift into meditation from a pleasant state, until I stop trying so hard and bring my body and mind with me.

Day Eighty-nine

I am at peace and I am comfortable and satisfied tonight. I am not in a rush. I notice that the stone feels comfortable as well. But I still sit and exercise some concentration. It requires patience and perseverance because I am dealing with holding on to these good things. I push a little because I am pulled down by a pleasant drowsiness. For a while I go there, to the comfort, but I remember..... looking into the comfort it is empty. I see that. It does not terrify me any more to know that these good things will end. They are such healthy good things. They will come again. Letting go with them is the best thing.

Day Eighty-eight

Touching and thought feel re-introduced, re-attached quickly in a series of individual grasps. I name thought after a while and say "Ah, there goes a thought about...." and that interrupts a very quick and complex series of thoughts about whatever the subject is. Tonight it is raining outside. I have a hundred thoughts about the rain, none of them involve actually experiencing or listening to the rain, although some are closer than others. Likewise stone, most thoughts about it are one-off from just feeling.

Finally there is stone and rain for a little while, unattached, needing no introduction.

Day Eighty-seven

The stone is cold, and so am I tonight, and I am restless and tired both. Encountering the stone I notice my resistance to touching it, to being here. I have a very general tightness of body and mind. I look for what is placid to hold on to and underneath, I struggle.

I struggle because I am at some level aware of my connection to all things, and somehow I resist, feel it is too much, feel a history of being burned when getting too close. Never mind history, all of advertisement and much of our day to day interaction is about not getting close. 'Here is this or that rich and velvety, long-lasting and pleasure giving thing, ' say the ads. Tht implies that we are poor, rough, short-lasting and 'running out' of pleasure. With that going on, it is no wonder that I will not reach out. Perhaps I can buy it and not share it and that will help. Sometimes faith too is about buying and selling rather than sharing.

I am part of all things. I can be with what already is.

Day Eighty-six

The stone was formed long ago. Me, not so long ago. Does the stone have wisdom born of time, I wonder? Do I? I wonder what sentience is and try to experience that. I notice that I have a mind that holds thoughts, but that mind may be mostly defined by the thoughts, a sort of mirror made of a mirror. In another sense, thought is only the impressions of feelings and history upon the mind, and so without a compound set of things, not only would they not be there, but they are not there now in any independent sense.

I do not know if the rock has sentience, I suppose not, yet there are many things I do not understand. I feel the rock in my world, but it defines my world and as such, is as real as I am. The art of awareness is as much the art of letting go as of defining anything. I am rock, sky, water, air in this very moment, in this very body, in this very life; more, I am neither me or not me, I am defined by what I hold on to and liberated by what I let go of; I can be in touch without holding on, right here, now, there is no time, no space.

Kitty climbs on me while I am meditating and I pick her up. She has good wishes for me, she wants to be close, I feel all that, so closely.

Day Eighty-five

I often conceptualize meditation as a place to go that is different from where I am, someplace harmonious, where I am like a great gentle eye that looks over animals and rivers, or like a river, flowing around whatever comes my way. But that is an instant of separation, 'this' vs. 'that' other more intimate place. How strange to conceptualize an intimate place, but that is what I often do.

It is delightful in a way to realize that working with troublesome mind states is good meditation, it is harmonious. It was me all along that was the subject here, me all along who was the obstacle, me all along that is choosing to build a wall apart from nature, apart from me.

Day Eighty-four

Doubt often feels like not being in touch with anything. It feels like having no grounding. But when I touch the stone I remember that I am always in touch. It may not be in touch as I like, but there is wisdom in just knowing that I am always making a choice about my reaction to feeling; in other words, doubt for me is often a kind of confirmation of feeling like I can't do it, can't meditate, not able to deal with anxiety, not able to control restlessness in the body, not being able to be in touch.

So I am looking to confirm the unable, offbalance feeling that I do in fact have. You'd think I would want the opposite, which I do, but therein lies the problem also; I split everything into sureness and unsureness; the known and the unknown. Once that happens, I must try with all my might to hold onto the known. Of course I feel my fingers slipping off, and that is left is me screaming "I'm not going into that doubt" which of course is exactly what doubt is made of.

Day Eighty-three

Looking at what is there. The stone is there. Also, tiredness, sadness, and great joy. I watch and tiredness has aspects of restlessness and doubt. I embrace them and they fade. Tiredness, too then fades. Sadness is there, and it is of the past and present, my memories and my worries are there. I hold the stone. It is not in the past although I have other memories of it. I too am no longer in the past. I sit with my worries and sadness of the past and let go of what I cannot change. Stones may not get sad, but they change; they crack and they become other things. I am what I am because of the past.

I wonder if I can choose my emotions, as if they were something I am far enough away from to not get led around by. I tend to think there is only distance and suffering from my emotions, but that is not true. Real closeness to them lets me have the only choices I truly have, to be me with them.

The stone was a gift of love and kindness, joy and a little sadness. It is well balanced; I leave my touch of it tonight to stay with the love in my world, with more of me, more closeness, less wanting.

Day Eighty-two

The stone is quiet at all times, in all places. Whevever I am touching it, only I have the noise, or only I am somewhere else. That must be the case with everything that touches any sense. The sound of a bell, the dart of a swallow, the waves of thought and the smell of coffee are all of the intensity that they truly are, none of them have any excess noise. And they are neither existent outside of experience nor are they only made of contact; they are something brand new.

When awareness is added, these things are notes in the quiet song of freedom.

Day Eighty-one

How often I treat meditation as a way out of pain, I say to myself "this will bring release from my attachments", with the attitude of non-acceptance of things as they are.

There is no time, there is nothing better, there is nowhere else to be. Yet the stone is a center, like a little writing desk I have made to supplicate inspiration. Every article of faith sinks into the ground with the rain. I let go my grip on waiting, my long count.

Day Eighty

I often think I cannot let go of problems and troublesome thoughts or physical pains until they are gone. But that's not really practice, that's just hallucinating again, holding on to wishes that things be different. Letting be might be a healthier way to phrase the beginning of working with problems.

All things appear at first to be in concert with my mood, with my own sense of trouble or calm. Later, all things appear sort of pointless, but that is my mood of doubt, when things start to run down and run out when they are looked at; combined with a low energy state and or an underlying problem I've pushed down instead of truly letting be.

I notice golden beads coming toward me on light rays from the candle. They are not really there. But all of my experience comes to me that way, none of it is very substantial. Reality is never made of what it looks like, but at least I get paid for my hallucinations at work, and they drive me to the supermarket.

Day Seventy-nine

A number of new distractions seem to come up when concentrating; like a sense of physical pleasure and also distinct and unexpected feelings in specific senses. Today I feel very light and comfortable and my senses feel clear. I do not feel very tired. When I touch the stone, after a while, it feels very comfortable.

I am drawn to my eyes and my jaw, which relax. Inbreath is especially pleasant and my nasal passages are very clear, larger. Perhaps I have become an anteater. A quick check reveals that I am not. I see clear grey and purple intertwining shapes on my eyelids.

So much to be distracted by; a kind of easy comfort that then demands to be filled up with visual and tactile things. I recognize this as a default position to easy comfort, although it is not often enought that I have a sense of easy comfort. I am mindful and go back to direct touching.

Hard to stay there when uncomfortable or distracted, hard to stay there when clear and calm.

Day Seventy-eight

Trust in love is necessarily scary or risky, at least to our constructed self. Otherwise we would be whole all the time, and therefore probably stone. It seems to me that much is made of nonduality and oneness, but from where and to where are we brought? Here is another construction, all that is beyond frustration, doubt, and anger. Just be here, they say, and rest in non-duality. I am not done kissing the stones I cast.

Day Seventy-seven

Craving seems to be simply wanting to be elsewhere. When I am going to meditate, I notice many cravings. Most of them are in the realm of thought, but these thoughts are often influenced by feelings and the body.

I am running through many scenarios in my life about gaining this or losing that. There are more diffuse wants that drift into a fog. I want to argue with situations in my life. I lose sight of the fact that I can look upon these hindrances for what they are and not push them away too forcefully. By noting what is going on I can refocus. I can see the craving, at least generally.

I am holding this stone. I am this body. I am posessed of many fears and arguments. I am this mind. This is a helpful step for me, although none of it is true. I need to go through it because the truth, that even my concentration, body and thoughts are not 'mine' is a place I must take steps to. For me, to let go I must know what I am letting go of.

Craving falls under the categories of hindrances; of doubt, restlessness, tiredness, desire and aversion, but doesn't seem to be any of these things. In other words, I can have doubt and not crave for it to be different, focus on its arising and watch its passing. I can see tiredness and not crave for it to end or crave to sink into it and so on. As for desire, that is much closer to craving, but I can watch that, too and turn back gently to the object of focus or let it pass.

This thirst for what is different feels so very intimately tied to all things.

Day Seventy-six

I notice many judgmental thoughts. It is difficult to be myself, even for a second. I do not know who I am, but then I watch myself and I come closer. I can let myself touch things deeply. I am carried along by the whole world and I am grateful.

Day Seventy-five

I am holding the stone but trying to let go. Instead I hold on loosely. I bring my attention loosely, gently. I try to be what I am, like the stone does.

I look to uncover the secret mechanism that is craving. It is there following feeling, and before, with contact, and within the senses. It seems all pervasive; at the very root of thinking. And so watching for craving; feeling for craving, is difficult, but it is the only other activity besides craving. Can I watch feeling without craving? Ah, that is watching; watching craving; craving is defined as not watching; not watching builds the self; the self is built of sleep.

In the glory of touching, of feeling, of contact, of forms that rest alone, I return to what I am.

Day Seventy-four

My perception of the world around me and of the stone is flawed by my presumption of its independence. I desire it to be a certain way, I dislike it, or pay little attention to it. Sometimes, the harder I try to 'just feel' it, the more entangled I get in many thoughts and feelings.

In any of these cases, I 'pick up' not just the stone but a delusion of myself as separate from it. It feels like I cannot see without this artificial barrier, but that is just doubt. The form is there and my skin contacts it. Immediately I have a story, not so much about the stone, but about myself. They are interwoven.

I haved a perception of the mind in the same way as thinking about those things and 'trying' to get peaceful, more aware. These are just perceptions and feelings that lead to a delusion of the way things are. With what is the way things are peceived? Simply with the mind of unwrapping, of letting go. I could say that to be spiritually healthy in this exercise, I need the stone to be calm, but there is no stone there, no exercise, no spirit.

Day Seventy-three

There have been difficult sessions with the clients I counsel; one in particular with a heavy past. I cannot go to the place he is, it feels to risky, too unsettling.... he is in my head as I sit today. I thought about how all beings have been my mother; those close to me, those in the past, those who only are seen for a short while. There is a call to be close to all of them.

If they have all been my mother, cared for me, that makes the possibility of some exchange of energy more possible; I can be closer because there is grace. As someone said, 'how little grace is earned and how much given....".... that is the situation with our mothers.

And not even so much that we have not earned the grace through our own efforts, but that we do not need to, we need not protect ourselves so much, there is the experience of such grace here available; there is only a series of mistaken angles in ourselves and others, only a tangled flame of craving above the lake of acceptance; this lake has been our refuge many times.

I shift from trouble to joy in release from this trouble I have made.

Day Seventy-two

The stone may be as much me as any other part of me. When it is touching my fingers, I cannot find the touching point. When I look for that point, I find at first, only my skin impressed upon the stone. But after a while, I feel the pressing of bone under the skin, and feel the surface of the stone. The surface impresses not just upon my skin, but upon my bone, upon my arm, upon my body. But it is not the stone that impresses upon the bone, not the skin upon my arm, not my bone upon my body, but impulses that bear the seed of perception; combinations of combinations, the stone and the air, the gravity of the earth less the moon, the temperature born of the sun and the cool dark of the house; everything is here, and none of it can be captured or assigned a cost. At the same time, none of it can be denied; and the true relationship of all things is there in the stone and my fingers, my stone and the fingers, the flesh upon bone of my parents and my children, my love and my lost.

Day Seventy-one

Barriers to meditation are created by me. They are mostly made of history; echoes of sense impressions and thoughts woven into new ones. I look at the difference between perception of touching and judgement about it. There is the stone (or the limitation of it in name), the feeling made of contact with it, and the perception of the feeling or the repeated stating over and over in my mind "this is the feeling". It seems to me that the 'picking up' of the feeling is the judgement; it usually moves quickly to a description in my mind of the stone and its feeling, based on older descriptions.

On the other hand, meditation doesn't work well in a thick fog; which is the other way to go, like not wanting to identify and pick up and instead sort of pretending not to know what feeling is. I feel that the feelings and perceptions are not a problem at all, neither are the volitions toward or away from them, nor the thoughts, but a subtle craving in them that relates to the description of myself. I find myself challenging the stone to a solidity battle.

Day Seventy

Life is hard for me to look at sometimes. Working with this stone, like life, seems unavoidable. I have it here, and life is all around. I could stay in bed all day, or make up stories about how things are. I could stop this blog and my meditation, but I'm committed to it. Besides, I do plenty of other things and few of them bring as much satisfaction. I bring my body and mind to meditation. They often seem in some disagreeable state to being quiet. . . .

Ah... that's it; it is not discomfort with the stone at all; it is not the avoidance of the stone, but of facing that which I am. In other words, my only real issue is accepting ME, whereby I can concentrate. I have tried many ways to go around me, but none of them work well. I am not in a disagreeable state at all, I'm only in my state. I have no reason to disagree with what is really here.