Day Three Hundred and sixty five

Dark and light wait to be known.

Rising from the eastern sea,

insight gleams all on its own,

through calm and storm, touch and tears

it does not move, but does not rest,

while lives are spun and ships are built

to undertake some bloody quest,

that empty jars of hearts be filled.

Here on the point an empty lighthouse

means not to divide

by grace the windswept to bay found

or to angry rocks to die,

Ah, but this is how we are not known;

We pay wrecked hearts no heed

and compass them with precious stone

that they not break or therefore bleed.

My love by touching of your gift

in pitch black night I occupy

the light that guides my lonely ship

to bring you treasure in the dawn.

to sing in salted spray your song,

the treasure treasure cannot buy.

Day Three Hundred and sixty four

Working with the stone on the next to last day of this diary. I find ecstasy in touching, I am better at staying with this object, returning to concentration and often noticing hindrances.

After the fading of hindrances, what else is there? In one way, desire, ill-will, sloth, restlessness and doubt are the stuff I usually live with. They are what the skandhas combine with to fuel the self, that subtle and persistent sense of watching from a safe distance, and then protecting that place with all possible means.

Believing in a self, I stock phantom barrels of desire for my journeys. Believing in a self, I hold to this view or that.

I sail to bring the stone home to my love. She is more valuable than diamonds or even sunlight, or water. On the way, fate tears the ship, between so many different rocks of opposites, but bound to my practice, I see them, and navigate on.

Day Three Hundred and sixty three

It is night on a sea of names.

Far away, nuclei fall together and throw plasma,

while the moon sighs, profaned by our measured months.

She turns yellow in the branches,

moving at a perfect speed.

Day Three Hundred and sixty two

Who is captain of this ship, when the rigging is set by the ensigns, the fuel by the firemen, the course by the lieutenant? Who is the captain of this ship, when the admiral put the fleet to sea, the queen ordered the fleet built?

Who holds the glass to look for land, and to call the alarm before the rocks?

Who abandons war for one fair touch?

Who lets go their grip, before being sewn into sailcloth, and sent sliding into grey green water?

Day Three Hundred sixty one

I consider touching, and how I suppose it to be more immediate than seeing, but that is not so. I have had as much or more difficulty identifying what I am with, to stay with what I am touching, as I would watching an eagle from half a mile away, or considering a school of fish in the waves.

All of the sense doors open upon their sense objects and cross a mysterious gulf to get to them, to receive them, to be with them. In all cases what is made is conditional, a rough form that is then bent to our grasp.

And yet in meditation, feeling gives way to contact, which gives way to sense doors and the forms they open upon to give names to. Here, the captain is found to be brave, so brave that he need not wear his cap or stripes. He needs no name.

Day Three Hundred sixty

Sailing from memory to expectation, I know not where I am.

Yet the salt wind blows, then rends the sails apart.

I am the vessel of a sextants guide,

who maps the outline of my heart.

Day Three Hundred fifty nine

Wisdom is like carrying water without a bucket, like painting, like whispers, like unveiled innocence, tart reverence, and torn determination.

Day Three Hundred and fifty eight

Touching the stone I notice the singular nature of mind; perhaps not so much the effort to concentrate, but the removal of distraction and a simple awareness of how things are. The fact that an encounter with anything of any length is made up of discrete contacts gives some clue to the nature of mind, and it's arising with contact, it's impermanence at base.

At peace, I consider the losses of family, friends and myself. The losses, too, are made up of so many objects and events that have changed and gone.

Only their bows to change allow me to acknowledge them now.

Day Three Hundred and fifty seven

A burial today and lots of family history with Jeanne and family. We send Metta to her lost father, that he may find his way.

We run to the lighthouse together, turn on a gentle guiding light, letting go of doubt.

Day Three Hundred and fifty six

The way out of the harbor is narrow. And why would I want to sail, anyway? Toward nothingness, toward an uncertain universe? I cannot stay here, in the gossip-ridden village of my mind.

A brave companion helps, perhaps the memory of a good dog. I learn to apply friendship to very complicated states of mind, which hiss and writhe, whisper false prophecy. I do not believe, for they call upon tender wounds with salt for bandages, because I practice allowing for the presence of kindness, which loves before thinking.

Day Three Hundred and fifty five

The bell of opposites rings so loudly when struck near an unprepared ear.

Peace and unrest, trust and fear, death and life, belief and doubt, all clamor for attention, cry for their place, claw for nourishment.

Without clinging to view, there is no hunger, no nourishment, no sound, and no silence.

Day Three Hundred and fifty four

When I touch the stone, I also think of things. Yet touching feels continuous. This is an illusion because the mind can only recognize one thing at a time. Further still, even if 'only' touching, it is made of many impulses. How fascinating, then, that concentration can be developed at all.

In any case, I consider latent impulses, latent energy. How and why does an object look like a stream of thought when it can be interrupted by meditation? Ah, that's better; interrupt my 'stream' of thoughts with meditation. It appears to me that while the mind has only the capacity for one thing at a time, it activates mind files and body cues continually. Why does it go back to one or another for the creation of a thought process?

I consider some of the games I play; 'smarter than', 'stupider than', 'considerate' (as vs some inconsiderate being), 'safer', 'stronger', 'weaker' (righteously of course). Can I let go of any of them? Perhaps if I observe how they make me.

Day Three Hundred and fifty three

I notice that I am full of expectation, before any events occur. Why do I cling to what is not yet? What is beyond this selfishness?

I prove myself only to me, but that is still an effort, a proof.

Day Three Hundred and fifty two

I touch and notice the feeling. I encounter the stone in time. Touching leads to concentration and then there is nothing else, no other objects, for a brief time. Suddenly, there is all the world without identification, without my marking, free and open.

Day Three Hundred and fifty one

Home late. "It doesn't matter," say the crickets. "Yes it does," they also say. There are so many things to be done in life. There is nothing of life I have made, but for my rare moments of attention to it.

At the shore, my sister and I found a silver dollar. It was a fish without a tail, shimmering, the same on both sides, with a bright eye. It moved its mouth for air in my hand. We said a prayer for it and set it in the water, where it would die. I considered the difficulties in sending metta; doubt, other thoughts, the spinning compass of attention, and above all, the presumed difference between fish and me. Yes, I still have my temporary rudder, but otherwise, we breathe and see together.

The eye is bright, bright as diamond waves. The heart is light, light as dawn.

Day Three Hundred and fifty

Late entry after return from beach trip

The waves crash on the shore... Much has been built at seaside by man, but the waves just keep crashing, one after another after another after another, in fall and sift and roil and build and crest and fall, without any beginning or ending, with no place to put a finger or even an eye. And yet, they wait for eye and hand to touch them, to play their trembling keys.

I sit on the edge of the mattress with my breath. It goes out to the sea with moist air, does not question the troubles of life.

Day Three Hundred and forty nine

I find that there is nothing I need try very hard to do. I do not assume that I cannot see and know reality. I suppose I did for a long time, doubted my experience of contact and release from craving, and tried very very hard to get to a place full of evidence.

When I am not someplace else, there are more simple and honest names for things, and vice versa. If I can notice all the naming I am doing, all the trying I am doing, the essence of things becomes more plain, and more accessible to being let go of.

Effort aimed at tomorrow necessarily falls short. Effort aimed at yesterday brings old troubles back around, but effort aimed here, now, with faith in seeing what is, allows me to bring healing, know how things are, a bright cascade of ocean wave.

Day Three Hundred and forty eight

Time and again I return to nothing to hold. After a host of small miracles, a torrent of moderate disasters, and a sea still as glass, I have the choice to either compare or let go.

What is this that caresses and gently chooses to allow for love to be gathered? It is the same hand that cares for pain, except that pain is healed into love.

Day Three Hundred and forty seven

I hold the stone and consider the qualities of the entire stone. It is of the size to be available as a single object of meditation by touch. I feel it pressing against my thumb, around the inside of my index and middle finger, cupped by weight in my palm. Does the stone feel me? Surely, I do not feel the stone but for its pressing upon my hand, and it makes the space to be felt, as much as me; and in this case, is the much more hard and present object against a receptive hand.

Such is the case with the world that meets my senses; were I but to consider it, it would take on the life that it has, which is greater, sweeter, and deeper than anything I could write about. After all, a door is meant to be opened, not to be the world itself.

Day Three Hundred and forty six

I touch the stone and my mind wanders; pretty places where my thoughts are in tune, primitive, and clear as starlight. I find so many ports of intrigue and delight off the course of the way.

I stop and gather greetings. How long should I linger? I watch and learn; dance without drinking, close my eyes in this comfortable place without catching a wink, long enough for my new friends to have fallen asleep; then I journey on.

Day Three Hundred and forty five

Sometimes my approach to meditation feels like settling into a fog of bad dreams, as if it is not safe for body or soul, that there is some poison in the air, something dangerous but unseen where I am going, even where I am found.

For a moment I see all the hindrances as one united force, with doubt's dark reign of the mind at the helm. Nearby, there is a place that holds all things. I can, no matter the headwind, aim at the heart of freedom.

Day Three Hundred and forty four

Noticing the rarity and difficulty of direct touching. Directing the attention toward stone and breath, and having a few brushes with the nature of them. Noticing the subtle ways the mind expresses discomfort with being still, some of which are a typhoon of questions about my own abilities. Laughing a little at the notion that there is no single point, a pinpoint would be too small for the mind, and anything larger the mind would say is too broad. But of course, there is never a single point and there is never a moment in time. All wheels in wheels.

Then, being more with the objects of meditation. Appreciating a 'third person' sense of just breathing, and the whole world letting go from my fantasies. How rarely I have been with anything; mostly I consider 'contact' with things as what I am steering over.

Day Three Hundred and forty three

Home again

This is the place where nothing moves

This is where words fall from lips

A spring whence rivers themselves rise

and from which thirst itself does sip,

Where merge both canticle and dew

Where wind and stone awaken

If light years tear my arms from you

our love be lives of love unshaken.

Day Three Hundred and forty two

Day seven of vacation

Touching stone and breath. The definition of me is only against or as possessing. I am lost without these locations. Yet, I let go and concentration deepens. The fantasy of the objects of breathing not being me vanish. The fantasy of them being mine vanishes.

The story of me runs out. I find a pool that is not made by anyone to drink from. I have long been thirsty.

Day Three Hundred and forty one

Day six of vacation

I notice the arising, the being, the passing of thoughts and feelings. Each is a frame bound and supported by other frames, in a larger set of how things are. The larger frame will fall away, and so many little things will change.

I aim my attention at the stone and mindfulness arises. For once it is out of the frame, out of time, singular, touched at last.

Day Three Hundred and forty

Day five of vacation

I practice allowing my breathing to be, allowing touch to be. I practice like water, allowing whatever there is to come to me, instead of reaching out to fill up or change or possess things. I am filled with light.

The stone returns home with me, along with the essence of things that touch me. Troubles go to their respective places, spirits to their spirit places.

Day Three Hundred and thirty nine

Day four of vacation

Meditation in a sleepy cabin during the day. I drift into vivid dreaming, of a museum where I find fossils. I wake to find myself somewhere in time, more of my own making that I expected.

That night, there is news of loss from home. I connect with many threads of meaning, sorrow, seriousness, the brief place that life is held in, and the definition of family.

Dreams run in many directions, forward into expectation, into the honey and salt of the past, and expanding here in pools of warm consideration; to cool or evaporate later.

Day Three Hundred and thirty eight

Day three of vacation

Working with breath to allow it to be whatever it is. When I do, I notice that I am alright as whatever I am as well. I touch the stone, and all is well with things, they are all always home.

Day Three Hundred and thirty seven

Day two of vacation

Now the stone is near home, where Jeanne found it years ago for me, before we met. But the stone is always home, unlike my wandering mind, which drifts and dreams like a lost sailor.

The stone rests, and I watch my moods change like the tide.

Day Three Hundred and thirty six

Day one of vacation to Canada; posted a week late.

Settling after a tough drive. Noticing many contrasts, how the hotel is better than driving, and holding on to the contrast. Noticing how hard it is to let go of pleasure; here there is more space, more quiet, less tension on the eyes and mind. Yet all of these things shift, from comfort to discomfort and back again. As I let go of the pleasure and peace of sitting here, I experience something greater.

It is hard to believe, as I sit, that the truth of, the experience of, the reality of impermanence is available as a release to mortals.

Day Three Hundred and thirty five

Touching the stone or the breath and trying to let it be whatever it is. Then letting go of trying, and they are as they are. Considering that breath or stone are in their way, the only things in the world, the only thing I need to experience contact with for a time.

Noticing that I vanish somewhere. Noticing that meditation is never a success the same way, there is never the same rest, because it is me who must let go, let my attention graduate, and to do so, I must recognize that I have changed.

Day Three Hundred and thirty four

I notice that I wrap around somewhere other than this moment because this moment here, now, represents true contact with stress.

I touch the breath without words.

Day Three Hundred and thirty three

I sit with stone in simmering heat. I consider the cares that present themselves. Sometimes I can easily give myself a break from them and allow myself to concentrate on breathing. Other times they seem to need more attention.

I reflect on them for a little while. I know there is not much I can do about them right now. I consider my attitude; that I am missing out on enlightenment. That makes such little sense. I let go and reorient to why I am meditating in the first place. I rest with the notion that it is a simple practice for the release from wanting, toward the end of fabricating, to being with everything in its place and time. The image of myself steps aside to let wisdom take a step forward, into the light, breathing the breath of humanity.

Day Three Hundred and thirty two

Noticing the importance of energy and attentiveness in meditation vs sloth. I watch how my motivation to practice enhances my energy, my desire to look at my mind, and vice versa. When I remember that sitting through hindrances has always yielded clarity and fruit, I am motivated to practice. When I remember the times I have found release in being mindful of pleasant and unpleasant contact, the release that is inherent in all of our contact, I am motivated to practice.

I notice some of the links between the hindrances. Sloth (not mere tiredness but the lack of motivation to practice) may be ego-boredom resulting from the fading of desire and aversion. It masquerades as tiredness to effect the continuation of self, the closing of the eye.

Can I see this? Am I willing to set my purpose in life against the shadow of time?

Day Three Hundred and thirty one

Again I am heavy and aching. I touch the stone and notice the many feelings of body that interrupt my meditation. I also notice the many things in the visual field, which seem especially sharp and tilted, sound which seems compressed, and a slight chemical taste. I know that each impression is made of much smaller impressions that I cannot see, each one point, one frame that adds up to the movie I make of my experience. Smaller dots make up a flow, each flow interweaves to make frame and then chapter and then title. Each movie runs along a course of history in a much larger movie. There are so many stories being made that I cannot see or feel at least on the surface.

I consider the feelings and stories as more craving, craving to get away much as I crave for pleasant things to stay around. I consider how my attachment to craving makes me really there, but really there with craving, with illusion, with what is not there. I put the distractions of my unsettled mind down in the gathering dark with my generally fragmented perception and I gain some distance to watch what is moving, and breathe silently.

Day Three Hundred and thirty

Tired and sore today. Noticing how physical pain and tiredness tangle the mind up with arguments and tirades.

While sitting, I notice some difference between body and mind. I notice how the mind names and describes the pain. On the one hand, there is a global sense of the need for wellness, a large and reaching description of what makes me feel well. It includes a sense of freedom of the mind to take up ideas and pleasant sense contact as its own. I remember feeling better for a short while earlier in the day and how much I enjoyed it.

On another level, there is an almost neurological sense of well or ill being, which I suspect has names or mental activity tied to it. There is a tangle of response from many locations of trained body consciousness, or mind/body places of consciousness. I notice it and for a time I am quite free of any pain; I am clear-minded, without holding on to a 'well' state.

There is so much that comes from sitting, so much information about the state beyond well or ill. I don't experience it as a unified state so much as I do an informative one, a state that also flows and changes as do my mood and feelings, but one that speaks in the language of liberation.

Day Three Hundred and twenty nine

Feeling ill from Lyme bite and antibiotic tonight. Noticing how tightly I hold on to wellness, such that I refuse to notice illness; not that I feel well, but that I tell myself I cannot be sick. Slightly feverish, I notice my mind getting tied up with the body, affected by the body, struggling with the body. It is an odd struggle to be trying not to notice it, not to allow for it, not to rest. Noticing it, I accept the heat and aches and allow myself to be in a different place than I usually am. My thoughts skitter like water in a frying pan.

But the water comes from a great pool that trickles over cool rocks, somewhere in the nature of that which holds me.

Day Three Hundred and twenty eight

I touch the stone and consider its material form, and my mental image of it. The stone is going through its many forms, and is not the least bit solid; though it could break the skull of a crow.

I have the feeling of its qualities, smooth and somewhat heavy. I perceive it in the realm of many stones and what is not stone. Consciousness of it comes up, craving comes up. All of the mental processes come up and I see them as different from the stone. I consider the magic of mental processes; the life they bring through the ground of self, built over a hundred thousand points of touching, all compared and led forward by craving into a jungle of new formations. I suppose comparison has brought me here, always a stone's throw from death, a ripple from Nirvana.

Day Three Hundred and twenty seven

I sit in the palace that holds nothing fast.

I bear the scepter I cannot grasp.

I wait while death declares the high position,

but at last let the ear take no place to hear,

whisper magic and miracles

their admonition.

Day Three Hundred and twenty six

I hold the stone and it is hard to concentrate. I blame the stone.

If I am not concentrating on the stone, where am I. I look, and see that I am in a vacuum that I have created by a presumed notion of me connected to many things. My anxiety rises as I look for things and do not find them. Then I look to leave the things I have created to be with, the ground or stage that I have made for things to set or act on. But it is all too compelling, even intermission.

Day Three Hundred and twenty five

I am tired in the heat and humidity, although I've had the luxury of a day inside in air conditioning.

I connect with breath and wonder, how in the secret name of heaven could this body and mind be anything more than a moan before death, a falling leaf, or rainwater collecting into rivulets that slip into drains? Then I notice the many impacts of form onto my senses, and the consciousness that arises there. Even the voices of many beings to whom I might send Metta must strike me somewhere, however lightly or in whatever way too quiet for my busy mind to sense.

My observation dislocates and I reach painfully for a new balm.

Day Three Hundred and twenty four

Following the breath comes easily tonight. I feel the breath going in and know that it is not part of a continuous touching; I feel it going out as another touching. Yet each in and out breath are broken up as well into little fits and starts. There is noticing of the breathing, and there is just breathing. I sense that just breathing is also conscious, already contains consciousness or it would not come about. It is not like the wind, simply a matter of interacting elements. It also has a regulation of the mind, long before awareness happens. Yet awareness begins to span the gap from rarified and distant conceptualization down to the elements of body and mind themselves.

The stone sits on the altar, an element in the potentiality of waking.

Day Three Hundred and twenty two

I connect with my breathing and I am grateful. I hear crickets outside. They are as they are. My breathing is the same way. Calmness comes to the surface.

After a time, I reflect on the retreat. I know that happiness and love can be brought about in any and all of us. In the same way that mindfulness brought to an object brings about the conditions for concentration, so can mindfulness, when brought to the feelings of separateness and doubt, allow for deep touching and strong faith.

Day Three Hundred and twenty two

Feeling the sensations of the body. I am made of these things but that does not need to make me into something else. Yet, there arise the personalities of me and the friends I am with tonight.

We are all older. They are each wise. I can feel their comments on impermanence in my heart more directly than I can hear them.

Day Three Hundred and twenty one

Departure day

Entertaining myself creates the ground of illusion, the stage of me. What good will it do me to speculate on the ending of this play, if I do not feel each prop, each actor, and come to know the director?

Day Three Hundred and twenty

Day Seven

From Maha Boowa's book Things as They Are:

"When the skandhas reveal themselves bit by bit, what are the adversaries to Nibbana? The sense that "my heart is empty and at ease, clean and clear." Even though we may see the heart as empty, it is pained with un-emptiness.

I loved this statement. The teacher in interview suggested that I consider that my difficulties are a purification, and the extent to which I was holding on to progress being this way or that way. Maha Boowa confirms the close and kind relationship that is needed and I celebrate my fortune at not yet having found peace.

Day Three Hundred and nineteen

Day Six

I apologize to my stone. After almost a year of practice, I must give it a break. I have had much difficulty developing sustained concentration in this quiet environment and so I am moving to the breath alone. I will return to you, dear stone, when I have developed my concentration further.

I wonder if ignorance and wisdom are not in perfect balance. How would the Buddha have become enlightened otherwise?

I have trouble concentrating and I am trying to look for what is there. It is hard to see. Is it another thought, or feeling, or just some belief in self? I do feel deeper tightness below the surface, deeper feeling. It is like there is some fear, something protected that acts as a bridge between thoughts.

I look out the window and watch a spider climb up a daisy. It moves out of view and I want to see it return to view. My wondering has already built craving and clinging. I notice that clinging gets stronger with little webs of contact and feeling and craving built around it. Views, it seems, are these strongly reinforced patterns. Do we have real memory? Sure but it seems to be more like views that reinforce a belief in self than it does one continuous consciousness.

Noticing how things are brings joy, contentment and bliss. Perhaps it is the concentration inherent in the timeless awareness of things. It seems there is no time or space, just things that go by, like webs in the dew.

Day Three Hundred and eighteen

Day Five

What creates a new state of mind? I notice that this present one, this thought pattern, begins to decay because it runs out of energy. Sometimes this is concurrent with weak messages of another formation. This contributes further to the decay. Sometimes my mind notices that something has changed in the body, or the body knocks on the mind first.

At this retreat, we can use the library. I read Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans., The Great Discourse on Causation: The Maha Nidana Sutta and its Commentaries (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1984), with fervor. I notice many points that can be observed. Bodhi points out that clinging includes an attachment to views, which explains a lot. I experience my mind tapping in to memories, and some of them are strongly held views.

In this discourse, the Buddha adds a piece about how craving becomes clinging in addition to the typical course of feeling>craving>clinging, etc.

"Now, craving is dependent on feeling, seeking is dependent on craving, acquisition is dependent on seeking, ascertainment is dependent on acquisition, desire and passion is dependent on ascertainment, attachment is dependent on desire and passion, possessiveness is dependent on attachment, stinginess is dependent on possessiveness, defensiveness is dependent on stinginess, and because of defensiveness, dependent on defensiveness, various evil, unskillful phenomena come into play: the taking up of sticks and knives; conflicts, quarrels, and disputes; accusations, divisive speech, and lies."

I observe a robin land in the grass, looking for a place to find bugs. He chases away an interloper. But there was plenty of room for both.

My fellow potwasher is slow to arrive. I consider him a slow person. I notice the above set of links in my process. What a leap I have taken!

Day Three Hundred and seventeen

Day Four

Lunch pear. Even as I begin to focus on eating, I fly away to critical analysis of the pear, to being done with the pear, to losing the juiciness of this pear moment. I try just paying attention, but I struggle. I consider myself bad for not paying attention. I struggle with that, the feeling of whether or not I should consider myself bad. Then I struggle with that struggle. I let it all go, noticing the subtle attachment to what I wish were happening in every other way but now. For the first time, I eat a pear at pear eating speed.

As I try hard to concentrate on the stone or on breathing, I have little luck. I notice a subtle tendency to hold on to something, to hold back, to protect. I want concentration to be this way or that way, to bring bliss, peace, clarity, freedom. However, concentration is a castle without walls.

Later, I lay down in my room in the heat. My bones are like the stones, hard, smooth, heavy. My blood and organs are like water, my breath is a supporting air, and digestion is fire. I am amazed to be only that, so little to really struggle with.

Day Three Hundred and sixteen

Day Three

I sense that the hindrances of attachment, aversion, sloth, restlessness and doubt are all different feelings of craving that impact my mind but are unobserved with mindfulness.

I have so many arguments in my mind, so much anger! I am so disgruntled and so attached to things. I notice my underlying desire to master doing things or thinking (which is the doing of the mind) to prove that I am good. I feel not so much that I am defensive about being good, but that I protect an inner weakness from being found out. Again, a wise heart that feels at once foreign and always known heals me.

Day Three Hundred and fifteen

Day Two:

Many thoughts and streams of thoughts arise in my mind. I play a little skit about me being entertaining and dancing away from something serious. I am found and I know that I need love. Something that cares very much for me helps me.

I feel dissolution of body into its many parts. I feel dissolution of mind from its many objects.

What is really coming into the contact of any of my senses are objects, each with information about liberation. Concentration lifts me up, as if I were high above the Nazca lines, to see what they mean.

Day Three Hundred and fourteen

The next eight days are posted late, due to being at a retreat.

Day One: Arrival

At the Forest Refuge in Barre, Ma, the Buddha in the meditation hall sits atop a ten ton boulder, reaching down to touch it.

Concentration creates a point of awareness; a place for it to rest to be different than all other things, to observe, and to be free. I notice that many things appear to be going on in the world, but my interrelationship (or presumed one) with the point of concentration is also going on and piques my interest.

Day Three Hundred and thirteen

Retreat week begins tomorrow. I am filled with many feelings. I relish the opportunity for the quiet time, but I know that means a full review of layers of me uncomfortable to my sense of control, attachment, and possession.

In the end, nothing can hide from the mother light.

Day Three Hundred and twelve

It is a quiet night after a busy day of travel and music. So much fits, despite some tiredness, that doubt and worry appear to be gone. But it is in their nature that I would suspect them to be covered over. On the one hand, the core of things seems like it might be meaningless and dangerous, just narrowly avoided or temporarily kept at bay. On the other, wisdom is my birthright, to know things the way they are. The more I am here with whatever body state or feeling or even bad habit of the mind, the more I know that I make my own states of mind. Anxiety is the state of not learning, of not being able to see, of not knowing that being is far more true than doing, of not knowing how I manufacture my own views. I can make the view of peace and meaning, and at last know that they are far more what I make of my body, mind and actions than anything external.

Day Three Hundred and eleven

I am tired after being out tonight, but I sit under the waning moon. As I age, my energy cycles through the day like the moon does in her long month. I make the mistake of trying too hard sometimes instead of recognizing and accepting the waxing and waning qualities of my energy, and the different tides of my awareness, each suitable for different things.

When the moon is a quarter full, she does not try to light up the entire sky, instead she shares light with the stars, pulls more gently on the ocean, and stays up late.

Day Three Hundred and ten

Tonight there are layers of dream. First there is movement from this to that, craving that never rests, craving that lies in only that which has not yet happened, while filling itself with activity so that it can wait. Later, there is craving for whatever meets the senses, the music going by the window, the heat to go away, the contrast of cool breezes, the bright flags, the early crickets. Then, there is concentration, and craving for the ecstasy of freedom-from to last. There is more contrast with other dream, and desire for the working eye to sleep.

The waking that would tear me from my flesh is hurtling down the track.

Day Three Hundred and nine

I am tired tonight again. I am restless. I have the stone in my hand. Many thoughts turn for many minutes. By body is tired and hot. I notice the ups and downs of mood, of wanting time and space to be more under my control. I press the stone and it moves above, below and through each feeling and mood of mine, even through any conception I have of time and space. I notice it giving me my awareness, the way the sun gives a sundial its shadow.

Day Three Hundred and eight

Another day posting late. My love said yes to my proposal of marriage. We sit and practice together at night. I am content, drowsy, far less anxious. I let go of the past and future and sit in the present. The present is harder to let go of, but I see that it is done by a kind of active rest. This present is not to be denied or manipulated. The eye sees every change, the heart allows them to flow.

Day Three Hundred and seven

Away from home today camping and blogging two days later. Meditating out in nature. Hearing the sounds of other campers, children, and birds. Feeling the firm ground and open air. They come and go and I rest in firm awareness. I feel anxiousness in the body, in my stomach and my chest. It affects my breathing a little but I am not worried. This is just anxiety. I understand it from the perspective of the body and thoughts let go of it for a moment, giving way for thoughts of acceptance.

Day Three Hundred and six

The mind appears to make all sorts of useless thoughts, but they point to what is behind them, allow for their dissolution, a fall of water that leads to a clear pool around the stone. I do not mind them so much anymore.

Day Three Hundred and five

Noticing a sense of accomplishment upon the usual review of the summary of the movie I write each day. Letting go and finding something deeper. Feeling bliss in touching the stone. I touch the imperatives of letting go, as delicate and strong as what animates living things.

Day Three Hundred and four

There is a menagerie of thoughts to let go of. Few lead to release, none have enough essence to stay around without attachment.

By stars, I wonder how to here I have arrived, trampling the grace of what is smaller than I, less than awake, covered with the quick of raided hives.

Day Three Hundred and three

It is the longest day of the year. I hear many voices. The treetops have been filled with fireflies. My skin is warm from yesterday's sun.

I sit at Sangha with my breathing. I collect myself to watch it. I feel my attention defining myself, but I stay with the breathing and attention is bare, like a seagull breaking free of a strong wind.

Later, I touch the stone and a tidal wave of colored calliopes goes rushing back out to sea.

Day Three Hundred and two

I struggle with being alone at the end of Father's Day. I let my worries be instead of trying to correct them. I sense awareness under all that I grasp. The truth of time is impermanence, the truth of space is non-separateness. I suffer under the compound arising of myself and my desires, believing myself permanent and separate.

I let my worries and fears extend as they may and they spread out like a healing sunset. Sights, sounds, and feelings become a living, healing world. What has been good with my children will be good again. Change and distance allow for that.

Day Three Hundred and one

I notice how expectant I have been all day, and a little tired from being out and now in, in the heat and humidity. I am a little disappointed, heavy and scattered. It is a fine place to start in meditation. I notice that this state I am in is not reality. It is A reality, but not all of it. As such, better to not let it color all of it. I let myself sink a little bit. Contact is very fine in this circumstance, a real unknown and new thing from the perspective of letting the all encompassing heaviness fade. It is a joy to find the unknown after doubt has seemed real. There are so few states of mind I realize I am making. If I make them, I can let them go, if I can let them touch me so deeply, I can let them be on their way. The stone is like a judge sentencing the old habits to accept the laws of change, and eager to hear a new case.

Day Three Hundred

It takes a long time to settle tonight, but it is not a chore. At first there is just a cloud of noise, in each sense, cluttered objects to the eye, buzzing to the ear, a bitter taste, hot and cold body. The mind runs through opposites; plenitude and desolation, a pleasant night for sleeping as opposed to stifling and too hot, a busy week and a quiet night. I let go of solving and comparing and touching the stone is very pleasant.

Everything opens up around it, on it, within it. I can pour all of my wounds into it, all of my hopes, all of me.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety nine

I have things, comfort, plenitude and then I do not have things, instead I have doubt, fear, and loss. I notice that these are each states of mind I create by leaning toward things in a certain way. I do not have to lean toward anything. I can stay quite still.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety eight

It is a peaceful night for me and concentration comes easily. I forget for a moment who I am and what I am doing. I come back and let go again, only wishing to know what I am doing and why. I am practicing concentration to allow for the experience of the way things are. I am choosing to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of all of the many things I concentrate on momentarily throughout the day.

I do so to free myself from the many traps born of distraction, which are so subtle; they run through me as the definition of myself.

Day Two Hundred Ninety seven

Homage to the unbinding eye in all things, that sees in the very middle of blinding sorrow, in the shattered balance that is pain, in the dark fog of doubt. Homage to the hand that reaches to touch what is seen, to hold an unknown tomorrow, cup the flooding rain, and pull the dry thorn out.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety six

Tonight I concentrate and consider the many challenges of thought, doubt, sitting environment, and difficult occurrences of the day. I am stuck with a hot room. I look for meaning and harmony. Suddenly it hits me. I make my own meaning. I make the hot room difficult. I turn the hot room into an obstacle. And then, since I am aware that the hot room is nothing without the hot room plus me, I realize that I make the meaning of everything.

Except, well, except for whatever the hot room is at its base.... no..... I could never know that, I can only know the interaction of the room and myself, or not myself, but more directly like essence knowing essence. In that case, each and every experience is the universe knocking on the door, asking me to wake up, to play, to heal, to help, to open.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety five

Touching the stone and noticing feeling. Noticing that pleasant feelings come in many varieties and each one has a because: Tickling when it is dry because of the surprise, moving from warm to cool or cool to warm because of the movement away from unpleasant, soft because being perhaps some biological sense of safety, grainy and therefore of interest, I let those go and know that at their root, most feelings are just biologically helpful or hurtful, and from that springs pleasant and unpleasant. I am grateful for the opportunity to explore the chain of causes with a body that is well enough to pay attention.

Preparing to publish, a stink bug lands on my face.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety four

Sitting is easy and breezy tonight. Alert and clear at the beginning. Then, more tired. Wondering what to do with tiredness. Sometimes I am able to increase the vividness of touching the stone by gripping it tightly for a moment. Tonight I consider allowing the lack of energy to be, to be able to wait for some return of energy.

Energy arises again in many places in my body and mind that have been stirred up by a visit to two of my aunts today. It was a very pleasant time. Now, I am neither very happy nor upset, but wanting to explore past and future relationships. I try to let some of the additional commentary that springs from a reaction, from old habits, from holding on, to flow out like water. I listen to my body and allow it to settle. I am made of my ancestors, their energy is in me now. I must care for it while allowing it to rise and fall as it must.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety three

I notice that I concentrate for a little while on many things, possibly all day. It may be one of the most basic skills I have. But concentration on one object is a special case. It helps me at first to quiet down. Perhaps I usually pull concentration here and there with restless craving, unobserved attachments. With concentration I have a place to notice how I do that, and go back deeper and less distracted. Concentration on a stone reveals many things about the nature of the object, and about the relationship of myself to objects, and to touching>feeling>craving.

Concentration, being a dependent thing, may not exist without an object. And yet, within it is essence, contact without craving.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety two

Most of the words I have to describe things are past and future oriented. It takes some work in my mind to talk to myself in a way that helps me be present. Besides words that take me out of real time, there are too many words that take me out of real space, also. I preface all of my thoughts with 'I'.

I picture myself doing this or that. I picture myself being here, deep in meditation. That's a nice idea but it hardly even gets to what's here, which is a fundamental step to understanding the craving inherent in it all.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety one

Restlessness, a full stomach, and sneezing disrupt my meditation tonight. Or do they? I always tend to see meditation as different than anything tight or moving, or irritating. Yet this is the nature of things. Perhaps meditation is different only in the view that it has toward things.

I lean in close instead of arguing with them, perhaps out of frustration. I almost see how the eye is clouded by holding on to something different than the way things are but it is still out of reach. There is a deeper veil.

Nevertheless, I rest somewhere other than in things, and restlessness becomes an awake energy, sneezing a simple body process with which a tissue helps, and my stomach, well, just a post-it to eat less.

Day Two Hundred and Ninety

Mostly I see meditation as a peaceful time and I unwind quickly, which I do tonight. I touch the stone and consider the various ways I view stones, for their difference in texture and temperature to me, as something useful, or beautiful, as something that moves less than most things, something harder and more solid, something that is on the ground.

Kitty comes by and I touch her. I consider the ways that I am more like her, warm, softer, moving and more complex, at least within the limits of what I call kitty.

I consider how similar all things are, how much of one thing they are, how connected. I notice and consider kitty relative to the stone. I do not notice how much evaluation and prejudice and judgment goes in to defining things, whether I consider them useful, safe, pretty, or whatever. I consider all things in relation to me.

Suddenly, everything has a similar cast and the entire universe assumes the identity of shards of a nihilistic explosion. But that is just Great Doubt. I am brave enough to weather that storm.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty nine

Time goes by quickly during sitting. I am very comfortable with my position and breathing, although not at first. I sit and soon after it is the bell.

Before sitting tonight I notice the clouds. They go by without attachment to what is going on below, what is going on in my life and in my head. I imagine they are shapes of things I know. To me they are, and they spur on my thought process. They stretch out and lose their shape, become other shapes. To themselves, they flow without time.

The universe may be profoundly neutral at its core. Yet, this is where the energy of wisdom and compassion are born. Doubt is the shaking of the self out of its shape into new birth.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty eight

There is an open space in concentration. It is a very even place to be to encounter whatever arises. Doubt arises at that time, in that place.. Doubt is close to the truth because even this equanimity does not rest on anything. So if doubt is bonded to wanting to keep, to hold, to possess openness, to keep this 'view', it is right to be doubtful of maintaining it. It is hard to separate out the workable parts of ego and abandon the views it holds which do not lead to the end of desire.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty seven

A long sit today. I notice my relationship to tiredness, discomfort. I struggle with it. I let go of struggle at times. I often reach in my mind for some magic phrase I have heard in books or on retreat to help me let go, but they usually do not have life for me. They are not direct in this moment. What is here is centering and noticing. I go back to touching again and again. I notice my mind becoming calmer. Doubt becomes a sort of companion that I outlast, not to get somewhere (that strategy seems to be just battling back) but to just be here. Awareness opens up on its own. Deeper levels of doubt are there that will require more patience and perseverance.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty six

Working with the effort it takes to concentrate. At times it feels like the effort must be too great to muster; the distractions too strong. The effort does not seem defined, the goal unattainable. But one place I can work is with the worry about attainment, with the feeling that it is too hard. Concentration, like all of the path in Buddhism, feels best in the middle; not too hard, not too easy.

I notice my feeling that my effort is too weak and I let that go. Suddenly I am with concentration, and for a time, my ego loses it's subtle workings of doubt and criticism.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty five

My mind mostly plays ping-pong, this thought here, bumps into that thought there and reflects upon it, which reflects back, until it runs out of energy and starts a new game. My mind seems like a foolish master, always playing this way, and paying attention rarely. It does not know concentration very well, and when it does, it shrinks back to hide until the concentration is gone.

My body is always honest, never playing a game. Why would that be so? Touching the stone, the general state of energy, the sense of tightness or looseness here and there are simply what they are, and as thought diminishes in concentration, the body becomes clearer and clearer.

Perhaps thoughts too are quite honest, and it is only the tendency to play a game with them that causes a problem. The mind is a funny place, always restless and seeking rest at the same time.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty-four

There are many distractions tonight. I consider my role in letting myself be pulled away. It can only be a combination of not looking and not caring. Concentration helps me to do both of those things, except for the aggravations that stand in the way of concentration. Oops, there I go again.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty three

Noticing that sometimes moving toward sloth substitutes for peace of mind, but only when moving from an overexcited or restless state, because it is more comfortable. At other times, restlessness feels peaceful for a moment in its transition away from sloth. Neither state is a very deep insight, I suppose there is a desire to capture and bottle the oh so brief moments of a calm (or calmer relative to something else) body/mind state.

Noticing the tendency to have clarity of mind dependent on outside circumstances. 'If only I had not left my stone somewhere tonight and not have to use a foreign one', 'If only the stone were more one-pointed or perhaps cooler to the touch'..... 'if only I did not have a head full of the day'.

What does it take to be with whatever is here long enough for it to pass, to stay still enough right here in the middle of it rather than getting carried along by it all? Once again, there is nothing out there that is carrying me away, nothing at all.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty two

Feeling the earth element of the stone and of my body. Sensing some relation between all of the elements, especially earth and the space which define one another. Sensing that all phenomena have much in common, and different vibrations, or movements, or wind. I have inner heat, generative capabilities, and I process food, which the stone does not.

But what percentage of my energy and vibrations is spent holding on to those processes, pushing away threats? Pretty much all of it. From that perspective, I've much to learn from simpler things. And of course, I am not really separate from them.

Who would bring me this stone to learn from? Who would bring she who brought me the stone?

Day Two Hundred and Eighty one

Worries before sitting deepens. Meditation upon feeling. Tonight, concentration deepens and I feel pleasure throughout the body. I return to concentration.

The stone is so often neutral. It seems more the way it truly is, or something beyond pleasant or unpleasant, something more essential. It seems that meditation upon feeling when unpleasant and pleasant states arise brings awareness of two of the hindrances, attachment and aversion. The neutral feeling, not that I can make that arise, but when I notice it, deepens and provides information about how things are.

How are things? I learn tonight that I do not need to 'know' about the three marks, or the five hindrances for concentration to deepen. I can return to it alone, it develops on its own. Concentration brings the base for reaching out to insight.

Easily, I am grounded in awareness, all of my worries earlier in the sit are now arranged in some accessible sidebar, touched gently with feelings of acceptance.

Day Two Hundred and Eighty

Looking at some of the thoughts that carry me away from my meditation. Noticing my distant relationship to energy. Often, when there is little energy, I throw all my nervous and worried thinking at the lack, and create a no-win situation. At the other end of the spectrum, when I am bursting with energy, I pull back and create another pointless struggle. Lots of energy seems to equal a feeling of not being in control for me, of not being able to know who I am. Little energy and I feel that my self concept will disappear, disintegrate.

The Buddha did more than even steal fire from the Gods. He took craving out into the light.

Two Hundred and Seventy nine

Noticing how hard it can be to meditate with a major thought in the mind. Of course, thoughts are never just thoughts, the body is already carried along, and feeling, craving and becoming many times over have already happened. They continue to happen when an issue or issues feel deep. How to meditate then?

Certainly it is by being closer. I talk to clients with a mental health issue all the time and suggest that they practice living, exercising, relaxing especially when there is a crisis, and if they can care for themselves during a crisis, they will be learning a skill that will carry them through many ups and downs.

Although certainly not a crisis, I am closely attached to certain thoughts and wishes. I notice them and notice the feeling in the body and bring them close. Kindness and looking come together and I allow myself to feel whatever is there. I can let them go after that, putting away what I can do, what I cannot do, and some wisdom in a file cabinet while my mind sets about cleaning the place overnight, that more work can be done in the morning.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy eight

My jaw is stiff and that makes my ear hurt, and that worries me, pulls in all the available history of ear problems in an attempt to prevent injury that is as misaligned as those parts of my face. That leads me to consider a host of other problems, due maybe to being already worried and having other worries fit right in. I've forgotten how much beauty and kindness are in my life. I think of all of those lines, and they are soft and vibrant and full of openness. For a time they replace the worries in my face, though it remains stiff. I move in a more open direction, practice gratitude of this one precious life.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy seven

To have interest in what is right here, the body, the mind, the objects that touch the senses, feelings. There's a kind of forgetting, a spell that is cast by naming and claiming. Tonight I practice with feelings of frustration, pushing away. I bring openness to those feelings and I am back here, with energy and curiosity for what is.

I see concentration, not as any kind of end point but as a point from which I can then find perspective. Yet perhaps non-perspective, or a way of seeing that is not manipulative. It is like the stone would see if it could see, without judgement.

But again, the stone does not need to see, and that is a fine thing to know about.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy six

Returning to the stone again and again. Tonight, each hindrance provides release. First, the window does not seem to provide enough air. I notice myself wrap around that thought, and struggle with opening another window for a cross breeze. I do not do it. I just touch the thought and let it go. It leads to a little doubt and I let that go and return to touching.

Feeling opens up, my body is consumed with release. I hear a car and follow that. Is it coming to the house? Must I stop my meditation? I let that go and return, deeper. I am very curious about getting close to what is close.

I touch the stone lightly and wrap my other desires into a desire to leave touching, to break concentration. I reflect on Lama's words about impermanence and I am energized to gently stay with the changes.

With some gratitude and reluctance, I place the stone back on the altar and write.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy five

Feeling the breath in meditation. Feeling the body and thoughts during discussion. Bringing it all very close, noticing how much my feelings are like the waterfall outside. We opened the door and let the sound of it in. The sound of me is as true.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy four

Considering the importance of separating awareness and feeling. I have a pleasant feeling in meditation, and it is easy to want it to continue. I hardly even notice the underlying desire to continue, and perhaps an aversion to the feeling ending. But when will I separate awareness from these feelings? At some point when I need to because I am in great pain? That is too late. Now is the opportune time to do so, but it is difficult. I know I must do so by bringing awareness closer to the subject at hand. That is what defines awareness, helps it to stand out; the description of the attachment. Not to describe a 'pleasant feeling' but to describe the process that is taking place. To do so I also experiment with dropping the feeling, letting go of it. I find a more neutral feeling occurring. There I learn, watching closely how feeling changes. That informs me as to the craving that arises in such a very subtle way.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy three

A retreat day with Lama Gursam. I so very much enjoyed being with the Sangha, feeling opening hearts and minds, togetherness with light. And opening is also strange, so many ghosts go fleeing from the light that it gets confusing as to which spirits are of benefit. Good to have a wise Lama to protect us, and we circumambulate this old Quaker meeting, and walk through the graveyard.

I touch the stone and watch more closely how I am carried away by many thoughts. My relationship to them is where hindrance is, not in the thoughts themselves. They appear of their own accord, so many of them out of history. I notice how I push them away or pull them toward me. I let them be, notice my cravings, let them be. I return to the stone again and again and everything opens up. I am in the stream of change, but without pain, without ignorance, at least for a moment.

This place, as Lama emphasizes, is available everywhere if we recognize our challenges, treat them with kind attention, and in touching, let them go or otherwise deal with them within the realm of reality. Reality is like a new home with many family members, with quiet grounds.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy two

Retreat discussion night. I am considering Lama Gursam's instructions that lay life be a place of great enlightenment. Also how he was a philosopher and felt that he knew many things but his knowledge as he said was 'in the book', meaning that when he wasn't reading the theory, he could not relate to dharma, the first time he sat down for long practice his mind became empty in sort of a useless way. In both cases I believe he was asking me to look at whatever is arising here and to work with these things. There are so many hindrances and shades of hindrance, so many things to cling to, it seems that life is just far too washed with them to have any definition. And so I cling to 'clarity' of theory and miss the things in front of me, the hindrances that are right here and the forgiveness and love as well.

Day Two Hundred Seventy one

Green is the color I see in the yard, but it is not the color of reality. Green is the glory of the instructions not to meditate. Touch is the coming together of stone and skin, but it is not the feel of reality. Stone is the place without struggle. Breath is the object of body meditation, but it is not the place of reality. Breath is the presence of the heart.

All sense touches without craving, even mind with history, fantasy. I could wait some while to be free of entanglements, but it is not a place to be.

There is only perspective, an everpresent now. Seeing clearly requires no extra senses, no aids, no new place. Reality lies between arrogance and fear.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy

Noticing states of mind that are joyful and then states that are fearful. Holding on to joyful states. Noticing how everything is indeed filtered through history.. I remember how joyful states felt and suppose that they should be 'like that one'. Remembering how states have changed in the past and contemplating root causes of view. Considering if view now is, at some deep level, like a kind of scarcity, that there may not be enough joy, or I might not have enough capacity to open up, to find it. I've cultivated so much fear, boxes within boxes to protect from the breaking of the outer boxes, that it is hard to bring the depths of me out into joy.

I notice also the fear of forgetting, missing something. I notice the body state that tightens around that feeling, and then how it moves in loops of body>mind>body>mind much faster than I can follow. I sit with the body through concentration. I notice that I can sit with one part of the body and the tension can ease, and it can move quickly to another part like from my chest to my jaw. Sneaky, that instinct to preserve, protect, run.

I bring history out into the light and it sits there and seems alright.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty nine

I sit with imperatives tonight. Although there are wars, death, overdose and their effects, and so nearby, I am not swayed from practice. At the social end of the continuum there is practice for the sake of all beings, directly, the practice of metta. Not being separate, I feel pain from the suffering in others. Knowing that, I cannot fool myself into being elsewhere. I let go and light enters unexpectedly, in the middle of pain, in the middle of sorrow. It is not the light of contrast, it is clarifying and warm, moves in every hurt place. It must be so.

At the personal end of being, I concentrate for the sake of all beings, and for the benefit of myself. I must know what I can and cannot bear, or I shall not fulfill the duty of this place. I relate to stress, carve myself a drinking cup with three deep marks.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty eight

Tonight everything vanishes except touching. Great ease with this single focus comes all by itself, like a raindrop after much heavy sky, letting me know of the beauty within change. Concentration often looks like a sharply defined place to go, like a city on a map, but that is a habit of the mind. I arrive home when I've run out of habits, out of gas.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty seven

Noticing a pleasant feeling in touching the stone and the desire to stay with it. How to work with the hindrance of desire? I can watch it from the steadfast place of concentration. I can not feed it, not give it a trainload of craving; stories about pleasantness, contrast to an unpleasant feeling, building a castle out of it, defining myself as 'having' it and so on. To not do these things, I must keep an eye on it, at least until it has run out of food.

I stay with it, watch the feeling until it changes and then experience the 'annica', or inconstancy of it. This impermanence is a direct threat to the notions of myself, to my stories, and as such, is a meal without relish.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty six

Touching the stone and increasing concentration by contrast. With all of the distractions of mind, I find again that lumping all of those other places into one great fog and turning back to staying with one point is helpful. I have doubts about the effectiveness of the stone as one point or as an object of concentration. I let that go and turn back to feeling. Is it the whole stone or a point?

It is all that is other than that which is distracted by thought and other feelings. The feeling is subtle, hard to put into the three categories of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. But I stay here a while. I label the feeling as subtle and vague. I notice many of my attachments and how the mind picks them up. With all of that activity, meditation upon the object of concentration becomes that which is quiet and still, yet which is brought to awareness.

The stone is the only place of stillness, the only place I am not running toward or away from.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty five

Feeling peaceful and dreamy tonight, and also full of pleasant anticipation. Tiredness comes in waves. I am grateful for all that I have. I call to mind the gifts of being alive, even intangible slumber, with its way of holding everything until wakefulness calls the wind to stir the sails. It can be hard to find perspective in a deepening comfort, but surely, it is just to be here, to be close, to know the eye that never rests, never holds, never looks away.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty four

There is so much around concentration, forests of attitude and moats of thought, walls made of other stones, each a way of being that prevent one-pointed concentration. Tonight I treat them all the same, as one, as other than touching and somehow I am over them, one with my little spell. I have a base to watch where I am, how close to concentration, and how far away.

Love enters from the only place she can, the present moment, and right here. She turns every compass point back to center as she sits down near.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty three

Looking for concentration and noticing distractions. Noticing how trying to get away from a stream of thoughts, or loud noises, or body aches creates more noise. The quick painting by aversion of some peaceful and pleasant place that is not here creates a body response, a biological coiling to jump towards something else or away from the irritation. Not finding such a place creates frantic looking, most of it brought up into the mind for processing.

I do so much processing that I remember little. I've long wanted to experiment on my ability to remember the events of a single day. I'm pretty sure I did that when I was little. I hardly see my stories anymore, hardly notice the painter of what is not, and yet, there is some room to do so. It is the presence of the heart, which has never gone anywhere, although I have traveled far, weaving illusion.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty two

B. Alan Wallace talks about how the mind, when concentrated, calms down. Further, how the breath as an object of concentration becomes more subtle, requiring increased vividness of attention. The stone also becomes more subtle, the feeling moves from distinct to very hard to find and I raise my energy level to stay with it.

I also notice more subtleties in how I interact with things. One such subtle relationship is how I quickly scan everything in the sitting area with all of my senses and a feeling registers of, not well being, but of OK vs something. In other words, I see that the items on the altar are in place, the sounds indicate an intact roof and floor, the bench feels in the right place, my body is not sick. These are all ways that I define myself as vs. something else. Noticing this, I stay with feeling and each sense begins to dissolve. This leads to great pleasure of the senses, having the base of concentration and some other, more direct and essential relationship with things, or at least a calliope ride on the way to a closer walk with reality.

I wonder how it would feel to have a new outlook permanently; one that is curious even to tiredness, doubt and worry. Ah but there I set myself up with a fantasy again, I paint what it looks like and drive myself mad trying to live in a painting. It is here that all falls apart, all comes together, where acceptance and effort live and breathe.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty one

Breathing meditation tonight because I do not have the stone with me. After a while, breathing occurs by itself. I rest there and time passes easily, opens up, and my body feels very light and balanced. As we read in discussion at Sangha from B. Alan Wallace, about breathing meditation, there is no reference to regarding the 'type' of feeling of the breath as pleasant or unpleasant, just that the mind can be in a state of balance, and I find that refreshing.

He says that concentration quickly quiets the mind. If only I had read that months ago.

I consider the curse and blessing of a racing mind, and some joy in the ability to bring energy, vividness of attention, and curiosity to meditation. Yet I fight with myself when I am tired, distracted, and I sometimes encounter the manifestations of mind with worry or doubt, curiosity's overfed cousins.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty

Touching the stone. I find myself alone. I look at loneliness. I notice fear of the unknown, the fear that I could feel lonely forever. Metta sails alongside loneliness and they both run out to the deepest water.

I touch the stone and all is less abstract. I have fear, I have the feeling of touching. I concentrate on touching. Neutral moves to pleasant and time and space reckon in my hand. I steer toward a port of my own making, in a sea of every manifestation.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty nine

A windy day and turning much colder for May, with swift clouds and some deep empty ache like late November. Ghosts with cold hands threaten to disrupt a sitting. I turn my attention toward them out of fear, fear of losing my identity.

I consider my history, and in a changing body state, remember when some hearts were colder than any wind. I know that the weather is only seeking balance. I know that all of our struggle, pushing away or being pushed away, is only defense, declarations of hurt, transitional and situational binding of identity to protect open hearts.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty eight

Watching how I lean toward or away from many things, the pretty sound of birds that are part of a story I've just written in my head, threatening thoughts, part of another story, the comfort of a sitting position. Each of them pushes a button in me, elicits a reaction from a long story I have had. Each movement toward them or away from them defines me in space and time.

The stone does not do that. Through feeling and return to feeling, I am not yet craving for things to be different than they are, different than they are being, different than they will be.

I have sat through dusk tonight. The world has changed in that time. Birds have sung an evening song and gone to bed.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty seven

Touching the stone and letting go. I notice my battle with tiredness, how it rises around my chest and into my head like a fog. I think to myself that I will be unable to keep my thoughts in check in this twilight state, I will go mad or discover that I don't fit with anything, just as this jumble of vivid daydreams twirls up out of my mind like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz.

But really, this is all more knowably real than so much of my daily life, when I am half gone, eating desert while I am really with my main course, being critical of a client I am counseling when I need to be near, or at least in the present, in the room, or consumed by a stream of history when looking at a new bill.

I am tired, I drift in the tides. I let myself be worn smoother.