Day One Hundred Eighty Nine

I touch the stone and feel grounded in my body. I have had a headache and soreness for a couple of days; felt feverish. I feel foolish about trying to get away from my body; just as I want to stay with it longer when it is pleasurable.

Although I counsel people who are in pain to accept it and not struggle so much; I am not good at letting go myself. I do notice how I tighten up and add to the problem. I let go a little by noticing that I am afraid for my body, afraid it will not get better. I let go more by meditating; the same freedom from all states of mind comes from concentration. It seems to not be a state of mind at all, and therefore what is added to the body just vanishes. I feel open. New thoughts following meditation are subject to a much wider range of recognition, choice, and letting go.

Day One Hundred Eighty Eight

Keeping in touch with the stone. It seems like it should be an easy thing to do, but it is hard to do without a reward. I think "oh I will watch tv after this", but that always makes it much harder. It is better for me to wait until concentration is deeper.

I find it hard to let go and return. I have to let go of extraneous thoughts and return to the qualities of touching. And I also must let go of those, because touching spawns an array of thoughts like "I'm not doing it right" or "I forget why I 'm doing this"... just a little doubt, I think.

Sometimes meditation is like any other very difficult thing; I have to persevere, not look so quickly for a result, remember why I am doing it without getting lost in the difficulty, to keep touching, and to know that this is concentration, this is where I am, this is real, and to identify that which is more and more real; the subsiding of doubt and hindrance, and coming closer to the understanding of conditions.

Day One Hundred Eighty Seven

I seek a free state from all that I find a hindrance. But it is one thing to not want to be here with whatever I am in contact with, and another to know what it is I want to be free from. Only delusion stands in the way of that. Even lack of energy is only a transitory state.

And where does freedom end? Certainly somewhere beyond the relationship of my attachments to me, somewhere beyond the way I expect things to end.

I want to be free because I know there is another day somewhere. It rises, golden, the sun's rays curious about everything.

Day One Hundred Eighty Six

I find a tendency in myself to believe I cannot examine anything without criticizing it. By that I mean that I lean my vision of myself against it, either outwardly or more passively. Phrases such as "I don't do it that way" or "This doesn't feel like anything I like" or "This is worth examining because it is something I like"... tend to typify an internal process of measuring myself against everything. Even my stone is either 'mine' or 'working well' or 'irritating' or 'feeling like this or that'.... I can feel my self created security slipping away when I encounter something just as it is.

What does life feel like in actuality? It is so much a measure of my own hindrances that seem to be the best starting point. I see now a little bit... What I have held on to fades a little bit.

How to be with anything without judgement?

I do not believe in awareness without ownership, but all things are here because they do not judge, they are not judged.

Day One Hundred Eighty Five

It feels like there is a whole world of information beyond following feelings. When I rest or stop with only contact and feeling, there is left a very dark and unformed place. But I go there and it brightens. Again and again, when I let go I find the voice of things; and there is always music, always a light. All experience feels layered, rich, poignant.

All is free beyond conditions, and all conditioned things are unconditioned, permeable to awareness. Even death and separation offer their anthems.

Day One Hundred Eighty Four

I touch the stone and wonder where my attention has been all day. It has been lost to the mind's games of making time and space where there are none. I had a headache and made stories about how it would go away or not, distance between reality and perception. I talked with people and remembered the past, instead of being in the moment.

Where am I now? I am full of the desire to be done, to move on, to do something else. So it has always been, me and my deep dissatisfaction with the present moment. But this is my dissatisfaction with reality, with emptiness. It is the black brush with which I paint letting go of space, it is the sullen cloak in which I wrap the fear of stopping time. In the end, only my perspective is up to me.

Day One Hundred Eighty Three

Once, whispers the stone, I was broken away from another. The sand and tide from mother moon have made me without edges. Submitting to all, I become whole and one.

In the morning, lost love paints kisses on the sky.
Tonight I sit, brave bulwark to a cape light's eye.

Day One Hundred Eighty Two

Retreat Day Two

Stepping out of the "swirl of emotion and thought" as Narayan puts it, leaves me with the tools for meditation: body, breath, sound. It is more possible here to get in touch with the present moment and the information that awareness brings.

There are people outside on the street; cars, buses and birds. In this moment they are not in time, they are not in my thoughts. They do not exist in time or space, theirs or anyone's. Yet there is no one for them to not exist for, either.

Day One Hundred Eighty One

A retreat day at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. A hard day with lots of swirling down into tiredness, scraps of deep-seated arguments with myself. With the open awareness, open acceptance that is asked for in this tradition, comes the past in all its unresolved glory. There are so many ways to feed the frustrations of the past; connect them with other things from the past or present, fight with them, imagine better endings (while believing that they can't come true except in dream), despair, and on and on. Why such feeding? Because it is feared that what is left is a rocket of neutrality to a stark lonely dead planet.

Not really, of course, but there are the two sides... As Narayan said when quoting Ajahn Chah; "these two things remain, practice and torment, right until the end." Practice only feels like torment because it brings it into the light. Feed it and it stays in the dark, promises to go away, lies through its teeth.

Day One Hundred and Eighty

Dancing to music tonight. It is hard to reorient the body and mind to recreation, to openness. So much of my time is spent protecting myself or satisfying myself, worrying. Meditation is likewise hard to orient to. My body starts to calm and looks for sleep instead.

Metta is the activity which is purely not involved in self-satisfaction, and it is also difficult to let go and do, and to still apply open attention that does not look for anything. I might say it should be easy to harmonize with the world, to offer harmony, but I have long made myself apart.

Day One Hundred Seventy Nine

Quiet, now. Something is telling a story. Your fear must rest so that you can listen. It is a story of creation, it is a story of balance. It is told with your body, it is whispered by your mind. In the narrative of touch, are whispered words by those you love. In the rising moon outside your window, a lesson of another kind.

Day One Hundred Seventy Eight

Restless at first, then calming. I notice many sensory things but I am not pulled to them. The eye meets the cool shadows in my room, my body feels chilly wind and warm where I am covered, more neutral elsewhere, I hear cars hiss by, and my tinitus. I let the world stay in its place without picking it up too much. Just noticing the contact; I return to attend to touching the stone. I meet touching there and I am closer and closer to being here, to being with what is by nature compound, knowing it.... to know the compound and temporary and unsatisfactory nature of touching is to touch something very eternal.

And yet there is much stirred up even here; in this little touch, much more that needs to be quiet. But I can listen; sense what is gently by grace given to find; and then, perhaps, allay the restless mice of mind.

Day One Hundred Seventy Seven

I wonder why I cannot stay in meditative absorption, or in the short term, even deepen it. I sense an entire world of physical and mental distractions of the past and present that wait below the surface of meditative activity. Yet it is the best place to be, the only place, the place where distractions come up and fade. My other world is where meditation comes up and fades. Choice is present. Hindrances are here to be encountered or avoided. These are the worlds of thought.

Day One Hundred Seventy Six

Sometimes I wrap tightly around concepts. The idea of liberation is so tempting to hold on to. It is the only thing we can never possess. so we settle for its ghost. Of course we don't really possess anything, but freedom is a special case. It is like water... nothing can stop it, it permeates everything. I touch the stone; perception occurs afterwards. Insight into the distance between realities brings despair to the mind of concepts. But after that there is liberation, holding it all very gently, bringing attention back through the forest of the mind.

Day One Hundred Seventy Five

It seems that most all of our endeavors are aimed at making ourselves feel alright, or at least think we are right. Even Philosophy and Science, with their noble and objective descriptions, tend toward fulfilling a desire to be correct. Extreme skepticism, with its negativity toward what can be known, fulfills our need to be in control of what is not known. The mind's capacity to wrap around comparison and categorization betrays the subtle underlying attachments and aversions its words deny. The mind fights to the bitter end to define itself through its definitions of everything else. Rarely is it brought into the light, to be with its mother attention.

Day One Hundred Seventy Four

Letting go of thought means letting it arise as well, gently, not pushing back. I go to touching and let concentration arise.

Who gave me this blessing of laughter and tears? More to the point, how will I let this body and mind sanctify the years?

Crows emerge and peel back the past. They dance in white dawn, sing at silence, mock my contrast.

Day One Hundred Seventy Three

God laughs and looks and bids you welcome; brings you a place to sit and a page to turn.
You read and smile and skip the part about how little grace is earned.

Day One Hundred Seventy Two

It is hard to see how many diverse thoughts proceed from one body state such as being tired or restless. Perhaps it is not even necessary; just to notice them winding around like ivy, choking out fresh emotion. All things need to grow and change without meddling. Our decision-making ability and the actions we choose to make are rarely given their due; rarely afforded the pristine insight always available to them, the interconnection to all things that is our birthright.

We must make choices in accord with things. We can let delusion sink down, away, like a rind that will become other things.

Day One Hundred Seventy one

I touch the stone and see my thoughts from some distance; close enough to see them but far enough to know that they are not all of me. I feel them like touching; they are jagged, sweet, or unpleasant, deeper; they are hateful, greedy, deluded, but the whos and whats and wheres I can let go of; I can let go of the story. There is no story with the stone.

Acceptance is like that; the end of a story. I watch struggle with stories arise. I have spent a long time there, it is familiar. To let go of stories is to be nowhere for a little while. That place becomes more comfortable over time, stronger.

What is nowhere after nowhere is free from being defined as a bad place? It feels neutral, balanced, equal, fresh, like snow.

Day One Hundred Seventy

Practicing Metta; I started with my roomate and cat and let it expand to neighbors, school and so on. I had to keep starting over because I forgot the many beings in the ground and trees; some asleep, some hiding under the snow or in trees. Then also I forgot the many beings inside the house, most of which never bother me. And I, the observer, am really many beings as well, or at least many things that make up a being. Consciousness seems tenuously located in one place, and connected to many others.

Metta seems to be simply the free flow between beings, between myself and beings, and even between my many parts and their connection to myself as a whole and beyond. When I define myself as separate, I block Metta. I also block flow when I will not be what I am, when I will not get close to myself, when I overrepresent myself to myself. Metta is a gift without a cost, except to what is holding on and held on to.

Day One Hundred Sixty Nine

I recognize some of the kinds of consciousness that develop between my mind and what it encounters; between my body and what it encounters. Most of them are connected to desire, aversion, or delusion. Some of them are softer desires, as if there is dharma mixed in; sometimes I struggle against good things because of delusion, because of other kinds of consciousness. Sometimes I create a third consciousness out of the battle of two. Many of them seem to evolve out of each other, and all of them seem to evolve out of history; mine and all the rest of it.

Concentration pulls me into less states of consciousness, toward one; or perhaps toward one with another one. Is there one that feels and one that watches? It is more subtle than that, far more. The one that watches must feel. The one that feels is not there.

Day One Hundred Sixty-Eight

Concentration and mindfulness generally help me to feel more relaxed, on sum. Yoga helps me to feel more calm as well.

I feel sugar and caffeine and their effects. I am more worried, more withdrawn from life. It is not either of these stimulants that are to blame for worry, but they trigger an over-energetic response.

Without enough awareness, I overuse them, and they cause some sort of physical twitching, fluttering, excessive movement, tinnitus, oversaturation of tastebuds, tightening of the stomache, and other physical responses which I become restless around, feel I must do something about.

The effect of body state on mood is impressive. The thoughts generated from a body state are quite off base from reality, although they are a good indication of the body state. When I notice despair and anxiety as being tied to the body, I begin to work well with a restless state and can often just be with it until it changes to a more easygoing one. On the other hand, too easy going and I become very comfortable and really find I am living a dream.

I may take grounging and awareness to feel subtle outside influences when I am meditating, but working with body states which seem to dictate mood, is even more subtle. I gently let body state go as a measure of how things are. It is just how I am feeling.

Day One Hundred and Sixty-seven

Thinking about fearlessness and meditation. It's all very well to presume to be fearless when there is nothing powerful confronting us. It is as easy to presume to be unable to handle things when the trouble associated with those things is not yet here. Projection is strong, but not strong enough to meet reality. It is an achievable goal to be fearless here, now... to be free of holding on to anger here, to be free of holding on to pleasure or pain. Even projections can be freed with a close touch of what of them is already here, then letting go, returning to touch the stone, this moment.

Day One Hundred Sixty Six

I find myself tired, then restless, then tired. Tired is a relief at this time from restless, but not always so. I notice that I can't measure either state without some opposite, such as awake vs tired, or restless vs calm. None of these states seem to have much inherent existence. Sure, I suffer from them, but perhaps not when I don't compare them. That requires being directly with them. Sometimes I see the comparisons clearly and that gives me the distance from them, or should I say the directness from them.

Day One Hundred and Sixty Five

Repeated touching and saying 'touching', noticing thought and bringing attention firmly back cuts through thought. Then the body sensations become more acute, with subtle thoughts about them, biological questions about well being. Then there is wrestling with a kind of blankness, a little doubt sprinkled over boredom and anxiety stew. It actually has a curious taste, but not one that is nutritious. Then concentration and restlessness. The mind does not at first like being stilled. But then there is bliss.... sometimes it is tingling, sometimes more ethereal. Sometimes there is attachment to it. Always there is some attachment to it. But it is more true, more in time, more here than thinking ever is. It is here like the body is here when the mind no longer argues with it. It is here like the mind when it no longer succumbs to directionless will.

Day One Hundred and Sixty Four

Another sunrise and another sunset. It's good to have a place to be, where it is alright to be, where it is alright to count days or thoughts or tasks and to let them go. This stillness connects me to one who is far away and to my loneliness as well. They come together here, become one.

Love taps on my window in the dark, whispers in the voices of the poor in town, leaves deer tracks. Love sheds desire, then pleasure, then touch, then skin, mind, even whatever it has touched in the past. Nothing can hold it. Instead it asks for us as offering.

Day One Hundred and Sixty Three

Examining bare feeling at first seems to be a study of two of the hindrances, desire and aversion. Yet, feeling in the body and mind occur before and in absence of craving and grasping, before striking out at that which interrupts our grasping. And so I am left with the sensations of the body in contact with the stone as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. What is pleasant without grasping? It seems mostly biological, although rarely short of craving. The body seems to crave also a continuance of warmth or smooth, and to avert from too cold or hard. It changes much more quickly and subtly when I look closely at it. It is hard to get to the definition of me before I write myself down.

Day One Hundred and Sixty Two

Walking and concentrating tonight. I notice many things approach my senses; trees in the darkening twilight, the smell of the clay path, birds and cars, the motion of myself. I walk under the interstate; many lives go by. None of them are there, no trucks, no sedans, no bridge, no canal. None of it is there but for contact with my senses. But in not being there it is free, without time, without space. Even in contact, and even in feeling, there is a free reality, an open universe that does not yet need to be anywhere.

I touch the stone, the way of things finds me.