Day Two Hundred and Twenty

Tired and restless tonight. A common state for me. I feel restlessness in places where I have an allergy, a slight headache, some overeating, some sugar and caffeine. I could work on the food options, that's for sure, especially at night.

More subtly, I notice tightening around my nose, around my stomache and breathing, and around muscles and nerves. My thoughts also are restless, in concert with my body. It is tax time, I have to finish something I am writing, and I am still swirling from a busy day. I go to the body in the way I touch the stone; however it is I just touch it, not too tight, not too loose.

Places in me begin to get some rest. Tiredness approaches and asks for a place to grow. There, I see...... Restlessness is the struggle against rest, tiredness the persistent call for equilibrium.

Day Two Hundred and Nineteen

This stone is the perfect size for my hand. My life has been a perfect fit for my mind. Both were given to me. Both are available to me for concentration, for opening up, for learning, for allowing nature to speak.

Day Two Hundred and Eighteen

Working with opposites helps me to let go and therefore refocus on concentration with less distraction. I notice that the stone is hard and heavy, but then, not so hard; it's not like steel, and of course 'it' is not particularly hard outside of it's contrast to my soft finger. It is heavy, yes, relative to most things I hold in my hand; commonly a quarter or a pen or papers or a fork. But it is light relative to many other things. And so the only conclusion I can draw is that the stone is part of a great continuum, having a notion of a stone only somewhere along that continuum where my history meets it.

And then there is the opposite of mind concentrating or not. I repeat to myself "the mind has difficulty concentrating on the feeling" and I notice first how I cannot locate the stone as a point or a vague shape pressing against all of my hand, but I let that go and repeat "the mind has difficulty concentrating on the feeling" and I notice the tendency of the mind to create a distinction between specificity and continuums, between anything it can pull up into it's labelling system, before it is willing to let go.

The mind stills with each inbreath and I leave just enough of it to bring my attention back down to bare feeling. The inherent stillness in all things sings to me.

Day Two Hundred and Seventeen

Concentration removes by degrees all those things that are not concentration.

We are not commanded to practice, we are not mandated, but come to realize that we are obligated by awareness itself to allow it's place in our lives.

That place is like a garden that is full of weeds. Flexibility, persistence, and practice are like weeding, resting, planting, tending and harvesting. We notice weeds because we allow ourselves to feel them, our attachments, our hindrances. We pull them up by owning them gently, looking at them clearly but not bitterly.

We need to rest and allow healing, because life can be harsh on a drawn or tender body, on a fresh or tired mind. We plant positive views even as we take up our negative ones, and we find that even our strongest pains of mind and body are simply tangled up in self-view, they have little power to destroy in the light.

We tend our peacefulness, our opening up with more awareness and patience; watching patiently for the remains of our once enslaved attachments. We harvest little seeds of liberation, for nutrition of the spirit, and for planting in return for grace.

Day Two Hundred and Sixteen

Practicing Metta. Noticing blocks to Metta; they feel the same as those for other meditations, attachment, aversion, doubt. Also something not to be held too tightly or too loosely. And then, it seems that Metta is almost something that happens by itself; it needs trust... I find trust in letting go of all of the hindrances I normally trust in.

I notice myself receiving Metta as I offer it, a kind closeness to my doubt, a non-avoidance and then a letting go that opens me up to allow Metta to be offered. How foolish I have been to not allow this washing, this opening, to happen by itself. I repeat the Metta phrases for a troubled friend and let go of wishing for things to be different; instead I want them to be different, to be the best they can be, to open in awareness and peace and freedom.

Day Two Hundred and Fifteen

It feels like there are imperatives for meditation. When I am fearing, being angry about, regretting, holding on to the future, I am blocked from allowing my attention to be in one place, to be gently held on anything.

My old mind says "no, stay with these problems, or they may overwhelm you.... you own them and you must..... you were right.... " and so on. But they are phantoms. When I think I am dealing with them well, most of the time, I am looking away and not at them. I can look at them with ease, especially if I let go and allow myself to concentrate, even for a moment, on breathing or the stone, or on nothing at all.

Then I have a less agitated place to see them from. After all, it is always the place in me that is agitating, not what is outside. I place blame on everything outside of me. Letting go of this sense of me is a must; and although letting go and concentration, release and bliss feel like an end run around my problems at times, this meditation is teaching me more about the truth of things.

It teaches me ease. Ease is the balm for my problems that attention can directly apply.

Day Two Hundred and Fourteen

I usually hold the stone in two fingers with my thumb on top. That seems to work best for feeling as though it is one discrete thing. Pushing too hard to make it into a pinpoint becomes an exercise in frustration. The notion of balance, of focus without forcing, works here as well for me. I let concentration do its work; of releasing, of being a base for insight, of calming.

Sometimes I think 'if only I could carry this at all times I would always be free of habits.' But of course that is just the persistent return of attachment to self, and what on earth could that be free from?

Day Two Hundred and Thirteen

Meditation reveals that unhappiness is only on the surface, where things are slippery.

Happiness seems to come in a couple of places. When I am concentrating, I disconnect from things and plans that I am attached to, usually by degrees, recognizing that which I am not concentrating on, and not holding it tightly, going back to concentrating, and sometimes being distracted again and returning briefly to noticing how I am wrapped around something, attached or repelled.

Later, happiness is more broad and deep, a knowing of what has value, which is not intellectual at all, it is very much a direct relationship of body and mind to things I come in contact to, without much worry or second-guessing.

But surprisingly, I find that this comes not from freeing me from my objects of attachment, though it would seem so. Rather, through concentration, 'I' become literally non-separate from what I am in contact with, and then simply not there. What remains is information, exploration, and inspiration, all relative I suppose to more subtle states of 'me', which need more applied effort to vanish in a deeper return to non-separateness.

Two Hundred and twelve

The mind picks up everything and befuddles it, but only to a point. Not holding too lightly or too strongly are so helpful, and can at times pierce through all of the thought, in spite of a swirl of thoughts about what and where something is being held.

It's surprising how even a few moments of deep concentration bring every object into its resonant glory; colors, shapes, air, body, even thought become stripped of their confines in time and space; the mind lets go of them... although of course it lies in wait somewhere for beliefs to wander, drunken, into its wild and solitary field.

Day Two Hundred and eleven

Concentration brings peace to my mind, which all too often repays the favor with doubt and restlessness. I take the bait and try and find something to extinguish these hindrances. Running around the dwelling of my mind, I find nothing that works.

None of my healthy responses need to fight or run away. must realize that I have everything I need right here to encounter whatever arises.

After all, I've always had everything I need right here to make my life an insubstantial fantasy.

Day Two Hundred and Ten

Wishing well to all beings tonight. Considering all of my negative thinking as if each thought were a being in need of equanimity. This brings up the probability that each thought has its own life, whether wholesome or unwholesome. This is unsettling, for it is easy to consider negative thinking as not mine, but none of it is mine.

Metta does not feel like thought although it starts that way. It feels like awareness, which feels like a resting place, a healing place where all beings, all thoughts are healed, where right views walk nobly.

Day Two hundred and nine

Touching a wide range of feeling, returning to touch of the stone. It is a little bit funny, this life. Meaning shows up in unexpected places. The stone brings me back to center, to more neutral for a time. But I notice pleasure, sadness, joy and their unique gifts. I consider the human condition, to intimately know our limitations in space and time but to bear them gently.

Day Two hundred and eight

I can't find any part of my body tonight that is not a little stressed. I find pressure behind my eyes and in my sinuses, the weight of my head, tightness in my chest and breathing, aches in my muscles.... none of it strong like I have a cold, more like something that I don't normally notice, that is very biological, always there, tensions that move me toward and away from things, that resist like the mind real relaxation, complete letting go.... in fact the various tensions have been there all week, and it is more the subtle reactions to them than even the aches and pains which are the problem... Being always in a state of readiness, always in a state of preparing to go and do or be careful in the body.... I notice that what I do not let go of is simply whatever is going on, and I am able to hold on in the most subtle, unthinking ways.

Day Two hundred and seven

Watching with an eye that seems to have no limit to its adornments, each one more subtly guarding the vision of change.

Day Two hundred and six

Sensation seems to have a relationship to time. Pleasure brings the illusion that time is not changing things, that it is giving us more of what we want at the time. Desire is like an engine that appears to gear things down to our liking. The mind refines desire until it is more abstract, ultimately 'non-dual', beyond this or that, an achievement of the complete stopping of time.

But time does not stop, it flows. Sensation is not a satisfactory thing to cling to, either in body of mind. We are these composite things, left next to the eye's torn veil.

Day Two hundred and five

Concentrating, I learn to stay in one place. Staying in one place, I learn to hold gently. Holding gently, I learn to bear with change around me. Bearing with change, I learn to let go. Letting go, I learn that I am not separate. Knowing that I am not separate, I learn that I am not my perspective. Not having perspective, I expand. Expanding, I offer gratitude to awareness, and I make sure it is with me.

Day Two Hundred and four

Asking what brings happiness tonight. The revelations that arise from simple contact are like a great grinding wheel that tears away what I thought I was. Harmony is often more jagged than expected, but only to the lifeless teddies of expectation. Heaven forbid that the universe sounds like Jazz. I don't care for it.

Day Two Hundred and three

Considering the struggle to be, to find out who I am. This is brought about just by being quiet, just by being in one place, perhaps with some impatience added..... spiraling away from the center quickly I am lost in worry about who I have been and who I will be. But being with that now is not so bad... even the worry I recognize as part of who I am, I accept it.

It occurs to me that I lay some concept of stopping, of stillness against the whirlwind of time; the past and future. I misrepresent the present moment as something different, something solid.

I am growing here, but I am not mature. I am being happy here, but I am not happy. Somehow, I am made of all the world's troubles since beginingless time. How else can I be here? Metta does not bring a picture of dinner to the hungry, it brings dinner.

As someone else said, love picks me up and spins me 'round; and sets me right back down where I belong.

Day Two Hundred and two

I feel my body reacting to dinner, to having been out in the rain, to tiredness, and to restlessness. I notice how rarely I am not reacting. I notice happiness rising up when I let my states of mind and body be, although its much easier with body. I can get closer, less tangled than with thought so that I can accept.

Spring waits a little bit longer here in Massachusetts, hidden under the cover of rotted fall leaves for months. It feels the rain. Maybe it is a little restless, but nature is more concert than reaction, more easily accepting than struggling. Otherwise, how could it have saved the energy to come back?

Day Two Hundred and one

Stuck with unfinished and stressful thoughts today. Noticing them, and how so often I think that I have encountered them and I haven't. I let awareness approach them more fully, all the parts of them. I was foolish to think that awareness was tired, it even underpins tiredness with open peacefulness. It is never tired. Awareness is eager to go to work, the good doctor that it is. My heart opens in its tireless work.

Day Two Hundred

Since it is not the task at hand, it may only be slightly useful to reflect on the notion of the self during concentration, nevertheless I do. In the state that is felt as release, of concentration that leads to an unbound feeling, the self is at last become more elastic, less 'there'. Concentration seems to be a deeper and deeper base for the self to dissolve.

There is such struggle for the mind to define itself, within opposites, within constructs of time and space, much of it in relation to this little rock. The mind breathes easily, drinks deeply of the philosophy of emptiness, when it is steady.

Day One Hundred Ninety-nine

Tonight I quickly find peace with concentration. I feel the heaviness and lightness of the stone. I notice a deeper sense of a continuum of weight. Whatever weight there is feels defined by histories of pressure against hand, of hand in air, and the fluidity of many things. Even mind feels fluid in balance to the deep pause of concentration. Concentration takes on an air of deepening definition balanced in the totality of things. The edge of impermanence and not-self disturb my self concept for a while, but I find balance there.

At last I am toppled by unsatisfactoriness. Tonight it is a subtle clinging to the concept of balance as a way out, which is unhappily balanced, at least for a time, by the law of change.

Day One Hundred Ninety-eight

Looking for the three marks in touching. I notice that the stone is impermanent; it feels different each session, different each moment. In fact there are no discrete moments with it, notwithstanding apparent ones that bring concentration closer. I notice that it is without self, without a separate being. Although it is a stone upon which to concentrate, it is only defined by non-stone, the other elements of air, fire and water (that is, it is still, cool, and not flowing). I notice that it is unsatisfactory, it tumbles over the edge of existence, it passes away, it offers no solace.

Yet it remains for a time, and I change. My sense of self is tested, measured against a little unwavering place.

Day One Hundred Ninety-seven

How does attention wrap around thought if attention, in it simplest form, is free? Certainly it can't be the attention, can't be mindfulness that wraps around. It must be something that passes for mindfulness or attention.

Often we start out quite mindful of our task, quite open to the activity we are engaging in. But by degrees we lose perspective, get carried away, find ourselves lashing out or isolating, nervous or lethargic toward it.

I'm sure it is the ego's hijacking of the attention, all of this activity is me and mine, and therefore any changes that bring attraction or aversion create a supposed attention toward things. The problem seems to be that we mistake thought, mistake targets of attention for attention, and we miss the impulses born of the ego entirely.

Day One Hundred Ninety-six

Feeling the stone for what it is. It is on the heavy side and then on the light side, both in relation to my mood, my feeling, my hand. It is pleasant, and then unpleasant, and neutral after a while. At times it is even nothing at all, out of touch in a way. Finally it returns with a new significance, an anchor in a storm. Until this anchor I did not even recognize the storm, the attachment, the aversion, the doubt. Storm and stone are still a good life, a sturdy little house on an emerald coast, knowing it's place, weeping and laughing with the clan voice of the wind.

Day One Hundred Ninety-five

Sleepy and full of thoughts tonight, moods really, vague and disconnected recollections of other places and lives... most of them mine.. What to do with them? I am comfortable knowing that I am made of my past and connected to many things.

Moods pull directly on tiredness itself, or maybe my struggle with tiredness... I am sleepy and I'm not sure I like it because I am trying to stay awake right now. So the mood becomes one of struggling with a blocked energy.

So much of mood is the energy of the body... When I am energetic without an outlet I am restless. When I am tired without a place to sleep, either physically or metaphorically, I can get overtired, tired as an irritation. The body energy impacting on mood... and yet, I can be peaceful in relation to any state.. any body state can be accepted and softened. Accepting and energetic body states are not tight or stressful. Things are flowing.

Flow feels like the right word to describe the best relationship I can have with body states. And flow seems to be emanating outward like a ripple from and with all states rather than being a mutual influence.

It feels like a different orientation; one that is touching mind and body without any restless struggle, any need to change any state.

Day One Hundred Ninety-four

Being with whatever is feels more simply learned through the body. Noticing the tendency to move away from what is unpleasant and toward what is pleasant. Noticing what happens when moving toward what is unpleasant, not for the purpose of more suffering, but only to investigate what is there. I have found nothing but relative descriptions of qualities combined with struggle with desire to move away and being unable to. Since I cannot move away, I can investigate the possibility of letting go of moving away. Sitting with pleasure, I have found nothing but relative descriptions of qualities combined with struggle with desire to hold on and being unable to. Since I cannot hold on, I can investigate the possibility of letting go of holding on.

Day One Hundred Ninety-three

I imagine myself dead and looking back on my life. I would be wondering why I had not discarded ever wish, every regret, each grip; why I had not allowed letting go to reveal the information about how things work, why I needed to wait until I had died.

I am in touch here, not in control. A secret the dead know, and rarely speak.

Day One Hundred Ninety-two

I touch stone and notice the consciousness of the body. I think "touching" and know that I cannot think touching without touching. I feel the characteristics of lightness, heaviness, smoothness, roughness, hardness and softness. I think them first and then know that I cannot think them without touching them. I notice thinking pulsing from touch.

I sift out the thinking and ask what is left; only each characteristic. I stay with one characteristic; the most dominant which is tonight lightness. I see a hundred thoughts in an instant which categorize the lightness. I sift them out, let them drop while still touching. Suddenly there is lightness without much thought. Then there is no lightness because there is no comparison. The stone has no qualities relative to me, to history, to other things. And yet I touch the stone.

Ah, there, there are qualities, each relative to their opposite. The stone is light relative to heaviness. Immateriality skips across my mind leaving a row of widening ripples.

Day One Hundred Ninety-one

Concentration feels like the center of things, but it may not be all things. I notice the pull back toward what is known, before letting go happens. Sometimes I experience irritation. I rarely notice that I get tangled in irritation; or see it as a combination of me and the senses... usually I blame myself or the external environment. Sometimes I race to become calm before a presumed irritation will happen.

Sometimes concentration pulls me toward a center, sometimes it sits still and the world opens. It seeks to find all of me, and so I must lose myself.

One Hundred Ninety

One more meditation at the edge of everything. I'm breathing, not looking for extra information, additional clues, yet my curiosity is unstoppable.

What is curiosity without too much attachment, without too much dullness? God, it's a bright thing, like the way Venus would sometimes be mistaken for a train coming down the track.