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.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty six

Stories begin, of pleasure, of pain, in the theatre of the mind. I watch them for a while. I watch the whole story, where life turns to dust, and pain falls wet upon the ground. The stone is a prayerbook without gilt and naked; Of course, that is how faith finds the words, only in what is written upon our eyes, fingers, and what is spoken on the wind.

Does the Buddha live after death? The theatre empties to me alone, and a cold breath on my neck. I touch the stone, sweet usher of atmosphere.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty five

I may wish for there not to be time, but I must understand the impermanence of past, present and future in order to experience it. I may wish for release from craving, but I must experience the labors of return after return to concentration of feeling first, so that I have a true port from which to set all of me sail from.

Happiness is usually located in appearances. Why should I leave this sorrow on a ghost ship, with a captain's hat from some fast fish place?

Day Two Hundred and Fifty four

Feeling. Noticing a swirl of thoughts and other feelings; associations, aches, recent memories. Allowing all of that, except for the touch of stone, to be one, one breath. Breathing out, allowing that to vanish and breathing in the feeling of the stone. At times I am comfortable waiting while the large mass of returning distractions is just there, not me, and watching them change through time. While I am waiting I notice another part of me reacting, struggling. I bring that closer and a deep worry is underneath, the question of an eternal or nonexistent me. Yet, there also vibrates an equal peace, the peace of being beyond struggle with these distractions, with lines, projects, regrets. When did I send peace and fear to two different colleges?

Day two hundred fifty three

I notice the effects of stress after the stressor is over. You would think that the body would return to normal quickly. When I look closely, it's just residual cramps and lack of food that I mistake for something more stressful.
I practice patience for my body to feel better in the future. All of my suffering is leftover tightness from past history. There need be no suffering here. Or here.

Day Two Hundred and Fifty two

Noticing how much struggle I bring to meditation, to being with friends, to my moods. I notice that this struggle does not come from the issues themselves. Granted, on vacation for two weeks I might have less noticeable struggle, a lower noise floor, and I might presume that I felt better because of my circumstances; but again it is my struggle, my noise that is causing me a problem, not the outside.

How often a slight change of circumstances changes our view. Suppose that I had to dig a garden for several hours. I might find the job unpleasant, but I might be much happier if I knew I was going to get paid, or even just complemented for doing it.

Really we know what is going on. We get dismayed about circumstances because we can feel ourselves sinking, or we feel good about something that will happen because we can remember something like it and feel ourselves lifting.