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.