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.