2 AM thunderstorms  Child hides under our covers Many May flowers From The Daily Stoic:  It's all too easy for me to become stuck on small and petty concerns, focused on unimportant, mundane things.  That's one of the reasons I am studying Zen, Buddhism, and the sutras: to broaden my perspective and gain a better appreciation of connections to things larger than myself.  Thunderstorms are bigger than I am.  Today's Meditation: Like finding my way through a dense fog, or a heavy rain, what I seek is already here, I am just not able to see it.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 4: Conservation of Energy  What is energy? Feynman offers a wonderful analogy to explain conservation of energy: a boy has 28 blocks and, no matter what he does with the blocks, they always remain exactly the same in both number and quality. They always remain identical to their original set. (The original is so much better than my summary. It's long and info

If I wish to have  A good life, I must study  My nature and purpose. From The Daily Stoic:  Desire creates want.  Want creates need.  Need creates power over me by others.  The less I desire, be it money, goods, approval . . . the object of desire is unimportant. Its mere existence creates a way for anyone who can fulfill the need to demand something from me.  There's a reason so many philosophies and religions, including Stoicism and Zen / Buddhism, tell their adherents that eliminating desire is a crucial step in achieving peace and happiness.  Today's Meditation: Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Is that the right quote? If not, it's close enough for jazz or government work. I don't have the mental power for permanent boredom. Not that I feel compelled to be busy at all times, but too long periods of idleness grate on me. (As Montesquieu's quote above implies, that one episode of Black Mirror would indeed be hell.)

New technology...  Nature is pushed aside.  Find balance, find peace.  From The Daily Stoic:  Take a 50,000 foot view — seeing connections and the big picture.  Take a veteran's* view — seeing with a practiced eye and finding that this situation is not unique, repeated uncounted time by innumerable people throughout history.  Take a neophyte's view — finding the naive beauty and mystery of the piece and appreciating its novelty.  Take the skeptic's view — doubting what I see and looking for unspoken assumptions and hidden agendas.  Changing how I see things gives me insight into what's really in front of me. I must practice shifting my mind from view to view so I better understand how best to proceed.    Today's Meditation: Sonde r  — Realizing that other people have a life, including an inner life, as complex as one's own. They are not NPCs to themselves.  They are not villains (or saints) in their own mind.  Reflecting on Tolstoy's

Learning a new skill Takes much time and patience From Plato's cave to . . . From The Daily Stoic:  If I can learn to approach life and its ups and accidents as training, it can help me handle mistakes more easily.  By seeing things as practice, if my "opponent" screws up, I can see it as a mistake s/he can learn not to make next time.  Too often, I see other's errors as deliberate, though they surely were not. When a car cuts me off in traffic, or a coworker doesn't get a task quite right, it's not about me.  It's about them and they don't know better.   The inconsiderate driver I will never see again and there's nothing I can do to improve it later, but it certainly makes my reaction better than the ire I used to (and, unfortunately, sometimes still) feel. The coworker is someone I can interact with, showing them the correct way to do XYZ and improving both their performance and my attitude at work. Today's Meditation:

Overindulgence  Blinds senses to truth, beauty.  Control must be learned. From The Daily Stoic:  Show me I'm wrong, and I will change my mind, but remember Asimov's warning:  I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind Disagreement on matters of opinion can be harder still. A lot rides on the effects of the belief in question.  This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.  ~ Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein's "Time Enough For L

Cats are zen perfect. Existing beyond caring,  Animal masters.  From The Daily Stoic:  How often do I fall for appearances? Do I miss the truth behind the veil? I mistake illusion for reality?  Promises for reality?  All too often, student. All too often.  Today's Meditation: This quote, from Tolstoy's book rather than the Daily Stoic, again serendipitously parallels the one above.  Is it an illusion?  Confirmation bias?  And I overlook and forget the misses?  Damned phantasms.  Perception is the theme.  Again. Though this time, in Zen, perception and non-perception are the same and lead past illusion to enlightenment. 

 Have I studied yet?  Realize that I have not.  Time to get to it.  From The Daily Stoic:  Control of my body can be taken from me by disease, other people, time, and more. My breath can be labored after exercise or stolen by choking or drowning. My mind, however, no matter what, is mine to control.  Even the existentialists knew that.  Today's Meditation: A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine 4. Diogenes Laertius, "Diogenes," VI.44,VI.71,VI.66

Silly thoughts invade Dawn's early contemplations. Thoughts like rivers flow. From The Daily Stoic:  And thus the purpose of these daily journals is stated clearly: if the unexamined life is not worth living, I am determined that mine will belong to those souls who are tested and have done all they can to improve. Successful or not, I'll not sit by and float my way through life, content with trinkets and distractions.  Today's Meditation: Examined lives at least have the possibility of finding the divine.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences: How Did It Get This Way  Physics is good at answering What and How questions. That is its purpose and method. Why is for philosophers.

Cats are Zen.  Sits in my lap, purr Petually now.  From The Daily Stoic:  The problem is you think you have time . ~ Internet inspiration Epictetus is talking about time. He's talking about losing it: once it's gone, you can never get it back. And because you can never get it back, its loss affects all that follows.  I must be present, finding now and not wanting to escape it.  EDIT: Serendipity . . . Today's Meditation: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki I don't get it. Boy, do I have a lot of work to do..... My wheel has no hub.  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences: Geology and Psychology  We cannot predict (yet, possibly ever) the weather because no matter the extent of our knowledge of current state, turbulence is introduced as the system progresses and disrupts what we would try to predict. We cannot (yet, possibly ever) understand the movement of matter within

Early rise, refreshed  Mind ready to learn from the  Masters of old words.  From The Daily Stoic:  Wisdom. Temperance. Justice. Courage.  These four Stoic virtues form the basis for the Stoic philosophy of life. The summum bonum of what we should pursue to find true happiness and contentment in life.  I carry a coin in my pocket which reminds me of these. I don't think about them enough, even with that small, weighty, reminder.  Today's Meditation: Being kind to others is a basic tenet of my philosophy of life. It is one of the most important parts of the philosophy that I try to model my children.  It is not so much as to idolize self-sacrifice, as these passages proclaim. It makes me wonder, though, if these ancient wise men know something I don't. Do I need to do more?  From Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman: Chapter 3. The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences:  Astronomy Astronomy predates physics, developing initially from observations o

New lamp to read by Shining forth on old wisdom. Lightning in bottles. From The Daily Stoic:  An emperor quoting a former slave . . . I should never look down upon a source of wisdom or inspiration.  There is a 100% probability that they have experiences different from mine and that makes learning possible. Today's Meditation: A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy Wisdom and knowledge are everywhere if we know how to look. From Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Rhetoric, Chapter 2. Structural Matters : 8. Reversal of Structure: CHIASMUS Technical term:  Chiasmus : repeating words or other elements in reverse order, resulting in an ABBA pattern. Antimetabole : reversing words (as opposed to purely structural reversals) Patterns and Examples  — Describing a reversal of action  — Suggesting reciprocity — Describing matches and mismatches — Showing relationships between sets — St