Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Second Arrow I try to find a connection to the sublime, to something bigger than myself. That's how I really relax, when I need it badly. All the better if I temporary succeed.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Appropriate Attention Happiness here, now is possible. I've been and will be happy. But my baseline is not. I'm not chasing the illogical, impossible phantom that is an ever-happy life. I just mean that my baseline is below where it would be without my guilt. Far below. Minus my sin, my life is good. As someone once said (my memory and Google Fu both fail me), 'He who has only my troubles is lucky indeed.' But I can't let it go. And I'm a fool to be like this. More than.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Wounded Child Inside Mindfulness promises so much. I fear I cannot believe. What hope? No, no thoughts of harm, to myself or others, but a belief that I cannot escape the everpresent background pain of everything. And yet it was a good weekend. Funmy.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Wounded Child Inside Pleasant? Enjoyable? WTH? My pain scares the crap out of me. How can recognizing it, much less embracing it be soothing? be relieving? Assuage my desire for an absolution by pain and fire? But there's no forgiveness there. There's no salvation. Is there? IS there? Isn't my pain so special that it alone is unforgivable, damming beyond redemption so that the boddhisatva must be wrong?

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Wounded Child Inside It's a metaphor for the pain in mr, not a metaphor about a child inside me. Forget the child. It's to help understand the feelings of fear and helplessness. The important part is the pain, the sorrow, the suffering. I'm saying hi to my suffering. I fear. I don't know if I can do it. What of it try to recognize my pain and it overwhelms me instead? I fear the process I fear a negative effect. I fear being lost in it again.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Right Path Find by not searching. The path not shown. I'll know it when I see it. The trick is to see it. But I've caught shadows of penumbras of emanations of hints of seltzer-water-flavor-level glimpses. I know it's made me a better person. I will be aware and present, mindful here, now and maybe someday will find the way. 

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Right Path I am already someone. I don't need to become someone. [Reminds me of an old joke: when I was a boy, I really wanted to be somebody when I grew up. I shoulda been more specific.... I know it's difficult but what are ya gonna do?] I like making people smile. I am happy when I help people. Focus on that. Do that. Be that.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Smile of the Bodhisattva Fearless with the knowledge of inter-being, appearances and ding an sich , enlightenment here, now. It's all so easy to see, but I don't understand it yet.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Businessless Person  She follows Nature so fully, so accepting of life she sees as manifestation, inter-being, and appearance. Truly at peace. I've been this way, briefly before. I will find it again.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Businessless Person The Tao that can be told....... This idea recurs in major religious literature. It's trying to explain a sublime event in pedestrian terms. There's a reason things are called ineffable . Enlightenment is something that can only be hinted at, only be suggested. It's too grand a state to be simply told. So look for the signposts. Find the hints and clues and shrugs and knowing smiles and let them point me. Then I have to do the walking.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Three Doors of Liberation I am already home. There is nothing to do. Tonight we saw a favorite star up close and personal. Old friends, plus an old friend via his shows and movies, plus good conversation after. I had a great night. (That's why this post is *a day late.) It was not a night of non-attainnent. Nor aimlessness. It was a night of laughter and interesting thoughts, given the determinist, analytic, and mystic bents of my friends. Mindfulness was on my mind as I let myself exist in the moments, hoping to strengthen the memories and deepen the experience. Being truly there was marvelous.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Three Doors of Liberation Deep seeing — seeing past appearances (from a previous entry) — is a first step, helping to understand the inter-being of all things, that nothing is separate. Imagine rays coming from my subject, connecting it to its antecedents and its contemporaries. All'd be hedgehogs, spines pointing in every direction. The universe full of rays to the exclusion of all else, all inter-being on levels I cannot imagine. So that's my idea:find the connection-fabric of the universe, the spiritual background radiation on which all of our projections manifest.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Three Doors of Liberation I am empty of separate being. I am one with the universe. I am a teenage pothead spouting profundities. it sounds hokey, like the worst dialogue in a student movie about enlightenment: " I am one with the universe ." Ok, buddy. You just sit here, play with some tchotchkes, and don't hurt yourself, ok? But stepping back and thinking about it with purpose, it really is that simple. Now to actually accept that and integrate it into my life.

Today's Meditation(s): Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 7  “I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.” (trans.?) "...but some deluding power is holding me helpless against my will. Desire persuades me one way, but my reason still persuades another way. I see a better course and I approve, but follow its defeat." (trans. Brookes More ) "Discretion this, affection that persuades. I see the right, and I approve it too, Condemn the wrong- and yet the wrong pursue." (trans.  Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al. ) But a strange power draws me to him against my will. Love urges one thing: reason another. I see, and I desire the better: I follow the worse." (trans. A.S. Kline ) "But now an uncouth maladie perforce against my will Doth hale me. Love persuades me one, another thing my skill. The best I see and like: the worst I follow headlong still."...

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Three Doors of Liberation Three Doors of Liberation. This is not the first door. This is a prelude. Realizing that what I hope to attain is within me — for a different reason than why the Stoics claim the answer is inside me, but to similar effect — helps me more feel more positive about my potential progress. This is a good frame of mind for exploring the three doors next.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Zen Master The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. ~~~ Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. ~~~ Stop looking for the answer in a book. It's not in a book. If it were in a book, everyone would have found it. It's not in a book . And we found our cypress.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Zen Master Put a pin in that cypress. We'll come back to it If I can't handle simple mindfulness, how can I handle deep truths, seeing past myself and the world, to Nature and Enlightenment?

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), No Fear We can manifest and not manifest, change and transform, but never dissolve, never end. This ends our fear of death and thus that suffering. Though what continues may not have my consciousness, it still continues. Perhaps Samara and the river Lethe got entangled? On entering the new life in this universe, we are tabula rasa I? To what end? How do I learn from one existence to the next if I forget all the lessons?  Maybe this is the first iteration. Or a closed book test. Or corporal punishment for bad behaviour. Time to look into how these questions have already been answered.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Nothing to Attain Aimlessness and nirvana are one. Don't search for what I already have. Discover it. It's in the here, now. It's what I already am. But I don't see it. I still strive. Even in letting go, it's a gimmick to find the next peace. Do better.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Nothing to Attain Be myself, but not only myself: be the best me that I can be. Be kind. Be loving. Be courageous, just, temperate, wise. Be here, now, present. Be loyal, honourable, and trustworthy. Be honest and calm, friendly and silent. Be curious.. Be straightforward, simple, adaptable. Be responsible. Be prudent. Be necessarily, deliberately, forgiving. Be joyful.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Deep Seeing Permanence is not necessary for love and understanding. So long as it is, I can approach it with loving-kindness. So long as it is, I can appreciate it for its internal, ephemeral worth. And if it's an instant of here now that cannot be remembered? See it deeply and rejoice that I was here to do so.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Deep Seeing "...and told Ananda so." It has such a wonderful rhythm to it. I had to look up Ananda again. I'd forgotten. And I'm falling asleep. I apologize to me for shirking my meditations tonight.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Deep Seeing It is because people cannot see the impermanent and selfless nature of things that they suffer. They take what is impermanent as permanent and that what is selfless as having a self. Damned if that doesn't hit too close to home. Taking the Impermanent as permanent. Hmmph. Had I known, if I truly understood, perhaps my pain would be less. [REDACTED]

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Impermanence I love my family, even though they will be here according to their mortal schedule, regardless of my desires. So all I can do is read the story, pick up the sock, and prepare the food . . . before enlightenment, after enlightenment. They are my focus in this life. More than anything else, they have my here, now, because I know our time is not assured. I have to appreciate it as it happens or it is lost to me.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Impermanence Depends on the definition of self, I suppose. If self is simply and only utter sameness as the instant before, than he is right. If self means a group of characteristics that makes person X unique, then I don't think he is. But I can still appreciate his point about impermanence and nonself. I can see the connection and hope to learn about it through some further thought.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Impermanence In Book Club tonight, we covered Ch. 11 of Derren Brown's book, Hapoy . Entitled Debra, it had us talking about death and Impermanence. But it's hard to make it personal, to look deeper into the everlasting truth of Impermanence, which is exactly what I mus do to have any success at incorporating this teaching into my life.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Impermanence ** *** *** ***********. It helps my to appreciate what is still here. Immortality would be a great curse.

Today's Meditation: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Buddha This morning reminds me of an old, Vaudeville-style joke: "So I'm sitting in the doctor's office, minding my own business when all of a sudden...." Though I'm not sure why: all is calm at the moment. (Maybe I'm still in the build-up.) I wait for my doctor, accepting the sawdust of missed appointment times, cutting short any narrative in my head that sniffs of people in this office deliberately annoying me. I think of times when I've been the one off schedule, perhaps through no fault of my own, and feeling terrible for it, hoping I can make up for whatever burden I may have placed upon others. Isn't it only fair to assume the same of my doctor and the staff? If I dismiss the feeling that I am harmed, I stop the harm. I transform my suffering. Part of my Buddha-nature showing through.

Today's Meditation: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Buddha Pain is a part of me. Suffering is not a cancer to be excised, but an injured limb to be made whole. Buddha suffered. He transformed it. He transcended it. He taught us how to suffer properly, moving it to joy, compassion, and healing. I was feeling my special pain earlier tonight, just a little while ago. Riding with my son, missing what might have been with my son now gone, and feeling joyful that I could spend this time with my son here, now. It reminds me that tomorrow they may be gone. I need love them now, no matter how much time I think I have.

Today's Meditation: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. By Melvin McLeod), Interbeing  Everything is connected. If I look correctly, everything is connected. If the mundane connects, paper to star to mind, then the elevated also connects. The connections themselves are the sublime, regardless of substrate. 

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), A Day of Mindfulness  Whatever I do, do it with mindfulness. Whatever I do, do it with mindfulness. Anywhere. Anytime. Anything. Everything. Do it with mindfulness.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), A Day of Mindfulness  It's not a race. I don't know how many times my dad said that to me as a child. It's not a race. But I missed the deeper meaning he was trying to tell me. The work itself has worth. Doing the thing well is the reward. Satisfaction comes from my attitude, not the job, finished or not. It's not a race.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), A Day of Mindfulness  So pick a day, he says. Just one day a week. Simple. But it is too much. One hour? Ten minutes? A few seconds? 'If I find just one upright man in Sodom, will you spare it?' So now I'm bargaining with enlightenment . . . . Who will win? The fact that 'win' came immediately to mind shows a deeper lack of understanding. My impulses still pulse toward incorrect ideas. More work to be done.