Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Taking Care of Your Anger Take the moment between stimulus and response to choose.  Act. Don't re act. This is one of my favorite mantras with my kids. Act. Don't re act. They have been taught how to look for the warning signs that they're getting angry. Clenched muscles. Tight jaw. Faster breathing.  And then to use one of their techniques to keep an even keel and be deliberate about what they do rather than just give in to impulse.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod),  Weathering Strong Emotions  I'm calm. I'm quick. I'm incisive I'm kind and helpful. I'm a good influence. I'm a good listener and give solid advice. I encourage others when they do well, praising them in front of their peers. I support those who keep trying to improve. I am usually ready to overlook small accidents and errors. I try to teach others what I know and to respect others enough to learn from them. These are all things I can bring to the table besides emotions. I should do that more.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Blocks and Knots I know I've blocked some things from becoming cancerous in my mind since I've begun studying Stoicism more in depth and Buddhism at all. I know there are things I would have let dwell rent-free in my head without my training and pokopton status. I'm working on it. I'm always working on it. Or, at least, I should be. I'm supposed to be. I'm not way too often. But sometimes it has 100% saved me from myself. And saved future me from now — but not here, now — me.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Blocks and Knots Accept, acknowledge, appropriate, assuage. Smiling at pain indicates an acceptance of it. It shows me that I can see it and recognize it without bowing to it or being submerged by it. It is an important step.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Seeds Identify and interrupt the pattern. Start there. Mindfulness brings me there. Concentration takes me deeper. Seeing deeply shows me roots. I want to write 'And treat myself with loving kindness' here, but I don't know why.

Today's Meditation(s): The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh  (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Seeds Accept and repurpose rather than fight and reject. This can solve that particular problem. End that cycle. Try not to start a new one.

Today's Meditation: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), Seeds Choosing the wrong even when I know it is right is a recurring problem for me. Now I know I can blame my jerk forebears who set me up. Serioudly though, it's definitely a habit energy I need to acknowledge, accept, and adapt to my life.

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.