I learned about guided relaxation early. I took a class in the fifth grade with a girl I considered my best friend in the way that fifth graders are wont to do. It may have been a class in meditation, but we were kicked out not long after it started, Read more…
M turned 53 today. Nonmeditation tonight because we spent too long in town, eating fancy pizza and cheap pie. The latter with an old friend of mine from high school who has been a great friend to us both since we moved here. It was a good night of delicious Read more…
Brief note: today I tried my first real tonglen meditation, guided (via an app)(I know, but it has some good teachers and the best bell sounds that I’ve found if I just want the timer). First, I read what Pema Chödrön had to say about it, and then I tried Read more…
I was exceedingly distracted by social media today. The March Shredness project has so many great essays and essayists and I am enamored with the conversations happening and the terrible videos. Add to that trying to put some panels together for NonfictionNow in Phoenix in November, and FB and Twitter Read more…
I was going to sit tonight, but it is too late and I need to start getting to bed earlier, not using constructed parameters as rigid requirements that result in poor self care. Things I did today: Nearly burned the house down (it’s fine; everything’s fine) Got mad at the Read more…
Today’s slogan is, In postmeditation, be a child of illusion. This is slogan number six, because I completely skipped the first one. I read all about it and then promptly absorbed it as something other than a slogan: First, train in the preliminaries. That is really what I am doing Read more…
Today I spent much of the day repping my March Shredness essay, trying to “win.” This goes against what I read today, but Pema Chödrön stresses the need to lighten up, so I will go easy on myself for still having ego and attachment to my writing. The first slogan, Read more…
Yesterday and today I read from Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are. She is an American Buddhist nun, and she founded a Tibetan monastery in Nova Scotia for Westerners. The first chapters of Pema’s book deal with bodhicitta, the awakened/saddened heart, and the beginnings of tonglen meditation, which has as Read more…
My days are too full of useless tasks and not full enough of those I need. Im going to bed too late and not sitting, tonight I read about and then listened to a talk on tonglen, or loving kindness. More tomorrow.
I’d put something off for awhile, and today I finally had to knuckle down and spend 3 dumb hours on it, that I could have spent doing innumerable other, more pleasant things. Now it is late, and I have not made time to exercise or meditate. Some days just get Read more…