Sunday

I am hopoing to get my new phone enabled to send photos to my blog. Inspired by Jayagupta, I thought it would be a nice idea to put a few images of what I find interesting or bewildering to share with whomever. I am still getting used to this idea of a public private space, as it appears to me is what a blog is. I fill it in in the comfort of my own room or wherever and anyboddy who feels like it can have a little look. I guess it is very post modern. The desire to connect yet undertaken in a very alienated sort of way. Yet it is desirable. I want somebody to read this and go, oh what a fascinating charchter. Why? I don't know exactly. I once heard somebody say that we read to know that we are not alone. So maybe know we blog or read blogs to know we are not alone.

Sunday is a funny day. The builders upstairs came early to create noise and then left againwhen we were nicelu awake. Very thoughtfull.

Each day I meditate.

I have been doing this for years. I kind of have to. Like breathing, well it is breathing. But what I mean is that it has a flavour of being essential. Like all day I go around being filled up with life and then I need a space to just be with life. Today I was mainly sat with tension around my chest. This is not unusual. People who are new to meditation expect that quite soon they will be able to experience lots of bliss or a mind devoid of thought or some kind of huge expansiveness. I too used to think this. Looking back now I recognise that this is wishfull thinking and it is the desire for there to be an easy solution to the human condition. I don't beleive there is an easy soklution. The big lesson I need to learn and most of everybody else aswel is patience.

In Buddhism this is called 'ksanti' and can be translated as 'patient endurance'. It also has the connotations of receptivity to meaning. Sometimes meditation feel like sitting and waiting to realise that you are alive and that this realisation will be liberating. I mistake life for being ordinary when in fact it is extaordinary. It is like glancing at something so fleetingly that you mistake it for something else, something scary or naff, when in fact it is quite the opposit. However it seems that simply thinking this is not enough to get this truth to sink right into our bones.