Day Forty Two B

Three highly neglected practices are:

• Word Meditation
• Thinking Meditation
• Seeing Meditation

Speaking, deliberate thinking, and seeing easily comprise 90% of our conscious activities, and we cannot ignore them if we want to bring perpetual mindfuless into our daily life. Many teachers have advocated walking Practice as the transition between Sitting Practice and daily living; I propose seeing, thinking and speaking Practices as well. And remember - the object is not the form - it's the knowing. Knowing that you're seeing. And being able to see their vibrations, hear vibrations in sound - it's all there is. We collecting these experiences and practicing the re-cognizing (albeit purely intellectual) so that when the time comes for these things to come together and take us forward, we will be ready. Sometimes, the going forward will be out here, right in our daily life, on some Thursday night or Saturday morning at 5B.

Touch, smell and taste are some of my favorite senses, because the pappan~ca is relatively easier to see and stop. Form - Feeling - Perception - Mental Formation - Consciousness. Chilly nipples, hot dog cart on wintry day, nice salty/sour tomato fish soup. We can see the perception, and the mental formation on a day when we're bright. But seeing, and hearing, and thinking. Grrrr. Especially words. Would that we could see words as selfless and impersynal as a clattering spoon, leaves rustling across the forest, deer jumping, ambulances wailing, even music and drunken carousing. A wrong word can rub me worse and longer than ten minutes of intoxicated revelers rejoicing in the street below my window. What I learn over, and over, and over again -- when you can't keep your mind on the form - keep it in your body. That is, if you can't focus on the sound, and the vibrations hitting your ear, like the second hand of a clock, then keep it on the annoyance or anger or desire you feel. Sometimes your mind was too fast and you now have no choice. You're already annoyed before you know it - so put your focus on your esophagus.

Things are so dynamic in our eyes - how can we help but stay engage when we look at them Even now as I type, I am looking at the wall in front of the table, and see small moving little things in everything. I nthis plain yellow wall, millions of little bits of vibration.