Sunday, 9/23

I’ve never had a retreat that went the way I wanted it to go, or the way I planned (even when my plan was to have no plan). Yet I’m never sorry. This is retreat’s great value. It helps us see these deeply-embedded ideas we measure ourselves against, and that continuously color our experience. Someone is never quite happy or satisfied? Who is that?

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You’ll never see things clearly until you see through your expectations, and since expectations are numberless, the process is endless. The Four Great Vows are in this sense just a realistic reminder that practice never ends. It takes away our idea and love of an endgame.

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Cricket sounds - nature’s “white noise.” It’s such a soothing sound. Even better than New York’s traffic sounds.

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A large grey spider (at least 3 inches in diameter) uses the retreat hut as his hunting ground. At night he’s usually perched on the wall a foot or two above my head, his many eyes glistening in the moonlight. His body turns each time I pass under him during walking meditation, like a tennis spectator following the ball in slow motion. I try to control that tinge of fear I feel when I’m directly beneath him. On occasion I imagine him pouncing on my neck, sinking his fangs into my jugular, and bleeding me to death.

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