Wednesday, 9/26

Today I got so sick of listening to animal fighting sounds—chipmunks, squirrels, blue jays (nature’s Dick Cheneys) that I turned on the fan to drown them out. What a welcome relief, and a good lesson for those of us who tend to romanticize nature.

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What am I? I look and look, but have never found any “self.” Only everything else reflected without a subject/ object interface. But I still feel like a self, I still get angry (even at stupid things), and my habit energies do not abate or weaken. Why doesn’t the realization penetrate? Why does pure clear original nature take on so many bad habits when it assumes human form?

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Thoughts appearing in the mind during meditation is “natural process.” Struggling with the thoughts that appear during meditation (instead of letting them play out) is also “natural process.” That’s how we eventually learn to stop struggling and just let them play out.

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Sometimes when I’m stumbling bleary-eyed through the woods at 3:00 AM, I imagine how convenient it would be to have a bathroom in the hut. But actually, these unscripted excursions into nature at all hours of the day and night are a unique and valuable part of the retreat experience. The demise of the outhouse has separated us from nature, and contributed a bit to the dulling of human experience.

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