Monochromatic Outlook

Again I’m uncom­fort­able because I’m fol­lowed around by this per­son called me. Being here at Tas­sa­jara has been very chal­leng­ing. I was afraid that I would­n’t be able to sit for long enough to make it through zazen, but this Morn­ing with­out real­iz­ing, I sat longer than I ever have before. Taigen told me that includ­ing the time before the bell, (we arrived ear­ly) I sat for about an hour and a quarter.

At sit­ting tonight I sat at my zafu and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed to sob. I was faced with a n over­whelm­ing sense that I was in the mid­dle of some­thing much big­ger than I am. I felt that here I am pro­tect­ed, and maybe I’m able to see myself in this refuge. I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take refuge here in Sang­ha in a way I’ve nev­er been able To before. yet I’m fright­ened of this oppor­tu­ni­ty to tahe refuge. It seems as though I am afraid of what tak­ing refuge means that I can’t do it myself, That I have to ask for help.

Only five or six more hours and I get to go home. I want to take it easy tonight, as I’m going off on retreat and am leav­ing at 6am for the Tas­sa­jara monastery. I’ll need to get plen­ty of sleep tonight. I think I’ll go to the gym on the way home, work out, pick up some­thing to eat at the gro­cery store, then go home and eat and pack.

Thurs­day is my last day at work. I’m get­ting pret­ty excit­ed about leav­ing the worka­day world, and I’ve been start­ing to get real bad about get­ting to sleep at a rea­son­able hour. Last night, or very ear­ly in the morn­ing we had a pow­er out­age here, and I used that as an excuse for my over­sleep­ing, although the real rea­son is that I went to see Juras­sic Park III at the Metre­on on the IMAX screen. It was pret­ty fun, although it lacked imagination.

Slept until 1:30pm today. I hate let­ting the day go down the drain like that. Of course, there’s plen­ty of time in the day to do a lot of things – I’ll be going to Alame­da soon to see Erik’s new deck and maybe watch *High Noon*. 

I got a few more chap­ters from the Tao Te Ching tran­scribed today. Chap­ter 16 real­ly jumped out at me in a very intense way last night, and I think that’s part of why I got through the oth­er chap­ters. It real­ly feels like a good prac­tice to me. 

I went to the dryclean­ers to pick up my only suit, which I bought in 1995 in antic­i­pa­tion of Matt and Mal­lo­ry Diedrich’s wed­ding. The suit did­n’t quite fit then; the jack­et was fine, but the pants need­ed to be let out as far as they could be to acco­mo­date my waist. Even then the pants were tight around my waist. The tai­lor who made the alter­ations tried to con­vince me to take the suit back and get a dif­fer­ent one, but I knew that I could­n’t get every­thing done and have the suit ready in time for the wed­ding, so I had him make the alter­ations despite his protestations. 

Woke up ear­ly enough to exer­cise or med­i­tate, but did nei­ther. I did how­ev­er make oat­meal for the sec­ond time, and put about a third the brown sug­ar in that I did last time. It was tasty, even if it lacked the rem­i­nis­cent fla­vor of instant oat­meal from childhood.

Progress point to note: Fri­day the 13^th would have been the third anniver­sary of Vikki’s and my domes­tic part­ner­ship, and it did­n’t even occur to me until yes­ter­day (Mon­day). I went through the whole day and two days after with­out real­iz­ing that the anniver­sary had passed.

I had a day at work that was not too stress­ful. If I had a few more like this I might not have giv­en notice on Friday. 

Noth­ing earth­shak­ing today, but I man­aged to bal­ance my email and my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at work, not feel­ing I’d fall­en behind in either regard. I final­ly imple­ment­ed the digest fea­ture on a mail­ing list I admin­is­ter and a few peo­ple have already resub­scribed with the digest. 

I made oat­meal for the very first time this morn­ing. Tasty! Also dis­cov­ered how much brown sug­ar one has to put in to “real” oat­meal in…

So much for that goal. 

I like my goals to be all-day suck­ers, but this time I hit my goal the very next time I got on the tread­mill. Ham­mer­head says this is OK because so much of run­ning is men­tal, but I real­ly thought that I had picked an ambi­tious enough goal so that I work on it for a while. 

On the oth­er hand, it is kind of nice to hit my goals, and it is a nice lit­tle ego boost that I can run four sev­en-and-a-half minute miles. I actu­al­ly hit four miles at 29:47, so I very slight­ly beat seven-and-a-half.