Vipassana Meditation Feb 27
Following the breath. While with the breath the craze of thought is readily apparent. Upper back and neck arching back. Hands tight, fingers rods. Jaw stiff, jutting. Lips contorting. Feet flexed. Breath steady. The sense of a continuous self is tenuous, a series of moments of attention bundled into a chain of me-ness.
Extracts from Chapter 16, the final chapter
There is no static self to be found; it is all process. You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home.
Those things that we called hindrances or defilements are more than just unpleasant mental habits. They are the primary manifestations of the ego process itself. The ego sense itself is essentially a feeling of separation — a perception of distance between that which we call me, and that which we call other. This perception is held in place only if it is constantly exercised, and the hindrances constitute that exercise.
Greed and lust are attempts to get ‘some of that’ for me; hatred and aversion are attempts to place greater distance between ‘me and that’.
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Mindfulness perceives things deeply and with great clarity. It brings our attention to the root of the defilements and lays bare their mechanism. It sees their fruits and their effects upon us. It cannot be fooled.
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Clear mindfulness inhibits the growth of hindrances; continuous mindfulness extinguishes them. Thus, as genuine mindfulness is built up, the walls of the ego itself are broken down, craving diminishes, defensiveness and rigidity lessen, you become more open, accepting and flexible. You learn to share your loving-kindness.
…
Once your mind is free from thought, it becomes clearly wakeful and at rest in an utterly simple awareness. This awareness cannot be described adequately. Words are not enough. It can only be experienced.
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This is simplified, rudimentary awareness which is stripped of all extraneous detail. It is grounded in a living flow of the present, and it is marked by a pronounced sense of reality. You know absolutely that this is real, more real than anything you have ever experienced. Once you have gained this perception with absolute certainty, you have a fresh vantage point, a new criterion against which to gauge all of your experience.
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In this state of perception, nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. Everything is seen to be in constant transformation. All things are born, all things grow old and die. There are no exceptions.
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Actions, thoughts, feelings, desires — you see all of them intimately linked together in a delicate fabric of cause and effect.
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You begin to perceive dukkha at all levels of our human life, from the obvious down to the most subtle. You see the way suffering inevitably follows in the wake of clinging, as soon as you grasp anything, pain inevitably follows. Once you become fully acquainted with the whole dynamic of desire, you become sensitized to it. You see where it rises, when it rises and how it affects you.
…
There is no static self to be found; it is all process. You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home.
…
The entity of self evaporates. All that is left is an infinity of interrelated non-personal phenomena which are conditioned and ever changing. Craving is extinguished and a great burden is lifted. There remains only an effortless flow, without a trace of resistance or tension. There remains only peace, and blessed Nibbana, the uncreated, is realized.
Extracts from Chapter 15
Meditation that is not applied to daily living is sterile and limited.
The purpose of Vipassana meditation is nothing less than the radical and permanent transformation of your entire sensory and cognitive experience. It is meant to revolutionize the whole of your life experience. Those periods of seated practice are times set aside for instilling new mental habits. You learn new ways to receive and understand sensation. You develop new methods of dealing with conscious thought, and new modes of attending to the incessant rush of your own emotions. These new mental behaviors must be made to carry over into the rest of your life.
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One of the most memorable events in your meditation career is the moment when you first realize that you are meditation in the midst of some perfectly ordinary activity. You are driving down the freeway or carrying out the trash and it just turns on by itself. This unplanned outpouring of the skills you have been so carefully fostering is a genuine joy. It gives you a tiny window on the future. You catch a spontaneous glimpse of what the practice really means. The possibility strikes you that this transformation of consciousness could actually become a permanent feature of your experience.
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We specifically cultivate awareness through the seated posture in a quiet place because that’s the easiest situation in which to do so. Meditation in motion is harder. Meditation in the midst of fast-paced noisy activity is harder still. And meditation in the midst of intensely egoistic activities like romance or arguments is the ultimate challenge.
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Carrying your meditation into the events of your daily life is not a simple process. Try it and you will see. That transition point between the end of your meditation session and the beginning of ‘real life’ is a long jump. It’s too long for most of us. We find our calm and concentration evaporating within minutes, leaving us apparently no better off than before. In order to bridge this gulf, Buddhists over the centuries have devised an array of exercises aimed at smoothing the transition.
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Walking is especially good for those times when you are extremely restless. An hour of walking meditation will often get you through that restless energy and still yield considerable quantities of clarity.
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We are learning here to escape into reality, rather than from it. Whatever insights we gain are directly applicable to the rest of our notion-filled lives.
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Your body goes through all kinds of contortions in the course of a single day. You sit and you stand. You walk and lie down. You bend, run, crawl, and sprawl. Meditation teachers urge you to become aware of this constantly ongoing dance. As you go through your day, spend a few seconds every few minutes to check your posture.
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Intentionally slowing down your thoughts, words and movements allows you to penetrate far more deeply into them than you otherwise could. What you find there is utterly astonishing. In the beginning, it is very difficult to keep this deliberately slow pace during most regular activities, but skill grows with time. Profound realizations occur during sitting meditation, but even more profound revelations can take place when we really examine our own inner workings in the midst of day-to-day activities.
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You start to see the extent to which you are responsible for your own mental suffering. You see your own miseries, fears, and tensions as self-generated. You see the way you cause your own suffering, weakness, and limitations. And the more deeply you understand these mental processes, the less hold they have on you.
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Ideally, meditation should be a 24 hour-a-day practice. This is a highly practical suggestion.
A state of mindfulness is a state of mental readiness. The mind is not burdened with preoccupations or bound in worries. Whatever comes up can be dealt with instantly. When you are truly mindful, your nervous system has a freshness and resiliency which fosters insight. A problem arises and you simply deal with it, quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss.
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Every spare moment can be used for meditation. Sitting anxiously in the dentist’s office, meditate on your anxiety. Feeling irritated while standing in a line at the bank, meditate on irritation. Bored, twiddling you thumbs at the bus stop, meditate on boredom. Try to stay alert and aware throughout the day.
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You should try to maintain mindfulness of every activity and perception through the day, starting with the first perception when you awake, and ending with the last thought before you fall asleep. This is an incredibly tall goal to shoot for. Don’t expect to be able to achieve this work soon. Just take it slowly and let you abilities grow over time.
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The practice of mindfulness is supposed to be a universal practice. You don’t do it sometimes and drop it the rest of the time. You do it all the time. Meditation that is successful only when you are withdrawn in some soundproof ivory tower is still undeveloped. Insight meditation is the practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness.
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Meditating your way through the ups and downs of daily life is the whole point of Vipassana. This kind of practice is extremely rigorous and demanding, but it engenders a state of mental flexibility that is beyond comparison. A meditator keeps his mind open every second. He is constantly investigating life, inspecting his own experience, viewing existence in a detached and inquisitive way. Thus he is constantly open to truth in any form, from any source, and at any time. This is the state of mind you need for Liberation.
Vipassana Meditation Feb 18
Coming back to the cushion after nine days I wonder where I’ve been. Awareness is more consistent during the days but its nothing like when sitting still. Back to the cushion, back to sensation after so much distraction. Delaying tactics. Delaying what I don’t and can’t know of, but think I do. Certainly sensation. Gross sensation as they say. And that means pain. And there’s a response to it that can be seen and understood and so pain isn’t what we think. And the pains themselves, forever subtly changing, even if in their intensity it will seemingly last forever. In listening there is shifting, movement, aliveness.
Such deep aches! I’ve been living with this, going about my days, weeks, months, years, carrying so much within the organism. It’s incredible really that the body and mind can do such a good storage job. Hold it and lock it down with thought. And yet there’s really no need. No one wants it, this task, heavy heavy task. It does a very good job but entirely unnecessarily. Just that we were taught this way, how it’s been done. In sitting still I am finding out simply and clearly what is needed and what is not.
Vipassana Meditation Feb 9
The pain takes me to the edge of what I can stand, the edge of myself even. I suspect this is what karma really is: the actions of the past are right here, embedded within us, locked in as stuckness, as ache, stiffness, tension. What goes around comes around, or maybe never left. We cannot get away with anything. But give it space and dare to feel and pay attention, in an atmosphere of awareness and equanimity and it starts to change, unfold, disperse. This is a right action, a karma undoer. You can’t will a pain to disperse, that’s furthering the same action that got you in this situation in the first place, but you can listen, feel, see, and the purity of that attention determines the rate of change. I just made that rate bit up; it’s not clear to me, but it does seem more instant in more complete awareness and slower in partial attention. Take a simple pain in my jaw. If I’m off somewhere else, thinking about last or this evening. In daily life I might not even notice it. In sitting, the experience is of pain, a bother, nothing much. Hone in on it, and allow it to have an expression, reveal itself and it grows and grows in severity. Keeping calm, watching, it gets so strong, overwhelming almost and then *!* it’s over. No pain. I suspect without the watcher experiencing it’s over in a flash, but in this dualistic game this is how it’s playing out.
Vipassana Meditation Feb 7
Needing less sleep. For so long, I have demanded more sleep. ‘If only I had enough sleep, things would be so much better.’ Now it seems I don’t need so much but this puts me up against the old demand for more. The irrational demand for more sleep is basically terrified, escapism, wanting comfort, more comfort. If I’m not sleeping, what shall I do?
Awake at 0430 as if it was 0830, I sat for an hour, body still unwinding all sorts of tensions and aches. Now into the shoulders. Deep tinges and holdings there, into the neck. This is where I stopped before xmas, and haven’t really got back to it in the depth of the muscles there. And my face is still contorting, jaws, cheeks, lips, even the gums have an ache in them. It seems we dont want to carry this around, and previously I was only vaguley aware that I was doing so: ‘Oh, that old ache in the upper back, it’s nothing, it’s normal, I’ll live with it.’ You can’t get away with it with a meditation practice. But practice is not real life, they say. Yes it is. You are not different in practice than elsewhere. It’s certainly not an escape; quite the opposite.
Vipassana Meditation 6 Feb
Equisite agony, pleasure riddled with pain, bursts of ecstasy, the poor body wracked with aches, the face stiff from society. Staying with the breath, staying with the breath, and in the staying, the one staying getting cleansed, observing more truly. All the while appreciating the realness of it, the simplicity of sitting still and listening, breathing, watching, feeling. I really appreciate this in a world of incessant action with such value and emphasis on doing. It’s so very overrated.
Incredibly centred and energetic throughout the day, completing work tasks with ease, mind clear. And for the first time I was looking forward to returning to the cushion this evening, to resume this ‘work’, despite the agonies of this morning. The feelings are real and I want more of this genuine experience. To come out of suffering, what more is there to do? A rather peaceful session this eveing, drowsy in the middle of it, body not moving very much. Some facial changes, into the mouth and lips where there’s often a deep soreness. Otherwise, staying close to sensation and breath, explosions in stillness.
Vipassana Meditation 5 Feb
It’s easy to think that the watcher is the ‘real me’, my ‘true self’, pure, and that feelings and thoughts are ‘not me’. What gives the game away is the conflict in this situation, the friction between me and what’s going on. How could there be a friction if it was pure watching? No, the watcher, full of ‘should’, likes and dislikes and is subtly distancing itself from sensation and preferring something else, or approving. Today’s agitation turned out to be resistance and dislike to a feeling of nausea Previously I would spend the day fleeing from something, not really sure what, resorting to agitated escape, muddled. Now that I am not who I thought I was, not the pure and true self, even if there is such a thing, and seeing that I am the same as sensation neutralises it.
Vipassana Meditation 4 Feb
It seems it’s more about the body than the mind at the moment. I really did not expect such strong bodywork in this practice. Not bodywork in that I am manipulating the body or energy in some way but bodywork as in the body is working something out. Left alone in an hour of silence, not doing anything outwardly, no movement, it seems to take the opportunity to unwind. This is taking the form or shaking, rotation, juddering, tensing and releasing, swinging, clenching, expressions. Bringing awareness into the head and face set the right arm off immediately, a deep ache at the wrist, arm shaking faster than I can shake it. The lower jaw jutted out. The head shook, mouth slackjaw, the torso rotated in circles until I thought I was going to be sick, the head rotated, the shoulders arched forward, the legs, buttocks tensed, the feet flexed and released. Not all of these simultaneously, but sometimes so. All the while maintaining some kind of equanimity, and sometimes thoughts remembering or planning. Nothing too unusual in the mind and very cathartic in the body.
Vipassana Meditation 31 Jan 2013
The mind naturally goes back over the day when it has the chance, while sitting, or when lying in bed before sleep. If there is no current concern, there is more space for the day to re-live or relieve itself and of some order to come. The no-current-concern state can come by simply being aware of the breath for a while. In meditation the approach and attitude seems to be far more important than the content. If the approach is right, the content changes on it’s own. If the focus is on content, without an equanimous approach, the content wins out and gets twisted up and gets to continue its reactionary and habitual pattern.
Vipassana Meditation 30 Jan 2013
It’s very simple, listen to each part of the body. It’s not simple because of what the body has been through, what the mind has been through, and suddenly the body is being listened to and the mind is learning how to listen. It’s very simple, each sensation is happening right now. It’s not simple because the brain has ideas about each sensation and decides to like it or dislike it. We are encouraged in this response – like; dislike – so much so that it seems a natural response, healthy even. It’s very simple, you don’t have to do that, to respond in any form of judgement. It’s not simple because even though we don’t have to, the habit of doing, of judging, subtle or not, is ingrained. It’s very simple, habit can be seen within this quieter time, and has chance to understand itself and even to retire. I am a habit and I’ve been given permission to retire. It’s not simple because the brain and nervous system is the most complex structure in the known universe. It’s simple, it has its own intelligence.
Vipassana Meditation 28 Jan 2013
am 1hr
Back to the cushion. Inner smile at doing so. Awake at 4.30, pre-dawn, quiet world. Somewhere there are others doing the same. Before sleeping on my 42nd Birthday I lay on my back for a long while. When lying, on my back is where things happen. On my side is dull, safe. Meditation is nearer when the spine is aligned. Thoughts playing catchup, undoing, getting up to date. Body playing catchup, face expressioning. Same this morning, yet somehow I’d forgotten about the arm shaking, quite what it was like for the body to be doing something without will or choice. Off it went again in grand style. The hour passed by fast. There was no obligtion to stay that long. There was no obligation to do anything, but I want to get back to the cushion. Back to bed now at nearly 6.
pm yoga class
Even though I’ve done no yoga except weekly class my back is the flattest the teacher has seen it. Way less tension throughout. Change your body by sitting still in awareness! Easy.
Extracts from Chapter 14
Concentration and mindfulness are distinctly different functions. They each have their role to play in meditation, and the relationship between them is definite and delicate. …
Concentration is pretty much a forced type of activity. It can be developed by force, by sheer unremitting willpower. And once developed, it retains some of that forced flavor. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a delicate function leading to refined sensibilities. These two are partners in the job of meditation. …
We might use the analogy of a lens. Parallel waves of sunlight falling on a piece of paper will do no more than warm the surface. But the same amount of light, when focused through a lens, falls on a single point and the paper bursts into flames. Concentration is the lens. It produces the burning intensity necessary to see into the deeper reaches of the mind. Mindfulness selects the object that the lens will focus on and looks through the lens to see what is there. …
Concentration can be used to dig down into deep psychological states. But even then, the forces of egotism won’t be understood. Only mindfulness can do that. If mindfulness is not there to look into the lens and see what has been uncovered, then it is all for nothing. Only mindfulness understands. Only mindfulness brings wisdom. …
The development of concentration will be blocked by the presence of certain mental states which we call the five hindrances. They are greed for sensual pleasure, hatred, mental lethargy, restlessness, and mental vacillation. …
Mindfulness is not dependent on particular circumstance, physical or otherwise. It is a pure noticing factor. Thus it is free to notice whatever comes up–lust, hatred, or noise. Mindfulness is not limited by any condition. …
Mindfulness has no fixed object of focus. It observes change. Thus it has an unlimited number of objects of attention. It just looks at whatever is passing through the mind and it does not categorize. …
You can’t develop mindfulness by force. Active teeth gritting willpower won’t do you any good at all. As a matter of fact, it will hinder progress. Mindfulness cannot be cultivated by struggle. It grows by realizing, by letting go, by just settling down in the moment and letting yourself get comfortable with whatever you are experiencing. …
Mindfulness is cultivated by a gentle effort, by effortless effort. The meditator cultivates mindfulness by constantly reminding himself in a gentle way to maintain his awareness of whatever is happening right now. Persistence and a light touch are the secrets. …
There is no ‘me’ in a state of pure mindfulness. So there is no self to be selfish. On the contrary, it is mindfulness which gives you the real perspective on yourself. It allows you to take that crucial mental step backward from your own desires and aversions so that you can then look. …
You pierce right through the layer of lies that you normally tell yourself and you see what is really there. Mindfulness leads to wisdom. …
Mindfulness is a broader and larger function than concentration. It is an all-encompassing function. Concentration is exclusive. It settles down on one item and ignores everything else. Mindfulness is inclusive. …
Mindfulness is more difficult to cultivate than concentration because it is a deeper-reaching function. Concentration is merely focusing of the mind, rather like a laser beam. It has the power to burn its way deep into the mind and illuminate what is there. But it does not understand what it sees. …
We are ignorant. We are selfish and greedy and boastful. We lust and we lie. These are facts. Mindfulness means seeing these facts and being patient with ourselves, accepting ourselves as we are. That goes against the grain. We don’t want to accept. We want to deny it. Or change it, or justify it. …
Too much awareness without calm to balance it will result in a wildly over sensitized state similar to abusing LSD. Too much concentration without a balancing ratio of awareness will result in the ‘Stone Buddha’ syndrome. The meditator gets so tranquilized that he sits there like a rock. Both of these are to be avoided. …
Mindfulness provides the needed foundation for the subsequent development of deeper concentration. …
The two factors tend to balance and support each other’s growth quite naturally. Just about the only rule you need to follow at this point is to put your effort on concentration at the beginning, until the monkey mind phenomenon has cooled down a bit. After that, emphasize mindfulness. …
This is not a race. You are not in competition with anybody, and there is no schedule. …
Vipassana Meditation Day 60
Two months into home practice. Mind. Body. Sensations. Reactions.
The key is to sit down before getting involved in other activities. If other activities begin, the habit of avoidance kicks in and the momentum is so strong. Of course, it is still possible to stop but I’m looking at the path of least effort and still maintain discipline. Discipline needs no effort. So I woke at seven, got up, brushed my teeth, splashed some water about then sat down. What could be simpler? Except: Terrified. The terror of yesterday that I kept at bay through occupation right there in my heart. Okay. It’s okay. Settling into my seat, I noticed my breath. Good old breath, always new. Moving awareness over the body I noticed the sensations and reactions in each part. After a careful down and up journey, the strongest sensation was still the terror, perhaps unsurprisingly, so I drew nearer, noticing any reactions to flee or try to force some kind of change. Nausea, and a hive of activity in there, energy buzzing in such conentration in the centre of the chest, heart, solar plexus, upper belly. Is this fear itself? What is it without the mind’s response of labelling and reacting and pretending it knows all about it? Whatever it is (if it is an ‘it’ at all) it’s been around for a long long time. I don’t recall life without it. I’ve learnt to manage it, keep it in it’s place, lock it down, or let it express within confined groves, but I have never understood it. This sensation is why I have been afraid to sit still without occupation, ever since I heard of such a thing. In my later twenties at the yoga ashram, the meditation sessions were largely avoided. In yoga, a brief spell of stillness only, and still ignoring it. In yoga nidra or other relaxation, staying in the head apart from superficial tours. Stay in the head at all costs. And now I am not; I’m in a practice that doesn’t allow it. Otherwise, I know it is perfectly possible to avoid sensation one’s whole life. I’ve done it all these years and I know how to continue to. This is about unknowing. And listening. And patience. And life itself.
Vipassana Meditation Day 59
I’m avoiding something and I don’t know what it is. Myself? 20 mins sitting this morning and a brief sit down this evening. Running all day and I don’t know what from. I couldn’t force myself to continue.
Vipassana Meditation Day 58
am 10 mins
Overslept. Then sitting in the rip tide of forward momentum, threatening to sink into the deep waters of sleep.
pm 1 hr
Following breath as the mind went through the day at work, thought softening it’s grip as the hour progressed. Unfolding of wrapped up incidents, perhaps purely symbolic, but valid in its raw expression. Exposed at last and undoing in a brief flash of emotion wrapped in mind-created scenario. The feeling of missing something, that I should be doing something else right now, vanishing as the breath became all there was.
Vipassana Meditation Day 57
am 1hr
It’s about wholeness, it’s not about getting rid of. Through some terrible mistake I thought it was about ‘getting rid of’. It’s not. After recent stormy sessions and then yesterday’s stuckness, today was careful, complete, relaxed. Although feeling exhausted I was able to rest within the grounded strength of the body, gently tending each small area of it, feeling how it felt, including all thought, sensation, emotion and tension. No more running, no more dashing through activity, there’s no need.
pm – Iyengar yoga class. More tending to and caring for the body. It’s important.
Vipassana Meditation Day 56
am 30 mins
Thought takes on a different action in the arena of equanimity and non-response. It’s like the old game is broken. If there’s nothing to bounce off, it cannot continue its chain of cause-effect-cause. I notice a biting criticism and instead of a response of flinching, rebuttal, justification, further criticism or self-depreciation, it’s as if the criticism is criticising its very self, because that’s all there is. And that hurts the criticiser rather than another party, like shooting yourself in the foot. The criticism and the pain of it is of the same nature, and the same process and of the same thing, so it is seen by the criticiser itself that it is pointless and ultimately powerless. This breaking of the setup that allows the continuance of thought allows thought to bubble, express, but ultimately wither. It needs two and the second isn’t playing ball. Where thought is valid is in planning and preparing, bringing necessary data and working out – in terms of practical, rational matters. But when it is dreaming or biting, it has no real value or place.
pm 30 minutes
Mind very hazy, unable to connect with body, daydreams coming and going. Peacefully. Felt like I could float off into sleep yet with an awakeness. Vaguely with the breath. Unanswered questions about work projects getting clear without deciding to think about anything in particular. Later, some more body connection but movement more and a few inches and I was off again.
Vipassana Meditation Day 55
am 1hr
Avoided it all morning, finally sitting still at midday. Yet sitting still isn’t how it was: so much movement again! As soon as I closed my eyes, an intense pressure came between the eyebrows, centre of forehead, face scrunched up, tears. Every part of the body tensed, released, tensed in different ways, arms in different configurations, fingers pointing like steel rods, wrists at strange angles. Then the movement really started, head rolling round, shoulders folded, body moving in circles. Then head shaking side to side dribbling all over, across my face, dropping on the blanket, mat, beyond. Not that I opened my eyes to see. I must have looked quite mad, possessed, and yet the mind incredibly calm, thought going off a little, coming back; no thought during the most intense passages. Again, spent, afterwards, collapsed in bed. During most of the time, breathing very fast and shallow, often through the mouth. And like in the early days, such pain in the lips, spiked by a thousand needles.
pm 1hr
Far less movement this evening. Very still for the first half hour. Fears: if I continue this, where will it take me? Insanity? What if I can no longer function? Is there social security for meditation casualties? And a sense that it will all be OK. After this I felt myself ascending somehow, walking upwards, and another aspect of myself was waiting for me, caring and wise, and a kind of merger took place between us. In the second half hour, areas of tension made themselves more apparent. Around the mouth, not so much the lips but a deep ache around the fleshy parts and into the jaws. A point on the right foot near the arch. The inner eyes. So, like on the course with the knots in my back, I stayed with each, noticing the subtleties of sensation, and how sensation shifts under awareness, forever changing. Then another sensation would come along, even an itch, and attention naturally moved on, until an itch became a tickle and I could smile. Later, a certain contentedness and peace that despite having a free day I took time for this. It’s easy not to but very unsatisfactory.
Vipassana Meditation Day 54
am 1hr
The move from daydreamy supposed freedom to the practise of the meditation showed the resistance and reluctance of the mind to look, listen, feel; preferring to continue in its own groove, feeling all right but only within its own protective boundaries. Conditional alrightness. The change of aspect into sensing the body offers change, a change demanded and yet feared. I felt fear in my chest, not fear of change in particular but fear of some potential future event, the event itself imaginary, vague, bundled together from past images, but enough to give the centre of the chest a fizzy bubbling. The beginning rounds of moving through the body were very steady, listening to each area, feeling how each feels, sliding from one area to the next. Later, the sliding got rockier, with perfect tension coming into all limbs, belly, upper back, neck, face, releasing as attention moved on. Upon reaching the very top of the head, some sort of dissipation of everything I’d felt before, then a direct line from the head to the base of the spine, light and white close by. By the end, my head was rotating, then the whole torso from the base, circling round and round until I thought I was going to puke. And that was enough for it all to cease for this morning.
pm 30 mins
Waiting at the train station, anapana, light shows, not from any internal fireworks but the passing cars dropping off and picking up. A simple, relaxed awareness of breath amidst the rush hour.
Falling Awake 