Blackout

 

I had terrible nightmares, but the agility of mind that meditation has given me, I rewrote the narrative and empowered myself this morning, when I woke up and broke the spell of difficult nightmares. 

Shams warned me about possible outages of electricity. We didn't meet at 6 AM. He's gotten 2 guys to come along and I've failed so far to get any of my friends to join us. 

We ended up connecting and talking a lot about adult animation, the Buddha, and anxiety. Great conversations. We ended up not even meditating because we ran out of time. 

I'm reading about Thich Minh Tue, a wildly popular Buddhist in Vietnam, had to ask people to leave him alone, kindly. Imagine being so popular as a Buddhist monk that you have to tell people to go away.

Ferdowsi wrote an epic I'm reading a section of, and I came across Gordafarid, a female warrior. Turns out there's an Iranian storyteller who has adopted that name. My list of female warriors is growing: Boudica, Mulan, Grace O'Malley, Joan d'Arc. This list didn't include Gordafarid, but maybe she's fictional. 

Gordafarid is listed in mythical female warriors on wikipedia. And presently there is Ahoo Daryaei, a symbol of resistance in Iran.

For me also Greta Thunberg is a young warrior. 

I'm listening to THANISSARO BHIKKHU on the 5 aggregates. Shams sent me this series and I picked this one out because I've been focusing on the aggregates lately.