Shams showed me Malek Abad Garden in Mashhad, where he was today. There is nothing greater than developing a friendship with someone you can share the phenomenology of your meditation experience. The intimacy of this act is partly at the heart of great spiritual friendship, kalyana mitra.
They meditated for 20 minutes, and then showed me the park. I kept meditating after they said goodbye and had a pleasant meditation. I was thinking that every time you go a level down, or you level up, it can be disorienting, but that's a good thing because often times meditation can feel stale and boring. Of course you have to make friends with boredom, one of the great treasures of the experience, but took much excitement is also possible, and you have to learn how to stabilize yourself. In the end, the breath is your constant companion and it can have many purposes, and stabilizing can be one.
Somehow I found out about David Viafora, his article in Lion's Roar and MorningSun.
Leonardo wrote backwards, mirror writing, because he was left handed, and didn't want to smudge the ink.
He is notable in his notebooks for asking questions. I think his open hearted searching is his greatest traits.
He did a practice that Buddhist do, and that's buying birds and liberating them from their cages.
One of his great paintings is Lady with an Ermine.
His apprentice and later assistant and friend becomes indispensable.
He studied anatomy, physics, engineering, painting, light, perception and on and on. I feel like he was the last person to be able to study things without feeling swamped by what is already known. He could be a generalist in a way it's hard to be nowadays.
Leonardo imagined the senso communis, the center of the brain that processes everything, and where the soul resides or senso comune. Every time I google the terms, it leads me to "common sense".
He takes his mother in, at the end of her life. He records the cost of burring her later, in her notebook.
War breaks out and they take the bronze he's going to cast an amazing horse sculpture.
The Last Supper comes next. He worked dusk to dawn on the work, forgetting to eat.
17 years in Milan he heads to Venice. Next episode.
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