Time change

 I can see how the monks talked all night when they would gather every full moon.

We talked about a lot things this morning. With the time change we're meeting at 6AM instead of 7 AM. You can still join us. Support my friend in meditation with your presence. 

I thought he was out protesting the assault on Ahoo Daryaei that led to her protest of stripping down to her underwear. Nope. He says protesting really just leads to suffering. All the youth he knows are filled with hopelessness and use drugs. Nobody can imagine building a family, a life. 

The morality police assaulted Ms. Daryaei. They ripped her clothes and in the struggle she just let go of her top. They will cast her as mentally unstable, for what they provoked.

We talked about pushy religions and others assuming everyone is the same religion. I talked about Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism without Belief and Living With The Devil. 

And Great Faith, Great Wisdom by Ratnaguna. I don't really imagine saying Namo Amifou at death gets you into the pure land, but I really like listening to the pure land sutras. 

I asked him if they set a small sangha if he would be persecuted. If I came over and meditated with him and friends would the morality police break the door down and stop us? He said no. Probably couldn't advertize, but other than that, they could kind of do it on the down low. Shams doesn't think he's ready yet for that. I'm kind of hoping the online sangha grows and at some point the Mashhad people want live group meditation. 

Thinking about going to the Queens IMS meeting tonight, saw the teacher had this quote on her bio:

“You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.” Rumi

I’ve evolved to the place where I read mostly poetry. I’m really enjoying Sohrab Sepheri’s poems:

I have spoken to my neighbors through the wide-open window but don't understand what they are talking about.
None of them glanced down with love to look at the flowers.
None became ecstatic looking at an orchard.
None noticed the magpie.

My heart constricts like a storm cloud when I see my neighbor Houri
seated beneath the most beautiful and rarest sort of elm with her nose buried in a textbook of jurisprudence.

Shams says he sees the mind as a landscape. Clouds are thoughts, waves are emotions.

I see the mind as a rag and bone shop. A disorganized and overflowing file cabinet.

There are two birds out my window. House sparrows and fish crows. I’ve seen the occasional bald eagles, Cooper Hawk, herons. Mostly it’s pigeons I see.

He sent me this article: