Monday

This is my personal dharma blog. Shams is my friend and we meditate online together. Shams lives in Iran, and I live in NYC. Shams doesn't care about politics. He's younger than me. We try to meet every day but it doesn't happen some days. Somehow this evolved into a personal blog, as opposed to my impersonal objective tone Buddhism blog. I write like I'm talking to a friend. The path is personal.

This graphic was interesting, sort of about the purification on the path, but not in a puritan way of unnaturally forcing things, but in a natural way. Explanation 

I think I had to read the Saṃyutta Nikāya to get why skandhas are important.

We met late last night for him. Usually the sun isn't up here, and it comes up while it's going down in Iran. But the sun was starting to go down here, and it was dark there. Shams gets insomnia, I'm glad he sought me out to support him. I feel really sleepy and yawned a lot during our meditation, but I like random meditation whenever.

I have a cold and my nose doesn't clear, so I'm having to breath out of my mouth. Theradithi got sick and then Ananadi got sick, and I thought I was morally superior because I didn't get sick, and then I got sick, and that crushed my hopes of being so enlightened that I didn't get colds anymore. 

I live on my own and only have to clean to please myself. Sometimes I don't clean the pan after I make my rice and beans. In the morning there are lots of mice droppings in the pan. Little footballs of hard poop. They seem to like my cooking though, and they clean the pan. Except they leave something to be cleaned, evidence of their existence. 

I had to move my bread off the counter. I guess that's why people have bread boxes, to keep the mice out. The mice like bread. I put it on top of the refrigerator, but they found it eventually, and found a way up there. They can get into some cabinets and not others. I keep learning. 

One dopey mouse was obviously sick and didn't run away. I put him out into the hall. Two have gotten stuck in empty garbage cans, I took them to the park, down the block. Ella, Andandi's cat that died recently, brought me a mouse once, when I was cat-sitting. I found it with my foot in the dark, going to the bathroom. Ella used to always sit in front of the stove, I think they climb in it somehow. 

He's eating ته چین, which is tahchin in English. He asked his mother Meygoo Polo, a shrimp dish, not Shirin polo.

He asked me what's up, and I said people were dying. Jimmy Carter and Linda Lavin. 

(I'm reading some hatred and some not blaming Carter for the overthrow and Islamic republic on Reddit.)

I talked about Ayya Khema, because I'm reading Right Concentration by Leigh Brasington.

"If I was a monk with some trusted people around me, that would be my life until I die." 

I told him to go to a monastery. He said he has to take care of his mother. He says if he could do a 3 months retreat, that would set him up. 

So lets do a 3 month retreat, starting now. He laughed. He imagines 10 hours a day.

I'm busting my ass to do 2 hours. I could try to push it to 3 hours. 

He's anxious about money and working. He thinks about right effort. 

Shams quit his meditation group. 40 people said they wanted to do it, and only 2 people showed up.

I told him how I threw a sangha night meditation, and 8 people showed up the first time, and then nobody showed up ever again.

We talked Sangharakshita and death. Both of my grandfathers and Sangharakshita lived to 93.

In the end we talked for 85 minutes so we could only sit for 21 minutes.