Nice to see you here Tim! Much prefer this forum format! I'll have a glass of water! Thank you. 

I think I get your sense of humor and am wondering why I need God's help in dissecting it> == lol
This post reminded me of another, in which some guy or gal (I don't rememeber the name of the poster) told me that they knew how my death would play out. It turned out to be very interesting (and could still be interesting if I have any flashbacks or flash forwards!)

lovely walk, sun not yet up, but the cloudless eastern sky
silver and bright, shading off into darker blues and purples to the west. 

Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 10/0:05:52/BBW/end 6:31am 

Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 11/0:05:53/BBW/end 7:03am

 a bit of breakfast, and reincarnation on DhO! I’m have acquired the new siddi of using music from YouTube as an emoji! Honors ever to
the Master of Smileys, Sri Papa Che. ;D 

 Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 12/0:05:54/bbw/end 8:46am 

Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 13/0:05:55/bbw/end 9:35am

 Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 14/0:05:56/bbw/end 10:06am

 Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 15/0:05:57/bbw/end 10:26am

 Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 17/0:05:59/bbw/end 12:31pm

recent logs for working toward vispassana noting. This is actually a history of how complicated i can make shit that is simple. but this vipassana is such strong shit in even the smallest does for me, that i'm just doing my best to taste it at all, not because it scares me so much as last time it ENERGIZED me, in practically homeopathic tiny doses. so i've gone as tine as possible. Meanwhile: a ton of security oriented crap spewed before getting to it properly.
 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/sit 1/0:05:18
 
Practice log/April 19, 202/sesshin day 7/sit 2, ended 4:16am/0:05:19
 
this Practice log, rated "P" for practice-oriented, Papa-friendly, until otherwise noted
 
okay, preliminary notes: it is my intent in these PF-rated practice logs to attempt to report them in the evolving language of the emerging pidgin drawn from the cultural interaction between vipassana-noting-aloud-style meditation i had been using in my work with Papa Che and my own established practice with my body-breath-word technique of prayer, which i had gone back to for its grounding effect during this, um, high energy period prior to my eventual incarceration.
 
to do so, i am going to have to begin by lay out some specifics, to facilitate not having to footnote every fucking metaphorical flight on my part, for one thing. Pidgin terms, seriously, da kine.
 
So: i will refer to my basic prayer as BBW, body, breath, word. The “word” part is the weirdly specific fire-tested mantra, which is as follows, broken up traditionally into thirteen distinct phrases:
 
with this gift of breath, let me first love You--- no hurry--- no fear--- patiently--- gratefully--- humbly--- attend--- abide--- accept--- embrace--- and not i--- You breath--- Thy will be done.
 
in traditional practice (TP, in pidgin, as it is as necessary and shit smeared as toilet-paper), and also because, as recent events have shown, everyone needs a lot of it, it is jumping off the shelves), i work with a rosary, re-purposed for this particular prayer, so more of a mala-type usage in practice, possibly heretical. I always begin with both mudra- hands on the rosary, thumb and forefinger of each on the medallion of the Mother of God, before any decades, and i say the whole prayer through once without any movement of the bead touching mudra-ponts, right and left, R and L, maybe, because they have distinct functions.
 
Also, i alternate direction from sit to sit, clockwise, and counterclockwise. In Catholicism, the left hand-leading direction is, literally, “sinister,” and so is along the lines of certain tantric practices, as opposed to the orthodox R, right-hand-leading, clockwise direction.
 
I begin the BBW prayer with B1, body, the more obvious sensate, usually tactile/feeling element that presents itself, the obvious blip, which is most often some qualitative variation of the simple pang/pain in my ass (PIA, in pidgin). I let that resonate and by procedure, technique, am intentionally alert for the second B, breath, B2, and usually it presents on the in-breath. step 3 is the word, which is as much of the prayer as presents itself easily. Often that is simply “With,” but it is seldom more than “with this gift,” on the first iteration.
 
This constitutes a complete iteration of the technique. Second iteration is the same, and when i get to W, if i can even remember easily where the fuck i lost the thread, i pick it up there. Say i did manage to get “with this gift”, i would then pray on “of breath,” third iteration, “let me first love You.” and so on BBW by BBW, until, “Thy will be done.”
 
This completes phase one of the BBW-rosary prayer. If i make it through the whole prayer, during any given sit, with often is so roiled that i am only able do do so one word at a time, i then begin, still on the medallion at the end of phase 1, with letters. W, word, is now is one letter. The letter prayer sequence is a shortened version of the whole prayer: with this gift of breath let me first love You--- and not i--- You breathe--- Thy will be done.
 
so in practice two, on a clockwise sit, it goes: B1 (PIA, e.g.), B2 (in-breath, e.g.), “w” (first letters of “with”). Still no movement, but with clockwise movement, that is the R mudra, aware of itself on the medallion. Next iteration is the L mudra, B1, B2, “w”, aware of itself on the medallion. next iteration begins movement proper: B1, B2, “i” with the R mudra moving to the first bead. Next iteration, B1, B2, i, with the l mudra joing the R on the first bead. B1, B2, t, R mudra to second bead. Apply, lather, rinse, repeat.
 
There are 67 letters in the entire short and sweet version of the BBW prayer, 6.7 decades, in Catholic. It is rare that i get through the entire sequence, even in the hour-plus sits of the old regimen, much less during this mania. I actually can tell, from what bead i am on, where i am at any point/letter during the entire 67 bead journey of a full round, or at least in principle i can, as it would take a word very math-like to actually calculate my location. But i could do it if asked, and i actually do have certain very well-established tactile landmarks that i know instantly, the our Father bead between the first few decades being the t from “with” on round 1, and the t from “let” on round 2, for instance, stuff like that. And, especially in the first decade, often when i go both mudras to the s on this, i quickly count the beads ahead. if there are three left before the our Father break of decade bead, i’m actually oriented and didn’t lose a step somehow along the way. If there are more or less than three beads, i may simply reorder myself to the “correct” sequence of traditionally correlated beads and letters, or i may just well, well i’m fucking lost, forget the rest of that shit, and look for the next letter without concern for overall oriention on the rosary as a whole. One bead at a time is deep fucking practice in darkness and secure.
 
I won’t do a phenomenological report for this last sit, but i intend to cut my next sit back to one minute, given my past experiences with the volatility of really trying hard to mix the “There is” noting aloud technique with my prayer/meditation, and see how that looks in a full on PF sit report.
 
Practice log
April 19, 2020
sesshin day 7
sit 3/0:01:00/V-BBW/ended 5:20am
 
note: bold-highlighted words and terms are tentative entries in the emerging vipassana-there-is-noting-technique/body-breath-word --- V-BBS--- pidgin. I will try to keep a glossary/dictionary, but feel free to stop me cold if you don’t understand a word as i am using it.
 
so:
a little shaky at the start, like a car engine not entirely turning over the first time, after setting up a distinct new timer set for (V-BBS) at 0: 01:00, leaving the old (lol) BBW timer at its current state of the art 0:05:20. There is in-breath . . . There is with this gift of breath, an easy one . . . there is sacral pang (PIA =pang/pain in ass, with degrees of qualitative nuance sometimes) . . . there in in-breath (this could, loosely, by called B2, in fast and loose pidgin, but in-breath is more specific, wink at Papa Che) . . . there is let me first love You, always an easy word run in prayer . . . there is PIA . . . there is no hurry . . .and thank God there is no hurry, because there is timer chime.
 
notes: so this is the first V-BBS PF sit, a little seed of practice, emerging pidgin practice language. It is so fucking exciting i can hardly stand it.
 
note also: Papa Che’s latest video gift to the world of practice is astounding.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKZkvLkG-EI
 
I haven’t gotten through it all the way yet, after two tries. First time i had to leap from my chair and go smoke at 0:00:21, just from the intro. Then, a couple of sits later, tried again and got to 0:01:35, really FUCKING ASTOUNDED IN A MILLION FUCKING WAYS.
 
That fucker is singing his meditation!!!!!!!!!!!! How can I keep from singing!!!!!!! even if i’m quite sure that Enya would make Papa-ji puke!

 
Practice log
April 19, 2020
sesshin day 7
sit 4/0:01:01/V-BBW/counterclockwise/ended 6:13am
 
note: counterclockwise indicates the alternating direction on the rosary, with the previous sit’s clockwise. Counterclockwise movement leads with left mudra, L-mudra, then right mudra, R-mudra, bead by bead, if the session gets far enough in the prayer for movement of the mudras to be in place.
 
much better oriented this time, there is PIA, warm and friendly, there is in-breath, and recognizing B2, there is with this gift of breath, there is joy, there is in-breath, there is let me first love You,  there is joy there is gratitude, there is PIA, warm, almost gentle, there is in-breath, and simultaneous with the recognition of B2, there is no hurry, there is sinking, sinking, on the out-breath, there is PIA, there there is joy, there is in-breath, and simultaneous with recognition of B2, there is no fear, there is out-breath, sinking to find there is PIA, there is in breath, there is patiently, there is timer chiming.
 
note: discovered what had been there all along, which is the natural out-breath sink toward the sensate base, and the natural  in-breath trigger for the word.

 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 5/0:01:02/V-BBW/clockwise/ended 7:06am
 
there is in-breath, there is with this gift, there is curiousity, after the last sit, trying to see the out-breath descent toward sensation, there is in-breath, there is with this breath, the repetition typical of getting really absorbed in something and losing where i was, there is sinking this time, yes, there is out-breath , there is PIA, just registering, sensate, qualities lost in there is excitement, delight, there is with this breath, same out-breath, there is in-breath and a blip too excited there is PIA, there is in-breath, with this gift of breath, there is timer chiming this one flew.
 
Nice!
 
Since you are keeping this on the safe short session side of things there is no harm to have more interest and enquire more into the sensate experience of anything that is MOST prominent. Im talking about bodily snesations and care litte about mind states at this stage.
 
Lets say its PIA that’s most prominent and clear to investigate ... there is ... theeeerr isss ... slower ... theeeeeer iiiisssss ... (there is this almost Listening during the theeeeere iiiiissss wording as you are sinkingthe attention towrds the PIA or outbreath connected with falling of the abdomen, your choice here).
 
So short session but paying more attaention to the sensate experience of the most obvious and investigate those preassures, sharp pains, pleasant tingelings, pins and needles, warmth, bubbly warmth , etc...
 
Here there REALLY is no rush at all. You are willingly letting many objects pass away without being noticed and that is fine but you do pay close attention to your favorite guest, that PIA or that preassure on the fingers from the ptayer beds or else.
 
What say you?
 

 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/seshin day 7/ sit 6/0:02:00/V-BBW/counterclockwise/end 8:04
 
notes: a bit of feedback from Papa Che, a suggestion or two--- fruits should be evident, for the most part in the report. Decided to bump the timer to 2 minutes, for this, as one of his most salient points was slowing the whole thing down to allow more room for sensate noting, and breath witnessing.
 
theeeerrreee iiissss iiiiin-breath, theeerrrre is a surprise of PIA on the same in-breath, warm and easy, like a hello, there is delight, there is excitement, there is with this gift of breath let me first love You, still on the in-breath, not in a hurry, it’s the world’s longest in-breath, time very slow and sort of irrelevant there major simultaneity, an extremely rapid if not chordal-simultaneity among the body, breath, and word elements of prayer, there is a bit of almost looking at the bottom of the breath, there is PIA, lovely and actually quite sharp, heightening with attention, playfully, flirting with pain even, but very very playful sense, there is no hurry, there is joy at the truth of that, theeerrre is iiiiinnnnn-breath, there is PIA and also, fleetingly, a sense of L-mudra touching the medallion, just a hint, but noticeable, notable, there is no fear, there is the breath at the bottom, therrrre is almost looking, there is an attention bounce into seeing, there is thrilling, a sense of thrill at the sense-mode shift, there is interest, there is PIA, attention still in seeing, the sensate element “distant,” somehow, like a bilocation, simultaneous but separate, if that makes sense, there is in-breath, there is patiently, there is the timer chiming.

 
 
 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 5/0:05:08
 
notes: so i always begin with both mudra- hands on the rosary, thumb and forefinger of each on the medallion of the Mother of God, before any decades, on my rosary, and say the whole prayer through once. If i make it through the whole prayer, during any given sit, i then begin with single words: “with” first bead, first hand, repeated, “with”, first bead, second hand; “this,” second bead, first hand (i alternate directions on alternate sits, on a working hypothesis that it may work different sides of the brain depending on which hand leads.
 
So the farthest i’ve gotten so far this morning is 1) body (oh sacred PIA), 2) breath (still alive, by all signs), 3) word:“with this,” in my opening full prayer, at which time it’s off to the fucking races until i either remember, right i’m fucking WORKING HERE, this IS GOD SHIT, at which point it is 1) body (PIA feeling better, now that you mention it), 2) breath (i know it was there somewhere), 3) word, “with this, uh . . . now THERE’S AN INTERESTING INSIGHT YOU FUCKING GENIUS YOU!!! . . .
 
Papa Che, you may stop reading here. Go watch butterflies and ants with that four-year-old of yours, i’m going to ramble, speculate, preen, and gossip now, telling takes and spinning strands of horseshit like a web to catch the unwary and the lazy and the innocent for my ultimate engrandisement.
 
notes: before my abrupt forcing of the hand of the Lord to send me to purgatory, I had as most of you know been working with Papa Che on a vipassana style noting aloud technique, with close attention to easy pace, curiousity--- pure no hurry, no fear wonder--- combined with the most accurate phenomenological reporting possible in my primitive but growing vocabulary, working out a common vocabulary with anyone who could relate to what I was doing at all, and so evolving both the technique and the language in a sort of helix spiral, two strands developing in mutual feedback. I know he hates this shit, but working with Papa Che was really an experience of grace, and a taste of salvation. "Working with" is the key. It is beyond guru/teacher vocabulary. He made the first slowed-down noting aloud video with me in mind, out of what i could only recognize as love, and it revolutionized my practice at that point to such an intensity that I went WAY THE FUCK OFF THE DEEP END, and so had what we psychotics like to call "a learning experience." Which landed me, not in hell, according to all my established expectations, and for which I was actually as well-prepared for hell as I can be, by the ongoing fear of God and knowledge of His justice as well as His mercy, but in purgatory. “Purgatory” is Chris’s word, from yesterday to characterize my current status, which gave me unspeakable joy to hear: purgatory is not hell! I provoked justice time, and actually in a weird way welcomed it.
 

This incoherent mass of manic shit storm is simply for the akashic record. Like: there is . . . in-breath, there is . . . tweak in neck, lower and left, there is . . . manic shit storm. . . there is next thing.

so:


 
This may be the only place i ever do this, but since it all comes down to this single prayer right now, and this asshole with its gift and pain, and this breath which could stop at any moment and solve every problem, i wanted to be explicit about my prayer, my specific, evolutionary state of the art prayer, which had its seed in 1985, when i was banished from the most powerful deep-all-in community experience i’ve had until DhO. “Left the commune,” as they say. I ended up dark nighting something awful, and on days when i couldn’t conceive of a sentence or write a meaningful word, i used to sit for the whole designated four morning hours first thing of my writing time at stare at the blinking cursor on the screen of my word processing program (Word Perfect 4, i think, for techo-history wonk geeks in the audience; the commune used Apple stuff then and i was pissed at them). Being also the slave of the writerly puritan work ethic, as well as clearly Called by the Lord, on a Mission from God, like the Blues Brothers---
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz9F_YmD6MU
 
--- to WRITE GREAT FUCKING NOVELS, it was clear that to write those great fucking novels i would have to get down words down first. So from the depths of dissolution or fear or misery or disgust, i would lift one finger on a journal page and type, one letter at a time, with whatever interval between letters proved necessary, usually finding a pace along the way---“and so, begin again--- with this breath”. (I had already done my zen rounds and my ashram rounds, and most of my mat time at that point was variations on watching my breath.) Over the years, this technique held up after cycles and cycles had pretty much obliterated everything else several time. Eventually i started adding the occasional praise to the mantra--- “no hurry,” was the first, “no fear,” came next: self-talk within the prayer on faith and what it took to type the next letter. Eventually, over the decades, through a tangled evolutionary bush of variants and periods and shit hitting fans and fans charging in to beat the shit out of shit, i arrived at a very stable prayer of thirteen distinct phrase/beats, which in times when i actually wrote it out in my journal at the worst of writer’s block/dark nighting, would look like this: “with this gift of prayer, let me first love You--- no hurry--- no fear--- patiently--- gratefully--- humbly--- attend--- abide--- accept--- embrace--- and not i--- You breathe--- Thy will be done.” I didn’t say amen, that fucked me up somehow. I think because i just went through so many times of hating every fucking syllable of every fucking thing, and those last two syllables just didn’t hold up through those, though the others did. Don’t get me wrong: this is not a I Never Wavered in MY Prayer thing. I’m just saying that as the dust settles around my now from this Most Recent Major Fuck-iup, So Much Like a Death, Except Still Painful, that is the prayer i find myself with, and to me it feels like it was first inscribed on a cave wall somewhere in Africa maybe 50 or 60,000 years ago and has been handed down from inscriber to inscriber unchanged every since.
 

 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 3/0:05:06
 
third sit would “normally” be my last sit of the day, and at the point of The Fissure, it would have aiming at 0:43:21, after sit 1 (1:12:19) and 2 (0:58:58). Since over the last four years meditation and God shit and scripture shit have pretty much taken up the entirety of my consecrated over decades, fought for in every manner of circumstance again all possible odds, often defeated never stopped fighting, four or so hour sacred “Writing Time” ( i hear the groaning of a host of past lovers, friends, mentors, and merely curious people and innocent bystanders, as i write those words, which, to most of them, was a synonym for “We are about to have a fight to the death and this conversation may well end our relationship”)
 
manic sentence protocol, no reader is going to make it through that last one--- and so, begin again, with this breath---
 
usually by the third sit, when i go out for the cigarette afterward, the sky is lightening or even the sun is up, depending on the time of year, usually still dark after #3 until the spring time change). And here i am, at 5:27 local time, in deep deep atemporal doo-doo.

 
Practice log/April 17, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 4/0:05:07
 
state of the art technical details, as best i’ve got it yet:
A. Apply: the proper email to respond to by best measures in any swamped in box will be 1) the most recent 2) email without either “re:” or “FW”.
B. Lather: if everyone could use “reply-all” for any input on this thread, it would be a great help to me, since i am trying to keep my full working burden of 50-plus-pounds-and-multiplying-exponentially of shit in one durable 25-pound sack.
C Rinse.
Repeat.
 
agnostic, Linda, i am delighted to introduce Sarah Elizabeth, a DoH newbie, but an old friend of mine from my days as a writing teacher. She knows all the dirt on why i no longer teach writing. I invited her to join the neurodivergent sesshin posse, and she was foolish enough to except. the rest, clearly, is her karma. Her sense of humor is slightly better than mine, and since her career is on the upslope, while mine long since zeroed out of its vertical dive in a pile of flaming rubble, now burned down to those ashes they bless and use to make crosses on the foreheads of Catholics on Ash Wednesday, she is also a better and more promising writer.
 
Sarah, agnostic does not actually exist as a self anymore, but he is willing to play along here. Linda is, just for openers, a well-known seeress and generally eerie new age witch/warlock/witchlock non-binary-gendered
 
(state of the art, direct from the uh, uh’s mouth: “any pronoun will do. I think a variation would delight me, but I don't know. I still haven't quite gotten used to "they", although that would probably be most correct (I sometimes refer to myself jokingly as the Polly Ester continuum). Thanks for caring! I don't have dysphoria. I just feel like the idea of me as a woman is incorrect, and it gets really awkward when people assign gendered expectations to me. In cases when people insist that I am a woman, or basically anything that I know I'm not, I sometimes feel gaslighted, and I really don't like that. 
There is a category called gendervague that was coined by neurodivergent non-binary people who did not fit into the available labels at the time. When I have to specify, I use that one. It is described as being at the intersection of neurodivergence and transgender. )”
 
autism spectrum neurodivergent who has Tourette’s syndrom and other conditions and has struggled her entire life to live in a world where simply saying one word about who s/he/they is/are results generally in a swift plunge into horror. She is thus a blessing on all people trying to reconcile themselves with a degree of self-knowledge that makes it clear to them that they really and truly ARE something(s) that pretty much everyone they meet will, upon hearing about it, tell them they are, to use the most common technical term, “fucked up.”
 
beverages are available at the free bar.
 
oh yeah, the meditation. It was lovely, thanks.
 
From: Polly-Ester Dessie-Belle Motvall <dessiebelle@hotmail.se>
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 5:45 AM
To: Timothy F. Farrington <tim_farrington@msn.com>; agnostic <agnostic123@yahoo.com>
Subject: Sv: Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 3/0:05:06
 
About that PIA... Have you ever tried sitting on a swimming ring? You know those who are filled with air and has a whole in the middle? That worked miracles for me whenever I had to sit up after giving birth. Just sayin’. Unless you really want to make the pain your meditation object; that could be fruitful too, of course. But there are alternatives, you know. 
 
I made it through that sentence, but then again, consider the source...
 
From: Polly-Ester Dessie-Belle Motvall <dessiebelle@hotmail.se>
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 5:38 AM
To: Timothy F. Farrington <tim_farrington@msn.com>; agnostic <agnostic123@yahoo.com>
Subject: Sv: Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 2/0:05:05
 
I like that. No hurry, no fear. I needed that. I have a writer’s block. I’m supposed to be writing a book about my research, and I keep falling back into avoidance behavior. It all seems so huge and endless, and it just keeps branching off. I have a tendency to think in many different directions rather than in a linear way, and language doesn’t quite resonate with that. Maybe this can help me. I really need to take it just one step at a time. 

 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 5/0:05:08
 
since by the grace of God i appear to have fried everyone around me to a crisp and thus am ensconced in a feedback free realm of what i like to think of as “that completely quiet moment before i hear the sirens approaching from multiple directions and wonder if they are coming for me” a few notes on fine points of my peculiar prayer.
 
so in always begin on the medallion of the Mother of God, before any decades, on my rosary, and say the whole prayer through once. If i make it through the whole prayer, during any given sit, i then begin with single words: “with” first bead, first hand, repeated, “with”, first bead, second hand; “this,” second bead, first hand (i alternate directions on alternate sits, on a working hypothesis that it may work different sides of the brain depending on which hand leads.
 
So the farthest i’ve gotten so far this morning is 1) body (oh sacred PIA), 2) breath (still alive, by all signs), 3) word:“with this,” in my opening full prayer, at which time it’s off to the fucking races until i either remember, right i’m fucking WORKING HERE, this IS GOD SHIT, at which point it is 1) body (PIA feeling better, now that you mention it), 2) breath (i know it was there somewhere), 3) word, “with this, uh . . . now THERE’S AN INTERESTING INSIGHT YOU FUCKING GENIUS YOU!!! . . .
 
oops this just in---
 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 6/0:05:09
 
since the silence before the cops is holding up well, and agnostic is at last report off making kissy-face with Papa Che on my tombstone thread in the DhO bardo, where i am a ghost by the grace of God and my sad early demise, or be assured i would be giving both those guys shit, a few more thoughts on the intricacies of this, the prayer that no one else will ever pray.
 
aside: i may actually have to stick with it, since when i do take people’s advice and try to apply it, and they witness the meditation-related-difficulties of my earnest efforts, they eventually are forced by simple prudence true senses of responsibility to all learning beings, and the natural desire to not get bomb splattered seeker’s-guys all over themselves, to tell me, that’s okay, man, just do what the fuck you want and stop giving me any credit whatsoever for this shit yhow you’ve got in progress here. . .
 
anyway, this last sit i realized: 1) i was wrong in my last post, i don’t know how to talk about this prayer after all, and may have been getting it wrong FOR AT LEAST TEN YEARS, since the actual prayer, as my body and fingers know perfectly well, is to run through the whole prayer first on the shield of the Mother of God, and then begin the letter decades with “w,” NOT ON THE FIRST BEAD BUT ON THE FUCKING MEDALLION< YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
 
I mean, thank God no one else will ever get that far with this technique, is what i meant to say.

 
 
will answer technical questions for cigarettes.
 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 11/0:05:14
 
Funny story, with a nod toward how this big mania is playing out locally--- i went for a walk after the last round, out into a lovely rain, and i took with me a beautiful big fat bag of primo salt water taffy that DD, my youngest sister, had sent me from Florida for my birthday last march. It had just been sitting there, i can’t eat that stuff. So i grabbed the taffy and slipped by my neighbors’ place, Don and Selena, and they spotted me coming, and opened the dooor, Don Shirtless and seedy, Selena looking fine, a couple of mid-sixies-ish ex cops just retired (Don) or on the cusp of retirement (selena). I held up the bag and said either of you like this stuff? Selena said yes, i handed her the bag, we all waved, and i walked on done deal, no more fucking taffy guilt. 100 yards down the road, i had walked past the little communal general store/office, and Ray, one of the owners of the land here (i am technically a serf), came and and called me back and handed me a big bottle of mouthwash. I had gone in there a couple days ago looking for mouthwash, i’m out of the stuff and i don’t want four-year-old Hartley to be, uh, less than impressed by my breath when we violate the social distancing interval while playing. No mouthwash in the store, though; Ray had said he could order some and i said, naw, no big deal, i’ll get to the store soon enough. Then i blew my go-to-the-store window by getting myself time-outed, so no DhO AND no mouthwash, worst of all worlds. Rays hands me the stuff and I said, wow, thank you, put it on my tab (not a joke, i actually have a tab at the store). He said no, no, i just grabbed it on my way in to work this morning, with a couple other things. I said, So are you, a guy wearing a face mask and standing six feet away, trying to tell me i have bad breath, gently? We laughed. Up walks Davy, the grounds and maintenance guy. we all shoot the shit for a few minutes, then Davy grabs me and drags me off to his “office,” this little shack of a room full of equipment and such, where he takes his breaks and eats his meals. And he pulls out his fucking wallet--- he does this once in a while, he is a sweet young Christian kid, earneest and loving and good as gold at heart, and he doesn’t want me to be unable to buy cigarettes, which i apparently either joked about or bitched about at some time in the distant past. So now, he is unstoppable every so often, every month or two, maybe, and i try to accept the gifts with as good a grace as i can muster and not further embarrass either of us. Then we say love ya, love, and go on about our business. So i leave the house for a brief still to get rid of that fucking taffy and get a little wet air, and trudge home burdened with gifts.
Mania Mastery-Tim 2 Public Nuisance-Tim 0.
context, context, context, kids. Papa Che knows that my radio call sign is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot 1, aka WTF, after a former love of my life who used to say “WTF, TF?” My name is Timothy Fucking Farrington, so people sometimes call me TFF, except for those who know me only by my alias Tim Trouble-is-my-middle-name Farrington.
 
practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 12/0:05:15
 
practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 13/0:05:16
 
Practice log/April 18, 2020/sesshin day 6/sit 14/0:05:17

 
Practice log, rated "P" for practice-oriented, safe for even Papa Che to read
 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/sit 1/0:05:18
 
 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 7/0:05:20/BBW/clockwise/end 9:28pm
 
Papa Che, I am leaving you on this message even though the practice report is not rated PF. You know I love you, I know you are a grown-up and won’t read something you think it useless. Dog don’t eat what dog don’t like, as a writer friend of mine put it long ago. So no harm, no foul, if this is not your cup of tea for a while.
 
The bizarrely coded paractice log line may be roughly translated into a couple of salient facts: after a series of sits working with a blended technique with Papa Che, I have fallen back to the kind of pure body-breath-word prayer that just doesn’t much care about remembering details of the sit in any fine scale. It’s my native language prayer, not for Enlightenment or stream entry or anything, just because i am an embodied sense overwhelmed by my helplessness and Need God Bad, or at least need to get deep enough in my dukha to be gate, gate, gate, paragate, parasamghate, as close to annihilated as i can get, just to minimize the horror.
 
Second thing of note is the time stamp: i had a two hour nap earlier in the day, and went to bed at about 5pm local time to boot, early even for me, but pleased that i was so tired, as you sleep when you can get it in a mania. woke for the last time about an hour ago from a nasty vivid dream about a fraternity/sorority house, that fell apart after i saved the life of one of the members and walked her home, and they blamed the fall apart on me, and started trying to kill me. For four or five wakes, continuous action in the dream, before i finally got out of bed and basically treated this as a new morning, practice time, time to get to work..
 
 i had actually done a lot of grounding stuff through the afternoon. I had thought i would get to the store today, but finally remembered it was sunday. no bus, no trip. Instead, I called my sister Kati, my brother Danno, and and my Aunt Mary Ann, aka Sister Martine Ann, JMJ, a nun in her eighties who is my John of the Cross blood comrade (hellamercy is dedicated to her) and family gossip center, in a several hour sequence while sitting out of earshot of the community on the common gazebo by the waterwheel and fish pool, and not one of them worried a bit, they just thought I was loving and funny, calling appropriately on a sunday afternoon. Mania Mastery 3, Tim as Public Spectacle Leading to Homelessness and Incarceration, 0.
 
And even when i got up, 8:30ish maybe here, and went out for my first smoke, my neighbor Don happened to be out there, and we chatted. He gave me a sackful of plastic razors, and a towel--- he and his wife are going to move in a month or so and are clearing out there storage, and so i get first offer on everything that would go to the thrift store, which saves me a later trip to the thrift store to but it. They are fucking showering me with gifts, most of which i don’t need or want and am able to cheerfully no no thank you, but i few which really are sort of great. Sarah knows this about giving me gifts, what a pissant i can be, and how every once in a while i am prostrate with gratitude. What a wanker i am. Still, considering i was in a near panic about this sleep shit, i rate the exchange in the dark with don a win: Mania Mastery 4, Taving Maniac Running Through the Night Screaming Warnings, 0.
 
So that’s the status, a new day in the sesshin, but this weird morning-in the-late-night-of-the-last damned day is fucking up my OCD meditation journaling. If that is my worst problem in what is now an official “mixed episode” of depression and mania, with the DK elements coming in strong, i can do this thing in sirsasana.
 
love, t
 

 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 8/0:05:21/end 10:26pm
 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 9/0:05:22/end 10:56pm
 
fear stage of dark night, and realizing that while the Psalms hold up: “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee,” and “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” for me, there is also the fear of those i love and those who love me. Mania and depression scare people, not just the strangers who call the cops eventually, but the loved ones wondering whether they should call the cops, or an ambulance. So two jobs, here in the fear bardo: trust God for me, and don’t scare anyone if i can help it. Since everyone on this posse here is in Europe except Sarah, this is actually a pretty safe place to be as nuts as i actually am right now. The Atlantic Ocean is a nice margin for error.
 
Practice log/April 19, 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 10/0:05:23/end 11:15pm
 
going to the Psalms now, at crunch time, i realize that one aspect of “fruition” within a given tradition is when the all-in practicioner comes to see that every word--- in Judeo-Christianity, every letter, even, every serif and comma and accent mark--- every word of Scripture is true, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. That’s how Daniel did it: he took his scriptures absolutely literally and worked his ass off to understand what they really meant, to him, the pragmatic Dharma in our time and in his experience. It’s how everyone does it; no one does this in a vacuum. And if they do, God bless them. But then who can they quote to make a point to their comrades? As I said, before I was no more . . . Agnostic, could be a good gig for you, actually, lol.
 
Practice log/April 19. 2020/sesshin day 7/sit 11/0:05:24/end 11:45pm
 
Practice log/April 19. 2020/sesshin day 7/ sit 12/0:05:25/end 11:58pm
 
“I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.” Ps 77:6
 
“He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.”
Lamentations 3:2
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 1/0:05:27/end 12:17am
 
body beat to shit; mania is a bitch. breath rises, breath falls, and not i, but You breathe.
 
“And Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgot the good*.”
Lamentations 3:17
 
* the hebrew here for “good” is: טוֹב , towb. The word makes it’s first appearance in the Bible at Genesis 1:4: “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” 
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 2/0:05:28/end 12:49am
 
“And I said, ‘My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.”
Lamentations 3:18
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8sit 3/0:05:29/end 1:15am
 
“remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
My Soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.”
Lamentations 3:19-20
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 4/0:05:30/end 1:54am
 
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 5/0:05:31/end 2:09am
 
“This I recall to my mind*, there for have I hope**.”
Lamentations 3:21
 
* the hebrew here is לִבִּ֖י leb, which is actually “heart,” in the vast Biblical sense of the word.
** יָחַל yachal, which means both “to hope” and “to wait”: to wait on the Lord is to hope in the Lord, and to hope in God is to wait patiently on God.
 
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 6/0:05:32/end 2:33am
 
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.”
Lamentations 3:22
 
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 7/0:05:33/end 5:25am
 
the key to a genuine dark night is the skin-in-the-game element of total danger: danger of loss of faith, loss of sanity, loss of life (suicide). Nothing else counts, in my view, and anyone claiming otherwise just cheapens the term. I think the use of “dark night” by anyone beyond stream entry is bullshit-false, linguistically. You may cycle through the dukha nanas, fine, papa che did it a few days ago, we saw him, literally in reobservation. but he was not in a dark night. THIS is a dark night, you enightened, language-devaluing motherfucking enlightened shit sacks. I am in serious fucking danger to my sanity, to my freedom, i am risking homelessness, etc. You fuckers in your “dark nights” are rich people in a poor person’s shirt, as The Boss sang somewhere.
Fuck you, fuck your advice. This prayer I pray is what keeps me alive, my faith, my sanity, and my life.
 
6:ooam [[The mania watch party Administrator has determined that Tim Farrington's last post violated the letter and spirit of the party, and constitutes a grievous "pooping of the party." He is therefore now in a time-out, duration to be determined by the brilliance of his peers.]]
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 8/0:05:34/end 6:17am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/ sit 9/0:05:35/end 6:54am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 10/0:05:36/end 7:24am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 11/0:05:37/end 7:46am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 12/0:05:38/end 8:14am
 
i had a good day, went out into the rain and onto the bus and finally got a big round of errands and shopping done, came home and did a few rounds of more sits,
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 13/0:05:39/end 12:20pm
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 14/0:05:40/end 12:38pm
 
ate a supper circa 3pm ( actually very normal for me, though it felt bizarre to do something at the "usual" time), and fell asleep by 4pm, which is crazy early by any standard. Popped up just now, 8pm-ish, U.S. east coast time, and am sort of hoping I can fall back asleep. If not, i'll try a round by round of sits. Eat when hungry, sleep when tired, right? Isn't that a zen thing? Sit when in danger of wandering the streets foaming at the mouth. Also a zen thing, I believe. It's been so long, with that stuff, it's a little hazy.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 15/0:05:41/end 9:04pm*
 
 
*a funny one, my volume control had gotten muted somehow, and i probably actually went about 10 or 15 minutes before i snuck a peek at the silenced timer and discovered it at 0.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 8/sit 16/0:05:42/end 9:29pm
 
and so, to sleep.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 1/0:05:43/end 12:21am
 
i wrote 0:05:43 on the time of sit, but i actually did an experiment and just let my own sit # 1 timer run, set at the now hilarious 1:12:19, out of curiousity, kind of taking my meditation blood pressure. And i went 0:06:20 and Had To Leap Up Due To the Excitement of It All. Close enough for government work, as my father used to say, with the implicit combat Marine’s contempt for the efficacy of and efficiency of what he thought of as federally organized cluster fucks. This cluster fuck is well within the margin for error.
 
this was a normal wake-up for me, in the sense of happening in the wee hours and being characterized by a strong desire to Just Get To Work, my mind active and me knowing how bad my active mind can kick my ass and get me in trouble unless it receives it strong dosage of attention. People asking “why bother to meditate if it takes forever to become a Buddha?”, take note: it just takes getting out of bed and getting to practice to more or less immediately become less of a danger to yourself or others.
 
One very funny thing: i’ve been in sleep when tired, wake when woke for several days now more radically than “usual”, and one thing i do right now is check my email immediately for fun and love coming in. And in several of the most unlikely hours, there have been very simple messages from agnostic, like “You ok?” in the subject line, so message. The first time it happened i was awake at a freakishly weird hour for me (it was around 10pm--- i go to sleep normally at around 6pm and wake normally around 2 am, so 10pm is basically the only time i am more or less certain of being asleep). And agnostic’s message had come in just minutes earlier. i may have joked him that it woke me up. It has happened like that at least one other time since, coming out of a nap. His message from last night came in around 10pm too, and he said something like “I won’t send this in case it wakes you up. woops,” acknowledging the slightly uncanny phenomenon. This one didn’t wake me up though, so he’s off the hook, i slept right through it for two full hours. This wake-up is just within the old norm’s plus or minus. Therefore i made the pot of coffee, smoked the cigarette, and Just Got To It.
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 2/0:05:45/end 12:54
 
i tried to log in to DhO both immediately after midnight, east coast US time, and just now, just after 1am, midnight in the time zone the site seems to use. Still blocked. Chris said “tomorrow morning,” but it IS tomorrow morning now everyhwre relvant, and i am still banished and jesus fucking christ have i got a lot to say to agnostic, for starters, and and and and. Am surrendered to the apparent fact that what Chris may have meant was “on the morning of 4/21/2020, after i get up and have a sit and make sure the site hasn’t burned down overnight and take care of the normal pressing business, i have your reincarnation on my to-do list, or at least on a post-it note stuck here near my to-do list.” Love, you, Moderator, Sir. Law is our main defense as a society against the rule of force and violence. Whenever you get to it, it’s close enough for government work.
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 3/0:05:45/end 1:20am
 
Smiling Stone: Hey Tim, I forgot to say I love your prayer. It's really got that far out twisted feel of the Esychasm (if I remember right, the Jesus prayer as mantra on the orthodox side of the catholics. I think the jesuits use it as well...
 
TF: I LOVE the heyschasts, and have spent a hilarious amount of time on them. "Word" is anatta, in my practice, as I work to speak Buddhist on DhO, the necessity of not-self, but it is more deeply for me the rock that is higher than "I", the teknos of technique, the logos of the spiritual logic, in all its forms. In my native tradition, it is the word of God, and i use it in a fashion that is frankly mantra-like, despite the handwringing of many in the theistic traditions. (cf. the godawful assaults on the Centering Prayer movement for practicing something like the kind of heyschasm that goes back to the desert monks in the centuries after Jesus and lives on in robust fashion in the Eastern Orthodoxy.)
 
fun side note: I've been reading lately about the history of a quasi-heretical use of the simplest repetition of the Name of the Lord in classic heyschast fashion, among the monks on Mt. Athos. At some point, some well-meaning devotee wrote a little tract that said the technique was so great that he saw it that the Name of God WAS God, so simply to invoke the Name was to be present to the Highest. Complications ensued, "the Name is God" proved to be a real fire-starter technique for a bunch of monks, to such a point that the monks who thought it was heresy, in that formulation, started fighting with the ones who were lit up with the technique's success in their own practice. It got to the point at which the Greek government felt they couldn't let it go on without intervention on Mt. Athos, an island left alone to its own monastic devices for hundreds of years at that point. The Tsar';s government, to forestall Greece taking over what was viewed as actually Russian territory, forestalled the Greek intervention and sent destroyers. The "Name of God is God" monks barricaded themselves in several monastaries, troops landed and blew them all out into the open with fire hoses, and scattered the heretics to various corners of Russia to scatter the problem, while the Metropole worked out whether that Name shit was a heresy or not. WW 1 broke out before the issue was settled, and the occasional Name fight still breaks out today, though no destroyers have had to be sent in recently.
 
[[some shameless wiki-lifting here, The origin of the term hesychasmos, and of the related terms hesychastes, hesychia and hesychazo, is not entirely certain. According to the entries in Lampe's A Patristic Greek Lexicon, the basic terms hesychia and hesychazo appear as early as the 4th century in such fathers as St John Chrysostom and the Cappadocians. The terms also appear in the same period in Evagrius Pontikos (c. 345 – 399), who although he is writing in Egypt is out of the circle of the Cappadocians, and in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.]]
 
and me now, again, steeped in: Gregory of Nyssa (Life of Moses is awesome, your mind will blow), Gregory of Nazianzus, Evagrius, St. Isaac of Syria, St. Simeon the New Theologian, the Orthodox anthology from the Philokalia, “The Art of Prayer,” which has a Jesus Prayer section and lots of fiery gems from the Abbas of the desert, John of Sinai’s Ladder of Divine Ascent, which our DhO map-happy crowd would love if i could correlate it with the stages of insight (any minute now, it’s on my to-do list and before the Bar(do) closes down, i will get to it)
 
I mean, i had bets down, i was all in with Gregory Palamos during the fourteenth-century fights about heyschasm. I was rooting for the home team. I love this shit.
 
 thanks for setting off another round of mania by the way, Stoner. I bow at your drunken lotus-puffing feet.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 4/0:05:46/end 2:03am
 
“Nothing is so strong as desperation. It knows no defeat at the hand of any, whether on the right hand or the left. When someone has cut off in his mind all hope of life, no one is more daring than he/she; no foe can face him/her, no rumors of affliction can weaken her/his pirpose, for every affliction which may come is less than death, for she/he has resolved to accept death for her/himself.”
St. Isaac of Syria (7th century)
 
Those who speak stages of insight will easily recognize Desire for Deliverance in this quote from a 7th century Syrian, from the silence of his reclusive monastic cell: 3rd vipassana jhana, ṅ9, DfD. This is a place that i think every tradition will recognize, the point of the zen story of the roshi holding the student’s dead under water after he asked about enlightenment (not until you want it as bad as you wanted to breath) (Roshi-san, I bow to your strong wisdom, but I am afraid you have given me meditation-related difficulties and spiritual PTSD).
 
I’ve sometimes thought this goes down to information theory--- nothing, nada, zip, zilch desire for anyfuckingthing, better zero than the shit i know and am and ever will be. 0 0 0 0 . . . and 1, somehow, something: something “noatble,” something noting, in spite of all that 0, as 1. That’s all it takes to make a universe: as much 0 as any sunyata junkie could want, and the occasional, every eon or so, say, 1 that a noting meditation will see or feel. So you generate a number of increasing precision, in DfD: 000000000010000000000000001000000001. . . There’s a snippet of the whole fucking code in one glorious universal binary number, the basis of physics, the solution to quantum gravity. Apply, lather into 1, rinse into 0, repeat. We don’t need your stinkin atom-crashers and your billion dollar budgets, we’re working here in the void from which arises the quantum foam, pre-Planck length, pre-Planck-constant intervals of “time.” All I want for Christmas is real zero. That 1, though, is just undeniable.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 5/0:05/47/end 2:43am
 
Lamentations 3:19-20=Knowledge of Re-observation=(n10, Re-obs), 3rd vipassana jhana
 
“Remebering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
“My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.”
Lamentations 3: 19-20
 
I mean, DUH! Humbled, motherfucker.
 
The Hebrew here is  שׁ֫וּחַ shuach, to sink, literally or figuratively, and so to bow down, incline, humble My soul is sunk, literally, and i know it, by the grace of God.
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 6/0:05:48/end 3:29am
 
Bernadette Roberts + a fatal dose of John of the Cross=Equanimity=EQ=4th vipassana jhana, n11
 
and this, from St. Bernadette Roberts, a contemporary Christian contemplative and one ornery woman, who died just a few years ago, God bless her, and who once, in a letter, tore me a giant new asshole on the issue of meditation and medication, dark night and depression. But that’s another story.
 
This, from her Path to No-Self:
 
When all aspects of the self are in silence, but before reaching the full unitive state, we may come upon a mysterious plateau of silence, a plateau that may be cause for aome concern. Once we have been lured into silence by the infusion of joy and love, all such infusions come to an end, and we are left in silence, wherein there seems to be No God, no self--- nothing but silence itself. After abandoning all to God, we seem abandoned by God, and although there is no anxiety or pain, there is the temptation to move out of this silence, which means moving back into our old frustrations. Right here we seem to have come to a dead end,; we are trapped because we cannot go backward and do not see the way forward. This is a crucial point in the unitive movement. But it becomes a problem only if we make it one, which we can do from sheer ignorance. I know, because I did. Nevertheless, we are standing at the gateway to the very peak of the unitive life.
 
. . . This plateau is actually our time of becoming rooted in silence, rooted until this silence becomes the deeoest, most stable habit of the soul, the deepest aspect of our existence. This plateau is the test of passivity, abandonment, and trust, and it may be a helpful deterrent to look back on the pain and frustration [[editor/translator’s note: cf. Re-observation!]] we encountered when moving out of this silence. We have been too burnt to move, learned too well the lesson: of ourselves, we can do nothing. The only choice is to remain patient, silent, and to be resigned to this state as long as God wills.
 
and this, from John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, stanza 3, 33-37:
 
[[FDA note: It has been determined that excessive doses of John of the Cross may be harmful to pretty much anyway. The following passages exceed the RDA by an amount that is beyond measure. DhO is not responsible for any side effects, should anyone chose to read on beyond the first sentence, which is a strong, but safe dose.]]
 
33. Hence persons at this time should be guided in a manner entirely contrary to the former. If, prior to this, directors suggested matter for meditation and these individuals meditated, now this matter should instead be withheld and they should not meditate. For, as I say, they are unable to do so even though they may want to; and were they to try they would be distracted instead of recollected. If previously they sought satisfaction, love, and devotion, and found it, now they should neither desire nor seek it; for not only do they fail to procure it through their own diligence but, on the contrary, they procure dryness. Through the activity they desire to carry on with the senses, they divert themselves from the peaceful and quiet good secretly being given to their spirit. In losing one good they do not gain the other, for these goods are no longer accorded through the senses as before.
Therefore directors should not impose meditation on persons in this state, nor should they oblige them to make acts or strive for satisfaction and fervor. Such activity would place an obstacle in the path of the principal agent who, as I say, is God, who secretly and quietly inserts in the soul loving wisdom and knowledge, without specified acts; although sometimes he makes specific ones in the soul for a certain length of time. Thus individuals also should proceed only with a loving attention to God, without making specific acts. They should conduct themselves passively, as we have said, without efforts of their own but with the simple, loving awareness, as when opening one's eyes with loving attention.
34. Since God, then, as the giver communes with individuals through a simple, loving knowledge, they also, as the receivers, commune with God through a simple and loving knowledge or attention, so knowledge is thus joined with knowledge and love with love. The receiver should act according to the mode of what is received, and not otherwise, in order to receive and keep it in the way it is given. For as the philosophers say: Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.
It is obvious that if persons do not lay aside their natural active mode, they will not receive that good except in a natural mode; thus they will not receive it, but will remain only with their natural act. For the supernatural does not fit into the natural mode, nor does it have anything to do with it. If individuals should, then, desire to act on their own through an attitude different from the passive loving attention we mentioned, in which they would remain very passive and tranquil without making any act unless God would unite himself with them in some act, they would utterly hinder the goods God communicates supernaturally to them in the loving knowledge. This loving knowledge is communicated in the beginning through the exercise of interior purgation, in which the individual suffers, as we said, and afterward in the delight of love.
If as I say - and it is true - this loving knowledge is received passively in the soul according to the supernatural mode of God, and not according to the natural mode of the soul, individuals, if they want to receive it, should be very annihilated in their natural operations, unhampered, idle, quiet, peaceful, and serene, according to the mode of God. The more the air is cleansed of vapors and the quieter and more simple it is, the more the sun illumines and warms it. A person should not bear attachment to anything, neither to the practice of meditation nor to any savor, whether sensory or spiritual, nor to any other apprehensions. Individuals should be very free and annihilated regarding all things, because any thought or discursive reflection or satisfaction on which they may want to lean would impede and disquiet them and make noise in the profound silence of their senses and their spirit, which they possess for the sake of this deep and delicate listening. God speaks to the heart in this solitude, which he mentioned in Hosea [Hos. 2:14], in supreme peace and tranquility while the soul listens, like David, to what the Lord God speaks to it [Ps. 85:8], for he speaks this peace in this solitude.
 
35. When it happens, therefore, that souls are conscious in this manner of being placed in solitude and in the state of listening, they should even forget the practice of loving attentiveness I mentioned so as to remain free for what the Lord then desires of them. They should make use of that loving awareness only when they do not feel themselves placed in this solitude or inner idleness or oblivion or spiritual listening. So they may recognize it, it always comes to pass with a certain peace and calm and inward absorption.
36. Once individuals have begun to enter this simple and idle state of contemplation that comes about when they can no longer meditate, they should not at any time or season engage in meditations or look for support in spiritual savor or satisfaction, but stand upright on their own feet with their spirit completely detached from everything, as Habakkuk declared he was obliged to do in order to hear what God spoke to him: I will stand on my watch and fix my foot upon my fortress, and I will contemplate what is said to me [Hb. 2:1]. This is like saying: I will raise my mind above all activity and knowledge belonging to my senses and what they can retain, leaving all below, and will fix the foot of the fortress (my faculties), not allowing these faculties to advance a step as regards their own operation that they may receive through contemplation what God communicates to me; for we have already asserted that pure contemplation lies in receiving.
37. It is impossible for this highest wisdom and language of God, which is contemplation, to be received in anything less than a spirit that is silent and detached from discursive knowledge and gratification. Isaiah speaks of it in these words: Whom will he teach knowledge and whom will God make understand the hearing? And Isaiah replies: Those that are weaned from the milk (that is from satisfaction) and drawn away from the breasts (from particular knowledge and apprehensions) [Is. 28:9].
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 7/0:05:49/end 4:00am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 8/0:05:50/end 4:42am
 
Bernadette Roberts and John of the Cross=Knowledge of Conformity (n 12), Change of Lineage (n13), and Path (n14), 4th vipassana jhana
 
Daniel says, in MCBT2, “Conformity means that we suddenly flash onto a way of perceiving the whole of our experiential reality completely, directly, and perfectly clearly. This stage lasts only one moment and never recurs until we attain the next stage of enlightenment. The same is true of the following two stages. Stages 12 through fourteen (Conformity, Change of Lineage, and Path) are the three moments of the first entrance to transcendent ultimate reality (stage 15, or Fruition) through one of the three doors.”
 
Bernadette Roberts, in Path to No-self, is also very clear on this moment, and she uses John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle to make her points here. This phase here corresponds to stanzas 38-39, of which she says, “Stanzas 38 and 39, which i have been referring to, are descriptions of transient experiences. In part, their importance is to set off by sheer contrast those elements in the unitive life that are still wanting and imperfect; also, they act as indicators of a future state.”
 
 
Roberts’s entire discussion of union is done, for the map-happy among us, very nicely through a progression of the stanzas of John’s poem “The Spiritual Canticle” and his exegesis of the stanzas, as his method is. I’ve been working on mapping that poem into DoH vernacular for 9 years now
 
cf. https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/16761328
and https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/19272318
 
and never got farther than stanza 22, but Roberts takes it all the way. And then beyond, but that is also a story for another time.
 
Anyway: She says, in Path to No-self:
“This new direction is verified in stanza 38, where we are told that the soul’s two great desires at this time are: to receive “essential glory”--- that is, to see God face-to-face--- and to give love. He explains why, at this point, the desire to give is greater than the desire to receive:
 
John X, here:
Just as the untimate reason for everything is love (which is seated in the will), whose property is to give and not to receive, whereas the property of the intellect (which is the subject of the essential glory) lies in receiving and not giving, the soul in the inebriation of love does not put first the glory she will receive from God, but rather puts first the surrender of herself to Him through true love, without concern for her own profit.
 
Roberts goes on: Since the vision, which presupposes the fullness of love, can be received only in the next life, the soul’s first desire is to give love. Thus giving, or love, takes precedence in the unitive state, just as vision or receiving takes precedence in the next state--- the state beyond union.
 
So Bernadette says 2 stages/stanzas here, Daniel says three. I don’t know anything except that it took me three sits and a mania just to transcribe the sheer minimum of the roughest draft of a correlation between these two spiritual masters, each the state of the art in their tradition, each using the scriptures they have digested into bodily reality and the new notes of their personal styles, and so in turn becoming scripture for those after them (I consider Bernadette Roberts and John of the CRoss, even more than the Bible, which i only really went o because of them, to be my primary scriptures for the past 35 years, and Daniel’s MCBT2 to be the scripture that has allowed me a toe in the water of Buddhism and given me the courage to putter around with these translations, renderings, attempts at cross-mapping, etc.
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 9/0:05:51/end 5:27am
 
John X and B Roberts=Fruition, n15, 4th vipassana jhana
 
D`aniel, briefly: Fruition (phala in Pali) is the fruit of all the meditator’s hard work, the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness, nirvana, nibbana, ultimate potential, or whatever extrapolative and relatively inaccurate name you wish to call something utterly non-sensate.
 
Roberts’s discussion of what the John X lineage would call, speaking in perfect Orthodoxy “union with God by participation,”
 
[parenthetical aside that threatened to get way out of hand:] ---“by participation” to avoid being imprisoned or killed for the “I am God” heresy, which got any numbers of less cautious or more defiant or just plain fucking nuts (think agnostic; think me, on a bad day) burned at the stake or thrown into dungeons to die in the rat-infested dark. Hallaj, a sufi, is revered by Islamic mystics for insisting “I am God,” and being executed for heresy, but the Sufis who cite him---Rumi, frequently does--- do usually say it in a finely nuanced way that will keep them just short of that, as Meister Eckhart lived to argue his case for God’s nothingness before the heresy judges, the canny SOB, while his contemporary Margreet Porete, a merely crazy Beguine laywoman with more balls than the whole bunch, insisted on not just saying the same damn thing, but publishing a book about it, and so had to be burned at the stake in downtown Paris. But don’t get me started here on politics, w’re here about Conformity--- where was i, oh yeah---
 
which I will risk the stake by usually using the shorthand of “union,” in Judeo-Christian-Islamic language,
 
is in her remarks on stanza 40 of John X’s Spiritual Canticle. She also points the way beyond John X here, at which every person on DhO would go, Well, yeah, DUH, but SHE IS THE ONLY CREDIBLE (to me, obviously, goes without saying) PERSON IN THE ENTIRE CHRISTIAN MYSTICAL TRADITION WHO HAS THE BALLS, CHOPS, AND ACTUAL LIVED EXPERIENCE TO DO THIS.
 
here’s her stuff, using my cut-precious-books-to-pieces-rather-than-type-all-that-shit siddi:
 
Path, pp. 109-111
 
lovely walk, sun not yet up, but the cloudless eastern sky silver and bright, shading off into darker blues and purples to the west.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 10/0:05:52/end 6:31am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 11/0:05:53/end 7:03am
 
a bit of breakfast, and reincarnation on DhO! I’m have acquired the new siddi of using music from YouTube as an emoji! Honors ever to the Master of Smileys, Sri Papa Che. ;D
 
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 12/0:05:54/end 8:46am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 13/0:05:55/end 9:35am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 14/0:05:56/end 10:06am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 15/0:05:57/end 10:26am
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 17/0:05:59/end 12:31pm
 
PF Practice log/sesshin day 9/sit 18/0:02:01/”theeers isss”/ end 1:06 pm
 
note: working with left thumb against right forefinger. re-watched the video first, ready for this short shower.
 
Theeerrrre isss . . . sinking, sinking, curiousity, alertness, there is PIA, overwhelming sensate . . .Therrrrre isss . . .in-breath, rising . . . there is sinking, looking, therrre is hearing, a heartbeat, not feeling it, hearing it . . .  in my ears, i left the headphones on after watching the video, lol . . . there iss . . . looking, sinking, looking for where the thumb and finger meet, a slight jerk as the thumb moves to generate sensation . . . there is . . . FUCKING THUNDER, IT’S THE TIMER CHIME IN THE HEADPHONES.
 
there is deafness, lol.
 
i could go three next time.
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/ sit 18/0:02:01/”theeers isss”/ end 1:06 pm
 
Practice log/sesshin day 9/ sit 19/0:06:00/bbw/end 7:11pm
 
that’s it, this shit is up to date in the Bar(do). thank you, and we’ll be here all wekk. Tip your bartenders and waietpeople. love, t
 
 

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 1/0:04:19/bbw/end 3:55am

first sit of the day, and i didn’t make it to the full time, so still very manic-energy. This is probably a re-start point, in a lot of ways: here in
the Bar of Last Resort, where i can labor in near perfect obscurity until all beings are saved, “me” last. and do my utmost to not be a danger, or even an annoyance, to myself or others. Being in DhO keeps me off the real streets, where my previous manias have culminated in involuntary psychiatric confinement. Being in the Bar keeps me “off the streets” of DhO, where i have been a fucking brass band at every zendo in town. but here, i can just bury my own priceless bullshit beneath more piles of worthless wisdom, and until the moderator feels that i am a festering sore on the body of DhO, no harm, no foul.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 2/0:04:26/bbw/end 4:17am

 I have been treating DhO, during this mania, as a beautiful
alternative to hospitalization or muffling antipsychotic drugs. It has been my
online version of a locked ward. But now i understand that even locked wards online
have their own ethos and etiquette. I learned that early, in the real wards
too.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 3/0:03:41/bbw/end 4:40am

How anyone can question the efficacy of meditative practice is beyond me.

But of course,  i am, quite literally, insane. My three minute and 40 second sit keeps me off the street right now, for the whole 3:41. That is better that stream entry. That is survival.

 I talked to my nephew via IM tonight--- he is a blues musician and did a live show from his garage on facebook, and it is a benefit of mania
that i was up at an hour to watch it live. We talked afterward, and he was telling me a deeper level on the story of his first-born child, a boy, who died of SIDS, in his arms, while he was asleep, years ago. He said to me tonight, “The last thing he heard was my heartbeat.” 

How can anyone live, without meditation, when your heart can explode like that in a second?

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 4/0:03:41/bbw/end 4:56am

 don’t bring your gems here, kids.
they’ll settle on the sawdust floor
of the Bar of Last Resort,
with everything elsethat is made to become dust. 

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 5/0:02:44/bbw/end 5:17am

 Apologies in full and heartfelt thanks
to all my teachers now.
You could have taken me all the way
to where the arhants play
without rebirth.
I coulda been a contenduh.
I could been Somebody,
Nobody, four paths on.
Instead i’m just another drunk,
here at the Bar of Last Resort,
where only the jukeboxplays without suffering.

And fuck that guy you never were
and fuck the horse he never had to ride.
I’m walking all the way
carrying this flaming cross
up the hill and past the ones i grieve

to the toilet in the Bar of Last Resort
to piss away yet another drink of shame. 

* * *

It’s just a matter of time
before some upright citizen
concerned for the good of all
calls the cops on me
for one good reason or another.

It’s just a matter of time
before i gently tryto explain again
that it’s all a joke
and the joke’s on me.

It’s just a matter of time
before some beautiful cop
has to tell me yet again,
that shit’s not funny, man.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 6/0:02:18/bbw/end 5:44am

Right now somewhere
some poor kid
sees a giant eye
open out of a fight
between strangers
and yanks away in fear
that he has sat his way
into insanity.

What can I say?
I was insane by birth
before i ever sat a moment.

Have one on me, beloved soul.
I’m crazier than you will ever know.

* * *

When i left my clothes
in separate heaps
on the path of stone
in the killing heat
that led to the empty cross
i filled,
to the horror of the pilgrims
gathered there below,
it still had not occurred to me,
feeling then that there could be no possible return
from this,
that there had never
been any getting away.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 7/0:02:37/bbw/ end 6:31am

Enough of the earnest warnings
of pain to come and imminent decay,
Enough of the magic pills
and interventions
that will save the day.
The night has had its way
with me, and tomorrow
is another day
in which the God without relent
will shower mercy
into this horrific flame.
The sun will rise again
and they will say,
It's Wednesday, here
where no one has their way.
.

they serve the drinks like rosary beads,
and prayer by prayer
i drink my way
through the countless days
and the single night.
 
This drink is the prayer
\i begged You for
when I screamed
 from the Arizona desert sand.
 
And even then You heard my cry:
I recognized You at once
in the headlight glare
of the Sheriff of Pima County.


April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 8/0:05:08/bbw/end 7:18am
 
I don’t care how bad i pray
it don’t bother me no way
 
i don’t care if i’m never heard
and my voice proceeds without a word
 
i don’t care if it don’t mean shit
and if this mustard seed won’t grow
and all i know is You are it
which don't mean shit
and that’s just so.
 

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 10/0:03:16/bbw/end 8:13am 

There is a natural break in my day when I run out of coffee, and I went for a lovely little walk in the bright sunshine. As I walked past
the commons building, I saw Davey, our young grounds guy, and we started toward each other to shoot the usual bit of shit. I was about fifteen feet away when suddenly a bird fluttered out of the eaves of the building overhang, circled very briefly in a downward arc, and flopped down on the cement. We both hurried toward it, it was a baby, and had fallen out of a nest up there. Davey, an animal soft heart who rescues squirrels and assorted broken-winged avians of all kind, bent and tenderly cupped the bird in his hands, then reached up and laid it back in the next, which was just within reach in the corner of theunder-eave. It settled right back in with its two siblings.

Davey and I looked at each other and laughed. I said, nice move, Dr. Doolittle, and he said, “There’s been three of them in that nest
since i spotted it yesterday.” I said, well there still three, thanks to you, and we went on with our days, him to work and me strolling my lazy ass along in the sunlight. 

There is a touch of irony in Davey’s beautiful love for vulnerable animals. Last year, a coyote took one of his cats, and Davey went out in a forty-degree rain and hunted the thing for twelve hours, then blew it away with some kind of Very Good Rifle. I asked him if he was sure he shot the right coyote, and he shrugged and said, “If not that one, the next one.”

It says a lot about the sixth mega-extinction event our biosphere finds itself in. We are ourselves a force of natural selection at this point, with the weight of selective pressure from many of our most humane and good-hearted people tilting the balance firmly in favor of our pets. God help us all, and the birds and beasts and the air and seas themselves.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 11/0:05:51/bbw-1/ end 9:35am

 “bbw-1” in the practice log refers to my basic body-breath-word prayer with a high-scatteredness-situation tweak #1. My usual practice is, rosary in hands, L- and R-mudras on the medallion of the Mother of God, to go through the whole prayer once before beginning the circuit of decades bead by bead. But I haven’t gotten off the medallion today, very high wild energy, so this time I just started moving on the beads right away, one bead per phrase of the prayer (13, then). At the thirteenth prayer, i thought “nana 13! A winner!” I couldn’t remember which one 13 was, but i knew that 15 was fruition. I mean, i can hardly ever articulate shit in the Dukha nanas anyway, so who's counting, right? In any case, the actual logarithmic protocol on this bbw-1 variant of the technique is to go back to the medallion once the prayer is completed by phrases, and then start from zero by letters. I know the total was more than fifteen, though, i was, like, seven letters in when the timer sounded. Better mathematicians than me may have an opinion on this, but I believe that may qualify as a fruition.

I did get through the entire timed sit for the first time today, anyway. Better than fruition, really, almost six minutes not out somewhere scaring someone. Tell me meditation isn't immediately beneficial! 

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 13/0:05:53/v-bbw/end 10:44am

 An interesting one. “v-bbw” is my shorthand for a mixture of mindset going in--- rather than using my normal bodily/sensate PIA (pang/pain
in ass) as my basic go-to, almost entirely default body ping, i spontaneously switched to an intermediate technique i had tried with Papa Che in which i would be more alert and untethered and intentionally curious, slowing down and allowing simply sinking to make the body aspect of bbw more up for grabs, more open to other sensate blips on the broader band radar, as it were. So it was just a spontaneous switch of horses, not mid-stream but very early in the sit, and fun to witness, LIKE A FUCKING VIPASSANA VIRUS IS FUN?! THIS SHIT IS DEADLY, a lovely interesting sit, aware toward the end, for instance, of my rosary, not at the mudra points on the counting beads, but where the beads were draped over the pinkies of both hands. I never realized my pinkies were carrying such a load, and have given them a pay raise.

  April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 14/0:05:54/bbw/end 12:29pm 

Another interesting infiltration of vipassana type noting, a sudden high pitched note in my left ear, an itch (i hardly ever notice itches) beside my nose, and, weirdest of all, hearing the birds singing in the bushes outside. I live about 50 yards from the main railroad line down the Peninsula to the Newport News shipyard and port, and we get a lot of trains going by in both directions. I wouldn’t even note the noise of them in vipassana, i think; i just don’t bother to hear them, although i am often aware of a kind of stress in my body that turns out to be vibrational from the passing loaded cars. But birds? fuggedaboutit.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 15/0:02:01/therrrre isss/end 1:32pm

 “therrrre issss” is my state-of-the art approach-to-noting technique, which i do under Papa Che’s close eye, using the Kenneth Folke technique of noting-aloud in a way by a strong internal vocalization in practice, and the Chris Marti-given technique of attending to two fingers, where they touch (a finger and a thumb, for me) as my meditation object, while remaining alive to sinking toward that with curiousity in a slow exploring way.

 Therrre is . . . hearing a strong high-pitched tone in both ears, there is . . . in-breath, there is . . . sinking along with the out-breath, gently, there is the bass note, PIA, there is in-breath, a sense of drawing back and circling, like a wrestler looking for a hold, there is . . . a confusion, a blank, there is in-breath, again a sense of circling withdrawal, there is a tightness in, uh, my teeth? in my mouth, somehow, not grinding, like jaw, but like something is somehow acting inertially on the teeth themselves, both sides of the mouth, there is thinking, there is in-breath, there is sinking, there is feeling the thumb-finger connect-point, a sense of the hands somehow ever so gently creating enough friction for a taste of touch, there is PIA, the bass note, there is another take on the subtle tactile tug at the thumb-finger simultaneous with awareness of the big bass PIA, like a soft flute playing, almost overwhelmed by the bass and brass, there is that tug in the toothlines again, there is hearing the timer.

Practice log April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 16/0:05:55/bbw/end 2:38 

more "V-leakthrough," noticing the mouth tensions, giving way to a sort of zappy, heated crackle, around the top of the right eye orbital region and down to the top of the cheek, and the axis of the mouth tensions, running from behind just below the nose, to the right and up diagonally toward the far corner of the right eye.

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 17/0:05:56/bbw-1/end 6:35pm

April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 18/0:05:57/bbw-1/end 7:15pm

The “bbw-1,” again, is a specific variation on my basic prayer, which rather than spending a full run-through of the entire prayer with the mudras on the medallion before beginning with letters to move through the beads, is used in situations where mental energy, agitation, and distraction is high, and uses starts right off with bead movement, one bead for each of the 13 distinct phrases of the prayer. (People do this with a lot of Catholic prayers; the variations on the “Our Father” and “Hail Maria”, broken down into phrases, are subject to endless variations). After the lead mudra, clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on the set-up, is at the twelfth bead, it returns to the medallion, where the other mudra has remained anchored, and begins the second phase of the prayer as usual from there, one letter per bead. 

I also use the technique in what I think of as Sisyphean circumstances, where the simple technique of putting one empty movement up after another is critical, usually for dark night-related reasons of near-total nihilism and despair. It can be mathematical in flavor, simple construction infinity number theory, n+1 in practice. And it can be like the stations of the Cross, x number of steps up the hill (which itself can transform into a Sisyphean type meditation if the cross rolls back down after the burial in the tomb, but the metaphors get trickier in this over extension.)

Practice log/April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 19/0:05:59/bbw-1/end 8:21pm

 Practice log/April 22, 2020/sesshin day 10/sit 20/0:06:00/bbw-1/end11:14pm

 Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 1/0:06;01/bbw-1/end 3:49am

 I heard an owl, while I was out smoking in the very dark night before the first sit this morning, somewhere east in the taller trees. I don’t think I’ve heard that particular call before, it may be a different kind of owl that the ones i’ve seen and heard. There is a novel i vaguely remember called “I Heard the Owl Call My Name” about a young priest sent to work among some Canadian tribe in British Columbia. He has a fatal disease, but doesn’t know it--- his wily old (horrifically unethical, in my view) bishop, who sends him, does know the guy is terminal, and is supposedly wise for giving him his life lessons just in time. I was so pissed at the bishop, i don’t remember much more of the book, but i do remember that toward the end of the book, when the priest has bonded with the tribe and gotten a proper dose of earth wisdom and poignant human beauty and community lore, he hears an owl call his name, which in tribal lore means he will die soon, and so he becomes aware of and is at peace with his terminal condition. So the owl was more humane than the bishop, basically, is the moral. 

The owl this morning was, as i said, probably a new species to me, and i could not make out its accent, so not sure if that was my name I heard. Am working under the assumption that it was.

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 2/0:06:02/bbw/ortho/end 4:41am
 
Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 3/0:03:02/bbw/sinistral/end 5:13am/this
 
One interesting thing about this mania so far is that as a result of my need to communicate without being a danger to myself and/or others, and using DhO as a relatively safe space for that, and so formulating my practice logs for public consumption, plus working with various people giving me tips and suggestions on techniques, my basic encoded practice log intro line has evolved at a spectacular rate to convey more information. Up til now, it was basically just date, and time of sit, three sits per day, each with their developing amount of time set. Now i am also noting what type of meditation is practiced, since i am using multiple techniques, and realizing that even within my basic bbw i have several variations, the end time of the sit (very interesting during the manic blow-out of normal diurnal rhythms),
 
 and in these entries, two new elements, first the direction of the movement on the rosary (ortho=clockwise and sinistral (in a sort of joking way on my Catholic vocabulary, where left-hand things are “sinister”, in the Latin sense)=counterclockwise. I considered Tantric Left-hand Path for “sinistral,” then decided the joke was too complicated. Muktananda, whose ashram in Oakland i lived in for a couple years during the early 1980s, was among the devotees notorious for having a left-hand tantric side, which was whispered about quite a bit. But i decided that joke required even MORE explaining, and was certainly wide open to way more misinterpretation and offense, and so stuck with keeping my offense Catholic.
 
The second new bit of data in these entries is where i finish the prayer, which will be either a word, if i never get off the medallion in the first place, or a letter, if i have actually gotten to phase 2 and gone bead by bead with letters. Thus, this first entry above noting the “Tim got this far” data point (big story behind that, which i will forego telling for the moment), is “this”, which is the second word of the prayer, and which indicates that i was agitated enough during the sit that most of the word element was a simple mantric return to the prayer’s first word “with”. This is actually a fascinating indicator of a lot of things, and can mean a lot of different things, which is why there are notes on sits as well as just the line of data, but introducing that data element was so exciting that as soon as the thought occurred to me in thi sit I LEAPT THE FUCK up.
 

Practice log/ April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 4/0:06:02/bbw//ortho/end 5:49am/withthisg-i


Outside after this sit for my reward cigarette (“Will meditate for smokes”), the sky is already a dilute dark blue-gray under a complete but apparently thin overcast, which explains the lack of stars earlier. I thought it might be kundalini or something, an anti-siddhi, sudden inability to see small points of light. But that sky was dead black for straightforward reasons. 

Once during the end phase of a chant/meditation at the ashram, my entire closed eye field was lit up by a brilliant flash of white light. It was a kundalini pentecostal scene and i was very pleased with myself for the experience, this gift from Mama Shakti. Outside at the shoe racks, slipping back into my Birkenstocks, i heard one person say to another, “Wow, did you notice that flashbulb going off, when that guy took the  photograph?” 

Sarah Elizabeth, an early riser in my same time zone, noted my owl audition earlier and sent me a link with owl calls. I heard a great horned owl this morning, it turns out. I hadn’t heard one since i lived in Pungo, the southern, agricultural part of Virginia Beach, circa 1997-2001, and so didn’t recognize it. Around here, it seems, the most common owl is either an eastern screech owl or a barn owl, which i hear very occasionally. Owl newbies often mistake the low throaty coo of a mourning dove for an owl, but i am a birdwatcher from way back and sorted that one out long ago.

 I don’t think that owl called my name after all. Damn. I was ready to say, like Isaiah before the Throne in Isaiah 6, “Here am I, Lord: send Me." But He ain't sendin' me nowhere but here.

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 5/0:06:03/
bbw/sinistral/end 6:31am/wi-t, left-mudra

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 6/0:06:04/
bbw/ortho/ end 7:06am/wi-t, right-mudra

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 7/0:06:05/
bbw/sinistral/end 7:48am/withthisgiftofbre-a, left-mudra

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 5/0:06:03/bbw/sinistral/end 6:31am/wi-t, left-mudra

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 6/0:06:04/bbw/ortho/ end 7:06am/wi-t, right-mudra

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 7/0:06:05/bbw/sinistral/end 7:48am/withthisgiftofbre-a, left mudra

 i ran out of my ritualized dose of morning coffee, thank God, and took my ritual pause to let the dust settle, walking over to the bathhouse and taking a shower. I was starting to smell like Lazarus, in the gospel of John, after his four days in the grave. When Jesus showed up late for the funeral, Lazarus’s sister Martha (of Martha the active and Mary the contemplative fame in Luke 10) said to him, “But Lord, my brother stinketh.” Mary, the contemplative one, had presumably noted the smell long since, in silence, and moved on to a deeper curiousity, sinking into
her vipassana  practice.

Practice log/ April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 13/0:06:11/bbw/sinistral/end 1:23pm/ withth-i 

Practice log/ April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 14/0:06:12/bbw/ortho/end 2:24pm/this 

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 15/0:06:13/bbw-1/sinistral/end 6:19pm/withthisg-i,L-mudra 

PF Practice log/ April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 16/0:02:03/”therrrrre iiiisss”/end 6:52pm 

Therrrrrre issssss . . . realizing i have a band aid on the
part of my right index finger touching the left thumb . . . therrrrre issss smothness
. . . therrrre isss in-breath . . . there is basic PIA, there is looking for
the thumb-finger, there is a shift to seeing, attention bounce to the eyes in
play . . . there isss in-breath . . . there is seeing, looking, there is a
crackling within the head, a sort of crisp electric arc, like the blade of a
scythe, but charged, sharply defining its arc like electric barbed wire . . .
there isss hearing the internal verbalization, “Therrrre issss,” there is
smiling inwardly, it’s like my mantra-like security blanket after all . . .
there is hearing the timer, shocked at the swiftness, i’m getting more
accustomed again to the slightly longer sits. But i am taking something smaller
than baby steps here. I am not even a toddler, i am in a crib, still trying to
figure out whether these arms and legs have anything to do with me, feeling
toward the connection.

Practice log/April 23, 2020/sesshin day 11/sit 17/bbw-2/ortho/end 7:36pm/embrace, l-mudra

Practice log/ April 24, 2020/sesshinday 12/sit 1/0:06:15/bbw-3/ended 2:20am/ortho/love You, T-mudra
 
I have started doing my first wee-hours sit every morning BEFORE COFFEE, whic allows me to set up conditions of deep mental sludge, fog, and dullness, a sort of depresso-mimetic mode, in anticipation of the Big Crash to come.
 
Practice log/ April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit/0:06:16/bbw/end 3:23am/sinistral/with-t, L-mudra
 
Daniel says that any of the three doors can open into stream entry. Likewise, i think we can find ourselves knocking on a particular door, in any given sit.

(crypto southern evangelist Bible-thumping Bible-spouting Catholic mole on DhS working in apparent idiocy and cluelessnes to the lingo that allows everyone to not take him seriously, while setting up the sucker punch of JESUS, that Jew, burrowing through the ground of the Overground with his ortho-sinistral agenda hidden in plain sight, slipping in Bible quotes, like: 
until all beings are SAVED, possibly BY JESUS, possibly by some other Bodhisattva, most likely by a team effort that includes Smiling Stone.)

so in this sit, clearly knocking at the breath door, following each breath with clear vision, letting word happen natural on the in breath, sinking into body on the out-breath.
 
Practice log/ April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 3/0:06:17/bbw-3/ended 3:55am/ortho/let, L-mudra
 
 (edit) breath door=transience door

(edit squared) transience door=impermance door

Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 4/0:06:18/bbw-2/ended 4:38am/sinistral/ embrace, L-mudra/anicca, anatta doors 

adding a new data bit to the basic practice log line here: if i am aware of particular doors at play, which doors i am knocking on, in a given sit.

In the previous sit, woke up to knocking on the breath door; this sit noticed that full attendance to the breath/transience/anicca door all the way through the cycle from in-breath to out-breath leads, in the variation on my technique that i call bbw-2, very naturally to a knocking on the anatta door as well, as i tend to move to the next mantric intonation of the next word (word=not self, the rock that is higher than I=anatta)  in the prayer in this one-word-at-a-time on one-roasry-bead-at-a-time mode. Having the word intoning at whatever frequency during the entire cycle of breath, first on the lead mudra reaching the new bead/new word, and repeating for the trail mudra, both on the same bead, allows me to have a chance at a sort of transient orientation point. It is like building as much of a sand castle as possible in the wet sand between waves: you won’t get much of a castle, on any given round, but you will get something more than flat wet sand. Then the next wave, the next breath takes it down to zero again. Apply the breath, lather with the word, rinse with the wave, repeat, the shampoo technique. 

Another thought: it is ironic to me, in the light of my
conversation with fabrice tom on another thread---

here https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/20239836 ---

where he is sort of making a case that Daniel is a hide-bound, style-cramped by-the-book lame-ass slave to the uncreative letter of Buddhist scripture, that terrible thing, a “traditionalist.”

I have begged to differ, there, and here i say agin, it is fucking IRONIC how hard it is to get the right sanskrit/pali words out of that fucking lame-ass traditionalist’s hopelessly rote commentary on Buddhist scripture throughout MCBT2. I had to go to wikipedia for my fucking lame-ass traditional scholarship, for this:
I mean, SHIT. It’s hard enough work being a lameass drone traditionalist, without having to bust your ass just trying to get to the words in the holy fucking language whose letters give rise to the fucking cosmos through their mere vibration.

Whether that language is Sanskrit, Pali, or Hebrew, by the way, is giving me fits right now.

Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 5/0:06:19/bbw-2/end 5:31am/ortho/You breathe, R-mudra/anicca, anatta doors

interesting side effect, with a two-doors-foregrounded sit, is that when the sit ended, i wasn’t able to finish simply jotting down the data notes for it before i realized that i had EXPLODING BLADDER SYNDROME, as a result of the body/dukha door being backgrounded during the sit. I just hadn’t noticed how bad i had to pee, it was all breath and mantra.

Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 6/0:06:20/bbw/end 6:01am/sinistral/wit-h, L-mudra/anicca, anatta doors
 
Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 7/0:06:21/bbw/end 6:36am/ortho/Thy will be done/ anicca, anatta doors
 
it seems to me this morning that which doors i am working with in a given sit are much more fundamental thatn whether it is “vipassana” or “concentrative” or “prayer of this or that” or what have you.
 
The thing is, at a given point in practice, certain doors present themselves to be knocked on. I began with the breath.transience/anicca door, in 1975 during my first meditations as a senior in high school in Honolulu--- i would drive up the Pali, the mountain road over the chain of heights that divides the leeward and windward sides of the island, to this little Buddhist temple, and do my sits in these intro classes, sitting around a big conference room-type table with a monk and a bunch of other clueless haoles and locals. So i’ve been banging on that door for 45 years. I got into serious mantra work, word/anatta door,  in the ashram in 1982-84, and always combined that with breath, in matras like so-ham, working one syllable on the in-breath, one on the out.
 
funny story: when i went nuts in my Haight Ashbury commune scene on two hits of Very Good Dope, in 1984, post-ashram, and started praying aloud to the goddess (the main goddess, we were polytheistic) of the new religion we were making up then, and got tossed out and sent up to Harbin Hot Springs, in the thermal leak hills of Lake County north of SF, i got stashed in their state of the art Spiritual Emergency hut (Grof was in his heyday then, driving every body nuts), the guy who ran the place, a skinny intense motherfuck named Ishvara, interviewed me when i got there. He was a KUNDALINI YOGI of the highest order, and when he heard that i had done my time in the kundalini saturated Siddha Yoga Dham in Oakland, he was delighted. He asked me what my practice was, no doubt expecting collegial intricacies, chakra spins and swoops and sophisticated nadi electricity manipulation of the highest order. I told him, “I watch my breath.” His face fell into scorn and disappointment; i was clearly another pedestrian/civilian to him. “Okay, well enjoy the Spiritual Emergency hut,” he said, and sent me on my way, and that was the last he ever spoke with me.
 
What i think of as “vipassana” is characterized by its relentless attention to the dukha door, what i call “body.” It was only in the worst of my dark night cycles that i was reduced to the body/dukha door, because at that point I was, like, Fuck this fucking breathing, I would so prefer to STOP THAT SHIT, and fuck this word shit, it’s all empty noise. What i found at that point was 1) the fucking breathing does itself, and 2) so does the fucking body/dukha. So i would sit there wanting nothing more than to die in this materialist void-of-meaning piece of shit universe, and be done, stuck with the anicca of breath and the dukha of body, a perfect two-door meditation if ever there was one, and entirely against my will.

Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 9/0:06:23/bbw/end 9:19am/ortho/gift/anicca, dukha doors 

Practice log/ April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 9/0:02:47/”vipassana-wink-wink”/end
9:37am/ anicca, dukha doors

Oh, you “vipassana” vipers, woe unto you! I’ve got your number and it is two, as in TWO FUCKING DOORS, as in follow the in-breath up out of sunyata, noticing what hurts the most the whole way up, and sink with the out-breath all the way back down, noting what hurts most as you go down into the abyss of suffering. Great fucking deal, you [immensely creative obscene rant, deleted per DhO forum rules, even though it was technically not directed at any specific person, it’s just real potty mouth stuff and really it just seems wrong somehow]

Practice log/April 24, 202/sesshin day 12/sit 11/0:03:04/ “v”-w-w/end 11:48am, anicca, dukha doors 

Again, all you fucking vipassana scam artists with all the fucking books since the beginning of time in multiple sacred languages, a tower of Babel of wisdom, would it have killed you to just put out a haiku or something, short and sweet, to summarize your crazed path? Like so: 

Just this fucking breath

pilgrimage through this body

up and down, all pain. 

Practice log/April 24, 2020/sesshin day 12/sit 12/0:06:23/ “v”-w-w/end 2:17pm/anicca, dukha doors

all this fuss, you see,
because breath goes up and down
while the body hurts.


 Practice log/April 24, 202/sesshin day 12/sit 13/0:02:55/ “v”-w-w/ end 12:54pm/ anicca, dukha doors 

Three burning Hebrews
lucid in the inferno
smiling at the king. 

(cf Daniel 3:25, ignoring the form of the mysterious fourth, for the moment)