The last log was getting a bit long. For reference, here are the previous logs. 

Log 1:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22024623

Log 2: 
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22715276

Log 3:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/23922732


On the cushion:
I have had covid for the past week and a half, which includes coughing, nausea, and tiredness, which all make meditation challenging. I'm satisfied with a half an hour a day. I do get some samadhi going, because I think it is generally speaking good for me and the wider world, but it's pretty basic. I can vipassana-ize  the sensations of sickness but it kind of misses the point. It is in the gestalt that sickness is most remarkable. Nausea is particularly interesting because, unlike pain, it is very hard to localize. If you look at the component parts of nausea, none has a very clear signature, and yet you cannot miss the fact that nausea is present. If you then try to look at it as an overall constructed thing, it slips and slides and morphs to an incredible extent. 

Off the cushion:
I'm still not suffering at a personal level but there is quite a bit of awareness of suffering on a more diffuse level. I was just starting to feel pretty healthy after last month's heart attack when my son came back from vacation and we all came down with covid. Although we all had boosters in December, it has hit us pretty hard. It must be an unfortunate strain. As all three of us are sick together, the inexorable and distributed nature of biological suffering is on display. I am also reminded that we are very lucky, doing this in a warm house with plenty of food, and nobody trying to kill us. 

Speaking of death, it is on my mind. Not in a bad way. I don't have any strong anti-death feelings (or even ant-dying feelings, which used to be a thing for me) but I do think that I usually have a bit of a death blindspot. The future tends to stretch indefinitely far before the mind's eye. Until recently, being a 61-year-old athlete with no health issues, I had somewhere between 20 and 40 years ahead of me. More or less infinity. Now it could still be decades, but it could also be later today. The funny thing is, that doesn't represent a change. We are always on the edge. 

This perspective has interesting tie-ins with desire. To want something or to be reluctant to lose something is to want a particular future but the future that is desired is itself situated longer future. Imagining being very rich, or very right, or very comfortable for just a day is different from imagining these states as potentially infinite, which, I think, is the default perspective. After all, we have all been, relatively speaking, rich, right, and comfortable and moments in our lives. There is nothing super special about those states. But when those states are in the future they look different. 

When I shift my background view of the future from infinite to finite, it has a different feel. Oddly, it becomes less tangible, less demanding of investment and protection. For one thing, the future is not finite in the sense of having a known end. It's not like the distance from here to the end of the street. The more specifically you try to make predictions about it, the more clearly lacking in reliability the predictions become. And the end is not just unknown, it actually does not, and will not, exist. It's not like the world stops when local consciousness stops. Looking at the whole wide world, and all the consciousness in it, it's clear that local consciousness stops millions of times a day. Probably millions of times a second. That doesn't seem to be much of a problem for the world at large. Only in the narrative version of life is the end so very important.

These are the views and perspectives that are flitting through my mind. I have no answers, which is a blessing. 

Oh, I love you man! Im 49 yo but I feel you big time! 

Yeah, that realization that death is inevitable. And it will happen to me. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe whatever But it will happen.

We are not all the same it seems. To me after the 1st path cessation, the "death thing" is more like "oh, this non-existence is not really scary at all". To me life-ing is more of a suffering thing than Not-consciousness But even that is more like ... oh, is this yet again a trance of sorts? ... oh, of course it is ... wonder ... dont know ... stuffing ... is ... this ... oops, again some sort of a trance dwelling state ... wonder ... dont know ... is ... ummm ... peace bra ... trance/dwelling state ... oh! I see! ... what know I ... dunno ... 

 

Wishing you good health, a speedy recovery and blistering insight. 

Death has been on my mind. 

I'm curious as to whether the sorts of things that you think of when you think of death have changed over time. For me, not being worried about it, and so not trying to push it away, particularly now that it has come so close, has made it possible to think about it more, and that is where all this thought about the finite nature of future experience comes from. Has your way of looking at it changed? 

Yeah so I understand or relate to the infinite wave horizon of time collapsing into a finite hour glass deal.

But lately it's something different. It's like when I really relax, when I really get down to it then death is just here. Through the room, through the body, through the heart. It has nothing to do with time really. 

I was a very sickly kid. I spent a lot of my early life in and out of hospital and the first few weeks of my existence in an incubator. 

I see now that my struggling against life has its roots in my early struggle to live. Once I start letting go of that struggle death arrives, or is seen to have always been right here, right through me.

It is frankly a rather unsettling experience  

​​​​​​​The last few years I've had some health struggles and I am now enjoying a patch of relative healthfulness. I wish the same for you. 

Thanks, Bahiya. It was good of you to share that. That does sound unsettling and also very penetrating. 

I'm glad your health is better at the moment. Health problems can shape life at such a basic level. I always found it interesting that, in the suttas, the monks were allowed their robes, their bowls, and their medicine, because, two and a half thousand years ago, managing health problems was part of life for many monks.