20250928

[2025/09/28, 9:40:22] James: Unable to meditate last night and this morning because of people and noise

[2025/09/28, 9:40:46] James: Also have painful prune-sized bursitis on one of my sit bones. Been developing for years

[2025/09/28, 9:40:54] James: I’ll get that surgically removed when I’m back

[2025/09/28, 9:41:07] James: But today will be a slow one. Stopping at shrines and temples for a brief sit.

[2025/09/28, 9:54:27] James: .

[2025/09/28, 9:54:36] James: Just 10 min but feel loads calmer

[2025/09/28, 9:54:45] James: Tuned into the serotonin behind the dopamine

[2025/09/28, 9:54:54] James: I need a quieter spot to go deeper

[2025/09/28, 10:05:45] James: .

[2025/09/28, 10:05:50] James: Piti is dopamine

[2025/09/28, 10:05:55] James: And Sukha is serotonin

[2025/09/28, 10:06:01] James: And we are all born with different levels

[2025/09/28, 10:06:07] James: Apples and oranges

[2025/09/28, 10:06:15] James: The important thing is how well it can carve

[2025/09/28, 10:06:19] James: I have a softwood brain

[2025/09/28, 10:06:26] James: If you have hardwood you might need full body

[2025/09/28, 10:06:30] James: Softwood does not

[2025/09/28, 10:06:34] James: Tools for the job

[2025/09/28, 10:12:12] James: .

[2025/09/28, 10:12:23] James: I hated the mind illuminated for this reason

[2025/09/28, 10:12:32] James: Like telling someone in a wheelchair to do hill sprints

[2025/09/28, 10:12:53] James: The Buddha clearly said that an untrue man will laud himself for being able to attain the jhana

[2025/09/28, 10:13:08] James: And the point of the jhana are to see that everything - including the jhana - are conditioned

[2025/09/28, 10:17:11] James: .

[2025/09/28, 10:17:18] James: And putting the dark night as a footnote

[2025/09/28, 10:17:27] James: Like it only shows up if you’re doing it wrong

[2025/09/28, 10:17:33] James: Pretty entitled there mate

[2025/09/28, 10:23:24] James: .

[2025/09/28, 10:23:30] James: A biologically imposed limit

[2025/09/28, 10:23:37] James: But that’s ok because that’s how your brain grew

[2025/09/28, 10:24:09] James: Hardwood won’t be scratched as much by the chisel of life

[2025/09/28, 10:24:20] James: You might be one of the lucky many who do not need a dark night

[2025/09/28, 10:24:30] James: But for the rest of us, the dark night is the fucking point

[2025/09/28, 10:24:35] James: That’s the pain we are exporting

[2025/09/28, 14:28:48] James: .

[2025/09/28, 14:28:55] James: Well there’s absolutely nothing in this town

[2025/09/28, 14:29:01] James: Maybe not even a place to wash!

[2025/09/28, 14:29:08] James: And I have 9 hours to kill

[2025/09/28, 14:29:38] James: Hard day in the saddle. My ass hurts (need surgery for sure) and it was headwinds and blazing sun all the way

[2025/09/28, 14:29:46] James: Time to get mah equanimity on

[2025/09/28, 14:29:54] James: Hope I can charge my devices somewhere at least.

[2025/09/28, 14:30:04] James: Maybe just jump in the ocean.

[2025/09/28, 16:00:35] James: .

[2025/09/28, 16:00:42] James: 25 min of broken meditation

[2025/09/28, 16:00:48] James: Amazing how much better I feel

[2025/09/28, 16:00:54] James: My mind was forming grooves already

[2025/09/28, 16:01:02] James: Too many days without a high quality sit

[2025/09/28, 16:01:10] James: It was dark-nighty

[2025/09/28, 16:01:14] James: The urge to move

[2025/09/28, 16:01:24] James: But that’s just the phasic spike pulling up tonic dopamine.

[2025/09/28, 16:58:45] James: .

[2025/09/28, 16:58:56] James: All that time I spent practicing zippo tricks.

[2025/09/28, 16:59:07] James: The sound of someone else opening one takes me right back

[2025/09/28, 16:59:12] James: I hope my kids will be ok

[2025/09/28, 16:59:16] James: They will suffer

[2025/09/28, 16:59:30] James: Maybe I can teach them they are not constant and to let go of things better than I did

[2025/09/28, 16:59:38] James: ‘Shut up dad’ for sure

[2025/09/28, 17:51:13] James: .

[2025/09/28, 17:51:19] James: That was cool

[2025/09/28, 17:51:27] James: I meditated on consciousness itself for a while

[2025/09/28, 17:51:45] James: Then in a restaurant I found myself meditating on pre-conception perception and mental formations

[2025/09/28, 17:52:02] James: I could feel the formations like a magnetic force on a charged wire in my brain

[2025/09/28, 17:52:37] James: And I felt the consciousness like ever-moving gravitational fields operating in 11 or so dimensions. I don’t know a number

[2025/09/28, 17:52:51] James: It was like an ebbing and flowing mass of water

[2025/09/28, 17:52:56] James: Nothing still, all changing

[2025/09/28, 17:53:04] James: I will move away from meditating on the body

[2025/09/28, 17:53:08] James: It is boring now

[2025/09/28, 17:53:31] James: And the jhana are dull, until number 4+