This morning I was anxious to eat breakfast. I had kow pad gai (skinless chicken breast over jasmine rice). It also comes with a baggie of chicken broth with scallions and black pepper. Really delicious and it’s my usual breakfast here 20/30 days each month.
I developed the hiccups. They were strong. I sat through it for a minute thinking they’d go away. This seemed like a strong case of them because they didn’t slow down or stop. I tried an experiment – just let it go – clear the mind… thought stopped and I was just experiencing an empty mind.
The hiccups stopped. I ate my breakfast in comfort!
Strange that the mind would have something to do with hiccups as I’d think it was a physical reaction to something – involuntary. Well, it is involuntary. I guess I thought there was no way we could control them voluntarily. It will take another couple tries to confirm that it wasn’t just good timing and the hiccups would have stopped at that time anyway, but interesting.
Other than that I’ve been experience brief periods without thought that just come and other times when I let everything go and it comes because I did.
I’ve been thinking about the future here. I spend entirely too much time on the computer – and for what reason? Not sure. I make a little money from ads on my web sites and it’s enough to live on. Do I need to do more? I’ve worked really hard for over a year to get to this point. If I worked that hard for another 18 months and had the same output it wouldn’t be worth it to me.
Is now the time to get rid of the computer, get a bike and go explore Thailand by bicycle? That’s one of the ideas floating around in thought right now. What else…?
I was thinking, why not create a place where visitors can come to meditate – where there is no agenda. No schedule. No classes. No anything except we provide a place for them to meditate – many places. Some in the woods, some in caves, etc. Just a place where meditators can come and do as they wish – their own practice. Not everyone wants 10-day Vipassana meditation courses like the ones we have plenty of here in Thailand.
Just some thoughts…