May 2009 Intensive Meditation | Day 9
It rained all last night – intense rain. I don’t know if this is from the Cyclone that killed all those people in Burma or not. Someone said 600,000 died. Is that unreal? In Florida, before I left we had 3 hurricanes come through that season. No more than 10 people died in all of them I’d guess. Is Burma that backward? That’s completely amazing that in this time – 2008, even 100,000 could die from a natural disaster that the world KNEW was coming. There was lots of advance warning. How does that happen?
Anyway, Southern Thailand gets its share of rain without cyclones too.
I am planning to do some exercise and walking meditation today. My mood is very calm – nothing stressing me out. No, I don’t have everything taken care of in my life – but, little has the power to affect me anymore. Meditation does that – gives one a good perspective on things.
It’s very cloudy right now – but I’ll try to go out for a bit and see what happens. I’ll write more when I return. Assuming I return… One cannot cling to the idea that there’s a future at all really – yes?
Sawasdee krup…..
Ok, I’m back. I went up the mountain twice today – thinking I had lots of energy. The 2nd time was pretty rough. It was hot – the sun was still shining on that side of the hill and there was zero wind and 95-100% humidity. It was so tough! One of the toughest times I’ve ever climbed once. But, once rested at the top and cooled off by the wind I decided to try again. Halfway up the second time, the realization hit me – wow, my heart’s beating way too fast. Much faster than usual. I took it slow from that point on – but suffered the whole way up and down.
Backing up…
From the time I started up the steps the first time – I was in complete mindfulness. That amazing thoughtless state where it’s just experiencing… very few thoughts came to mind the whole way up. I met a few people – so that helped me maintain the state. Maybe the entire way up – I had thoughts just 2-3 times. They were quick one-sentence thoughts that were just mind comments about whether there was pain behind my left knee or not… and another thing I can’t recall now.
Once at the top there were a few people. The wind was cool a couple of places around the rim of the top and while taking photos and videos I discovered a new function of my camera. I’ve had it for about 2 years. More than that. I discovered multi-burst mode. I played with that a while. Here are some images from it below… What it appears to do is fire off 16 photos in a very short time – It said 1/7.5″ So – is that 75 hundreds of a second? Not sure at all. Anyway, here are some photos from it.
Ok, on second thought – it’s not so cool. It takes 16 photos – very small and puts them in a timeline sort of format – almost like still frames from a movie clip – but the photos are so closely spaced in time that they aren’t very unique. I must not have moved the camera enough. Oh well, never mind that. Take a look at the video below instead.
More people came up the steps as the rain looked like it was going to stay away for a while. I didn’t sit at the top like I thought I might. Instead, I took photos and talked to a young couple from Dublin, Ireland. I meet people from all over the world on these trips up the hill – that’s half the reason I do them.
So, as I said – I went down and up and down again and then back home to eat some French bread from the big market which really isn’t half bad. Or maybe I don’t have a taste for bread anymore after 42 months of rice daily. I ate it plain as usual.
Tonight I was going to just eat another few bananas and call it a night – but, I realized I have some spaghetti pasta leftover in the bag. Hmm… I have some butter in the cooler… Might just be a pasta & butter night. Will sit for a while first since there is some feeling that the state is still with me, and has been all day.
It’s funny – I keep ignoring the state when it comes, and when I don’t have it – I think – hmm, wonder where it’s been. Now it’s been here since I woke up 12 hours ago and I ignore sitting and do other things… Strange how/why I do that.
Oh, before I forget – I did do a quick run around the entire top of the mountain so I could get a 360 view on video. Not sure how it turned out – but I’ll put it below once I get fast internet access. Right now I have none from home as the service must be down with all the rain.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned yet – I’m working on another site. Did I mention it? Hmm.
It’s called, GuruGone.com. Have a look if you like, it’s not finished by any means -but the basic idea is there. Might move this blog /journal over to that domain after a while or may keep it separate. Not at all sure at this point. This blog (seemlessness) has moved and even changed names over the last year. I have the seemlessness.com domain or seamlessness.com domain – can’t remember which. I could move it back there too.
Attention Deficit Disorder is NOT fun… man, if I could just be happy with it as it is…
(update 27 Feb 2019 – I haven’t had any significant ADD/ADHD since day 28 of this intensive meditation. It seems to have wiped it away. Just another massive benefit of meditation.)
