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Swimming against the tide...
May. 21st, 2002 10:31 pmFor the second day in a row after returning home, I've been unable to get done what needs doing. This raises some interesting questions that may need to be addressed offline regarding "what needs doing." One thing I have come to realize is that I must put off thoughts of doing the translation a little at a time and just do the thing over the weekend, say, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This will eliminate one more distraction for tomorrow and Thursday.
I went home from the store about 3:00 pm and had to lie down to take a nap for an hour or two to recharge my batteries. I got up at 4:45 pm and went downstairs to start working on the assignment due next Monday, which is a series of short occupational safety standards. I will read through them over the next couple of days, but as I note in the previous paragraph, I don't intend to sit down with them until late in the week.
Galina called around 5:40 pm to say we'd been invited over to the house of one of our customers for a talk about a local Buddhist Meditation Retreat Center called Tara Mandala. The center was founded by a woman named Tsultrim Allione in 1993, and she spoke this evening to a group of about 50 people (most of whom, I suppose, were already familiar with some of the ideas presented). It was an interesting talk, and I found myself making a number of small connections as she spoke.
Some had nothing to do with what was being said. There was a lamp behind the speaker, in the shape of what I initially took to be a geodesic sphere, but was not, really. It occurred to me that Drew, who has been spending a lot of time building model airplanes lately (his latest is huge), may have some spare balsa lying around that we could use to build a scale model of a geodesic dome that we might later construct on the property. I've seen such domes - which are used mostly as greenhouses - here and there around Pagosa, but they cost several thousand dollars if you want to buy them commercially, with all the accessories.
Other things did, not all of which I remember now (and it only occurred to me to take notes late in the talk).
One involved the idea of training the consciousness to cause moments of insight to occur. I associate this with placing oneself in certain 'states' (that might be induced by prayer or meditation) that, in turn, allow the "fog" to clear from our vision. Personally, I have experienced what I consider to be moments where I think and feel I understand the universe; where I have a momentary vision of the Great Interrelationship of Things. I do not doubt one could train oneself to cause such moments to occur more frequently.
Another is associated with the idea of a retreat. The Tara Mandala center organizes many retreats, but here, I am talking of the deliberate withdrawal from the hurly-burly of daily life to do... nothing. The closest I have ever come to such an experience have been individual days while on vacation; once, in Greece, a second time, in Spain. There are times I think I would like to go into the forest for several days and find myself a corner in which to sit and not think about what to do... just go pursue whatever or wherever it is strikes my fancy, deliberately avoiding long-term planning, though perhaps allowing myself to freewheel my thoughts onto paper or something.
I remember talking with Oleg N., back when we worked together in Houston, about an experience he once had visiting the seashore for a couple of weeks. Oleg told me he (initially) forced himself to sit on the beach and look out at, and focus on the surf and, beyod that, not to think of anything in particular at all. At the end of his time there, he said, he had cleansed his soul and become more healthy, physically. Indeed, he said that his eyesight - which had been spoiled via a lifetime of poring over engineering drawings - improved dramatically.
It was an interesting evening.
Cheers...
I went home from the store about 3:00 pm and had to lie down to take a nap for an hour or two to recharge my batteries. I got up at 4:45 pm and went downstairs to start working on the assignment due next Monday, which is a series of short occupational safety standards. I will read through them over the next couple of days, but as I note in the previous paragraph, I don't intend to sit down with them until late in the week.
Galina called around 5:40 pm to say we'd been invited over to the house of one of our customers for a talk about a local Buddhist Meditation Retreat Center called Tara Mandala. The center was founded by a woman named Tsultrim Allione in 1993, and she spoke this evening to a group of about 50 people (most of whom, I suppose, were already familiar with some of the ideas presented). It was an interesting talk, and I found myself making a number of small connections as she spoke.
Some had nothing to do with what was being said. There was a lamp behind the speaker, in the shape of what I initially took to be a geodesic sphere, but was not, really. It occurred to me that Drew, who has been spending a lot of time building model airplanes lately (his latest is huge), may have some spare balsa lying around that we could use to build a scale model of a geodesic dome that we might later construct on the property. I've seen such domes - which are used mostly as greenhouses - here and there around Pagosa, but they cost several thousand dollars if you want to buy them commercially, with all the accessories.
Other things did, not all of which I remember now (and it only occurred to me to take notes late in the talk).
One involved the idea of training the consciousness to cause moments of insight to occur. I associate this with placing oneself in certain 'states' (that might be induced by prayer or meditation) that, in turn, allow the "fog" to clear from our vision. Personally, I have experienced what I consider to be moments where I think and feel I understand the universe; where I have a momentary vision of the Great Interrelationship of Things. I do not doubt one could train oneself to cause such moments to occur more frequently.
Another is associated with the idea of a retreat. The Tara Mandala center organizes many retreats, but here, I am talking of the deliberate withdrawal from the hurly-burly of daily life to do... nothing. The closest I have ever come to such an experience have been individual days while on vacation; once, in Greece, a second time, in Spain. There are times I think I would like to go into the forest for several days and find myself a corner in which to sit and not think about what to do... just go pursue whatever or wherever it is strikes my fancy, deliberately avoiding long-term planning, though perhaps allowing myself to freewheel my thoughts onto paper or something.
I remember talking with Oleg N., back when we worked together in Houston, about an experience he once had visiting the seashore for a couple of weeks. Oleg told me he (initially) forced himself to sit on the beach and look out at, and focus on the surf and, beyod that, not to think of anything in particular at all. At the end of his time there, he said, he had cleansed his soul and become more healthy, physically. Indeed, he said that his eyesight - which had been spoiled via a lifetime of poring over engineering drawings - improved dramatically.
It was an interesting evening.
Cheers...
