Eat When Eating

This morning I made a point of eating when eating. Not eat and read, not eat and watch TV. Just plain eating.

I sat. I ate. My thoughts took me someplace else.
"Oh well", I thought, "There's always the next meal to try again".
A new place of comfort.

Sweet ripeness

The figs in my garden are starting to ripen, filling the air with their honey-scented bounty... the fig tree has finally grown strong enough to face the harsh wind, and has become a place of cool shadowy shelter in the heat of summer... I see the figs maturing slowly, from hard immature bright-green to the soft round sweetness of opulent green-violet... the infinite play of light and shadow under the branches of the tree, the soft wind that moves green leaves along with green fruits ask for quiet observation... you cannot come to the tree hungry for its sweetness, you need to walk softly amidst the buzz of bees and hornets, to become acquainted with the ripe fruit you are about to pick and swallow, to sense with gratefulness the intimacy of giving and receiving...

Beginning

This is my journey through meditation. Those who might see progress are invited to rethink the linear paradigm of progression. Is the acorn less perfect than the oak?

The epigraph is from Walden, "Solitude": "I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you".