Willow Lake

I started walking to the library and I thought about intimacy. The last time I felt intimate with my ex maybe was the sex but it was when she told me that the heavy utensils hurt her wrist. That felt like an intimate moment.

At the library I put my five books in. It's a complicated technological transaction. I put the book down and a door opens. A green light goes on and I push a book in. It somehow scans it, and then pushes it in further, and asks for another one. When I'm done it registers 5 books. I have them email me the recept. I returned my 6th Mary Olive book, I started my 7th today.

I walked down to Willow Lake. I walk through orthodox Jewish suburban houses. It’s funny to see the Jewish women running in dresses, in full length black long sleeve, and then tights under the dress. Probably a wig too.

I walk past the place where I go in by the pond because it’s so overgrown. I waid through the weeds to the shore and wish I had brought a machete with me to clear the path. My fear brain tells me it’s not safe to be in the bushes like this. I think I would freak out somebody else if they found me where they were an animal or human. Humans are animals too. I don't feel like sitting down and meditating.

I’ve been thinking about the intersection of Buddhism with Concord Transcendentalism and the love of nature. When I enter the park, I bowed. I think parks are my temple. The Buddhas is specifically human psychological techniques towards becoming more mindful. Now the result oriented world focuses on enlightenment and it’s good to know the goal, but just becoming a little more mindful, this is precious. What the transcendentalist did was they shocked off all the complicated theology and hair splitting of Christian theology and said Nature, that’s enough we don’t need all this schisms and hair splitting and orthodoxy and "this is the only way" kind of thinking. Nature will let us know. In a way it’s almost Taoist, a kind of mysticism it doesn’t really have a creed so much as it’s just about being natural. For me anyway, I’m sure there are academics that can sniff out creeds, but I’ve read a lot of Taoism and I don’t think it’s more than misterioso talk about just trying to be one with nature.

The Buddha was outside when he got enlightened. 

I read a poem by Mary Oliver where she talks about turtles, sticking their heads up out of the water. When I sit and meditate by the pond, it sometimes happens to me. I see those turtle toes.

Closer to home I pick some weed flowers that nobody wants. I can put them on my shrine. I’m gonna meditate with a great master at noon on Zoom. He probably wouldn’t want me to call him a great master and that’s kind of why I like him. He’s humble and unassuming. He wrote a book on meditation and he obviously has spent a lot of time meditating and teaching meditation.