Karma knows

It's a beautiful day today. Like a jewel. Like a venetian glass bead. It's not too hot and the air is fresh and green. Coming home from the farm this morning, the mist was like a golden blessing. It's high summer. The grass is long and honey colored, the fields filled with queen anne's lace.

I found this great soft grey cotton cardigan by the side of the road and I've been wearing it everywhere. I love cardigans. It's perfect for a cool morning like this one.

We went swimming in the pond last night, then messed around. Afterward, the moon was shining like a beacon on the fields and we went running naked around the yard in the moonlight, eating peaches off the trees like two creaky Adam and Eves. It's supposed to be very good for you to walk around naked in the moonlight.

I am still mad about the cup. I keep having imaginary conversations with Anne. The conversations are brilliant. I say brilliant, pithy, cutting things, designed to make her feel like crap and make everyone else overhearing them flock to my noble self. Then I go "thinking!" and they stop, for awhile.

Thinking!

Most of the thinking, most of the dialogue I engage in is so useless. Where does it get me? What does it solve? What do I miss when doing it? I was riding my bike a few days ago and embarking on some internal drama--and may I just say that, while I love my new bike (well--3 years old--but the last one was from 1967, and I'd been riding either on it or on the back of it as an infant my entire life) the old bike required a lot more concentration to ride. The shocks were terrible and it was perpetually stuck in third gear, + things would always fall off it. I just gave up on it eventually. All my groovy friends were like "Man, Haley, that bike was a classic" but my new one actually gets me places on time. However, it does give me more time to get lost in my head, which is maybe not the best thing.

Hey! Maybe that's one good thing about aging! Maybe the physical creaks and pains of the body are good for keeping you focused on the present. Hmmmm?

So, it is a beautiful day, but I know it will rain. Because Karma, my yellow lab, is refusing to come out from under the stairs. And she knows.

I was reading the latest issue of Shambhala Sun. There was an interview with a yoga teacher in it and she said something very interesting--hang on, I'm going to go get the magazine. Okay--never mind. That's not it. It's the article by Chip Hartranft. There was a quote that really hit home: "...it is difficult to perform a yoga pose without unconsciously striving to feel good, or improve the self or prolong life. Grasping and delusion follow us wherever we go, and thus both sitting and hatha yoga can become new, specialized arenas for perpetuating dukkha, suffering."
Not fair! He's so right. Vanity is the only reason I'm on the cushion, I think. I started meditating when I was a teenager because I saw pictures of buddhist nuns and they didn't have any wrinkles.

However, the world of illusion has been compared to a burning house--any ruse is acceptable to get people out of the flames.

I nurse my secret vanities like dirty little demons. He's right. My practice, both the yoga and the zen are about grasping--grasping youth, grasping health, grasping superiority. What a big fat bore I am. Oh well, I've been doing it this long....

Wheww. Well as Darlene from Hurlyburly would say, "Insight!" Now I have to spit on the floor because I've just quoted Macbeth.

Ah, the world of conditioned reflexes.

That's my 1/2 hour.