Fall is in the air--I saw a perfectly formed, red maple leaf on the ground. We're still harvesting--my peppers are still producing, and some nearby fields have winter squashes and cabbage and even melon! The first frost is not for several weeks most likely, and my CSA goes through October, I believe--at any rate, several weeks longer than the CSAs in MN do. A nice benefit! Hardy greens especially, get only sweeter after a frost.

My classes are going well. I love the weeds course I am assisting with. It's so fun to sit back and absorb the material, without having to be tested on it. The test is every class, if the students have any questions. The prof is so enthusiastic, he seems hopped up on caffeine. He just loves the class.

The benefit to school, that should be inherent in any job, is the mental stimulation. I loved my job the first few years, when it was a challenge. I was figuring out the ins-and-outs, learning Spanish, and figuring out how to best counsel people. After that, it was miserable because it was so boring. But new challenges would have made all the difference. I could have done it for many more years with any sort of challenge added to it. So, you don't have to go back to school to get that stimulation. You just have to find a way to get it from your job. It was also fun to take community ed courses at night, and learn things completely different from what I needed for work.

Tomorrow I take a pesticide applicator certification exam. My adviser wanted me to because it makes me more marketable, and I found a way for someone else to pay for it. It's very amusing to me--I don't "believe in" pesticides! It is true that there are some organic sprays, but generally it's a way of solving a problem that I don't believe is very helpful in the long run. Still, whatever adds to my knowledge base is useful--better to be educated about your decisions.

I decided to make a big switch in my meditations, from the mantra I had been using, to a breath-watching meditation. It sounds ridiculous, but the mantra meditation is too powerful for me. I have to be super cautious, and it shouldn't be like that. It should be calming, centering afterwards. The proof in the pudding is the way you feel afterwards. So I will do a breath-watching meditation until I feel better otherwise. It's so crazy because after fighting and fighting with the idea, I am willing to do it. I will sit there, every day, for half an hour or an hour or whatever it takes. I know it is the key, to so much. But it's been over a year and I have to be honest about what works. I have a disposition that needs a softer form of meditation, for now.

Both yesterday and the day before I got to go on a friend's boat on the lake (Seneca Lake, I think?). This never would have happened in MN, even though there's more lakefront-- because it's urban, it's in higher demand and more costly. I miss home a lot but there is a lot I never would have gotten to do there. The idea of "home" that is in my head doesn't really exist anyway--people have moved and everything is different. There is no true home to go back to. And then I will be changed, used to the natural beauty and quiet out here. Aren't I young to be experiencing so much nostalgia? Where will home ever exist?

Of course I love visiting home--but that is vacation, and not representative of daily life.

ramble ramble on Buddhism and books

Last year, I was by myself at a used bookstore in NYC (Strand) and a guy started talking to me about some kind of Buddhism. In all honesty, I was kind of unbalanced at the time. I felt all out of sorts from the move away from MN, and had started meditating, and it was all a lot for me. But the same toughness that didn't see this (my sensitivity, and overdoing change) kept me safe walking around the city by myself. Anyway, this guy was nice, and it was interesting talking to him. He was from some sort of Buddhism where there is a stick they chant to. He gave me a sheet of paper with the info and I promised him I would look at the website, even though I wasn't really interested in chanting to a stick. I kept the paper because I didn't want to be a liar

Recently, I took the piece of paper from this man out of my purse (I am tossing out everything I can, and that means going through it all). I looked up the website. It was pretty much as he described it, chanting to a stick. Buddhism is interesting (though yoga is what appealed to me from day 1), but not my particular thing, and I may be too Western for this stick chanting. I can dig mantras (I highly recommend the Ravi/Ana kundalini yoga DVDs for a Western crowd; they explain the purpose behind various exercises as you go along). However, chanting is a little too somber for me. I know the stick thing is not as ridiculous as it sounds--but I can't figure out why I'd want to do it. I just thought the whole thing was interesting. I remember mostly wondering why he decided to talk to me. Did I look weird? Now I think he was probably enthusiastic about his practice, and saw I was open-minded. It's so funny, the people you can run into.

I was reminded again because I went to that bookstore, Strand, when we were in NYC last weekend. I love bookstores, and my weakest point, as far as materialism goes, has to be book collecting. I try to give away books I'm not reading (I even gave away my 1984 version of the book 1984--which was my favorite book for several years! I was a somber teenager :) ) and now have the excuse that I'm going to give them away to a local prison book project. They need the books, I insist, so I need to buy them and read them. But the stack is getting to be too much, even for me. Time to start going to the library more often!

I'm listening to Adyashanti, who trained in Buddhist Zen for many years (not sure if "trained" is the right word). He says suffering is caused by misperception, not seeing things as they really are. His writing and speeches are very interesting to me right now. "How am I causing my own suffering through my own misperceptions?" "There is no such thing as a true belief... Reality itself is clear."

Class today was fun. Weed science is like "plant story time", because the instructor has tons of energy and loves to tell stories about things. He told a story about wild parsnip, commonly found on roadsides and in abandoned lots. A girl's father was brought to court for child abuse. The girl (7 or so) has severe welts on her back. It looked as if she had been whipped. The defense brought a weed scientist, who was able to confirm that her welts were from wild parsnip. Apparently there was a patch of it in her backyard that she felt into. It causes contact dermatitis (similar to poison ivy). The father was finally acquitted. Who knew!?

I wasn't looking forward to classes starting, but things have gone very well. I feel more alert, active in my own existence. I'm attempting to understand concepts and complete assignments right away, instead of delaying it. My sensory experience has always been blurred, I'm learning. In class, I don't listen, don't listen, don't listen. I read the notes and book when I feel like it and suddenly-aha!- I understand, in my own way, in my own time.

Why am I so afraid of perceiving things directly? Why can't I understand things as they are being said? I create a layer, which I replay for myself, and then I understand. What a stressful way of doing things--it requires ignoring what is front of me, and putting off comprehension (procrastination), in a matter of seconds. Even if I understand instantly upon replay to myself (and I often do, in my own way; this is the only reason I can pull off doing this), it is so detaching. And I am just beginning to realize, probably draining. Getting myself to experience things as they occur is so hard, I am resisting so much. But cracks in the pattern are beginning to form. I can see some light starting to shine through.

It started to become clear (in the smallest way), when I first heard the yogic idea of samskaras, mental and emotional patterns etched into our brains and bodies. Neuroscience backs this idea up to some degree, and new research on the plasticity of the brain goes along with idea that these can be broken down. The patterns are hard-etched, but can be changed. There are many ways to do it, but yoga is what instantly appealed to me. I wish I had known about the entire multi-facted practice when I was younger--it would have appealed to my 14 year old self and saved me a lot of lost time. But, oh well. You can never know "what might have been".

I'm reading The Wisdom of Yoga, which goes over the eight limbs of yoga with personal experiences (I believe I mentioned this earlier), and the stories speak to the truth of how yoga can overcome this conditioning. The part I'm reading right now speaks to how mild restraint is necessary for getting past the samskaras. Not huge restraint; willpower alone cannot overcome these patterns. But making small choices to reverse harmful habits always pays off. Restraint rewards.

One intriguing example is of a woman who had lived her life in a fairytale. She was pretty and talented, and imagined away anything that didn't fit with this picture-perfect life. When things began to fall apart, she started practicing yoga (not just asana/poses). She began to see how she lied, constantly. She couldn't help it. Small lies were the hardest, especially gossip (truthful speach that is unnecessary/harmful is not "right speach"). So she began working with someone once a week, tracing the samskaras/patterns back to their origins. She committed to the idea of silence--speaking only when absolutely necessary (giving money to a banker or something). It was horrible at first, because it revealed her thoughts. But then, the Witness began to come out; she saw the fruits of restraint. She extended her commitment to more fully experience it. It marked a true shift for her.

Things don't change so fast for me. But the same stubbornness that refuses to let go and continues to resist, is what I'm applying to my sadhana, my yogic practice. The same thing that causes any suffering I experience in life, now properly applied, is starting to do me some good :) I know deep inside I must continue, and that everything will be shed in due time. Over a year after starting meditation, I finally feel a shift starting to occur, lightening my load a little. I'm a tough nut to crack, but it's happening.

I signed up for a volunteer training, for a listening-intensive type of peer counseling. You spend two semesters training, go through an intensive, and then can counsel. I thought it would be good for me to focus on people besides myself, working actively on becoming more empathetic and spending energy on others.

There are some laughter yoga classes at Cornell--I may go to them if I have time. But this training will take up my Monday evenings.