Fall!

I have been so busy bemoaning the fact that another long, gloomy Ithaca winter is coming (MN is colder but much sunnier!) that I almost forgot how much I love fall.

The evidence:

Annual % avg possible sunshine, by city
New York City, Central Park, NY: 58%
Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN: 58%
Syracuse (an hour away): 46%
Seattle, WA: 47%
Portland, OR: 48%

So the northeast gets more sun than us here!

Okay, done with complaining. Best things about fall, here or anywhere else in the north:
-changing leaves!
-crispness in the air
-perfect running weather--sunny, warm mid-day but cool morning and night
-apple picking, fresh apples, and all the spices that go with apple-flavored treats (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc)
-winter squash
-all the holidays coming up (which I'm not really into, except for my b-day in Nov, but I might as well celebrate it all)
-for those in school, we're still fresh and excited to learn, and not quite jaded yet ;)

Some interesting articles:
Primitive cultures are simple, civilization is complex (a falsehood)
What's wrong with eco-stunts

From http://images.google.com/url?source=imgres&ct=ref&q=http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattchamplin/2938153364/&usg=AFQjCNFSbOn4OpN-80yP3ekxzQOMVWrYtg


The air is crisp and nights are cold, but days are sunny and warm. Squash and apples are being harvested--I'm baking lots of cinnamon-flavored desserts. There's also a locally grown and milled whole wheat flour available, so I want to try making my own bread. I'm a bit lazy for the yeasted bread, so I'm trying quick breads--either sweet with fruit (like banana, or currents) and spiced, or savory with herbs.

My breath-watching meditation is going well. I was just thinking that it didn't seem to be doing anything, and that maybe it was a waste of time. Just my mind playing games, I realize when I step back. Before my meditation was too strong, and now that I don't see instant results I think I am wasting my time? So silly. Looking objectively, I have to say I am really happy with it. I just need to stop being lazy, meditating laying down. I am a lot more undisciplined mentally during meditation if I am laying down instead of sitting up.

There is an alternatives library here. It is really neat; it has magazines, CDs, DVDs, and lots of different kinds of books. I checked out a few Buddhist magazines. They are interesting but it just doesn't attract me the way yoga does. I really like Jack Kornfield though, a Buddhist clinical psychologist who has done a lot to bring mindfulness meditation into the mainstream in the past few decades. I really admire that-- in the beginning it was rather a rather radical act, and now it is something doctors will recommend in conjunction with other therapies (possibly medication and conventional therapy). Some feel that it loses something when it is brought into the secular realm, but I think making it accessible does far more in this case.

A quote from him: I don't think there is dharma practice on the one hand and psychology on the other. I believe that sets up a false dichotomy.

I agree.

I'm reading the Yoga Sutras. They are short and are meant to be taken in slowly, and meditated on (I suppose). There are also many commentaries available on them. There are also many translations--sadly, I think a fair amount gets lost in translation from the original Sanskrit.

They translate "yoga" as "Union" here, I notice. I think it may be British... they use "fancy" where I've seen "imagination" before.

An idea here seems to be, that until we are able to clear our minds and see what is true, we are not living in reality.

From Sacred-Texts:

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.

1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.

1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.

1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.

1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.

1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.

1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.

1.9. Fancy is following after word- knowledge empty of substance.

1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.

1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.

1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.

I've been running this week. Fall is the perfect time for running--cool, crisp air and sun at the same time. Beautiful clouds and changing trees. Nothing makes me think of change more than watching the leaves change in fall.

I love the way running makes me feel but hadn't in a long time because it hurt. All my tension goes into certain nooks and crannies in my back and it makes running painful. So I don't exercise as much, and I feel less energetic, and feel even less like running. But I have been doing some yoga kriyas lately, and they seem to dissipate the energy well, so that I feel like running. I should have tried that a long time ago, I kept thinking that would help. So funny how we know the answers, but don't listen to ourselves. 

Interesting article on cooking and human evolution (they're related!). I'm inclined to think his claims have merit, especially because of the following:

JZ: So you don’t give much credence to the health claims of present-day raw foodists?

RW: I give a lot of credence to some of the health claims of raw foodists. The fact that I don’t think raw diets are natural does not undermine their claims that they get various kinds of benefits. One benefit of course is [raw foodists] lose weight. Another benefit is that [the diet] reduces various kinds of allergies. I can well believe that some people are sensitive to some of the compounds produced by cooking. I don’t think everybody is.

I like it when people are open-minded, looking at issues from multiple sides. Raw foodists, on the other hand, tend not to. I like the restaurants, I like eating simply, but the dogma as a whole is so silly. While some seem to do better on all raw, I really think it is unbalanced for many others... I am glad I went to the Tree of Life, I saw lots of neat things and met neat people. But I like a more centered approach in the end.

Not sure why the font in this post is so strange.

Today was the second training for this peer counseling training I am in. The whole thing will take a year, and then I can actually be a peer counselor here. If you don't finish it, you still gain listening skills for your personal and professional life. 

They have us use real-life problems for examples, since they're more realistic. They also find it's easier to be empathetic later on if you've done some of the work on yourself--recognizing your own issues. We actually had to make a list! I could make a long list... but the reassuring thing is that many of their list examples didn't resonate with me :)

It's fascinating to hear about others' problems. We're not supposed to talk about them--but basically they show the universality of the human experience. The themes you can find are so interesting to me--conflict between expected emotion and actual emotion. Disappointment in self and those who were trusted. Not meeting expectations set for self. A screenwriter could get a lot of fuel for some scripts... :)

Whole Foods is at it again, never walking the walk.

One thing I hear recommended a lot for creative expression is random dance to music, without regard to form or how it looks. People kept recommending it and I keep thinking it was a good idea--I am thinking it is good again, especially if I've been studying, to get tension out.... that's all, just a random thought.

Classes still going well. We are thinking abut doing a few more trips before the end of the year. DC, maybe Canada, maybe Boston.