I woke at 4.00am and even though I woke a couple of times in the night (once at just after two o’clock bathed in the gentle blue moonlight that streamed through the window above me) I feel, after a quick cold face wash and a cup of tea, ready for the day.

 

Before going to bed last night I made a meditation posy using seat cushions and a rug. So it is only a matter of adopting the position. It felt familiar thankfully. And I just let my mind wander freely, allowing it to settle of its own accord. I knew that it would be pointless trying to enforce some focus to my mind at this time, so I just let it ramble through this and that: ideas, associations, events, plans, dreams, recollections that it deemed so very important that they needed to be dwelt on or dealt with right now. After some time (and it is always difficult, perhaps impossible to put an exact length to time during meditation) I felt the agitation ease, as if my mind, without my collaboration to energize it, was wearing itself out.

 

I began drawing my attention to my breath. Over and over again I gently refocused my attention on my in-breath and out-breath. Over and over again I drifted away, not so rapidly or so rabidly as before but away nevertheless, and then once I noticed my departure I would let go of whatever had my attention and refocus.

 

I sat for just under an hour with very little physical discomfort. My urge to rise at the end coming more from my mind’s restlessness than my body’s. The thought that I had been here long enough, that I had other things to do became so dominant that in the end I just gave in and got up.

 

Less than an hour later I had finished a breakfast of eggs, tomato, baked beans, mushrooms and toast. A hearty meal which I was pleased to notice I had eaten rather mindlessly. Previously I am sure I have eaten such meals in exactly the same way and not noticed. So this observation heralded a potentially greater mindfulness as the week progressed. I looked forward to becoming more aware of the food I ate, its tastes and textures.

 

By 7.00am I had done over an hour’s grammar study and was now well aware that there was a lot I did not know about grammar. I had also rediscovered how unnerving it is to be doing something and abstracting myself to analyze it at the same time I am doing it. After just an hour of study I found that I was now trying, almost unwillingly, to identify the different parts of speech, verb clauses, tenses, adverbials etc in every sentence I wrote.

 

Next I sat down to start planning my dharma course. I did this with some trepidation, I have invested it in my mind with some weight, and dare I say it, attachment. One of the first notions to surface is that of mindfulness. How appropriate this is, for just like my experience with the grammar, mindfulness requires us to be present in something/anything/everything fully and yet simultaneously being conscious of the rules, structures, discourses, beliefs, values etc that we reference in all that we think, say and do.

 

I work at this course outline for ½ hour and then wander outside and begin snipping away at a stack of small branches that Jim indicated needed cutting, or as he put it I could get stuck into “if I got an urge to chop wood and carry water”. And of course I do, enjoying it as I stand in the sun snipping away repeatedly one branch after another, making little obvious dent in the pile.

 

As with all things, after a while when I wander back inside to my work, I take with me the realization of mindfulness in all tasks (like chopping wood) and I recall Thich Nhat Hanh’s story of doing the dishes in a mindful way. This then becomes part of my dharma course.

 

Soon after I sit in a chair placed by the old wetback stove. As I eat muesli, the morning sun streams through the front window and bathes me in its warmth. I am reminded of how everything ties together and thoughts of Caroline come to me. I let them go, focusing on the food before me and in my mouth. Already I am becoming more mindful. I stop eating and add another note to my course plan.

 

 

 

After my meal the sun proves too enticing and I sleep where I sit by the stove. I had wondered on the way here whether the rest that comes with a Vipassana retreat would also prevail here. It seems it might. I wake after an hour or so and at 12.30 I eat again, a lunch of spaghetti on toast with cottage cheese. I am drinking a lot of water, and it is passes through me quickly. I have a small sense of detoxification.

 

In the afternoon I started on my CELTA pre-course task, which itself is a bit of a misuse of the English language. The ‘task’ is a 30 page document comprising 50 separate tasks (yes 50!). Interestingly I received the task only after having paid my deposit for the course. I guess they think that the ‘task’ might put some people off, and best grab some of their dosh first.

 

I am fortunate to be in this physical space. I am grateful to Jim for being so generous, so giving -  for being such an amazing provider. It is a blessing to be so free of distractions, and have quiet and solitude in which to work. I am enjoying this time and already feel that it has been beneficial. I am confident that over the time here I will steadily work through all that I want to do.

 

day zero…

day two…

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Tags: caroline, CELTA, grammar, meditation

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