And just like that, the monastery is back to normal; normal functioning, normal day. The winds must have blown the smoke away, but it looked like the fire was out, too. Woke up to a bright and clear morning, morning bell at 5:00, sitting at 5:30, breakfast at 7:30, work at 9:00, walking at 11:30, lunch at 12:30, with plenty of time in between those things to fill with sweet simplicity and calmness, drinking tea, reading, contemplating the garden and koi pond, and appreciating the joy in that.

For work, I still was on the same project, moving the contents of three storage tents out back to make way for another guest building for the Winter Retreat. It's physical work, kinda dirty work with dirt and bugs, and on big things we had to coordinate and work together, so it wasn't really conducive for mindfulness, especially if we disagreed on how we should move things, but the joy of being at the monastery had gotten to the point that I was really enjoying that work. And even if we disagreed on something, that gave us a chance to reflect on how we didn't want to be, and we quickly resolved the issue within ourselves and got back to our common goal and working together.

I've always dug the idea of monks and nuns shaving their heads and wearing the same robes. I think the idea is to remove the distraction of vanity and uniqueness in appearance. I can get into that. I also think the head shaving has purification or renunciation connotations in it. I brought enough clothes for a week, but with the idea that I could stretch it out to two weeks. The clothes I wore on the first work day got dirty and those became my work clothes. Otherwise, changes of clothing are on an at-need basis. Same with showering, but I think working on the tents justifies showering afterwards if needed. As for sleeping, I just zip off the sleeves of my pants, take off my socks and crawl into my sleeping bag. Emulating simple.

The afternoon was basically off, and I went up on a hill overlooking the Solidity compound with my shakuhachi as I've been doing quite a bit. I'm not any good at it, I don't know any of the many complicated techniques to get various tones out of it, but I enjoy it because it's sad and moody sounding. Later in the afternoon, we had another spontaneous creative noise-making session with hand drums, various flutes, and assorted "found object" percussion.

We had sitting in the evening, and I don't think it was a good session. I don't think it was a good session for other people, too, like it was a collective unconscious type of thing. I know that by the end I was in such excruciating pain that I was sweating and not concentrating on anything except getting through it. Behind me I heard three of the monks fidgeting, which I think is unusual, and someone else told me later that he also couldn't concentrate and just had his eyes wide open towards the end.

I was invited to extend my stay until Sunday because of the fire, and I'll consider it. My mindset has been to leave on Friday and make it back to San Francisco in time for Halloween Critical Mass and Lisa's party, so I was resistant and skeptical to the suggestion, but I'll consider it. It may be a happy medium between wanting to stay longer, but not for a full two weeks.