I feel like this third week of practice period got off to a bad start, with skipping yesterday morning and all. There's more to it, but not worth going into. It's fascinating, but probably only to me. Last week was pretty structured, too, as I spent most of my afternoons at Border's reading a new book by Thich Nhat Hanh, Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights Into the Lotus Sutra.

Truth to tell, I'm not a huge fan of Thich Nhat Hanh's writing, strange though that I'd be considering entering one of his monasteries, but I really like his treatment and exposition of various texts and sutras, and since the Lotus Sutra has always been of interest to me, I ate this one up. I'm not a fast reader, nor do I have the longest attention span when reading, so it was an accomplishment for me to read this in six afternoons.

So maybe it's alright for this week to be a little more lax.

I did go for that ride in the Headlands yesterday. The rip off is that I went on a 30 mile ride, but 10 miles was riding there, and 10 miles riding back, so the amount of time on the trails is always limited unless it's gonna be an all day outing. I did come to a revelation about mountain biking, but I'm not sure exactly what the revelation is. Let's just say it came when the trail took a steep downgrade. After about 3 seconds of considering walking the bike down the grade, but then realizing that's not the point of mountain biking, down I went, eyes wide open, riding the brakes, praying to almighty God, Jesus, Allah, Mohammed, the raven spirit, and Buddha himself in Pat Robertson rapture to see my wheels true. My that was harrowing. Some people consider that fun. I'm just not that "extreme" (47 mph on a road bike coming down a mountain is about as extreme as I like it).

But this week is still salvageable. It's only Wednesday. Only the evening sitting at SFZC for the rest of today, and then Dharma Talk, which replaces the second evening sitting on Wednesday nights. Otherwise today I need to return a bike lock to Sports Basement, I need to retrieve my road bike from the shop, I'd like to stock up on Joint Juice from a place in the Richmond that is selling boxes for $2.99, and I really wouldn't mind stocking up on Ben & Jerry's from Trader Joe's, advertised at $2.50 a pint!