Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

5:34 – woke up
5:44 – final bow to J*ost (he was walking around outside the laundry room, probably doing laundry) while walking to Meditation Barn
5:52 – morning sitting/Touching the Earth
7:16 – morning exercise: jogging around Meditation Hall
7:30 – walking meditation
8:00 – breakfast
9:30 – working meditation: Solidity Hamlet (monks) went down to Clarity Hamlet (nuns) to knock out the pantry walls in their kitchen to make more space.
12:45 – lunch (cooked by nuns in Solidity kitchen)
2:40 – went for a run
6:00 – dinner
6:30 – met guest Ruth and chatted

I was burned out a few nights ago, but it’s incredible how quickly I bounced back the next morning, and all it took was a nice sunny, unseasonably warm day. J*ost and Robin are gone and they will be missed, even if they were hard to keep up with. They left this morning while everyone was sitting. Bruno also left, and I’ll miss our conversations and his reminder to me (or me to myself) to keep my skepticism about this practice and if I get sucked into it completely, including the parts I’m not thrilled about, that I should remain aware that I’m letting myself get sucked into parts that I’m not thrilled about. I do have an attraction to the austerity of Theravadin practice, and in many ways I think it would be more appropriate for me, but it’s a stronger feeling that I’m just not Theravadin.

Guest Ruth arrived and she feels like a gift in response to the burnout. It wasn’t like, “Oh my god, you must be my long lost sister!”, but it was like I’m on my path, she’s on her path, and they’ve become vaguely parallel, and now that we’ve met, we’re finding some distinct and random connecting points. Random enough to make me feel that our meeting was meant to happen, and the timing feels like a gift. That feels good.

I went on a pretty good run this afternoon. I ran 4 miles in 36:14 minutes, which averages out to something like 9 minute miles. It’s nothing to be proud of, but the hills on the trails are real leg-busters. Given my knee problems and that I stopped running years ago because of them, I’m just happy that I was able to complete a hard 4 mile course. I felt like puking right after I finished, and even that was good. It meant I pushed myself hard enough to feel like puking, and even more important that I was able to push myself hard enough to feel like puking. One, the ability, two the doing.