Englewood Cliffs, NJ
For having no reason to go to Taiwan, I can't well say I'm not ready to go. Not knowing what I'm going to do there, I have no packing list. After two weeks in New Jersey being distracted and goofing off, going to Taiwan will be an opportunity to quiet down and focus and be more disciplined, um, with the monastic practice thingie.

Not that I've been way off on the practice. It's true that I haven't been particularly disciplined about sitting or walking, or other setting specific times for . . . practicing the practice, but the practice has always been right here. Or not, but when it hasn't, I've been aware of that, too.

There's a difference between the practice - the practice of mindful awareness and mindful being, and practicing for it. Sitting in the morning and the evening, bookending each day, is practicing mindfulness, which is what we're trying to maintain at all times - what we call the practice. But you knew all this.

Actually, a lot of what it has been lately is noticing when I do something without some degree of full awareness. It's particularly egregious with the smaller things, so I'll notice immediately after the fact if I walk across the kitchen somewhat mindlessly. There's no chastisement, just noticing it and doing my best at it.

Furthermore, it's been really cold in New Jersey, so there have been times when I've been outside and would think, "I am mindful that it's too friggin' cold to walk mindfully" and allow myself to rush to get out of the cold. Mindfulness of not being mindful, I think, is oonsonant with the practice, but that's a whole sticky, easily misapplied, philosophical conundrum that I won't get into.

I don't know if any of this practice is really being tested. Relations with my family are pretty benign at this point, and with our contentious history, I don't know if my keeping quiet when they say something that bugs me is a result of my practicing or if it's just me not dealing with it. Probably both at this point.