Notes 5 - 2023 to Present
December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. Myself: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won’t — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let’s go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one’s worthlessness and then again achieve one’s perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won’t, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn’t recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn’t allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach’s Chacon for solo violin it would’ve driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won’t.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won’t when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory’s infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don’t react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po’s “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being’s knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It’s there, waiting. January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven’s “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka’s assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won’t allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer’s like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while Anne was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I don’t do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
May 4, 7 AM. Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Essentially, the mental and the physical are all one and the same. Every willful thought has a physical corollary. Free won’t lets go of all that and thus the abdomen relaxes.
May 8, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Thought I was through with that now. Yesterday was ready to sit forever. Today never hated it so much.
The NOW may be the only refuge for the infinite spirit, but for the finite being it’s a prison it strives incessantly to escape. For it means its death.
The difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind is that ordinary mind incessantly strives for reproductive success through the unfree will. Enlightened mind IS free won’t. Did Huang Po not see that? [When asked what is the difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind he replied, “How many minds have you got.” And “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind.”]
May 15, 9 AM. Mild descent into hell.
May 24, 9 PM. Only by “embracing all living things and nature in its beauty” is there freedom from fear. But fear is what prevents that. Not just nature but everything. The potholes in the road are “IT in all its fullness, utterly complete.” [Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”]
Not embrace, but BE IT. “I am that which is.”
May 25, 2 AM. To allow All to flow through one is to be All. [Modern physics has shown that] The wave of every “separate” thing overlaps every other, overlaps all. No this nor that, no me nor not-me. Just ALL. [See: The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, by Heinrich Päs. A "fascinating [and] provocative" argument by a particle physicist—marshalling a "heady mix of history, philosophy and cutting-edge theory" (Wall Street Journal)—for monism, the ancient idea about the universe that says, All is One
In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.
Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. (From book description at Amazon.)]
May 27, 2024, 11 AM. Philip Kapleau said: “There is no reason for fear. You can’t fall out of the universe.” Yes you can. To myself: “Let yourself fall into the black hole of the Eternal NOW. Let the finite being be ripped apart by ITS tidal forces.” Kapleau would not go there.
May 31, 7 PM. MIND, when allowed to BE is devastating to the finite being. Fear coming up of going to the center for two days. That’s why I haven’t gone in 10 years.
June 1, 10 AM. All my life the Infinite Spirit has been nagging me to sit continuously to let IT in.
June 8, 8 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to letting go of all the countless layers of tension which defend the finite being. The waving ferns and grasses — “Holy! Holy!” [Beethoven wrote that when he’s in the country it seems like every tree cries out “Holy! Holy!”] — will devastate the finite being if we let them. As will our every movement. Through free won’t every tension let’s go … eventually.
June 11, 11 AM. Giving myself over to the Infinite Spirit after a trill-in-the-heart nap. Felt I might faint or at least not walk straight. [This is how I feel regularly after sitting these days.] Sensing ITS infinite intent and relentlessness. No choice. Abdomen ever so slowly letting go.
June 12, 8 PM. The finite being uses sitting methods — even the meditative inquiry of the Springwater Center — to stay on the surface instead of allowing the devastation of the depths. The surface tension of fear keeps us afloat. The knife twists and twists and twists — but the abdomen’s knot does not want to let go.
June 14, 2 AM. If one “thinks” one’s life is one’s own, then one is the pawn of the finite being. If one realizes one’s life is not one’s own, then free won’t can arise.
June 27, 8 AM. Intermittently being with the knot. Staying with it is another matter.
July 3, 2 AM. Is saying “It’s my karma” the same as calling it “stagnant chi”? A way to avoid feeling our worthlessness?
July 3, 8 AM. Is having eyes closed a better way to stay with the knot? Are eyes open or even half open a way for the finite being to maintain its supremacy?
July 9, 8 AM. Physical tension creates the boundary wall of self. No tension, no boundary.
July 13, 7 AM. To not like something regardless how trivial is to resist it in order to protect the finite being.
July 17, 7 PM. Is van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish from painting due to an openness that is equivalent to meditation? Likewise with Beethoven?
August 9, 2 AM. To let in the extraordinary beauty of the red sun through the trees, purple sky, vegetation … is devastating. Is this van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish?
August 12. I asked Anne how she suffered. She said all her life she has felt “squeezed, torn, pushed against something. With fear an enveloping feeling. Fear in all her fibers, cells, sensations, of body and mind.”
August 12, 7 PM. Crucifixion by disembowelment all day.
August 28, 7 AM. Opening of the abdomen leads to indescribable mental anguish to the nth. “I” cannot continue. “I” would rather die. Christ: “May this cup pass from me.” Rather, “May this me pass from me.”
August 28, 11 AM. A deeper inner freedom and Being.
September 3, 9 AM. The finite being ripped apart by tidal forces as it is inexorably drawn into the black hole wormhole to Being.
September 4, 7 AM. The key to meditation is to suffer and not resist the above .
September 9, 7 PM. Abdomen looser but dreamt I WAS the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th [over which he scrawled DESPAIR!]. Devastating jerks. Jumped when Anne came in the room — just like she does. Only MIND can oversee this dissolution of the finite being.
September 19, 8 AM. Unbelievable torture in abdomen. Something incredibly profound must come of this. An intimation of BEING to the nth.
9 PM. If no resistance, then no torture. But it’s hardly fun. Just Being with the knot.
September 22, 9 AM. Wanting the suffering of purification to stop. But only the finite being suffers. The “eternal necessity of suffering” is so we have no choice but to find freedom from the finite being and just let’s go of its clutch.
October 12, 9 AM. Lately have been having little tastes of the descent into Hell in sitting. Sitting is a descent into hell. Jerks, tensions slowly release from body/mind — then clamp down again with the abdomen’s knot.
October 14, 9 AM. A tinge of descent into hell in bed before sleep. Still some now. Can it be perpetual? This is the suffering you hate so much. Cart before horse is equivalent to attention without suffering. Only the suffering being can be effortlessly, and intentionally — attentive.
Super jerk — so far still to go.
8 PM. On the edge of descent into hell all day. NOT relished! NOT fun! Swirling down the black hole of being. Finite being ripped apart.
October 17, 2024, 1 AM. The knot is resistance to suffering. Being with the knot means allowing suffering. Thus and only thus can the knot dissolve.
October 18. Driving to Rochester and Macedon: Being taking in all (to a degree) — sky, trees, homes, traffic.
October 26, 2024. Video of Phil’s jerks.
October 27, 10 AM. Can every moment be a descent into hell?
October 28, 11 AM. Are my jerks and shakes like a dynamic stretch — necessary for letting go?
November 6, 11 AM. Swirling down the black hole of being. Can that be allowed every moment? Cabeza: "You are going to die sometime, aren’t you…"
Need to allow suffering every moment. This is the Infinite Spirit purifying the finite being.
November 17, 3 AM. One author, perhaps Paul Ehrlich, said he believes he has the free will to at least choose roast beef or roast duck for dinner. But this is the unfree will. Free won’t would choose neither. Rather a plant food diet which is good for one’s body, the vehicle we need to maintain as long as possible.
November 11, 11 PM. The finite being is equivalent to locality, the Infinite Spirit, non-locality — as described by quantum mechanics.
December 5, 11 AM. Opening yesterday. Lockdown tension today. Because the finite being was trying to return to that state and feel better. Just give in to everything every moment. And give up all trying.
December 6, 11 AM. Regarding all the interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen, hidden variables, many worlds, Qbism — this is like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chicken versus the egg is a meaningless question and the "answer" goes back to the beginning of all life (specifically the evolution of sex) on earth. Likewise, without understanding the origin of the universe all those interpretations of quantum mechanics are "not even wrong."
December 9, 8 AM. Horror movies and books, amusement rides, etc. are a safe way to let our fears come up. But those fears are ultimately rooted in fear of the dissolution of the finite being.
December 10, 8 AM. The day after my weekend at the center: a whole new level of jerks (made a new video). Abdomen in and out not even just when sitting. 8 AM to 8:45 AM, then immediately at 10:25 AM.
January 2, 2025. 8 PM. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. On the cross.
January 16. To let go of, abstain from, all intentionality. Just being with the breathing. Mindfully aware, giving in, giving up, letting go. Allowing the knot to untie itself. Without any trying whatsoever.
Everything we instinctively react to, if we instead let it flow through us via free won’t, purifies us of the finite being. Thus, and only thus can MIND manifest Itself. Can LOVE, more accurately called Lovingness, BE, and permeate the finite being.
January 17, 8 AM. Yesterday letting Lovingness flow. Today NOT letting Lovingness flow. But giving in the best I can.
January 18. So devastated by sitting, can hardly move or exercise. Not loosening but the knife thrusts ever deeper.
January 19. With no intentionality (i.e., with free won’t) MIND is equivalent to all pervading Being which is equivalent to all pervading Lovingness.
January 21, 8 AM. When we react, we tighten the knot. It will loosen on its own if we don’t keep tightening it.
January 27, 8 AM. Make the present moment your home. Relax into it. Settle in. Nowhere to go regardless.
The Infinite Spirit arises from the ashes of the finite being.
January 29, 2 AM. The only thing you can do is to get in the way. To let go of all doing… anything is possible.
8 AM. The NOW is our True Home and embraces the entirety of the space-time continuum. But there is no place for the finite being there.
February 16, 8 AM. Can one let go of the tension — the resistance — that pervades all our “doing.” No resistance, no doing, no tension, no problem. Just Being There, Being Here. No problem for the Infinite Spirit That Is. The finite being fights that to its literal death.
February 26, 2 AM. Before the all day sitting at Springwater plus two more days. Stay with the now. Nowhere to go.
March 6, 8 AM. The jerks are the resistance to the energy, Huang Po’s Pure Mind, Stephen Hawkins “Fire behind the Equations.”
March 17, 7 PM. Can this one Be the vehicle of the Infinite Spirit? Can the finite being relinquish its hold? then and only then can there be no problem, no separation, just ONE. This necessitates a complete letting go: of all wanting, fearing, tension, and resistance.
March 21, 11 am. Opening yesterday to Being/freedom/joy. Today the gate slammed shut. No choice but to feel my worthlessness.
March 22, 7 pm. Utterly miserable lately. Resistance to the necessary purification.
March 28, 7 pm. Giving in more and more. Can the finite being let its house of cards be blown down? Giving in, give up, let go every instant. continuously. Abdomen looser and looser. But sitting takes me into deeper and deeper levels of resistance. Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”
March 30, 10 AM. Sitting like the coda of Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement, which itself is a descent into hell. The funeral march for the finite being.
April 2, 7 PM. Free won’t is equivalent to no intentionality, is equivalent to being in the moment with no concern for the future, is equivalent to letting go of all tension. And is equivalent to allowing oneself to suffer every moment.
April 9, 8 AM. The Thursday after the all-day sitting with three nights at Springwater: yesterday all day indescribable mental anguish to the nth. 1-3 AM: Being with the knot.
April 11, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth.
7 PM. Knot opening, loosening — but the “I” hates this.
April 15, 7 AM. Can you allow suffering/purification every instant. Give in to the suffering. Give up fighting it. Let go of it all. [Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when he appears. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”]
April 16, 7 AM. Allow suffering without complaining every instant. This is true prayer… without thought. This is true attention.
April 18, 7 PM a state of Being requires the purification and suffering of the finite being.
April 19, 10 AM. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Freedom, joy, and purity — and still the finite being resists.
April 21. 10 AM. Accept that the finite being must suffer every instant. The eternal necessity of suffering.
April 22. Allow suffering every instant. This is the true being one with the moment.
April 25, 7 AM. St. Teresa of Ávila: “My life became very heavy for me because prayer illumined all my faults.” And “faults” includes resistance to Truth, and being the slave of the finite being.
May 16, 7 PM. I hate sitting but when I stop all I want to do is sit.
May 18, 7 PM. Letting go is equivalent to allowing the finite being to suffer its death throes which is equivalent to allowing MIND. Yesterday a bit of smiling Buddha Mind taking in all. And on run today.
May 25, 7 PM. All this work, 56 years, 4 to 5 hours a day, just to get to where I allow — or do not allow — myself to be crucified.
May 26. But it is necessary not to react to being crucified. Suffer without complaining.
May 30, 6 AM. Can sitting be a perpetual descent into hell? My father, Anne’s brother just wanted to die, because the finite being had had enough (they were dying of cancer). Likewise the finite being: can every moment be a perpetual death and descent into hell.
June 2, 10 AM. Letting go of the abdomen’s tension is a descent into hell.
June 5, 7 PM. It is our reaction to others that makes them seem separate from us. If there is no reaction, just observing — all is ONE.
June 6, 7 PM. All engines may be ready to go to solve life’s problems (at the moment the truck’s cruise control) but while sitting just don’t shift into gear until the sitting is over.
June 16, 10 AM. All that matters is MIND and ITS emergence. The finite being’s misery is irrelevant.
June 21, 7 AM. To fully relax, descent into Hell is necessary.
July 4, 7 AM. You don’t have to do anything… but… that not doing, nonaction, is death to the finite being. Do any spiritual teachers say that, go through that themselves? Not any that I am aware of.
July 9, 7 AM. Until/unless you let go and let the finite being perish you are doomed to misery like the first movement of Beethoven’s 32nd Sonata. Your choice.
July 14, 7 PM. Just Being with the knot now mostly without jerks. Sliding into “Hell.”
July 19, 7 AM. When we hate sitting — good! This shows the finite being is being purified. Just keep going upstream. Again, the purpose of sitting — of life — is to force us to allow the finite being to suffer, wither away, and die it’s inevitable death. Preferably before we die. This is the opposite of “normal human” life centered around avoiding suffering or blindly following the genes’ dictates.
July 20, 7 PM. Just being with the slowly dissolving knot. Letting it dissipate. On its own.December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won’t — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let’s go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one’s worthlessness and then again achieve one’s perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won’t, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn’t recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn’t allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach’s Chacon for solo violin it would’ve driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won’t.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won’t when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory’s infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don’t react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po’s “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being’s knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It’s there, waiting. January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven’s “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka’s assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won’t allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer’s like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while Anne was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I don’t do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
May 4, 7 AM. Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Essentially, the mental and the physical are all one and the same. Every willful thought has a physical corollary. Free won’t lets go of all that and thus the abdomen relaxes.
May 8, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Thought I was through with that now. Yesterday was ready to sit forever. Today never hated it so much.
The NOW may be the only refuge for the infinite spirit, but for the finite being it’s a prison it strives incessantly to escape. For it means its death.
The difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind is that ordinary mind incessantly strives for reproductive success through the unfree will. Enlightened mind IS free won’t. Did Huang Po not see that? [When asked what is the difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind he replied, “How many minds have you got.” And “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind.”]
May 15, 9 AM. Mild descent into hell.
May 24, 9 PM. Only by “embracing all living things and nature in its beauty” is there freedom from fear. But fear is what prevents that. Not just nature but everything. The potholes in the road are “IT in all its fullness, utterly complete.” [Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”]
Not embrace, but BE IT. “I am that which is.”
May 25, 2 AM. To allow All to flow through one is to be All. [Modern physics has shown that] The wave of every “separate” thing overlaps every other, overlaps all. No this nor that, no me nor not-me. Just ALL. [See: The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, by Heinrich Päs. A "fascinating [and] provocative" argument by a particle physicist—marshalling a "heady mix of history, philosophy and cutting-edge theory" (Wall Street Journal)—for monism, the ancient idea about the universe that says, All is One
In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.
Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. (From book description at Amazon.)]
May 27, 2024, 11 AM. Philip Kapleau said: “There is no reason for fear. You can’t fall out of the universe.” Yes you can. To myself: “Let yourself fall into the black hole of the Eternal NOW. Let the finite being be ripped apart by ITS tidal forces.” Kapleau would not go there.
May 31, 7 PM. MIND, when allowed to BE is devastating to the finite being. Fear coming up of going to the center for two days. That’s why I haven’t gone in 10 years.
June 1, 10 AM. All my life the Infinite Spirit has been nagging me to sit continuously to let IT in.
June 8, 8 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to letting go of all the countless layers of tension which defend the finite being. The waving ferns and grasses — “Holy! Holy!” [Beethoven wrote that when he’s in the country it seems like every tree cries out “Holy! Holy!”] — will devastate the finite being if we let them. As will our every movement. Through free won’t every tension let’s go … eventually.
June 11, 11 AM. Giving myself over to the Infinite Spirit after a trill-in-the-heart nap. Felt I might faint or at least not walk straight. [This is how I feel regularly after sitting these days.] Sensing ITS infinite intent and relentlessness. No choice. Abdomen ever so slowly letting go.
June 12, 8 PM. The finite being uses sitting methods — even the meditative inquiry of the Springwater Center — to stay on the surface instead of allowing the devastation of the depths. The surface tension of fear keeps us afloat. The knife twists and twists and twists — but the abdomen’s knot does not want to let go.
June 14, 2 AM. If one “thinks” one’s life is one’s own, then one is the pawn of the finite being. If one realizes one’s life is not one’s own, then free won’t can arise.
June 27, 8 AM. Intermittently being with the knot. Staying with it is another matter.
July 3, 2 AM. Is saying “It’s my karma” the same as calling it “stagnant chi”? A way to avoid feeling our worthlessness?
July 3, 8 AM. Is having eyes closed a better way to stay with the knot? Are eyes open or even half open a way for the finite being to maintain its supremacy?
July 9, 8 AM. Physical tension creates the boundary wall of self. No tension, no boundary.
July 13, 7 AM. To not like something regardless how trivial is to resist it in order to protect the finite being.
July 17, 7 PM. Is van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish from painting due to an openness that is equivalent to meditation? Likewise with Beethoven?
August 9, 2 AM. To let in the extraordinary beauty of the red sun through the trees, purple sky, vegetation … is devastating. Is this van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish?
August 12. I asked Anne how she suffered. She said all her life she has felt “squeezed, torn, pushed against something. With fear an enveloping feeling. Fear in all her fibers, cells, sensations, of body and mind.”
August 12, 7 PM. Crucifixion by disembowelment all day.
August 28, 7 AM. Opening of the abdomen leads to indescribable mental anguish to the nth. “I” cannot continue. “I” would rather die. Christ: “May this cup pass from me.” Rather, “May this me pass from me.”
August 28, 11 AM. A deeper inner freedom and Being.
September 3, 9 AM. The finite being ripped apart by tidal forces as it is inexorably drawn into the black hole wormhole to Being.
September 4, 7 AM. The key to meditation is to suffer and not resist the above .
September 9, 7 PM. Abdomen looser but dreamt I WAS the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th [over which he scrawled DESPAIR!]. Devastating jerks. Jumped when Anne came in the room — just like she does. Only MIND can oversee this dissolution of the finite being.
September 19, 8 AM. Unbelievable torture in abdomen. Something incredibly profound must come of this. An intimation of BEING to the nth.
9 PM. If no resistance, then no torture. But it’s hardly fun. Just Being with the knot.
September 22, 9 AM. Wanting the suffering of purification to stop. But only the finite being suffers. The “eternal necessity of suffering” is so we have no choice but to find freedom from the finite being and just let’s go of its clutch.
October 12, 9 AM. Lately have been having little tastes of the descent into Hell in sitting. Sitting is a descent into hell. Jerks, tensions slowly release from body/mind — then clamp down again with the abdomen’s knot.
October 14, 9 AM. A tinge of descent into hell in bed before sleep. Still some now. Can it be perpetual? This is the suffering you hate so much. Cart before horse is equivalent to attention without suffering. Only the suffering being can be effortlessly, and intentionally — attentive.
Super jerk — so far still to go.
8 PM. On the edge of descent into hell all day. NOT relished! NOT fun! Swirling down the black hole of being. Finite being ripped apart.
October 17, 2024, 1 AM. The knot is resistance to suffering. Being with the knot means allowing suffering. Thus and only thus can the knot dissolve.
October 18. Driving to Rochester and Macedon: Being taking in all (to a degree) — sky, trees, homes, traffic.
October 26, 2024. Video of Phil’s jerks.
October 27, 10 AM. Can every moment be a descent into hell?
October 28, 11 AM. Are my jerks and shakes like a dynamic stretch — necessary for letting go?
November 6, 11 AM. Swirling down the black hole of being. Can that be allowed every moment? Cabeza: "You are going to die sometime, aren’t you…"
Need to allow suffering every moment. This is the Infinite Spirit purifying the finite being.
November 17, 3 AM. One author, perhaps Paul Ehrlich, said he believes he has the free will to at least choose roast beef or roast duck for dinner. But this is the unfree will. Free won’t would choose neither. Rather a plant food diet which is good for one’s body, the vehicle we need to maintain as long as possible.
November 11, 11 PM. The finite being is equivalent to locality, the Infinite Spirit, non-locality — as described by quantum mechanics.
December 5, 11 AM. Opening yesterday. Lockdown tension today. Because the finite being was trying to return to that state and feel better. Just give in to everything every moment. And give up all trying.
December 6, 11 AM. Regarding all the interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen, hidden variables, many worlds, Qbism — this is like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chicken versus the egg is a meaningless question and the "answer" goes back to the beginning of all life (specifically the evolution of sex) on earth. Likewise, without understanding the origin of the universe all those interpretations of quantum mechanics are "not even wrong."
December 9, 8 AM. Horror movies and books, amusement rides, etc. are a safe way to let our fears come up. But those fears are ultimately rooted in fear of the dissolution of the finite being.
December 10, 8 AM. The day after my weekend at the center: a whole new level of jerks (made a new video). Abdomen in and out not even just when sitting. 8 AM to 8:45 AM, then immediately at 10:25 AM.
January 2, 2025. 8 PM. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. On the cross.
January 16. To let go of, abstain from, all intentionality. Just being with the breathing. Mindfully aware, giving in, giving up, letting go. Allowing the knot to untie itself. Without any trying whatsoever.
Everything we instinctively react to, if we instead let it flow through us via free won’t, purifies us of the finite being. Thus, and only thus can MIND manifest Itself. Can LOVE, more accurately called Lovingness, BE, and permeate the finite being.
January 17, 8 AM. Yesterday letting Lovingness flow. Today NOT letting Lovingness flow. But giving in the best I can.
January 18. So devastated by sitting, can hardly move or exercise. Not loosening but the knife thrusts ever deeper.
January 19. With no intentionality (i.e., with free won’t) MIND is equivalent to all pervading Being which is equivalent to all pervading Lovingness.
January 21, 8 AM. When we react, we tighten the knot. It will loosen on its own if we don’t keep tightening it.
January 27, 8 AM. Make the present moment your home. Relax into it. Settle in. Nowhere to go regardless.
The Infinite Spirit arises from the ashes of the finite being.
January 29, 2 AM. The only thing you can do is to get in the way. To let go of all doing… anything is possible.
8 AM. The NOW is our True Home and embraces the entirety of the space-time continuum. But there is no place for the finite being there.
February 16, 8 AM. Can one let go of the tension — the resistance — that pervades all our “doing.” No resistance, no doing, no tension, no problem. Just Being There, Being Here. No problem for the Infinite Spirit That Is. The finite being fights that to its literal death.
February 26, 2 AM. Before the all day sitting at Springwater plus two more days. Stay with the now. Nowhere to go.
March 6, 8 AM. The jerks are the resistance to the energy, Huang Po’s Pure Mind, Stephen Hawkins “Fire behind the Equations.”
March 17, 7 PM. Can this one Be the vehicle of the Infinite Spirit? Can the finite being relinquish its hold? then and only then can there be no problem, no separation, just ONE. This necessitates a complete letting go: of all wanting, fearing, tension, and resistance.
March 21, 11 am. Opening yesterday to Being/freedom/joy. Today the gate slammed shut. No choice but to feel my worthlessness.
March 22, 7 pm. Utterly miserable lately. Resistance to the necessary purification.
March 28, 7 pm. Giving in more and more. Can the finite being let its house of cards be blown down? Giving in, give up, let go every instant. continuously. Abdomen looser and looser. But sitting takes me into deeper and deeper levels of resistance. Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”
March 30, 10 AM. Sitting like the coda of Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement, which itself is a descent into hell. The funeral march for the finite being.
April 2, 7 PM. Free won’t is equivalent to no intentionality, is equivalent to being in the moment with no concern for the future, is equivalent to letting go of all tension. And is equivalent to allowing oneself to suffer every moment.
April 9, 8 AM. The Thursday after the all-day sitting with three nights at Springwater: yesterday all day indescribable mental anguish to the nth. 1-3 AM: Being with the knot.
April 11, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth.
7 PM. Knot opening, loosening — but the “I” hates this.
April 15, 7 AM. Can you allow suffering/purification every instant. Give in to the suffering. Give up fighting it. Let go of it all. [Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when he appears. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”]
April 16, 7 AM. Allow suffering without complaining every instant. This is true prayer… without thought. This is true attention.
April 18, 7 PM a state of Being requires the purification and suffering of the finite being.
April 19, 10 AM. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Freedom, joy, and purity — and still the finite being resists.
April 21. 10 AM. Accept that the finite being must suffer every instant. The eternal necessity of suffering.
April 22. Allow suffering every instant. This is the true being one with the moment.
April 25, 7 AM. St. Teresa of Ávila: “My life became very heavy for me because prayer illumined all my faults.” And “faults” includes resistance to Truth, and being the slave of the finite being.
May 16, 7 PM. I hate sitting but when I stop all I want to do is sit.
May 18, 7 PM. Letting go is equivalent to allowing the finite being to suffer its death throes which is equivalent to allowing MIND. Yesterday a bit of smiling Buddha Mind taking in all. And on run today.
May 25, 7 PM. All this work, 56 years, 4 to 5 hours a day, just to get to where I allow — or do not allow — myself to be crucified.
May 26. But it is necessary not to react to being crucified. Suffer without complaining.
May 30, 6 AM. Can sitting be a perpetual descent into hell? My father, Anne’s brother just wanted to die, because the finite being had had enough (they were dying of cancer). Likewise the finite being: can every moment be a perpetual death and descent into hell.
June 2, 10 AM. Letting go of the abdomen’s tension is a descent into hell.
June 5, 7 PM. It is our reaction to others that makes them seem separate from us. If there is no reaction, just observing — all is ONE.
June 6, 7 PM. All engines may be ready to go to solve life’s problems (at the moment the truck’s cruise control) but while sitting just don’t shift into gear until the sitting is over.
June 16, 10 AM. All that matters is MIND and ITS emergence. The finite being’s misery is irrelevant.
June 21, 7 AM. To fully relax, descent into Hell is necessary.
July 4, 7 AM. You don’t have to do anything… but… that not doing, nonaction, is death to the finite being. Do any spiritual teachers say that, go through that themselves? Not any that I am aware of.
July 9, 7 AM. Until/unless you let go and let the finite being perish you are doomed to misery like the first movement of Beethoven’s 32nd Sonata. Your choice.
July 14, 7 PM. Just Being with the knot now mostly without jerks. Sliding into “Hell.”
July 19, 7 AM. When we hate sitting — good! This shows the finite being is being purified. Just keep going upstream. Again, the purpose of sitting — of life — is to force us to allow the finite being to suffer, wither away, and die it’s inevitable death. Preferably before we die. This is the opposite of “normal human” life centered around avoiding suffering or blindly following the genes’ dictates.
July 20, 7 PM. Just being with the slowly dissolving knot. Letting it dissipate. On its own.December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won’t — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let’s go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one’s worthlessness and then again achieve one’s perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won’t, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn’t recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn’t allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach’s Chacon for solo violin it would’ve driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won’t.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won’t when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory’s infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don’t react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po’s “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being’s knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It’s there, waiting. January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven’s “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka’s assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won’t allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer’s like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while Anne was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I don’t do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
May 4, 7 AM. Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Essentially, the mental and the physical are all one and the same. Every willful thought has a physical corollary. Free won’t lets go of all that and thus the abdomen relaxes.
May 8, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Thought I was through with that now. Yesterday was ready to sit forever. Today never hated it so much.
The NOW may be the only refuge for the infinite spirit, but for the finite being it’s a prison it strives incessantly to escape. For it means its death.
The difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind is that ordinary mind incessantly strives for reproductive success through the unfree will. Enlightened mind IS free won’t. Did Huang Po not see that? [When asked what is the difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind he replied, “How many minds have you got.” And “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind.”]
May 15, 9 AM. Mild descent into hell.
May 24, 9 PM. Only by “embracing all living things and nature in its beauty” is there freedom from fear. But fear is what prevents that. Not just nature but everything. The potholes in the road are “IT in all its fullness, utterly complete.” [Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”]
Not embrace, but BE IT. “I am that which is.”
May 25, 2 AM. To allow All to flow through one is to be All. [Modern physics has shown that] The wave of every “separate” thing overlaps every other, overlaps all. No this nor that, no me nor not-me. Just ALL. [See: The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, by Heinrich Päs. A "fascinating [and] provocative" argument by a particle physicist—marshalling a "heady mix of history, philosophy and cutting-edge theory" (Wall Street Journal)—for monism, the ancient idea about the universe that says, All is One
In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.
Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. (From book description at Amazon.)]
May 27, 2024, 11 AM. Philip Kapleau said: “There is no reason for fear. You can’t fall out of the universe.” Yes you can. To myself: “Let yourself fall into the black hole of the Eternal NOW. Let the finite being be ripped apart by ITS tidal forces.” Kapleau would not go there.
May 31, 7 PM. MIND, when allowed to BE is devastating to the finite being. Fear coming up of going to the center for two days. That’s why I haven’t gone in 10 years.
June 1, 10 AM. All my life the Infinite Spirit has been nagging me to sit continuously to let IT in.
June 8, 8 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to letting go of all the countless layers of tension which defend the finite being. The waving ferns and grasses — “Holy! Holy!” [Beethoven wrote that when he’s in the country it seems like every tree cries out “Holy! Holy!”] — will devastate the finite being if we let them. As will our every movement. Through free won’t every tension let’s go … eventually.
June 11, 11 AM. Giving myself over to the Infinite Spirit after a trill-in-the-heart nap. Felt I might faint or at least not walk straight. [This is how I feel regularly after sitting these days.] Sensing ITS infinite intent and relentlessness. No choice. Abdomen ever so slowly letting go.
June 12, 8 PM. The finite being uses sitting methods — even the meditative inquiry of the Springwater Center — to stay on the surface instead of allowing the devastation of the depths. The surface tension of fear keeps us afloat. The knife twists and twists and twists — but the abdomen’s knot does not want to let go.
June 14, 2 AM. If one “thinks” one’s life is one’s own, then one is the pawn of the finite being. If one realizes one’s life is not one’s own, then free won’t can arise.
June 27, 8 AM. Intermittently being with the knot. Staying with it is another matter.
July 3, 2 AM. Is saying “It’s my karma” the same as calling it “stagnant chi”? A way to avoid feeling our worthlessness?
July 3, 8 AM. Is having eyes closed a better way to stay with the knot? Are eyes open or even half open a way for the finite being to maintain its supremacy?
July 9, 8 AM. Physical tension creates the boundary wall of self. No tension, no boundary.
July 13, 7 AM. To not like something regardless how trivial is to resist it in order to protect the finite being.
July 17, 7 PM. Is van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish from painting due to an openness that is equivalent to meditation? Likewise with Beethoven?
August 9, 2 AM. To let in the extraordinary beauty of the red sun through the trees, purple sky, vegetation … is devastating. Is this van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish?
August 12. I asked Anne how she suffered. She said all her life she has felt “squeezed, torn, pushed against something. With fear an enveloping feeling. Fear in all her fibers, cells, sensations, of body and mind.”
August 12, 7 PM. Crucifixion by disembowelment all day.
August 28, 7 AM. Opening of the abdomen leads to indescribable mental anguish to the nth. “I” cannot continue. “I” would rather die. Christ: “May this cup pass from me.” Rather, “May this me pass from me.”
August 28, 11 AM. A deeper inner freedom and Being.
September 3, 9 AM. The finite being ripped apart by tidal forces as it is inexorably drawn into the black hole wormhole to Being.
September 4, 7 AM. The key to meditation is to suffer and not resist the above .
September 9, 7 PM. Abdomen looser but dreamt I WAS the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th [over which he scrawled DESPAIR!]. Devastating jerks. Jumped when Anne came in the room — just like she does. Only MIND can oversee this dissolution of the finite being.
September 19, 8 AM. Unbelievable torture in abdomen. Something incredibly profound must come of this. An intimation of BEING to the nth.
9 PM. If no resistance, then no torture. But it’s hardly fun. Just Being with the knot.
September 22, 9 AM. Wanting the suffering of purification to stop. But only the finite being suffers. The “eternal necessity of suffering” is so we have no choice but to find freedom from the finite being and just let’s go of its clutch.
October 12, 9 AM. Lately have been having little tastes of the descent into Hell in sitting. Sitting is a descent into hell. Jerks, tensions slowly release from body/mind — then clamp down again with the abdomen’s knot.
October 14, 9 AM. A tinge of descent into hell in bed before sleep. Still some now. Can it be perpetual? This is the suffering you hate so much. Cart before horse is equivalent to attention without suffering. Only the suffering being can be effortlessly, and intentionally — attentive.
Super jerk — so far still to go.
8 PM. On the edge of descent into hell all day. NOT relished! NOT fun! Swirling down the black hole of being. Finite being ripped apart.
October 17, 2024, 1 AM. The knot is resistance to suffering. Being with the knot means allowing suffering. Thus and only thus can the knot dissolve.
October 18. Driving to Rochester and Macedon: Being taking in all (to a degree) — sky, trees, homes, traffic.
October 26, 2024. Video of Phil’s jerks.
October 27, 10 AM. Can every moment be a descent into hell?
October 28, 11 AM. Are my jerks and shakes like a dynamic stretch — necessary for letting go?
November 6, 11 AM. Swirling down the black hole of being. Can that be allowed every moment? Cabeza: "You are going to die sometime, aren’t you…"
Need to allow suffering every moment. This is the Infinite Spirit purifying the finite being.
November 17, 3 AM. One author, perhaps Paul Ehrlich, said he believes he has the free will to at least choose roast beef or roast duck for dinner. But this is the unfree will. Free won’t would choose neither. Rather a plant food diet which is good for one’s body, the vehicle we need to maintain as long as possible.
November 11, 11 PM. The finite being is equivalent to locality, the Infinite Spirit, non-locality — as described by quantum mechanics.
December 5, 11 AM. Opening yesterday. Lockdown tension today. Because the finite being was trying to return to that state and feel better. Just give in to everything every moment. And give up all trying.
December 6, 11 AM. Regarding all the interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen, hidden variables, many worlds, Qbism — this is like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chicken versus the egg is a meaningless question and the "answer" goes back to the beginning of all life (specifically the evolution of sex) on earth. Likewise, without understanding the origin of the universe all those interpretations of quantum mechanics are "not even wrong."
December 9, 8 AM. Horror movies and books, amusement rides, etc. are a safe way to let our fears come up. But those fears are ultimately rooted in fear of the dissolution of the finite being.
December 10, 8 AM. The day after my weekend at the center: a whole new level of jerks (made a new video). Abdomen in and out not even just when sitting. 8 AM to 8:45 AM, then immediately at 10:25 AM.
January 2, 2025. 8 PM. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. On the cross.
January 16. To let go of, abstain from, all intentionality. Just being with the breathing. Mindfully aware, giving in, giving up, letting go. Allowing the knot to untie itself. Without any trying whatsoever.
Everything we instinctively react to, if we instead let it flow through us via free won’t, purifies us of the finite being. Thus, and only thus can MIND manifest Itself. Can LOVE, more accurately called Lovingness, BE, and permeate the finite being.
January 17, 8 AM. Yesterday letting Lovingness flow. Today NOT letting Lovingness flow. But giving in the best I can.
January 18. So devastated by sitting, can hardly move or exercise. Not loosening but the knife thrusts ever deeper.
January 19. With no intentionality (i.e., with free won’t) MIND is equivalent to all pervading Being which is equivalent to all pervading Lovingness.
January 21, 8 AM. When we react, we tighten the knot. It will loosen on its own if we don’t keep tightening it.
January 27, 8 AM. Make the present moment your home. Relax into it. Settle in. Nowhere to go regardless.
The Infinite Spirit arises from the ashes of the finite being.
January 29, 2 AM. The only thing you can do is to get in the way. To let go of all doing… anything is possible.
8 AM. The NOW is our True Home and embraces the entirety of the space-time continuum. But there is no place for the finite being there.
February 16, 8 AM. Can one let go of the tension — the resistance — that pervades all our “doing.” No resistance, no doing, no tension, no problem. Just Being There, Being Here. No problem for the Infinite Spirit That Is. The finite being fights that to its literal death.
February 26, 2 AM. Before the all day sitting at Springwater plus two more days. Stay with the now. Nowhere to go.
March 6, 8 AM. The jerks are the resistance to the energy, Huang Po’s Pure Mind, Stephen Hawkins “Fire behind the Equations.”
March 17, 7 PM. Can this one Be the vehicle of the Infinite Spirit? Can the finite being relinquish its hold? then and only then can there be no problem, no separation, just ONE. This necessitates a complete letting go: of all wanting, fearing, tension, and resistance.
March 21, 11 am. Opening yesterday to Being/freedom/joy. Today the gate slammed shut. No choice but to feel my worthlessness.
March 22, 7 pm. Utterly miserable lately. Resistance to the necessary purification.
March 28, 7 pm. Giving in more and more. Can the finite being let its house of cards be blown down? Giving in, give up, let go every instant. continuously. Abdomen looser and looser. But sitting takes me into deeper and deeper levels of resistance. Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”
March 30, 10 AM. Sitting like the coda of Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement, which itself is a descent into hell. The funeral march for the finite being.
April 2, 7 PM. Free won’t is equivalent to no intentionality, is equivalent to being in the moment with no concern for the future, is equivalent to letting go of all tension. And is equivalent to allowing oneself to suffer every moment.
April 9, 8 AM. The Thursday after the all-day sitting with three nights at Springwater: yesterday all day indescribable mental anguish to the nth. 1-3 AM: Being with the knot.
April 11, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth.
7 PM. Knot opening, loosening — but the “I” hates this.
April 15, 7 AM. Can you allow suffering/purification every instant. Give in to the suffering. Give up fighting it. Let go of it all. [Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when he appears. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”]
April 16, 7 AM. Allow suffering without complaining every instant. This is true prayer… without thought. This is true attention.
April 18, 7 PM a state of Being requires the purification and suffering of the finite being.
April 19, 10 AM. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Freedom, joy, and purity — and still the finite being resists.
April 21. 10 AM. Accept that the finite being must suffer every instant. The eternal necessity of suffering.
April 22. Allow suffering every instant. This is the true being one with the moment.
April 25, 7 AM. St. Teresa of Ávila: “My life became very heavy for me because prayer illumined all my faults.” And “faults” includes resistance to Truth, and being the slave of the finite being.
May 16, 7 PM. I hate sitting but when I stop all I want to do is sit.
May 18, 7 PM. Letting go is equivalent to allowing the finite being to suffer its death throes which is equivalent to allowing MIND. Yesterday a bit of smiling Buddha Mind taking in all. And on run today.
May 25, 7 PM. All this work, 56 years, 4 to 5 hours a day, just to get to where I allow — or do not allow — myself to be crucified.
May 26. But it is necessary not to react to being crucified. Suffer without complaining.
May 30, 6 AM. Can sitting be a perpetual descent into hell? My father, Anne’s brother just wanted to die, because the finite being had had enough (they were dying of cancer). Likewise the finite being: can every moment be a perpetual death and descent into hell.
June 2, 10 AM. Letting go of the abdomen’s tension is a descent into hell.
June 5, 7 PM. It is our reaction to others that makes them seem separate from us. If there is no reaction, just observing — all is ONE.
June 6, 7 PM. All engines may be ready to go to solve life’s problems (at the moment the truck’s cruise control) but while sitting just don’t shift into gear until the sitting is over.
June 16, 10 AM. All that matters is MIND and ITS emergence. The finite being’s misery is irrelevant.
June 21, 7 AM. To fully relax, descent into Hell is necessary.
July 4, 7 AM. You don’t have to do anything… but… that not doing, nonaction, is death to the finite being. Do any spiritual teachers say that, go through that themselves? Not any that I am aware of.
July 9, 7 AM. Until/unless you let go and let the finite being perish you are doomed to misery like the first movement of Beethoven’s 32nd Sonata. Your choice.
July 14, 7 PM. Just Being with the knot now mostly without jerks. Sliding into “Hell.”
July 19, 7 AM. When we hate sitting — good! This shows the finite being is being purified. Just keep going upstream. Again, the purpose of sitting — of life — is to force us to allow the finite being to suffer, wither away, and die it’s inevitable death. Preferably before we die. This is the opposite of “normal human” life centered around avoiding suffering or blindly following the genes’ dictates.
July 20, 7 PM. Just being with the slowly dissolving knot. Letting it dissipate. On its own.December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won’t — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let’s go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one’s worthlessness and then again achieve one’s perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won’t, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn’t recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn’t allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach’s Chacon for solo violin it would’ve driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won’t.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won’t when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory’s infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don’t react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po’s “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being’s knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It’s there, waiting. January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven’s “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka’s assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won’t allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer’s like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while Anne was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I don’t do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
May 4, 7 AM. Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Essentially, the mental and the physical are all one and the same. Every willful thought has a physical corollary. Free won’t lets go of all that and thus the abdomen relaxes.
May 8, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Thought I was through with that now. Yesterday was ready to sit forever. Today never hated it so much.
The NOW may be the only refuge for the infinite spirit, but for the finite being it’s a prison it strives incessantly to escape. For it means its death.
The difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind is that ordinary mind incessantly strives for reproductive success through the unfree will. Enlightened mind IS free won’t. Did Huang Po not see that? [When asked what is the difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind he replied, “How many minds have you got.” And “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind.”]
May 15, 9 AM. Mild descent into hell.
May 24, 9 PM. Only by “embracing all living things and nature in its beauty” is there freedom from fear. But fear is what prevents that. Not just nature but everything. The potholes in the road are “IT in all its fullness, utterly complete.” [Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”]
Not embrace, but BE IT. “I am that which is.”
May 25, 2 AM. To allow All to flow through one is to be All. [Modern physics has shown that] The wave of every “separate” thing overlaps every other, overlaps all. No this nor that, no me nor not-me. Just ALL. [See: The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, by Heinrich Päs. A "fascinating [and] provocative" argument by a particle physicist—marshalling a "heady mix of history, philosophy and cutting-edge theory" (Wall Street Journal)—for monism, the ancient idea about the universe that says, All is One
In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.
Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. (From book description at Amazon.)]
May 27, 2024, 11 AM. Philip Kapleau said: “There is no reason for fear. You can’t fall out of the universe.” Yes you can. To myself: “Let yourself fall into the black hole of the Eternal NOW. Let the finite being be ripped apart by ITS tidal forces.” Kapleau would not go there.
May 31, 7 PM. MIND, when allowed to BE is devastating to the finite being. Fear coming up of going to the center for two days. That’s why I haven’t gone in 10 years.
June 1, 10 AM. All my life the Infinite Spirit has been nagging me to sit continuously to let IT in.
June 8, 8 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to letting go of all the countless layers of tension which defend the finite being. The waving ferns and grasses — “Holy! Holy!” [Beethoven wrote that when he’s in the country it seems like every tree cries out “Holy! Holy!”] — will devastate the finite being if we let them. As will our every movement. Through free won’t every tension let’s go … eventually.
June 11, 11 AM. Giving myself over to the Infinite Spirit after a trill-in-the-heart nap. Felt I might faint or at least not walk straight. [This is how I feel regularly after sitting these days.] Sensing ITS infinite intent and relentlessness. No choice. Abdomen ever so slowly letting go.
June 12, 8 PM. The finite being uses sitting methods — even the meditative inquiry of the Springwater Center — to stay on the surface instead of allowing the devastation of the depths. The surface tension of fear keeps us afloat. The knife twists and twists and twists — but the abdomen’s knot does not want to let go.
June 14, 2 AM. If one “thinks” one’s life is one’s own, then one is the pawn of the finite being. If one realizes one’s life is not one’s own, then free won’t can arise.
June 27, 8 AM. Intermittently being with the knot. Staying with it is another matter.
July 3, 2 AM. Is saying “It’s my karma” the same as calling it “stagnant chi”? A way to avoid feeling our worthlessness?
July 3, 8 AM. Is having eyes closed a better way to stay with the knot? Are eyes open or even half open a way for the finite being to maintain its supremacy?
July 9, 8 AM. Physical tension creates the boundary wall of self. No tension, no boundary.
July 13, 7 AM. To not like something regardless how trivial is to resist it in order to protect the finite being.
July 17, 7 PM. Is van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish from painting due to an openness that is equivalent to meditation? Likewise with Beethoven?
August 9, 2 AM. To let in the extraordinary beauty of the red sun through the trees, purple sky, vegetation … is devastating. Is this van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish?
August 12. I asked Anne how she suffered. She said all her life she has felt “squeezed, torn, pushed against something. With fear an enveloping feeling. Fear in all her fibers, cells, sensations, of body and mind.”
August 12, 7 PM. Crucifixion by disembowelment all day.
August 28, 7 AM. Opening of the abdomen leads to indescribable mental anguish to the nth. “I” cannot continue. “I” would rather die. Christ: “May this cup pass from me.” Rather, “May this me pass from me.”
August 28, 11 AM. A deeper inner freedom and Being.
September 3, 9 AM. The finite being ripped apart by tidal forces as it is inexorably drawn into the black hole wormhole to Being.
September 4, 7 AM. The key to meditation is to suffer and not resist the above .
September 9, 7 PM. Abdomen looser but dreamt I WAS the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th [over which he scrawled DESPAIR!]. Devastating jerks. Jumped when Anne came in the room — just like she does. Only MIND can oversee this dissolution of the finite being.
September 19, 8 AM. Unbelievable torture in abdomen. Something incredibly profound must come of this. An intimation of BEING to the nth.
9 PM. If no resistance, then no torture. But it’s hardly fun. Just Being with the knot.
September 22, 9 AM. Wanting the suffering of purification to stop. But only the finite being suffers. The “eternal necessity of suffering” is so we have no choice but to find freedom from the finite being and just let’s go of its clutch.
October 12, 9 AM. Lately have been having little tastes of the descent into Hell in sitting. Sitting is a descent into hell. Jerks, tensions slowly release from body/mind — then clamp down again with the abdomen’s knot.
October 14, 9 AM. A tinge of descent into hell in bed before sleep. Still some now. Can it be perpetual? This is the suffering you hate so much. Cart before horse is equivalent to attention without suffering. Only the suffering being can be effortlessly, and intentionally — attentive.
Super jerk — so far still to go.
8 PM. On the edge of descent into hell all day. NOT relished! NOT fun! Swirling down the black hole of being. Finite being ripped apart.
October 17, 2024, 1 AM. The knot is resistance to suffering. Being with the knot means allowing suffering. Thus and only thus can the knot dissolve.
October 18. Driving to Rochester and Macedon: Being taking in all (to a degree) — sky, trees, homes, traffic.
October 26, 2024. Video of Phil’s jerks.
October 27, 10 AM. Can every moment be a descent into hell?
October 28, 11 AM. Are my jerks and shakes like a dynamic stretch — necessary for letting go?
November 6, 11 AM. Swirling down the black hole of being. Can that be allowed every moment? Cabeza: "You are going to die sometime, aren’t you…"
Need to allow suffering every moment. This is the Infinite Spirit purifying the finite being.
November 17, 3 AM. One author, perhaps Paul Ehrlich, said he believes he has the free will to at least choose roast beef or roast duck for dinner. But this is the unfree will. Free won’t would choose neither. Rather a plant food diet which is good for one’s body, the vehicle we need to maintain as long as possible.
November 11, 11 PM. The finite being is equivalent to locality, the Infinite Spirit, non-locality — as described by quantum mechanics.
December 5, 11 AM. Opening yesterday. Lockdown tension today. Because the finite being was trying to return to that state and feel better. Just give in to everything every moment. And give up all trying.
December 6, 11 AM. Regarding all the interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen, hidden variables, many worlds, Qbism — this is like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chicken versus the egg is a meaningless question and the "answer" goes back to the beginning of all life (specifically the evolution of sex) on earth. Likewise, without understanding the origin of the universe all those interpretations of quantum mechanics are "not even wrong."
December 9, 8 AM. Horror movies and books, amusement rides, etc. are a safe way to let our fears come up. But those fears are ultimately rooted in fear of the dissolution of the finite being.
December 10, 8 AM. The day after my weekend at the center: a whole new level of jerks (made a new video). Abdomen in and out not even just when sitting. 8 AM to 8:45 AM, then immediately at 10:25 AM.
January 2, 2025. 8 PM. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. On the cross.
January 16. To let go of, abstain from, all intentionality. Just being with the breathing. Mindfully aware, giving in, giving up, letting go. Allowing the knot to untie itself. Without any trying whatsoever.
Everything we instinctively react to, if we instead let it flow through us via free won’t, purifies us of the finite being. Thus, and only thus can MIND manifest Itself. Can LOVE, more accurately called Lovingness, BE, and permeate the finite being.
January 17, 8 AM. Yesterday letting Lovingness flow. Today NOT letting Lovingness flow. But giving in the best I can.
January 18. So devastated by sitting, can hardly move or exercise. Not loosening but the knife thrusts ever deeper.
January 19. With no intentionality (i.e., with free won’t) MIND is equivalent to all pervading Being which is equivalent to all pervading Lovingness.
January 21, 8 AM. When we react, we tighten the knot. It will loosen on its own if we don’t keep tightening it.
January 27, 8 AM. Make the present moment your home. Relax into it. Settle in. Nowhere to go regardless.
The Infinite Spirit arises from the ashes of the finite being.
January 29, 2 AM. The only thing you can do is to get in the way. To let go of all doing… anything is possible.
8 AM. The NOW is our True Home and embraces the entirety of the space-time continuum. But there is no place for the finite being there.
February 16, 8 AM. Can one let go of the tension — the resistance — that pervades all our “doing.” No resistance, no doing, no tension, no problem. Just Being There, Being Here. No problem for the Infinite Spirit That Is. The finite being fights that to its literal death.
February 26, 2 AM. Before the all day sitting at Springwater plus two more days. Stay with the now. Nowhere to go.
March 6, 8 AM. The jerks are the resistance to the energy, Huang Po’s Pure Mind, Stephen Hawkins “Fire behind the Equations.”
March 17, 7 PM. Can this one Be the vehicle of the Infinite Spirit? Can the finite being relinquish its hold? then and only then can there be no problem, no separation, just ONE. This necessitates a complete letting go: of all wanting, fearing, tension, and resistance.
March 21, 11 am. Opening yesterday to Being/freedom/joy. Today the gate slammed shut. No choice but to feel my worthlessness.
March 22, 7 pm. Utterly miserable lately. Resistance to the necessary purification.
March 28, 7 pm. Giving in more and more. Can the finite being let its house of cards be blown down? Giving in, give up, let go every instant. continuously. Abdomen looser and looser. But sitting takes me into deeper and deeper levels of resistance. Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”
March 30, 10 AM. Sitting like the coda of Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement, which itself is a descent into hell. The funeral march for the finite being.
April 2, 7 PM. Free won’t is equivalent to no intentionality, is equivalent to being in the moment with no concern for the future, is equivalent to letting go of all tension. And is equivalent to allowing oneself to suffer every moment.
April 9, 8 AM. The Thursday after the all-day sitting with three nights at Springwater: yesterday all day indescribable mental anguish to the nth. 1-3 AM: Being with the knot.
April 11, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth.
7 PM. Knot opening, loosening — but the “I” hates this.
April 15, 7 AM. Can you allow suffering/purification every instant. Give in to the suffering. Give up fighting it. Let go of it all. [Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when he appears. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”]
April 16, 7 AM. Allow suffering without complaining every instant. This is true prayer… without thought. This is true attention.
April 18, 7 PM a state of Being requires the purification and suffering of the finite being.
April 19, 10 AM. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Freedom, joy, and purity — and still the finite being resists.
April 21. 10 AM. Accept that the finite being must suffer every instant. The eternal necessity of suffering.
April 22. Allow suffering every instant. This is the true being one with the moment.
April 25, 7 AM. St. Teresa of Ávila: “My life became very heavy for me because prayer illumined all my faults.” And “faults” includes resistance to Truth, and being the slave of the finite being.
May 16, 7 PM. I hate sitting but when I stop all I want to do is sit.
May 18, 7 PM. Letting go is equivalent to allowing the finite being to suffer its death throes which is equivalent to allowing MIND. Yesterday a bit of smiling Buddha Mind taking in all. And on run today.
May 25, 7 PM. All this work, 56 years, 4 to 5 hours a day, just to get to where I allow — or do not allow — myself to be crucified.
May 26. But it is necessary not to react to being crucified. Suffer without complaining.
May 30, 6 AM. Can sitting be a perpetual descent into hell? My father, Anne’s brother just wanted to die, because the finite being had had enough (they were dying of cancer). Likewise the finite being: can every moment be a perpetual death and descent into hell.
June 2, 10 AM. Letting go of the abdomen’s tension is a descent into hell.
June 5, 7 PM. It is our reaction to others that makes them seem separate from us. If there is no reaction, just observing — all is ONE.
June 6, 7 PM. All engines may be ready to go to solve life’s problems (at the moment the truck’s cruise control) but while sitting just don’t shift into gear until the sitting is over.
June 16, 10 AM. All that matters is MIND and ITS emergence. The finite being’s misery is irrelevant.
June 21, 7 AM. To fully relax, descent into Hell is necessary.
July 4, 7 AM. You don’t have to do anything… but… that not doing, nonaction, is death to the finite being. Do any spiritual teachers say that, go through that themselves? Not any that I am aware of.
July 9, 7 AM. Until/unless you let go and let the finite being perish you are doomed to misery like the first movement of Beethoven’s 32nd Sonata. Your choice.
July 14, 7 PM. Just Being with the knot now mostly without jerks. Sliding into “Hell.”
July 19, 7 AM. When we hate sitting — good! This shows the finite being is being purified. Just keep going upstream. Again, the purpose of sitting — of life — is to force us to allow the finite being to suffer, wither away, and die it’s inevitable death. Preferably before we die. This is the opposite of “normal human” life centered around avoiding suffering or blindly following the genes’ dictates.
July 20, 7 PM. Just being with the slowly dissolving knot. Letting it dissipate. On its own.December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won’t — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let’s go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one’s worthlessness and then again achieve one’s perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won’t, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn’t recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn’t allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach’s Chacon for solo violin it would’ve driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won’t.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won’t when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory’s infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don’t react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po’s “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being’s knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It’s there, waiting. January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven’s “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka’s assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won’t allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer’s like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while Anne was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni’s room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I don’t do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
May 4, 7 AM. Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Essentially, the mental and the physical are all one and the same. Every willful thought has a physical corollary. Free won’t lets go of all that and thus the abdomen relaxes.
May 8, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Thought I was through with that now. Yesterday was ready to sit forever. Today never hated it so much.
The NOW may be the only refuge for the infinite spirit, but for the finite being it’s a prison it strives incessantly to escape. For it means its death.
The difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind is that ordinary mind incessantly strives for reproductive success through the unfree will. Enlightened mind IS free won’t. Did Huang Po not see that? [When asked what is the difference between ordinary mind and enlightened mind he replied, “How many minds have you got.” And “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind.”]
May 15, 9 AM. Mild descent into hell.
May 24, 9 PM. Only by “embracing all living things and nature in its beauty” is there freedom from fear. But fear is what prevents that. Not just nature but everything. The potholes in the road are “IT in all its fullness, utterly complete.” [Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”]
Not embrace, but BE IT. “I am that which is.”
May 25, 2 AM. To allow All to flow through one is to be All. [Modern physics has shown that] The wave of every “separate” thing overlaps every other, overlaps all. No this nor that, no me nor not-me. Just ALL. [See: The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, by Heinrich Päs. A "fascinating [and] provocative" argument by a particle physicist—marshalling a "heady mix of history, philosophy and cutting-edge theory" (Wall Street Journal)—for monism, the ancient idea about the universe that says, All is One
In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.
Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself. (From book description at Amazon.)]
May 27, 2024, 11 AM. Philip Kapleau said: “There is no reason for fear. You can’t fall out of the universe.” Yes you can. To myself: “Let yourself fall into the black hole of the Eternal NOW. Let the finite being be ripped apart by ITS tidal forces.” Kapleau would not go there.
May 31, 7 PM. MIND, when allowed to BE is devastating to the finite being. Fear coming up of going to the center for two days. That’s why I haven’t gone in 10 years.
June 1, 10 AM. All my life the Infinite Spirit has been nagging me to sit continuously to let IT in.
June 8, 8 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to letting go of all the countless layers of tension which defend the finite being. The waving ferns and grasses — “Holy! Holy!” [Beethoven wrote that when he’s in the country it seems like every tree cries out “Holy! Holy!”] — will devastate the finite being if we let them. As will our every movement. Through free won’t every tension let’s go … eventually.
June 11, 11 AM. Giving myself over to the Infinite Spirit after a trill-in-the-heart nap. Felt I might faint or at least not walk straight. [This is how I feel regularly after sitting these days.] Sensing ITS infinite intent and relentlessness. No choice. Abdomen ever so slowly letting go.
June 12, 8 PM. The finite being uses sitting methods — even the meditative inquiry of the Springwater Center — to stay on the surface instead of allowing the devastation of the depths. The surface tension of fear keeps us afloat. The knife twists and twists and twists — but the abdomen’s knot does not want to let go.
June 14, 2 AM. If one “thinks” one’s life is one’s own, then one is the pawn of the finite being. If one realizes one’s life is not one’s own, then free won’t can arise.
June 27, 8 AM. Intermittently being with the knot. Staying with it is another matter.
July 3, 2 AM. Is saying “It’s my karma” the same as calling it “stagnant chi”? A way to avoid feeling our worthlessness?
July 3, 8 AM. Is having eyes closed a better way to stay with the knot? Are eyes open or even half open a way for the finite being to maintain its supremacy?
July 9, 8 AM. Physical tension creates the boundary wall of self. No tension, no boundary.
July 13, 7 AM. To not like something regardless how trivial is to resist it in order to protect the finite being.
July 17, 7 PM. Is van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish from painting due to an openness that is equivalent to meditation? Likewise with Beethoven?
August 9, 2 AM. To let in the extraordinary beauty of the red sun through the trees, purple sky, vegetation … is devastating. Is this van Gogh’s indescribable mental anguish?
August 12. I asked Anne how she suffered. She said all her life she has felt “squeezed, torn, pushed against something. With fear an enveloping feeling. Fear in all her fibers, cells, sensations, of body and mind.”
August 12, 7 PM. Crucifixion by disembowelment all day.
August 28, 7 AM. Opening of the abdomen leads to indescribable mental anguish to the nth. “I” cannot continue. “I” would rather die. Christ: “May this cup pass from me.” Rather, “May this me pass from me.”
August 28, 11 AM. A deeper inner freedom and Being.
September 3, 9 AM. The finite being ripped apart by tidal forces as it is inexorably drawn into the black hole wormhole to Being.
September 4, 7 AM. The key to meditation is to suffer and not resist the above .
September 9, 7 PM. Abdomen looser but dreamt I WAS the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th [over which he scrawled DESPAIR!]. Devastating jerks. Jumped when Anne came in the room — just like she does. Only MIND can oversee this dissolution of the finite being.
September 19, 8 AM. Unbelievable torture in abdomen. Something incredibly profound must come of this. An intimation of BEING to the nth.
9 PM. If no resistance, then no torture. But it’s hardly fun. Just Being with the knot.
September 22, 9 AM. Wanting the suffering of purification to stop. But only the finite being suffers. The “eternal necessity of suffering” is so we have no choice but to find freedom from the finite being and just let’s go of its clutch.
October 12, 9 AM. Lately have been having little tastes of the descent into Hell in sitting. Sitting is a descent into hell. Jerks, tensions slowly release from body/mind — then clamp down again with the abdomen’s knot.
October 14, 9 AM. A tinge of descent into hell in bed before sleep. Still some now. Can it be perpetual? This is the suffering you hate so much. Cart before horse is equivalent to attention without suffering. Only the suffering being can be effortlessly, and intentionally — attentive.
Super jerk — so far still to go.
8 PM. On the edge of descent into hell all day. NOT relished! NOT fun! Swirling down the black hole of being. Finite being ripped apart.
October 17, 2024, 1 AM. The knot is resistance to suffering. Being with the knot means allowing suffering. Thus and only thus can the knot dissolve.
October 18. Driving to Rochester and Macedon: Being taking in all (to a degree) — sky, trees, homes, traffic.
October 26, 2024. Video of Phil’s jerks.
October 27, 10 AM. Can every moment be a descent into hell?
October 28, 11 AM. Are my jerks and shakes like a dynamic stretch — necessary for letting go?
November 6, 11 AM. Swirling down the black hole of being. Can that be allowed every moment? Cabeza: "You are going to die sometime, aren’t you…"
Need to allow suffering every moment. This is the Infinite Spirit purifying the finite being.
November 17, 3 AM. One author, perhaps Paul Ehrlich, said he believes he has the free will to at least choose roast beef or roast duck for dinner. But this is the unfree will. Free won’t would choose neither. Rather a plant food diet which is good for one’s body, the vehicle we need to maintain as long as possible.
November 11, 11 PM. The finite being is equivalent to locality, the Infinite Spirit, non-locality — as described by quantum mechanics.
December 5, 11 AM. Opening yesterday. Lockdown tension today. Because the finite being was trying to return to that state and feel better. Just give in to everything every moment. And give up all trying.
December 6, 11 AM. Regarding all the interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen, hidden variables, many worlds, Qbism — this is like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. The chicken versus the egg is a meaningless question and the "answer" goes back to the beginning of all life (specifically the evolution of sex) on earth. Likewise, without understanding the origin of the universe all those interpretations of quantum mechanics are "not even wrong."
December 9, 8 AM. Horror movies and books, amusement rides, etc. are a safe way to let our fears come up. But those fears are ultimately rooted in fear of the dissolution of the finite being.
December 10, 8 AM. The day after my weekend at the center: a whole new level of jerks (made a new video). Abdomen in and out not even just when sitting. 8 AM to 8:45 AM, then immediately at 10:25 AM.
January 2, 2025. 8 PM. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. On the cross.
January 16. To let go of, abstain from, all intentionality. Just being with the breathing. Mindfully aware, giving in, giving up, letting go. Allowing the knot to untie itself. Without any trying whatsoever.
Everything we instinctively react to, if we instead let it flow through us via free won’t, purifies us of the finite being. Thus, and only thus can MIND manifest Itself. Can LOVE, more accurately called Lovingness, BE, and permeate the finite being.
January 17, 8 AM. Yesterday letting Lovingness flow. Today NOT letting Lovingness flow. But giving in the best I can.
January 18. So devastated by sitting, can hardly move or exercise. Not loosening but the knife thrusts ever deeper.
January 19. With no intentionality (i.e., with free won’t) MIND is equivalent to all pervading Being which is equivalent to all pervading Lovingness.
January 21, 8 AM. When we react, we tighten the knot. It will loosen on its own if we don’t keep tightening it.
January 27, 8 AM. Make the present moment your home. Relax into it. Settle in. Nowhere to go regardless.
The Infinite Spirit arises from the ashes of the finite being.
January 29, 2 AM. The only thing you can do is to get in the way. To let go of all doing… anything is possible.
8 AM. The NOW is our True Home and embraces the entirety of the space-time continuum. But there is no place for the finite being there.
February 16, 8 AM. Can one let go of the tension — the resistance — that pervades all our “doing.” No resistance, no doing, no tension, no problem. Just Being There, Being Here. No problem for the Infinite Spirit That Is. The finite being fights that to its literal death.
February 26, 2 AM. Before the all day sitting at Springwater plus two more days. Stay with the now. Nowhere to go.
March 6, 8 AM. The jerks are the resistance to the energy, Huang Po’s Pure Mind, Stephen Hawkins “Fire behind the Equations.”
March 17, 7 PM. Can this one Be the vehicle of the Infinite Spirit? Can the finite being relinquish its hold? then and only then can there be no problem, no separation, just ONE. This necessitates a complete letting go: of all wanting, fearing, tension, and resistance.
March 21, 11 am. Opening yesterday to Being/freedom/joy. Today the gate slammed shut. No choice but to feel my worthlessness.
March 22, 7 pm. Utterly miserable lately. Resistance to the necessary purification.
March 28, 7 pm. Giving in more and more. Can the finite being let its house of cards be blown down? Giving in, give up, let go every instant. continuously. Abdomen looser and looser. But sitting takes me into deeper and deeper levels of resistance. Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”
March 30, 10 AM. Sitting like the coda of Beethoven’s Ninth, first movement, which itself is a descent into hell. The funeral march for the finite being.
April 2, 7 PM. Free won’t is equivalent to no intentionality, is equivalent to being in the moment with no concern for the future, is equivalent to letting go of all tension. And is equivalent to allowing oneself to suffer every moment.
April 9, 8 AM. The Thursday after the all-day sitting with three nights at Springwater: yesterday all day indescribable mental anguish to the nth. 1-3 AM: Being with the knot.
April 11, 10 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth.
7 PM. Knot opening, loosening — but the “I” hates this.
April 15, 7 AM. Can you allow suffering/purification every instant. Give in to the suffering. Give up fighting it. Let go of it all. [Handel’s Messiah: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when he appears. For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”]
April 16, 7 AM. Allow suffering without complaining every instant. This is true prayer… without thought. This is true attention.
April 18, 7 PM a state of Being requires the purification and suffering of the finite being.
April 19, 10 AM. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Freedom, joy, and purity — and still the finite being resists.
April 21. 10 AM. Accept that the finite being must suffer every instant. The eternal necessity of suffering.
April 22. Allow suffering every instant. This is the true being one with the moment.
April 25, 7 AM. St. Teresa of Ávila: “My life became very heavy for me because prayer illumined all my faults.” And “faults” includes resistance to Truth, and being the slave of the finite being.
May 16, 7 PM. I hate sitting but when I stop all I want to do is sit.
May 18, 7 PM. Letting go is equivalent to allowing the finite being to suffer its death throes which is equivalent to allowing MIND. Yesterday a bit of smiling Buddha Mind taking in all. And on run today.
May 25, 7 PM. All this work, 56 years, 4 to 5 hours a day, just to get to where I allow — or do not allow — myself to be crucified.
May 26. But it is necessary not to react to being crucified. Suffer without complaining.
May 30, 6 AM. Can sitting be a perpetual descent into hell? My father, Anne’s brother just wanted to die, because the finite being had had enough (they were dying of cancer). Likewise the finite being: can every moment be a perpetual death and descent into hell.
June 2, 10 AM. Letting go of the abdomen’s tension is a descent into hell.
June 5, 7 PM. It is our reaction to others that makes them seem separate from us. If there is no reaction, just observing — all is ONE.
June 6, 7 PM. All engines may be ready to go to solve life’s problems (at the moment the truck’s cruise control) but while sitting just don’t shift into gear until the sitting is over.
June 16, 10 AM. All that matters is MIND and ITS emergence. The finite being’s misery is irrelevant.
June 21, 7 AM. To fully relax, descent into Hell is necessary.
July 4, 7 AM. You don’t have to do anything… but… that not doing, nonaction, is death to the finite being. Do any spiritual teachers say that, go through that themselves? Not any that I am aware of.
July 9, 7 AM. Until/unless you let go and let the finite being perish you are doomed to misery like the first movement of Beethoven’s 32nd Sonata. Your choice.
July 14, 7 PM. Just Being with the knot now mostly without jerks. Sliding into “Hell.”
July 19, 7 AM. When we hate sitting — good! This shows the finite being is being purified. Just keep going upstream. Again, the purpose of sitting — of life — is to force us to allow the finite being to suffer, wither away, and die it’s inevitable death. Preferably before we die. This is the opposite of “normal human” life centered around avoiding suffering or blindly following the genes’ dictates.
July 20, 7 PM. Just being with the slowly dissolving knot. Letting it dissipate. On its own.
Print | Sitemap
© Philip H. Grant
Print