Winding down from personal retreat. The first several weeks were on a schedule of meditation and ceremony and bowing for all but one day each week.Then when I got sick with some bug, it changed and became much more fluid and quite intense in a way I hadn’t experienced before, I seemed to just sort of stay in a hyper-aware mode that was very interesting and at times discomfiting.  A few days ago that too has edged away and I think I’m sort of done with this little Winter Withdrawal. I could have been more rigorous in maintaining the schedule when I was feeling puny, but a good friend reminded me that this is the Middle path. So, it was time well spent.

In a conversation with someone last week, I mentioned that I was concerned  with the fact that I would be moving one more time this Summer, which would make five moves in the 3 1/2 years since Linda died. My friend said, “So what; you can move ten times, who said you have to stay in one place?” Good point.

I have decided to cast a little further afield in my looking for a place. This Winter in the Wallowa Valley of Eastern Oregon was a little more stark than am willing to commit too. I’m exploring other options that will put me in a milder Winter but not too far away. I like the area and want to stay close to the local temple but maybe with more mobility and choices. I’ll find out a lot more in the next two months.

I realize once again, that the “problems” that are in my life are all a result of things I set into motion (karma) and all the consequences are reaped in feeling (s). That is the nature of Karma.

We set things in motion and the feelings we reap induce further actions we “feel” we have to take and then, we’re off to the races. That is how we suffer.

I’m reminded that the three basic “engines” of our suffering are greed, hate and delusion. Of those three, Delusion is the most difficult to see because its main activity seems to be trying to reconcile our Greed and Hate through rationalizing them with a complex story (ours), that this is how life is. This results in an insistence of how things are and not, which activities make it that way.

We want this; but not that.

Although we may get what we want it will change and 

We don’t like that. So we fix  the Change because it looks

Like Muddle, because we forgot it was a-a-a-

Part of our Plan and the

Muddle and plan don’t seem

Con-nected.

Or even dis-

Now we have This,

Not That.  There that’s better!

For now.