Autumn Sunrise




After teaching my classes this morning at Willow Street, I will be studying with Paul Muller-Ortega, who is leading a workshop on tantric philosophy and meditation today and tomorrow. It will be good to study, to learn, to meditate with direction. To be able to teach, it is essential for me to study.
It was a day of meetings and conversations and emails. I’m in the middle of a major project, and it feels demanding. I’m being careful to take good care of myself.
On the walk home, just as the last glimmers of daylight were fading, I could feel the temperature dropping. Any last warmth was being blown away by the wind. I was bundled up and had my computer with me with the intention of working from home. The sky was like a black opal–dark blue-grays with fiery orange streaks. The walk (chanting the Maha mrityunjaya mantra for some of the way) shifted me out of work mode.
I came home to my newest gardening venture. The worms will arrive separately; they will be held for me at the post office to keep them out of the cold.
Experienced vermicomposters, please feel freee to post your favorite tips for happy, healthy, hungry worms.
I was browsing; I was looking for a poem to read to a friend because I was not ready to write one myself. I found several that were right for me to read, but not to share, and this one I wanted to share more widely because of the delight it is bringing me to read it:
Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4
1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.
2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet and sleep there.
3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.
4.
Richard Brautigan, The Pill v. the Springhill Mine Disaster
I had a real fondness for Brautigan when I was a teenager. Every once and a while, I will pick up one of his books and remember why. If you enjoyed reading this poem, please go buy a book by Brautigan to thank him.