Basil, lilacs, and sun.

Saturday morning I rose early, around 5am, to watch the sunrise from the sun porch at my new place. I’m not much of a morning person, typically, but on days like this I wish I were. Nonetheless I was grateful for the opportunity to pretend to be one, even if only for one day.

The crispness and the quiet of the morning is something to be cherished. The calm of the world helps calm the mind – or it allows the mind to see just how chaotic it has become. That was the case for me, watching the thousand different directions my mind would travel from one moment to the next.

What arose from this was mostly aversion (Pali: dosa), one of Buddhisms three poisons. Mostly the aversions were to the many things (and people) taking up my time of late. Yet the other side of the coin of dosa is lobha, or greed. And it has been my greed that got me to the ADD-monkey-mind state in the first place. I have wanted all of the joys and pleasures of the world, here and now. Thus striving, thus clinging, thus suffering as these worldly things came apart.

So now I begin again. Each day, each breath a new opportunity for practice.