Day 22 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 22

Length: 15 minutes (timed)
Start:: 9:45pm
Experience:

I had a good sit today. I spent a majority of the time enacting some techniques I've been learning about in Mindfulness in Plain English: counting breaths, defeating frustration by wishing loving kindness to all things, and focusing on unpleasant feelings.

Counting breaths really helped my wandering mind, and when I met with some frustration with how my day went wishing loving kindness helped evaporate it. I was having some discomfort in my back and found the most peculiar reaction to focusing on it - it disappeared!

It made me think that perhaps minor pain was but a momentary pin prick and my brain just kept reminding me that it had happened. When I focused on it, truly focused on it and tried to observe it mindfully, it slipped away like grains of sand through my fingertips. It was quite an experience.

I also focused on my favorite koan - Tekisui. It's a simple one that has brought me great joy in its contemplation:

"
A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath.
The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over.
"You dunce!" the master scolded him. "Why didn't you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple?"
The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water.
"

I daresay this particular koan is the reason that I started down this path. If I had a proper meditation room or altar I'd decorate it with some kind of reference to it in order to remind me of my root.

Closing Thoughts: I should make better use of the advantages of this interconnectedness of contemporary life, I've held an electronic copy of Mindfulness in Plain English for so long but have yet to finish it even though upon each page I find great wisdom to help me in my practice. Enacting several of the techniques within have helped me greatly improve. My favorite koan still brings me great pause even now.