2012.04.26 _ 16

My art club afternoon. Have found it difficult to decide what to paint lately but am going to try some flowers. It's just the colours really, not the forms, I like.
A hospital consultant rang me to say they want to remove my gallbladder. Oh... and I thought they were just going to leave it. Seems they are worried I will have a recurrence of previous trouble. My muscular dystrophy will make it more difficult and I have to see the anaesthetist first.

So. What is happening? Very busy today in some ways. Not in others. Entertaining family, local and in from 1000 miles away.

My goc day and managed Karuna-metta beforehand. I found early on during the meditation that I had a smile on my face, and it never left.

What of equanimity? Something that intrigued me of late was how much of the time I experience equanimity. I realized that it was nearly all the time. (Quite the reverse of, say, 20 years ago.) That is, I suspect, fairly unusual.

But if equanimity is considered something desirable - and I believe it is but I know not everyone shares that view - then is it something that can be cultivated, or are you just lucky to have it? Well I think it's a combination of the two. You're born with a base level, sure, but you can actively and consciously cultivate it. And in my cosmology the base level would be through karma, but those are only the results of one's own actions, conscious or unconscious, displaced in time. So whichever way I look at it, it's up to me to cultivate it. And, as far as I can see, practicing compassion is a sure-fire way to do that.

Continued to work on my large pine cone. Like Bruce's plastic flowers, it is restful because it doesn't change quickly. I don't have to rush to capture it before it dies. edited 05:29, 27 Apr 2012

:) Sorry to miss posting this day, but can site as my practice watching a film titled "Bread of Happiness" completely by chance, and finding it to be a wonderful attempt to show people living genuine and loving lives of appreciation. It is a 'slow' and 'simple' film.

http://bit.ly/Ix8GTF edited 20:28, 27 Apr 2012