2018.05.12 - Day 59

Seem to be getting pushed in direction of vipassana meditation lately. Warched a Yuval Harari video yesterday where he claims he does 2 one hour periods of vipassana per day and it helped him focus when writing his books.
Charles Tart is recommending using self-observation using vipassana. He makes a good point, I think, that this is better practiced in our daily lives rather than while being on a retreat. 'Indeed, a retreat situation is not generally useful for observing important aspects of your functioning: since you are away from your usual, habitual life, many of the most central aspects of your self are not being activated.'
I have tried noticing what happens in my body in stressful situations but this is more like trying to understand 'how your psychological machinery operates,' and thus be able to function better rather than be on automatic pilot all the time.

It's a 1000 mile drive to the ocean. But today, rarest of days, it feels like Spring in Provence, with the sea in the air, and only the salt is missing. :)) Oh, et les melons charentais!

No isolation today - 4 hour phone conversation with my mom. Mother's Day.

Re longer meditations, thst's something my new '3 airports' friend mentioned and I've been thinking about too. In the beginning, my meditation periods were longer and my goal was to sit at predictable times. It is interesting to think about how practice has changed course, yet does return to basic beginnings over and over again. edited 03:19, 13 May 2018

I finished the chapter on Play and Law in Homo Ludens. So much interesting content! And what Huizinga describes seems to support my Day 57 thesis.

He points out that so-called divine will, and destiny, and chance seem distinct concepts to the modern mind, but they were once more or less equivalent. Contests of law may have been decided not just by adversarial argument but also by lot or by ordeal, the outcomes of which may have been seen to have been directed by the gods and therefore seen as revelations of truth and justice. Fit foundations for a developing society's values and later laws? Maybe!

Onto the chapter on Play and War. Of course, since Huizinga's time, everyone with a computer can now play *at* war. For example, I have played the game Civilization in all its (so far) six incarnations since 1996, and managing wars between nations in an inescapable part of the game. And I suspect, with modern communications and news reports that assail us daily, that many people think they are fairly knowledgeable about war. I suspect Huizinga will surprise me!