Notes on Apapb

First, a quote shared by Eos:

"If the meditator is able to use whatever occurs in his life as the Path, his body becomes a retreat hut." Jigme Lingpa 

It took quite a while before I felt as though I was working at all, with appreciating the presence of appearance as a presentation by/of being", and certainly a while before the exercize began to open up as having to do with all of appearance, all of the time. I am slowly but surely developing a rather intuitive trust in a 'process' that  finds unfolding layers and pages and sheets and sensations now ... spontaneously engaging apapb.

Whether I can articulate notes to share? We'll see :) What I'd like to do here, is relate the more recent notes taken, and gather notes on earlier explorations, on a page attached to this one. 

2009/12/18 - Appearing to hear the rain.. (notes scribbled in the night) 

The sound seems to dissolve partitions... the idea of outside/inside. I let it.
i am not feeling the rain with my hands or my body, but this i'd see as a feeling experience. how so?  It seems mere memory of feeling of water whose falling calls it rain. i feel... where? The "coolness of the pool" feeling, with the layers of ideas and pictures of things i thought cool... in other sometimes. Is it all 'just' memory and memory 'just' texture? of what. does it need to be of something? 

Noticing components distance dissolves. innumerable sensations... but are any of them 'water'? 'rain'? there is obviously no texture in the texture... If I taste it, the texture seems already memory, too... all memory ... thin thin, transparent, warping almost. dream being? glowy. 

In a dream, often just before one wakes up, things start looking obviousy squidgy. 

12/8 - In which I cope with the mall using a light form, I'd say, of apapb...

APAPB- People watching is an incredible 'exercize'... taking the time to just relax the appearances of people Summarizing: It was still a mall.
And I didn't find enthusiasm enough to buy anything beyond the green tea latte. I did come out with pleasure at a wild ride we're on, how much there is to notice. Dwelling as not only particular things, but also on the settings.. endless. There is a way to unfold more and more attentively without taking away from time at all to do so. 

*Note added: Later the same month I went back to the same mall, sat reading. Felt inspired toward a variation of tonglen in which I breathed in all osbscurations/appearances and breathed out vividness...

12/23 -Setting the Stage   

Appreciation as 'group activity' with others can be a very powerful thing. This day I spent first at pab, then at a garden event with my children and another mom I'd not met before. We first walked garden areas, and talked about what we were seeing. She was tactile, and her touching encouraged me to touch too... noticing that some things, like these massive cone-like fruits we found, felt completely different than our memory/expectation would suggest... soft paper...   

We took a trolley tour, and though the guide taught quickly, we were exhilarated trying to keep one another up. Little by little we became comfortable, and our sharing became open. After a while, I began to wonder at the overlaps between us, and with the ease that was developing. When we rode through an area of bamboo for instance, there was a gust of wind which shushed everyone and we both closed our eyes, smiling. It was an intimate, funny moment, for two "strangers". The day took on a distinct rhythm and even things like timing and weather seemed to conspire. It was a stolen moment amidst holiday hoopla.

Before we left, we ducked into an office which had bins and bins of "free books". I found nothing of interest, but she found two books among the hundreds, and we headed back to the entrance to meet the kids. As we are waiting, a man walks up to my new friend and says "Hello", and she begins scrambling at who he might be "Dave?" "Steve?" He and his companion laugh. He is the author of the book she is carrying! He is from San Francisco. His companion notes that she's a character in the book, and he signs it. My new friend leaves the event in a bit of a state of wonder. It was nice. :)   

2/7/10

There is a guidance given sometimes when beginning to meditate, to ask questions like 'what color is mind, what shape', and while I have never really found that useful, I wanted to make a note of falling asleep last night, and noticing a bright teal color which changed and moved and seemed to cause 'mind' to stretch farther than it first seemed to. Mind, when I closed my eyes had been like a dome or cave, but seeing the teal, the boundary was just *not* ... was more of an open screen. Noticing the teal, there came the deep blue that I've been drawn to as long as I can remember... in bursts and sparks... then settling. Then just as there was no color and I wanted to fall asleep, a deep red began to seep through. At some point I began to see a kind of flow or partitions... like a diamond view where water is flowing left, but in front of that right, but in front of that backwards and then forwards, yet seeing them together it made sense.

I guess I was just playing, but the effect and energy of the play was a sense of letting in the unexpected... letting "imagination" be even more flexible.

2/11/10

Sensations I normally bundle together have taken on more space, naturally. The first time I was waking and heard talking going on in the kitchen and without trying the sounds and the talking felt to unwravel from each other a bit. Then there were little moments like this which I wasn't exactly conscious of but felt I was beginning to be. Yesterday, first in the shower where without intending I noticed 'hot' separating itself from the water. After, I dove into a bit of reading, in prep for Time workshop. In between the reading and the workshop, I stood outside in the breeze, to wait for my son who now likes to walk part way home from school. It was a little chilly, and I felt the cold as very distinct from the breeze, as distinct from an underlayer of the sun's warmth, as distinct from my skin, as distinct from many other perceptions. Things took on a sheerness which allowed me to experience the in-between freshness in a very 'alive' kind of way.

This day, I sent out in colder-than-usual weather, to take a long walk. I resisted the urge to wear a jacket... just wanted to dive into the weather and 'notice what I noticed'. It was similar... fresh and light and I with a great sense of the world... as though I could feel my feet walking along the ground...  as the ground...

The exercize extended itself organically into what I was considering, also, as I saw that I could appreciate, and See that the appreciation is separate from wanting to 'keep' what is appreciated. It was interesting to think that self can try to 'own' appreciation itself as an accomplishment/doing.       

2/24/10

I came away from Time Workshop today having talked about not holding onto insights/fear/worries/ dreams/validations/insults/etc., and appreciated that sharing itself can be offering up, too... though maybe doing so becomes more and more refined as one is not the center of the sharing? Then there is *just* the sharing?   

Pure Motivation. Truly no formulas. The experience of sharing can be 'pure' for want of a better word, in the same way as the glimpse or hint itself. 

My son, on our little walk home today, showed me how to run through deepish puddles without making a splash. It was fascinating to watch. He's worked on walking without sound for a while, but this I thought was new. He tells me he's been doing this since he was six but never thought to show me before. It was a pebble/little bird moment.