Being at that age where friends and relatives are adjusting to their new knees, various aches and pains, only dreaming of running a six minute mile, celebrating just getting out of bed, giving a walk around the block the weight of a completed marathon, and spoiling our grandchildren, it has been and continues to be quite a run.
Everyone, celebrate each day, all you meet with a smile, hold each friend as priceless, and, while you might take life seriously, don't take yourself such.
Cry when you must, laugh when you can, and enjoy the ride.
Peace to all
I'm also willing to answer web & forum hosting questions to the best of my ability here; my only request is you use General Banter to mention me rather than a private message. (If I'm going to spend time dispensing free technical consulting I'd rather it at least be public for others to benefit from too.)
Listening to Sam Harris today talk with one of the original mindfulness and attention researchers. They talked about the 4 foundations of mindfulness in a way that unlocked probably a basic, but new way for me to look at them. I had just never thought of how in a practice someone would tend to focus on one of them. It made me realize I've focused on the body as a locus of meditation.
Mindfulness of the body: (kāyā)
Mindfulness of feelings: (vedanā)
Mindfulness of the mind or heart: (citta)
Mindfulness of qualities: (dhamma)
They were talking in the context of attention development and he asked the question if when someone begins practicing mindfulness meditation if there is a distinction in the quality of mindfulness one develops depending on which foundation they focus on. An interesting discussion followed.
Also mentioned later was how mindfulness meditation, as opposed to other forms with different aims, doesn't necessarily reduce the amount of thoughts one has. Rather it changes our relationship with them, we don't take them so seriously.
Only the first half is freely available, but I believe I have the ability to share the whole episode with someone if they wanted to hear the second half.