Cleanliness is Next to Germ Warfare, part one

Peak flow 290
6 am: Breakfast: grapes, strawberries, 2 slices of turkey and 1/2 slice of paleo friendly meatloaf.
Lunch: Meatloaf and raw veggies, sliced mushrooms and broccoli
Dinner: Dunno yet.

1 6 oz cup of water.

Meditation


7 AM practice: I thought I'd switch things up a bit and work with the Essence of the 2 tantric stages Monday, Tuesday and Friday's optional emphasis found on pg 30 of Lama Jigme's Advanced Collection of Practices.
This is a very profound practice which leaves me feeling energetic and filled with happiness and optimism throughout the day. Usually I reserve this for my ll am practice, but like I said, I'd change things up a bit.
It wouldn't do to become 'attached' to the routine. Boredom is often the smooch of death when it comes to good meditation practice. The last thing you want to do is have your practice sessions become just background noise.

I personally find my daily practices a joy to do, and find myself missing them if I have to skip a practice because life gets in the way.
My practice schedule today looks like this:

11: am. Mahmudra
3 pm (if not raining) Three Cauldron's middling Practice as a walking meditation
7 pm Buddha's Three Cauldrons extensive Practice

Morning Reading: Heart Treasure of the Enlightened ones.
I found this too works well. Instead of clumping all the readings together, I do my best to do one in the morning after breakfast, another at lunch and the last one after dinner. This is, after all, quiet time for reading and reflection, not a 200 page college assignment with essays. My readings should be savored, like a fine chocolate, not gulped down in one huge mess hoping to digest it later.

Besides, who wants spiritual indigestion?

So the reading routine is this: Heart Treasure in the morning. Heart of Compassion at noon, and Path to Enlightenment in the evening.

It's too wet to work out outdoors, so I'll have to do it inside. Since Z has gone out to the farm and Chris has gone to school and JW is in bed, I'll have room to do my am fire series yoga. This afternoon, if time allows, I'll pull my yoga mat into the bedroom and work on my abs and weights.

I woke this morning with a bit of a sinus infection, the first I've had since starting this paleo-adventure. BP (before paleo) I had them on a regular basis. Plus lung infections...bad ones. I'd spend 2/3 of my practice with Lama Jigme coughing up my lungs. Never good. Imagine how much precious instruction I missed while gasping for air? Asthmatics have compromised immune systems because of poor lung function. Sounds odd that the lungs would have anything to do with the immune system but they do. Everything is interconnected after all... my Cherokee and Kiowa ancestors understood this. And because flu season is just around the corner, i.e. the dreaded swine flu which the media is portraying the worst kind of flu since Stephen King's the Stand introduced 'captain tripps,' I thought now is as good a time as any to be prepared. Since JW has congestive heart failure, and my brother isn't much better off, and I being chronically asthmatic, lung health is top priority here. We all need flu and pneumonia shots this year and I'll do my best to see that it happens. I dont care how much they complain. We're getting our shots this year.

In the meantime I've got a program started for keeping the house down to a germy minimum.
This means clorox. Yes, clorox. And pine sol, and borax if I can get it. All the basic things that keep a hospital antiseptic. My house is old and drafty, true, but there are measures I can take to keep things as bug free as possible.

Such as bleaching off the counters, keeping the bathroom spotless, and bleaching off the floors and yes, the doorknobs. You have no idea how many microbes are on a doorknob. Or in your kitchen sink. Which reminds me, I need scrubby stuff to keep the sink clean too.

Now you're probably thinking as a good Buddhist, I should be more concerned about the welfare of others, even the smallest microbe. Don't germs have a right to be happy and not suffer?

Well, yes. but here's my take on it. If the little bastards want to be happy and not suffer, they shouldn't be in my house. I have no problem trapping spiders and ants that find their way into the house and releasing them back into the wild. I even caught a palmetto bug a few days ago that I found in the sink and after tossing a towel over it to capture it, I carried it out into the yard as well. I just can't bring myself to squish anything. But germs? Especially germs that make you sick and can potentially kill you? Now that's a different story altogether. they gotta go, and now. Like today.

During all of this I have to write as well. Which I will. But now, I gotta get to work. I'm burning daylight.
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