I've been meditating every morning for the last two weeks, and I feel superlative. My mind is clear and I've begun to notice the idle beauty that I've never taken the time to see. The majestic stretch of bridges and the glimmering water beneath; girl's eyes and the contagion of smiles; stacked skyscrapers against the sunset; my friends.

          On top of the standard 'one, two,' of meditation I've been layering in affirmations. The idea is to not just clear my mind, which is great if you want to be a monk in the mountain, but to shape my thoughts into beneficial beasties that will lovingly nip at my heels as I walk through modern life. It's the usual stuff. 'Confidence, passion, love,' etc. I've found that my mind has begun to automatically chime in against negativity with these little catch phrases.

          'You suck. You're a shit writer and your balls look funn...'
          'POSITIVITY!'
          'You're going to be poor for the rest of your life you self indulgent schmu...'
          'CONFIDENCE!'
          'Shave your moustache you look like a dirty Mexican.'
          '...'

          Touché, subconscious mind. Obviously when I say 'dirty Mexican,' I mean a Mexican that is dirty. Not that all Mexicans are by definition dirty. Good. I'm glad we got that cleared up.

          On the topic of mindscape, I've also been keeping at the forefront of my reality the notion that none of this ephemeral mishmash that swarms around my cranium is actually me. Eckhart Tolle, the wise little leprechaun, says it far better than I:

"1. One of the great principles of philosophy and psychology is: “Know yourself”. How can I know who I really am? Which traps should I avoid? And which tools should I use?

A. The main trap to avoid is to confuse content and essence. The ancient dictum “know thyself” points towards essence, your true identity. Your name, nationality, religion, your opinions, political views, material possessions, likes and dislikes, desires, fears, ambitions, as well as your view of yourself as a success or failure, good or bad – in fact your entire personal history and your thought processes… all that is content. All content is subject to the law of impermanence (as the Buddha already discovered 2600 years ago), and if you try to discover who you are within the dimension of content, you will encounter frustration again and again. Or, as the Buddha put it, you will suffer. You suffer because you derive your sense of identity exclusively from the content of your life. Another word for content is form. That is what the ego is: identification with form. When you stop identifying with form, the ego is no longer in control. So, first realize who you are not (form) and what’s left is who you are. But then there is nothing left, you might say, but this is not so. What’s left is not form, but essence, which we could also call inner space. The space out of which all forms come and into which they disappear. The ancient Chinese philosophers called it the Tao. It is beyond time. It is the eternal, the primordial I am."
(Thx B)

tl;dr: fuck yo ego bitch.

           In essence, all is good. I am for the most part satisfied in the moment, and besides the reams of assessment that is undoubtedly piling up behind my walls of wilful ignorance life is going as it should. The one thing I must be careful of is using this Buddha zen as an excuse to not go after the things that I want. It's a very easy and all encompassing justification for not taking action, and I will not allow it.

          In other news it seems my father has become a monk. I like this. Being able to say 'my father's a monk,' is far more pleasing to the ears than 'my father used to be a heroin addict.' I'm thinking about going to Thailand in the next uni break to pay him a visit. I'll book in without telling him and then go sit somewhere and meditate till he finds me. See how unflinching his zen is when he sees his only son sitting lotus position in the temple courtyard. Robby even had the genius idea of bringing along a little baggie of assorted drugs.

          'Oh what's this? *reaches into pocket* A bag of heroin! What's that doing there? Mmm smells good. Oh boy I sure could go for a hit right now. Sure you don't want one? '

          I digress. But then most of my life is digression. Even this is just a semi-productive excuse not to study. Adios amigos.