I really like that, because it's so simple.

Based on this, I must say thank you and ask for forgiveness.
A lot of crap has arisen this year, mainly within myself, and some of it has managed to spill out, as it does.
I've practised enough with softening around guilt that I don't feel too terrible or complicated about it all... but, you know.

I've been very fortunate to meet with gems of people in my young life.
They are the kind of people you miss if you blink twice because there's nothing heroic or boastful about them in a worldly sense. It's like seeing a very beautiful tree - you walk past something like that, and if you don't stop for a second, you miss its natural beauty and the shade it provides and the oxygen it releases for you to breathe a little nicer. Nothing incredible.

But in many ways, truly incredible.

I think there's a different level of connection there when two people are practising to look at suffering. When you look at your own suffering, you realise, ow, this is nasty. And you look at other people and realise they feel the pain too. And you feel for them. And you give love and care, naturally.

I appreciate my friends, who are looking at suffering with me.

Haha I just thought about that last sentence. It sounds so depressing and dreary. But I think it's just acknowledging the human condition. And in doing that, life is more real and you are more in touch with it. And in a sense, in looking at suffering, you begin to understand how to accept it, navigate it and transcend it. Again, it seems like a kind of nothing. But it is everything, because it is all of existence.

Anyway. I'm just grateful to have such companions.

So it sucks when the shit within spills out and stinks all over these gems. It's really something unbecoming.

But it's always okay in the end.

Thilina, PhD holder, bird whisperer, your neighbourhood carebear.

*Gasp* A wild floof has been spotted!

Lower Kalimna Falls, Lorne. Absolute magic.

Happy birthday Ajahn Bom!

• Practise to know the heart, not abide by "law and order" - Ajahn Sucitto
• Feeling like a loser? Okay - but whose standards are you measuring yourself against? The world's, your own, or deathless reality?
• Don't limit yourself by creating or planning the future in your head and then forcing conditions to conform to those ideals. When you drop all that, your path and the world opens up.
• Let life live itself. Live according to what is needed.
• It's okay to be mildly depressed with high voltage anger, mate. Just passing conditions. Sit down and take a look.

Thank you, and sorry!!