Another Day, Another Dharma

I found the following email in my inbox when I first got up this morning:

From: L.
Date: Sun 10/3/2004 11:17 PM

Hey there -

I left the office early on Friday to fly to NYC to visit with mom for the weekend...so obviously, I wasn't around..but also I didn't bring my computer & didn't take time to find internet access either...so I am back now.

I would have liked to have participated in the sesshin actually...

Hope & trust you had a great weekend -

L.

Well, that explains that. I appreciated that she had bothered to reply to my Friday afternoon message so late in the evening. Trying not to hold on to any attachments, either positive or negative, I replied late this morning with a chatty email about the weekend sesshin, and she promptly answered in kind.

The dive shop called me this afternoon to tell me that my regulator was fixed and ready to be picked up! Saturday, they said it would take about two weeks, but Monday afternoon it was ready to go. So I will have my own equipment to take to Panana City after all.

I stopped by the shop and picked up the regulator on my way to open the zendo, and chatted with the owner about a dive trip he's planning to Grand Cayman next month. I've wanted to dive Sting Ray City for a long time, and told him to email me with some details about the trip.

None of the Monday night regulars showed up at the zendo, but there were two others I had never met before - a first-timer to Zen, but who had been sitting on his own for a while, and who impressed me with the sincerity and the effort that he put into his sitting, and an Italian graduate student from Emory, who was doing a clinical study on the effects of meditation on the brain. He said that he was looking for more volunteers for his study to sit and meditate while he performed brain scans and reflex tests, and I initially offered my support, until it turned out that one of the requirements was that the subjects had to be right handed (I'm a lefty).