Book # 28 of 2020: How to Meditate by Pema Chodron

We are entering month five of lock-down in Panama. The first 3 months were spent teaching online. Then, we started summer break from school and have been in the apartment for 3 weeks on "vacation." It looks like we will remain on lock-down for the next month and then resume teaching online from home in August. Travel is barred domestically and internationally. I can only leave the apartment for short shopping windows 3 times a week, and we are supposed to shop within 1km of our residence.

The only way I maintain my sanity under these conditions is to regard this all as a mindfulness retreat. Every morning: yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness, and then an online class followed by Rosetta Stone practice. Then, it's reading in the bed for a while, reading on the chair for a while, and reading in the hammock for a while.

Pema's book helped me with some simple self-discipline techniques as I try to maintain daily practice. She gives really strong advice about dealing with the emotions during mindful practice. Clear, elegant, charming, and often funny. Recommended!

Books 13 and 14 of 2018

The very satisfying conclusion to an entertaining sci-fi/fantasy series. I've been thinking of re-reading some of the old-ass sci-fi I grew up just for kicks (Asimov's Foundation series, for example). But this took care of that craving.

The best sci-fi, of course, deals with social issues of the current era and projects them into a potential future. Here we've got racism and ecological meddling and the sort of re-sacralization of Nature that Terrence McKenna preached all wrapped up in a tidy bundle.

Oh you crazy moon, you took my heart...


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Carlos Castaneda learned this shit from Don Juan and it took like 8 books. Here, Don Miguel Ruiz distills it down and you don't need to eat peyote buttons or smoke some weird ass herb bag to get there.