Sat quickly tonight, since it's already after 1AM and I need sleep.

I thought about sitting quickly, and how I had to "hurry" at my sitting. I started the count, but maintained it pretty much in the back of my head, not paying too much attention to it. Then I noticed how my thinking mind was telling me I wasn't going to sit tonight -- I didn't have time, had to get up in the morning, was too tired, etc. But there I was; when I went into the bedroom, I just sort of found myself sitting down. Then I went on to think about panth a bit, I think [I was over at his place visiting earlier tonight]. After that I noticed a rather sharp, localized pain to the left of my spinal column in my mid-back. I shifted positions slightly, and the pain went away, to be replaced by a generalized ache.

I went back to my breath, and thought about the advantages of organizing my meditation posts strictly chronologically, or by subject matter (e.g. a paragraph about the count throughout meditation, followed by a paragraph on my breath over the whole session, followed by my thoughts over the whole session). I worried that I was exerting a lot of mental energy in trying to remember the exact order of events so I could write this post later, and that memorizing like that was distracting to my meditation. [At the same time, though, I had a discussion with northing about this last night, and we both agreed it would be a more valuable exercise to write strictly chronologically.]

I focused on my breath for a bit, then thought about compilers, and propagating semantic information (such as types, constants, etc.) iteratively throughout a program as it's being compiled. I postulated that after a program has been optimized (i.e. simplified), it might be worthwhile to re-run semantic inferencers/checkers, because the optimizations might have exposed some more useful information that could be picked up. Then, of course, one has to make use of that information, so we want to pass back through the optimizer again, repeat as necessary.

Then I focused on my breath a bit more and brought the count back to the front of my mind. I realized my breath was a bit more ragged and hurried tonight. I became amused at the idea of "hurrying" meditation, and made the judgement, "it's right before bedtime; I should be doing things that are calm and relaxing, not hurried and stress-inducing. What's the point of sitting here if it's causing me more stress?". I thought to myself the point was, of course, to neutrally observe whatever sensations arose, including stress and the hurried feeling.

I went back to the breath. When I reached 10 on this count, though, I thought perhaps it was time to get up. But while I was thinking this thought, my body continued to breathe, so I continued to meditate. I did another set (1-10), and then stood up.

-- Des