Making an algorithm of gratitude, and other things...

I forgot to bring gratitude into meditation practice this week. If I'm going to actually make it the word of the decade it needs to be part of my spiritual algorithm. Meditation on the precious gift of this life is a standard Buddhist practice. A ritual that is a building block of natural awareness.

This first building block, though, is awareness of death.  I felt its fiery touch this week when I received news that a work acquaintance died on the flight shot down accidentally by Iranian forces.  It was tough looking at the bodies on the front pages of the NYTimes, knowing one of them could be this lovely man who had moderated a panel I spoke on a year ago, who died with his sister. In meditation, the day after I heard this news, I went deep. I hit the core of the truth that however random this seems, we will all lose every single person we ever cared about. And anyone who cares about us, will lose us too.  Not that horribly, by inevitably.

If felt right to go back to that grief, as I went back in my memory, to Nairobi, to start writing what I hope will be one of the final chapters in Code For Life. Eight years ago an idea came to me that changed my life entirely. Have I done this idea justice? It has given me so much. Have I given it enough? Does it know how grateful I am?  I am re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic.  I miss her world view, that ideas are living entities, that inspiration is only part of this world, but also part of an immaterial world.

I ordered a book on the innovation that is happening around the world, Beyond The Valley. I'm going to take that leap of faith and believe that the dhamma, the big magic, the substance, the tao, whatever it is, exists and that I can take refuge in it. That we can all take refuge in it. I will not let another day go by where I do not express my gratitude to it.

In my essay, and in my meditation, I am playing with the notion of circular versus linear time. People who live in one place are closer to the joys of experiencing time as something that returns again and again to our beginnings.  People who travel, who sell things, who depend on the new and on the story of sustained growth, live on linear time.  Either way they are mental frameworks, not true or untrue. These days I try to find pleasure in both.

Yesterday an interesting piece in the NyTimes on memory.  Adults think they are losing their memory, but really they are only losing a bit of short term memory.  The problem is that they have too many memories. But they are better at patterns, at seeing this circular iteration. It seems to me we are trying to replace this precious wisdom, this ability that our elders have of giving context to things, with artificial intelligence.  Good, very good at short term memory, but not much else.

It's overwhelming to think about the apocalyptic future.  I take refuge, but I remember, also, that nothing lasts for anyone.