Meditation

I got in a good twenty minute meditation in the bedroom at work before I went in for my shift this morning. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, with everything that goes on there distracting my mind. Ironically, though, one of my old Buddhas resurfaced at work the other day--I'd left it there ages ago and forgot about it, and someone had set it up as an ornament or something in the room--so I was able to use that as the focus for a kind of makeshift altar on the floor.

People are instinctively repelled by the idea of things like altars, bowing and prayer in this time--though it's okay to worship money and have a widescreen telly as the altar-like centrepiece and attention-focus of your living room--but I don't worry about them anymore. The ceremony of morning meditation is a nice way of centering my mind. And the elegance of it is certainly better for your head than the drivel it gets filled with by morning telly. I only bow before the Buddha from time to time, but anything that helps you break down your own ego has got to be a good thing. Who am I that I shouldn't have to bow down before something? or somebody? What's so special about me?

Mind you, these things probably would seem sensible and right to me. I talk to cows.