notes on meditation

On the weekend I got a nice chance to sit and meditate under a tree like I used to, a good few years ago, I guess, in the promenade of olives and pines along the western side of the University of Arizona campus. The meditation went as mine usually does, though for blessedly longer than I've had the stamina or time for, of late, but it was really the moments after the practice that struck me.

That is, oftentimes after I meditate (excluding some times where I'm untangling a tricky emotional issue, and I just crash and sleep afterwards) I feel I'm in a particular, peculiar state of mind. And the only way I can describe it is as, "poetic." Every color I see is just vibrant, almost singing with its tone, a hundred motes of dust dance and skirl through the air as if they were underwater, sound is pleasant in its existence...I could go on, obviously. If that's how an Awakened person lives their life, I'm glad to put the effort in, even if it's an effort that seems to ask more than it gives, as some have put it.
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"We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason or doesn’t have a purpose. In this respect it’s unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps music and dancing. When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to reach a particular place on the floor as in taking a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the journey itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point in life is always arrived at in the immediate moment." – Alan Watts

'There is a secret to making a little pond in your Japanese garden. If it is an open pond the koi or goldfish will tend to stay in the same area. But if you put a stone in the middle of the pond and create a circle "like a donut" or a course to move in, they will swim more and grow bigger and stronger. Just by the "form" of the pond alone, one can encourage the growth and development of the fish that live in it.' - from A Path With Heart