As beautiful twilight set in over the Rockies, I drove Tobias into Boulder, the rippling breeze blowing in through the open driver's seat window.

I decided I had a little bit of extra time before meditation and class, so I went to Tobias's old favorite location for a bath. After the trip Sunday night, he needed it badly. Remnaints of bugs were smeared all over the windshield, the hood, headlights, and any other surface that faced forward.

After the bath, it was feeling so nice outside that I briefly contemplated not going to class at all. It could be so nice to just to wander up and down Pearl Street and catch what remained of daylight during the next hour. I was so close to doing just that.

But I had come here for class. I had driven all the way from Westminster. Though I am not a fan of dogmatic obligation to religious ritual adherence (plain english: I hated church as a child, and even moreso as a teenager), I have usually found this particular series of classes to be beneficial to my spiritual needs. This was what I came for, so I went ahead and attended, even though I didn't particularly feel like it.

As I meditated, I could not get the music of a sweet electro-metal version of The Phantom of the Opera out of my head. So I meditated on that, letting myself experience the thoughts of it in the present. Always back to the present. The breath.

Class was good, though a bit scattered in terms of discussion topic focus. Or maybe it was I who was scattered. I kept alternating between semi-wishing I was out wandering in the last bits of sunlight on Pearl Street, trying not to think too many lustful thoughts about an attractive female who was sitting on the cushion a meter away from me, and trying to keep my mind on the interesting points that were being made by the teacher, as well as comments and questions from the class.

The official topic was fearless simplicity. Like many talks on Buddhist philosophy, there was much discussion on the nature of ego, dualism in thought processes, and the science of "what is mind?"

For the final 15 minutes of the class, the teacher had us meditate some more. Discussing theories about meditation as a study of mind is one thing. Experiencing this study in direct succession to such talk is another. Back to the breath, I let myself be.

Thoughts flowed forth, and I did not hold them back. Back to the present. Back to now. Letting the moment happen. About compassion. Had these thoughts come from inside my head, or had they filtered into it from others who were talking in the discussion while I was thinking? No, they were things others had said while I tried to focus my mind, and I incorporated them into my psyche. The meme had been spread before by many sources, but it was now back to the forefront.

"You cannot experience true and deep compassion for others without first finding compassion for yourself. Accepting who and what you are, no matter what it may be, and you will find the truly basic good nature that is common to all of us."

I realized that I was being ridiculously hard on myself, as part of a habitual pattern. Trying to force my mind into this, not let it think about that (bad, bad, bad), and then getting pissed at myself for it all. For the final minutes of the meditation, I practiced the art of just letting whatever was be, even when what I was felt like jumping out of its own skin. I sat, and felt like running away, and wished the meditation could be over, and allowed myself to wish the meditation could be over even as I meditated. Always back to the breath.

After class was over, I asked the teacher a question that had only occurred to me after the main discussion was over. It was partially inspired by a question someone had asked me during a previous fest (not this one), and I didn't know how to answer.

"I know we meditate in silence as a way to bring ourselves into the present. But what about using sensory stimulation? Subjecting ourselves to anything shocking or intense can be another way to bring the mind back into the present. Does Buddhism have anything to say about intentionally using means such as, say, loud music (as one example), as a way to force our brains into the moment? Does a Buddhist way of life discourage indulging in excesses of the senses?"

Her answer was startingly simple. "No, Buddhism does not discourage anything that brings you into the experience of the moment. Anything that happens in our environment, like the sounds outside, whether we're meditating or not, can serve to bring us back to the present. Just be with it and experience it, whatever it is. Let your environment stimulate you, and seek out whatever brings you into the present. Just be with whatever is around you."

It made sense, and I was satisfied with the answer as a criteria in my own life. Had I really been on the ball, I would have asked how this fits with some of the vows that are taken when one is initiated into committing to the path. But I didn't think of it at that moment. Perhaps another day.

As I walked outside, I followed the way of just letting myself experience things as they happened. And I walked around Pearl Street. I indeed felt that I had a heightened awareness of my senses, as has sometimes been the case after meditation classes in the past.

On the way home, I stopped by a used record store on the hill, and browsed around for a while. There's something about record stores (good ones, at least) that's just fun. Even though I can download pretty much anything I want from Russia these days (at least if it's mainstream or semi-mainstream), it just isn't the same as walking into a nice store and purchasing a physical product.

I spotted a title for $3.99, and decided it would be worth that price. I had owned a copy of the same cd years ago, and listened to it many times, but on one devastating occassion, it, along with a bunch of my other discs (a couple dozen) were stolen, due partially to my own negligence. (They year must have been '95 when that happened. Maybe I'll share details another time.)

But anyway, tonight, here it was again, sitting in front of me with a used price tag of $3.99. Get ready to not laugh too hard.

It was Mariah Carey's debut album. Yep, I once owned a copy, and now do again. (And yes, this first one was the best record she ever made. The second one, Emotional, was pretty good, but not as much as the first. Music Box was okay. After that, they all started sounding pretty much the same.)

In the DVD section, I also found a couple of movies that I couldn't resist, even though I considered them slightly overpriced for used copies. (My formula for calculating whether a movie is worth the asking price involves multiplying an estimated rental price ($3) by the number of times I would likely want to watch the movie over the course of the next 5 or so years. In the case of both of these movies, which I have seen on past occassions, I decided they were worth buying.)

From there, I headed back out to eastbound US-36, and contemplated which I wanted more: To get to my computer and type a rambling, which would involve more driving around, or a simple, early trip to bed. I opted for the trip to bed first, and maybe a few vegetables from the fridge to settle the stomach. There would be time to type ramblings later. (Continued in previous rambling.)