Back to Uni

Uni is always such fun at the beginning of semester - especially in the few hours before you receive your course outlines. Technically you are a student, you can hang out on the lawn and watch the clouds drift by, you can buy cheap food at the refectory, drink coffee with friends you've bumped into and yet there are no assessment pressures. Cut to three hours later when you will find me in the library desperately photocopying the readings for the next week and freaking out about an upcoming presentation.

Anyway, my point is that yesterday was still pretty nice. Even though I know now how much reading, note taking and research will roughly constitute a seat of the pants pass, it's still all good.

I had an ephiphanic moment (is that a word?) in my meditation class yesterday. We were talking about how the West uses meditation - stress relief, concentration, improved achievements etc. Then it dawned on me - the whole point of meditation is to transcend the mundane, the physical and the everyday. Meditation is about letting go of the worldly and finding the divine. Yet in the West, here we are turning meditation on its head and using it to boost our performance and our drive for possessions. How wrong is that.