The weather has been awesome recently so my spare time has been taken up with being outdoors cycling.

It's been over two years since the last time I did Nyung Nay practice, but it felt as familiar as the last time, if not even more so. Somehow it also served as a fitting way to celebrate the completion of the long retreat which many of my Vajra siblings had been in.

Seeing them was both humbling and inspirational. Humbling in the sense that being around or meeting 'serious' practitioners always is and inspirational as I'm now even more keen to do the same myself.

The last e-mail I got before the Nyung Nay started was from a friend of mine at Mindroling monastery. He is a tulku studying in the shedra there who I met whilst in Dharamsala. He was my Tibetan language teacher for the last part of my stay there and we became very good friends. Getting this e-mail seemed very auspicious as he once said that after I have completed one long retreat I can come to his monastery and do as much retreat there as I like. His monastery is in a very remote part of Nepal. This would be in a few years once he has graduated from shedra and assumed day to day responsibility for his monastery.

For no particular reason I've not slept. When it got to 4am I decided to do some extra Dorje Sempa practice. It's been a while since I meditated at that time of the morning and it felt amazing, so fresh and energising.

Lots of nothing happening recently, almost feel like I'm 'warming up' for Samye Ling next week. I'm so stoked to be going, it's been too long since the last time.

This is really one of those pointless blogs where I'm just writing to get back into the swing of blog writing. I'm very happy though. Very. And I hope you are too.

Whichever way you look at it, Buddhism really comes down to looking at and dealing with your own mind. Years ago when I was depressed, I managed to use it as fuel for my practice and in some ways this was a very simple practice, whilst also being very powerful in terms of renunciation and compassion.

I haven't been depressed for years so now I it's more subtle. I guess the closest I get is a combination of tiredness with a sense of frustration. This totally lacks the suffocating and crippling power of depression though, so it's less effective for feeding the dual fires of renunciation and compassion.

One thing that does really sting though is seeing other people experiencing totally avoidable suffering. Whilst it is often tempting to try to help or intervene, experience tells me I'm not skilled enough yet.

I've noticed a large percentage of high achievers I know, or have known, who really throw themselves into emotional turmoil on an ongoing basis. Obviously high achievement is a somewhat subjective subject, but my observation was from the conventional use of the term. an that's all it is, an observation.

This time next week I will be heading North for a micro retreat. I am really looking forward to it, although I wish it was for longer, a lot longer.

Of all the blogs I've kept over the years, this is by far the most random one. It's also far more secret than "Thousandarmedprocrastinator" ever was. I'm undecided on whether this is a good or bad thing, although it's probably a combination of the two. And just because two things seem to be in opposition it does not automatically follow that they are.