This is the entrance to my Digital Garden. It's a way for me to share my working notes, and ideas that I'm tinkering with. There are many inspirations for this, but one of them is Andy Matuschak's idea of [Working with the garage door up](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes?stackedNotes=z21cgR9K3UcQ5a7yPsj2RUim3oM2TzdBByZu). You can learn more about the concept of Digital Gardens [[Digital Garden|here]]. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to structure my notes, so for now you'll just have to muck around and hope you stumble upon something interesting. One place to start is my list of [[Essential Questions]]. These are questions that form my lifelong curriculum. You could also check out my [[Pillars of Practice]]. And you can access my Top of Mind archive [[Top of Mind (Archived)|here]]. # Top of Mind ## July 2026 It's been almost 2 years since my last Top of Mind. That's not so bad. Others have taken longer breaks from writing. But I am definitely feeling the call to pick up the thread again. These lines from William Stafford's poem "The Way It Is" are haunting me: > There’s a thread you follow. It goes among > things that change. But it doesn’t change. > People wonder about what you are pursuing. > You have to explain about the thread. > But it is hard for others to see. > While you hold it you can’t get lost. > Tragedies happen; people get hurt > or die; and you suffer and get old. > Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. > You don’t ever let go of the thread. Zen practice and teachings have continued to be very present for me. Earlier this year, I took the Plum Village course Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet (ZASP). I think everyone should take it, and not just those who are trying to save the planet (whatever that means). The course draws upon the rich teachings of the Diamond Sutra, the oldest book in the world - https://plumvillage.org/courses/zen-and-the-art-of-saving-the-planet I also went to visit Dharma Gaia in the Coromandel. The Plum Village monastic who lives there, Sister Shalom, is a deep practitioner, and living embodiment of Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings - https://www.dharmagaia.org/ And in a recent conversation between Parker Palmer and Norma Wong, I heard Norma Wong talk about the importance of lettting go, and focusing on only one thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNnwWRDQtuw Reading this in Robert Rosenbaum's [[That Is Not Your Mind!]] really hit home: > Our human delusions of greed and pride bring with them a tendency to overreach, to overestimate our abilities while underestimating the practical difficulties, to expect and grasp at too much too soon. We can be sincerely well-intentioned and sincere in our aspirations, even capable of occasional honest self-observation. However, we have a tendency to conflate imagination with actuation. When we form an intention to be more loving, or more efficient, or less short-tempered, or less ruled by fear, it often comes with a magical tinge: “If I think it, it must/should be so.” > Consider the books on your shelf: they give the appearance to others that you know what’s in them. How does their appearance on the shelf affect your sense of knowing them? How many of them have you read completely, how many have you skimmed, and how many have you meant to read but never got around to? This describes me to the T. I am always struggling with my greediness to consume knowledge. I purchase books that I will never have the time to read. I fragment my attention into a hundred shards by switching from book to book at the press of a button, so easy to do with electronic devices. I long to recover that sense of savouring and using words as if they were earthy substances, as Seamus Heaney evokes in his poem Digging: [[Seamus Heaney - Digging]].