This month I worked very hard on re-establishing some important habits, including habit-tracking, that had lapsed after some setbacks. The stats are a little odd because I didn’t start tracking everything until sometime well into the month.

Habits

Russian

In an effort to complete the 10,000 word Brown Russian vocabulary list by the end of May 2020, I need to do at least 15 words a day. This month, I logged 395 new Russian words in Anki. These words are often, but not always accompanied by example sentences that I study in a separate deck. This month, I added an additional 348 new sentences and 83 new grammar cards.

I really tried. Sorry, Jordan Peterson, it’s not me, it’s you.

What is the First Principle? I don’t know.

I’m a big fan of David Cain’s raptitude.com. A post from 2017 entitled Wise people have rules for themselves is one that a come back to frequently.

In short, he makes the point that productive and consistent people don’t leave important (or even some trivial) aspects of their lives to chance. They create rules for themselves around certain behaviours and tasks. He also makes the point that others often attempt to undermine or discredit those who create rules for their own self-governance by labelling them as joyless, rigid, or overly competitive. Cain likens this to the “tall-poppy syndrome.” I had to look up that one.

An interview about the Four Brahmaviharas as meditation objects.

A Hugo shortcode used to style inline text in a post. I use it here to style Russian text in my posts.

Listening to a series of excellent dharma talks from the San Francisco Zen Center, I first learned about the ancient poem “Trust in Mind”^[Full text of the poem, “Xinxinming”.] by the Third Ancestor of the Zen tradition, Jianzhi Sengcan (鑑智僧璨)

It captures beautifully, even in translation, the essence of Zen.

“The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.”

A pervasive, but unusual feature of Russian grammar.

An AppleScript to create year and month groups in DEVONthink