After the Exhileration, Work
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We all (or at least most of those who would be reading this blog) have heard the Buddhist-inspired saying: before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry. The question is whether after the moments of enlightenment can we infuse doing the laundry with more joy, acceptance, and peace. A young adult acquaintance asked me the other day whether I was readjusting ok. I did not know to what he was referring, and he had to explain that he was asking how I was doing on my return from my India trip. “It was just a vacation–albeit an extraordinary one,” I replied. “Life continues.”
“The good experiences just slip away like dry sand through my fingers,” he made a motion of letting something slip away.
“When you practice and when you get older, it will be easier to bring the temporary, good experiences into your life without feeling they are lost when you have moved onto the next thing,” I said with hope that would actually be true for him, he seemed so bereft.
The yoga teaches us neither to be out searching for the highs nor actively avoiding the lows; the dance of grasping and avoiding is what makes us suffer. That does not mean that the highs, the times of wild abandoned joy, the experiences of utter fulfillment, of exquisite understanding are of no value. What brings joy is a thing of wonder and an opportunity to deepen our ability to love and be generous. They are only a problem if we ruin our time by vainly clinging to or trying to repeat the sensation. As our practice (and our understanding of a life well-lived and loved) matures, we understand that there is no readjusting in the return to the day to day. We welcome what we have had, try to remember what we have learned, including how much joy and delight we are able to drink in, and approach each day as another opportunity to seek and share connection.
“Culture Wars” (and Mayiya-Mala)
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When I saw this headline the other day, the first thought that came to mind was how much pleasanter life would be if those spending huge amounts of effort and money to “fight” gay marriage would pour that energy into educating children, tending gardens, and being friendly with their neighbors. The next thought, which was not unrelated, was that the headline was a prime example of how the action of mayiya mala serves to alienate us and cause unnecessary rancor.
The three malas or cloakings, in tantric philosophy, are aspects of consciousness that prevent us from recognizing the unifying spirit in all beings. We tend to hear a fair amount in yoga class about the first of these –anava mala, which clouds or covers over our recognition of the divine in ourselves, thus leading to feelings of unworthiness–but there is less focus on the other two (the third is karma mala, which is the illusion that we are doing everything all by ourselves–that’s an oversimplification. Perhaps more another time).
At an elemental level, mayiya mala is the distinction between subject and object that leads us to feel separate from other beings. When this separateness makes us feel threatened or needy, then we can behave very badly indeed (mild understatement). I believe that our superficial requirements of outer sameness–think dress codes or neighborhood rules on what one can plant in one’s front yard–are exactly because we fear difference. If we can instead accept difference as part of the play of what actually connects us (see through mayiya mala, then we can more easily love and embrace others and widest variety of creative expression.
On our mats, one of the things that leads to injury is mayiya mala. When we forget that we the purpose of the practice is to seek the peaceful joyous space within ourselves and instead get competitive or acquisitive about postures (or external emblems of “spiritual advancement”), we are getting caught up in the differences and comparisons generated by mayiya mala and get compelled to push and strive in unhealthy and dangerous ways. When we remember the true purpose of practice, we will seek to expand, but with such sensitivity that we do not hurt ourselves. This, of course, is easier said than done.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Found Exhortation
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Signs Around Town
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In Our Own Back Yard
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It is a great privilege to be able to travel and to experience and witness what is made especially exciting to us by virtue of its difference. If we are open to it, though, we really need go not much further than our own back yards — I use that the term back yard metaphorically as I don’t really have one — or to shut our eyes and sit for meditation to witness the wondrous.
Lunchtime walk after the storm blew through.
Found Objects Around Town
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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
“This Is Soul Kirtan”
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One of the ways I prepare for a restorative workshop is to spend some time looking for new music to play quietly in the background to enhance the fullness of the experience. In the past couple of days, I have enjoyed listening to quite a quantity of new and new to me music appropriate for my upcoming Finding the Warmth Inside: Relax Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives on February 25th at Willow Street Yoga Center (click on the link for details and to register). Among the music I downloaded, which I am thoroughly enjoying (though it might be too upbeat for the restorative workshop playlist), is C.C. White’s “This is Soul Kirtan.”
As I was listening at my desk and swaying to the beat, I thought about the non-dual tantric philosophical principle that exhorts us to find the good in everything, to recognize that in all there is still a “divine” spark that is expressed in the creative effulgence of the universe itself. The music is joyous, delightful, offered with love, delivered with a high degree of professionalism–both the musical performance and the recording and presentation. I tried to fathom just how many centuries of human migration, suffering, oppression, bigotry, and then fighting for tolerance, education, equal rights, spirit, and freedom had to occur for this music to be able to exist at all and to be published and embraced, it being an extravagant blend of Indian spiritual/religious practice, American soul and blues (and all its history), and classical Western musical technique.
Probably a Cooper’s Hawk
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“Wow!” exclaimed the well-dressed woman who was walking towards the Senate office buildings as I was walking in the opposite direction to the DOL through the park on the North side of the Capitol. We had both paused absolutely still to appreciate the drama of the moment.
A raptor flew in and landed on one of the high tree branches. There were a few warning chirps and calls and then everything froze into stillness and silence. After a few minutes the bird flew off, and gradually the squirrels, sparrows, starlings, etc resumed their usual morning activities.
“Did you notice how every thing became still?” I replied.
“Yes,” said my companion in the moment of appreciation and observation. “It hardly seemed real.”
We then moved on to go about our business, becoming conscious again of the noise of the city as the small animals and birds went back to their usual activities.
I looked it up when I got to work. It was most likely an immature Cooper’s hawk.
I did not even think to photograph the moment lest I disturb it. These are the trees after the fact.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
How True, Gertrude
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Gertrude Stein quote on wall at exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Hare Om Ganesha Revisited
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I bought in India this sweet image of ganesha. When I came home, I had the treat of going shopping for here and looking though dozens of strands of beads until I found just the right ones to complement the colors in the painting and the energy of the image. The brown and green tones of chunky turquoise felt just right. In creating the necklace, I took the time to see how the individual stones related to each other both in shape and color. Just as taking time to get in alignment can enable us to create beauty out of challenge, so to, taking the time to arrange the stones makes the difference between something merely strung together and an artistic creation.
