In Which My Camera Sees the Good
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It was one of those days when it was hard to get home. I’d gone to the museum to see the Harry Callahan at 100 and then went out for tea in Georgetown with a friend. I stopped on my way home for some groceries. I got to the bus stop just as a bus was arriving, but with a big suburban SUV hogging the bus stop and the dark rainy night, the driver sailed past without stopping. He must have been really late and was taking advantage of a short break in traffic. I caught a taxi rather than wait in the cold rain for the next bus.
Traffic was completely still on K Street because of the police trying to clear out Occupy DC from McPherson Square and a number of streets were closed off to traffic, so the driver went to H Street, which was almost equally congested. Things started to move for a bit, but then there was then some issue with another big black SUV with suburban plates in Chinatown that had been pulled over by the police. This resulted in absolute tirade by the taxi driver as to why DC should not be allowed to be a state. I was having trouble explaining that Federal voting rights for citizens in the District had nothing to do with whether the cops could have pulled the car over better or faster so that it would less obstruct traffic. I gave up completely when he started in on how DC schools should be better than Maryland’s and Virginia’s because they had so much more tax revenue.
I remembered I had my camera in my pocket. I accepted the the meter was going to run unless I got out of the taxi in the rain (and then what was I going to do?) and enjoyed photographing the lights of the city at night. Sometimes, my camera really helps me accept whatever is and see the beauty in it.
Devotion (Bhakti)
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Much is said about devotion in yoga, and there is a great privileging by many of the path of devotion — bhakti. With no clear answers, I contemplate often what it means to practice bhakti, to be devoted in a religious or spiritual sense. Witnessing those on pilgrimage when I was in India (it was “pilgrimage season”), I was flooded with memories and ideas for contemplation about what it means to be devoted and how people express devotion.
Among the thoughts and memories were having observed the operaphiles in their expensive clothes swoon and gasp and applaud at the Vienna Opera House on the opera level where I had paid a dollar for standing room; having been literally swept off of my feet in the press of the crowds heading to the tube at Wembley Stadium after seeing the Rolling Stones in concert; watching the people do the standing wave thing at ball games while hollering for their team as if their whole view of the world was dependent on who wins; having taken, standing room only, the third class train from Florence to Rome during Easter week (a different pilgrimage season), on asking who is that woman on the billboards, discovering that India, too, has a habit of electing movie stars to political office.
“Far Too Many Words”
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Professor Douglas Brooks on language and the India pilgrimage. I have just finished leading the group house practice and need to meditate before going to bed, so I do not have time to write more, but I wanted to draw your attention to this blog for your own contemplations about language and practice. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to join in part of the conversation and look forward to going ever deeper.
Humbling Spam
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“I admit, I have not seen this blog for a long time, however, it was another joy to see such a fantastic points and ignore it.”
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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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Signs Around Town
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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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.
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