Hare Om Ganesha

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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Petting the Temple Cows

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After a day of teaching and more discussion and emails regarding the upheaval, I had a memory of petting one of the temple cows at Chidambaram.  I was jetlagged and in sensory overload, and then I petted a most wonderful cow.  I dropped into a space where I was perfectly at peace and unaware of the time and all the things going on around me.  This space is always there for us, even in the absence of a sacred cow, and we practice so that we can find it more and more consistently, especially when we are being challenged.

I did not photograph the Chidambaram temple cow, although a nice Indian lady asked me if her husband could photograph the two of us with the cow, so she has a photograph of herself with the strange American lady in a sari who was petting the cow.  I stopped to pet many cows after that.  In one town, a man told me, as I was scritching a cow between ears and horns, that the cow would enjoy a banana.

What An Exquisite Gift

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To be able to see (and be grateful).

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Para, Apara, Para Para?

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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Would the Sky Look Different to You?

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The sky was a very pretty mixture of blue and fluffy clouds this morning. The first photo I took did not have the Capitol in the corner because the sky was just a little more lustrous and variegated facing more west than south. Although I chose to allow the Capitol into the photograph, it is fairly clear that I was photographing primarily the sky and not the Capitol.

I see people photographing the Capitol almost every day. What is around it usually is of no moment. The point is, for one reason or another, to document being in the presence of the Capitol. It is only the postcard/calendar/art photographers who care what is going on in the sky for purposes of the overall composition.

I wondered whether readers would think that the scene would be prettier if it had mountains or a stream or a lake instead of a building in it. Would they think the sky unworthy of notice if underneath was a parking lot? How much do we judge something by its surroundings? Are we able to see the beauty of the sky regardless of the scenery in which we are standing?

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Signs Around Town

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In the washrrom at William Penn House. Come join us for class on Tuesday nights. For me, the practice and study of yoga informs this question.

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

In a Tangle

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When things are in
A tangle, it is hard
To see what is solid
And what is shadow.

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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.

What Do You See?

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What do you see when you walk down the street or into a room?  Do you see more or less depending on whether the surroundings are new to you or familiar?  John Friend has said that when leading a class teachers need to be able simultaneously to see the whole room (and how everything and the students are in relationship to each other in the room), each student as a part of the whole and as a whole person, and the individual alignment of each student.

What it takes to do this is the ability to be completely soft, spacious, and open in our seeing (“open to grace”) and also well enough educated and experienced to appreciate and understand the details.  I think that when we can see both the big picture and the details simultaneously, we have the greatest opportunity to experience the most of life, are more likely to be able to look for the good, and to make the most positive changes.

 

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