Yoga inside the Beltway
Have you called, emailed, etc about the looming health care bill, about DACA, about diplomacy over military action?
Please make it a practice. A weekly practice. Regardless of your assessment of the likely impact of your one small voice. We are all in this together.
Earlier in the day I took leave and walked over to the Capitol to bear witness.
I think it highly unlikely that the neighbor who chose to decorate a front yard with a silver-painted pig and wood chips intended in any way to reference Vishnu in his incarnation as a boar. But as I’m caught up in learning about the animal chariots and incarnations of the 330 million these days, that is what came to mind for me.
There’s a story that Vishnu incarnated as a boar to kill a demon who could not be killed by man or god (similar to the story about Durga slaying Mahisha, the buffalo demon).
When in anthropomorphic form, Varaha is often seen with Bhudevi (Earth goddess) and sometimes also Lakshmi. There she is again–Lakshmi–calling to me to remind me to act from my abundance (from there comes my capacity to slay demons).
I’ve been working on illusion busting this week, finding more places where my eyes have been turned away.
March Against Mass Incarceration, Lafayette Park, August 19, 2017
Last week, a co-worker stopped by my office to chat. Not surprisingly, the conversation turned to current affairs, and I voiced my every day growing anger and grief and disgust and commitment to seek more ways to have positive impact. My co-worker essentially responded that as a yoga teacher, she thought I ought to know that I shouldn’t get so upset, things weren’t so bad.
As should not be surprising to those who know me or practice yoga with me or read what I post on social media that I explained that my yoga calls for lucid and engaged citizenship and not escape from challenges and difficult emotions. My co-worker demurred, still wanting her own comfortable silence.
The fateful weekend passed. When I returned to the office this week, I found a note and a cookie on my desk. The note basically said, wow, Charlottesville, I hope you’re feeling ok, I thought you might like a cookie. Without addressing the substance of the note, (my own conflict aversion coming to the fore or perhaps my sense that in this case there was little point in pursuing the conversation further and my co-worker has been a pleasant colleague ), when emailing about another matter, I said merely thank you for the cookie.
I’d thought that would be the end of it, but my co-worker then stopped by to thank me for saying thanks for the cookie, I no longer restrained myself from passionately though tolerably politely articulating what I really thought, including what a privilege it is to be able to have a bakery cookie whether for hunger or comfort.
I can relate to wanting everything to be ok, and I’m really glad I have plenty of food and a comfortable home, but I also believe that with my privilege comes great responsibility, now even more than ever. I seek to be more aware not less. What about you?
On the way home, it being twilight because I’d stayed talking about the state of our country and what William Penn House can do to support action and resistance, I was fortunate to see bats swooping for mosquitoes. In practice, we contemplated dharma and integrity.
