A Nice Request Best Honored
Blossom Restaurant, Chelsea
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Vacation
I am delighted to be going on a short trip to a warm place (Tucson) to do nothing but yoga and visit with friends and acquaintances.
My work life is such for the next several months that I cannot take a long vacation. I can find a few days here and there, though, and it is critical to my working well. I find if I work with too much effort or for too many hours or days in a row, I lose my sense of humor and my creativity. These are truly essential components of doing a good job.
If you cannot get away for a day or two or five, take five minutes to just breathe without following your thoughts. It is not a vacation. It is meditation. It will not serve in the way of a vacation, but it will provide a needed break from attachment (perhaps to the point of misalignment) with the mindstuff (citta) and will enable you to continue with your efforts more at peace with both the efforts and yourself.
Looking for the Good
As I read the blogs and commentaries about the transition, I’ve been thinking a lot about John Friend’s exhortation that we should always start by looking for the good. This is a very unsettling time — economic and environmental crisis, two wars, etc, etc. I may disagree with some of the picks for cabinet, but not only am I not in charge, I neither have the desire nor the skills to be in charge. I often have an opinion about a way to enhance action, and then I try to take action to have my voice heard. I am saddened, though, by the onslaught of negativity. Hope for change does not mean instant transformation before even taking office. Why not look for the good, and then raise our voices for what else we think could make things even better. This works, too, for our own personal growth. I’ve personally experienced that when I stopped habitually criticizing myself, came to a level of acceptance and nurture and then worked for progress, that not only did I feel better, but I did change more because I wasn’t wasting energy on both the criticizing and the feeling bad.
Listening (and laryngitis)
For the past week, I have had laryngitis. Obviously, this resulted in my being more selective about when I was going to speak and what I was going to say. Less obvious, was that the limitations on speaking led me to listen more carefully. Listening more carefully helped me choose what to say and when to speak. At a surface level, this did not change whether I was analyzing or judging. It just led me to be more discriminating. As I pondered this issue, though, I found myself wanted to listen more freely, to try and listen first without analysis, without judgment, without any anticipated response. This was, then, even a listening to my temporary limitation. Not judging it, not lamenting it, not trying to change it (although I treated the cough and the sore throat), but listening to what was there. This deep listening to the body, to events, to what comes to us (in conversation or otherwise), can lead us to the true deepness of meditation — true listening for how spirit speaks to us.
- Art and Culture | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
Spirituality and Politics Do Mix (but maybe not at the Thanksgiving meal)
Yesterday I received a rather negative email in response to my posting a suggestion on a list serve connected to a religious organization that people write to their elected officials about the health care bill pending in the Senate. I sent the email because my contribution to this group is to serve as the designated liaison between a lobbying group that was established by the religious organization and the religious organization. Once of month or so, I highlight issues that are the focus of the lobbying groups email campaigns. The email took me to task for thinking that politics has any place in connection with spiritual practice and therefore the on-line discussion should never be about politics. The person assured me that our political views were different, although I did not actually suggest what people should write; I only said that they should write. I have been pondering this deeply as it is a topic I have thought about, taught about, and wrestled with deeply over the years, especially during the Presidential elections.
As one who believes that body, mind, and community are inseparable from spirit, I am unable to separate political action from spiritual action. I believe that I have a duty to be knowledgeable about the issues challenging society as a whole, to take action within the framework of society to seek the embodiment of my spiritual beliefs (grossly oversimplified, that the rules, commitments, and support networks of society should recognize the light of all beings — human and not — and foster the seeking of that light by all), and to challenge the very framework of the discussion and rules when they obscure the light and its recognition.
One of the reasons for discussion is to explore, to learn, to be challenged, to expand both knowledge and understanding. That can be a hard process. I certainly do not expect people to agree with each other at all times, but that is not the point of discussion. While I think this sort of discussion perfectly appropriate in the context of a spiritual discussion, it might be less welcome where what is being sought is an immediate sense of peace and harmony in the connection of a particular practice. For example, if it is known that family and friends have strong disagreements about “political” issues, it might be disagreeable for digestion and the day to bring up the issues at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
“It’s All Good” (and Voltaire’s Candide at the Shakespeare Theater)
Last night I went to see the revival of the Bernstein musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, now playing at the Shakespeare Theater’s Harmon Hall (discount tickets available), which was absolutely a delight — fantastic staging and direction, luxurious costuming, enthusiastic performances. Throughout his journey, which is beset with cruelty, hardship, natural disaster, and other mishaps wherever he goes, Candide sings of his tutor’s optimistic advice that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” The application of this philosophy leads to some silly results, including the Monty Python-worthy lyric “it’s a great day for an auto da fe.”
I have a friend who, after telling me of various life challenges and griefs, inevitably signs off with the phrase “it’s all good,” though I am not sure she believes it. I thought of her repetition of the phrase “it’s all good,” while I was watching the musical. Later in Candide’s travels, he encounters a second philosopher scholar who (I’m paraphrasing loosely) contradicts the “it’s all for the best” philosophy of Candide’s tutor by telling Candide to just look around and he will know that things are not in fact always for the best. A fluffier version of the debate in the novel, as to whether things are all for the best when there is so much cruelty and devastation, is interwoven into the rest of the play.
I’ve never had a desire to wear the t-shirt proclaiming that “it’s all good.” I look around me, and I simply do not believe it. I do believe wholeheartedly, though, Voltaire’s premise that we have the responsibility to “cultivate our garden.” As my teachers John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega espouse, we should “respond from the highest,” regardless of what we experience and encounter. By having our response make the best of all possible worlds from things that are not evidently for the best, we bring more light into the world, whatever is our world view. I can only hope that with steady practice of yoga and meditation, I can keep ever truer to these teachings when I am seriously challenged.
