Similar Posts
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Airport Delay (and “Unreasonable Happiness”)
I am sitting in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International airport waiting for the plane that should already be carrying me home to finish being repaired. After having done a full hour of practice this morning in my room, having a last delicious breakfast at the retreat center, and enjoyed the two-hour ride with friends to the airport, I find myself perfectly happy to sit in the airport. I am warm and well-fed. I have bought a novel to read on the plane — Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” — and put aside a philosophy handout to write. The handout, a translation of the beginning of Abhinavagupta’s “Tantrasara” that was given to us by Paul Muller-Ortega to support our meditation practices, teaches us to seek the power of bliss through the practices, this bliss being true knowledge and true freedom. The more we practice, the more we can draw on this power and abide in a state of true happiness. Paul Muller-Ortega sometimes says that we want to be “unreasonably happy.” As I sit here feeling perfectly content after my weekend of practice and community and watching others in the airport get progressively grumpier with the delay, I feel unreasonably happy. I also feel fully motivated to practice and study ever more deeply so that I can abide ever more steadily and this glorious unreason.
Tis the Season for Restorative Yoga
I have been feeling a strong need for more time spent in vipariti karani (legs up the wall pose) to balance how much walking and working standing up I have been doing. If you don’t have a cat to provide weight and warmth, a hot water bottle can be a soothing extra.

- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Poetry
Great Gary Snyder Quote (and Sadhana)
My friend Dan just posted on his blog a great Gary Snyder quote on the need to do maintenance (of the self) in order to be most creative. The idea that we need to maintain our tools and toolbox, as it were, in order to be most creative, is exactly what we are taught about the tantric yoga sadhana — practice. With our yoga practice, diet, lifestyle, work, consumption, participation in community, we seek to live progressively more in alignment with the undulating fabric of space, time, and apparent world so that we have maximum well-being best to serve ourselves and others with delight. In our sadhana, we include both study and experience (experience includes meditation, asana, and pranayama). As both John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega teach, we engage in the practices and studies to learn with ever expanding insight how to see and experience the highest first and live from that place. Living and practicing with such an intention is, I think, the maintenance done so we can live out all of our lives as a reverential and creative act.
Dan–I look forward to reading the sermon.
FYI–Info on Bystander Intervention–Do’s and Don’ts
The other day on one of my now only occasional walks out, I saw a man on the ground at the entrance to the CVS and several cops. Rather than trying to stay completely away, the first thing I did was get out my own phone and then only walked on when I had confirmed that someone else was already standing witness and filming. Earlier in my life, to film would not have been my first reaction. I’ve also had unfortunate opportunity to be called to help out in the face of witnessing harassment more than once since 2015. We all should know what to do. Here’s a good resource:
https://www.afsc.org/bystanderintervention?emci=d4f309b3-0e1a-eb11-96f5-00155d03bda0&emdi=03d69ace-741b-eb11-96f5-00155d03bda0&ceid=319218&utm_source=weekendreading103120&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekendreading
Murtis Around Town (and Dana and Seva)
This evening I went for the first time into the Anderson House of the Society for the Cincinnati. I was attending an event for supporters of Casey Trees, one of my favorite local charities, which is devoted to protecting and expanding DC’s tree canopy.
I give because I believe it is an important part of a living practice (dana–charitable giving is a companion to seva–volunteer service). Getting to discover this garden was an unexpected delight, but not the goal.



