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    “I just like art.”

    ByElizabeth

    I love the Vogels’ story. It is wonderful to witness such an exquisite balance of passion and moderate living. Sometimes there is not much of a why for a thing. “I just like art,” Mr. Vogel said in 1992. “I don’t know why I like art. I don’t know why I like nature. I don’t know why I like animals. I don’t even know why I like myself.”

    You may need to cut and paste this link into your browser to see the story:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/herbert-vogel-unlikely-ar
    t-collector-and-benefactor-of-national-gallery-dies-at-89/2012/07/22/gJQ
    ANqOf2W_story_2.html

    Think of things/activities you like or which inspire you to passion. Can you really identify why you have come to have and develop certain likes or passions among multiple things all worthy of passion (as distinguished from providing after-the-fact explanations of why such things are worthy of your passionate attention and devotion of time and energy–for example, yoga)?

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

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    Baksheesh and Brahman

    ByElizabeth

    I spent a few hours this weekend reading Joseph Campbell’s  Baksheesh and Brahman, which is Campbell’s journals from a year in India from 1954-55 (I’m now about a third of the way through).  Campbell writes that he went to India to find Brahman and instead found politics.  He approached his visit from the perspective of a mythologist.  In contrast to Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, who went to India to find God, Joseph Campbell went to observe religious practices.  Although the journals evidence his own perspective and prejudices, he makes cogent observations on the difference between religiosity and spirituality (not all that dissimilar to the distinctions made in the Bhagavad Gita about the difference between rigidly practicing ritual and truly believing).  He also makes very interesting and still timely and cogent comparisons between the relationship of Hinduism and to the then rather new Indian nationalism and American Protestantism to democracy.

    Ultimately, though, it is evident that this year was important for Campbell’s life path and work, as it was for the Beats, and has been for many of my friends who have gone, though not for all.  I think about going to India.  It will be when I have several weeks and don’t have a venerable and ancient cat who cannot be left behind for a long stretch of time.  In the meantime, reading of such journeys can stimulate thought and can be applied to other aspects of my life, though reading and studying (especially in the yoga tradition), is never a substitute for experience.  Just reading of spiritual experiences, but not doing the practices to open the door to one’s own experience is like reading cooking or gardening books, but never going into the kitchen or the garden.


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    After the Exhileration, Work

    ByElizabeth

    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.

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