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    Beginner’s Mind

    ByElizabeth

    The other day I was doing a computer search on contact improv jams in the Bay Area to see if it was possible to fit one in during my upcoming vacation in San Francisco.

    The website for one of the jams said for a class that preceded the weekly jam that beginners and advanced practitioners with a beginner’s mind were welcome. I loved that statement.

    The idea of beginner’s mind is one that is mentioned often in the yoga world and was taught as an integral part of the principle of “opening to grace” in the Anusara system.

    What I think is meant by practicing or bringing to the mat or to the dance a beginner’s mind is approaching each practice, every step, every pose, every aspect of alignment and technique with wonder, openness, and an ever-growing willingness to learn.

    When we are new to a practice or a style, discovering our own capacity to express and experience the form is exciting, as is a growing mastery of body and mind in the language of the form.

    Being advanced, though, is not just about physical or intellectual prowess. It is about developing a nuanced relationship between ourselves, the practices, and our fellow practitioners. Being freshly open to new insight and learning even from beginners helps us deepen our practice and experience ever greater enjoyment (bhoga).

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

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    Ignorance is Bliss Only If You Do Not Care What Happens the Welfare of All Beings (Do You Know How Your Tax $$ Are Spent?)

    ByElizabeth

    If you are a true renunciate yogi, then the horsemen of the apocolypse don’t phase you.  The ultimate bliss is leaving your body anyway.  For those of us who are engaged in the world, care about what we eat, care where we live, care about the well-being of family and friends, then learning, understanding, and acting — knowing of course that we can control that and how we act, but not the outcome — is a critical part of a tantric yoga life.

    It’s great to know how to place one’s hands for optimal alignment in downward-facing dog, but do you know how your tax dollars are spent?  Here’s a little overview worth sharing widely.  And perhaps it will make all that noise in Washington about the budget and the debt ceiling seem a little more important.  Check out the “People’s Budget,” which enhances domestic programs, increases participation in paying for our society by the rich, and decreases defense spending and military action.

    And then I highly recommend standing on your head or balancing on your hands or otherwise going upside-down, getting twisted, and knowing that the practice will help you stay sane and steady and able to act.

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    When was the last time you noticed a “Hare Krishna?”

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday morning, before I read the article in the Washington Post I discussed in yesterday’s post, a memory of an acquaintance from Quaker youth camp entered my seated meditation.  I had not thought about C in at least 30 years.  He was a couple of years older than me, and all the parents were a buzz with talk and worry when C decided that instead of going to college, he wanted to give away his possessions, live in a community devoted to simple living, a vegetarian diet, daily worship, a like-minded community, and spreading what they believe is the word of God.   Nowadays, many of the people who are in my broad social network would have nothing but admiration for someone who lived by and practiced such tenets, including the daily chanting of the name of Krishna (or some other deity).  In the late 70s, the parents were deeply concerned:  “He is in a cult, he is brainwashed, we need to get him back.”  “Back to what?” I remember thinking at the time.

    I have not seen a member of ISKON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) in years.  Why not?  Not because the “cult” has disbanded.  Rather, it has grown substantially and become part of the fabric of our global religious society.   Now, by virtue of its longstanding existence,  its members blend in with accepted norms of social and religious behavior.

    What makes a cult?  What makes a religion?  How do cults and religions foster, spread, or interfere with our own relationship to spirit and our recognition of spirit in others.  What is the difference between ritual and religion?  Ritual and spiritual belief and practice?

    ps Craig made a good point yesterday about being sensitive to the practicing Hindus when we take part in some of their practices, but not in the context of the Hindu religion.  He also noted a number of rituals that have morphed and shifted with changing religious groupings in society.  ISKON “took” something that was part of the Hindu religious practice and opened it to the masses (proselytizing with enthusiasm).  Is that not analogous to the development of any religious sect?  Think about the meaning of the word “protestant.”  When is an off-shoot of a religion a cult, a “legitimate” religious group, or an offense to the group from which it parted in terms of stated belief or practice?  Does it matter that some take offense?  What if offense is taking because of a disturbance of a status quo that diminishes and constrains large elements of society (such as women or people of certain classes)?  What about practicing a ritual to honor members of another religion — I am thinking, in this regard, of the recent example of the White House seder?

    pps. How is this relevant to our yoga practice in the United States?  Many of us listen to and practice our asana to the music of “chant.”  Krishna Das has a CD called “All One” that has nothing on it but variations of the maha mantra “Hare Krishna” that became so notorious when ISKON was just being known here.  What does it mean when we listen to such music, buy such music, share such music, chant these words?

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