Fairy Clouds
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Received Exhortation
I ordered some seeds for the garden–Malabar spinach–a spinach-like green that supposedly likes heat and humidity–from Calabash Tea and Tonic. I’m looking forward to seeing whether it will thrive in the summer. It’s hard to find greens that do well in the long, hot summer.
As I was running low, I also got some powdered ginger. Even though I can make my own, because it came with a good story, I included some Jamaican curry powder in my order. They arrived almost immediately, along with an exhortation.
An Offering
The fennel has become an offering to future butterflies. A worthy sacrifice.
A Letter from Tamil Nadu
The attached photo of devotees at a kumkum-reddened shrine to Hanuman is just a taste of the extraordinary things I have been privileged to experience and witness in this journey. I think that there as many reasons to go on a pilgrimage and as many experiences of it as there are people. For both the challenges and the wonders, I have been given a chance to feel and shift and explore myself at the deepest levels.
As you know, I had planned to take a mini-sabbatical from posting photos and writing while I was on the trip. I was faced with an opportunity, though, from a lesson in both non-attachment and gratitude that opened up this opportunity to share.
On our first full day in Madurai, we went to see the famous Meenakshi temple. The experience at this temple was different from that we had in other temples for two significant reasons. The first was that the inner sanctum was rigidly restricted only to Hindus. Ironically, this correspondingly led to a permission to take photographs within the temple (usually forbidden) because we who are allowed only in the other parts of the temple are viewed more like tourists than worshippers.
Right before we went to the temple, my camera reported that the battery was exhausted; intermittent power the night before must have prevented my getting it properly charged. I took out my Blackberry as a second best alternative. It had somehow turned itself on and depleted the charge looking for a radio signal even though I had turned off both the phone and Internet connections. I couldn’t imagine making it through the rest of day without being able to take another photograph, and it appeared that I had no choice other than to call in what I have learned from yoga practice about non-attachment. (Yes, I recognize that for even the most avid of amateur photographers, this was not a big loss).
As grace would have it, though, a fellow enthusiastic photographer on the trip hearing of my predicament understood completely. He had three cameras and his fiancee also had one. He handed me the extra camera and showed me the basics. The next day, he uploaded the photos I had shot onto my IPad, giving me a lesson in technology, along with the loan of the camera. I may have avoided having to practice non-attachment for this minor moment of potential disappointment, but I was definitely gifted with a big opportunity to practice gratitude. Having been the recipient of this gift, I wanted to share a little with you.
I look forward to sharing more images and stories when I return, especially with all of my students when winter classes resume in January.
Devotees of Hanuman - Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Gates and Gateways (and Ganesha’s Exhortation)
A gate might be an obstacle or it might be a way through or it might be that which is containing something that would otherwise be detrimental to our well-being. One of the key things that we do with the various yoga practices is explore how an apparent barrier is serving us or how a locked gate might turn our path in a more auspicious direction.
We will learn little and live less fully if we just lament the locked gate and unreasonably expect from the practices the removal of challenges or barriers. Ganesha–who is often invoked as the remover of obstacles–is less one who just opens all the gates for us than one who empowers us to discover gateways regardless of whether gates are meant to stay locked or whether they seem to block our path.
