In what, how, where do you find abiding comfort?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I am having a momentary yearning that it is hard for me to imagine realizing. Given all my commitments (commitments that I treasure for the groundedness, sense of place, and community that they give me in return), I cannot quite figure out how I could fit in a long weekend in Paris before March 11, 2012.
Nonetheless, I have been enjoying this morning a fantasy of picking up and going to Paris to see the Tagore exhibit at the Petit Palais, and incidentally eating and walking and photographing and delighting in everything else Paris has to offer. I suppose I could buy the catalogue–the internet has made such things ever so easy, but it wouldn’t quite be the same.
A nyaya is literally a recursion, something which leads back to an essential principle. In my recent studies of meditation, we have been taught various nyayas that help to explicate the experience of meditation and the whys and benefits of steady practice.
At the place where we have been staying for our meditation and study retreats with Paul Muller-Ortega, there is a wonderful cat named Oberon. I first met him last summer when I was walking the labyrinth just before dawn. I’d heard a meow off in the distance. Lonely for cat company since my Becky had so recently left her body, I called to the cat. He came running to me and walked the labyrinth with me. Each time I have visited, I have had some special moments with Oberon, who lives fully up to his name — Oberon being the King of the Faeries.
Oberon loves the meditation hall and often tries to get in. He also brings offerings. Last winter, he brought us a mostly dead bird. As well intended as it might have been on Oberon’s part, it was not particularly welcomed in the meditation hall. On the final night of our retreat this time, we were reveling in the good fortune of having fellow students (and my sometimes teachers and the creators of many CDs in my music collection) Heather and Benjy Wertheimer lead us in kirtan. At one point, I left my place to go to the facilities. A fellow student, stopped me, “Elizabeth, the cat has a really big mouse.” I went to look. Oberon did not have a mouse; he had a young bunny. “It’s a bunny I said.” The other students who were outside were horrified.
Without thinking, I went to him, “Oberon, drop it!” I said, as if it were appropriate to speak to the King of the Faeries as if he were an obedient dog. He listened though and dropped the bunny, which remained frozen. I held Oberon by the scruff of the neck. “Go bunny; bunny run,” I said, but the bunny did not move. I then tapped the bunny on his back at the tail. The bunny remained frozen, though it did not appear yet to be injured. I let go of Oberon and went to get a towel or something to pick up the bunny. Then Oberon tapped the bunny just where I had touched it. Off ran the bunny through the shoes neatly piled outside the meditation hall. I caught Oberon and picked him up. The bunny again froze, looking back at us. At this point I was completely oblivious to anything other than the cat and the bunny. “Bunny run; go now.” Oberon squirmed, but did not scratch me, letting me continue to hold him. Finally, the bunny ran off into the scrub and disappeared. I put down Oberon. He sniffed the trail, but then came back to me for a petting when I called. “Thank you for the offering Oberon; I know it was well intentioned, but we are not so keen on bringing dead baby animals into the meditation hall.” He sniffed, lifted his regal head, and sat down to wash.
Leaving aside what my actions may have done to the fabric of the world order and the pondering I could do about the interrelationship between destiny and free will, I felt that I had been given a wonderful lesson about life and practice. Practice can bring us great freedom if we stay steady on the path. Like the bunny, though, we can stay frozen in fear and old patterns, even when we are given a glimpse of the freedom of self we can get from practice. As dire as things may be (or perhaps even when they are at their worst), we return to the familiar, regardless of whether we are unhappy with it, regardless of how old patterns are limiting our ability to grow. Sometimes it is dissatisfaction with and pain from the old patterns themselves (revealed more clearly by practice already begun) that push us to go further, just as it took Oberon getting the bunny to run again for me to realize he was sufficiently healthy to be able to run off. And just as I stayed with Oberon and the bunny until the bunny finally took his chance at freedom, the practice and the truths and freedom practice can reveal will always be there. No matter how many times we forget or return to the stuck and the familiar, the opportunity for growth and freedom continues to await.
When I am feeling stuck, when I am finding myself returning to patterns that do not serve, I will think about my own personal nyaya of the cat and the bunny. I hope it will serve to keep me moving forward, less stuck, less attached to the familiar that no longer serves.
Or instead of or in addition to writing, practice of any kind that feeds and expands your soul.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I went tonight to the space at Flashpoint to see a dance performance by people I know from the Sunday contact improv jam. One of the things that I am finding thought-provoking about the jamming with dancers is dancing for the sake of the dance, but also as a practice for those who perform. I went to support friends appearing in a small venue. I know how much I appreciate it when people make an effort to come to workshops, and in the days when I was still exhibiting art, to my openings. I also went to be able to witness from the space of pure observer, my friends in performance mode, so that I could learn and appreciate more about the dialogue and dialect of dancers and the dance. And I went because it was fun.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
On my previous visits to Sedona in the past year and a half, the moon has been full or nearly full each time. Even though there was little light from man-made sources, the bright light of the moon illuminated the sky enough that the stars were outshone. This trip, though, there was only a sliver of a crescent, and then, no moon at all. In the absence of the moon, the stars blazed forth in all their glory.
I recently have been contemplating how the practice of pratyahara (usually translated as withdrawal of the senses) fits into a tantric yoga path. Pratyahara is the fifth limb of the eight-limb path of raja yoga, see Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In classical yoga, the aim of yoga practice is to transcend the body-mind, and the eight limbs provide the means for that transcendence. It fits within that paradigm to withdraw from the senses to move towards meditation. In tantric yoga, though, the aim is not to transcend or quell the body-mind, but to understand that the body-mind is an emanation of spirit and to live ever more full of the light of spirit. The senses are not something to be transcended. Yet we still practice pratyahara on the tantric path.Why is that?
I think that in order to remember our own light, we sometimes need to choose to withdraw from the potentially constant stimulation of our senses; we need to pick darkness and quiet so that we can better discriminate between being delighted and inspired by the senses and being bound by craving stimulation of the senses. If we get completely bound up in the senses and seek only to get more and more stimulated, we will forget the fullness and light of spirit. We choose, therefore, at times in our practice, to diminish outer sensory input so that the inner light can shine more brightly. When we return from the inner light to go back to the senses, we are then better able to appreciate the wonder of what our senses bring to us. It is not unlike how we get to witness the extraordinary magic of the stars when we take ourselves away from the light of the sun, the moon, and the city.
