And I imagined coming and heaping red sandalwood powder and golden turmeric on the concrete barriers shaped just like linga that are next to the fountain and guard this building devoted to human labor.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I have not much been one for hand sanitizer, though I have long washed my hands well and frequently and avoided touching directly door knobs and elevator buttons, etc, and appropriate social isolation when I am sick.
In the present moment, it seemed like a nice idea to try and make hand sanitizer at home and then share it. I already had the alcohol for making tinctures and the tea tree oil, but mixing this combination of things all together will be a new thing. I would have done better with aloe vera gel than juice and a good deal less, but this was the smallest size. As long as it’s more than 60%alcohol, it should both sanitize and keep.
The remaining ingredients are meant to add moisturizing and/or antiseptic properties. Both tea tree and lemongrass oil can be irritating, so that will only be a few drops.
In 2000 or 2001, shortly before I started practicing Anusara yoga, a teacher who regularly played music in class, played for us a recording of Alice Coltrane singing a tantric chant to Siva and the Goddess Bhuvaneshvari. I only heard the chant once while we were in savasana — corpse pose/final relaxation. Although I only heard the chant once, for several months afterwards, I found myself having a recurring dream that I was wondering in a neighborhood that looked like the one where I grew up and went to high school and chanting the full chant. At the time I merely found it curious that I seemed to have learned the sanskrit just by hearing the chant one time. I have since learned that the recording may have been done right near my high school; that is where the Coltrane’s had a recording studio. I also learned that the chant was a tantric chant. At the time, my teachers were coming from a classical yoga perspective. Did I actually learn the chant by osmosis? Was having the very vibration of the chanting near where I lived and studied the catalyst for me, as a receptive being, discovering a path of tantric yoga?
I have found other recordings of the chant. One is Atman’s “Dancing to the Goddess” on the Eternal Dance CD, which is an electronica version. The other is Ragani’s “Om Mata” on the Best of Both Worlds, which is a very nice kirtan/pop version. I have several of Alice Coltrane’s recordings, which are great jazz, if you aren’t familiar with Alice Coltrane as a fabulous musician in her own right. Recently I searched again on the internet to see if the bootleg had become available. There was nothing on YouTube (though some good Alice Coltrane things to watch). I bought Alice Coltrane’s “Radha-Krsna Mana Sankirtana,” which was originally recorded in 1977 (when I was in high school) and reissued in 2005, as I thought that was a promising source. It has some good things on it, but no luck finding the recording I wanted to hear.
The chant goes like this:
Samba sadasiva, samba sadasiva, samba sadasiva, samba shambo.
Om mata, om mata, om sri mata, jagade mata.
Om bhuvaneshvari, sri bhuvaneshvari, hari parashakti, devi bhuvaneshvari.
It is a chant to the benevolent, auspicious one within, the radiant goddess, the creatrix of the world. Bhuvaneshvari is one of the ten wisdom goddesses.
Please advise if you have access to the Alice Coltrane or another recording of this beautiful chant.
Thunder clouds pelt rain
Strewing winds reveal beauty’s
Soft ephemera.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I am reading Philip Goldberg’s American Veda–From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation; How Indian Spirituality Changed the West. It is another of the recently published works on the interplay and inter-influence of east and west. What distinguishes American Veda is that it is more about how Indian spirituality influenced western/American society overall, than an analysis of the yoga that we practice in the west. Much that one might expect to be in the book is there: Emerson, Thoreau, Swami Vivekananda (and the Parliament of the World’s Religions), Ramakrishna, Paramahamsa Yogananda, Osho, Muktananda, the Beatles, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, but there are other connections that are less well-known.
As one generally familiar with the history of Indian philosophy and yoga practices coming to the West, it reads more like a survey or overview than an analysis to the extent that it tries not to leave out any one who could have been an influence and goes into little depth regarding any particular influence. (Note: the author himself says that the book is limited to Vedic/Hindu influences; he refers the reader to other sources, in particular, How the Swans Came to the Lake, for the transmission of Buddhism to the west).
What is most interesting to me about reading American Veda is that it reads like old home week. I recognize the names and the philosophies and the way people speak about spirituality and religion, and the author lovingly and thoroughly shows how profound and widespread is the influence of Vedic thought in America, even where no attribution is given. I recognized even when I first discovered Indian philosophy texts in high school the interplay between how me and my fellow unprogrammed. liberal Quaker friends were talking about mystical experience and understanding of God/Spirit and the Indian philosophy, and it is lovely to have a book where someone went out and did all the research and gathered the sources. By the time I was thinking about anything at all really, Indian philosophy was already something in my consciousness thanks to the Beatles and the Beats. The Beatles discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when I was six, which was the year that Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour came out and my parents for some now unfathomable reason gave them to me for my Christmas present. My older sister and I played those albums over and over again on our portable record player, whirling ourselves into states of dizzy ecstasy with the sitar grooving in the background on our favorite songs.
I was moved to read the Bhagavad Gita by reading J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. I do not remember whether this was in 9th or 10th grade, but I read Salinger because was what cool, smart kids read. What I remember is that I read both Franny and Zooey and Catcher in the Rye (probably read the latter first) before Catcher in the Rye was assigned reading in 10th or 11th grade and that while I was not particularly impressed with Holden Caulfield, I really wanted to be as brilliant and educated and extraordinary and talented and philosophical as the children in the Glass family, and so I tried to read what they read (though alas, I read it in translation, where they were able to read the Greek and Latin and Sanskrit, etc.) By 11th grade, a teacher had given me J. Krishnamurti to read, and his anti-guru guruness appealed to my Quaker sensibilities.
