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Savasana
Rising from post-morning meditation savasana. Have you been practicing?
Food is the link between self and spirit (Taittreya Upanishad and the Yoga of Eating Part III)
The Self in man and in the sun are one./ Those who understand this see through the world/ And go beyond the various sheaths/ Of being to realize the unity of life./ Those who realize that all life is one/ Are at home everywhere and see themselves / In all beings. They sing in wonder:/ ‘I am the food of life, I am, I am;/ I eat the food of life, I eat, I eat./ I link food and water, I link, I link./ I am the first-born in the universe;/ Older than the gods, I am immortal./ Who shares food with the hungry protects me;/ Who shares it not with them is consumed by me./ I am this world and I consume this world./ They who understand this understand life.’ Taittreya Upanishad, 10.5, trans. Eknath Eswaren.
As one who is immersed in the joy of growing, selecting, creating, and tasting food and studying and practicing yoga, it is no suprise that the Taittreya Upanishad (which Eknath Eswaren subtitles “From Food to Joy”) is one of my favorite readings.
The Taittreya Upanishad explains the five sheaths or koshas that make up the self — the food body, the energy body, the mind body, the intuitive body, and the bliss body. What we take in with our senses and what makes us flesh and blood can, with right observance and practice, lead us to a consciousness of self as joy and spirit embodied. This is the yoga of eating and of food.
For more details on the Taittreya Upanishad, please see Jon Janaka’s article, “I am the Food!”
Other sources:
Upanishads, trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford World Classics 1996)
The Upanishads, translated for the modern reader by Eknath Eswaren (Nilgiri Press 8th Printing 2000)
The Ten Principal Upanishads, put into English by Shree Purohit Swami and Wm. Butler Yeats (Faber and Faber, London, Reprinted 1952)
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July Greetings–Ultimate Freedom (and Some Free Yoga) (Web Version of E-Newsletter)
Dear Friends,
It is Saturday morning of Independence Day weekend. I have sat for my morning meditation, watered the garden, pet the cats, and done a few errands around the house. In an hour or so, I will be heading up to Willow Street to teach my noon class. As I take the time to care for garden, cats, house, and prepare to teach, I have been contemplating the concept of freedom.
In the tantric shaivite tradition, we are taught that one of the key aspects of spirit is svatantriya — ultimate freedom. We are also taught that we are ourselves inseparable from spirit, just as a drop of ocean water is no less part of the ocean for being a drop. Spirit chooses, out of its freedom and play (lila) to embody itself in forms that are limited in space and time. One of our greatest sources of suffering is feeling bound, thinking that we are stuck with who and what we are in the constraints of this mortal body, with all its quirks, forgetting our own auspiciousness.
I could get grumpy about the need to do errands and to teach on a holiday weekend. I could feel constrained from my usual activities around town by the combination of single-tracking on the Metro and the influx of tourists for the activities on the Mall, the combination of which will likely add an hour’s communiting time to teach today and to do volunteer work in Georgetown tomorrow at the Lantern Bookshop. I could choose instead to be grateful that I have a house that needs caring, a garden to water, a class that gives me great joy and abiding satisfaction to share the incredible yoga principles that have so enhanced my own life, and volunteer work that I have enjoyed for over 15 years.
I am not going to be telling anyone that we are without limitation, being as we are in time and space. We are always and perfectly free, however, to choose to turn towards the auspicious, the light, the good, the uplifting, the highest or we can turn away. We can act in ways that bring us ever more in alignment with spirit , or we can act in ways that take ourselves and that in our orbit farther from the good. The more we exercise our freedom to turn towards the auspicious, the happier and healthier we will be, regardless of the fact of life in a mortal body. That choice is our true freedom and the way to our hearts.
To help you experience svatantriya, to choose freedom of heart, there’s nothing better than some free yoga. The weekend of July 15-17, Willow Street Yoga will be offering it’s summer free class weekend. I’ll be offering gentle/therapeutics at noon on July 16th in Takoma Park. Preference is giving to new students and to returning students who have brought new students with them.
For July at William Penn House, I’m offering a two-part freebie: (1) brand new students get first class free; please invite your friends and neighbors; (2) if you are an existing student who brings a new student with you, you get a free class when the new student comes back for a second class.
Have a wonderful Independence Day, however you choose to celebrate and see you soon.
Peace and light,Elizabeth
