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    Interconnectedness

    ByElizabeth

    This morning, on my last full day of vacation, on my way to leave my bags in the office of the bed and breakfast where I was staying before I walked about in Santa Fe for the day, I walked back through the breakfast room, where I had eaten an hour before.

    To my happy surprise, good friends from home (a former co-worker and his wife, whom I’d just been thinking about because I knew how much they like New Mexico) were there finishing their meal.

    We spent much of the day together, until I had to leave to catch the train to Albuquerque to be ready for tomorrow’s early morning flight back home.

    It felt a perfect completion of a trip made to study yoga and be in community for the week.

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    Meditate Only for Its Own Sake

    ByElizabeth

    Last night I had the singular pleasure of hearing Gary Snyder read his poetry at the Folger Shakespeare Library.  At the end of the reading, Mr. Snyder answered a few questions.  In response to one question about advice he gives to aspiring poets, he said:  “Don’t be journalists.  Do hard physical labor that leaves y0ur mind open.”  This is not surprising advice, coming from one who has chosen a life requiring regular manual labor.  “Meditate only for its own sake,” he added, in an apparent non sequitur and without elaboration.

    Gary Snyder’s poetry is evidently influenced by his dedicated study and practice of Buddhism.  The insight and clarity of his poetry surely reflects not only his intellectual study, but the deep wisdom of a dedicated, long-standing, and steady meditation practice.  The advice to “meditate for its own sake” seemed almost the offering of a koan by the master (poet) to his pupils.  Meditation, in my experience, definitely  enhances clarity, insight, creativity, and health.  Meditation is not meditation, though, unless when engaging in meditation that is all one is doing and without any goal (like the “actionless action” of the Bhagavad Gita).  It is the deepest of practices to engage fully, but not be doing except for the sake of doing itself (and in alignment with the deepest truths).

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    The Power of Mantra (and “Alice’s Restaurant”)

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday morning, on the listserv for the Friends Meeting of Washington, someone shared a link to the original recording of Arlo Guthrie singing “Alice’s Restaurant” as part of an email about Thanksgiving festivities.  Usually, I scan listserv emails quickly and delete, especially when they relate to events that I am unable to attend. I saved this one for later, though.  I’d woken up from some anguished dreams that were hard to shake, and on being reminded of it, I was sure that when I could make the time, listening all the way through Alice’s Restaurant  (it’s long) would cheer me up.

    This morning I did indeed listen, and remembered why we (at least those of us who attended Quaker Youth Camp in the early 1970s) memorized most of Alice’s Restaurant.  It spoke to us and inspired us and invited us to feel that we were not alone in thinking that things could and should be more gracious and peaceful.

    And the refrain is catchy and easy to sing.  This morning, at the end, when Arlo invites the audience (the 1967 album version was a “live” recording), I started singing along just for the delight of it, which led me to think about the power of mantra.

    Chanting or silently repeating mantra is one of the key yoga practices.  The purpose, roughly, of mantra is to replace one set of thoughts with another.  Repeating even just “om,” the simplest mantra, over and over again is meant to shift you from whatever mind state you might have been in (at least to the extent that you are having repeating troubling thought patterns) and into or  towards a more beneficent state.  In my own years of practice, I have found much power in practicing Sanskrit mantras, but many of the songs we have been singing for years, especially those that we associate with ritual can serve similar purposes.

    If you’re so moved and feeling that you’re having thoughts around this Thanksgiving holiday that you’d rather replace with more cheerful ones, invite the power of mantra and perhaps sing, along with Arlo  for the refrain in  Alice’s Restaurant.

    Oh yes.  Happy Thanksgiving.

     

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