Signs Around Town (Multiples)
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It’s About the Money (and Solar or Wind Power for Home and/or Business)
This anecdote is a powerful incentive for those who could not care less about consequences of fossil fuel consumption.
Total electric bill this late spring/summer by month so far:
May 2011: $6.92 (PEPCO carrying charge); solar output exceeded usage
June 2011: $6.92 (PEPCO carrying charge); solar output exceeded usage
July 2011: $6.92 (PEPCO carrying charge); usage exceeded solar output, but by less than the extra output in May and June
Wow! How much was your monthly electric bill in the Southern and drought states? Do you know any one who would be persuaded only by the money? Tell them what a great investment it is, and they will start thinking seriously about it. Putting a dollar value on social good is the way to get through to those who only look at the numbers and do not see how budget numbers relate to real living beings and honoring the beauty of the web of creation (this would not be a veiled reference to something going on in that big domed building down the street; definitely, not).
It may not always work, but putting what you want in the language of those whose actions and beliefs are not in synch with yours is the beginning of communication and change. These cost savings say, in the language of those who care most about the money, that alternative energies are worth considering.
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Two Temptations of Maya
In classical yoga, maya is the illusion that the tangible world is what is real. Only atman is real; the world we experience through our senses (and our senses them selves) as reality is an illusion. We renounce the world to escape the temptation of being drawn into it as reality. In so doing, though, we ineluctably must come to the conclusion that all that is ill with the world is as much an illusion as that which is tempting. In turning away from the world we would be also turning away from the pain of seeing inequity and suffering and the desire to seek change in the tangible, sense-experienced world.
As I was walking around New York City, ankle-deep in slush and being hyper-stimulated by the lights and the noise and the smells and the bustle and the choices, I found myself thinking about maya and that in its classical sense has two surface temptations for me. The first is the temptation to turn away from the stimulation, to reject consumption of more than needed to exist. In the face of such excessive stimulation, the idea of nothing, of utter simplicity, of quiet seems desirable. If the turning away is another form of seeking pleasure or escaping pain, though, it is still in the trap of maya — the worldly illusion that binds us in the pair of opposites–pleasure and pain. The second temptation, the temptation to withdraw from everything except seeking the light within, is more subtle. If we truly are to turn away from the world of the senses, we turn away from notions of justice and equality and freedom that are based how we live in the material world as much as we turn away from consumption.
The true path of renunciation, of pure meditation, is a rare and beautiful path, but to stay in the world and to withdraw ineffectually in such a way might earn the hackneyed epithet “navel gazing.” My path is not that of the renunciate yogin, nor do I have the fortitude to live a life of Christian poverty, which would reject riches and live for service. Where can we find the support in the yoga path to stay engaged and yet still live mindfully, fostering the expression and recognition of spirit in ourselves and others?
In tantric philosophy, maya is understood somewhat differently than in classical yoga. The maya is not the world itself. When we think that getting and having and avoiding is all that there is and that it is separate from spirit, then our lives are cloaked by maya, and we are ignorant (avidya) of the true bliss of spirit (satcitananda). To know spirit, we must see through maya. To do that requires discrimination (viveka) in what we take into our senses and ethically responsible action in the tangible world to align our lives in a way that expands the opportunity to recognize spirit, which in my mind includes having less material disparity in society, which disparity most assuredly makes the essential truth of blissful consciousness more opaque (due to the play of maya) for both the haves and the have nots. While we make our attempt to live with more discrimination and grace and with less cause of conflict or suffering (doing better some times than others), we still try to recognize and savor the exquisite divine in each sight and taste and sound and creation. How extraordinary always is New York in all its wild manifestation!
Staying Indoors (or Not)
Of my friends on facebook, several reveled in staying inside because of the rain yesterday. Others complained about being unable to do things that would have been better on a dry day. Reporters and anchor persons seemed to think it newsworthy whether the rain will impact football or baseball games. How about telling us whether the rain we are getting is optimal for the native flora and fauna and how it is impacting the farmers? We seem as a society to have forgotten the relationship of the weather to food.
