Blossoms Around Town
I very much appreciate the neighbors who enthusiastically plant their gardens and share beauty.
Similar Posts
A Portal
Today, if it was still there, it would be frozen.
Moksha
I have a set of cards that I keep on my altar that are designed to be used for contemplation. There are about fifty cards, each of which has a sanskrit word and its meaning. Just as one gets a fortune cookie randomly or picks a tarot card from a deck, but the message often seems right on point, the word that arises from the card picked from the stack often seems uncannily timely. Early Saturday morning, after not having used the cards in a few months, I picked a card from the middle of the stack to see if it would help guide my contemplation and meditations as I was getting ready to say good-bye to Becky. The word on the card I picked blind from the middle of the stack was “moksha” or liberation. In classical yoga, moksha does carry with it the implication of being liberated by transcending body and mind.
Later on Saturday, when I was on my way home from teaching for the appointment with the vet, I stopped at the metaphysical supply shop for a piece of rose quartz (to use in a ritual to assist with the transition and loss that a friend taught me). At the check out were “dolphin saying cards.” There was a sign next to the cards inviting customers to take one for free. The sign also said that it was not necessary to take the one at the top. The cards were face down; I did not look for a particular saying. I dug a few cards down, and the one I selected read: “freedom has its roots within yourself.” In other words, “moksha” for the second time on this day, when I was facing with Becky her transition of the spirit from the body.
Was it a message? Was it a coincidence? I do know that I knew when it was time, as I did with Henrietta. Becky just did not want to be embodied anymore. When I held her in her arms after she stopped breathing, she was released and relaxed in a way she had not been in months. That the signs were saying “moksha” resonated with Becky’s power and connectedness. I hope that when I am ready to go, I will truly understand moksha, that I will be released. It is so resonant of Becky’s life, for all her quirks, that she was still teaching me even as she was dying.
What Does It Mean to Study War?
Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Still, the Pentagon suggests that Martin Luther King “might” have supported the war in Afghanistan. Not sure on what basis.
Last night at the Willow Street Book Club, where we were reading Ram Dass’s Paths to God–Living the Bhagavad Gita, one of my fellows raised the question of how we could read as a spiritual guide a book whose context is war. Another asked a similar question from the perspective of a feminist. It was a fabulous, engaged, lively discussion, and I hope to see more next month.
It would be an injustice to the text and the historical context to read entirely out of the Bhagavad Gita the duty of a warrior to kill, a wife to practice suttee, and persons born into each caste to accept their lot in life in a society structured on the caste system. There is much richness in the text, though, that can provide guidance for a feminist, pacifist, who believes that “all men are created equal.”
We have reread “men” in the Declaration of Independence to include women and those of all races (though we cannot manage to rewrite the Constitution to explicitly state that women are equal, but that’s a thought for another day). Similarly, without doing injustice to the text, we can see that the ultimate teachings about living in accordance with duty (svadharma), love, devotion, and sacrifice in the Gita, like the concepts of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” provide guidance and force for social action and spiritual devotion beyond a historical context that oppressed and bound on the worldly plane the very persons who are now seeking the deeper meanings in the text. In fact, I believe that we can use the essential intent of the text to teach and transform the oppressors, to use the very text to show why the violence and oppression of the historical context is injust and needs to be changed so that the spiritual intent can be expanded and spread beyond the privileged.
An Excellent Sufficiency, Homegrown Tomatoes (and the Isha Upanishad)
The Isha Upanishad starts, “That is fullness (purna). This is fullness. Fullness comes from fullness. Take fullness from fullness, and the remainder is fullness.”
My maternal grandfather died when I was just a toddler, so I never got to know him. My mother used to tell us that when he had eaten enough at a bounteous meal, he would say “that was an excellent sufficiency and any more would be a superabundency.”
On Sunday I went over to Lovejoy Gardens to my little plot (approximately 3′ X 7′ raised bed on concrete, half shaded by a fence) and harvested tomatoes. There were about 15 ripe tomatoes. The first thought was that it was too many tomatoes. Then I thought of all the neighbors I had who didn’t have their own tomato plants. I knocked on one neighbor’s door. He gave me tea while I played with the cat. I gave him tomatoes. I went for a massage in the afternoon. I brought tomatoes. I was sent home with freshly made spanakopita. I invited another neighbor over for dinner. We at pesto with basil from the garden and cucumber and tomato salad (cucumber, tomato, and shallots all from the garden drizzled with a little of the best balsamic vinegar and seasoned with just ground sea salt and pepper). We had a lovely visit, and I sent him home with tomatoes. In the next day or two, I will make a batch of tomato sauce and put it in the freezer and have someone over for dinner another night.
There is only “too much of a good thing” or a “superabundency” if we hoard it or try to ingest it all ourselves out of fear, greed, or desire for power or control. When we have enough ourselves and then share the abundance, we simply create more abundance. Once again, I am given again from my garden another sweet insight into the yoga teachings. I am also reminded by this small example that I could share even more broadly from my blessed lot of fullness in global society.
