On the Way to William Penn House for Tuesday Night Yoga Practice
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- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
Found Exhortation
(Recognizing that to be here now mindfully , we must learn from the past and care for the future).
With respect to Ram Dass.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Dance/Contact Improvisation
Contact Improv Curious? Or Experienced?
For those of you who have heard me talking about contact improv and how much delight in it I’ve found and how a steady engagement with this art form has influenced my asana practice, there will be a great opportunity to get the basics at the morning workshop session on August 24th at Dance Exchange in Takoma Park.
Many thanks to my friend Leslie for coordinating the workshop. For more information and to register, click here.
Hope to see many of you there. For those more comfortable with movement, dance, and the form, there will be more opportunity to dance all day.
If you’re out of town and interested, email me separately about a possible visit.
State of the Garden
We all worked from home today.
The Four Gates of Speech
One of the offerings in John Friend’s Anusara Teacher Training Manual, is the “four gates of speech,” which I believe comes from Buddhist practice. The four gates are:
1. Is it truthful?
2. Is it necessary to say?
3. Is it the appropriate time?
4. Is it a kind thing to say?
It is easy to see this application in terms of speaking with others, though not always easy to practice, especially in a group setting where the culture is to condemn and criticize.
A more subtle practice of the four gates is how we talk to and about ourselves. I am someone who was raised to have a very strong internal judging voice. Although with the steady practice of yoga affirmation, my tendency for self-judgment has eased, the propensity reasserts itself when I am stressed. I have taken to asking myself, when I hear the judging voice, does it pass the four gates of speech? I find it a challenging practice, but a necessary one. When we honor ourselves (we can honor ourselves and our own light and still know there are ways we would benefit from expanding or shifting), we will more easily honor, recognize, and affirm the light in others.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
“It’s All Good” (and Voltaire’s Candide at the Shakespeare Theater)
Last night I went to see the revival of the Bernstein musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, now playing at the Shakespeare Theater’s Harmon Hall (discount tickets available), which was absolutely a delight — fantastic staging and direction, luxurious costuming, enthusiastic performances. Throughout his journey, which is beset with cruelty, hardship, natural disaster, and other mishaps wherever he goes, Candide sings of his tutor’s optimistic advice that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” The application of this philosophy leads to some silly results, including the Monty Python-worthy lyric “it’s a great day for an auto da fe.”
I have a friend who, after telling me of various life challenges and griefs, inevitably signs off with the phrase “it’s all good,” though I am not sure she believes it. I thought of her repetition of the phrase “it’s all good,” while I was watching the musical. Later in Candide’s travels, he encounters a second philosopher scholar who (I’m paraphrasing loosely) contradicts the “it’s all for the best” philosophy of Candide’s tutor by telling Candide to just look around and he will know that things are not in fact always for the best. A fluffier version of the debate in the novel, as to whether things are all for the best when there is so much cruelty and devastation, is interwoven into the rest of the play.
I’ve never had a desire to wear the t-shirt proclaiming that “it’s all good.” I look around me, and I simply do not believe it. I do believe wholeheartedly, though, Voltaire’s premise that we have the responsibility to “cultivate our garden.” As my teachers John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega espouse, we should “respond from the highest,” regardless of what we experience and encounter. By having our response make the best of all possible worlds from things that are not evidently for the best, we bring more light into the world, whatever is our world view. I can only hope that with steady practice of yoga and meditation, I can keep ever truer to these teachings when I am seriously challenged.
Theater of the Absurd
Last night I went with a group of friends for dinner and to see “Hell Meets Henry Halfway” at the Woolly Mammoth. We all had a most enjoyable time, although the play was pretty negative. What could you expect, though, from a play based on a 1930s novel written by a Polish exile that was about declining monarchies and social depravity, etc? What relieved the bleakness of the outlook was the slapstick playfulness of the acting and staging. It was also a pleasure just to see beautiful technique, and acting was wonderful.
As the recession deepens, I have been trying to go to see more theater and dance, to support local theaters and restaurants that I care to have still in my world. It would be easy to settle into a mindset of anti-consumption at this time. Better I think, even if we are trying to shift the consumer orientation of our society, to become ever more mindful in our consumption, being especially mindful of those around us are struggling from the sudden shift. The right action, I think, for those who cannot help but recognize problems, or suffering, or even absurdity, is not only to seek change, but also to see the playfulness in everything to keep the spirit vital and to be able to accept the change that might not be realized despite our best efforts and intentions.