I had a work day full of things that it would not be hard to find annoying. I recognized that the challenge I was having with being at peace with my day was not unrelated to the morning news of us lurching closer to nuclear holocaust than ever before in my lifetime. I took myself to the museum to refresh myself with art–the place I most readily find nourishment and refuge.
We all (or at least most of those who would be reading this blog) have heard the Buddhist-inspired saying: before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry. The question is whether after the moments of enlightenment can we infuse doing the laundry with more joy, acceptance, and peace. A young adult acquaintance asked me the other day whether I was readjusting ok. I did not know to what he was referring, and he had to explain that he was asking how I was doing on my return from my India trip. “It was just a vacation–albeit an extraordinary one,” I replied. “Life continues.”
“The good experiences just slip away like dry sand through my fingers,” he made a motion of letting something slip away.
“When you practice and when you get older, it will be easier to bring the temporary, good experiences into your life without feeling they are lost when you have moved onto the next thing,” I said with hope that would actually be true for him, he seemed so bereft.
The yoga teaches us neither to be out searching for the highs nor actively avoiding the lows; the dance of grasping and avoiding is what makes us suffer. That does not mean that the highs, the times of wild abandoned joy, the experiences of utter fulfillment, of exquisite understanding are of no value. What brings joy is a thing of wonder and an opportunity to deepen our ability to love and be generous. They are only a problem if we ruin our time by vainly clinging to or trying to repeat the sensation. As our practice (and our understanding of a life well-lived and loved) matures, we understand that there is no readjusting in the return to the day to day. We welcome what we have had, try to remember what we have learned, including how much joy and delight we are able to drink in, and approach each day as another opportunity to seek and share connection.
I went on Saturday evening after teaching two classes and a workshop. I arrived at the 5:20 show of Harry Potter just as the opening credits were rolling, having intentionally missed the ads and the trailers (17 minutes of them by my clock). After the movie was over, and I was walking to catch the bus home, I overheard a young woman loudly giving a blow by blow to a friend about the ways the movie was unfaithful to the book.
I was raised to think the book was always better. I read all of the Mary Poppins books (yes, there are several), first seeing Mary Poppins in college. In the books, Mary Poppins has quite an edge; she is not the saccherine being of the movie. I’d read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory years before I saw the first movie. The book is fantastic. The movie is its own art. The list could go on.
I’ve taken these days — thank goodness I never did realize the ubiquitous adolescent dream of being a movie critic — to just enjoying movies about books for their own sake, without undue comparison. (It does help, sometimes, though, to be familiar with the books on which the movie is based, for example: Cheri).
If it had not been for the yoga practice, I do not know whether I could have reached a stage where I could watch the movie without comparing it to the book after my Woody Allenesque how to watch a movie upbringing. To be open and fully accepting of what comes takes many forms. This is just a very small and rather unimportant one. Having come with no expectation of the movie being faithful to the book, though, gave me a much greater possibility of enjoying it for the bit of summer afternoon entertainment it was.
Stated another way: act only at speeds in which you can be fully mindful.
Perfect exhortation to see on the way to a therapeutic yoga workshop. I didn’t go to the morning session. It started at 8:15. Instead I did my own morning practice and walked to Georgetown. It was good to be outside for a good long walk and even better to share the yoga.
