Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Jai Siva Nataraja on a Snowy Afternoon
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- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Another Self-Induced India Photo Flashback (Roadside Temples)
Another self-induced India photo flashback after a long work day reading and writing at the computer with breaks only for shoveling snow and for eating and cleaning up.
We were traveling on the bus when I saw the Durga temple (the fifth photo–the one with the white glare and flat sky, but an incredible Durga). I suggested to my seatmate that he take a picture with his better camera. I recall it quite reasonably and correctly being pointed out to me the flat, white heat of the midday, humid sky and the glare off of the window would make it impossible optimally to show the intricacy and vividness of the temple.
I snapped a picture anyway. I was seeing things at angles coming and going and with whatever the light was at the moment. I likely wasn’t ever going to be there again and certainly not any time soon.
Sometimes the bus would pause in just the right place for a perfectly composed shot, but mostly it didn’t. In this, the act of taking these photos was much like other aspects of life and practice. Our path is not always certain. Sometimes it is hard to see because there is too little light or too much. Sometimes we have something obscuring our vision. Sometimes we are going too fast and only notice just before it would be too late for that turning.
But even with vision turned or obscured, we are always experiencing something. How can we make the best of each moment of experience? For me, it is meditating and bringing the spacious awareness of meditation to what I am witnessing. Taking photographs helps me witness in a certain way, too.
Found Exhortation
Found yesterday. Today, I managed to stay inside working.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening | Meditation
When I Wasn’t Looking
I don’t know how I missed this pickling cucumber before it grew to such enormous proportions. I’ve scooped the seeds and pulp and added some water to ferment for a couple of days. Then I will dry the seeds that don’t float and save them for next year. This plant has been more successful than prior efforts to grow pickling cucumbers. They may have cross-pollinated with the Persian cucumber, but I’m trying to expand my seed-saving beyond the easy herbs and greens.
I won’t know how well I’ve done until next year, when I try to grow cucumbers from these seeds. There is a sense of connection to the cycles of life, with such required patience with the changes of season.
And the cucumber falling from the vine, ripe, and ready to go to seed, is a line in the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra, chanting to release and aid the passage of spirit from this realm of consciousness.
“Do you have an umbrella?”
As I was headed out at lunch, a co-worker in another office whom I know only from the hallway, asked, “do you have an umbrella?”
“Yes, I do, how are you?” I replied, knowing that she was trying to be helpful. So many of us work in spaces without windows, it was not unreasonable for her to think I might not know it was raining.
Another woman who I did not know said, “I heard it might rain all weekend,” revealing herself as one who gets all knowledge of the weather from tv.
I thought, but did not say, “yes, there is that pesky hurricane coming.”
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
