Untitled
Similar Posts
Shiva Nataraja
This murti of Nataraja has been in the window of a store near where I work for at least 20 years. I often walk past is and just as often stop to admire it. I have never really considered taking it home, lovely as it is. The murti is simply too large for any of my rooms. I have mentioned its needing a home to a couple of different friends, who were looking for large murtis of Nataraja, over the past few months, but none have followed through.
Today, when I was walking past it on a lunchtime walk to the bank, I noticed a “commercial property for rent” sign in the window. I will miss having this resplendent image in my work neighborhood, but not enough to buy it and bring it home. I decided, though, to take a photograph. I know the owner only very casually, but well enough to know he is retiring, rather than being driven out by rising rental costs or the recession. The neighborhood has gotten trendier since Nataraja first appeared in the window. Nataraja might be replaced with a delicious restaurant or a fabulous store purveying things that entice me. Or the space could stay vacant or be used for something that holds no interest for me whatsoever.
Nataraja–lord of the dance of concealment and revelation, of dissolution and manifestation–is dancing here. The murti will be sold or transported away when the shop closes and will physically be gone.
I will have my memories of the image, a photograph I took with my BlackBerry, and will have had a sweet opportunity to observe the lord of the dance dancing away his own image.
Late Afternoon Moon
How is your practice these days, whatever your practice. Now it is even more important than ever.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Dance/Contact Improvisation | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
The Goddess(es) and the Green Tomatoes
When someone tells me I need to see the Divine I can get anxious that they mean I’m supposed to see whatever that person thinks is “the Divine.” I don’t think anyone ever should be required to do so by anybody else. I am, however, all for being reminded to see the divine if such exhortation is to look on whatever I encounter with the most gratitude and compassion and wonder I can muster.
Here: two kinds of tomatoes with two versions of the goddess (Tara and Uma (a/k/a Parvati)). I had only a large tomato or two per week throughout the summer; with the equinox passing, the vines are for some inexplicable reason now abundant. I will either be making a good sauce in October or pickling green tomatoes, depending on how soon we get a frost. Or perhaps both.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening | Meditation
Found Exhortation
It is my experience that if I can simultaneously accept that I am ultimately not in control even while I am working to meet a particular goal that I feel less stressed by the vagaries of fate.
It’s not easy to do, but I do think that is the balance that the yoga practices–the ones that aren’t trying to have us transcend embodiment–are trying to teach us. And as the weather gets wilder, there will be more opportunities for practice.
