State of the Garden
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White Silence is Violence
Today I worked efficiently, gave additional money in support of racial justice, signed comment letters and petitions, meditated, walked, shared calls to action on social media, picked beans, cherry tomatoes, and herbs in the garden, and made soba noodles in spicy peanut broth with herbs and green beans.
- Art and Culture | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening | Photos
It Does Not Get Much Better (and Satcitananda)
The key concept of yoga–satcitananda can be elusive, like all abstract concepts in the yoga philosophy and in other philosophies or areas of study. We are given metaphors and analogies in the texts to help us recognize when, through our practice, we experience in our self the manifestation of what had just been theory (book knowledge).
It is hard to describe, for example, what it truly means to be fully present and aware in the moment and thus suffused with bliss
(satcitananda).There was a moment, standing in the hot sun, when I tasted a sun-warmed, perfectly ripe blueberry that I thought, this is a moment many of my students might imagine to be able to extrapolate the abstract concept of satcitananda.
Notice also the volunteer purslane at the base of the blueberry bush. Weeding and harvesting greens for salad and stir fry can be coextensive. Don’t poison or discard your purslane (or your dandelions). Pick it and eat it; purslane is a great plant source of omega fatty acids.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
In Honor of National Book Day
Current stack of to be read in anticipation of upcoming travel. Though I’m on a brief detour into a reread of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which appeared the other day in a nearby “little free library.” The Arundhati Roy is so finely wrought, I can only read a few pages at a time. The Madhur Jaffrey, by serendipity, has a bit about one of places I will be eating.- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Airport Delay (and “Unreasonable Happiness”)
I am sitting in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International airport waiting for the plane that should already be carrying me home to finish being repaired. After having done a full hour of practice this morning in my room, having a last delicious breakfast at the retreat center, and enjoyed the two-hour ride with friends to the airport, I find myself perfectly happy to sit in the airport. I am warm and well-fed. I have bought a novel to read on the plane — Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” — and put aside a philosophy handout to write. The handout, a translation of the beginning of Abhinavagupta’s “Tantrasara” that was given to us by Paul Muller-Ortega to support our meditation practices, teaches us to seek the power of bliss through the practices, this bliss being true knowledge and true freedom. The more we practice, the more we can draw on this power and abide in a state of true happiness. Paul Muller-Ortega sometimes says that we want to be “unreasonably happy.” As I sit here feeling perfectly content after my weekend of practice and community and watching others in the airport get progressively grumpier with the delay, I feel unreasonably happy. I also feel fully motivated to practice and study ever more deeply so that I can abide ever more steadily and this glorious unreason.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Bi-Locating
The texts speak of the siddhis–beings with great powers from the steady dedicated fire (tapas) of practice (sadhana).
One of these powers is bi-location — that of being able to be in two places at once. A friend and fellow practitioner once said to me that I shouldn’t want to be able to bi-locate. What that is called, she said, is schizophrenia.
The resting in two places at once that I think we do want, is always to be able to rest in the vast, peace-filled, and gracious space of meditation while we are fully going about the daily business of living.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
