My first reaction when seeing young people go past my house without a mask, is to ask, where’s your mask? My second reaction may not be kind. I am trying to make a habit of thinking, may they be happy–starting in the middle of the litany.
That may be more about enlightened self-interest, than exercising true compassion, but it’s a start.
World Wide Knit in Public Day is this weekend — June 13th (and 14, 20, and 21). What will you be knitting? I have started a pair of leg-warmers. The pattern was really for ankle warmers, but I have chosen to make them longer than the pattern suggested. The nice farmers who raise the sheep, spin and dye the yarn, and sell it at the Dupont Fresh Farm Market, called them “yoga socks.” The yarn is beautiful. The sample pair looked like something I would want on my feet in colder weather. The project was small enough to tuck into my carry bag. Definitely a go for summer knitting (unlike the three-quarter finished mohair shruggy that has become a lapful of furry stuff).
“Why are they so short?” I asked. “We had originally designed them to be longer, but our teacher said we might need to grab our ankles?” they explained. “When would you do that, when it would not matter whether you were touching fabric instead of your skin,” I puzzled out loud, not out of criticism, but really wanting to know, thinking maybe in Pilates. The farmers could not really think of a reason. I bought an extra skein along with the kit to make the — oh, let’s call them footless socks — calf height. The yarn has a bit of a stickiness to it, so they are not slippery. They will be good to wear for yoga.
I’ve never knitted on double-pointed, size 2 needles, in the round before, though I happened to have four in the house (picked up at a yard sale for a $1 a decade or two ago and put in the sewing box). I tend not to knit from patterns for whole projects. So I had a little learning to do. The pattern did not explain how to use the double-pointed needles; that knowledge was assumed. I am not used to the contraints of following a pattern. Doing so, on occasion, though, forces me to learn a new technique. It took my a couple of hours to get into the rhythm, but now I’ve eased into the project.
I sometimes seek the same type expansion with cooking. Though easily able to cook something delicious without a recipe with most ingredients, sometimes I pick out a complicated recipe just to expand my skills in the kitchen.
Yoga, most of all, benefits from a combination of free exploration and attentive development to the knowledge imparted by a teacher. We are most full and expanded when we combine experience and teachings. We receive the teachings and then we practice again and again to make it not just our own experience, but part of our being. This process is called vikalpa samskara.
When I find it hard to muster sufficient humor about the state of things, there’s always a silly cat picture.
I have spent most of my life practicing one thing or the other. What attracts me about practicing in the sense of complete absorption that it brings. For a time, the absorption can be enough. Ultimately, though, the absorption should bring joy. I do not really think that it matters what it is that one is practicing as long as steady engagement brings a sense of inner peace and bliss that enables one to be kinder and to offer service in some way. I have quit some things along the way either because the practice did not bring enough joy or fulfillment or the practice was detrimental to my nature.
I know yoga and meditation are the right for me at this point in my life because sadhana (practice) continues to brings me ever increasing delight. I do not think of practice as work (though sometimes I need to use some self-discipline to remind myself to practice), but as an invitation to greater depth and understanding of not only the practice, but myself.
I have friends for whom the right practice is not yoga, but something else — a visual art, music, law. It is not what one does, but how one does it, and whether it brings a sense of fullness to life, a satisfaction with the engagement in the doing, rather than in what the doing achieves.
