Now is not the time for avoidance or passivity. What can you do or do more? Who are you going to support? These are the questions for an engaged yogi. Meditation, asana, and pranayama are life balance and support not ends in themselves for a householder yogi.
Would we need such a sign if we weren’t bombarded with messages to hurry up, to go faster, to do more quicker, etc? I wonder.
After teaching my classes this morning at Willow Street, I will be studying with Paul Muller-Ortega, who is leading a workshop on tantric philosophy and meditation today and tomorrow. It will be good to study, to learn, to meditate with direction. To be able to teach, it is essential for me to study.
My Grandma Rose (for whom the name of this blog is partly in tribute) was a very important part of my childhood. She had a small, but lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and I spent about a weekend a month for most of my childhood with her. One day when the family was visiting and I was no more than seven or eight, I took a carton of her cigarettes and destroyed them. She was very angry, and I got in a lot of trouble with my parents for the deed. I had just learned in school about all the horrors of smoking (that was the very early years of starting to admit and warn of the hazards of smoking), and I wanted to protect her.
When my grandmother died at age 76 from her heart unexpectedly stopping, I was in 10th grade. They found she had advanced stages of emphysema. Occasionally I wonder how my life would have been different and think about how much she would have enjoyed seeing me grow up if the smoking had not shortened her life.
Although I was too young to know that we cannot change our loved ones by force or even by the force of our love, I hope she knew that my childish act of destruction was borne from love.
At Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
