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I just read Arthur Kilmiurray’s recent blog entry on the citta-vikshepas (distractions) as described by Patanjali. I really like his suggestions on how a modern Western yogi might use the principle of the distractions for thinking about how to better align one’s path and daily living. The advice arrived timely.
Every time I walk past this sculpture, I wonder whose idea it was to repaint it. For a long time it the gilding was chipped and faded. For me it had much more charm showing its age.
So too, I think, with humans. It is great to feel and look youthful naturally because of proper care of health, and quite another to disfigure ourselves and our looks with surgery and treatment seeking always to look like we have not fully lived out some life.
By all means, seek to remain vibrant and supple, but do please also honor the signs of experience.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
After a day of teaching and more discussion and emails regarding the upheaval, I had a memory of petting one of the temple cows at Chidambaram. I was jetlagged and in sensory overload, and then I petted a most wonderful cow. I dropped into a space where I was perfectly at peace and unaware of the time and all the things going on around me. This space is always there for us, even in the absence of a sacred cow, and we practice so that we can find it more and more consistently, especially when we are being challenged.
I did not photograph the Chidambaram temple cow, although a nice Indian lady asked me if her husband could photograph the two of us with the cow, so she has a photograph of herself with the strange American lady in a sari who was petting the cow. I stopped to pet many cows after that. In one town, a man told me, as I was scritching a cow between ears and horns, that the cow would enjoy a banana.