If I post a picture of a rainbow a few days after I took it, is it still worth looking at? Or does it need to be in the moment?
At one point, during this walk with a friend at the National Arboretum, four hawks were circling. I wondered what was on the ground. It was a gloriously temperate day.
Found yesterday. Today, I managed to stay inside working.
What do we look for, what do we see, when we come looking and to see another culture?
The philosophy and religion professors with whom I have studied yoga philosophy have emphasized that we need both theoretical study and experiential practice to develop understanding. In that light, here’s the reading line-up (though currently I am slowly making my way through Harry Potter y el cáliz de fuego.
Anyone who wants to or has read anything in this list and is interested in discussing, please let me know.
During one of our sessions, one of my fellow students asked whether she was really seeking a life of renunciation because she sometimes really craved sitting quietly for meditation. For her, having first experienced meditation as an adult who has a rich and comfortable life, even the shortest time sitting with eyes closed looking only within felt like it might be a denial of the outer world.
The practices Paul Muller-Ortega is teaching, and as he makes absolutely clear, are very much for the householder and are not the rarified path of a renunciate. Sitting in silence is a blissful and steady; it is going towards the inner world and not going away from the outer world.
We do not have to renounce our lives to sit regularly in silence. We can frankly delight in the sweetness of inner light and stillness and honor our desire to do so (a true renunciate would have to renounce even that desire). Meditation as part of the daily life of a householder, is a bedrock of support so that we can be ever more fully engaged in our lives, no matter how noisy they can get sometimes.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
