On the Way to Work (and Dharma?)
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- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos
Found Exhortation (Core Value of the Month: Discipline)
What if we were to cease to think of discipline as constraint, as punishment, as something confining and unattainably rigorous, something satisfying only in having suffered for gain? What if we were to understand it, as Swami Chidvilasananda, suggests as discipleship, a cleaving to the path out of the exquisitely blissful yearning for the light? Such discipline is, I think, what is the true practice of brahmacharya — aligning with the divine.
It was such a beautiful day that I spent as much time as possible walking in the neighborhood. That walking is “good for me” was just an incidental benefit.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Another Self-Induced India Photo Flashback (Roadside Temples)
Another self-induced India photo flashback after a long work day reading and writing at the computer with breaks only for shoveling snow and for eating and cleaning up.
We were traveling on the bus when I saw the Durga temple (the fifth photo–the one with the white glare and flat sky, but an incredible Durga). I suggested to my seatmate that he take a picture with his better camera. I recall it quite reasonably and correctly being pointed out to me the flat, white heat of the midday, humid sky and the glare off of the window would make it impossible optimally to show the intricacy and vividness of the temple.
I snapped a picture anyway. I was seeing things at angles coming and going and with whatever the light was at the moment. I likely wasn’t ever going to be there again and certainly not any time soon.
Sometimes the bus would pause in just the right place for a perfectly composed shot, but mostly it didn’t. In this, the act of taking these photos was much like other aspects of life and practice. Our path is not always certain. Sometimes it is hard to see because there is too little light or too much. Sometimes we have something obscuring our vision. Sometimes we are going too fast and only notice just before it would be too late for that turning.
But even with vision turned or obscured, we are always experiencing something. How can we make the best of each moment of experience? For me, it is meditating and bringing the spacious awareness of meditation to what I am witnessing. Taking photographs helps me witness in a certain way, too.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Found Exhortation (and Tapas)
What does it mean to excel, to do well? I think there is no excelling in yoga, at least not the way we conventionally think of excelling in school or career or sports. But to practice in a way that is more than casual, there must be ardor–tapas.
Tapas is often translated as fire, and the texts are full of stories of outrageous physical exertions done to prove the tapas of the practitioners looking for boons from the gods.
There is a fiery aspect to tapas, but I question whether it must necessarily be burning from physical exertion, though that is a path that calls out to many.
The fire of tapas could be thought of as doing what it takes to manifest the will to know something deeply enough to be able to experience the fluency and grace and delight of expertise. It could be the ardor to show up in a disciplined and committed way for hours and days and years of practice, always still wanting deeper, fuller knowing.
Found Exhortation (and Sauca?)
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
