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On the Way Home From Tuesday Night Yoga Practice at William Penn House
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Jai Chandra
Last night’s moon, full and dancing with the clouds.
On Looking at Clouds
One reason to look up is to avoid the troubled response to a view of highway and homeless shelter. The other is because I am captivated by the never ending exquisite beauty of sky and how much I can learn about my environment from the sky if I pay steady and open attention to it.
Sometimes I practice because I want to move my attention away from something unpleasant. More often it is because to practice is an abiding joy.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
Questions Around Town
Some things we need to learn to adequately navigate the environment in which we are living. Some things we can choose to learn. And sometimes, life gives us the choice of suffering or learning from what life has given us.
Down By the River
Today the clouds were what captured my attention. When I was there yesterday (with many fewer people out), a groundhog/woodchuck ran across the path about 10 feet in front of me. I was too captivated by the unexpected encounter that I did not even try to take a picture.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
Found Exhortation
A number of years ago I had a conversation with a cherished friend and co-worker who is no longer in this body. I was explaining to her the yoga practice of samtosha (contentment), which is one of the five niyamas that make up the second limb of the eight-limbed path of yoga set forth in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. My friend said it felt like a great revelation to think of contentment as a practice. She had thought of it as a state you were either lucky enough to have — or not.
Many states or characteristics or attitudes that we tend to think of as only being innate characteristics or good fortune can be cultivated.
Wearing an exhortation on a t-shirt might not necessarily be my style, but I do agree kindness is worthy of cultivation when it does not happen spontaneously.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Cherry Blossoms
When I ventured out into the streets yesterday morning to get some air, greet some neighbors, and get some fresh vegetables if possible, I saw that a very large branch had come off of a cherry tree a block from my house. I have lived in my house long enough to have watched the tree grow from a three-foot sapling to a tree that has swollen past the confines of its row house corner yard. The branch that broke off in the snow was four or five times the size of the sapling when it was first planted. I spent an hour walking and then made sure I went back to the tree. It was starting to bud. It was warm last month, and it’s getting lighter every day. I don’t have high confidence that the buds were far enough along to force blossoms. I thought I’d give it a try. Whether I see blossoms early or not, I can use the branches to stake young herbs in another 7-10 weeks.
