“Lady, do you have some spare change?” asked a man sitting on a bench with eyes glassed over from one or more intoxicants, which from one of the notes in the bouquet of odors included alcohol.
“I don’t have any change,” I replied, “but would you like a peach? I just bought some.”
“No. I have my own.” After a pause, when I’d already passed him, he called out, “do you have a can opener?”
I guess his peaches were canned and that he preferred them canned to fresh.
I don’t know how I missed this pickling cucumber before it grew to such enormous proportions. I’ve scooped the seeds and pulp and added some water to ferment for a couple of days. Then I will dry the seeds that don’t float and save them for next year. This plant has been more successful than prior efforts to grow pickling cucumbers. They may have cross-pollinated with the Persian cucumber, but I’m trying to expand my seed-saving beyond the easy herbs and greens.
I won’t know how well I’ve done until next year, when I try to grow cucumbers from these seeds. There is a sense of connection to the cycles of life, with such required patience with the changes of season.
And the cucumber falling from the vine, ripe, and ready to go to seed, is a line in the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra, chanting to release and aid the passage of spirit from this realm of consciousness.
In the tantric philosophy, one of the aspects ascribed to the ultimacy of being itself is that it is completely free (svatantriya). Even when elemental being manifests itself as limited in time and space (as humans for example), it is part of the very dance, the play (lila) of existence.
I find it fascinating how much of our advertising uses language that in essence promises that we will realize aspects of our divine nature by owning some material thing or indulging in some activity. What is being sold, by those terms, inevitably fails deliver and must thoroughly disappoint. This thing on offer might be a wonderful technological toy that would be great fun to use, but hardly could bring unlimited freedom. If it did, we wouldn’t want to buy the next version.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
There are several heart-shaped holes in the sidewalks on my usual haunts. A number have gotten progressively more heart-shaped over a period of months. Who are the good fairies who are chipping away at things to remind us of the heart if we are just paying attention?
Ahimsa, which is the first of the yamas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and thus is the first practice or principle of the eight-limbed path, is usually translated as non-violence or non-harming. Over my years of practice and study, I have read and heard many versions–some general, some personal beliefs–as to what it means to practice nonviolence as part of a path of yoga. As I watch the way people around me are behaving and reacting to the heat and drought, I thought about how, for me, the practice ahimsa is as much about seeking to be in alignment with the movements and shifts around us that we cannot change as about refraining from specific acts of violence (though that is obviously a basic element).
In terms of aligning with the world arounds us and the cycles of our own body-mind, when we are sensitive to what will best serve our own self while having the least impact on the environment, we are practicing ahimsa, in other words, “opening to grace.” How does practicing ahimsa by behaving mindfully incorporate many aspects of the Anusara first principle of opening to grace? Opening to grace, as a practice principle, invites us to be open, sensitive, spacious, and radically affirm what is so that we can expand, shift, and serve ourselves and others in the best way possible under the circumstance. To be open in this way, try not to rage at the heat–or whatever is your weather. Soften, listen, and mindfully discover how you can live at your fullest, kindest, and most generous with what you cannot change.
When the temperature soars above 95F for days in a row, it is an act of violence to rage against it or to consume outrageous amounts of fossil fuels to cool our businesses and homes enough to wear warm clothes, sleep under blankets, cook and eat hot foods, or do an athletic asana practice or workout (lest we feel that we are not fulfilling some externally motivated personal notion of fitness–having external notions of how we should look, act govern us without accepting the actual situation is its own form of violence against ourselves) that we would not do if we could not artificially cool our environment.
Perhaps I have no call to speak on this: my central air conditioning is on, though I’ve been keeping it between 78-82F and I have been moving, dressing, and eating in a way that honors the fact that those temperatures are as cool as it is going to be until the heat wave breaks. Some might argue that using any air conditioning or even an electric fan or a refrigerator is doing excessive harm to the environment. That may in fact be true, but asking for more than we can do just makes things seem impossible, and then we are less likely to make any shift at all.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
