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Signs Around Town (2 of 2)

ByElizabeth

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Receiving v. Taking Revisited

    ByElizabeth

    Last Tuesday night class, I noticed that one of my students who had started out with very tight hamstrings fairly easily touched his toes at the beginning of class. He is an athletic guy who started yoga in his late 60’s. He first came only with his wife, who has been a regular student for a number of years. After a few months, he started coming even when she was out of town. He said that although it was hard and he does not always feel like coming, he always feels better afterwards, which inspires him to keep showing up.

    When I saw his easeful uttanasana–standing forward fold–I asked whether six months ago he would have thought this possible. He replied that he knew it would just take time. If he had pushed it, he would have just busted a hamstring.

    This was a great illustration of the class theme of receiving v. taking. If he had pushed or grasped at the poses that require hamstring flexibility, he would have just injured himself. By coming to class consistently and practicing with right effort, though, the openness came to him when it was time.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    “It’s All Good” (and Voltaire’s Candide at the Shakespeare Theater)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night I went to see the revival of the Bernstein musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, now playing at the Shakespeare Theater’s Harmon Hall (discount tickets available), which was absolutely a delight — fantastic staging and direction, luxurious costuming, enthusiastic performances.  Throughout his journey, which is beset with cruelty, hardship, natural disaster, and other mishaps wherever he goes, Candide sings of his tutor’s optimistic advice that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”  The application of this philosophy leads to some silly results, including the Monty Python-worthy lyric “it’s a great day for an auto da fe.”

    I have a friend who, after telling me of various life challenges and griefs, inevitably signs off with the phrase “it’s all good,” though I am not sure she believes it.  I thought of her repetition of the phrase “it’s all good,” while I was watching the musical.  Later in Candide’s travels, he encounters a second philosopher scholar who (I’m paraphrasing loosely) contradicts the “it’s all for the best” philosophy of Candide’s tutor by telling Candide to just look around and he will know that things are not in fact always for the best.  A fluffier version of  the debate in the novel, as to whether things are all for the best when there is so much cruelty and devastation, is interwoven into the rest of the play.

    I’ve never had a desire to wear the t-shirt proclaiming that “it’s all good.”  I look around me, and I simply do not believe it.  I do believe wholeheartedly, though, Voltaire’s premise that we have the responsibility to “cultivate our garden.”  As my teachers John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega espouse, we should “respond from the highest,” regardless of what we experience and encounter.  By having our response make the best of all possible worlds from things that are not evidently for the best, we bring more light into the world, whatever is our world view.  I can only hope that with steady practice of yoga and meditation, I can keep ever truer to these teachings when I am seriously challenged.

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    It’s All Good?

    ByElizabeth

    I’ve never understood the t-shirt saying that “it’s all good.”. It just isn’t. This morning I found myself near to tears reading the news of violence, greed, malice, and willful indifference.

    I do believe that we need to do our best to respond to everything we face with the greatest good we can offer. The ability to respond from spacious, illuminated awareness for the good and to discover the possibility of good in the most difficult and abhorrent is what yoga and meditation–or any other spiritual discipline–makes progressively more possible. No amount of yoga will make me love crisis, but it will make me better able to experience and offer love when in crisis, so I hope.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Dim the Lights for Earth Hour on March 28th

    ByElizabeth

    Join in the call for a friendlier, healthier planet by participating in Earth Hour by dimming your lights on March 28th (and before and after when you can).

    A few years ago — just before the Al Gore movie came out — I went to a talk and movie about what we can do about global warming.  A Nepalese attorney who had been working on a case before the World Court that related to saving the snows of the Himalayas (good luck), said something that fully resonated with me.  He said he did not understand why Americans turn on electric lights on a sunny day.  I think about that every time I see a light on at the same time as bright daylight is coming through the window.  If I have the power to turn off the light (or not turn it on in the first place), I choose to do so.

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