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- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Keeping Things in Perspective
We were holding at New Carrollton Station. Ten minutes or so passed before there was an announcement. The first announcement said that there was a “medical condition.” The second, perhaps five minutes later, referred to a “medical emergency” and that we were waiting for medical personnel to arrive. The third announced a “medical situation” and that we were still waiting for “appropriate medical persons” to come, but that we would leave as soon as they arrived. The final announcement let us know that the medical personnel had arrived and that we were about to depart for the next station. That we were leaving immediately upon arrival made it most likely that the person who was sick was leaving the train to go to the emergency room
Sure. I sent a text to the friend scheduled to pick me up on the other end of my trip and wondered how late I would be. Mostly, I took the experience as a reminder to be grateful that I was merely going to be late to visit friends and family (who would be perfectly understanding) and was not suffering from an accident or sudden illness. I spent a few moments in meditation, holding this stranger and those human beings who lives were just shifted by being in relationship to a greater or lesser degree to this stranger. I contemplated how those 15 minutes of waiting may have been of extreme pain and fear.
Sometimes When the Complexity
Sometimes, when I step back in awestruck wonder at the complexity of human society and what it means to be engaged in rulemaking in that complexity, I like to take a moment and look at pictures from India, a whole other version with much the same and much different.
I invite myself to think about being human in this time and place with this many billions of others. And then I return to my work, confident that my work is both absolutely essential and completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. In other words, I try to do my best, but still keep in perspective stumbling blocks to completing some mission in the way first intended.
I took this photo when we stopped on the bridge to Rameshwarum. I doubt I have either the fervor or the fortitude to have gone without the safety and comfort cushion of the bus.Sauca (Another Perspective)
My friend and Willow Street colleague Natalie Miller taught a lovely class on Monday night, using sauca as her theme. She said that she had recently read a book that described the yamas as things we do to be better persons, but that the niyamas were precepts for our spiritual practice to lead us better on the path. In that sense, she suggested, sauca is about clarity or purity of intention.
What I love about contemplating and practicing with these concepts is that they are so pregnant with meaning; they have so much to offer wherever we are in our life and on our individual path of spirit exploration. The more we contemplate and visit and practice and discuss, the more we will discover both about the meaning of the concept and about ourselves.






