Fortune
This cookie fortune has been taped to the bulletin board in my office for a couple of decades. Sometimes I remember to notice it.
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Dogwood (and the Five Acts of Shiva)
Tight buds of next Spring’s
Flowers amid reddening
Leaves about to fall.
Note: The five acts of Shiva are concealment, revelation, creation, sustenance, and dissolution
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Found Objects Around Town
This is a strange one.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening | Meditation | Photos
Gorgeous Autumn Day In the Neighborhood
It is always possible to appreciate beauty, no matter how challenging things are. It is in these moments of recognition that healing takes place.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Dance/Contact Improvisation | Meditation | Photos
Fences, Freedom, and Viveka
Refining how and to what we say “yes” and “no” in the world is one of the purposes of the yoga practices. The dedicated yogin seeks ever-growing discernment (viveka) of his or her own limits for the purpose of living ever more expansively and in fact more freely than is possible for those who fight against or ignore limits.
If we stick up or hold onto fences and defenses where they are not needed, we miss the opportunity to connect. Conversely, if we fail to honor the extraordinary combination of limits that makes us our exquisitely individual self and shapes our embodied connection to the world around us, we will be less free in ourselves and in the world and with each other, which leads to suffering.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
Lord Murugan and the Peacock Yoga Pants
A few months ago, I succumbed to the brilliant marketing at one of those yoga studio boutiques filled with enticing outfits that make one feel like part of the in crowd and bought a pair of leggings covered in an allover peacock feather print that made me think of Murugan whose temple we visited on the trip to South India and whose steed is a peacock.
One of the stories about Murugan, who is Ganesha’s brother (Ganesha being the beloved elephant god and remover of obstacles), talks about a competition between Murugan and Ganesha for divine knowledge. (Let’s leave aside for now the question of why a divine being would need to enter a competition to gain divine knowledge as too big a question for a blogger who has no academic or priestly expertise in the Hindu pantheon). In the story, as I have heard it (and as described in the Wiki article that I have shamelessly linked to above, despite all the disdain one might appropriately have for one who cites to a Wiki article), Murugan loses because what he does is try to show off his prosaic prowess by tearing around the world three times. Ganesha wins by quietly circumambulating with quiet worship Shiva and Parvati, the god and goddess, the essence of being, the pulsation of opposites.
When we were out walking in the woods the other day, my friend ER took an incredibly insightful picture of me trying too hard to look like the yoginis who grace the magazine covers and can do the most magnificent asana. The brilliance of the photo is its revelation of the empty ridiculousness of my posing like the beauty I am not, and of pointedly demonstrating how neither wearing wild peacock pants, nor being able to do a tolerably deep backbend reveals anything to the self about spirit. But perhaps it also shows, in its candid and ironic look at an all too human yogini, that like Lord Murugan, who despite of or perhaps because of his absolutely flawed nature is actively and devotedly worshipped, I in my laughable striving may still have in my human being something of the divine. I can only hope.
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Random Thoughts on Getting a Flu Shot
Today was the day at the Department of Labor for those with last names starting with the letters F-L to get a flu vaccine, including the infamous H1N1.
I mostly don’t feel a need for a flu shot for myself. I’d rather rely on daily outdoor walks regardless of the season, a healthy diet, adequate sleep virtually every night, yoga asana, meditation, regular massage, and washing my hands frequently and generally keeping them away from my face.
But I’m going to visit my mother in a rehabilitation facility where she is recovering from a severely broken leg. If, for a few days of discomfort and a half hour out of my day, I could reduce the risk of being a carrier or being unable to visit, it made sense to go ahead.Also weighing in favor of the vaccine, though insufficient reason alone, is that in order to yield the expansion of my horizons that is possible from a return trip to India, I will be enduring the stress on my immune system from the travel.
