Signs Around Town–Non-Verbal (Happy Valentine’s Day)
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Sculptures Around Town
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Signs Around Town (and Some Thoughts on Community)
I found on first and second and even third reading this declaration a little confusing. It may be that something was lost in translation (from the Bulgarian–a completely unknown language to me).
It does not say that to each his own is freedom, but that we should have freedom AND to each his own.
I think this means that true freedom is not everyone getting his or her own. Rather, out of freedom, we choose the binds of community and sometimes elect to forego complete individualism so that we can maximize the fulfillment of each individual as a member of the community.
To each his own as the only governing principle does not permit anything other than suspicious and antagonistice relationship. Honoring that everyone wants to be recognized as a free individual but that getting the benefit and support of community requires freely choosing to submit, commit, and work to a relationship in which maximum individuality thrives but the community of individuals is greater than any of its individual members–that’s a great and worthy dance.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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A Momentary Yearning
I am having a momentary yearning that it is hard for me to imagine realizing. Given all my commitments (commitments that I treasure for the groundedness, sense of place, and community that they give me in return), I cannot quite figure out how I could fit in a long weekend in Paris before March 11, 2012.
Nonetheless, I have been enjoying this morning a fantasy of picking up and going to Paris to see the Tagore exhibit at the Petit Palais, and incidentally eating and walking and photographing and delighting in everything else Paris has to offer. I suppose I could buy the catalogue–the internet has made such things ever so easy, but it wouldn’t quite be the same.
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Art and Culture | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Quaker
Signs Around Town
In the washrrom at William Penn House. Come join us for class on Tuesday nights. For me, the practice and study of yoga informs this question.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Found Objects Around Town
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Occupy DC–The Morning After
When I was on my way to do volunteer work this morning, I rode the bus past the dregs of Occupy DC-McPherson Square. The police presence was thick. I wasn’t sure why the heavy construction equipment was necessary. It is hard to know what will happen to the movement when it loses its physical location. It is clear that the idea of “occupy” has already entered popular culture, and the idea of the 99% will be part of this year’s Federal elections.
As things are created and dissolved, it is always hard to know what will stay and what will disappear from the fabric of our lives. Part of it depends on the strength of the ideas. Part depends on the commitment of those involved to transform and evolve to keep what is good moving forward even when beset with challenge and upheaval. As for the last photograph, which was taken just down the street (the cop cars were clearly related to those in the Square)–I couldn’t tell you what god or whose country; could you?
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In Which My Camera Sees the Good
It was one of those days when it was hard to get home. I’d gone to the museum to see the Harry Callahan at 100 and then went out for tea in Georgetown with a friend. I stopped on my way home for some groceries. I got to the bus stop just as a bus was arriving, but with a big suburban SUV hogging the bus stop and the dark rainy night, the driver sailed past without stopping. He must have been really late and was taking advantage of a short break in traffic. I caught a taxi rather than wait in the cold rain for the next bus.
Traffic was completely still on K Street because of the police trying to clear out Occupy DC from McPherson Square and a number of streets were closed off to traffic, so the driver went to H Street, which was almost equally congested. Things started to move for a bit, but then there was then some issue with another big black SUV with suburban plates in Chinatown that had been pulled over by the police. This resulted in absolute tirade by the taxi driver as to why DC should not be allowed to be a state. I was having trouble explaining that Federal voting rights for citizens in the District had nothing to do with whether the cops could have pulled the car over better or faster so that it would less obstruct traffic. I gave up completely when he started in on how DC schools should be better than Maryland’s and Virginia’s because they had so much more tax revenue.
I remembered I had my camera in my pocket. I accepted the the meter was going to run unless I got out of the taxi in the rain (and then what was I going to do?) and enjoyed photographing the lights of the city at night. Sometimes, my camera really helps me accept whatever is and see the beauty in it.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Devotion (Bhakti)
Much is said about devotion in yoga, and there is a great privileging by many of the path of devotion — bhakti. With no clear answers, I contemplate often what it means to practice bhakti, to be devoted in a religious or spiritual sense. Witnessing those on pilgrimage when I was in India (it was “pilgrimage season”), I was flooded with memories and ideas for contemplation about what it means to be devoted and how people express devotion.
Among the thoughts and memories were having observed the operaphiles in their expensive clothes swoon and gasp and applaud at the Vienna Opera House on the opera level where I had paid a dollar for standing room; having been literally swept off of my feet in the press of the crowds heading to the tube at Wembley Stadium after seeing the Rolling Stones in concert; watching the people do the standing wave thing at ball games while hollering for their team as if their whole view of the world was dependent on who wins; having taken, standing room only, the third class train from Florence to Rome during Easter week (a different pilgrimage season), on asking who is that woman on the billboards, discovering that India, too, has a habit of electing movie stars to political office.
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“Far Too Many Words”
Professor Douglas Brooks on language and the India pilgrimage. I have just finished leading the group house practice and need to meditate before going to bed, so I do not have time to write more, but I wanted to draw your attention to this blog for your own contemplations about language and practice. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to join in part of the conversation and look forward to going ever deeper.
