Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Dance/Contact Improvisation | Food for the Body | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
Found Exhortation
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Sunset on My Way Home From Work
The sunset itself
Isn’t any less beautiful
Wherever witnessed.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Caught in the Trees?
Classical yoga philosophies (as opposed to tantra) teach us that our mind/body are not real; what is real is “God,” and when we truly know this, we will experience freedom. I personally don’t ascribe to teachings that hold a concept real, but ourselves unreal.
I do think, though, that the practice that comes from this theory that advises us to pause, to step back, and to notice when our reactions to things are so bound in previous limited experience or expectation or dogmatic teaching that we’ve created unnecessary constrictions and suffering.
What appears to be caught or bound or stuck might not necessarily be so.
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Signs Around Town
This was left behind in an assembly room that is used by many unrelated groups.
Who wrote it is unknown.
A possible answer, besides “what do you mean by spirit and soul?” would be “maybe not at all.”
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State of the Garden (You Can See the Teeth Marks)
I cut off the gnawed parts, diced the rest, and put it in the freezer. One day in snowy winter, I will thaw it and cook some warm for winter soup or stew with beans and grains and possibly greens.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos
Dakshinamurti
Sometimes we call out the names; sometimes they call out to us. I’ve been too tired and stressed to yearn for more adventures in the near term, but this week, I have found myself wanting to be in India, to be surrounded by the colors and the sights and the outrageous display of creative imagery.
The photo is of a roadside temple, with Siva in the aspect of Dakshinamurti–guru of all knowledges (jnana). I have been told that is good to chant to Dakshinamurti when one is looking for support and guidance in teaching.
In my work as a civil servant, I spend much time informally teaching colleagues and the regulated community the details of the complex area that is my specialty. I set my intention to be able not only to be clear, but to convey a bigger purpose even in that which does not readily come to mind as being something of spirit.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Quaker
Chanting the Names/Listening to the Silence
Krishna Das reminding his listeners the reasons he practices and offers kirtan scrolled across my Facebook feed last week with this quote:
“My path is to be in the living Presence; We have to find a way inside us, we have to find a way to open our hearts, to quiet our minds, to let go our fears and our selfishness, our guilt and our anger and jealousy; Everything is already present in our own hearts; By repeating these Names over and over, we are moving ourselves into that place in us; the Heart in us is deeper than any emotion or psychological issues; I don’t know if there is God, I know there is Love – Unconditional Love and I know I like to be in that love, and that maybe God; all you have to do is look, and chanting remembers us to look.”
I am in a space right now where chanting is serving me to help remember the good, despite all that is going on that doesn’t feel particularly good or hopeful. I don’t believe in “God” as an actual being (though I can no more disprove the actuality than anyone has been able to prove it), and history certainly proves the power of the idea of such a mystical being.
Regardless of whether the very real ideas of God(s) represents an actual being, it has been my beautiful experience–studying with Krishna Das and others over the years–that engaging in practices that turn our hearts towards love and universality helps us be sweet living in relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the ecological fabric of the whole of embodied existence. I chant because calling out the names in their universal multiplicity is a recognition, not dissimilar to what I have found offered in the silent collective worship of Quakers, that everyone has their own individual access to and ideas of the sublime, of the divine, of what brings them to feel a fullness of love.
