It seems funny now to write about some of these most basic concepts (as are presented below). Even funnier to realize this was less than a year ago! But of course I had to learn them at some point, and many of these words will show up again and again from now on here. And some of these ideas and words may be new to a few of you. As I will write about at some point, and probably has struck many of you already, it is utterly bizarre that I had already read so much and been so dedicated in some ways to the sacred texts and ideas of India WITHOUT ever having become interested in yoga until this point. More on that later. But yes, I am aware how strange that is/was.
January 20
Returning my library books (fiction) and finally realized I don’t have to take the risk or figure out beforehand which is the perfect yoga book. Duh! They do carry other books that are actually useful in some way. And I was surprised at what a selection our library had. From slim glossy volumes stripped of all spiritual content, to those focused on age and others on varieities of health problems. Yoga as fitness predominates. But there were many books offering to explain the “real”yoga, the spiritual, the ancient, the Indian yoga. Some by Americans – scholars or MDs, some telling of their personal journeys, and some who’ve set themselves up as gurus. Then there were a handful by Indians and other Asians, including at least one of the wall one. And a couple of Christian Yoga volumes. So a decent variety for a small, close-minded city that usually pretends it’s never neard of anything besides Lutheranism and Catholicism. I wonder if the Fed is tracking our library card usage. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve converted to Hinduism rather than Islam :)
Anyway, I’m going to keep reading the Upanishads, because I want to and because I just finally got to the Changdogya Upanishad. But I’m also going to start one of the yoga books. As soon as my butt allows (I was just pre-hemhoiroid surgery) I want to work it into my daily life, as well. As part of and in addition to my meditation and mantra. This body obviously needs some help. Who else is going to give it?
The Changdogya U seems to be mostly about the High Chant, OM, and establishing or supporting the superiority of breath. Breath was already shown to be the most sacred, or central or closest to brahman in the BU, but eh CU continues on that theme. In the first chapter you see something you’d never see in an English translation of a Christian text: All the most sacred things described as being in an act of coitus. In acts of coitus with one another in matched pairs.
First establish the holiest of holies; what is the essence of beings on earth? Water. The essence of water? Plants? Essence of plants? Man. And so on, until we get the most important things. Then: “The Rg is nothing but speech; The Saman is breath; and the High Chant is this syllable Om. Speech and breath, the Rg and The Saman, each of these is clearly in a state of coitus.”
In the second chapter it is explained how evil entered our human consciousness, but also how it is and has always been limited. Prajapati made both gods and the demons. When the gods and demons began to fight, the gods decided to use the chant Om against the demons. “So they venerated it as this breath here in the nostrils.” The demons attacked it, and that’s how we came to have both good and bad smells. So the gods take OM and “venerate it as speech.” Devils attack and we say good and evil things. And so on through all the senses until they come to “this breath here in the mouth.” That breath, prana, is so solid and secure that the demons cannot assail it. They attack, but is like “throwing clay stones at a rock; the clay stones shatter upon hitting the rock.” When OM and prana are united, I guess, no evil at all may enter. Not the whole host of demons and devils may breach it.
Okay! I have to give Ms. Turlington (Christy Turlington, Living Yoga) full points. She’s done a good job (I won’t even say “for a model”) of anchoring yoga deeply in India and explaining to a very thorough degree the complexity and age of the spiritual traditions there. Moreover, she’s done it in a way that reveals the complexity without making it so overwhelming a neophyte would throw up their hands. I’m impressed. And she’s done it with humility, with good (excellent) reasons for writing the book – I.e. because the trendy West has largely ignored the spiritual origins and implications of yoga which has lead to situations where people are teaching it long before they understand it themselves. Dangerous. But she says this without casting blame or making anyone feel badly, or that she’s saying she has a right to judge. More like she is obeying an imperative that when one has knowledge others might need, it is one’s duty to lovingly provide it. Except that sounds smarmy or condescending and she didin’t strike either of those tones.
Anyway, so far, except for the part about her life – pretty interesting in itself and not wholly unlike my own though vastly more financially and popularly successful – it has all been review for me up until now. Now being a description of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. We have them; they’ve been sitting in the bathroom for two years. I’ve read part of them, but I bought them for J, and haven’t wanted to “steal” them from him. I may need to just read them now, and they are clearly important to pursuing the path toward samadhi.
In them he apparently describes eight limbs of yoga (jnana or raja? Or is this a kind of blended, post-Gita, Classical period arch-yoga?). The limbs are called astanga. The astanga are:
Yamas and niyamas – modes of moral and social conduct. I assume the same as Krishna gave in the B.Gita.
Asanas – postures, I think.
Pranayama – restraint and control of the breath
Pratyahara – internalization of the senses
Dharana – Concentration
Dhyana – meditation
Samadhi – ultimate state of union with Self, God, the Source
Yama, niyama, asana and pranayama are all bahira sadhana, external practices, which can be taught by someone else. Ah, I really should read his chapter on avidya, or “Knowledge other than right knowledge.” He apparently discusses at length, in the second chapter, the state of false understanding, when we think we are doing the right thing, but it is wrong, or we don’t trust our instincts when we are right, and convince ourselves to do wrong. I could definitely use more discernment in figuring out whether I am on the right path about some things.
Now I am learning about Krishnamacharya, widely credited with bringing yoga to the West. She (Turlington) claims there are three main branches of yoga (of Hatha yoga, of course): Astanga Vinyasa, Iyengar and Kundalini. Astanga Vinyasa was developed in the 20th century from a recently rediscovered manuscript, the Yoga Korunta, which Krishnamacharya and his students believed to be what Patanjali originally intended. Don’t they all? This method emphasizes vinyasa-synchronizing breath and movement. It also produces great intence body heat and sweath, meant to purify and detoxify muscles and organs.
Iyengar follows nother of Krishnaryacharya’s students, and seems to focus more on the mind and self –practice. Standing asanas. Stay in each one for a long time, so no heat general. They allow one to use paper, belts etc. to attain the proper position until one can do it oneself. Kundalini – literally= the curl of the lock of him of the hair of the blood. Especially for householders. Interesting. So for those with the busiest lives, most drudgery, it is give a most direct experience if one’s highest consciousness.
The point is to discover one’s prana and put it at the service of one’s will, one’s Self.
There is also Bikram Yoga, which sounds awful. They heat the room to 100 degrees and practice in front of full length mirrors on all four walls. The focus is purely on the physical appearance. I saw his book in the library. There was zero mention of spirituality, or discipline, or any kind of soul-benefit. It was all about toning, losing weight, looking good, etc.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Return to the Spiral Path
I’ve decided it’s time to take this blog back to its original purpose. Enough fooling around! And now that I have spent several months recuperating from various surgeries, I have a giant backlog of journal entries that I’d like to share. In fact, many amazing things happened “on the way to the operating table” and on the way home from it that drew me along my path and shaped my relationship with the divine. As I said when I sort of re-appeared in July, I sometimes feel like a different person. Clearly I’m not, because when I fail to do the things I’ve learned to do over the past 6 months, I fall all too easily into the impatient and ego-driven self I’ve always been. I’m hopeful that by reviewing the journey I will also recapture the means to get back to where I was at the peak. Where to begin . . .
January 7, 2008
As I type up old journals for the blog I am amazed at how much spiritual progress I had made – and then lost – again! This is a repetive pattern. Do other people do this? I wonder if it is what Phyllis (my pain psychologist) was talking about when she told me about all those who dropped out of her prayer group once real transformations began to occur? We want to change, we do, but it is scary to let go of our familiar, habitual ways of being so at some point we stop doint the necessary things, and eventually begin sliding back . . .
For me, I believe what happened – and I have to rely on memory because I stopped keeping a journal at the end of the summer 2007 – is that I really did not need the journal anymore. The purpose had changed, anyway. I occasionally recorded a few key insights. But after Christmas 2007, when some things happened, a great shift occurred in me. I began to feel that I was making a doormat of myself with my attempts at compassion and forgiveness. Instead of working at figuring out how to achieve the appropriate balance, I began to actually desire to hang on to resentments!!! I didn’t want to smooth them away with the mantra; I wanted to begin to collect them! Heaven help me, I wanted to nurse my anger enough to harden into a protective shell. I’d been badly hurt, you see. I felt that I wasn’t going to allow it any more.
But in my blindness, part of what I was angry about was feeling that I wasn’t respected. Not for me, the “real” me, the person I’d been and the one I was becoming. That I’d cut off or hidden big chunks of myself to please others. So in my anger, what did I do? I turned my back on the best practices I’d ever known, the most incredible spiritual progress I’d ever made, and in the process hid even more of my real self. Brilliant! I began to find excuses not to meditate – never hard with a schedule like mine – until eventually, by late March or so, I wasn’t doing it at all. I’d say by mid April or so I wasn’t reading any spiritual or devotional material. I was very busy with my job; several conference presentations in and out of state, teaching four classes, managing large numbers of TAs and RAs, interns and independent studies. Lots of institutional and community service. And a lot of pain that led to two surgeries in the summer of 2008. We also were trying to buy a house, which we did, and moved in on September 22. Then it was just a mad, crazy dash through the semester. Just hoping to survive it. No thoughtfulness really. No meditation, no concentration. I still have the mantra.
Now I have a room for meditation. That tired old excuse is gone. I am on Winter Break and my only excuse for not starting again is pain, which is no excuse. And the shame for having been gone so long. Like my Self doesn’t know?! And all the other excuses are all the more reason I need to GET IN THERE! Today! So I will. No more excuses.
January 15
[Had wisdom tooth pulled and two doctor visits leading up to third surgery]
I’m going to be able to get to work, the blog, and even my spiritual life back on track now. I have a place to meditate, the ice is broken; I have a plan to begin reading the Uddhava Gita and the Upanishads again, and I’m going to pull myself back to Krishna’s feet.
January 17
I’m reading the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad and trying not to take a thousand notes. But some things are not in the glossary and I want to be sure to check them later. I’m in 3.1.8 and there is a Hote priest. From context, Hote priests appear to be associated with fire and speech and maybe death. Breath too? Just read and learn from context like a child – that is what I am supposed to be doing.
It does seem to be a particular god associated with the element of fire and the means of speech. As Adhvaryu is associated next with days and nights and sight. Udgatr is with the waxing and waning moon and breath. Each of these has temples, priests, rites and sacrifices, assumedly to be practiced at certain times. Then it says when there is no support in this world, one turns to Brahman, who is associated with the mind.
This sage who is being quizzed is next asked about “graspers” and “overgraspers”. This is a fascinating way to look at the relationship between senses and sense-objects. The graspers are our sense organs. Speech, nose, tongue, sight, hearing, mind, hands, skin. Things sensed are not described as grasped but overgrasped, capturing the dialectic, the mutuality, the relationship between Self and gunas. Visible appearances, flavors, sounds, desires, actions, touches . . . they grasp us back.
Graha and atigraha – double entedre. Graha also refers to the cup used to draw out Soma. And atigraha also means the practice of offering extra cupfuls of soma. So, the grasp that grasps back!
In 4.1.3 the same sage, Yajnavalkya, is instructing the king of the same region and he goes through this kind of charade where he aks what the kings sages have taught him about brahman. They have taught him some formulas – “Brahman is sight” “Brahman is breath,” but not what the words mean “or what its foundations are.” So he goes through each one and for each he ends up saying, “The highest brahman is sight.” “The highest brahman is breath.” Etc. The king never asks him to resolve how all of them can be the highest, so he doesn’t, exactly.
January 19
I am re-reading Easwaran as part of re-establishing my equilibrium and good spiritual habits, and reminding myself of what I am supposed to be doing. On the subject of one-pointedness, I am struck (again) by how much energy I have squandered this past year with split attention. As my tasks and responsibilities piled up, I somehow came to believe I could get more done by dividing myself into 2 or 4 or 8 pieces, each with only half, quarter or eight the energy, knowledge or attention. I literally found myself booked for 2-4 meetings more than once last spring. Clearly tht did not work. So I need to attend carefully to what he is saying.
In Sanskrit, ekagrata. Eka = one, agra = point, or edge. Easwaran talks about how much energy is dissipated in giving mental attention to things over which we have no control; the past, regrets, the comeback we wish we’d made. But also he discusses the way we make some tasks boring or onerous by not giving them our attention. I mean, if you spend the ntire time you are grading essays or creating a rubric feeling put-upon and impatient, and telling yoursel fyou shouldn’t have to do this grading; it is boring; the students won’t appreciate it, or whatever, then half of your mind is fighting the other half, which is trying to work despite the clamor. A grey pall sets over everything, you feel dispirited, disgusted and bored, and the whole project comes to feel pointless.
In his terms, you’ve consumed a tremendous amount of vital energy at war with yourself. No wonder the thing exhausts you. The task could be anything one finds boring or menial or beneath them. And all of this enormous waste and generation of unhappiness that spills over into the rest of one’s life is all due to the simple lack ofan ability or will to pay attention to the task at hand.
If we gave our attention to these tasks – well, we know what happens then. We experience it with the tasks we love. So I need to remember to give the same attention to every task that I give to solving an intriguing puzzle in the data, or prepping an interesting class, or writing an engaging part of an essay. Dishwashing can be and has been exactly this absorbing when I’ve tried it. Remember? I managed this for a brief time, and it was wonderful. Everything in my life smoothed out. Why and how did I let that go?L
January 7, 2008
As I type up old journals for the blog I am amazed at how much spiritual progress I had made – and then lost – again! This is a repetive pattern. Do other people do this? I wonder if it is what Phyllis (my pain psychologist) was talking about when she told me about all those who dropped out of her prayer group once real transformations began to occur? We want to change, we do, but it is scary to let go of our familiar, habitual ways of being so at some point we stop doint the necessary things, and eventually begin sliding back . . .
For me, I believe what happened – and I have to rely on memory because I stopped keeping a journal at the end of the summer 2007 – is that I really did not need the journal anymore. The purpose had changed, anyway. I occasionally recorded a few key insights. But after Christmas 2007, when some things happened, a great shift occurred in me. I began to feel that I was making a doormat of myself with my attempts at compassion and forgiveness. Instead of working at figuring out how to achieve the appropriate balance, I began to actually desire to hang on to resentments!!! I didn’t want to smooth them away with the mantra; I wanted to begin to collect them! Heaven help me, I wanted to nurse my anger enough to harden into a protective shell. I’d been badly hurt, you see. I felt that I wasn’t going to allow it any more.
But in my blindness, part of what I was angry about was feeling that I wasn’t respected. Not for me, the “real” me, the person I’d been and the one I was becoming. That I’d cut off or hidden big chunks of myself to please others. So in my anger, what did I do? I turned my back on the best practices I’d ever known, the most incredible spiritual progress I’d ever made, and in the process hid even more of my real self. Brilliant! I began to find excuses not to meditate – never hard with a schedule like mine – until eventually, by late March or so, I wasn’t doing it at all. I’d say by mid April or so I wasn’t reading any spiritual or devotional material. I was very busy with my job; several conference presentations in and out of state, teaching four classes, managing large numbers of TAs and RAs, interns and independent studies. Lots of institutional and community service. And a lot of pain that led to two surgeries in the summer of 2008. We also were trying to buy a house, which we did, and moved in on September 22. Then it was just a mad, crazy dash through the semester. Just hoping to survive it. No thoughtfulness really. No meditation, no concentration. I still have the mantra.
Now I have a room for meditation. That tired old excuse is gone. I am on Winter Break and my only excuse for not starting again is pain, which is no excuse. And the shame for having been gone so long. Like my Self doesn’t know?! And all the other excuses are all the more reason I need to GET IN THERE! Today! So I will. No more excuses.
January 15
[Had wisdom tooth pulled and two doctor visits leading up to third surgery]
I’m going to be able to get to work, the blog, and even my spiritual life back on track now. I have a place to meditate, the ice is broken; I have a plan to begin reading the Uddhava Gita and the Upanishads again, and I’m going to pull myself back to Krishna’s feet.
January 17
I’m reading the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad and trying not to take a thousand notes. But some things are not in the glossary and I want to be sure to check them later. I’m in 3.1.8 and there is a Hote priest. From context, Hote priests appear to be associated with fire and speech and maybe death. Breath too? Just read and learn from context like a child – that is what I am supposed to be doing.
It does seem to be a particular god associated with the element of fire and the means of speech. As Adhvaryu is associated next with days and nights and sight. Udgatr is with the waxing and waning moon and breath. Each of these has temples, priests, rites and sacrifices, assumedly to be practiced at certain times. Then it says when there is no support in this world, one turns to Brahman, who is associated with the mind.
This sage who is being quizzed is next asked about “graspers” and “overgraspers”. This is a fascinating way to look at the relationship between senses and sense-objects. The graspers are our sense organs. Speech, nose, tongue, sight, hearing, mind, hands, skin. Things sensed are not described as grasped but overgrasped, capturing the dialectic, the mutuality, the relationship between Self and gunas. Visible appearances, flavors, sounds, desires, actions, touches . . . they grasp us back.
Graha and atigraha – double entedre. Graha also refers to the cup used to draw out Soma. And atigraha also means the practice of offering extra cupfuls of soma. So, the grasp that grasps back!
In 4.1.3 the same sage, Yajnavalkya, is instructing the king of the same region and he goes through this kind of charade where he aks what the kings sages have taught him about brahman. They have taught him some formulas – “Brahman is sight” “Brahman is breath,” but not what the words mean “or what its foundations are.” So he goes through each one and for each he ends up saying, “The highest brahman is sight.” “The highest brahman is breath.” Etc. The king never asks him to resolve how all of them can be the highest, so he doesn’t, exactly.
January 19
I am re-reading Easwaran as part of re-establishing my equilibrium and good spiritual habits, and reminding myself of what I am supposed to be doing. On the subject of one-pointedness, I am struck (again) by how much energy I have squandered this past year with split attention. As my tasks and responsibilities piled up, I somehow came to believe I could get more done by dividing myself into 2 or 4 or 8 pieces, each with only half, quarter or eight the energy, knowledge or attention. I literally found myself booked for 2-4 meetings more than once last spring. Clearly tht did not work. So I need to attend carefully to what he is saying.
In Sanskrit, ekagrata. Eka = one, agra = point, or edge. Easwaran talks about how much energy is dissipated in giving mental attention to things over which we have no control; the past, regrets, the comeback we wish we’d made. But also he discusses the way we make some tasks boring or onerous by not giving them our attention. I mean, if you spend the ntire time you are grading essays or creating a rubric feeling put-upon and impatient, and telling yoursel fyou shouldn’t have to do this grading; it is boring; the students won’t appreciate it, or whatever, then half of your mind is fighting the other half, which is trying to work despite the clamor. A grey pall sets over everything, you feel dispirited, disgusted and bored, and the whole project comes to feel pointless.
In his terms, you’ve consumed a tremendous amount of vital energy at war with yourself. No wonder the thing exhausts you. The task could be anything one finds boring or menial or beneath them. And all of this enormous waste and generation of unhappiness that spills over into the rest of one’s life is all due to the simple lack ofan ability or will to pay attention to the task at hand.
If we gave our attention to these tasks – well, we know what happens then. We experience it with the tasks we love. So I need to remember to give the same attention to every task that I give to solving an intriguing puzzle in the data, or prepping an interesting class, or writing an engaging part of an essay. Dishwashing can be and has been exactly this absorbing when I’ve tried it. Remember? I managed this for a brief time, and it was wonderful. Everything in my life smoothed out. Why and how did I let that go?L
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
My Wonderful Life
I have been the luckiest girl in the world; my sister came to visit me!!!!! And she brought her four little ones with her, who aren't so little anymore. You can see from my face how ecstatic I was to see them. I don't think I've ever been so happy in a photograph before in my entire life. I am so very, very grateful to her for being crazy enough to drive all the way here to see me with four children in the car, and then to put up with two people who aren't used to having young children to get dinner for at a reasonable hour, put small objects out of reach, etc.
Here are some of the things we did:
We visited the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder - this is the reconstruction of her family's cabin near Pepin, WI.
We also went to Door County, where my sis (an artist, married to a painter) could visit some galleries and we could all eat ice cream and go to the beach. Here is my husband being a good shepherd.
Some other beach-goers made this amazing mermaid; I wish we could take the credit.
And we went to a local amusement park, which was the first time most of the girls had ever ridden any rides. It was so exciting!
After a bit she decided it was pretty fun, and then, like most of us, she wanted to do it again!
I am not too great of a photographer, unfortunately - especially with moving rides - but we did capture a little of the flavor the day, I think. I had such a wonderful time, and I'm glad to be able to share it. Surely these precious days are as good for our souls as and our health as whole weeks spent in prayer or exercise : )
Then I got even luckier; my Mom came and joined us! And I got to take them all to one of my favorite places, a gallery/greenspace/gardening center/cafe/bakery on the lake. We went to the beach afterwards.
And then we made sure Mom had her own trip up the Door peninsula for ice cream and more beach.
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