whitespiralthoughts

Building a Routine

2009-09-23T08:14:00.001-05:00

February 27
The Meditation from the Mat messages today (I’m reading several at a time since it’s a library book and has to go back) have to do with not being too harsh with one’s self and not racing and running through yoga as one would a regular “sport.” If I find myself unable to achieve a posture or the deepness of one – or a state of mind that I feel I ought to be able to – my training has been like most Judeo-Christians, to feel shame and then to be angry with myself. These entries are teaching and remind me that it is not the yoga way. We should observe what happens, and let emotions swirl away. Boredom, frustration? They arise and pass away. If an asana or the pace is difficult . . . rest. In child pose or rest in the posture.
Then there were a couple about how most come to yoga through an exercise-type class, but find themselves hungry for more. They suggest the “more” is the yamas and niyamas. Which at first I suppose it is. How doing the physical, the asanas every day without the yamas and niyamas is like rowing your boat madly all night only to find in the morning you are still tied to the dock.

February 28
I had a long yoga session yesterday. 40 minutes or so. Some parts felt better than others. I still felt jerky and like I wasn’t sure how I should be moving from one to the other. That – how to get from one asana to the next when you haven’t worked up to the full Rishikesh sequence – and how to breathe – when inhale, when exhale – are two weaknesses of the text. I think I remember that in general one exhales as one enganges in movements that bring limbs closer to the trunk and when lifting, and inhale on the reverse. Maybe I can find a reference in the others, or maybe Van Lysebeth says in a general comment somewhere. He doesn’t include it as a part of each asana’s instructions, which I’d prefer. Before I begin today, I’m going to review all the directions for all four of the ones I’m doing, and maybe also the Locust and the first 3 parts of the Sun Salutation.
I realize I’m already spending 40 minutes, but I don’t have to spend as long in each posture or do all of them every day. It shouldn’t take me as long to get my breathing under control and get relaxed before I start as I get better, either.

March 1
[Pelvic pain had been getting increasingly worse; almost went to emergency room night before, resolved to make appt with ob/gyn today. Journal entries much taken up with whether or not to make appt for couple weeks now]

One of the Meditations from the Mat readings is about pride. It is amazing to me how much pride can still be a factor even when I am practicing in a room by myself where no one can see me. No one is going to laugh if I look ridiculous or struggle with something that “should” be easy. No one will ever know how long it takes me to master certain things nor how many mistakes I make along the way. Likewise, there is no one to congratulate me or stroke my ego for doing something well or learning fast. Yet I can’t seem to stop keeping “score” in my head, imaging an audience, imagining what Jim will say when he sees what I can do eventually. Fantasies develop around the first time I get to attend a class with others . . . how they’ll be amazed by my knowledge and stillness and form and grace . . .!!! And then I remember that I won’t know any, or few, of the asanas they do, nor how to move between them. Probably I will breathe wrong, and may have developed all sorts of bad habits. So the fantasy turns nightmarish, with everyone laughing at me, only they are too evolved to laugh – they just feel pity and compassion for poor little me who needs so much correction.
All of this in split seconds, then I realize – “What am I doing? What is the purpose of this again? To impress people when I visit an ashram some far away day? Or a random person who peeps over the fence some summer day? To wow Jim with my new flexibility?” But Pride has long been my enemy, my foe. And spiritual pride is the most insidious. It sneaks up on me in so many guises. Satya – honesty – is the way to combat it. I think to acknowledge that yes, there are parts of me that would like to show off how well they have mastered the asanas is helpful. Especially when I remind those parts that the honest truth is we need a lotof work to deserve the praise of others. We are in this for many reasons: the pursuit of ultimate liberation, health here in this life, increased widom, patience and compassion, better digestion – LOTS of reasons! If the ego’s drive for recognition helps get us through the hard parts, I guess it isn’t such a bad thing. It just can’t be allowed to rule the castle.
Hmmm. What a concept! Observing what is, in oneself, and accepting it! Not slating parts for immediate or eventual demoliton. This is kinda new.
Another reading (several actually) discusses the riches that come from small changes in our daily lives, the “doing the next right thing.” He talks about correcting his flat feet by learning to lift his arches in yoga. But it took a teacher. We can only see so much about ourselves; at some point one needs a teacher with more knowledge and wisdom who can see what you can’t. The Upanishads and Patanjali say if you do the work to get ready, when you are ready the right teacher will appear. But they were written in the social context of India, where there were teachers everywhere. What are my chances here? My only option is to trust their wisdom. Do all the preliminary work. Get as ready as I possibly can, go as far as possible on my own, and see what happens. I can always drop in at the downtown center, too, to see what it is like. I shouldn’t reject it without every visiting.
The third yama is asteya, non-stealing. What are all the ways I steal without thinking about it? Borrowed books unreturned? Work time in which I am unproductive? I think I make up for that in spades. “When we look honestly at the ways in which we’ve been stealing, we come to understand that in each instance, there is an attachment to a specific result that overrides our deeper values.” P.42 “Beneath the attachment we find fear.”
He provides a sutra that speaks to that fear: “When abstention from stealing is firmly established, precious jewels come.” Yoga Sutra If he’s right, which he surely is, all we have to do is trust. Trust that the Universe will take care of us, will provide what we need and what will give us deep pleasure. If you really, really believe this, there is no need to steal anything from anyone. Not time, food, money, a kiss, a compliment . . . you can just relax into the faith that whatever it is that you need is on its way to you.

March 2
My yoga practice really is taking 40-45 minutes every day and leaves me in a great state of mind to meditate. I guess I need to get up even earlier or something so I can add 30 minutes, or at least 15, of that to my routine. I have to begin making some kind progress on knowing my Self. I feel panicky about it, as if I’m racing the clock, which surely isn’t the right frame of mind in which to find the most healing parts of myself. Maybe after I see the doctor I’ll be able to let some of the anxiety go.
Wow. The first reading included the quote, “Our vision is beclouded and the pathway of our progress is obstructed until we come to know that God can and does express as Good in every person and every situation.” – Ernest Holmes. Rolf talks about how students come to him with anxiety over physical ailments and problems in their lives and he used to tell them that those were opportunities to be mindful. Now, he says, he thinks about it as an opportunity to pay closer attention to what we do, and to put our faith in our ability to heal. “We are not meant to be on the edges of our seats, anxiously paying attention so that we can control events and outcomes. We are meant to stand firmly in the postures of our lives, bearing witness to the moment, to our experience of the moment, aware as we do so that, in the words of Charles Johnston, ‘we are encompassed and supported by spiritual powers’.”
Maybe all I need to be doing right now is be aware of myself experiencing this pain. Stand in it, and do my best to feel the support of the universe. Have faith in my ability to heal myself. Yesterday I did have a cool moment of feeling the earth spinning on its axis, me a part of it, held by its gravity. Have faith in healing like I have faith in that, that I won’t fall off the planet.
The last yama is chastity, brahmacarya. Temperance. Literally, to walk with God. Gates makes the loud point, or point loudly, that to interpret this as celibacy is to miss the point.

Really Learning Yoga

2009-09-21T08:01:00.000-05:00

February 26, 2009
I read a bunch more of my new yoga book and I found it so helpful! I’d like to know if he wrote others and if so, buy them. He explains things in such detail, gives both Hindu and Western biomedical reasons for doing things. He gives explicit, motion by motion instructions for each asana, provides alternate instructions for beginner and adept, even down to where our concentration should be. For example, beginners generally need to focus on carrying out the movement correctly. As one gets better, one’s focus shifts to carrying the movements out correctly, slowly, without jerking, and being sure all uninvolved muscles are relaxed. During the static stage, beginners should focus on breathing, then on immobility. Experts should focus on the specific part of the body the asana targets: the organ, muscle, etc.

He provides lists of incorrect movements, common mistakes, and then some pictures. So for each asana, there are like 3-7 pages of text and 2-4 of pictures. No wonder he only covers a handful of them (10). Plus a quick run through of one version of the Sun Salutation. He has chosen one of the series developed and taught by Shivananda at Rishikesh – the place I want to go. The home of Integral Yoga, which has spawned Yogaville here in the US, and a couple of others. The full Rishikesh Series in this book is Breathing, Self Awareness, Salutation to the Sun, then:
Sarvangasana (Candle – Shoulderstand)
Halasana (Plough)
Matsyasana (Fish)
Pashchimattanasana (Forward Bend)
Bhujangasana (Cobra)
Shalabhasana (Locust)
Dhanurasana (Bow)
Ardha-Matsyendrasana (Spinal Twist)
Shirsasana (Headstand)
Uddiyana or Nauli, Shavasana (Relaxation)
He provides a chart suggesting when to integrate which postures; not in weeks, but in stages. When you feel you’ve made good progress on stage one, integrate the things from stage 2. So yesterday I did breathing, self-awareness, sarvangasana and matsyasana, both twice. They felt great. I was jerky and shaky, had little control, but it felt wonderful to be doing them. Felt right. Also in the category of what I should be able to do are cobra and spinal twist. I’m thinking of reading about and doing them today. Then on days when I have time I’ll do the whole set; when short, I’ll alternate or be able to pick from 4 which I want to work on, instead of just the 2.
Later: So today I ended up doing all four asanas. I had a much smoother rise and descent in the shoulder stand, but I need to check on the Fish, to see if I was doing it correctly, because it kind of hurt my head, and yoga shouldn’t hurt. Case in point – that other book I had, which in fact was published by Yoga Journal but tried to strip out virtually all spirituality, had photos and instructions for each asana including the Cobra. But it was an entirely different thing. Entirely! In the other book, it was basically a push-up. I couldn’t really figure out what was different.
In this one, he shows how the arms should be positioned, adds a step that was lacking, and then explains how the upward motion should be driven by the head and the neck. The arms should be as relaxed as possible. So it is not at all a push up; it has nothing to do with strengthening the arms! I did feel – still – that I was rushing everything. But the ones I had done before I was able to be more mindful in/about. So I’m hopeful that as the newness wears off, the urge to rush and the distraction level will, too.

Since I’m really practicing now, I’ve returned to reading Meditations from the Mat. Today the reading was about how we commit to a practice, a lifestyle, a priority, and if we really are comitted, our lives rearrange themselves around that almost without effort. From that commitment, then, when renunciation is necessary, when it comes time to give something up, we will actually be ready, so that it will not feel like a death, but like a new birth. I know that feeling – there have been times in my life when I changed so much that some old habit just didn’t fit anymore. And when I realized it and gave it up or had it taken away, I thought it would be hard and it wasn’t. It just felt right, and life got even better and fresher. A gift from the commitment you made to the new practice.
Is that how it will be with smoking? That’s what I’m hopingand praying for. Guess the practice and commitment has to come first though. The other gift is that the practice sustains us through all times/seasons/moods/etc. You don’t know, when you make that commitment, if the next year is bringing you trips abroad, promotions, status – or illness, loss, death. You know there will be days when you will excel at your practice – yoga, meditation or whatever – and days when nothing will go right, and lots of days in the middle. But the point is that you just keep doing it, every day, and in that way it will always be there for you. If good times come, it will keep you grounded. If disaster comes, it will be your life line, keeping you sane.
In exchange, all you really have to give is the effort of overcoming the initial inertia. That “Oh, I’m so comfy on the couch and I don’t feel that well and I don’t have that much time today” feeling. Because once I get over that feeling and just do it, I love it. It isn’t like exercise, like aerobics, which is just torture all the way for me. Not at all. It feels good. It isn’t torture, or painful, or like giving up anything. It is pure gain.

Anger about Shame and other things

2009-09-19T19:22:00.004-05:00

I seem to be losing some readers – maybe partly because I haven’t been doing a very good job spell-checking my posts, and partly because my parsing of the Upanishads just isn’t very intersting to a large audience. I guess I am one of the very few who actually likes poking around in these super ancient texts and making sense of them. Ah well. But I admit that some of these entries just aren’t that interesting. So I’m going to skip around and skip ahead. And I will try to be more careful about the spelling.

February 15, 2009
I’ve been reading the Katha Upanishad, formally belonging to the Black Yajurveda. Olivelle says that it is obviously a late work and never formed an integral part of the Brahmana of that school. The text has an episode that relates the establishment of various ritual fires that he thinks was originally part of the Kathaka Brahmana but is now housed in the Taittirya Brahmana. It’s pretty cool, even though it is extremely confuising and without the commentary would make no sense to me.
It ends up being a conversation between Naciketas, a boy, and Yama, Death. Naciketas’ father sends him to Death’s abode in a kind of fit of pique; Death isn’t home, and because the rules of hospitality to a Brahmin are violated (no food, drink, etc. offered), Death owes him something, and he grants him three wishes.
Clever boy, Naciketas asks for knowledge. Well, first he asks to be returned alive to his father. Second he asks how to construct the fire altar that leads to heaven, which is also asking how to make sacrifices and good works not decay. For his third he asks how to exit the cycle of birth and re-birth. How to get beyond dying just to live, just to die again, just to live again, etc.
Death begs him to ask any other question, have any other wish fulfilled: lust, wealth, power, greed . . . Naciketas asks, “What good are any of those things when one knows one is just going to die? And then live again? What is the solution? What is beyond all of that?”
Death praises his wisdom and insight and begins to speak about brahman. From here through the rest of the chapter this really sounds a lot more like the Gitas. It is poetry, for one thing, but much of the phrasing and the ideas are the same.

February 16
Just wanted to record this verse for myself, from KaU 6.11
When senses are fully reined in,
That is Yoga, so people think.
From distractions a man is then free,
For Yoga is a coming-into-being
As well as a ceasing-to-be.

Not by speech, not by the mind
Not by sight can he be grasped.
How else can he be perceived
Other than be saying “He is!”

February 21
I am so in thrall to this novel [Stones From the River] that it is hard to do anything else. There is so much we forget, or just don’t know, about the Holocaust. But in the last 20 years all of these books and movies have been coming out to fill in the picture. At first, I guess the first 40 or 50 years, it was all we could do as a world to absorb the images of the concentration camps. The reality of them. The large-scale, totalitarian, bureaucratic brutality. Uncovering the details of the work camps, the starvation, medical experiments, torture, varieties of mass murder and experiments in extermination. Learning how it all unfolded and whose ideas were whose, who gave tho orders, holding people responsible – that came next.
And then trying to understand how an entire nation went along with this. That’s what is really difficult. At first the blame settled on the Gestapo, the SS, Hitler’s elite. Then spread to his army. But as more was known, it had to be faced that it took an entire country to vote for, applaud, allow, cheer, turn in, look the other way, inform on neighbors, parents and friends . . . the whole nation was guilty. But now we’ve gone one step further and realized that can’t be true, either. Because people escaped. People were hidden through the entire war and longer. From the roundups in ’37 and ’38 all the way to the Allied Liberation. It is so much more complicated.
These books – like Hegi’s and Lost and others – paint pictures of hundreds of small towns and cities across Germany and Poland and the Ukraine in which people of different ethnicities and religions lived and had lived for centuries. They’d had their problems and there might have been tensions between groups, but for the most part the towns were functioning pretty well, and there were a great many cross-ethnic, cross-religious economic and social ties, including ties of marriage. There was also room for people who didn’t fit in, and who were unproductive. There almost always is in small-ish groups. Like the town drunk, or the woman who lost her mind when she miscarried, or that little man who drools and was never “right” from the day he was born.
I mention these misfits because one of the things we so conveniently forget in our retelling of the actions of Nazis in the US is that they didn’t just go after Jews. Jews were first, sure, because they were the most obvious “cause” of the nation’s economic problems to Hitler. They were the most obviously different, the easiest to target and they had a larger pool of wealth. Plus whatever personal hatred and pathology you want to throw in and the ancient beliefs about Jews killing Jesus and eating Christian babies, etc. It seems important to note that children were taught in school – even Jewish children – these beliefs about Jews, yet before 1937 it didn’t stop Jewish and Christian children from playing and being friends together.
What we forget is that by the time they’d pretty well rounded up the Jews, they had an efficient work and death camp system going. They weren’t going to just stop. Plus the economy hadn’t gotten magically better, and they still needed to rationalize and fight the war. You know what else isn’t rational and efficient? A town supporting blind, deaf, crippled, mentally retarded, and psychologically disturbed people. Adults for sure, but children will just grow up to be burdens. Off they go. Homosexuals are not only sinners but traitors, since they aren’t producing children for the state. How long would it have taken them to get around to barren women? Women past menopause?
The people on the internet forums here in Wisconsin make me shudder because they sound just like this. Every month it is a different group of people they want to “round up” and “send away” or “get rid of.” No, they aren’t proposing concentration camps . . . that I know of. But they have the same idea that it is okay to label a group you believe is unproductive or unhelpful to the community and have them taken away. They seem to have no inkling that once you begin that, it never stops. The process becomes itself insatiable and sooner or later they will come for you.

February 22
In relation to Stones . . ., although not intended, I don’t think, as an indictment of the Church, or not entirely, there were many times while reading the novel that I became so angry at the Catholic Church I was almost shaking. The number of lives it has twisted and bent, deformed and maimed, retarded and delayed, not to mention the millions of lives it has outright stolen, ended and murdered. The teachings of that Church, I believe, since it has been able to become a as powerful, widespread, influential and long-lived as it has, have done more than any single institution in the history of humanity to destroy humans – what is best in us. They did it by labelling the very parts of us that make us human sinful, so that people would have no choice but to recognize their “original sin” and thus their need for the Church. If you have curiousity, questions, which is doubt, desire, a thought for yourself, anger, envy – all of which are part of human nature – then you have to confess them to a priest. You might even have to pay for that privelege. Then there will be someone who will always know the dark secrets of your heart and be able to make you feel shame whenever they feel like it.
Of course it isn’t a bad thing in itself to have a system that encourages people to be unselfish, avoid envy, etc. All religions do that. What is so evil about the Catholic Church is that it infused people with shame for just being who they are. For being human. For feeling things and experiencing things it is normal and natural to feel. No, of course it would be better if no one experienced envy. But it is normal to feel envy. Shaming those who feel envy is NOT HELPFUL!!! It simply compounds the problem and makes them feel worse. How about instead providing instruction for what to do when you feel envy? Saying envy arises from th ese causes, it is perfectly natural, but since it feels bad, here is how to avoid the causes and thus avoid the feeling. No shame, just compassion and good directions. Oh yeah, that’s Buddhism and Hinduism.
And in fact, it isn’t the God of this religion, as I thought for a long time. It is to a certain degree, but look at the difference between how Jews experience Him and how Catholics do!
That shame – inscribed on the souls and embodied by children as soon as they begin to understand what is going on, along with the teachings of exclusion. “Only we are right. Everyone who believes even slightly differently is going to burn in hell for eternity” makes for very frightened, lonely people. And what do frightened, onely, shame-filled people do? They hate. They strike out. They find ways to attack anyone who is different. Or they attack themselves. They subject themselves to terrible mortifications and they deny themselves all the pleasures of life because they don’t deserve them. Often, in the meantime, deforming their children in the process.
It is sick. Sickening, disgusting, hateful. Evil. Yes. The Nazis would never have been able to do their work if the Catholics hadn’t set the stage, prepared the ground. Here in the US today, what prevents teens from getting the information they need to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy, cervical cancer, and deadly disease? A Church that believes if you talk to teens about sex they will go and do it. And if they do, these same teens, who swear their parents love them, will be terrified to go home; ashamed now and sure their parents will “kill them” because of their sin. These same parents will vote against their conscience on every single issue: war, taxes, education, healthcare, the environment, etc., because their priests say they must vote for the anti-abortion candidate or risk mortal sin. So the Church is saying that all the dead who would result from a longer unjust war, a truly exploitative and faulty health care system that denies coverage, practices that are destroying the very planet and will eventually kill us all – these do not matter whe weighed against abortion being legal. That is the only law God cares about. The only lives God cares about are the unborn, apparently.
Well, I need to stop ranting. My anger and hatred of the Church serve no purpose and get me nowhere. I just wish it was possible to expose children to choices, so they would be free to decide for themselves which philosophy they wished to be indoctrinated with. I doubt the version the Church espouses would last very long, in that case.
My SU reading is very cool, very interesting. It is the Svetasvatara, Chapter One, and it begins with a kind of list of questions that people always ask about brahman: What is its cause? Why were we born? By what do we live? Governed by whom? Do we live in pleasure or pain? And in the questions it summarizes a lot of the positions taken up by different schools in the other Upanishads. “Should we regard it as time? As inherent nature, as necessity, as chance, as the elements, as the source of birth, as the Person?” 1.2
Then it gives an answer, which I’ll have to consult footnotes to get all of. It starts by saying that those who have meditated have seen God, the self, the power, all hidden by their qualities (gunas?). Meaning – we don’t need to convince you of this part, because you have all seen it? That’s kind of how it reads to me. Then our expertise says brahman is:

A wheel that is one-rimmed and three-fold
Wheel is implied, not stated. One rim = primal nature or prakrti. Three-fold = the gunas of Samkhya (sattva, rajas, tamas)
With sixteen tips and fifty spokes
16 tips = five elements , five organs of perception, five organs of action and the mind
50 spokes = 50 dispositions (bhava) of Samkhya listed in Samkhya Karika
Twenty counterspokes
10 organs of perception and action and their respective objects
Six sets of eight, whose single rope is of many forms
1) Five elements, intellect, ego, and mind
2) Eight elements of the body: outer skin, inner skin, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, semen
3) Eight yogic powers: very small, very large, very light, obtain anything, freedom of will, subdue one’s will, lordship, supress desire
4) Eight dispositions: righteousness and unrighteousness, knowledge and ignorance, detachment and non, superhuman power and lack of it
5) Eight divine beings: Brahma, Prajapati, Devas, Gandhavas, Yaksas, Raksas, Ancestors, Prsacsas
6) Eight virtues: compasion, forbearance, lack of jealousy, purity, ease, generousity, auspiciousness, absence of desire
One rope = desire or “glittering”
That divides itself into three different paths
Footnotes say – righteousness, unrighteousness and knowledge, but provide an alternate interpretation. Johnston (1950) has argued the rope image refers to the 3 paths to liberation – knowledge, yoga and devotion (bhakti). I’d like to read that or someone, because that seems to make sense.
And whose delusion regarding the one springs from two causes.
The two causes are good and sinful actions and the one is the one from above who governs all causes. Johnston sees this as a reference to the samkyha ignorance where the self regards the 2, purusa and prakrti as just one. He may be right.

This is pretty cool imagery; in just a few words it summarizes all that has been laid out and argued about in the previous texts and foreshadows the Gitas. But there is more. One image isn’t enough. In case the wheel doesn’t work for you, the SU offers another: [Several more pages follow of analysis]

. . .

“The one God rules over both the perishable and the self. By meditating on him, by striving towards him, and further, in the end by becoming the same reality as him, all illusion disappears.”

We yearn toward God in the same way Christians do. But the end result is so different. Instead of a Judgement Day where some will be thrown into an everlatsting punishing fire or worse, and some will get to go praise yet still be separated from their beloved, we will come to “share the same reality, become the same reality as him” and “all illusion of separation will disappear” forevor. Certainly no room for punishment and shame and other ugliness like that.
The next chapter is really playful and fun. It is kind of an ode or a prayer but it has double entendres and insider jokes; its playful. For tomorrow!

Body and Mind

2009-09-17T07:54:00.000-05:00

February 8, 2009
The reason I was so upset is this – I had worked until 3 or so yesterday, then did half an hour of yoga, which felt great everywhere except my butt, which felt as if I’d torn something open. Earlier I thought I’d maybe hurt the healing surgical wound because I’d begun bleeding there again. I hopped in the shower and realized it wasn’t the old wound torn open. No. I have a brand new hemmorhoid. Why? I have been doing all I was told to do! I have done all I can think of to stay healthy. I began yoga almost as soon as I thought I was well enough, and in fact, it might have been too soon. Maybe the asanas I chose were wrong. I don’t know. I’m just trying to do my best.
There is absolutely no way I am going through another surgery like that. So now I’ll have lived through that hell but STILL have hemmorhoids? It’s enough to make me scream. Makes me wish I believed in a God I could yell at.
I am not giving up on yoga, that’s for sure. My new plan is to go through Turlington’s book and find all the poses that are good for the colon, rectum, small intestine, spine, and right torso. Make a list, then figure out which asanas are the building blocks for those, and create a routine that enables me to learn and master the basic asanas, integrating the more complicated ones whenever I feel my body and spirit are ready. Make it so that there is a little variety from one day to the next. And then I’m going to stick with it. Every day. I hope that at least 3-4 days a week it will lead straight to meditation.
That is all I can think of to do. I feel like my body is so weak, so vulnerable. It just can’t take very much more. It needs a great deal of kindness. I was so angry at it yesterday. But how is that helpful? Or fair? Or kind or compassionate? It is not my body’s fault that it has been ravaged by shingles and an incorrect signal to attack itself instead of the shingles virus. I’m sure it’s very sorry. It is not its fault that its genetic code is programmed for weak rectal veins and endometriosis. Our only way out is to recognize that we have to work together. I need my body to stop fighting me, and I need to stop fighting it. Since I’m on the side (by definition) of the ability to have the symbolic idea, I need to lay down my “weapons” first.
No more hateful thoughts. No being angry at body parts for their failures. No skipping doses, no forgetting Activia. Plenty of sleep, vegetables, fluids and spiritual discipline. This is the best I can do. If my body continues to fall apart despite my best efforts, at least we’ll be friends while it happens. Maybe it can be more gentle, less fearful and anxious that way.
The “meditation from the mat” for yesterday was about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Why didn’t I just read that when I got it for J? It’s up next, after the Upanishads. Anyway, the eight-limb path of Patanjali’s, which he put together from the scriptures, is so straightforward one doesn’t really need a lot more commentary or instruction.
So how is it, again, that I always understood about the yamas and niyamas, but then jumped right into svadhyaya – self-study, skipping right over the other first two tapas, the asanas and pranayama?
The MfM describes pratyahara this way: turning inward, as “the mind withdrawing from the senses of perception.” Where dharana, concentration, can occur. “The Light of our awareness can begin to shine on our soul. The deepest form of connectedness is now possible.” P.5
Why did I believe I could get to the end by skipping two parts? I guess because the Upanishads, the jnana yogi way doesn’t stress it, nor does Krishna. But it is there – a constant given. Hatha is the underlying assumption they all took for granted and I, in my Western, Cartesian ignorance, kept leaving out.
The MfM concludes that all that is necessary to undertake a yoga practice is: “We must simply remain open to our own spiritual potential and be willing to take action on our own behalf.”
Chapter 2 of the KsU felt like it was tying right into what Stephenson’s [Neal – Anathem] characters were saying about consciousness. He has one of them arguing that the mind functions as if it were a multi-celled organism in which the indiviudal cells had evolved in order to communicate with one another across sensory modalities. i.e. one could hear, one smell, one see, etc. How does something that only hears communicate with something that only sees? Or smells? They’d have to develop a shared language mutually. Functionally, that’s how our brains work, how they deal with sensory information. I’d just read that, and then the KsU 2.1 says,”Brahman is breath . . . now, of this breath that is brahman, the messenger is the mind; the guard is sight; the crier is hearing; and the maid is speech.”
But the rest doesn’t explain any of this. It just says if you know this, you’ll have messengers, criers, etc. And that the vital functions or deities bring offerings to a knower without having to be asked. I guess that means that once you understand it, the vital functions are under your control and are generous with you, kind of like how my body isn’t, right now.
2.3 tells how to do a ritual to get objects you want. I think the significance is that instead of praying and sacrificing to the gods, one directs all the parts of the ritual to the vital functions – speech, smell, sight, hearing, mind, intelligence. More ritual instructions though 2.10.
2.11-13 reiterates stories fro the other upanishads, establishing breath as the pre-eminent, most important vital function.

Deciphering the Beginning and the End

2009-09-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

February 7, 2009
Today my reading is the entire Aitereya Upanisad. It consists of chapters 4-6 of the Aitareya Aranyaka, which is part of the Aitareya Brahmana, belonging to the Rg Veda. Olivelle says, “The distinction between the Upanishad and the Aranyaka proper is womewhat artificial, there being little difference in the topics covered.” P.194. The first little bit tells the story of creation again, and yet again it is consistent:
“In the beginning this world was the self (atman), one alone, and there was no other being at all. He thought to himself, “Let me create the worlds.” AU 1.1 I guess the story is a little more Semitic, because he creates “the floods, the specks, the m and the waters. The sky. He ‘incubates’ man, who is hatched like an egg. Ah, those were the deities. Then the being makes humans for the deities as a “dwelling in which to establish” themselves and for their food.
I had to back up and start over. I had been expecting the text to say one thing, but it doesn’t. After the creation of the waters it gets funky. A mouth was hatched like an egg and from it came speech. Ears hatched, and from them came hearing, and son on. The vital functions are taught as having emerged from this deity that is hatching. The deity, or the functions, get hungry and demand food and shelter and that is when the One creates man. At the end of this chapter, this original deity somehow becomes Indra. Not the One, but the first-made. Or maybe it is brahman.
I don’t know if I’m just being dense, am not wise enough, am too tired, impatient, or in the wrong mood, but I am finding this one way too mystical for me. As it ends, “the gods are cryptic.” It might go back to the different “ownership” between castes. Maybe Prajapati figures more in some Vedas and Indra in others? I’ll have to check on that.
I have also begun using another devotional tool now that I have begun asana practice; a book from the library called Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison. It is meant for people who came to spiritual awakening after beginning yoga for health or beauty reasons, so the first few readings are pretty simple and basic. But humility requires being open to learning from everyone, right? So either just before I sit down or just after, I’ll read a section from there.
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Okay, another part of the Rg Veda, the Kausitaki Upanishad belongs to the Aranyaka and Brahmana of the same name. The Kausitaki Aranyaka is also called the Sankhanya Aranyaka, which itself is part of the KsU Brahmana of the Rg Veda. Very confusing to one not familiar, still, with exactly how these Vedas work. Olivelle says the KsU corresponds in many ways with “its sister school” the Aitareya, so I may end up just as baffled here. They were both pre-Buddhist, so 5-6th century BCE. The transmission of this one has been “less faithful than that of many of the other Upanishads; Frery’s (1968-9) edition has shown that the sequence of passages in the vulgate edition is probably inaccurate.” P.200. This one is quite a bit longer. But hey, we know for certain that other holy texts have never been messed with : )
This is much more interesting! C would have loved it. I’m afraid I can only appreciate it as metaphor, because 1) we already know that the text is corrupt, and much more importantly, 2) Krishna said and I believe that we get what we want and expect after death. In fact, I think this Upanishad may be trying to hint at that. But first things first.
It opens with an amazing social fact, if the translator has it right: A Brahmin father and son put themselves under the spiritual training of a Kstraiya guru! Wowee. Now that’s humility. They do it to learn what happens when we die. Citra, the teacher, says this:
First we go, by means of the lifebreath, to the moon. All during the waxing of the moon. Made me wonder if there was a link between this and Krishna’s advice to make sure you die during moon-dark if you want to go one direction, and moon light if another?
During the waning of the moon, Citra instructs, souls unable to answer the moon’s questions are sent back to earth, there to take up new bodies – including animals – according to the kind of life they’d led. Those who can answer the moon’s questions, which boil down to identifying (who are you? A-I am you! You are me! We are Brahman!), are allowed through heaven’s door. And there begins quite a journey. S/he must pass through a wold of fire, world of wind, then Varuna’s world (the king of demons), the Indra’s world (king of gods), Prajapati’s world, and finally the world brahman. But it’s not over.
In this world there is a lake one passes over with one’s mind. Without knowledge (of brahman) one drowns in it. I presume that menas you find yourself living another life here on earth. Or somewhere, I guess. Then there are watchmen, but they flee. A river comes next, whose name means “undecaying” or “pure”. Here all of one’s deeds fall off, good and bad. But get this; they fall onto your family members according to who you like! Good deeds to your buds, bad deeds to the jerks. How’s that for payback? One also gets to see it all laid out “like two wheels.”
Having been stripped of all karma, one is now ready. Brahman sends servants (debate over what these represent – seems to be various aspects of perception) with flowers, lotions, garments, cosmetics, ornaments and perfumes. One gets all beautified, then approaches the throne room, which has lots more symbolism. Finally the throne, onto which one climbs, right foot first.
Now brahman asks, “Who are you?” And your answer better be, “I am You.” It can be dressed up, as it is here, but that is the bottom line. Brahman asks some probing questions to be sure you really get it, both what brahman is and your identity and that’s it. “All my bliss is yours. My immortality, my power.” The Original Self says.
Very cool.

More Connections; Vowels to Cows

2009-09-13T09:20:00.002-05:00

February 5, 2009
I thought some more and realized that I am actually afraid to make any kind of committment, like to join another committee, seek a grant, etc., because I just don’t know how I’ll feel. I went the first two years on the assumption that I would be able to do anything I wanted or set my mind to do, and look what happened. I ended up letting down so many people, over and over, and causing disruptions to their schedules and plans. So I am shy of just planning my life. It isn’t as if it were just flare-ups of PHN. My entire body seems so out of whack . . . one never knows what is going to break down next. It could be absolutely anything. It seems likely to be something I‘ve never heard of or had problems with before.

The solution is still the same – yoga and meditation. Only by incorporating my body in the healing will I have a chance at a different future. At avoiding cervical cancer, maybe.
I’m not going to write about the part of the CU I read yesterday and the day before. The fun story of Indran and Virocana going to Prajapati to learn about atman. The demon satisfied with the easy answer, Indra going back again and again. That ends the CU and we move on the TU.
“The Taittiriya Upanishad constitutes chapters 7, 8 and 9 of the Taittiriya Aranyaka which is a supplement to the Taittirya Brahmana of the Black Yajurveda” P.177. They are named Chapter on Instruction, Chapter on Bliss and Chapter on Bhigu. Oh boy. This is going to be some deep, maybe impenetrable stuff.

The first part is all about phonetics. And unlike in English, it matters how long one stresses or sounds the vowels. The text says it will illuminate the “combinations.” A footnote explains that in Sanskrit and Hindi the first syllable of the first word affects the last syllable of the second word – sometimes? In some paired words? Or always? There are these secret connections that allow one to build innuendo and double meanings into what you are saying. No – the first syllable of the second word modifies the meaning of the last syllable of the previous word. That makes a lot more sense.

Okay, so the TU1 is an invocation and blessing. In 2, it describes the field of phonetics: phoneme, accent, quantity, strength, articulation and connection. The latter I’ve just explained, and quantity refers to the length of the vowel. 1=short, 2= long, 3=prolate. Articulation = speed of recitation of Veda: madhya-medium, druta=fast, vilambita=slow, teacher for pupil.
When a text is “connected” in that secret way, it is called samhita, which is also just a general record used to refer to the Vedic texts.

So in TU3 we are ready to learn how those texts reveal secrets. Unfortunately, it doesn’t point us to a specific text, or Veda. Maybe because that knowledge would be so obvious? The “large scale combinations” refer to the world, light, knowledge, progeny and the body. “The preceeding word is the earth, the following word is the sky, their union is space, and their link is the wind.” So by using the syllables to modify one another and put them together to create new words, they get these linkages. I’ve seen this elsewhere in the Bu and CU. It is very much like the Kabbalistic study of Torah, too. Its fun, an dkind of cool to see what correspondances you can get, but is this really, ultimately, what we should spend our time doing?

This whole Upanishad has a different feel. I’d guess it is much later, was explicitly written for use in an ashram or monastery/temple, and reflects the life there. Maybe it was meant to be a guide for those who would start their own? Olivelle says probably later than the BU and CU, but still pre-Buddhist and so still 6-5th century BC.

My idea that it is for a community of students is not exactly brilliant. The opening prayer adds a blessing on the teacher. The prayer in 1.4 begs for prosperity and that “students will rush to me.” I just read through the whole first chapter on Instruction, and I don’t think there is much in it for me at this time. Perhaps the next, on Bliss, will be more accessible.

BTW – had two very productive days at work, and good meetings. I am grateful that I don’t wear misery on my face, but what am I supposed to say when people say, “You look great!” when I feel like shit? Am I supposed to say, “Thank you, but in fact I am this close to keeling over?” For most it doesn’t matter, but for those in supervisory positions, those who need to know why I am missing work or bailing on my responsibilities . . . I guess it just isn’t doing me any favors that I don’t look as ill as I feel. How do I say, with grace, that just getting through the day is a struggle?

February 6
This is the Chapter on Bliss, and like so many parts of the B and CU, it is a reflection on how to think about brahman, how to grasp it. So it goes through all the things brahman is. It begins by recounting where the physical body came from. Atman the Self generates space, from space comes air, then fire, water, earth, plants, food, bodies. Then there is this lovely verse that reflects reality – the Great Chain of Being – and makes one wonder how so many Hindus came to be vegetarian:

From food, surely, are they born;
All creatures that live on earth.
On food alone, once born, they live;
And into food in the end they pass.
For fodd is the foremost of all beings
So it is called ‘all herbs’
All the food they’ll secure for themselves,
When they worship brahman as food;
For food is the foremost of beings
So it is called ‘all herbs.’
From food beings come into being;
By food, once born, they grow.
It is eaten and it eats beings.
Therefore, it is called ‘food.’

You can’t really put it more plainly, can you? I think this would make a good pre-meal blessing. Then the scripture goes on to acknowledge that we are more than just eater and eaten. “Different from and lying within the man formed from the essence of food is the self (atman) consisting of lifebreath, which suffuses that man completely.” 2.2.1

The physical shell, the meat-man . . . I was about to say is not the real man, and I was going to attribute mind/body, Cartesian dualism to these ancient Indian sages. But that is NOT correct. Because look: First, we were just told that body is brahman, too. Worship food as brahman! Next, the following text shows us multiple more layers. The self is more like an onion. We can keep peeling off layers, each layer contributing another flavor, more richness, complexity, subtelty, depth, etc. But when we’ve peeled the last layer away, there’ll be no core, no pit, and no “real” self. The whole thing together is the real thing.

After the lifebreath, which is always so important, comes the mind, and then perception. About the mind it says, “Before they reach it, words turn back, together with the mind; One who knows the bliss of brahman, he is never afraid.” In terms of the correspondences (all of them are related to parts of the human body), the mind is connected to the Vedas. For perception, the head is faith, the right side truth, left side the real, torso (atman), performance, the bottom celebration.

Hmm, applied to my health, am I having trouble perceiving the truth, performance and celebration? Just a thought. Let’s check out the others. Inside perception is bliss, of course. The head is pleasure; right is delight, left is thrill, torso is bliss, and the bottom is brahman.
In 2.6.1 we have the alternate version – brahman coming out of nothing. Here’s the whole quote that I love:

“He had this desire: ‘Let me multiply myself. Let me produce offspring.’ So he heated himself up. When he had heated himself up, he emitted the whole world, everything that is here. After emitting it, he entered that very world. And after entering it, he became in turn sat and tyat, the distinct and the indistinct, the resting and the never-resting, the perceived and the non-perceived, the real (satya) and the unreal (anita). He became the real, everything that is here; that is why people call this sat.

In the beginning this world was the non-existent,
And from it rose the existent.
By itself it made a body for itself;
Therefore it is called ‘well-made.’”

I guess that verse, which is actually much older than this Upanishad, is really only referring to the world, not to brahman itself coming out of nothing. I do find a lot to love in this chapter. It isn’t saying anything radically new and different, but it seems very straightforward and helpful. And continues to be so, though 2.8 doesn’t do too much for me, as it attempts to describe blisss simply b comparison – the Ghandavas have so much, Indra has so much, other gods so much, etc. What is important, and the radical teaching of these “secret doctrines” is that you, I, can have excatly equal bliss to the very highest of the high. A person who knows brahman – who travels through her own food, breath, perception, mind – will share in a bliss – “a hundred times greater than this of Prajapati”. He who is here and he who is in the sun is the same.”

So actually it was chapter 3, the Chapter of Bhigu, which I read while out smoking, that I was continuing to find so practical and down-to-earth. It continues the themes from chapter 2 regarding the path to brahman through the onion-of-self and the importance of food, which it really stresses. Need to remember that as fodder for anti-omnivore arguments. I don’t typically argue with people about their eating choices. But if they start preaching at me, especially if they assume they know something about Hinduism and accuse me of hypocrisy, well, it’ll be handy to have more than a few verses handy.

Chapter 3 begins with the story of Bhigu, who went to his father Varuna and asked to learn about brahman. “Food, lifebreath, sight, hearing, mind, speech.” Then, “That from which these things are born; on which, once born, they live; and into which they pass upon death – see to perceive that. That is brahman!”

So Bhigu goes off and “practiced austerities.” Footnote says tapo ‘tapyata is the term, which also can mean “heated” or “incubated” so it is unclear exactly what he did, but he went and pondered – where do all these things Father mentioned come from, on what do they subsis, and where do they go upon death? After awhile he figured out, “Food!” He came back and told Dad his answer, then asked for more and Dad said, “Seek to perceive brahman through austerity. Brahman is austerity.” Eventually Bhigu recreates – or maybe creates? – the whole path – food, breath, mind, perception, bliss.

So 3.7-10 are basically a rant against austerites, especially food austerities. 3.7 begins, “One should not belittle food.” 3.8 “One should not reject food.” 3.9 “One should prepare a lot of food.” 3.10 “One should never turn anyone away from one’s home.” And all of it is backed up with connections and correspondances that basically say, “Hey! Brahman created things this way! We ARE food. We are part of this chain, and animals and plants are too, and we are all one, and it’s all beautiful, and let’s get down and enjoy it until we become food again!” I love it!

2:30 I did it! Yoga for an hour. In addition to the first three breathing exercises – all supine. I did the Dvipada Pitham – two-legged platform, another supine pose, and then switched to prone – the Chakravakasana (sunlord/cat stretch) and Balasana (Child’s Pose). They all felt pretty good except that with the Dvipada Pitham I couldn’t feel each vertebra the way you are supposed to. I think tomorrow I will do the same thing but add the Bridge Pose. It grows right out of the two-legged platform. Setu Buhdhasana it’s called. And maybe the Apanasana, knee-to-chest pose, which is inbetween them in difficulty. And I’d like to add one or two fo the seated poses from the other book.

This book presents yoga as if it were a matter of learning the movements so that you can master them quickly. Do multiple repetitions of them, over and over, in various orders to get your heart pumping and burn fat, as in aerobics. I’m sorry, but I will never believe that was the purpose of hatha yoga, and it is not a method with which I feel comfortable. Since the Yoga Center downtown – the only yoga center for miles – is Astanga, I’m afraid that is how it will be, too. Power yoga, for Krishna’s sake! I suppose some of the fitness centers and health clubs might have yoga classes. Maybe even on campus? But I fear it’ll be the same thing. I need someone who teaches Integral or even Ananda or Kripalu. Viniyoga would be a middle way that I could live with. For now I’ll just muddle on by myself.

Me and Me and Me in a Dream

2009-09-11T07:51:00.001-05:00

February 4, 2009
In the dream – well, before the dream, when I went to bed Indy [my cat of 12 years] settled between my body pillow and my belly, kind of propped on a hip and an elbow and my chest. I could feel her touching several places and knew if I shifted at all I’d disturb her, which I hate doing because it is so rare she sleeps on me rather than beside me. It was very cold night, on the below side of zero with gusting winds, and she was willing to share body heat. I think her position influenced the dream.

In it, Indy and I walked out of wherever we were for a stroll in a beautiful landscape. We were enjoying one another’s company, frisking and communing and feeling free and in sync. All of a sudden, when we were some way from the safety of the place we’d come from, a bunch of squirrels and four or five rabbits shot out from around corner and a hole/door in the structure we were just approaching. Some birds may have taken off, too. All these animals appeared and then zipped off across our path, obviously running for their lives. We were startled, maybe the fight-or-flight response already beginning in us. And then the predator appeared. A yellow-grey mountain bear\rottweiler\wolf\hellhound\lion\cheetah thing. He was a mix of all the scary wild animals I imagine, I guess. His fur was matted and dingy, yellow-gray rather than golden, but his eyes were pure gold. He’d been hot on the trail of the rabbits, but when he saw Indiana, who was much bigger than them and I guess therefore a better meal, he came to a dead stop.
Indy, in a crouch since the first startle of the animals, went completely frozen. I moved faster than I ever have in real life. I bent and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck – something I’ve never done and don’t think would be smart now, she’s so big. But I did, supporting her weight quickly with my other hand and pulling her tight against my body. She was just still and alert. Not a dead weight, and not trembling.

But now what? His attention had shifted to me. Previously he hadn’t really cared that I existed. Now he did, and he was laughing at me. Daring me to try anything. And he was right. I needed both of my hands to support Indy; if I let go with one, she’d either dig into my flesh with her claws so deeply the pain would distract and weaken me, or she’d fall and be eaten by the creature. I had my feet. I could kick, which I did the first time he took a step. I think I even connected with his muzzle, but all it really accomplished was to give him a measure of my strength. Or lack thereof. What could I do? I was getting really desperate. Terrified. I couldn’t turn and run back to where we’d come out of. I knew he’d attack then, kill or maim me then run off with the baby. My Indy.

I was wondering if there was some way I could turn Indy around too, let her natural attack abilities work with mine to help us escape while still protecting her. Or would that just get her killed? Was I going to get her killed anyway? No matter what I did?

I cannot convey how awful it was. How frightening. How helpless and frustrated I felt. Because the solution seemed just out of reach. A whole series of “if only’s” went through my mind. As I looked into the animal’s eyes, the certainty that I was trapped, largely by doing the only thing I could do – pick up my cat – my frozen cat, before she became someone’s dinner. And I woke up.

Indy was still there, which soothed me somewhat, but I could not shake off the effects of the dream. I was still full of adrenaline, still frightened, still feeling bereft. That piercing loss. Since Indy was with me, and purred as soon as she felt me wake, I began to worry that the dream signified the loss of someone else dear to me.

This morning, after telling the dream to J, I realized that Jung would advise me to analyze it as if I were playing all the key roles. J said, “Or just forget it.” But it was too powerful to just forget. Too emotional to be meaningless. To packed with meaning to perform no analysis. Some dreams are just a recycling of the day’s work, making sense of sensory input; mental housecleaning. And some dreams are not. Some are powerful, important, encoded messages from the unconscious, or pre or subconscious mind. I believe that because subjecting such dreams – mine and others – to analysis has produced tremendous insights in the past.
So, who am in the roles of myself, Indiana, and the predatory lion/wolf/creature? Well, what most terrifies and disgusts and threatens and disrupts my life right now? For many it might be the economy, their jobs or fear of losing them or something like that. But for me it is most definitely disease, pain, and illness. If we ran with that for a moment and said the predator is the part of me eaten up with pain and illness, threatened by disease, what does that make the other two?

At first I was tempted to say, “I am me,” but that is hardly illuminating. That was a part of me that responded quickly – first assessed the situation and determined the danger, responded decisevely and bravely, selflessly out of love for a friend. Her focus was intently on Indy. A warrior. But maybe too protective? Because she didn’t give Indy a chance to defend herself. Maybe Indy wasn’t frozen but biding her time? Waiting for the cat/wolf/thing to make the first move? The me-woman will never know now, since she intervened to “save” Indy and only ended by getting them both stuck.

Then who is Indy? Who is the best friend, with whom a simple walk is pure joy? Is that atman? Or maybe the part of me that is ready for yoga, wants to meditate every day, has the discipline to pull out the scripture each morning and will lead us to the new, healthier, more spiritually rich life? Indy was ahead, leading, by the way. So does that mean that the healer/yoga part of me is so vulnerable, so fragile or frightened that it is frozen by the sight of disease and pain?
I have certainly used it that way, saying I’ll begin seated meditation again and yoga once I’m healed up from this last surgery; or I’m in too much pain to focus right now . . . I use the mantra a lot, and nothing keeps me from intellecualizing the scriptures. But if Indy represnts the experiential part. . . could it be that the warrior part only thinks that joyful part is vulnerable and in need of protection? Maybe she was finally getting it when she realized she needed to allow that part, Indy, to help protect hersef, protect them both with her claws and her instincts.
I know I had a terrible fear that I was going to lose whatever Indy represented, in part because I had acted so quickly to protect it. Maybe there is a lesson there, too, about not being so frightened of the pain that I allow it to dictate my actions. Force myself to remain calm, assess, evaluate what is best in the long term for all, and only act then. Perhaps inserting that pause will enable me to see that the best course really is to meditate or pursue yoga, not see another doctor or read scary articles on WebMD or something like that. I confess that negative Pap is haunting me a bit. I know the answers – yoga and meditation. Why not start today?

Connections of Different Sorts

2009-09-09T08:25:00.002-05:00

February 2, 2009

I’m worrying about my relationship with an old friend. It seems to be suffering because I no longer drink. Maybe that throws a wet blanket on everything. Because I don’t lose the thread of the conversation; I will follow but I don’t get lost in tangents, and am not bamboozled by ridiculous arguments. I don’t take the bait on those with near as much heat as I used to when I was similarly trashed. So maybe I’m just no fun to talk philosophy with anymore. Maybe I’ve grown too pedantic and teacherly and know-it-all.

I have caught myself lecturing a couple times. See, I discovered that with all his knowledge of Buddhism, Taoism and even the fringes of Jainism and Sikhism, he knows next to nothing about the central beliefs of Hinduism. He knows enough to mask his lack of knowledge and understanding, so he starts with “Which hinduism? Jains or Sikhs? The Bhagavad Gita? Isn’t that the battle on the Plain, where the Pandava clan . . .” blah, blah, blah. Yes, but what is the message of the Gita? What does Krishna say in it? No clue. See? Slippery fellow to talk to. He begins to make you feel like a heel for daring to suggest he hasn’t fully considered all the aspects of something (all the while insisting he knows nothing so you cannot have hurt his pride), but if you push at the structure, you realize it is a house of cards. And then he says, “Well yeah, I told you I don’t really know anything about all this stuff. I don’t really care about it, either. Just something to pass the time.”

So I was lecturing him a bit, because I wanted him to at least have the alternate, Sanatana Dharma, jnana yoga, Upanishad and Gita reality in his head, as something to contrast to his very negative, life-denying and judgmental mixed up combo of Buddhism and Calvinism he’s got right now. He’s tied together the Buddha’s view that all life is suffering and there are no actions that relieve the suffering permanently except detachment, with his father’s beliefs that this world is run by Satan. So he has pretty well programmed himself to see only the negative, only death, sickness, greed, dissolution, evil, etc. And he sees no hope for the world; he doesn’t believe in a redeeming savior, he is not really even seeing Buddha as a figure that helps pull the raft. Pretty hopeless. And he really hasn’t stressed much of the compassion. He doesn’t seem to remember that the Buddha was always laughing and smiling; he wasn’t walking around wailing and glum.

There also isn’t much room for action. There isn’t any point so why bother? On the one hand, humans got themselves into this mess and will have to get themselves out. On the other, he doesn’t believe in actually working toward that end. Or at least, he’s been going around in circles about that for the ten years I’ve known him, freely admitting it might be an excuse to avoid having to do anything. A decade is a pretty long time to be in the same place philosophically and spiritually. I devoutly pray I will not remain in the same place I am right now for 10 days, let alone 10 years.

Chapter 8 of the CU will help me along the path. It begins by saying that inside “this fort of brahman,” meaning our bodies, “There is a small lotus, a dwelling place. And in that lotus there is a space. That is what you should try to discover.” The space is smaller than an atom and larger than the galaxy. It does not age, is never sick, is not killed, does not die, and no evil attaches to it. It is the eternal, joyful, blissful part of us that we should seek to know.

February 3
In the CU 8.2 it says that you get whatever kind of heaven you want. A person who has fully found that space inside the lotus – “If such a person desires the world of fathers, by his intention alone fathers rise up. And securing the world of fathers, he rejoices.” Or the world of mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, perfumes and garlands, food and drink, singing and music, women – whatever he desires. Okay, so it is not heaven, it is here on earth. Once you know the true Self, you control Reality.

Then again . . . 8.3 is impenetrable. It says all the desires (real) are masked by (unreal) desires. Though real, they wear an unreal mask “for when someone close to him departs from the world, he doesn’t get to see him here.” But, all the things he desires but doesn’t get, he will get by going there, “. . . for these real desires, masked by the unreal, are located there.”
Where is “there”? Okay, it can’t be heaven, or after death, even though the example is a departed loved one, because of the context. We are talking about that lotus-space in the heart, the dwelling place of atman.

And 8.3.2-4 confirms by saying it is like a buried treasure; those who don’t know it is there will tramp over it every day, never realizing they are walking on gold. In the same way, the people and creatures use and go into their own hearts every day, they never suspect such power is right there. “The name of brahman is Real (satyam).” I note that because my novel is all about people deciding what is “real” and what is not – creating and sharing reality in that way. [Probability Moon by Nancy Kress].

This is interesting and I need to share it with Mara. 8.4 “Now, this self is a dike, a divider, to keep these worlds from colliding with one another.” Doesn’t it seem more like “to keep them from flowing into one another” than colliding? Either way, we can and will pass over the dike eventually, into where old age, illness, death and evil cannot follow.
Oh man, this is so cool! But to explain why it is so cool, I have to explain so much about the novel I’m reading. I wasn’t planning to, but I just got to the point where she (Kress) explains the most recent scientific theories about the quantum basis of thought, of human consciousness. Our understanding of how the mind works is still limited, but it has gotten far enough to tell us that our first idea, electromagnetism, is certainly occurring but does not explain everything that happens in the brain. The second idea, neurochemicals, transmitters, was a huge leap forward and explained so much more. We can now analyze and tinker with brain chemistry in a much more sophisticated way than with electicity or – I guess what was really first, plain old mechanics – just anatomy – open it up and chop something out and see what happened.
But even neurochemistry doesn’t explain it all. “The electrical impulse hits the presynaptic grid; it has a measurable, constant voltage, the same voltage across all neurons. But sometimes it causes a release of neurotransmitters and sometimes it doesn’t. The probablility of release varies from .17 to .62 depending on the kind of neuron. And no one really knows why.” (Kress 200:128)
See, the problem is this – why do we have thoughts with no external stimuli? That’s one of the problems. And why, given that constant electrical impulse, does the exact same stimulus only have a 17-62% chance of causing some mental reaction?
Because, maybe, we are dealing with quantum effects. Probability waves. At the end of every nerve synapse we have vesicular grids. Billions of them. They are what control how much neurotransmitter is released with each nerve impulse. “Paracrystalline vesicular grids are very small. They operate according to the laws of quantum physics. They can cause quantum events outside their energy barrier, because part of their quantum probability field lies there. More and more, it looks like that is how consciousness affects the brain. Through altering the prbability field. There’s no other way for a purely mental event, such as deciding to get up from your chair, to produce an effect in the natural world without violating the law of the conservation of energy.” P.275
And when you start talking quarks, you bring in quantum entanglement. This has so many implications I can’t think through them all right now. It applies directly to my belief that metaphor is the mind’s language, not linear, digital, binary code. But check out what the very next part of the CU 8th chapter says, that blew me away with its timing:
In 8.5.3 it mentions two rivers “in” a “land” of brahman, kind of like a metaphor for perfect bliss and joy. These rivers are called “the rivers of the heart.” So in 8.6 it says these rivers flow like or with the rays of the sun, like a long highway they traverse the worlds, the one “up there” and the one “down here.” When we sleep and dream peacefully, we have slipped into those rivers and been transported to the sun “up there.” No evil can disturb us because we aren’t even here, not “really.” When we die, we rise up along these same rays, with the sound OM. “No sooner does he think it than he reaches the sun.” That’s the line that really grabbed me. “It is the door to the farther world, open to those who have knowledge, closed to those who do not.” 8.7.4

Where and What Atman Is, Part 1(?)

2009-09-07T08:11:00.002-05:00

January 31, 2009
In the CU 6.9-11 the lessons continue to be about the nature of atman brahman, this living essence, or this essence that pervades and defines our existence. I’m not quite sure if he’s referring to what happens when we die, or what is always true, in reference to the Self – the atman part of each thing/creature. Each verse uses a different metaphor. The first, verse 9, uses honey. Bees collect nectar from all over to create honey, but once it is all together, each part doesn’t say “I came from here, I came from over there, etc.” No, it is just all the one honey. In the same way, our atman does not know it is a tiger, wolf, C (a friend), Me, Indiana (my cat), etc. It is just one thing. In v.10 the metaphor is rivers flowing into the ocean.

Verse 11 is different. Here, the father/guru speaks of sap in a tree; wherever one cuts the tree one finds living sap flowing, and wherever the sap stops flowing, those branches die. In the same way, wherever there is the essence, atman, there is life, or living (jiva). “Know that this, of course, dies when it is bereft of jiva, but life itself does not die.” “The finest essence here – that constitutes the self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the self (atman). And that’s how you are.”
It takes the animating force of jiva to keep our bodies alive – as C would say, our animal part – but because we are more than animal, because we are Atman, too, the death of the animal part, the shell, is not the death of life. It is not the death of us, though the earlier verses certainly indicate that it is the death of our consiousness as individuals. Do all the Upanishads teach this? I thought this was a difference between Hindu and Buddhist thought. I mean, at the end, at the merging, or moksha or samadhi, of course one lets go of individuality. So it is just a symptom of my spiritual immaturity that this bothers me in the slightest. We are One. Why hold on to the whitethoughts-construct?

V. 12 and 13 are good, short, profound lessons too. In 12, the teacher asks the son to cut up a fruit from a banyan tree, then take a tiny seed and cut it up into quarters. Now point to a quarter. He can’t, because the pieces are so small they’ve disappeared. Just so is the essence that pervades us; atman is invisible to see, but the essence, as in the seed, was/is mighty enough to start and uphold a great banyan tree.
In 13, he gives the son a chunk of salt to dissolve in water, asks him to retrieve it, to taste the water in several locations, and finally to throw the water out on a stone (where it will evaporate and the salt re-emerge). Just so is atman in every particle of our being; not here nor there but everywhere. Just so is it invisible, even when you doubt and disbelieve. That is what and who you really are.

February 1
The Seventh chapter of the Changdogya Upanishad is another treatise – using the “Socratic (how arrogant is that, considering how many others created the method pre-Socrates?)” method – on what brahman is, and what is the “greatest” part of brahman. Since brahman is everything, I guess I don’t really understand these sages’ preoccupation with determining the “most” important or “best” part of brahman. What I am witnessing here is partly to do with the development of the philosophy; they had to go through the stage of questing for most and best. And maybe it’s also about what to focus on. Its fine to know that all the cosmos is brahman, is One, but where does one begin? On what should one train one’s attention in order to really grok that? Theortetically, absolutely anything can be your doorway, but aren’t some easier to enter than others?

So in Chapter 7 a man comes to Sanatkumara and says he’s learned everything anyone else can teach him. He has studied and mastered the Vedas, ancestral rites and histories, mathematics, monologues and dialogues, astrology, mythology, etc. Yet still he suffers from sorrow. He has heard Sanatkumara can teach him about self, and that this will allow him to pass out of sorrow. He begs to become a student and is accepted. The first thing the teacher says – the first lesson – is that everything he has studied is “nothing but name.” We are back to what we talked about a couple days ago; the words for things. But here he just says, “So venerate the name.” Venerate brahman as name. Right, extend it maybe, at least to labels. All those words are just labels, and if you venerate the lables as brahman, you are getting it, you are looking past the label, the ritual, the duty, the chants, whatever, to the real thing, which is One.

The student asks if there is anything greater than name. Yes, speech. Because speech makes all of those things known. Venerate brahman as speech and you can go all the places speech goes. After a bit . . . Is there anything greater than speech?
The mind. The mind envelopes both name and speech. One formulates both speech and names in the mind, so it is greater. Even greater than mind is intention. Samkalpa. Will, purpose. One must have these in order to shape words in the mind. This is a rather longer set of verses that says the earth, sky, the Vedas, rituals, the essence of all of them is intention. There is a whole pattern of intention laid out in the pattern of the cosmos and in the rituals and the body and the vital functions. So venerate brahman as intention.

That isn’t the end of the chain by far. Still greater, in order of ascent, are thought, deep reflection, and perception. So far, all of these seem consistent – logically and with later teachings. But after perception, the student asks again, “Is there anything greater?” And the surprising (to me) answer is “Strength.”
“Even one strong man strikes terror into the hearts of a hundred men of perception. When someone becomes strong, he comes to stand; standing, he moves about; when he moves about, he becomes a pupil; when he becomes a pupil, he comes to be a man who sees, thinks, hears, discerns, performs rites and perceives. By strength does the earth persist . . .” 7.8.1 Without the first sentence, on could argue that this is referring to personal force – that strength/power by which we move ourselves through the day and life, not brute strength that can be used on others, though I suppose the two are necessarily related. If strength is truly better than perception, why not dedicate one’s life to body-building, rather than meditation? Is it that one must keep the body’s strength up through hatha yoga and healthy eating?

Obviously, I was surprised to find this so highly ranked. And look what comes next – greater than strength is food. One must eat to stay alive, and eat well to live well, to be strong, able to perceive, reflect deeply, perform rites, speak, etc. Even more important than food – water. We can go longer without food than water. All the vital functions rejoice over water. Therefore venerate brahman as food and water, which give us strength.

More posers – at first at least – what is greater than water? Well, what can dry up water and prevent it from coming? Heat! And what contains the sun, rain, moon, lightening and more? Space.
Really not knowing what to expect next . . . It is memory. Without memory “they would not be able to hear, consider, or recognize anything. Clearly it is through memory that one recognizes one’s children and one’s cattle.” 7.13
Hope is even greater, since without hope we wouldn’t bother remembering or having intentions or even eating and drinking. And finally, the very greatest . . .
Life breath. All this is fixed to lifebreath, as spokes are fixed to a hub.

There follows an injunction to the student that he must follow a course of learning in order to really master this knowledge of the self. But the teacher seems to contradict his orders. I mean, he seems to lay out what was perhaps a standard belief and practice of the time and say, “but I don’t think that’s true, or right.” What he says is that the student, in order to speak truth, must first perceive it. To perceive truth, he must understand perception, and in building like that, the order is, perceive thinking, perceive faith, produce, act, attain well-being, attain plenitude.

The notes help us understand that there was a belief, to which the teacher is referring, that one’s faith was demonstrable with monetary wealth in Vedic India. Makes sense. The gods reward the faithful, and if you do the rites properly, wealth will flow your way. Plus, one has to have wealth to do the rites and pay the priests and have over all the guests and show proper hospitality to humans, priests and dieties.

Thus the injunction to produce, which requires action and the attainment of material well-being. So here is where this radical Upanishadic thinking breaks with that tradition: The student asks, “Sir, on what is plenitude based?” He answers, “On one’s own greatness. Or maybe it is not based on greatness. Cattle and horses, elephants and gold, slaves and wives, farms and houses – these are what people here call greatness. But I don’t consider them that way; no, I don’t, for they are all based on each other (my emphasis) 7.24”.

Then he says plenitude is below, above, in the west, east, north and south. It extends over the whole world. Now substitue “I.” I am below, above, in the east, east, north, and south. I extend over the entire world. Next substitute the self. The self is below, above, etc. “The man who sees it this way, thinks about it this way, perceives it this way; a man who finds pleasure in the self, who dallies with the self, who mates with the self and who attains bliss with the self, he becomes completely his own master; he obtains complete freedom of movement in all the worlds. Thsow who perceive it otherwise are ruled over by others and obtain perishable worlds; they have no freedom of movement in any of the worlds” 7.25

In 7.26 he says that a person who perceives it this way – for him lifebreath, memory, hope, space, heat, water, food, strength, perception, deep reflection, though, intention, mind, speech, name, vedic formula, rites – all spring from his self. The whole world springs from his (or her!) self.
One sees here both the upholding of the Vedic rituals and the utter breaking with the old interpretations and meanings. Everything is being recast in the light of the new insights, but they are managing to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The search for the greatest makes a little more sense, in terms of developing ever deeper insights. One imagines the dialogue taking place over a long period of ime, as the student goes away to digest the first message and practice venerating brahman as mind, the feels dissatisfied and realizes this is only part of it, “let me go back and ask if there is something more.”

C and I were talking yesterday about how ridiculous it is that we still smoke (cigarettes). With all of the emphasis on breath – that breath is the absolutely most important and fundamental part of life and spirit – which should be kind of obvious – I really wonder if, when I begin hatha yoga, it will help me feel ready to just let go of the cigs. I want to want to. I am getting closer. Just not quite there yet. Hopefully between yoga, meditation, Chantix, a cervical cancer scare and the cold weather, I can give it a try.

Prana 101

2009-09-06T08:42:00.002-05:00

January 29, 2009
My Upanishadic lesson today is a parable in which a boy learns from various animals that brahman is far flung, limitless, abode-posessing and radiant. This is in the CU 4.1.1-10. Each of four creatures reveals one quarter of brahman, but he still wants to hear it from a human teacher. I think that is largely out of respect.

Then in CU 4.1.10 that boy is the teacher, and he won’t teach this one student. His wife keeps saying, “You better teach him, before the fire beats you to it.” But he ignores her, and sure enough, the fire tells the student, “Brahman is breath; brahman is joy; brahman is space.” He says he understands the first part, but how can the others be right? How can brahman be joy AND be space? “They are the same thing,” says the fire.

But the explanation is more of those semantic, metaphoric chains of signification they so depend on in their magic; this word is like this word which is like that object which comes into the world the same way this does and therefore this last thing equals the first thing. Huh? [I unfortunately fell asleep here – drugs took me off so the pen just trails into unreadable, which is unfortunate because I think I was onto something.]

January 30
One last health thing I forgot to report that is preying on my mind a bit: my nurse practitioner called to tell me that the results of my PAP were abnormal, so she had them re-tested specifically for the HPV strain that causes cancer, and that was negative. She said that meant all we have to do now is wait and make sure I get tested again in 6 months, and step up the testing schedule. Of course, my mind stattered chattering away; why only the HPV test? Is that the only thing that causes cancer? And for a little bit I felt dismay, that “Oh no! How can one more thing go wrong” feeling. I haven’t even had a chance to demonstrate what I’ve learned from this last round!
I just have to trust her. Take the rest of the winter, spring, summer and early fall to put into practice what I think I’ve learned. Begin to incorporate my body into my spiritual development and discipline by learning yoga, and when I go for my physical in the fall, the results will hopefully reflect a changed reality. We will be eating from our garden and the farmer’s market, getting the exercise from gardening and walking in our neighborhood in addition to yoga, so my body ought to be super happy. We will just make it a place where cancer does not feel welcome and cannot find a foothold.

Turning to the fifth chapter of the CU, it begins with a series of statements that Socrates might not have argued with in principle – to know good is to do it. “When a man knows the most excellent, he becomes the most excellent.” In v.1, the “best and greatest” is breath. V.2, the “most excellent” is speech. V.3 the “firm base” is sight. V.4 “When a man knows the correspondences (sampad) his desires, both divine and human, are fulfilled. Correspondence is hearing.” V.5 Refuge is the mind.

We’ve seen these – breath, speech, sight, hearing and mind presented before in various ways. Sometimes with other things like smell, touch and taste as well. They are, together, the vital functions – prana. Sometimes prana seems to refer only to breath, and sometimes to all of them together. Verses 6-15 explain why, telling the same story told in the BU about how the vital functions argued about which was most important, agreed that each would leave for a year. Speech leaves, and the body lives like a mute for a year. When speech comes back, sight leaves, and the body lives for a year like a blind man. Then hearing leaves, and the body is deaf; when the mind leaves, the body is a simpleton for a year. Each of the years has its difficulties, but the body gets along. Then comes the breath’s turn. When breath tries to leave for its year apart, it so jerks all the other vital functions, in the way a fine horse would jerk all the stakes to which it is tethered, that they all gathered around him and implored, “Lord, please stay! You are the greatest among us, do not depart!” v. 12.

This is really helpful. I found it super confusing in some contexts. Studying the Upanishads sometimes feels like an uphill battle, or like a . . . not useless, but a task that will bring little benefit. A kind of luxury, intellectual playing at something, because the culture of the authors is so far distant from me in time and space and - - culture. How can I possibly know what they might have meant? The translation I have I’m sure is very good, because I trust his notes as a scholar. He explains why he makes the decisions he makes, who he is following and why, etc. But he is not a Hindu. He’s not an Indian. There is much about the culture he can’t explain, and there is much about the philosophy I don’t think he even begins to understand. The more I read, the more I realize that for him the scriptures are a very challenging and intriguing linguistic puzzle/task/work. And for that we can maybe trust his scholarship more; he has no side, no concern for how the chapters are interpreted spiritually. But that doesn’t help me get when I’m stuck philosophically.

So I was saying, sometimes it does get to feeling a bit too dry and scholarly for me. What does it mean that the breath is so important? I mean, both the BU and CU speak endlessly about it, and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita and the Uddhava Gita said we had to get it under control as part of our devotion and discipline. How could I so blithely ignore that all this time? Doesn’t it mean that it isn’t just asanas I must add to meditation, but pranayama? Likely all the yoga methods include pranayama . . . or all the good ones.
I wonder if, after I have learned experientially some things about breath through those practices, if all the scriptures will take deeper significances. Like the Gita did after I had a mantra, and the U. Gita did after I’d been meditating. It still comes as such a shock to me – the person who has always lived so much in her head – that there are things that MUST be learned that CANNOT be learned with the mind. Whoa! Hunh? As an anthropological theorem I liked the idea of embodiment, embodied culture. It seemed true. But I still wasn’t really getting it, because I wasn’t putting my body through the experiences it needed to learn things.

In the end of the CU 5 comes a description of a collection of wealthy and wise households, all intent on learning more and understanding better what atman and brahman are. They travel together to two teachers. The second asks them each in turn what he venerates as brahman. Each has thought about it, and each has a different answer. Sky, wind, space, earth, sun, waters. The guru says to each, “That thing is brahman, but it is just the (head, foot, breath, arm, etc.) of brahman. Venerating it is good, it has brought you wealth and a family and standing among your people, but if you had continued to be so limited in your conception it would have killed you.” Waters are the bladder; it is good to have one, but if you keep filling it constantly, the bladder will eventually burst and kill you, sort of thing.

He gets them to see that brahman is all of that. All of those things at once. Then he gives them instructions for a ritual which the notes say became a very important one in the brahmanical tradition. In fact, it seems like one I could maybe do. With food, when eating one makes sacrifices in order – to the out-breath, the interbreath, the in breath, the link breath, the up breath, each time saying, “To the out breath, svaha.”
This rite is called praagihotra – the fire sacrifice in the vital breaths. Svaha, recall, is a word used in rituals that has no actual meaning. A ritual call to the gods. This seems an easy enough blessing, right? Especially once one knows what the breaths are?

Oooh. I decided to keep going and stumbled onto a treasure. First, it begins with a father requiring that his son go away and study rather that be a Brahmin in name only, which reminds me to record that there have been several indications that caste is more than a matter of birth at this time; in fact, birth is sometimes demonstrated to be irrelevant.

What Chapter Six is really about, though, is how the universe(s) – cosmos – come into being and how that determines the nature of the composition, development, and relationships. This is presented as a secret teaching; something the son was not taught at his Brahminical, Vedic school where he became arrogant and swell-headed. The father begins by presenting the “Law of Substitution,” which is almost cool enough. He says, “By means of just one lump of clay one would perceive everything made of clay – while the reality is just this, its clay.” He says the same with a copper trinket, by which one can perceive everything copper, and an iron tool, by which one could perceive everything iron, “It is a verbal handle, a name, while the reality is just this, the thing.”
I said this to C (a houseguest), said “think about this for awhile” and he said, “Well now, I’ve been thinking about that, about how the Bible says ‘In the Beginning was the Word.’ Why a word? What does it say there, does it say logos” I was stunned, because the very next part of the scripture is about the origin of the cosmos! “In the beginning . . .” I about fell off my little donut-pillow! How in the world had he made that leap? I said “That’s amazing!” and I read him the next part and we began discussing the merit of various origin stories, the meaning of the Garden of Eden myth and my rocky relationship with it and my current peaceful acceptance of it as a myth that explains god’s gift of choice and the pain of growth and knowledge. Then we got sidetracked by making menus and whatnot and I only just now got back to thinking about what this verse means and I just aksed him what his thought process was, how did he get from the thingness of a thing to the origin of the universe?

His answer made perfect sense; he was thinking about the word. Why IS it a “Word” that exists first? These verses insistence that it is “just verbal handles” while the reality is something else had made the connection. He was thinking about the Bible verse “the Word became flesh” and wondering if things aren’t existent until we name them. Do they have reality in and of themselves, beyond the words for them?

The Upanishad is saying yes – penetrate the word, the verbal handle, the mere name, and you will get to the reality of the thin-in-itself. Once you perceive the reality of copper or clay in one thing, you get “copperness” wherever copper is. Okay, so why does the Upanishad make the leap to the origin? To “in the beginning”?
It explains that this cosmos was “simply what is existent – one only, without a second” CU 6.2. Meaning there was a deity/being/consciousness/thing that existed befere/outside the cosmos. The father explains that some people teach that there was no existence – nothing – and out of that nothing, existence emerged, but that is wrong. The One existed, and it said to Itself, “Let us be many. Let me propogate myself.” And it emitted heat. Out of the heat came rain, and out of the rain came food. So these are the three essential characteristics of the deity and of every aspect of the cosmos; heat, water and food – according to this teaching.

In 6.3 he establishes that there are only 3 sources from which all creatures originate. More importantly, 6.3.2 “Then that same deity thought to itself: ‘Come now, why don’t I establish the distinctions of name and appearance by entering these three deities here with this living self (atman) and make each of them three-fold’.” In every thing, heat, water, food – red, white, black – are present in different quantities and distributions. Is this the origin of the three gunas? Like some of the early teachers/sages were figuring things out and got different pieces, and eventually it coalesced into the formulation presented in the Gitas and Puranas, which hangs together so well it hasn’t been seriously changed or challenged since.
Geez, reading one of the footnotes where he actually provides some insight makes me realize how very much I am NOT getting out of these scriptures. Well, it is a first time through. I’ll have them forever. One has to begin learning somewhere.
A little taste in CU 6.8.7, it concludes with “and that’s how you are, son.” Olivelle defends his translation, saying it is often translated “That art Thou.” The latter is impossible, claims Olivelle, because the pronoun ‘tat’ cannot refer either to ‘sat’ or to ‘animan’. The Sanskrit of the contested text is tat tvam asi. Anyway, the phrase “does not establish the identity between the individual and the ultimate being (sat), but rather shows that (the son) lives in the same manner as all the other creatures, that is, by an invisible and subtle essence; it indicates the cause of his existence.” P.349
The father has shown that the “whole world exists because of the essence, which is the truth and is lasting and real. It is the self, for everything exists in relation and reference to it. Then the father personalizes the teaching by making the son realize he should look upon himself the same way – he, like the tree and the world, is pervaded by the essence, which is his final reality and his true self.”
I was getting some of that, but not all. Ah well, how fun would it be if there was nothing to go back for?

The Very Real Body

2009-09-04T09:37:00.000-05:00

January 24, 2009
[I’ll spare you the details – a beautiful journal ended on descriptions of pain and mess of the hemerhoid surgery, which I bring up because):
Isn’t that exactly what I am supposed to be learning right now? That the “dirt” of life, and the messiness of the body are just as much me and as important to my journey, my spiritual growth, as the sublime, the ecstatic, the intellectual moment? I know this year I need to have a lot more experiences with my body. Yoga, obviously. Walking, working in the garden, smelling flowers and incense and just trying to learn to experience the Divine in ways that aren’t filtered through my brain so much. And I’ll try to NOT write about all of them, either! : )

January 25
[Just to give you a taste of what trying to truly live in my body was like at the time . . .]
I don’t know if I can do this. I am more miserable than I know how to describe. Broken glass is a fairly good description of how it feels inside my rectum, except it doesn’t capture the sense that there is also a wound that has healed shut that I must break. I’m repeating myself. Its just that the more stressed I get, the more my PHN [post herpetic neuralgia] flares. The higher the pain level, the less control over my heart rate, blood pressure, tension. So the sphincter spasms, which is AGONY – chewing glass with your butt. I actually have bands of pain across my nose and cheeks and a few other strange sensations, all derivations of the extreme pain my behind is in. It’s like a kind of shock, I think. Nausea also playing a role, of course.

January 26
I am finally reading the Changdogya Upanishad, which is focused primarily on the High Chant, OM. The texts are not as easy for me to enter into as the BU, because they largely provide history, theory or rationalization for ritual. Or instruction for rituals that are laid out in the Vedas and most of which I don’t imagine I’ll ever pick up. Of course, that isn’t necessarily true. Ritual is important and I’m not knocking it. But I didn’t grown up with these, I’ve never seen them, I have no idea if they are – or which ones are – ancient history and never practiced now, and which are daily habits for modern Hindus. I don’t have access to a temple or any of the appropriate priests. In fact, I know that some of these priests – the Udgatr, Saman and Prastotr priests have been replaced by those for the gods from the Mahabharata.

I’m learning what I can. Getting a better feel for how scriptures and stories work, in themselves, in India. And the role of the Upanishads. I see better why it is called the Vedanta, the “End of the Vedas,” but yet is still classified as part of the Vedas, part of Vedic time. It is very in-between. At one momen very magical – mix this, say this, stand here and eat that three times in order to . . . At other times there are appeals to a priestly or deity’s authority “just because I said so.” But the general tone and thrust is one of attempting to explain the rituals, provide some philosophical basis or foundation for the things that make sense and an attempt to eliminate or reform all that has become empty or meaningless.

One can also see parallels with the Old Testament – the time of Judges and Kings. A certain kind of thinking that must have been common in those early states. Trickery on the part of the holy men and the kings. It is not considered deceit, somehow, to pretend to be someone else in order to avoid paying people, or giving them a blessing or whatever. I admit this drove me crazy in the Bible. How can these supposedly “good” people do things like . . . Abraham pretending Sarai was his sister and prostituting her to Pharoah, and a hundred smaller deceptions and tricks? But the truth is that different cultural rules apply. Now in the Abraham case, even Pharoah and Abe’s own people were horrified. But a certain amount of trickery seems to indicate craftiness is admired. It is not considered evil or bad.
Another sort of contradictory thing – the sages in the Upanishads are always being rewarded with cows and riches and kingdoms. If they are sannyasin, what do they do with those? Maybe the category doesn’t really exist yet, nor the ideal.
The CU devotes whole chunks to not only translating but deeply exploring some of the chants in the Vedas, like the five-fold Saman chant, described in CU2. I have no idea if those are the same chants that are used in yoga classes today, or in any temples, but surely having some familiarity with these chants and knowing their “hidden wisdom” (the meaning of upanisad) of each syllable will make any chant more open to meaning for me.
In fact, I just began to make some connections between what Turlington said about pranayama – breath control – and these first few chapters. So let’s look a little closer.

The Saman Chant
Opening – OM
Introductory Praise – hum/upsamai gayata narom
High Chant (Udgatr) – om/pa(2)va(2) manayendava (2) abhi devam iya (1212)
Response (Pratihartr) – hum/a (2)
Female (Udgatr) – Ksato
Concluding (all 3) – sa (345)t

Then all of chapter 2 explains how various aspects of the world, the body and the spirit are reflected in or by this chant. The seasons, the rain, the digestion, sexual intercourse, breathing – everything. If you know this, and you can “hear” the rhythm of the chant in these everyday things, multiple blessings unfold for you. I wish I could hear it, I think I would understand it better. It would also be nice to have a translation. But maybe, like OM, there is no translation, really. Or not a full one.
The chant is woven upon all these things, so when one knows this, one doesn’t mindlessly repeat words but has the tools to meditate upon the ways this chant weaves the universe together. I think that is what the chapter is saying. And so one’s life becomes even richer and more blessed. Instead of complaining about rain, or Brahmins (both specifically mentioned) one sees their place and how to fit in with them, how to “use” them.

Oh! This is too fantastic! As in what a cool scripture! Instructions for good comebacks if anyone criticizes the way you chant! I’m not kidding! The Cu 2.22.3-4. There it says vowels are the corporeal form (atman) of Indra. Spirants are the corporeal form of Prajapati, and stops are Death. So if someone criticizes you for the way you pronounce your vowels, “he should tell that man, “I have taken refuge in Indra and he will rebut you.” For spirants, “Prajapati will crush you,” and for stops, “I have taken refuge in Death, and he will burn you up!” Isn’t that great? A tool for stutterers!

When speaking, vowels should be uttered, “with resonance and emphasis, thinking “Let me give strength to Indra.” One should pronounce all spirants without swallowing or ejecting them, and with an open passage between the tongue and the place of articulation, thinking, “Let me surrender myself to Prajapati.” With stops, check slightly, separate them from following sounds thinking, “Let me save myself from Death.”
As I was copying all that out I got thinking about how slow you’d have to talk, or how fast you’d have to think to actually dedicate each noise to the appropriate deity. I know that such activities, practice, do occur at ashrams all over the world. You sure wouldn’t say much, would you? You’d think pretty hard about what was important to say.

January 27
Another rough night. Couldn’t fall asleep ‘til 2, then was up at 4:30 with abdominal pain. Could barely pull myself out of bed. These actions become contortionist challenges, trying like crazy to stay relaxed so that the sphincter won’t clinch, while not allowing one’s bottom to touch any surface – do that while rolling out of a bed so high you need a step ladder to climb into/out of, pull on socks (doubled of course because it is so cold) and pajama bottoms, all while trying to make it to the bathroom on time and not disturb your husband or the cat. The latter because she’ll go stomp on the husband. It just isn’t fun. All around, this recovery is the super duper pits.
I’m reading the 3rd chapter of the Changdogya Upanishad. Much of it is way over my head, with its references to the sun as the honey of the gods, and the various parts of the sun – the rays . . . No, the various parts of the honey – the honey cells, the bees, the flower – all correspond to the rays, chants and Vedas. The diferent directions correspond to different Vedas, e.g. East = Rg, South = Yaju and West = Saman. North = Athava and Angirasa. The “upward” cells correspond to the secret teachings – the Upanishads themselves, I guess. Okay, so I can parse all of that, but I have no idea what it means.
Maybe if I follow it out, because the next part is about nectar. I picked up my pen because I was going to write that I’m beginning to get a tiny inkling of the main classifications of the gods and how they came about, though I’m not sure that’s even true, as I write it. I was kind of giving up on figuring out the deeper meaning of the text, but maybe it is worth a shot. I’ve read it several times and it is pretty mysterious. It is also considered very important. In 3.11 it says a father should only teach this knowledge to his eldest son or a wealthy pupil, even if someone offered the world’s weight in riches to him.
The first verses seem to be setting up a metaphorical structure. A model of the world, the sacred universe is like a honeycomb. The purpose of which is to produce honey, or nectar. The next verses talk about how the various classes of gods subsist on the nectar that is produced by the – oh yeah, the Vedas - the chants! The gods survive on the chants. They exist because of ritual. That is what it boils down to, right?

When you realize this, it says, “When someone knows the nectar in this way, he truly becomes one with those very Rudras, with Indra himself as his mouth . . . he enters into this appearance and emerges from this appearance; and he will achieve dominion and sovreignty over these very Rudras for as long as the sun will rise in the south and set in the north, which is twice as long as it will rise in the east and set in the west.” 3.7.3
And so it goes through all the gods, beginning with the Vasus, with fire as their mouth, then Rudras, Adityas, with Varuna as their mouth, Maruts with the moon, Sadhyas with brahman as their mouth. All the gods exist through ritual, are kept alive through ritual remembrance and chant, and thus, if one knows that, one has dominion over them. That would have been a pretty big secret at the time.
It terms of gods, I’m still a bit confused, but I’m getting that these three groups go together – Vasus, Rudras and Adityas. There are 8 Vasus, but they are vague. There are 11 Rudras and Rudra is one of them. He is a storm god, also a healer, and may be a precurser of Siva, as he was sometime called Siva ahd shares some of his aspects. Rudra also rules over the Maruts, a group of – lesser? – deities. The Adityas are literally the children of Aditi, the Mother God. Associated with the earth (of course), she’s the mother of Varuna, Indra, Mitra and others, who are therefore the Adityas.
But what remains confusing – and likely always will because it reflects a bunch of diverse belief systems and mythologies – is the Varuna/Prajapati/Indra thing. It isn’t troubling; they are all “stand-ins” for an idea of Sky God in any case. I just marvel at how little trouble local peoples had with the name differences. After all the killing Western peoples have done over what name God wears, one becomes conditioned to believe it is somehow human nature to slaughter one another over what to call the Maker of Rain, the Creator of Life. If that isn’t sad, I don’t know what is. But how joyful, now, to realize all these other people never dreamed of fighting, much less killing over such a silly thing.
There is a lot more in the next verses I’m not going to go into, but if only I had the confidence! In 3.16 are instructions for how to avoid sickness in the various stages of life by chanting the appropriate word of the Soma metre. Life is divided into 3 stages according the length of the Soma verses, 1st 24 to Vasus, next 44 to Rudras, last 48 to Adityas. If you get sick you are to do certain dedications. But if you are a master, like Mahidasa Ditareya, you can say, “I am not going to die because of it, so you why do you have to afflict me like this?” And his troubles were presumably removed and he lived to 116. Guess that’s what happens when you have dominion over gods people still believe in.

Inauguration Blessings

2009-09-02T10:31:00.002-05:00

January 22, 2009

I’ve just gotten home from my third surgery. Yep. Third surgery in seven months. Fourth if you count oral surgery, which I don’t. I guess only for anesthesia. Are we done now? Have I learned the lessons I was supposed to learn from all of this? Probably not – there are always so many things to learn. But I do believe I’ve had a major breakthrough or insight. I was given the grace to have a blindspot illumined.
Short version: I cannot keep leaving my body out of all the spiritual growth. All the efforts I’ve made to come to know and walk with the Divine have been in my head and heart. Intellectual and some emotional. But we have bodies, as has been made immanently clear to me. Mine has asked politely to be included. It has whined, and then it began screaming non-stop. My response has been to shut it out even more completely. I’ve made some attempts here and there to be kinder and more inclusive; to feed it better, get more exercise, etc. And we’ve gotten along better when I’ve made those efforts. I’ve come a very long way in terms of hating its looks and being verbally abusive or mentally brutal to myself in that way. No more “ugly, fat” taunts all day long.
But I am not conscious of this vessel my soul chose for a house. I don’t listen to it, to its needs and desires. The more it hurts, the more I tune it out, the more I consider it an irrelevancy. That was wrong. I believe all these surgeries, this cascade of problems is/are the result of that shutting out. Not in a punishment or blame sort of way, just cause and effect.

I have begun to integrate my body, this temple of god, into my spiritual development plan. If I don’t, it will continue to break down and it will hold back my intellectual and psychological development. So, yoga it is, as soon as I’m able. I’ll give you some of the model Turlington’s insights later; they really struck home and inspired me.

[Lots of detail about the inauguration of President Obama]
I was surprised by Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the Invocation. But once again, it shows his shrewdness, his ability to look past his personal preferences and reach out to those who call themselves his enemies; to think about what would be good for the country as a whole. If he hadn’t been balanced by Joseph Lowery, I’m not sure Warren would have been good for the country, though. Rick Warren is hugely popular. Not just among the wing-nut ultra right, either, like Falwell. But all those who made his “Purpose Driven Life” a best seller, the millions of moderate, middle-road Christian consumers. My issue with him – like most – is his open anti-gay stance. He preaches intolerance rather than love. Plus the other tell-tale signs that he’s not a man who walks the talk. He’s fat, for example, and loud. His coloring suggests a life of indulgence in food and drink with no exercise – like most Americans. Expecially those with money. No self-discipline or control. Well, I simply cannot trust “men of faith” who claim to have God’s ear who have no self control. The proof of a relationship with God and a true, deep spiritual maturity that provides authority to teach and preach is in the LIFE.

Warren sits in judgment on others. He believes he has every right to – when he’s living in a glass house and has logs in his eye. . Choose your metaphor. So I was wary of his selection and what his prayer would be like. After 8 years of hate-mongering disguised (thinly) as the Lord’s word, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He did a better job than I feared. He did end with the Lord’s Prayer, which is pretty dang exclusive, but he also worked in the Shema and parts of a Muslim devotion, calling god “The Compasionate and Merciful.” He said right after that “and you are loving to everyone you have made." Which could be taken as a reference to LGBTs in that context.

He said quite a lot about our need to work together, stop fighting, and restore justice, freedom and equality. But the way he did it reflects the problem I see in much of mainstream American Christianity; even while trying to lay down the law, set the tone or stage for Obama’s sober message; even while attempting to call our attention to our failings and need for change, he said, “When we focus on ourselves, when we fight with each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity are ours alone, forgive us. When we . . . . forgive us.” These are all excellent things to point out that we are guilty of. But what about repentance? What about sincerely turning away from what we know to be wrong? In addition to forgiveness, how about some help in changing the behavior? None of that was even hinted at, which just leaves this feeling of, “Okay, this is great. In this religion you do what you want, indulge in a bout of remorse (which feels good) ask for forgiveness, and go back to doing what you want.

Maybe I’m the only one who heard the prayer this way. But I don’t think so, judging from the behavior of the vast majority who identify as Christian. And the studies into what Americans actually belive about God support this. He’s much more like Santa Claus than Yahweh, and c’mon, is Santa really going to put coal in a cute little child’s stocking?

Reverend Lowery’s Benediction had all the elements missing from Warren’s. Maybe I’m being a spiritual snob, but as I was saying to J (my sister), if you cannot trust your inner voice to recognize who is truly plugged into the Divine and Absolute Spirit, then you cannot trust anyone, and you are lost.
Lowery doesn’t have to try. He doesn’t have to seem tolerant, to appear loving, to make it look like he knows what God wants to hear from us. He is in utter comfort and familiarity when he opens his mouth and speaks hard, difficult truths. But is equally certain when he calls on God’s help when we try to change. It doesn’t hurt that his voice is lyrical. Listen:
“And while we have sown the seeds of greed – the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.” See that clear difference? Not just “Oops, forgiveness please? Thanks, bye.”
And he wasn’t near done. He went on naming the things we needed help with – choosing love over hate, inclusion over exclusion, tolerance over intolerance, holding on to the spirit of fellowship. “We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won’t get weary in the difficult days ahead . . .” And my favorite:
“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”
So amazingly cool. I’m crying again. I just can’t get over how far we’ve come.

Enter Yoga

2009-08-30T12:37:00.003-05:00

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.

Return to the Spiral Path

2009-08-29T10:47:00.003-05:00

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

My Wonderful Life

2009-08-26T19:18:00.019-05:00

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.

Summer Flowers . . . and Veggies

2009-07-15T18:57:00.001-05:00

It has been such a long time that there is no hope in my catching you up. I feel, anyway, like a totally different person some days. Unfortunately, I am now recovering from yet ANOTHER surgery, different from the one I was anticipating the last time I wrote. Nevermind, I want to post some photos of my lovely garden, that is finally coming along. So here goes : )

Pre-Op

2009-04-09T01:48:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking and even writing quite a few "blog-worthy" things the last few days, but I haven't quite got in the habit of writing on the computer. I still turn to my journal first. It may have something to do with the size of my laptop and the difficulties inherent in holding it in my lap. In any case, an update is due.

I am scheduled for a total abdominal hysterectomy on Monday the 13th. I spent the last week or so arranging for my classes to be covered and prepping my on-line course ahead as far as possible, etc. Surgeon says I won't be doing a full-day's work for at least four weeks. It is a little intimidating. While on one hand I am near-desperate to have it done and feel almost ready to grab a knife and do the operation myself . . . on the other I still ask myself if I am doing the right thing and I tremble at the thought of feeling that weak for that long. It is hard to wrap my head around four to eight weeks of recovery time. Missing out on the end - the best time - of the semester. When you've brought your students through all the hard parts and it is really paying off in sophisticated analysis and critical interpretation.

So I am dealing with it by reminding myself that I would not - am not - giving my students the best of me in any case. I would be suffering through that 4-8 week period anyway. My body has no trouble reminding me of that. And I am putting myself in mental, emotional and to an extent physical training for healing after the surgery.

I am dedicated to health. To being healthy. To being the living embodiment of health. It has begun to really sink in that I do not have to accept anything less than perfect functioning of this temple of god that I'm in. I'm not quite sure when I allowed myself to beging believing that the PHN was a permanent condition, but things went downhill from there.

I am trying to see this surgery and the recovery period as an opportunity to truly change the relationship I have with my body and with my health. I am doing a number of things to try to foster that. I've been continuining the things I've talked about some here (and that I hope to talk more about while I'm recuperating) like yoga and meditation and continuing study of sacred texts that are meaningful and helpful like the Gitas. But I am also participating in a very neat visualization/mind-body healing program offered by the Rehab Center of the hospital.

It has some fairly standard relaxation techniques, and visualizing oneself healed, along with walking yourself through getting to know and have discussions with the hurting parts of your body. That latter is something I can certainly use help with. It also has a component of asking for support; that involves requestion that people who love you send their love in a warm blanket of color (I choose peachy-pink) half an hour before surgery (7 am Central Daylight Savings Time for anyone who feels like participating - I will take all the love and healing thoughts I can get). It is hard for me to ask for this - or anything. But I am and will be grateful.

Another very cool part is that the circulating nurse will read five healing statements to me (4 are pre-selected and one I write myself) as I am going under anaesthetic and while I am under. A great many studies have demonstrated that we do hear what is going on while we are under, and it does have an amazing effect on us. For example, people who are told they will heal well do actually heal faster in controlled studies. Other studies have people using less medication, getting out of the hospital faster, having fewer side effects, and all kinds of things. Anecdotal stories also reveal the opposite; when people hear their doctors saying "Oops" or "This looks bad" or other negative things, they heal more slowly, are depressed, use more pain medication, etc.

So what I decided is that in addition to the statements that suggest I will heal well, quickly, need little medication and have no complications, why not also plant the idea that as I heal from the surgery, I will also heal from the post-herpetic neuralgia? It can't hurt, right? I am working on how to phrase it; it needs to be wholly positive and not mention pain (what happens when you say "don't think about pink elephants"?). Maybe something like "You will be whole and free of all medications forever." Or "All of your cells will work together as a field to be free and healthy for a long life." That means something to me and my body - we've been reading about the body as a quantum field which ties into the way Krishna talks about the body, too. Anyone else have any good wordsmithing for me?

I am asking for help. Hard for me, but I am learning to be humble. I've eaten a lot of crow this semester already, and as I head into this period where wiping my own bum is going to be difficult I expect I'll learn even more about humility.

I'll try to post again before the big day. Thanks for still reading - Hopefully I'll be able to say something a little more profound one of these days : )

March 2008

2009-04-08T20:54:00.000-05:00

March 13

[Ok – now this is getting silly. I am blogging about my journal, which here is an entry about the blog I created to record my journals!]

1994 is really hard to release without commentary. It is just so clear to me now that I wanted to be a Christian, wanted Christianity to be true, largely to please my parents and make them love and accept me – which is not to say they didn't already love me.

But it didn't take long at all for the questions to arise, for me to become uncomfortable. I persisted for a couple more years – in a very serious way – because I was determined to make it work. I gave it the fairest shot I was capable of giving. And what came out of it for me was again more guilt. More pain. More inability to measure up. Where others are able to find forgiveness, I just keep finding condemnation. Standards set impossibly high. Each of my rounds with Christianity is flavored with anxiety, guilt, shame, and fear of being excluded, left behind, and rejected.

Part of that is my own personal pathology. Since my father is (was) a minister, my ideas about the Christian God will forever be entangled in my impressions, conceptions and emotions about my Dad. As others have argued before me and about gods in general, my picture of Yahweh is one big Rorschach test. Clearly I have long had issues of desperately wanting to please my father but never being able to. A great fear of being rejected by him, being unloved. An uncertainty about how my actions will be interpreted, but deep anxiety that they my intentions will always be misread. And those fears are writ onto my image of god.

But I don't think all of these feelings and ideas are personal, or ideosyncratic, I think they are a result of this kind of theology. If you posit a heaven and hell, for example, or any system of eternal rewards and punishments based on a single life – to which no one can know the outcome until they are dead, you are going to create anxiety in people.

I have written a lot in my life about the difficulty in reconciling the Yahweh of the Old Testament with the Loving Abba Jesus mentions. Well, the presence of the one ought to produce a little confusion in anyone who's paying attention. There are just too many places where Jesus himself says things that can only be interpreted as exclusionary. So you have to decide that a) he didn't really say them, b) he didn't really mean them, or c) he's preaching something different than you thought he was.

In some ways I hate this dredging up, because I really am tired of arguing with Christianity. Why can't it just go away? I mean, out of my head. I don't want to have to keep explaining why I don't practice that faith. But that's the key argument for doing this. Put it all out there on the blog – warts and all, and then my family and closest friends will know how I think and why I think that way and I will never have to explain it again.

We may have some cool discussions, and maybe even some arguments or debates, and that would be wonderful and welcome. Certainly, if anyone has the stamina to wade through the whole thing, there is no way anyone can claim I haven't thought about my position.

March 30

I haven't mentioned I'm reading Wicked, which is wonderful. Concealed as a fairytale about the backstory of Oz' Wicked Witch of the West, it's really a treatise on the nature of evil. He explores the struggle to explain and deal with evil among followers of folk religion/superstition, pagan worship of elemental and creator gods and forces, organized religion and its bureaucracies and ties to the state (and thus its interest in maintaing the status quo), and secular humanism, with its potential for revolution or democracy or anarchy; moral relativism.

Super good. He's just had a character say that evil always precedes good in folk tales. Is that true? "There once was an evil witch . . . " Or a cruel giant, an ogre, etc. Peasants and earlier, didn't care where evil came from, he argues. They just assumed its existence. Is this true universally? In Europe? In agricultural societies?

It is at first an appealing argument. One wants to accept it at face value. But the Mbuti? Do they have stories of "evil beings?" I don't know. Surely they must. How else to explain the urge to be stingy that comes over people? For them the Forest is Mother and Father, source of Life and all good things. But evil things might live in the forest. I just don't know.

The !Kung have evil beings in the myths. Or they have beings that behave evilly. Hyena, for example. Of course, Hyena is only following his nature, just as Rabbit is only following his. It isn't necessarily considered "evil" by them, the way we would consider it, any more than the scorpion is evil for stinging. So I'm doubting this hypothesis that evil always precedes good, universally. As we've defined it. Which actually is what another of Maguire's characters says, "It is at the very least a matter of definitions" p.231.

One thing I wonder about – in societies with religions like Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., where the philosophy is non-dualist, or monistic, is it only the monks and priests and ascetics who really get that? While the masses go right on believing in devils, witches, demons and ogres? It seems the latter is more true, because look at the rich and fascinating body of evil (and good) deities, heroes, spirits, legends and magical creatures throughout Asia. Or do people kind of believe both things simultaneously, even though they contradict each other? As Holland et al quote somebody (and I cited in my dissertation but can't remember right now who said it originally) – one of the key hallmarks of human thinking is our ability to believe two or more mutually contradictory things.

This reminds me that I need to write more, soon, about the new stuff I've been learning about how brains work, which is not in a linear, analog kind of way. All our ideas about us being like computers are basically wrong. What I began to see awhile ago, about thinking metaphorically, is actually true. Means a lot of our thinking is non-linguistic, which has serious implications for how I conceptualize and how I teach about the development of language, cognition and emotion. Oops – almost to Detroit so I'll have to expand this later.

Spring 2008

2009-04-05T20:49:00.000-05:00

February 20

On the way to New Orleans, but I've got some things to say about Genesis. Did I tell you about Biallas' interpretation? I'd forgotten it, all this time, or had forgotten to let it affect me. A lot of what I learned in my religion courses in college I've continued to apply to all religions BUT Christianity. Hmm – fair treatment, huh?

Biallas points out, much in line with my insights in Dec/Jan, that the "fruit of the Tree of Knowledge" and the Serpent's tempation are gifts – boons to humankind. When we analyze that story, of course it is obvious that if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then he put the Tree there, He created humans with a thirst for knowledge, and he had to know what would happen. Hard to argue with.

The problem is with interpretation and how we see the serpent. Christians – building largely but not wholly on Jewish tradition, have chosen to see the Serpent as an evil being, and the temptation as a test that we fail. So we need to be punished. This is an archetype – we keep acting out this story; it tells us our nature and our relationship with God.

What if instead you read the story as one in which God, knowing humans as he does, knows the best way to get them to do something is to forbid them it? So He sets up the whole situation to entice us into a world of intellectual stimulation, moral responsibility and choice, instead of just sitting on our butts enjoying the good life? The result isn't punishment – its growth. Yahweh isn't vengeful; he's an Intelligent Designer, pushing us toward our greater consciousness.

OK, so I read and thought all of that over break. Now I want to report some new stuff.

I'm reading The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn. Wonderful! Will fill in plot later. He discusses two rabbinic commentaries on the creation story (and others) in Genesis; That of Rashi and of a modern scholar, Friedman.

Two points. One, his own excellent question as a child – why does knowledge come on a tree? Why not a river? A flower? A stone? He ends up concluding it has to be a gowing, living, developing thing, like learning itself. Still, why a tree and not a flower? Tree has longevity and statliness I guess, is not frivolous. But there are an awful lot of flowers that one could hardly accuse of frivolity.

Two – All rabbinic commentators apparently accept that it was a fig tree, because Adam and Eve wrapped themselves with fig leaves! That flummoxes me. Where is the logic? Rabbis are supposed to have laid the groundwork for symbolic logic, logical reasoning in general in the West. And maybe Mendelsohn is overstating. But Rashi, widely considered one of the greatest, wisest, most important commentators, he says about the fig leaves: "By the very thing with which they were ruined, they were corrected." Since God made clothes for them. But maybe the Tree of Knowledge had tiny leaves, so they had to use a different tree . . . right? Geez! Else why would one be called "fig" and the other "Tree of Knowledge"?

Earlier, Mendelsohn points out something super important in the whole "origins" arguments. The Hebrew text of the beginning of the Torah is not "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" What it says is:

Bereishit bara Elohim et-hashamayim v'et ha'aretz.

"In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth . . ." That little change in emphasis is just gigantic.

March 1

I've just finished Lost. Last night and many times while reading it I had to put the book aside and weep. Mendlesohn's story is interspersed with his musings on the Torah. More correctly, on the parashah, the weekly readings of Genesis. Thinking about what happens, even just from the Creation through the birth of Jacob, I do not see how one can conclude that Yahweh is a "good" God.

Clearly the stories are meant to tell his people, his followers, who He is and what He expects of them. Let them know what kind of God they've got themselves mixed up with. And it is the story of a very specific relationship; this one god watches and chooses this one man, and tests him, and decides he has the right qualities. The qualities this particular god is looking for. So he makes a covenant with him. Forevermore, Yahweh and Abraham will be bound together, along with all of Abraham's decendents.

The Torah is a record, and an explanation, and maybe like a manual. Like a book you would leave for your successor about how to get along with a cranky and persnickety boss. And for a very long time, neither the Jews nor anyone else claimed it was anything more. You have your gods; we have ours. You have your ways; we have ours. No claims to universal truths and righteousness. Just deep intimacy and relatedness, trust and interdependency. Why will we get the land of Canaan? Not because it is the "just," the "right" thing to happen, but because Yahweh is our champion and is more powerful.

If you read the Torah in this way and in this way only, can you remain untroubled. Because if you are looking for Yahweh to be just, kind, fair or good – forget it. Even to be consistent. The only way in which he is consistent is that he demands obedience and loyalty. He is always a jealous god. But he is absolutely horrified that Cain killed his brother Abel. One human murdering another is such a terrible abomination. Then just a little while later he's commanding Abraham to murder his own son. Of course he prevents that, but inbetween, Yahweh himself has annihilated all of humankind except Noah and his family (even babies, even children), and has killed every living being in Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, there had to have been innocent infants and children in those cities.

So if these stories are myths to teach us the nature of God, I think they teach that Yahweh is/was a partisan of the family of Abraham, who insisted on loyalty and defined goodness as obedience to himself – much as people generally did define things at the time. In other words, a God of the time and place. A god created for and by the people. A god that should never have been taken out of that context and made universal. Not without a serious makeover.

Then we come to the horrors of the Holocaust. No. I do not believe a living Yahweh, who had really Chosen these people, would stand by and allow that to happen. If he would, he's not good. A god who intervenes in history – Egypt, Canaan, Jericho, Jerusalem, etc. – choosing NOT to intervene in Germany? There is no possible sin big enough for a good god. These were children. All of them. Even the elderly. They were innocent as infants in comparison to what was done to them. No one with even half a tiny bit of goodness would allow it, who had the power to stop it.

So if there is no Yahweh, there is no Jesus. Not as Savior. Which I already believed. But its amazing how deeply rooted the habit of such belief is. And I guess its that no matter how much I want to just walk away from monotheism altogether and stop thinking about it, I can't. I live in a culture in which there is no escape. One is constantly and incessantly bombarded with it.

January 2008

2009-03-31T23:31:00.000-05:00

Here's an old one while I'm busy. Just two more after this one. Then what will I do for a quick fix?

January 9, 2008

I've just finished Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials" trilogy. There has been a lot of talk about the books and the movie they've already made of the first one. I was attracted to it when I first saw the trailer; it looked like a fun fantasy. I had no idea what the story was. Then came the talk about banning the books, or reserving them for adults only (he wrote them for teens, tho he can't have been aiming for much younger than 14). A school district in a nearby city pulled them from their library for a time. I think they put them back. But the Archbishop for this region said he thought they ought to be required reading.

When our friend (whose books I first started reading, as she was visiting) first told me some of the story, she only told me the most simple levels of the story. And I suppose that is the level at which many readers will read them. I assumed from her description that the trouble was over the fact that in the world he's created – or one of them – the humans all have daemons. Now, he's doing something far different here than Davies or anyone else I know of has done with the concept, but in fact it so resonates with what I myself was just writing and thinking about. Pullman's daemons are not "other." They are a part of us, a physical manifestation of our spirit. We find out later in the story that humans have three parts – body, spirit and soul. In Lyra's, the heroine's world, spirits take animal form, usually opposite sex, so they are also kind of our anima/animus.

So, since the folks in the film all speak with British accents, they pronounce the word more like "demon" (according to my friend), and the idea that every human has a sort of guardian demon, rathen than a guardian angel, and that demon's aren't all bad – too much for the "Christian" public to handle. Plus the church is portrayed in a negative light, tho not too terribly so in the first book. Or is it?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I thought the hullabaloo was about daemons, and it may have been, so far. If and when they make the rest of the movies, there'll be some serious banning and book burning going on. Why? First, let me say I think the books are extraordinarily well done. A truly fascinating, plausible, intriguing, thought-provoking story with characters so finely drawn I feel I really love them. And it has complicated physics, philosophy and theology, and it is written such that teens can understand it. And it is ballsy as hell. Literally.

The central argument of the books is that God, if he exists, has done terrible things to us, and must be destroyed. All of history has been a battle between wisdom and stupidity, with God using his power and the power of his church (es) to keep people stupid. God is petty, mean, envious, and cruel. He must be overthrown. Lyra's father assembles an army from many worlds for the second battle for heaven. As it turns out, God turned things over to Metatron long ago, and God himself is a frail, befuddled ancient of days, who falls apart into atoms as soon as he's exposed to air.

So what was god? Was he the creator of the heaven and eath, etc.? Not at all.

January 10

The world(s) were created, came into being, in an unexplained way. Probably thru the big bang or a similar process, and life began in the way modern evolution describes. But Pullman posits an element that in some worlds is called Dust, some Shadows, and in ours, Dark Matter. It is conscious. And where consciousness arises, or minds capable of it, Dust is attracted – created even. I'm still not completely sure which comes first. Anyway, long before there were humans in our universe, there were beings made of pure Spirit, or consciousness, or something. Angels. Made of something quite different from us, in that they have no real bodies, tho they do have forms, and as the Bible faithfully records, they were able to take the form of humans later and come and mate/have sex with human women.

One of the earliest angels, and smartest, was able to convince the later angels that he had created them – a bald faced lie – and therefore had authority over them. He claimed credit for having created everything – not just the angels but the universe and all that was in it. One of the other early-born/come-into being angels knew that for the lie it was, and she gathered a force around her who rebelled against the self-proclaimed Authority. Of course they lost, but they were not destroyed, and they've been fighting an underground, guerilla war for Wisdom and freedom ever since, against Stupidity and Authority/control. Since the Authority, God, won, he can place his people in all the positions of power, and thus all rulers (secular and religious) ultimately are on the side of Stupidity. Even if they are engaged in research, it is with one eye closed and one hand tied behind them, because they can't really search for the truth, seeing as how all their power rests on a lie.

The books, therefore, are deeply heretical. To any and all religions. They teach children to doubt whether there is a god, to wonder, if there is, if he might be a bad guy, and they encourage children to mistrust all agents of all churches and governments. And there are homosexual angels, good witches, and the idea that Eve's Fall is the greatest boon to all humankind. A wonderful trilogy! I think all teens should read it.

Not because I want them all to be little atheists, but because they should all have at least one time in their lives where they are given an opportunity to seriously question their faith. They ought to have some tools, some complexity, with which to do that.

In the meantime, I read Connie Willis' Passages, about near-death experiences, and it also spurred some new thinking. Right now I'm reading Annie Proulx's Postcard's. But I have got to get to work.

Decision Time

2009-03-28T01:14:00.005-05:00

It is one am, or a little after, on a Friday night, and I'm doing what I always seem to be doing these days - trying to decide what I should do. It strikes me again that I have to do this myself. I can talk things over with women who have walked this road; I can read blogs and discussion boards; I can call my Mom and sisters for comfort and support. And J is always there. We have talked it through again and again. He listens to each new piece of information I share, each ramification that occurs to me. But ultimately, no one can make this choice for me, and no one else will have to live with the consequences.

Am I ready to give up my womb? Am I truly okay with closing the door on all possibility of having my own children? And more - am I ready for menopause. Am I ready for all the signs and symptoms of aging that will come with losing my ability to create my own hormones. My doctor thinks (and I've found support in the literature) that because of my particular circumstances, I should not start hormone replacement therapy right away - if at all - if I decide to have the hysterectomy. Likewise, we can't leave the remaining ovary there.

I keep thinking I've made up my mind, and then a new option is presented and I have to choose again. It is hard. I don't want to do something I will regret, but I can't bear to live this way any more. It doesn't feel fair to my students, my employers, my family, and certainly not my husband. And me - I'd like to have a life I can enjoy a little bit more if that is possible. I would love to have a little more energy.

I have hashed and rehashed all the pros and cons in so many places; this isn't the place for that. I don't feel like it, anyway. I just wanted to put it out there, how I'm feeling. How scary it is. All of my readings lately - in the devotional book and the U. Gita - have been about trust. I have realized I have a hard time trusting the universe. I don't trust my Self to work things out. If I did, I wouldn't worry so much. One of the recent entries in Gates' book said, "You either believe in God or you don't. God is there or He isn't."

That's right. I either believe in brahman or I don't. Since I do, I need to act like it, and trust. I am so grateful for prayer. I'll be doing a lot of that this weekend, and talk to the doc again on Monday, when I'll make the final decision.

December 2007 - Break on Through . . .

2009-03-26T04:31:00.000-05:00

December 3, 2007

5:30 am. I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver, and then Tom Robbins books in the mornings and evenings, and together with a return to saying my mantra and occasional meditation (tho not a firm habit again yet), its all helping me get my priorities back in order and my perspective back straight.

I just finished Skinny Legs and All [by Tom Robbins] and want to record the message of the seven veils, the illusions destroyed by each one, so that I can more easily keep them in mind. They are things I've known a long time; Heck! I first read the book in 1991 or 1992! But we forget. The illusions are so powerful; they creep back in without our realizing it. Another reason daily meditation is necessary – eternal vigilance against maya.

Veil One –
Life is a sexual dance. Sex requires male and female as equal partners. Even molecules bond. There is even molecular rejection. And as we know now, the female has more control than we ever gave her credit for (eggs choosing the sperm) and more than the male in many cases. It's hard not to read patriarchy as a massive attempt to compensate for insecurity about inadequacy. Any religion that doesn't acknowledge, openly, the female aspects of the Divine is a religion based on fear.

I am becoming even more of a feminist because I've about had enough of the double-talk, the hidden and commonly accepted sexism.

Veil Two – Humans do not have dominion over plants, animals and minerals. "Humanity was a function of nature. It could not, therefore, live separately from nature except in a self-defeating masquearade. It could not live in opposition to nature except in a schizophrenic crime. And it could not blind itself to the wonders of nature without mutating into something too monstrous to love" p.404.

Veil Three – This is one it is really hard to remember. "It is futile to work for political solutions to humanity's problems because humanity's problem's were not political" p.405. They are [the problems], of course, philosophical. Trying to solve philosophical problems politically means solving them over and over and over. I realized this a good year ago. Stopped reading the paper, stopped getting so excited about the news. But when I stopped doing my own spiritual work, I got caught up again, and began all over to try to solve the problems in a wrong-headed way.

Veil Four – Religion is the improper response to the Divine. Religion tries to pin down something forever in flux. "To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could get to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that" p.407. "The Divine is expansive, Religion reductive." "Since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy" p.408.

Veil Five – Money is an illusion. 'Nuf said.

Veil Six – Time – past and future don't exist. All is present. Time isn't linear, etc. No "after" life, no after. No judgment day. All days are judgment days.

Veil Seven – Everyone has to figure it out for themselves. Apparently many times!!!! How I wish I could keep my insights fresh every day! Live them as easily as think them!

December 9

I'm reading Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, and in The Manticore David's analyst, a Jungian, says "The unconscious chooses its symbolism with breath-taking artistic virtuousity" p.179.

I was getting sleepy, so shortly after I read that, I closed the book and my eyes and I asked my unconscious to tell me something about myself in a richly symbolic dream. I asked specifically for a metaphor – I wanted a show of this artistic virtuousity. How it delivered! And in a 10-minute nap!

[There follows a long description of a detailed and vibrant dream – full of symbols (about barbecuing, of all things) – which I realize is about a personal relationship]

What really, really pleases me is how receptive and friendly and downright accomodating my unconscious was! Can we build on this? I am certainly going to try. I don't know why I never thought of just asking myself for what I want!

December 16

Still reading Robertson Davies. What's Bred in the Bone right now. Tell's the story of Francis Cornish through the eyes of the Recording Angel and his personal Daimon. And in addition to some of the other things I've been thinking, and other things I now believe, it's shed new light on my own biography.

If we look at our lives as things planned, to a certain degree, by our larger Selves, to teach us particular things . . . or to put it less pedantically . . . If our souls, our Selves, have at least a moment of knowing the greater picture, the full spread and direction of our many lives between one life and another, and if they (we) can then choose, to a certain or full extent the circumstances of our next life, such that it will provide the opportunities to grow in the directions we most need `or will satisfy a hunger or thirst we most feel, or however it actually works – then very little of our lives in the early parts at least can be said to be due to chance.

We've chosen them for reasons. And might that extend through much of our life? Might not we have laid out a pattern that would unfold? And if so, how different would that really feel from having a personal daimon, or a guardian angel (two very different kinds of beings) guiding, interfering and making things happen?

In the book, the daimon talks about how he purposely provides Francis with some very unpleasant experiences, a generally unhappy childhood, an extended illness later (age 10-11) to allow him an escape from the small minds at school and give him time for reflection and creativity.

Why? The Recording Angel asks if he has no pity, if he/it isn't cruel, etc. The daimon replies that those are human attributions, that what he's creating is something special, and that greatness isn't born from happy childhoods, free of reflection, etc. Humans do not come to know themselves or to know charity, art, compassion, truth, or wisdom from easy lives.

Something in me felt a joyous leap of recognition and freedom as I read these words. What a wonderful way to approach the past. I am not a victim. The troubles I had as a child – the molestation, etc., were things I was giving myself – gifts, to help me become more fully human. Hell, I even gave myself a sickness of long duration so that I could write a novel at 12! Forget the petty, drivelling, conventional morality that for so long made me feel guilty about that! About lying to my parents and doctors about being sick and celebrate the guts of a child who dared to grab what she needed from a world that was too routinized and institutionalized to give it to her!

And the same applies to R [the abusive boyfriend] and the drug use and the selling of sex and all the other experiences I've had – probably – well of course not probably!!! Dummy! The shingles and the PHN! All the pain and every other single thing.

The pattern isn't clear at all to me right now. I think that it's related to myth. I haven't a clue what kind of a myth I am. But it's about time to start finding out. I know this is big, because I had been allowing myself to start feeling like a victim again. I've been struggling so hard and feeling so embattled and dragged down.

I refuse! I reject it! I refute it! I am the Self of my own life! Nothing happens but by my own will – conscious or un. If there is pain and unpleasantness, I must need to feel it for some good reason. But I'm not going to blame it on fate, or God, or anyone else. And I'm not going to wallow in self pity, either. Look what beauty all the childhood pain brought into my life! What in the world is there to be pitied about?! Would I rather be one of those self-righteous, self-ignorant morons walking around? Brahman forbid! I'll take the pain and mess any day.

I don't imagine I'll be able to let go of the complaining and sniping immediately, but I'm sure going to try, because I am heartily sick of being unhappy. Goodbye to the stinky pity-pot.

December 19

Gave my last finals yesterday.

I've been thinking a lot about my own spiritual/psychological life. What is the next step? It is to find my myth, the myth that is living me; the mythic, or allegoric, or metaphoric pattern that shapes/informs my life. How does one go about doing that? There are so many myths, so many mythic traditions. Why should I believe a Swiss psychiatrist identified all the relevant ones? Still, I do think that Jung is a frutiful place to begin, but I'm not looking to adopt his whole system. I don't want any one else's system. I think I have finally truly understood what it means that these ultimate answers must be worked out individually by each of us.

Wish that I had more time to devote to these things during the semester. It isn't just Jung; I need an education in allegory and the allegorical symbols used in art, especially in the middle ages and Rennaissance. I want SO much to be able to read those paintings, to understand them for the stories they told to the people of the time. I wonder if I could sit in on a few art history classes? The problem is, the professors here probably don't even know how to read the allegories unless it is their own little niche of expertise. They teach history and technique and composition and color and light and other important things I am not focused on right now.

See, if I could learn to think allegorically, even kind of medievally, I might be able to see a pattern in my life that would be meaningful to me. Like Cornish, my mind is not necessarily the most comfortable in the idiom of today. Maybe none of our minds are. And maybe, by stumbling around in the religion of our history, I can find something that works on multiple levels.

Be careful how you interpret that.

By "religion" I do not mean anything organized, but more the patterns – maybe the psychological or spiritual or (isn't there a better word?) _________ patterns that underlie the European search for meaning which has expressed itself in the mythologies of many cultures, along with their superstitions and folk tales, their local saints (who are often just their indigenous religious figures dressed up in Christian clothes), the ways in which they interpreted Greek and Roman myths in their art in later periods, their astrology and cosmology, etc.
The pattern I'm searching for is above all the one for my own life. It is ultimately only my own life I am in charge of, responsible for, and have any hope of being able to understand.
Having said that, if I found a useful methodology – well, I am a social scientist trying very hard to understand human development, especially the development of identity. If I found something that worked for me personally, I'd want to see how far it could be stretched professionally, or at least communally. Write a book, maybe.

So for now it seems my routes are to learn the languages of symbolism and allegory and to become familiar with the myths. That is so that I can take the next step, which is to begin thinking about my own life in those terms.

For example, if my life were a fairy tale, who would the characters be? Or if it were an allegorical painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style, who would be in it and how would I represent them? Would it have a biblical theme, given my childhood? Or a pagan/classical theme given my later sensibilities? A King Arthur/Grail Quest theme given a long-standing obsession? Who would be the heroes and who the monsters? Who the hidden beauties? The betrayers/false-faces? These are the kinds of questions I want to be asking myself, and thinking about, and struggling (?) with.

Struggle. Do I even like that word any more? Why do I need to struggle? I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, when I'm supposed to be doing it, and I'm excited about it and looking forward. What does "struggle" have to do with anything?

Here's a quote out of context. Its about a real horoscope, which would be fun to have done, by someone who knows what they are doing and speaks this ancient language of symbols: "Your Saturn has the same relationship to your Moon that Mars has to your Sun, but it's a giver of spiritual power, and takes you deep into the underworld, the dream world, what Goethe called the realm of the Mothers. There's a fad now for calling them the Archetypes, because it sounds so learned and scientific. But Mothers is truer to what they really are. The Mothers are the creators, the matrixes of all human experience" p.308, Davies, What's Bred in the Bone.

That's essentially what I want to do. I want to journey to the Mothers, and humbly ask them if they will let me know anything. I am sick nigh unto death of the fathers.

Now I'm reading my old book on myth by Leonard Biallas. What a wise person! Many of the things I highlighted at age 20 or 21 I still find important today. He really seems to understand this process I'm going through – have been going through for at least 2 decades now, of trying to discover who I am. To discard what is "not essential to me," but to embrace both the light and the dark that are truly parts of myself. I don't want a religion that is aimed only at making people good. I want one that aims at making people whole. Making them "real" "honest" with themselves and with others. I guess I'm looking for the word 'authentic.' As in Hinduism – a dialogism, a dialectics that transcends dualities.

Why I Don't Know My Body

2009-03-19T18:50:00.012-05:00

I've been putting off writing this post. I think its because the subject could get so bogged down in the history of Western thought. I mean, the splitting of the mind/soul/body has long roots in Western philosophy and culture. But I don't necessarily want to go there. Can we take that as read?

Of course that is an important part of my cultural training. What's a body? Who cares? It is just something to cart around your soul, which is the only part that matters to God, and houses your mind. Of course, the body can get you into all sorts of trouble, and is a source of sin, if anything. Sure, there are references in Christianity to the body being the temple of God, but except for its use in exhortations to quit (or never take up) smoking, avoid promiscuous sex, exercise restraint in use of alcohol - in short, don't allow the body to lead you into sin - I don't recall anyone ever taking the "body as temple" thing too seriously.

And then in my parents I had examples of downplaying or outright ignoring messages from the body. Dad thought orange juice ought to cure whatever ailed you. He is one of those people that just never gets sick; I think the first time I ever saw him with even a head cold he was in his fifties or sixties. Mom is a different story. She has had so many different kinds of pain - severe pain - that she developed her own methods for dealing with it. One never knows what is in another's head or heart, and I don't know for sure how she coped. But to me it seemed that she coped mainly by just powering through. The lesson I learned, whether it was what was intended or not, was definitely an overwhelming "IGNORE THE BODY - IT IS IRRELEVANT". If it gets in your way - if it is weak, or painful, or sick, or deficient, just ignore it. Push it away and pretend it isn't there. That's what I took away.

More - I saw Mom turn inward and "upward" - turn to God for assistance with her pain. So what it looked like was that one should kind of retreat from the body and ask God for help in dealing with it. The idea of making friends with the pain, or even with one's body was never introduced to me. To be fair - that could be because the notion is so obvious to both parents that it never occured to them to say outloud. But I never got that message.

So, between the deep philosophical divide provided by our culture, the religion and the socialization provided by my parents, there was a pretty strong foundation for pushing away unpleasantnesses of the flesh.

Then I was molested. And then I was raped and beaten. These events drove further wedges between my self and my body. For years afterword - more than a decade actually - I did not feel that I even lived in my body. It took a lot of work in therapy just to inhabit my skin, to know that gnawing pain in the belly meant hunger, or to notice that my arm or leg had been asleep for some time.

That killed any athleticism I might have had, too. I was going to say that I had never had any attraction to sports, or had not a single athletic bone in my body. But that isn't true. I reveled in the suppleness and strength of my body as a child. I loved riding horses and hiking and swimming. I was on the swim team, in fact. I roller-skated with passion. I loved to ride my bike; I mean loved. I remember the feeling of balance and speed and grace that both bikes and skates provided. But the development of breasts and the dark attraction of evil men stole that innocent pleasure away, and I never regained it. Pleasure in the body turned to deep, deep shame.

So really it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I deal with pain by ignoring it, and that I do not feel like my head, soul, heart, mind, breath, body, identity and self are integrated into a complex and complete whole. It should not be shock to anyone that my search for wholeness took place almost totally in my head. Come to think of it, except for extremists, what role does Christianity have for the body? In Catholic ritual there is at least kneeling, but in Protestant worship services the closest one gets is standing and sitting. I do remember one of the 12-step groups I went to introduced me to the idea of kneeling, which I found very useful. But where has that idea gone in American Christianity? There is no prostrating oneself before the Lord in public or in private. Do any children still kneel by the bed to say their prayers? I was not taught to kneel; we said our prayers laying down. But I digress.

I came to Hinduism - or the Sanatana Dharma - in ways that are familiar to anyone who has been reading this blog. All through scripture and study and pondering and thinking. And there is room for that - that's fine. Plenty of respect for study of scripture in this religion, and a whole path - jnana yoga - dedicated to pondering (in the mind) the difference between the self and the Self. But somehow, I guess for all the reasons I've detailed here and maybe others I haven't figured out or spelled out, I kind of forgot, or just plain skipped over, this fact:

As I studied all of the different paths, karma, jnana, bhakti and raja, and tried to determine which was for me, or how best to combine them in ways that fit my self this life - I noted that all presuppose certain things, like adopting or practicing the yamas and niyamas. But I conveniently just didn't see or notice that all paths presuppose the practice of pranayama and asana, too. Of hatha yoga, in other words. How? Now that I can see it, it is so hard to understand how I could have NOT seen that!!

I had been going around for a month thinking about blind spots. Since Christmas I had been praying for God/brahman to show me whatever I needed to see about my self that I couldn't see. And there in late January, all of a sudden it hit me, and it was an epiphany, a revelation. Yoga! I am supposed to be doing yoga!

I guess that was even before I had surgery, because I had gone to the library and checked out a few books. And it was standing in the library looking through the selection that I realized another reason that I had avoided the conclusion that I should take up asana practice (asana = posture) as part of my overall spiritual development: there is a tremendous amount of junk out there.

I have to be really careful about being a spiritual snob; I realize that wisdom can come from the strangest and most unexpected places. For example, one of the best books I got first was written by a fashion model!!! Shock! I forced myself to give it a try just because my first instinct was to snort and boy did I get taught a big lesson. Christine Turlington has certainly done her homework and she knows a lot more about hatha yoga than I will for a long, long time. I wanted to be picky with her about some of the other parts of her book - like the history and scripture parts - but there wasn't that much to pick at, really. Moreover, I learned a lot about grace and humility; learning to love one's body for what it is, healing and peace.

That was an exception. There were so many books on the shelf about "power yoga" and "speed yoga" and "yoga for executives" and other titles that just struck me as oxymorons. Opening them, they were utterly stripped of everything meaningful. They were teaching yoga poses - marginally - if you stretch the term past its meaning - but nothing else about what yoga is. Is it yoga if your sole purpose is to lose weight or make money, and you have sped it up so that there is no time for reflection or contemplation? Why bother? Why not just stick to aerobics?

I guess the search for yoga lessons and teachers is a whole 'nother post.

What's relevant for now is that I had finally seen the light. I'd woken up and realized that there was a way, had always been a way right in front of me, interwoven into the very scriptures I read every day, to connect with my long-lost body, befriend it, and begin to be whole. That there might just be a path to true health for me, a way for mind, body and self to procede together rather than fighting against one another. It really did feel like coming home.

A Real-Time Update - Really!!

2009-03-15T15:30:00.006-05:00

It is Spring Break at last, and I am nearing the end of my old journal entries. I think there are just six or maybe eight more. So I thought I would take this time to dip my toes in the pool - get a feel for what it is like to compose on the computer for the blog. It is different, isn't it?

What I need to share is my experience this winter and how I finally came to realize that I had been pursuing spiritual growth for the last few years with only part of my self, and how I have been trying to fix that, and how there have been all kinds of starts and stops and backtracking since that moment.

Some of you know and some of you may have gathered that I have had a lot of health problems this year. I guess I am one of those people that have to be hit over the head - several times and with something hard - in order for me to learn my lesson! And even then, the odds are only 50/50 that I'll take the hint.

In 2005 I got the shingles, and that turned into post herpetic neuralgia which did permanent damage to my nerves and probably my spinal column itself. So I've struggled with just dealing with that pain, and really, as a permanent source of unrelenting pain that will never cease and that has no known cure, you would think that should have been enough to give me a hint that I might want to find some ways to begin to work with my body, to incorporate it into whatever healing and growth I entered into. But that really did not occur to me.

I did do quite a bit of work on trying to learn to stop fighting my body, and to stop thinking of it as my enemy, and I guess I do need to think of that as progress. It is a long way from the kind of hatred and pure loathing I used to spew at the poor thing. When I was working my way through the Tao te Ching I especially focused on trying to accept the pain as it was and not label it as "bad" or undesirable. But that did not really translate into a broader approach to checking into my body as a whole.

I'm not sure why I didn't go there; I even bought one of Mantak Chia's books on Healing Through the Tao, which I know uses Taoist concepts to help us connect to our physical forms. The notion of xi ought to have alerted me to the idea that I could indeed come to see myself as something more than a floating head, or a head attached to a bothersome ball of pain-we-must-learn-to-ignore-or-no-I-mean-fully-accept. I just wasn't ready, I guess.

So beginning last spring, I began feeling even worse. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but over the summer we began sorting things out and in July I had my gallbladder removed. In August I had my right ovary and fallopian tube taken out. Recovery from both went fine, and I was rapidly enmeshed in the fall semester.

My body, all through the fall, kept disappointing me. Instead of just bouncing back and being all fixed up, it seemed like it kept getting weaker and weaker, and it kept losing weight, and I continued to have all sorts of pain - some new ones and some old ones. I began to feel really betrayed and confused and concerned. Come winter break, and a new set of problems pounces on all my free time; oral surgery is required, then a pesky infection, and then I am told I need a more invasive surgery (for hemmorhoids) that was going to be really difficult and require a long, brutal recovery period. That was the week before classes were starting up again.

So - I began to figure out about then, but it wasn't until after that surgery that I actually truly put the pieces together for the whole picture. I wrote, on January 22, having just arrived home from that surgery:

"Have I learned the lessons I was supposed to learn from all of this? Probably not. But I do believe I've had a major breakthrough or insight. Was given the grace to have a major blind spot illuminated. The short version - I cannot keep leaving my body out of all the spiritual growth. All the efforts I've made to come to know and walk with the Divine have been in my head and heart. Intellectual and some emotional. But we have bodies, as has been made immanently plain to me. Mine has asked politely to be included. It has whined, and then it began screaming non-stop. My response was to shut it out. And then to shut it out even more competely. I've made some attempts here and there to be kinder and more inclusive; to feed it better, get more exercise, etc. And we've gotten along better when I've made those efforts. I've come a very long way from the days of hating its looks and being verbally abusive and mentally brutal to myself in that way. No more "ugly, fat" taunts all day long.
But I am not conscious of this vessel my soul has chosen for a house. I don't listen to it. I don't attend to its needs and desires. The more it hurts, the more I tune it out, the more I consider it an irrelevancy. That is wrong. I believe all these surgeries, this cascade of problems is/are the result of that shutting out. Not in a punishment or blame sort of way - just cause and effect.
I have to begin to integrate my body - this temple of god, into my spiritual development plan. If I don't, it will contine to break down, and it will hold back my intellectual and psychological development. So - hatha yoga it is, as soon as I'm able."
I have several ideas as to why it took me so long to come to the realization that my body might be important, and that hatha yoga might be part of the solution. I'll save those for next time. In the meantime, I wonder if there are others out there who also have a hard time remembering - or ever realizing - that we are more than just the thoughts in our heads?

July 5-15, 2007

2009-03-14T06:56:00.001-05:00

July 5, 2007

I am beginning to feel the lack of a dose of Krishna's wisdom. It's been a few days since I opened the Gita. My meditation went much better yesterday, though I may have drowsed. I'd like to believe I actually had some moments in which I thought of nothing at all, but it seems much more likely I fell briefly asleep. Easwaran notes we will, if we fight drowsiness now, one day be wholly conscious when we descend deeply into ourselves. Now that I have the passage memorized and it comes easily to me, it is easier to get bored, and to wonder what is supposed to be happening. I mean, I get that my job is to keep my mind focused, with one-pointed attention, on the passage, on each word. And I've managed to do that for small stretches – sometimes long stretches.

The goal is not to analyze the words, or apply them to one's life – though I can't help, yet, those images/word-associations sometimes springing up. I let go of them as quickly as I can. OK, but, though the meaning is assumed to sink in thru repetition, the goal is not to actively think about meaning. So one begins wondering, what will happen? Or is anything supposed to happen? Easwaran and others talk about pyrotechnics, and deep emotions and insights – but we aren't supposed to focus on those – just stick to the words of the passage.

I do see the value simply in getting one's mind to do as one asks for 30 minutes. That ought to be goal enough. And I oughtn't to allow it to claim boredom with the passage we've only used for 2 weeks or 3. Probably I'm just being impatient. I've sat, what – 10-12 times? And haven't yet reached enlightenment? Silly girl. It is that, but it is also anxiety that I'm not doing something correctly. Need to just reassure myself by checking Easwaran, and then direct my energies to doing what I am supposed to be doing – training my mind to be one-pointed and my heart full of compassion.

7-am now. I've re-read what I needed to in Easwaran, and it helped. Just keep doing what I'm doing. I'm also going to begin work on memorizing (finding first) some new passages, too.

July 6

What an interesting day I had yesterday! To begin, in my meditation I tried something hinted at in Easwaran – to slow down the passage by letting each word fall, "like a pearl into water," and to follow it down. It's kind of hard to explain. But I did it, dropping each word in and letting it stay by itself until the ripples of it, or the resounding of it, wear off. E says in time we'll be able to follow it all the way to the bottom.

Well, it enriched my meditation more than I would have believed. For one thing, the time flew past, and for another, I went much deeper, much faster. That in itself is hard to describe – the senses withdraw; one becomes less aware of all the sounds smells, aches and pains – kind of like being lowered into a tank, or being sealed up. It gets easier to focus on the one thing. One's breathing becomes deep and slow.

Yesterday I was rewarded with something new; a buzzing energy in my body, centered on the lowest chakra. The hairs on my arms stood up! It was pretty amazing. Do you suppose that was the prana that Krishna was talking about? Wow. I guess what you are supposed to do is push that energy up your spine and into your heart chakra – or your head. I have to re-check. We'll see if I can ever even feel it again. I was at the end of my time, and Easwaran warns against following the side shows. I wanted to, but he is my only teacher and I have to trust him, so I shut it down.

But then I went to work and had an amazing day – did my first television interview – all sorts of wild things.

July 15

Today makes a week of uninterrupted first-thing-in-the-morning meditation. May be beginning to make some progress. Much less chatter today.

I finished Roy's God of Small Things. A beautiful, heart-breaking book. I think that between coming from the horror at the end of Disorderly Knights, and the way Roy lets you know her story is going to be horrifying, I shut myself down. I admired the skill with which she weaved her plot; I so appreciated the child's eye view she so clearly understands/remembers, and I loved the little twins a little bit. But I never surrendered myself to the story. It was so powerful that I feard it, and didn't give myself to it.

Now I'm reading another Indian writer, a book called Vishnu's Death. Anil is the author, I think. It at least has given me more of what I was looking for, more understanding of daily life in India, of a Hindu, of food and when one eats what. Was pleased that now I recognize many of the stories from the Mahabharata and more of the allusions make sense to me.

One thing I must face; there are virtually no happy stories coming out of India, and haven't been for 40-50 years. When I want to judge Christianity by its fruit, I can't close my eyes to the atrocities of caste, of Hindu-on-Muslim violence, or the everyday violence of grinding poverty. I can say to myself, and do, that anyone practicing bigotry, cruelty, etc. is not practicing "real" Hinduism. They may be following Vedic ritual but they are not following the Upanishads or the wisdom of Krishna, and that's true. They aren't. But wouldn't every Christian say those doing evil in Christ's name aren't practicing the "real" Christianity? Of course.

I can make a better argument because there are actually 2 different doctrines – the incarnation of Krishna splits off from the Vedas in the same way Jesus' life and teachings break away from Torah. Its just that in the West, the religion of Judaism couldn't contain the alternate, whereas Hinduism could, can, and continues to hold within it a hundred or a thousand different belief systems.

Nevertheless, one can't be honest and deny that most Indian lives for a very long time have been wretched. Even in a land where poverty is not seen as something awful, like it is here, and where lots of people are happier in their slums or ancient villages than we typically are in all our luxury. Even in a place like that, the poverty is deep, the inequality too unequal, the random cruelty of the government unspeakably hideous and wrong.

June 30- July 4, 2007

2009-03-12T07:54:00.001-05:00

June 30, 2007

I went to meditate just before dinner. It went okay. Not great, not terrible, but I'm really glad I did it.

Back to the wise and compassionate words of Krishna. Dialogue 14 ended with Krishna enjoining us to cease making judgments between "good" and "bad." In Dialogue 15 Uddhava begins by asking the obvious next question – But wait! You tell us to stop making these judgments but the Vedas and even your own words talk about what is right and wrong ~ I'm confused! Are we to be good? Or are we to cease seeing good and bad?

I think I know where Krishna is going to go. It's something of a paradox so I don't know if I can explain. I think it is something like – in reality there is no distinction between good and evil because all is one. You can't have only one side of a coin. However, if you would like to experience that oneness, there are certain things one ought to do, which we'll label "good," and other things one ought to avoid.

It isn't wrong to take a path that leads into darkness; it just won't bring you into light. Remember that King Kamsa, who hated Krishna and kept trying to kill him even when he was a babe, achieved liberation because even though it was hatred and fear that motivated him, still he had one-pointed attention, and thought of nothing but Vishnu/Krishna.

So even dedication to evil can bring one enlightenment. Nothing is inherently good or evil. Yet Krishna's purpose is to lay the path to Himself for us; to pave it, make it as direct and easy to follow as possible. Thus all things that keep one on that road are good, those that don't, aren't. Let's see if that is actually what he means!

Yes! Krishna begins by saying there are 3 and only 3 paths to spiritual enlightenment – jnana, karma and bhakti yoga. He describes them again, and says who each is for. The duties each of us has because of our caste and station he says, we should do "until you lose interest in the world, or until an intense faith and devotion arise in your heart" v.9.

People who just go about their duties, simple people who just live their lives will go neither to heaven nor to hell. They'll just be reborn again and again until one of those two things happens. He says that souls in heaven and hell covet a life here on earth because it offers opportunities for growth, for liberation, for enlightenment. They are like side worlds. You can make trips out to them but neither is actually on the main path.

One must be human to make spiritual progress. This is the vehicle designed exactly for that purpose.

[Entry ends abruptly because our vaction was at an end – it was the last day, and time to pack. Several days of driving and unpacking and recovering later . . .]

July 2

Dialogue 16 is about how the deep meaning of the Vedas is knowing the Oneness of God, and NOT the lists of rules and rituals. Krishna is still answering Uddhava's question about making distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong. And basically what he is saying is: there are no hard and fast rules about this – it all depends on context.

Actions, thoughts, words, etc. are never wrong/evil in themselves, nor are they right/good in themselves. Just saying a prayer or chanting a mantra or doing a ritual isn't necessarily "good" even if it was good at one time for some one. Krishna sounds an awful lot like Jesus when he says that the instructions, the laws in the Vedas, as in the Old Testament, were given by Him to the ancestors "as a guide to how to conduct one's life." Like the Torah, the Vedas are full of discussions and lists of things that are pure/clean and things that are impure. About these Krishna says that what makes things pure is the presence of god, the pure and devoted heart.

People who have come to read the Vedas literally and rigidly are incorrect and are missing the whole point. There are injunctions in the Vedas, promises of reward for good behavior, placed there to entice people into their spiritual journey. Instead, people have often become fixated on the rewards and therefore fail to progress at all.

Heedlessly they indulge in ritual acts

Only to choke on the smoke

Of their own ignorance v.27

A strict adherance to ritual

Will be their only theme:

They will not even recognize me

Dwelling in their own heart

And in the heart of this entire creation v.28.

In sacrifical rituals

These cruel people

Will slaughter innocent animals v.30

They fantasize in their own minds

About a heavenly world after this one

And then imagine

That like merchants in a market

They can trade rituals

For a place in such a heaven v.31.

Doesn't this sound, not only like what Jesus said to his contemporary Jews, but also like what needs to be said now? Like all these Christians who are arguing for the arrest and deportation of undocumented workers because they "broke the law." At the end Krishna says, "I am the sacrifice the Vedas speak of." Just what Jesus said. And what is really intriguing, has the seeds of radical re-interpretation of Jesus is: Krishna, the man, was NOT killed. He means he is a sacrifice in a different way. I don't think I clearly understand it. But couldn't Jesus have also meant it differently? I mean, couldn't he have meant it however Krishna means it? That he would have been the sacrifice regardless of whether he was crucified?

With all of the parallels between their words, I feel I am coming to understand and appreciate Jesus through coming to know Krishna. More than I ever did when studying the Gospels alone. And it confirms in my mind that the doctrine does not reflect what he was really saying.

July 3

I should record a couple of things. One – meditation seems easier in some ways now that I've truly got the prayer in my memory. I don't have those long gaps between words as I struggle to recall the next one. I also didn't have too much trouble with drowsiness yesterday. I did have a hard time concentrating, keeping focused on the words, without analyzing them. I started out well, but the phone rang in the middle and then I kept being distracted by outside noises. Will see if I can do better today.

July 4

Meditation yesterday was awful. I didn't get to it until after 8 pm. We had a thunderstom that terrified poor Indy. So I went up with her and sat in the closet where she was hiding but my mind just wouldn't stay still. I grew frustrated. I couldn't find a position that didn't pain me. The only good was that I did make myself sit there, and my cat was calm and reassured when I left.

Also, when going to sleep at night, I've learned I had better go back to saying the mantra. I had purposely stopped to allow my mind some free time in which ideas could freely associate. I learned yesterday that Easwaran is right – again. You can't expect the mind to be quiet and lie still for 30 minutes a day when it has free reign the other 23:30.

Discipline requires being disciplined all the time. I resist the idea, but will eventually cave, because I fear it is correct. A person in training to be an Olympic athlete can't be fit or work out just ½ an hour a day. They are always at it. And the payoff – just remember the payoff. Muscles that respond, almost on their own, with all the strength one needs. I recall from skating and swimming what a glorious feeling it was, to have finally mastered a routine – whole body doing exactly what you asked of it, all smooth and effortless. How much more glorious for the mind to respond like that?

Well, it takes practice. Training. So the mantra is back in at night, and I will be more contientious about working it in everywhere in my day. The mind is screaming "that will kill creativity," but of course it would say that. Mind, this training will get you in shape to be more creative, to tap inner reserves of insight, to make more brilliant theoretical analyses. You'll be more nimble than ever! Just give it a try!

God Having Sex - June 29, 2007

2009-03-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

June 29, 2007

I guess I have a little more to say about Krishna's life. It's really funny to me how intellectually I find it quite reasonable for God incarnate to have sex, and I have always said it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me if Jesus had been with – especially if he had married – Mary Magdalene. And it makes a lot more sense in a culture where young men are expected to get experience and in which people do not equate sex with sin.

And yet . . . I confess to feeling a little disappointed in Krishna, like he's lost stature or become tarnished by his carnal exploits. Part of it is my culture which reserves sex for marriage. Well, wait a minute. That isn't true at all. My culture doesn't in practice – but it preaches that, still. Part of it is the idea that God should be above mundane sexual seduction. Which is silly. Of course he's above sex. He's above eating and shitting and being a cowherd, too. Isn't that the point about being incarnate? To be human is to become human. And if so, why would one limit oneself to some human things and keep off others? Particularly when you haven't designated any human function as evil? I think it may be that it seems like a weakness to me. And/or like someone using his power to exploit. But that's me not really getting it. Krishna remains celibate even after having sex with an entire village, because the sex was NOT for him, did not grow out of HIS desire, and did no harm that would incur karma.

With the villagers, it was a way to lead the women to total devotion, submitting their egos, their selves into Him. And they became the example of perfect bhakti devotion – so much so that Krishna later sends Uddhava to learn from them. And later, when Krishna returns to his rightful place in the palace, he goes to a courtesan who helped him "in the form with which she approached him." Being a courtesan sex is all she knows, so he comes to her as a sexual partner. In the same way, the scriptures say, that because Kamsa approached Him as an enemy, He came to him as his slayer. Okay . . . but I've become cynical and I see how easily someone could say this, could use it to fulfill their own desires. And if that's true, then Krishna becomes like any conquering hero, and that bugs me.

Especially when we are given to see the pain the gopilas suffer when he leaves them. They moon about, unable to do their daily tasks because everywhere there are reminders of him, and they have utterly lost all sense of themselves as separate without him.

I realize the scriptures are trying to show the truth that we ARE incomplete without Him, that he is our very Selves, and that the goal of human life is to shed our attachment to this ego and merge with Him. But in my culture, that kind of submission to a lover is bad news, a sign of pathology and exploitation. Of course, that's men we are talking about, male lovers – not God Itself, which changes things. I guess I'd feel better if Krishna inspired and expected the same devotion from men.

And I guess he does. Else why send his servant and colleague Uddhava to learn from them? But it seems a different quality. The men get made more themselves, while the women become nothing. They aren't even mentioned by name (except one), even though Krishna promises their names will be remembered forever. Maybe that's my author, though, not the scriptures.

I'm just going to have to keep working on it in my heart. I mean, isn't my goal to get to the place where I can let go of my ego, my self, and merge with Absolute Supreme Reality? That is what I want, what I'm working for in meditation, so why begrudge it to these ancient cow girls? Actually, isn't this what an encounter with the Infinite ought to do? Shatter your social conceptions, your limited, confining views? Just strip them off, one by one?

Maybe this is how Mom feels about all the things Jesus does that don't seem to make sense, that it is God saying "Don't pigeon-hole me! Don't even begin to think you can bind Me with your silly social conventions, your extremely limited view of morality." And maybe one day I'll be able to see Jesus' actions that way, too. Right now I'll stick with Krishna. Obviously I recognized His words as Truth in the two Gitas. I will just have to reconcile my feelings. That's my problem, not God's. Brahman is.

Its back to that mind-blowing idea that Krishna is All, Brahman is All, God is All. God is not an old man, a priest, a celibate, a dead thing on a cross; is not limited in any way. Even the Christian god is limited, required to be "good." Brahman is not so bound, as It is good and evil, is everything. I have to stop using mainstream, American Protestant ethics and morality in my subconcious view of god.

See, I've already learned a ton from Krishna's sexual episode. I believe I've gotten my heart and mind into the right place to learn again from Krishna's dialogue with Uddhava at the end of his earthly life.

Oh – I know now who Uddhava is/was. He was a sage – a jnana yogi – who was part of the court of the Yudavas when Krishna got rid of the evil king, Kamsa, and restored his clan to power. I believe Udhava will play important roles later in the story.

In Dialogue 14, Krishna provides a lot of information and answers a long list of Uddhava's questions. Big chunks would be good for memorization and meditation, as he repeats and puts into a few words much of what has already been said. One could call it repetitious, but it is very consistent – every text that refers to Krishna's teachings says the same things. There are no contradictions. In fact, what I've read of Patanjali, the Upanishads, and the references to the Mahabarata are all consistent as well. Odd, as it is on the whole not a religion that claims to value consistency. It's fine with everyone that gods have thousand names and a hundred forms; that at one moment Indra is supreme; then Vishnu, or Brahma, or Krishna. None of that matters and in those ways, of course, one would NOT find consistency if one searched for it. But for the core messages, the texts, written over a span of more than a thousand years and by people whose native spoken languages were widely divergent – scattered over an increasingly diverse land mass. One is led from the Western scholars of Hinduism to expect multiple schools of thought and much disagreement. But the reality is that Krishna's message is very simple. It is only the humans, Arjuna, Uddhava, me – that make things more complicated with our questions, because we don't really get it. Much like it seems to me it was with Jesus and his followers. All Jesus really said was "Love." The imperative. "Love yourself. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Love the Lord your God." That's it. That's the whole of the law and the whole of life.

Krishna says, "Recognize that all is god. Even you. Even your enemy. Even your neighbor." But we humans want complicated, detailed instructions. How do I love my enemy? How do I come to see that I am brahman? So in Dialogue 14, Krishna again provides some answers.

He makes clear right off the bat that just philosophizing – the part I'm good at – is not enough. He begins:

The sannyasin who has learned

All that is required

To know the Self

And for whom such knowledge

Is not mere theory but direct experience,

And who knows the phenomenal world

To be an illusion,

Such a one,

Known as a vidvat-sannyasin,

Should surrender all that knowledge

And all that experience,

To Me, the Eternal v.1

Only those who have been purified

Through both knowledge and experience

Know my true and supreme nature.

Truly it is these souls that are my support

And are much loved by me v.3.

Verse 10 contains a prayer for me:

O Great One, lift me up `

For I have fallen into the pit

Of unremitting pain.

Further down Krishna summarizes again the constituent parts of creation. The earliest quantum physics? He says that these parts permeate all of creation, from Brahma "to the smallest ameoba," and that one Supreme pervades them all.

How do you know when you are there, when you really get it? Krishna says – and note this is experiential, not theoretical – that knowledge becomes a realization "When one no longer sees multiplicities pervaded by the One, but experiences the One as the only reality" v.13.

Wow. Can you imagine even truly doing the first – seeing all things and people as pervaded by the One? I especially am going to require grace to see George W. Bush and Karl Rove, Bill Krystol, etc. as part of the same One as Indy, butterflies, puppies, brand new babies, and warm spring breezes. However, reading these stories of evil kings and demons, and Krishna's appreciation for and absorption of them is very helpful on that score. It is very good to have a model for how that kind of love works; especially from a position of strength.

I remember a short story I once read in which there was a machine, or an object of food or something, that allowed a human who used it to perceive the forest around him as one organism (Michael Crichton?). We know that is true, scientifically/ecologically, and biologists now speak of forests and even the planet as one organism. But this guy in the story gets to experience it that way for a moment. Actually 2 guys do, and one goes crazy, catatonic. The other can just barely stand it, but not for long. The complexity and grandeur, the awe of all the bugs (the number and diversity of the insect life alone is enough to send the one over the edge), the dirt, the bark and the sap in the trees, the living branches in every single tree, the leaves, the grass, the shrubs and other plants, the rotting wood, the birds, reptiles and mammals, the fungi, the wind, the dew, the sunlight – all of it not just working together but ONE THING!!! Now imagine not just a little patch of forest but the entire planet, and not just that but the entire universe, and not just that but ALL of the universes (if there are more than one, however many there might be). It does seem too much for the meagre human mind to grasp. This is a good reason for making it difficult to attain. We need time and practice to literally expand our minds enough to hold such an image.

To continue, and begin to wrap up, Krishna says that there are things before us/with us, that can corrobrorate the notion that all is One, before we can fully grasp it. The four most authoritative are: The Vedas which teach it (the Upanishads), direct experience, tradition, and inference.

In none of these can experience

Of multiplicities find support v.17.

Then he gives a long list of activities we can do in pursuit of this Oneness. Finally, a brilliant quote at the end.

What are the definitions of good and evil?

Judging another to be good or bad is evil.

To cease making judgements between good and bad,

That is true goodness v.45.

And yes, I get the irony and hypocrisy of me being gleeful at finding that to pass on to all those I deem judgmental! : ) I am a work in progress.

June 21-27, 2007

2009-03-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

June 21, 2007

I waited for J's call, and then sat down to meditate. It was a struggle. This time the words came alright, but I felt I was racing through them. I was afraid that if I allowed any space between the words, the random associations and tangents would crowd in and take over. I didn't have sleepiness issues because I couldn't really relax. It's a new challenge every day, isn't it? They'll soon have to repeat themselves! I suppose I'll get better at dealing with them as I get more practice. I mean, Easwaran speaks in years.

[Description of doctor's appt and errands, writing a political protest letter we e-mailed to news orgs] But then I became super-irritable. I don't know what was up with me, but I just lost it. I forgot to say the mantra when it began, so it just grew and grew. It was all directed at my computer. It just really pissed me off. I'm ashamed of having allowed a piece of machinery to control my feelings and behaviors. As Easwaran said, we lose our freedom when we allow things outside of us to control how we feel. I put myself in bondage to reaction. It felt really bad. It felt completely out of my control, which is ridiculous. We always have choices.

The Gita reading for today is beautiful. Krishna describes himself again. It is a refreshing reminder of what is really important, and also that He is in everything, and can be worshipped in the people around us. I'll hold on to that.

June 22

In Dialogue 11, as translator Saraswati notes, we can see the spiritual growth of Uddhava as he no longer begs Krishna to take him with him, but accepts his mission, his dharma. Saraswati says some helpful things. First, that Uddhava's path is our path: we begin our search for God by looking for it outside of ourselves, but "as that wish begins to shape our life, we see the Divine reflected in ourselves and in all material existence" p.104.

Second, she says this dialogue "allows us to begin to view the Divine with a human mind, though through the veil of the mind's perceptions . . . Krishna allows us to 'see' the embodied Divine through our bodily senses ` as the stars, the planets, the creatures of the earth and sea, and so on." As we begin to recognize the divine in all these things, "the quality of our experience of the world must change." Haven't we all felt closer to God when out in nature, closer to the unmediated earth, and looking up at the stars?

The difference for me is that I used to recognize God as the creator of the universe. Now I am learning to see God as not only creator but also IN the creation. The created universe IS god itself. That may seem a small semantic difference, but it is great. It must change, ultimately, everything about the way we approach and treat and deal with the earth. We are not the masters having dominion over the planet. No! No! No! We are another part of God, and granted the blessing of living on God and in god, with all the other tiny fragments of His/Her being. No wonder it wasn't India that invented industrialization.

Third, Saraswati says we must remember that we will never "see" brahman, as a physicist will never "see" a quark "until we have gone beyond the limits of individual perception. There is nothing more we can add to ourselves to see the Divine better. All we can do is look about and remind ourselves of what Krishna has said, that all this is the Self." And as we keep walking the path, she says we'll gradually be stripped of all that prevents us from seeing it directly – which, I'd add, includes our bodies, eventually.

Verses 9-11 would be good for meditation:

I am that which you and all seekers seek.

Among things difficult to conquer, I am the mind.

As he goes on, naming the things of this world that he is, it's important to me to note that there are "negatives" as well as "positives." God isn't just good, it's everything.

June 27

In dialogue 12 I find the answers to many of my questions. Here Krishna lays out the plan for life, for living together in society; the varnashrama. He explains the idea of caste and the four seasons of life, as well as a little of the history of the system and of the Ages. Uddhava has asked him:

How may we fulfill this devotion

While maintaining our own

Allotted duties according to the social order? v.2

If we don't become hermits or sannyasin, in other words, how can we live our normal lives and still show our devotion? A very pertiment question for me, because I'm not ready to give up living with J and the kitties, or teaching and researching. I am in the householder stage of life and I mostly enjoy it. But I certainly don't want to put off devotion and spiritual learning until I'm ready to leave it all. In fact, I'd never become ready to leave without more growth first.

This is not wrong; Krishna (brahman) made this world, made humans, and made it so that there must be people in all different stages of growth in order for the system to work. So Krishna answers by first establishing this point, that all the castes and stations emanate from Him, all are loved and desired. And his point is that the varnashrama exists to promote the good of all, if practiced correctly.

Recall that in Hindu cosmology, there are four stages of creation, or Ages. Each creative cycle begins as a kind of utopia, then people forget who they are, chaos and destruction, as well as evil enter the creation and it gets steadily worse, until finally it must be destroyed.

This seems at odds with the other big plan, that humans are fragments of brahman who willingly immerse themselves in maya in order to have learning experiences. Those lessons eventually lead them to remember who they are and re-merge with brahman. The two probably fit together and I just haven't learned enough to see how. Because doesn't it seem that as more souls learned more, the world would become better . . . Aha! Oh, duh! It's that as more souls take the path that leads to enlightenment, they are liberated and are no longer re-born. So over time the world comes to have higher and higher proportions of those who chose explore evil, darkness, and inertia. That solves the paradox.

Okay, so Krishna begins by saying that the first age of this creative cycle was the Krita Yuga, the Age of Accomplishment, in which all people belonged to one caste, the hamsa caste. All people were "virtuous from birth," and "had everything they needed." The pranava mantra "Om" was the only scripture, and dharma was as "firm as a bull standing on four legs."

The next was the Treta Yuga, the Age of Three, because it was like a bull standing on three legs. The scriptures of this age were the Vedas: Rig, Sama & Yajur. These Vedas "flowed from my heart, borne by my exhalation" v.12. And now Krishna explains how a variety of people sprung from different parts of the one cosmic Supreme body.

Brahmin – those disposed to spiritual learning, from the mouth.

Kshtraiya – those disposed to rule, defend justice and truth, from the arms.

Vaishya – those disposed to "bring comfort and prosperity", from the legs

Shudra – "those who wished only to serve humanity, the servants and tillers of land", from the feet.

Then he describes the stages of life, and their dispositions, saying students came from the heart, householders from the loins, retirees from the chest, and sannyasin from the crown of the head.

It is clear from the rest of the dialogue that Krishna means that people are NOT born into caste. That instead one should examine oneself, and compare to his descriptions of each varna, and then decide which fits their disposition. There should be no compulsion, and each person should have enough learning and opportunity to be able to make such a decision.

Another clear theme is that all of the castes are there to serve one another. Shudras may be labeled "servant" but in fact service to the community is the heart of each job. All are required to be truthful, free of desire, anger, greed, "always seeking the happiness and well-being of all" v.21.

He also talks about how all have the duty to remember the Self. That busy householder, raising children, working, serving the community, should also study the scriptures, perform the rituals and worship the deities. At the end, he reminds householders not to get too attached to the people and things of his or her life. The wise one will cling to that which is imperishable, and let go of that wich perishes.

Remember always the associations made

With relatives, spouses, children and friends

Are like the chance meetings of travellers –

Brief, and only for the duration of the lifetime.

At the end of each life these relationships end –

Just as dreams end upon awakening v.53

Keeping such an awareness

The householder can live free from entrapment

In the ideas-of-I and "mine" –

Even while performing the required duties v.54.

Krishna warns against the dangers of getting caught up in ideas-of-I and in entanglements with others. These hold us back, so that at the moment we should be retiring to the forest or to a monastery, we "will always be given to creating reasons for forgetting the Self and not moving on to the next stage of life."

"Oh" they will say "My parents are sill alive, my partner cannot cope, my children cannot live without me" v.57. "With an unfocused mind, such a person will continually be distracted by foolish thoughts of "I" and "mine" and on death will go to a great darkness" v.58.

So, that is the whole of the answer. One can and one should continue to live life according to one's dharma. In my case, being wife, daughter, sister, aunt, teacher, researcher, community servant, activist, and colleague. But at all times remember the Self and keep focused on the true goal. Attach to no one and nothing. Be ready to shed it all and move on to the next stage.

Our culture is so focused on the stage of youth that it will be a challenge to recognize it as such in myself. Does the use of anti-wrinkle cream mean I'm clinging too hard to one stage? Or is that an acceptable part of taking care of the skin I'm in?

June 28, 2007

2009-03-06T09:34:00.000-06:00

June 28, 2007

[On vacation at friend's summer cabin on Illinois River]

Easwaran was right about not taking any days off from meditation. Geez was it difficult to make my mind stay on track! I had to coninually bring it back, had to start over multiple times, and wasn't really making much progress by the end of 30 minutes. But the first step is taken. It should be easier today. I better understand why he insists on 30 minutes. For someone like me, my mind is just beginning to settle down at the 15 minute point. If I was quitting then, I don't see how I'd make any progress. Even yesterday, the half hour sped by rapidly as I wrestled with my mind. I began to get a little frustrated, and then remembered that's precisely what the mind wants; to create a diversion. So I let go of my anger at myself and just went back to the passage. Decided it was better to say it fast than to get caught in the spaces between words, but I still lost myself over and over.

It is kind of cool. Yes, my mind is utterly undisciplined and makes crazy connections, but instead of just admitting defeat, I am actually doing something about it. I understand it may take years to see a real difference, but it feels good to be "in training" for something again. I was always attracted to things one had to practice to do well, as long as they were solitary efforts, like skating and swimming.

I am eager to see improvement, but I am also going to take enjoyment and satisfaction from the daily practice, the rehearsal where one must do the same step a thousand, ten thousand times to get right.

This morning I think I'll begin reading my book on Krishna. Right now I am ready for the next dialogue in the U. Gita. The 13^th Dialogue is mostly about how to become and how to live as a sannyasin. It is interesting to read to see what the earthly goal is. It would be awfull hard to live that way in America. Funny, it is supposed to be the "land of the free," and yet anyone truly living the life which leads to liberation – anyone truly free, would be arrested as a vagrant.

We really mean, "The land in which one is free to pursue wealth at all costs." Poverty is a crime in the United States. Wealth is god, and anyone who chooses to give up their belongings and go wandering MUST be insane and in need of help. Plus, Krishna suggests the sannyasin should freely roam the earth, visiting its sacred places, "its flowing rivers and soaring mountains with their deeply penetrating solitude" v.24. But in the US, those places are usually "private property" where trespassers can be shot or at least arrested.

No, this is not a friendly place for holy people. Not like I'm ready for that personally anyway, but it really highlights some very ugly things about our society. And it isn't as if the religion – the religion they claim to practice – of these people forbids the actions prescribed for sannyasin. Their god – Jesus - tried to tell them the exact same message. You could find a verse in the Gospels to match nearly every injunction. "Leave your nets and follow me." "Do not worry about where your next meal is coming from; does not the Father take care of the birds of the air?" "Does a father on earth give his children a stone when they ask for bread?" "Give up your posessions." "If a man asks for a shirt, give him your coat also." "The rich man, in order to get into heaven, ought to give away all his posessions."

Over and over, Jesus tried to convey the message: if you really want to find God, you need to stop what you are doing, give up your schemes for earthly success – oh yes – lay up your treasure in heaven – give up your wordly identity, stop worrying entirely about the future of your body and concentrate on that of your soul. Walk away and follow me.

And he led those who followed an itenerant's path, moving constantly, visiting holy sites, begging for food, not hunting but relying on the kindness of strangers, repaying them with kindness and blessings. He taught them that religious ritual isn't enough, that going through the motions in order to look holy or achieve some worldly end would not only not work but was ridiculous. Basically, he said everything Krishna says here about the way to live a life in search of God and eternal liberation, everlasting salvation. The message of the two religions in terms of behavior is nearly identical.

Yet, whereas in India and throughout Asia they've built their societies such that spiritual mendicants and wanderers are cared for, sustained and treasured by the people, Christian societies have structured themselves such that it is next to impossible to do as Jesus commanded and not end up in jail or another institution.

Another difference is in our view of the life course. Youth is worshipped here, and old people are ever striving to be young again – a hopeless venture, it should be obvious. Mecca for us is to have no wrinkles, no sagging skin, no yellow or broken teeth, and no silver hairs. To be able to have sex twice a day and to eat and drink whatever one wants. We try to make no concessions to/for the ageing body. Dance all night at 79!

Silly! The rest of the world treasures their elderly. People look forward to being older, largely because their societies are structured such that in old age one receives more prestige, power, and a relaxation in one's workload. An obviously realistic hope and plan. I think for us, part of it must be our approaches to death. Americans are terrified of death. We abhor and fear it, and seem to be always trying to escape backward in time and elude its clutches. Why? If you believe you are going to heaven to be with God, why run away?

Hindus have built a culture that helps people prepare for death. There is a cycle of birth and rebirth that can be comforting, but better is the belief that all souls already are eternal and divine. Every soul will eventually realize that. There is no winning and losing because from the start it is accepted that we all will win eventually.

One lives a busy life, doing all life has to offer, but at the end of life, Hindu religion and culture makes a time and space for people to devote themselves to meaning-making and to preparation for their own death (and possible re-birth). And so, by the end of this dialog, Krishna has answered the question and explained how it is that all people, wherever they start in caste or station, have their own duties, and that by doing them, all can reach Him, the Supreme Self of all.

I'm hungry for more, and everyone but Isi is still asleep, so I think I'll read my book about Krishna's life. I'm so excited to learn more and develop a better devotional image.

The Play of God, by Vanamali Devi. I've just waded through all the prefaces, introduction and benedictions. Reading the author's explanation of the life of Krishna, of how the Divine can incarnate, and the pupose of incarnation, one cannot help but be struck by the commonalities with Christianity. For example:

"The simplicity of his teaching was such that it could by followed by any man, woman or child, unlike the Vedic teachings, which were meant only for the elite. The Vedic system had become elaborated into a vast system of complicated sacrificial rituals, which could only be performed by the brahmins and conducted only by the Kshtraiyas." The glorious Upanishads were there, but required a teacher and fine intellectual ability to grasp (p.xiv).

Could this sound anything more like the situation within Judaism at the time Jesus came? And really, it is very similar to what was going on when Buddha arrived on the seen a bit earlier.

"The Bhagavata Dharma provided a devotional gospel in which action, emotion and intellect played equal parts, and proclaimed Krishna as Ishvara (God), who had incarnated Himself for the sake of humanity, who could be communed with through love and service, and who responded to the earnest prayers and deepest yearnings of the ordinary person" (p.xiv-xv).

One difference is that while Jesus is thought to be all-god, all-human, and therefore limited by His human form, Krishna is not. He is fully tapped into his Divinity from childhood on, and thus has total control over nature. Jesus does too; I mean, he walks on water and turns water into wine, but He does so rarely. I guess Krishna uses His power more regularly.

Krishna is also of a royal lineage but born to humble circumstances. One difference; he actually becomes the King Jesus' followers wished He would be.

"All His human actions during the span of His earthly life are meant not only to bless His contemporaries and establish righteousness on earth, but to provide a spiritually potent account of His earthly deeds for the contemplation of posterity. By meditating on them they could establish with Him a devotional relationship like that which His great devotees had with Krishna during His lifetime. He is the expression of the redeeming love of God for man which manifests itself in different ages and in different lands, bringing spiritual enlightenment and bliss into the otherwise dreary lives of humanity" p.xv.

While I am comparing, I'm noting some competetion in my mind, like "At least Hindus make room and allowance for other faiths, unlike those rigid and ethnocentric and snobby Christians." While that may be doctrinally true, there are probably plenty of closed-minded Hindus, and competition is not the point. There is no winning! Jesus and Krishna, I believe, are both incarnations (of a different sort than the rest of us) of the Supreme Reality, the Sat-Chid-Ananda (existence-knowledge-bliss). We can follow either and be saved. On points of disagreement, I have come to believe that Jesus was actually teaching a message closer to Krishna's, but that his followers didn't understand him. That may sound arrogant, or misguided, or ethnocentric, but that is what I currently believe.

11 am. I've read the first two chapters, The Advent, and The Birth. Its amazing how, even tho the stories are quite different and conform to their respective cultures, there are still many common elements. For instance, there is an evil king whose death is predicted to come at the hands of the baby. The evil king responds by trying to kill the babe by killing all the other infants around. There is another woman pregnant with a different special child. There is the attempt to hide the child, this time by switching with the other special child, whose mother is in her 40s and had given up on having children.

Krishna is also conceived in a special way. His mother was not a virgin, having already given birth to six children (note he is the seventh child), but before her marriage was considered the purest in the land. She had already lived two lives of austerities in order to earn the honor of housing the divine. She and her husband have been chained in a dungeon, in such a way that they cannot touch each other. But the Supreme, whom they are here calling Vishnu, entered into Vasudeva, the father-to-be, and he was so filled with bliss and wonder he called out. His wife, Devaki, asks her husband what could possibly give him such joy when they are in a situation in which they cannot conceive the child who will be their salvation. He explains, and then "Vasudeva transmitted to his wife through the medium of the all-comprehensive Being present in all, including herself, and she received the mental transmission even as the eastern horizon receives the glory of the full moon. Thus did she conceive the Lord mentally thru her husband Vasudeva" p.11.

As in the birth of the Buddha, and the Christ child, the whole earth trembles at the birth – flowers bloom, stars shine more brightly, birds sing, etc. The differences that stand out to me – none of the prudishness or devaluing of women that one might expect from modern-day Indian culture or that one sees in the modern translations of the Gospels. The parents of Krishna are depicted as clearly sexual beings and Devaki is important, learned, and earned the honor through spiritual discipline.

Both stories have the element of recognition; it is clear to all around that this infant is special, and all are charmed by him immediately. From here, the stories ought to diverge, since we know little of Jesus' early life, but let's see. Oh – I forgot to mention the theme of all people who know bringing the babe gifts. And of others who act in ways that stir up trouble in order that God's purpose will be fulfilled.

In Krishna's infancy, before even he is named, the king sends many demons to kill him. But by his divine knowledge and strength he defeats each one. He also blesses them. Even though they are pure evil, just by touching the babe they are cleansed and achieve liberation, moksha.

Everyone senses he is special but no one yet knows who he is. Since her son keeps narrowly escaping death, Yahoda, his foster mother, becomes consumed with worry, feeling he's been super lucky so far but that she just can't protect him. And so Krishna, in his great compassion, seeks to reassure her. One day, she sits on the verandah worrying how to protect him; he opens his mouth and allows her to see the entire universe inside him. Of course she is stunned and forgets as soon as he closes his mouth, but something of his nature stays with her and reassures her.

There are a bunch of stories of him as a toddler, getting into all kinds of mischief, and getting away with it because he turns on the charm. These are stories that would enchant children and mothers, particularly Indian peasant mothers who do indulge their children. He steals things (food) and does other naughty things, but it is always so can make some boon or blessing to those he stole from – like breaking clay pots so the owners will receive pots of gold, or giving a poor woman 5-6 grams of wheat instead of the bushel he owed her, only for those grams to turn into precious jewels. The villagers love him so much that they hold a meeting to discuss all the trouble and in their fear for him agree to pick up the whole village and move it.

I remember being a child and asking Mom what Jesus was like when he was little. She had to disappoint me. I imagined things kind of like this – working small miracles all the time. These stories of Krishna illuminate what Jesus' childhood might have been like. What the gospel of John lends some credence to. But the other gospels either give no hint or suggest he had no idea of his power until much later, so who knows?

One of the things I love, and which seems to me the mark of a good god, is that every enemy he bests – even purely evil demons – are not sent off to hell to be punished, or treated badly in any way. Because when they enter into the Lord's presence, they see clearly, and often they simply merge into Krishna. Isn't this wisdom? Love? True power?

Krishna takes delight in all and everything around him. He is genuinely amused and entertained by demons' attempts to murder him. They are demons, after all. They do what demons do. He is never angered, never vengeful. He is calm and never disturbed. He reaches out in love and embraces all to him. This is a loving god! A God whose mood one can be sure of.

I think the key here is non-duality. Krishna is all. He is both good and evil. There is no battle between good and evil, because there is nothing outside of God, thus nothing outside of His control. With the mystery of maya, He allows this creation to play out how it chooses to. There is complete free will. But it doesn't matter in the end, because we'll all collapse back together into one. A One that is now wiser.

I guess what I'm getting at is that at least in some parts of the Bible, one gets the distinct impression that good and evil are at war, and that one must pick a side. If you choose wrong, you'll spend eternity in hell. Even if you choose correctly, and you try your best to serve God, he may smite you for reasons you don't understand.

Especially in Calvinist Protestantism, there is an overwhelming insecurity. Was I one chosen to "get it" and be saved? Or will it make no difference how well I serve him? If I'm already predestined for hell? It really confuses me. But I bet that basic insecurity about whether one is going to heaven or hell drives most of the intolerance of Christians. Hate the Jews because they are Chosen and know for sure. Hate the Muslims because they believe they are all going to heaven. Of the monotheists in the West, only Christians can't be sure. And like miserable people everywhere, they want to take away others' happy security.

There is none of that here. Krishna extends love to all. With the confidence of a king who already knows all are His. All are HIM. Even tho Krishna is less confusingly all-deity in human form, not the fully human, fully divine combination, his point is very clear – you can be like me! You ARE me! It would be like me being jealous of my own toe, or angry at my nose for smelling a bad smell,

Oh – here is a good story for teaching children how Krishna (brahman) is all of us. One day Brahma kidnapped all the cows and all the cowherds. Not wanting anyone to worry, Krishna made himself into all the missing boys, animals, flutes, flowers, staffs, etc. For one whole year he did this, and all the parents treated their children as if they were Him, and they loved their cows as if they were Divine, because of course, they all were! For a year, everyone in the village loved as we are supposed to love, each recognizing God in the other.

3:30 Meditation went better today. Mind much less monkey-like, though I did have random images arise that my brain wanted to follow. Drowsiness a bigger opponent. But it felt very much like time well spent.

I'm up to chapter 7, in which Krishna is 12. I've followed him thru many exploits, and I'm coming to love him as much as I'd hoped. Now all the girls are becoming smitten with him a different way. Nice to have a God who flirts and will fall in love.

I wondered what would happen with all the village girls in love with Him. What he ends up doing is teaching them to expand their obsession with him into an almost ceaseless meditation. Then, when he's got them all naked, he promises Himself to them – but he teaches them that carnal love is good, but a mere shadow of the bliss of merging with and housing the divine. The divinity they, too, have within them. And then he also teaches the young men about the Lords inside themselves.

Oh! I have to comment on this! In Chapter 8, the village makes ready a sacrifice to Indra to get just enough rain. Krishna says to his father that all beings are where they are because of their karma. Karma will determine their fate as regards rain. And then he gives an explanation of meteorology, how the hill makes the clouds drop their water – so cool! And he says – what do we need Indra for? Better to celebrate the hill, the cows, the ocean, the clouds, etc.

Part of Krishna's job is clearly to teach us to look inside for God, not outside of ourselves in whimsical and demanding gods like Indra (or Yahweh).

Well, I didn't expect that! Krishna had sex with all the girls and women in the village! Even the married ones. In the B. Gita it says that He will come to each soul the way it comes to him. These women could not grasp the finer points of the philosophy or become sannyasin, but they came to him as a lover, and so he was a Lover to them! Imagine suggesting that Jesus did such a thing! : )

In the next chapter Krishna uses a delightful way to teach the gopis and us that he is still celibate. Why? How? Because those who are identified with the Self cannot be held by karma; karma does not attach to them. In the Gitas he says this over and over, but here he shows it. The laws of cause and effect do not apply when we are not invested, attached, to the action and its fruits.

June 16-18, 2007

2009-03-04T09:45:00.001-06:00

June 16, 2007

Forgot to mention that last night I began a new ritual. I'm going to read the Upanishads – if I read anything – before going to sleep instead of whatever novel I'm reading. I only got through a few pages of the introduction in which the translator provides historical, anthropological background, context, and explaining the Vedic system. It's really complicated. I'm not sure I completely understood what I read. I don't have the book here to check, but I think the Vedas have four main branches, one coming late. And Brahmin families "owned" or belonged on only one of them. So the members of those families only would have had access to those rites, hymns and scriptures of that branch. The texts consist of the ritual instructions, the texts that explain the rituals, which I think are the Brahmanas, and then the later texts that explain the spiritual underpinnings – I mean the philosophical underpinnings – are the Upanishads. I think.

It is very interesting, and speaks to the integration of Indian philosophy at an early date, c. 1^st century BCE. From the tremendous diversity of ritual across the subcontinent, it all begins to braid together into a single strand about 2000 years ago.

Just to get a little taste, I skipped over to the first one, and it was the first two parts; how to do the horse sacrifice, and the explanation of the sacrifice, tying the horse to the creator of the world who, interestingly enough, was Death. And as far as I could tell, he created the world by giving birth to things and then eating them. For Death is also Hunger. Pretty different stuff than the Gitas!

Speaking of which, I'm ready to read the 8^th Dialogue of the Uddhava Gita.

Wow! I really like this one. Could copy the whole thing in, but that seems silly. In it, Krishna begins by teaching, again, how to liberate ourselves from the bondage of ignorance. He reminds that the gunas, which Swami Ambikananda translates as purity, passion and ignorance, rather than Miller's lucidity, passion and dark inertia – are states of the body and personality, not the Indwelling Self.

Uddhava asks Paul's question: "we know what is right; we know that pursuing pleasure only brings pain, so why do we keep doing it?" Krishna answers by explaining that the "idea-of-I" springs up in our bodies, personalities, because of the quality of rajas – passion – implicit in nature, in created things. Passion drives us and it is only by cultivating sattva – lucidity/purity – that we can overcome it. He tells a story about appearing to Brahma and the sage Sanaka in the form of Hansa, the divine swan, to teach them how to meditate, how to distinguish self from Self; and in that he reminds us all that really there is no distinction.

Recognize this truth

With a clear understanding:

All the senses perceive only me.

I alone exist.

Nothing exists besides me. v. 24

Oh, if only I could truly recognize this, and believe it, and live it! If only we all could.

[later that day] here's another Rushdie quote – "Although he kept it quiet, however, Saladin felt hourly closer to many old, rejected selves, many alternative Saladins – or rather Salahuddins – which had split off from himself as he made his various life choices, but which had apparently continued to exist, perhaps in parallel universes of quantum theory." P.523. It would be interesting, wouldn't it, if all the other selves at one point come back, come together? And more, what other selves has my Self been? I'm so eager to find out.

My meditation was so-so. Only 20 minutes because I chose the hot bedroom and the pain got too much. I began with the prayer of St. Francis but found it really distracting, so switched to my mantra and that was much better. I'm going to try to find a passage that works better for me, if I can. But when using the mantra I quickly got deep down. It was cool! Maybe I'm going to be able to do this?

June 17

Let's return to the 8^th Dialogue.

Early on, Krishna explains how sattva can overcome the other gunas and it is essentially Easwaran's eightfold program. Krishna says there are 10, because he includes water- for purity – and purifying rituals as well as the seasons, which Easwaran leaves out. The other "contributors to the predominance of any one guna" are: spiritual practices, the people with whom one associates, the activities one practices, one's initiation into the spiritual way, your manner of contemplation, the mantras you use for contemplation, and chanting v.5. We can allow sattva to grow in ourselves by nurturing whatever is sattvic in nature. He says in v.13 to sit in contemplation three times a day, dawn, noon and dusk. I'll be doing well when I can make once a firm habit, but I would love to someday be someone who sits all three.

Now back up to where we were – Krishna telling Brahma and the sages how to excape from identifying with the body, being distracted by sense objects.

Therefore, cease to identify yourself with the mind,

Which is constantly drawn to objects through the senses,

And which then gets caught up in these objects.

Instead, identify yourself entirely

With that undivided Presence v. 26

Knowing that this bondage

Is solely due to the false identification

With body and personality,

Give it up!

Identify yourself with the immortal Atman

And be free. v. 29

He makes it sound so easy! Just do it! But the illusion is a good one; the sleep a deep one. This whitethoughts seems so very real to me, especially when pain is burning a hole through all of my thoughts. Everyone promises that the changes come through practice, so I guess I just have to keep following instructions.

June 18

Speaking of meditation, I had a tough time yesterday. I'm thinking maybe I should force myself to stick to St. Francis' prayer until I've got it mastered. I am having trouble memorizing it – which is ridiculous. Part of the issue is I have 3 versions floating around in my head. Need to choose one and stick with it. For heaven's sake! I used to memorize very large chunks of text! Whole plays! Everyone's lines! This is silly. Is this just my mind making another stupid excuse? I think I need to let it know who is boss. That it can't get out of this by refusing to memorize a short passage. What happens is I forget the words or get them mixed up, and yesterday the next word finally just wouldn't come at all. After 15 minutes I got fed up and switched to the mantra for 10 minutes. It felt like giving in. I was also fighting sleep; found myself nodding off.

In my reading of the first Upanishad, the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, I've been learning some interesting stuff. Reading these will make my re-reading of the Gitas so much richer, as I'm coming to understand more of the culture and the belief systems from which they arose. I think Patrick Olivelle, the translator, is correct in saying we shouldn't read them the way the Jewish Bible is often used by Christians; looking for support for our own modern conceptions, pulling out verses here and there to justify a position. Nevertheless, one can see the roots of certain ideas, and it is difficult not to say "Aha! They say here that Atman and Brahman are One, so it must be true!" Even though, of course, I recognize how specious an argument that is.

It is really cool to see that idea developing, however. Also to see what it is growing out of, and to begin to learn what some of the rites are that Krishna was refering to in the B. Gita when he said, "Do them, but don't get caught up in them; do them for me." And also to learn the mythology and the cosmology that explains and justifies those rites. This first one (BU), lays out a lot of the connections and homologies of the Vedic world, which are the basis of the things said in the Gitas, like about the tree and branches the three worlds, etc.

Recall I learned that Death/Hunger created the world? I forgot to mention, or I didn't really get, that Death, the Creator, IS a horse. Doesn't that seem a clear left-over from the pastoralist past of the Aryans who invaded and settled in Persia and India? Every once in awhile Olivelle shows us how a word or an idea is very similar in Ancient Persia and India. The connection is strong. And since Persia influenced Babylon and the area now Israel, one has to wonder about some Indian ideas sneaking into Hebraism and later Christianity.

What occurred to me last night was John's version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The more I think of it, the odder it seems to me that John would refer to horses. They really don't show up often in the Bible. Donkeys and camels, yes. I vaguely recall an odd mention or two in reference to the Egyptians on horses. Did the Romans have horses? I feel like they had a horse god – Persians did, so why not Romans? Maybe horses had come to be associated by Jews with the evil oppressor? Or, maybe he saw the Indian gods coming to destroy the world, as it must in the end be destroyed to make room for the next experiment? : )

[I just did a quick google search and came across a reference that says horses appear in the prophets (Isaiah, Ezekial, Joel, I Samuel, Jeremiah, Micah), poetry (Psalms and Song of Solomen), and the histories (Esther, 1 & 2 Kings, Judges). But mentions are very rare, and almost always in the context of either war (war horses or horse and chariot), and exclusively the property of kings.]

There is a lot in this scripture that I don't understand. But one theme that is clear is that the concept of the self, atman, is developing. And the idea that the entire universe is contained in the mind of the self. For example: "This same self (atman) is the trail to this entire world, for by following it one comes to know this entire world, just as by following their tracks one finds the cattle" BU 4:7. And "If a man knows 'I am brahman' in this way, he becomes the whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their very self (atman)" BU 4:10. "It is his self alone that a man should venerate as his world" BU 4:15. "Now, a man who knows this becomes the atman of all beings; he becomes just like this divine breath" BU 5:20.

And by the way, there has been so far no hint of ascetism. On the contrary, a man is not complete until he has a wife and wealth (4:17), and a son (5:17), and there are many references to being showered with all manner of material things.

12:30 Awesome! I made the full 30 minutes of meditating, and it went much better. I'm going to need to watch out for drowsiness almost more than anything else. Easwaran warns it is a difficult and common problem. His only advice is just sit up straight, renew and redouble one's concentration on the passage if it is still a problem, open your eyes for a minute and recite the mantram, then go back. But overall it was good. I found a compromise solution for the passage – using most of one version, but including "where conflict, harmony; and where error, truth" and using "comfort" rather than "console" in the second part from two other versions. And it worked. I went right through without stumbling twice before I began to have drowsiness issues.

But Easwaran also says that's good; it means the body is relaxing, heart rate and breath slowing, and the mind isn't throwing a thousand distractions my way. There are some. The words call up all kinds of associations but I did pretty well at keeping my mind on task. Just letting those associations come up and go away without too much attention. Biggest problem is when the next word just doesn't come, and in that space before it does I can follow an association chain or begin to go to sleep. I'm hoping that's mostly a memorization problem and will get easier as the passage gets more familiar.

After meditating I did do my half hour of exercise, too, so I'm starting to get this train on track.

June 11-15

2009-03-02T11:19:00.002-06:00

We just had the biggest snow storm of the season, in terms of how much fell at once. And the Farmer's Almanac predicts we will have a very snowy March. But at least it IS March! Hurray! The month in which spring will officially arrive. Things are as busy here as ever; trying to get as much grading and prep done as possible, and am still woefully behind on everything. I don't know if I really believe in prayer lists, but I certainly could use whatever positive energy and thoughts you could send my way. I am fairly certain that I have some more stuff going on that will require me to make a decision about which body parts I would like to keep and/or how much pain I would like to tolerate. I'm sharing before I know for sure because I am feeling pretty weak, streched pretty thin (ha-ha; I replaced nearly my entire wardrobe this weekend at Goodwill. I never thought I would complain about losing weight!), and I could use some support even if it is silent and free-floating and from strangers.

June 11, 2007

[I was whining about how poor we were going to be over the summer, and how unfair it was]

This is jumping ahead, but it is so relevant to what I just said – I've read ahead and in the 5^th Dialogue, I was just reading on a smoke break.

To think that through diligent labor

You will avoid pain

Is a silly fantasy v.18

Couldn't be much clearer than that, could it? The problem is, as usual, that I was indulging in full identification with the little self, this whitethoughts, and ignoring the larger Self, which is exactly opposite of what I "should" be doing, of what will bring joy and fulfillment.

To back up, in the Fourth Dialogue, Krishna finishes his story about the young Brahmin/sannyasin. It begins with the latter saying:

The true source of misery

Is the acquisition of anything

That you hold dear v.1

He points out that he himself has no family, no wife or children to whom he is attached, and he has freed himself from all other worldy distractions. "One should go along through life," he says, "making no noise." He gives other instructions – about meditation he says that regular practice will quiet the mind.

They center the mind on the Self

And slowly it will cease its activity.

Both rajas and tamas

Will be submerged into sattva v.12

Those are the gunas – passion and inertia subsumed into lucidity.

He reminds us that this creation will be destroyed – but really he says it will be sucked up, submerged into Brahman, the undifferentiated One, and then creation will occur again. His description supports the idea, the image, that I was beginning to get in the B. Gita.

The One, through the power of Time,

Begins the next creation cycle

By summoning the primordial vitality

Through maya

This vitality rouses the gunas,

Calling into being a world

Which appears to be

Made up of multiplicities v.19

This will be helpful when I'm in the mood to think about how the creation works, and why this happens. But I'm not feeling like that right now.

He does talk about embodiment, and what great teachers our bodies are, saying no matter how frail, the body – the human body – is "still the means of attaining final liberation." The king to whom he was speaking thought about his words and achieved enlightenment.

In Dialogue 5, Krishna goes back to speaking directly to Uddhava, reiterating what the sannyasin said. His message seems to be about distinguishing the self from the Self, and shifting one's identity from the former to the latter. So he repeats, in condensed form, much of what the sannyasin said, pointing out the multiplicities we see are illusion – they come and go, bound by the rope of the gunas. He repeats how one devoted to brahman, to him, ought to live, and there are more good reminders here than I can copy out.

He makes reference to the yamas and niyamas, which the translator defines thusly:

Yamas – contract with society

Ahimsa – non-violence

Satya – truthfulness

Asteya – non-stealing

Brahmacharya – living as a seeker of Brahman

Niyamas – contract with self

saucha – purity

santocha – contentment

tapas – regular practice

Ishvarapranidhana – aligning with the Infinite

June 12

Jim is reading me horrible things from the paper.. . More about the immigration ordinance, even though they've been advised they don't have the legal right to pass one. It makes me so sick I can hardly stand it. I feel outraged at the dishonesty, the outright lies they are telling, the abuse of words that is meant to hide and disguise the abuse of people. I feel sad the world, the state, the city has so much hatred and ill-will. I feel angry, and most of all, I feel helpless. What would Krishna advise? Try to see the Self in all of these people. But how does one go on . . . I mean, saying, "Well, that's their path" hardly seems enough.

Do you just stand by while people are beaten, tortured, jailed, deported, killed, because that is their path? This is always the place I get stuck, and I know I've found the answers before. I guess maybe I can still have my path be to fight injustice. Maybe that is my dharma. Could be, right? And Krishna urged Arjuna to pick up his weapon and fight. I don't have to worry about my enemies souls – that isn't my business. I only need to worry about mine. Have to figure out a way to respond to those I perceive as bigoted idiots in a way that is healthy for me.

Oh! The most important thing, I nearly forgot. Identify with the Self, not the self. Of course. And with that identity, one has perspective. An eternal perspective that sees the point, where the whitethought-self doesn't – of all the pain and ignorance. This should always be my main goal. Then everything else will become clear. It seems counter-intuitive, that the way to handle the world's problems is to turn inward, to be more self-focused for time.

But here in the 5^th dialogue, which I started yesterday, Krishna couldn't be more clear that this is the right thing to do. What I am seeing as multiplicity is just a dream Brahman is having.

Identification with the body,

Which is created by the Supreme

Through the mysterious power of maya,

Is the cause of human bondage

To birth and death and rebirth.

Only knowledge of the Self

Can release one from that bondage v.10

Therefore, step by step,

Detach yourself from

Identification with the body;

Let your attachment be

Identification with the indwelling Self v.11

This is what I need to be doing. And once again I note to myself that the intellectual understanding I am developing is not enough. I need the experiential knowledge that will only come through meditation. And it takes years, so what am I waiting for?

In verses 14-20 Krishna says that if we believe what we are seeing, hearing, etc. is the only reality, we will be, not only deluded, but unhappy. In verses 21-29, he says even working for the reward of heaven will only get you to heaven – which like earth is bound by maya and will end. Funny thought – J's mom is very concerned with me getting to heaven, and I am in a position to argue that heaven is a paltry prize, that I am headed for more than heaven and she's the one to be worried about. Don't think she'd like that much. Tho she may actually be aimed higher, since I believe her heart's true desire is to be with God. Surely that devotion can move one along the path – Krishna says so.

Only the wise know

That what is called

The individual, or time, or the scriptures,

Or even the heavenly spheres,

All of that

Is the undivided and complete Self

I've read on, into the 6^th Dialogue, and it is exciting stuff, but I'll save it for tomorrow.

June 13

I just have a short time to reflect on the U. Gita. We are at the 6^th. At the end of the 5^th, Uddhava asks, "Sometimes we are described as eternally bound by maya to samsara; sometimes you say we are eternally free. Which is it? Eternal bondage or eternal liberation?" Pretty spunky, that Uddhava! And Krishna has an answer that is shocking, and yet we totally should have expected it.

His very first words:

Neither bondage nor liberation is real.

Subject to the gunas – the three boundaries of nature,

The mind thinks of itself now as bound, now as free.

But since these boundaries are themselves illusory,

I tell you, there is neither bondage, nor liberation.

It is all a dream of the One Reality; it is an illusion, remember! I am also reading Salmon Rushdies Satanic Verses, and his characters keep asking themselves "What kind of an idea am I?" And that's it, isn't it? We are all just ideas in the mind of god. Everything about us and our situations is an idea, an illusion, and all we have to do to be free is to remember that. To really know it. By shifting our identification to the Self, we see that, we know we are ideas, and are therefore free to truly enjoy this idea-world we live in.

The rest of this dialogue is Krishna explaining that. Explaining how once one realizes they are free, they can "live a spontaneous life, free from the need for scheming and planning." They can soar like the wind, shape reality, be totally unaffected by the condition of their bodies, impervious to pain, torture, hunger, cold, etc. And, of course, knowing who they really are, they rejoice, they love to discuss the One Self, they love the scriptures and communing with others who know, and instead of withdrawing out of the world they are a vibrant part of it.

Who wouldn't want this? I want it! I so passionately want it. So I will stop holding myself back and go after it! But not today. Today I have to pull 12-14 hours of work.

June 14

We are in the 6^th Dialogue, and Krishna is saying that this life is like a dream. The wise are those who have awakened and no longer cling to the dream. After describing best practices, as in the B. Gita, the compassionate Krishna says:

Old friend, if you are unable

To hold your own mind steadily on the Self

There are other ways of achieving wisdom.

Uncaring of the outcome for yourself,

Offer all that you do each day

To the one ineffable Self v.22

He always allows for imperfection, lets people begin where they are. As the translator notes, up to here Krishna has been describing jnana yoga which is faster, better. But here he begins describing bhakti, and he clearly isn't looking down his nose on it. He says this devotion will also bring one to wisdom, to awakening.

He has slammed religious rites a bit before. Here he says "do them if you must, but do them for the sake of the Indweller of all" v.24. He says clearly to listen to the stories of avatars, hang out with sages, study scriptures, but do it all for him, for the Self. It seems prayer is not wrong. And it should consist of offering. Offer each day, with all its worries, successes, failures, emotions, etc., offer them up to God, to Self, to the Indwelling Radiant One.

Uddhava asks him to describe a sage, how to recognize a good teacher, and Krishna responds with long descriptions. And once again, it sounds an awful lot like the instructions Jesus gave his followers. It also sounds like Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. And like Lao-Tzu in the Tao te Ching. And like Buddha in the Pali Canon. Must be truth, right? All the sages of all the hugely successful religions give the exact same message. That concludes the 6^th dialogue. Krishna says, "There is no more straightforward road to the Self than this path of devotion." v.48. Clearly putting bhakti on the same footing as jnana.

June 15

In the 7^th Dialogue, Krishna reveals what he says is a great secret, and it is startling. He says that satsanga, association with the wise, will bring one closer to Him than even sanyasin! Even meditation. All the scriptures of all the religions tell us to associate with those who are likewise seeking god, but this is the strongest statement I've heard. He points to a bunch of people in Hindu mythology and hisotry who attained union with the One in that way – just by hanging out with saints, sages and avatars, knowing nothing of the scriptures or the practice of meditation. But also in there is another injunction against rites and rituals:

Give up all the injunctions and prohibitons,

All that you have heard or may hear

Related to scriptural dos and don'ts

And take shelter in your heart;

There seek the Self. v.15

When Uddhava asks for clarification, Krishna answers with another description of how the world works, how the One becomes and is the multiplicity of forms we see around us. I don't really see how this answers the question I thought Uddhava was asking, or exactly how it relates to the idea of satsanga. Certainly it does explain how really we are one, and as the translation says, offers beautiful, incredible images for contemplation, but I'm not getting the connection, exactly. Well, it'll be cool when I get that next level of wisdom next time or two around.

Anyway, it still is super intereting. Krishna describes the chakra system. Or more correctly, refers to it.

He says the One is the prana (energy, vitality, life-force) that flows through the sushumna nade, the spine part of the inner body in which the chakras, the "spinning wheels" exist. He refers to the "most gross manifestation" as the muladhara chakra, which the translator explains is the lowest one, located around the perineum, where Kundalini Shakti "the primal power" sits. And he refers to the "most subtle" as the anahata, the heart chakra, "where It is the subtle, celestial sound and the parts of speech."

Like the spark "resident" in a potential state in wood, so the One is resident in us and "manifests by degrees, even through the sounds that are uttered" and through the actions we take.

He explains again, as in the B. Gita's final teachings, how the creation is a tree. Deep roots are desires, the gunas are its support, and the panchatattva are its five sturdy branches. They are earth, water, fire, air and space. Interesting they recognized space as a thing whereas the West ignored it 'til the 20^th century for the most part. The branches yeild sap, which are the senses – smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing. Do they correspond in that order? Earth would be smell, water taste, fire sight, air touch, and hearing space. Yeah, that makes sense. Then the panchatattva have 2 branches each which correspond to the indriyas, the "organs of action" – the nose, tongue, eyes, ears, skin, throat, hands, feet, anus, sexual organs, and mind.

The mind, hidden in its branches, has two birds in a nest, the supreme One, and the ahamkara, the "I-maker," the "idea-of-I." This tree has 3 layers of bark – wind, bile and phlegm (humors) and it bears two fruits – joy and sorrow. Did I mention its seeds are good and bad deeds? That makes sense. Then Krishna tells Uddhava:

With a quiet and watchful mind,

Sharpened by service to your guru,

Take up the axe of awareness

And cut this tree down

Thus free the Self

And remain totally identified with the Self v.24

Wowie. Same advice he gave to Arjuna. But the beauty of the tree he's described makes it hard to want to cut the tree down! The roots are desire, and are deep.

June 19-20,2007

2009-02-28T09:19:00.000-06:00

June 19, 2007

I didn't even read any of the U. Gita yesterday because I took so much time writing about the Upanishads and re-reading Easwaran. I'm into "Sense Training" now, in which he tries to teach the importance of controlling our response to sense-objects without getting into the Sanatana Dharma, the philosophy of why we respond to sense objects, what they are, and why it is important to resist them.

And I am trying to just read the Upanishads, without having to take a lot of notes. But there are some things so exciting, so enlightening, I feel I want to record them. Of course, there are also big chunks that make next to no sense to me, that are repetitious (because meant to be oral and from memory) to the point of being boring.

I am still going to try to mostly just read them this time, at least the early ones, and save my real studying for the U. Gita. But last night, after a truly incomprehensible bit in the BU, there came a passage describing a conversation between a man and his wife. He is about to leave – either to die or to become sannyasin (which is the same from her point of view), and he wants to divide his property between his two wives. One says, "Will the wealth you give me make me immortal?" When he says no, she says, "Then why would I want it? Give me some teaching instead; teaching that will help me realize immortality" BU 2:4:1-4

So he begins to teach her about the importance of atman, and what brahman is, and that brahman is atman. It is really interesting to see that women were thought capable of being taught these things, somewhere around the 1st, maybe even 2nd century BCE. But also it is really striking how they understood so early that it is the self one must attend to, that it is through the self one can find God. Whereas the Western religions never really focus on that (except for a handful of mystics). Are still outward-looking as whole.

Anyway, the husband, Yajnaralkya says to Mairiyi, his wife, that she ought to focus on comprehending her self, by which she will gain the whole world. He explains that the universe and all that's in it came out of brahman and is brahman; in the way if you drop salt into water, all of the water becomes salty, so is brahman in all of creation. BU 2:4:12. "In the same way this Immense Being has no limit or boundary and is a single mass of perception." Therefore after death one has no awareness. Maitriyi says "Huh? Now you've lost me." So he explains, very beautifully, how once you've joined the One, the Whole, and ceased being a perceiving multiplicity or duality, there is no way to be aware of self in the same way. "When the Whole has become one's very Self, then who is there for one to smell (see, hear touch, etc.) and by what means?" v. 13.

I get it! And it is very beautiful. Is this how new converts to Judaism or Christianity read the Bible? How they feel about it? Like surely it is True, and makes sense and gives comfort. I felt that way, I guess, each time I renewed my commitment. But the feeling never lasted. As I kept reading I'd get more and more uncomfortable with it. Even horrified, appalled, unable to make sense of it and bcoming afraid of it, confused of the God it portrays. Will that happen with these texts? I don't know. Only time will tell.

But let's get back to the Uddhava Gita. We are at Dialogue Nine.

Oh man, another one so beautiful it makes me almost weep with joy! It is unfair to keep comparing with the Bible, since it too contains Truth. But I am so moved by the Gitas, and in them, at least, nothing seems contradictory or out of character. The harshness of Yahweh, the punishing vengeful God one finds, for example, in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus says such violent, hateful things is utterly absent from Lord Krishna. He speaks, always, with compassion, especially for those who are weak, who stumble and fail. Always there are instructions and reassurance for those of us who don't find it easy or even possible to do as he asks.

So in this dialogue Uddhava asks, "Teachers speak of many paths to enlightenment. Is one of greater value than the rest? You have described a path of devotion. Is that way better?"

In answering, Krishna first makes it clear that the Vedas have their origins in him, thus validating all the different paths described in them. He goes back to the creation to explain how all the creatures of the universe, including individual humans, are unique; we are each a unique pattern of the combination of the gunas. Since we are each different from the other we each interpret the Vedas differently.

People differ from each other

By nature,

Or by lineage,

Or by what they are taught.

Some are even atheists v.8

Because people are under the power of maya

They will proclaim various paths as the best

According to their own nature and activities. v.9

"Each path will have its own believers" v. 10. Each path has a beginning and end, each bears the fruit of the action taken on it. Ultimately, all paths will end and this brings sorrow – except the merging of the self with the Self.

Krishna asks how anyone attached to the objects of this world or the next can be as blissful as one focused on him. Recall that in the 8^th dialogue he answered the question of who he is by making it clear he is the Whole; this particular image is just an image – Krishna is brahman, is Self, the One. Here, in verse 15, he shows this again by saying that not Brahma, nor Shiva nor his own brother-self nor even his own self as worshipped deity is "as dear to me as you are, you who are my devotee." He describes such a one, again, and then says:

Even my devotee who has not yet

Mastered the senses

Will not be overcome by them

Because of the devotion v.18

Again, those very comforting words for someone as weak as myself. He says – Whoa! - Just like Jesus – that devotion to him burns up all sins, all transgressions. And in v.21-22 he makes clear that this path is open to all, even to outcastes. In v.23-30 he instructs and describes how to devote ourselves, urging us to merge ourselves with his Self; to use meditation to help us do this.

Uddhava asks how to meditate, and Krishna replies with very detailed instructions. They are instructions I'd like to follow. And they are even stepped. At first, he says begin by sitting in lotus and concentrate on breathing. While breathing, let the prana flow up the sushumna to the heart chakra, and there let the sacred mantra Om "sound there – like the peal of a bell." Practice combining breath and prana in this manner 10 times, 3 times a day. In a month, he says, you'll have enough control of the prana to begin meditating.

Then he gives instructions on how to meditate, focused in devotion on him, using very specific imagery. While at the same time saying it doesn't matter what form we give him, so long as it is beautiful, serene, and benign. "Let it smile at you and be gracious to you" v.38. Eventually one lets oneself be filled and absorbed by that Self, so that all distance between self and Self is dissolved. "Remain like that, absorbed in Self! Like fire uniting with fire" v.45. One who does this, who achieves the focus required for this, is yogi and "Liberation from the world of multiplicities is near, very near" v.46.

I think I better stick to Easwaran's plan for now. I'm not sure I completely understand how to follow these instructions.

Later – meditation awful today. Well, not really, but had trouble staying on the words of the passage. Mind skittering around, going off on tangents. I had to call it back over and over. It wasn't drowsiness at all, it was monkey brain. I had to make myself start over at the beginning in punishment several times. I didn't allow myself to get frustrated or angry though. Just brought it back. Having re-read Easwaran's warnings about what can happen helped a lot. It reminded me that this is par for the course. It will likely be a frequent problem for me, the more so because I boasted yesterday of not doing this, so it has to show me who is really in charge. Easwaran quotes one of the Christian saints as saying that even if all one does for an hour is bring the mind back, over and over again from one of its side trips, it is an hour well-spent. I believe him. I put my faith in those who have gone before. They must be my gurus for now, as I haven't got a living, breathing one to hand.

At the library I found some gems. A book that explains – or at least tells – the stories of Krishna's earthly life, which I've so been wanting to know. My mental image of Lord Krishna is disembodied, cut off from the context of a human life. I want to know the "biography," the mythology, the story. If I am going to be his devotee, which it appears I am, already so much love wells up inside me for Him – probably partly a transfer of my long love for Jesus. This seems ok to me. Both are just ways for us to connect with God – I don't think either would mind overlapping in my mind and hear. At least – if they do, they aren't really God.

Anyway, I've gathered that the story of Krishna's life inspires easy devotion, much like Jesus and Buddha Gotama. And with Krishna, there is the wonderful additon of (or rather, there is no subtraction, nothing missing from) his infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, pre-teen and teen years. So with Krishna we get all these wonderful stories about his being a cute baby, a holy terror of a two year old, growing up, his friendships, his coming of age, dating – if you can call it that (more like catting around), marrying, settling down and having his own children, becoming a king, having adventures. I mean – it is a whole life. But I don't know it, really, yet. And I'm hungry to. Will I grow closer? Become, as the verse I read today, moved to tears of sorrow at his absence and joy at his return?

Or will seeing the real man make me say "this is no god!" the way the Gospels do? In the gospels, especially Matthew and John, I can't abide the person they depict – haughty, arrogant, enraged, violent, snide, abusive, vengeful and angry. Such a hippocrite, he seems. Which is why I don't believe those gospels are faithful to the man Jesus must have been. Like Rushdie's Mohammed, their god's words sound too conveniently like what the author's would like God to say.

Besides, I don't expect the same things from Krishna that Christians are taught to expect from Jesus. No one claims Krishna to be sinless, pure, chaste, perfect. The point of their lives is different. Humanity's condition is different. While Krishna is already Us, part of the great experiment, whose job is to help us see that He and We are the same, Jesus' job seems (from the Christian POV) to be to tell us He is God and we are not. We are an experiment gone wrong and its subjects in (im)mortal danger. Jesus must save us. Krishna "must" not do anything, but is there as an example and teacher if we'd like to follow. We don't "have" to; nothing terrible will happen to us if we don't.

I guess I'm working on how to explain my choice of path, choice of divine image to my Mom. I don't, otherwise, feel any need to justify myself or attack Jesus or Christianity. I don't want to do that. Even writing this out feels like beating a dead horse. Going through the motions but feeling the angry passion I felt last year as I struggled to prove to myself that I had good reasons for letting Christianity go. I no longer need good reasons. I'm convinced. I have faith in the dharma. And it isn't that I believe people should stop being Christians. Surely emulating Christ will get one to brahman, too.

One other thing I thought of recently was this: there is room inside Hindu philosophy/belief/faith/practice for every other religion/philosophy/science in the world. But there is no room inside modern Christianity for anything but itself. Which then is the greater? In science, in social science, in philosophy, in humanities, in art – in all areas of scholarship and human endeavor, we come to appreciate and esteem the theory with the greatest explanatory power. Hinduism wins, hands down.

June 20

In Dialogue 10, the translator tells us, Krishna reveals the rewards, the powers that come from dedicated, disciplined meditation. These powers are called "siddhis" which means "perfections."

To the yogi of balanced mind

Who is able to fix awareness on me,

Who has both the senses and the prana in control,

The siddhis will offer themselves.

These are pretty cool things! Krishna grants eight of them; the other 10 flow naturally from the guna sattva. These are things like becoming smaller than an atom, seeing the past and future, entering another's body, choosing a different form, choosing one's death, being impervious to hunger, thirst, cold, illness, death. To direct maya with one's will, to have one's will obeyed without objection. These are no small rewards! How much more willing am I to work for these, rather than "heaven"?!

Krishna explains which type of meditation will lead to which gift and notes that one who meditates on all these aspects of Krishna/Brahman will receive all 18. But he notes immediately that those who practice the best yoga, who wish to seek union with Him, "they know that these siddhis are obstacles" v.33

One can immediately see why they would be. Striving to obtain one or all of these gifts is a distraction. If one's goal is to be smaller than an atom, then one's goal is not escape from maya and union with the Self. Or, having meditated in good faith with the goal of union, one could be pulled off course after receiving a siddhi, just as Easwaran warns against being too awed by the mental fireworks or the other shows the mind puts on during meditation. Just like with those, the best course, if one is blessed to receive a siddhi, is to note that one has it, but keep it to the side, with one's focus fixed on Krishna or brahman.

Probably that's why you don't hear of yogis doing these things; they don't. Those who receive these abilities are wise enough not to use them. At least not for themselves and not often. Still, it's exciting to know what gifts await. And one does have the sense that many, many people in India (and China, Nepal, Tibet – all over Asia and S.E. Asia for that matter) DO choose the hour of their own deaths. Also a good number who are impervious to hunger, pain and the elements. I see that a lot in the ethnographies of aging and medical anthropology that I read.

There is so much to read! I want to read it all, absorb it all, do it all. I wish I was able to devote my whole life to these things. I mean, every hour of every day. I still have to do all these professor things, support my family, be a wife, etc. And I still care about those things. But can you imagine how wonderful it would be to spend one's every waking moment in meditation, communion, studying scripture, learning from the wise? Oh, that is a true desire of my heart. It would be perfect if J also wanted that, and we could do that together. How I would love that. Could we maybe find some version of that someday? Some lifetime? Or maybe at least some small taste of it? A retreat, maybe?

Oh! What if we bought a farm that we could turn into a retreat center, and we could bring the gurus to us! And other fellow seekers could come? Everyone can dream, right?

June 8 – 10, 2007

2009-02-26T07:50:00.000-06:00

June 8, 2007

I am about to start the Uddhava Gita, the Final Teaching of Krishna, which elaborates on the bhakti path. Last night I ordered a copy of the Upanishads, so I'll have that next. This Gita is also translated by a woman, but this time a Hindu, Swami Ambikananda Saraswati. The intro says it "avoids the sort of oversimplified devotion that robs its devotees of intelligence" p.9. The forward identifies this work as part of the Bhagavatha Purana, and says it competes in popularity with the Bhagavad Gita.

Hinduism, or the Sanatana Dharma, it says, "is said to be shruti, smitri purana – that which is heard, that which is remembered, and the puranas" p.11. All of the important scriptures – the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana – all refer to the importance of the Puranas. The forward says the traditional view is that the Puranas are a way of putting the great Truths of the Upanishads and the Vedas into simple language that lay men can understand. Whereas the Vedas are prabhusammit vakya, "words of authority," the Puranas are shraddha vakya "the counseling of a friend." "They teach the message of the Vedas in a friendly way because they are rich in parables and stories" p.11.

Goes on to say that the Puranas have "generally not sided with any sectarian philosophy or school," so they contain the basic principles embraced by the schools of Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta. Also the ideas later taken up by Buddhism and Jainism – so it does sound a lot like the Gita – the other Gita – in its message, if not its form.

The Bhagavatha was the first Purana translated into a European language. It has 81 Sanskrit commentaries, is translated into every Indian language. It is said to be vanamayavatara – the incarnation of the Supreme in the form of literature. Like the B. Gita, and the Koran. It is attributed to Veda Vyasa, but of course, like all ancient scripture, was probably the work of many hands. Bhagavatha Purana literally means "Book of God." It has 12 volumes that detail the life of Krishna, whom it depicts as the avatar of Vishnu. The only "total" incarnation.

Instead of the young warrior, Arjuna, the Uddhava Gita tells the discussion between Krishna and Uddhava, "an old man and the friend and humble counselor of Krishna, who turns and asks Krishna for advice on the eve of the avatar's departure from earth" p.14.

I'm into the translator's introduction now, the explanation of choices. Some important terms:

Bhagavan has been translated as "Radiant One" and is often used as an epithet for Krishna. It is traditionally applied to "gods who possess power, courage, fame, wealth, knowledge and renunciation" P.17. Shiva also has these qualities and Bhagavan is used for him as well. She notes it is often translated as "Lord" but she rejects that term because of its European medieval connotations.

Yay! She has refused to translate all pronouns referring to brahman, jiva and atman as masculine! Finally! This accords, she says, with the "original Sanskrit tradition of genderless references to the Self" p.18. She also has refused to use the terms "God" or "soul" because of their anthropomorphic, Christian connections and images.

The meat of the book begins with a mind-centering prayer, a meditation for the Book of God, which I like. And so . . .

Dialogue One

The translator begins with a commentary. This dialogue sets the scene. Krishna, who is Prince of Dvaraka, is in his palace and the gods, demi-gods and "hosts of angelic beings" have gathered to witness his departure from earth p.21. Krishna is distinct from the gods and the people at this point. Uddhava begins at Krishna's feet, I guess begging Krishna to take him with him; Krishna refuses.

As I begin the actual dialogue, I'm first swallowed up in footnotes, some of which are quite interesting. I know that Krishna is usually portrayed as having either black or blue skin. But I didn't know that Krishna, the word, actually means "the Dark One." Some historians therefore believe that he was, in fact, dark in skin color, and was one of the non-Aryan invaders. Pretty interesting, since the Dravidians, the darkest Indians, often as dark or darker than Africans, were incorporated into the very bottom of the social structure. Maybe even more despised and lowly than Jesus at birth. Maybe that explains his message that liberation is possible for all regardless of station in life?

She notes that others believe his name is not a reference to skin color but to his association with the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age we are living in.

I am so excited that I am going to learn more about the gods! I get so confused. There is the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. I have no problem with that. I know some of the others, too, like Ganesha and Saraswati and Kali and the other shaktis. And Indra, of course. But I've always wondered how Indra can be King of the gods? How does that jibe with the trinity? I'm not going to learn it all at once. I know that some of the systems come from different time periods of belief, and reflect different naming systems in different regions, too. But I'm not going to worry about it right now. I'm going to read like a child and learn from the context of the stories.

The point here is that just about everyone who is anyone is there. I love that she provides info in the footnotes about myths that Indians would know, so we can understand the allusions in the text. I often wished Stoler did that in the B. Gita – but of course she didn't know them, so she couldn't. [Can you imagine having a copy of the Christian gospels with footnotes and commentary provided by a 1^st century Hebrew? Wow! How amazing that would be!]

The gods and hosts gathered there shower Krishna with praise, and ask blessings of Him. They repeat things from the B. Gita about his nature, and make it explicitly clear that Krishna is the unifier of all schools of philosophy by saying in verse 11:

Your beloved feet

Are the very feet contemplated by those

Who make offerings to the sacrificial fire

In accordance with the Scriptures;

And by the great Yogis

Who seek to pierce the veil of illusion;

And by the most devout

Who hunger for true knowledge of the Self.

Okay, this is what I understand: the gods – Brahma, Shiva, Indra and others asked Krishna to incarnate, to stop the evil being done on the earth. A clan, the Yadus, had usurped power and were doing nasty things. So Krishna incarnates into this evil dynasty and as a Yadu, as one of them, he works toward and sets up their ruin. Wild! Seems so unlike what Judeo-Christian heros do.

Krishna arranges for himself to be ruler of the Yadu (I don't know how yet) and sets them up so that the Pandavas will win the battle and "oversee the destruction" of the Yadu. Krishna, in verse 34, looks out at the "disturbances all around" – meaning the war, and tells the elders its time to split, to escape, lest they get slaughtered. He says they'll sacrifice and feed the hungry as a way to avoid attracting the bad karma of the battle.

While everyone is scurrying around getting ready to leave, Uddhava, "the ever faithful" prostrates himself at Krishna's feet. He praises him and speaks of his own devotion. He says "What about us? Those of us who love you so much? How will we live without you?"

Naked sages, lifelong celibates,

Who have pacified their senses

And renounced the world,

Attain the elusive goal of liberation v.47

But what of us who are in this world

And involved in all its works?

We talk of you among ourselves,

We know that you are the guiding light

That will lead us out of darkness. v. 48

It is a very moving story. Reminds me a lot of how people responded to Jesus and to the Buddha. Humble people, lowly servants, full of passionate devotion, and amazingly, feel comfortable coming up to these larger-than-life saviors and expressing their devotion. In this case, begging as one would a child or a partner – please don't leave me! I love you so much I cannot live without you. With you gone, life loses all its meaning and purpose and light. That is devotion. Here I am, wanting to be devoted but still stupidly clinging to what I have and not reaching for the bigger prize. A child's dilemma, but here I am.

June 9

I'm eager to hear Krishna's response.

Dialogue 2

The opening notes from the translator don't tell me anything new. From the verses and footnotes I learn that Krishna was incarnated with his brother, Balarama. And Krishna verifies that he is leaving the earth, having done what he came to do, namely helping the Yadu dynasty into its own destruction. He mentions a flood, saying "in just seven days it (the palace and city) will be submerged by a deluge" v.3.

In verse 4, Krishna says that once he has left the world "the dreaded Age of Kali will begin – the age in which all that is suspicious becomes hidden and obscured." A footnote clarifies that we are living in the Kali Yuga right now, and it will not end until Vishnu incarnates as Kalki.

Krishna tells Uddhava not to stay in the palace, but to go off and become sannyasin. Say goodbye to the people in one's life and "roam the world as one free of all attachments" v.6. He speaks of our deluded state:

Whatever you see, hear, or touch

Know that you cannot know it

For what it is.

Know that whatever your mind makes of it

Is like a mirage that will fade away. v.7

Not just figured worlds, but even matter we see is not "as it is." All reality is mediated – I mean all our perceptions of all reality are mediated by the delusion of individuality. We are not able to see "things as they really are" except occassionally and as a result of effort and dedication.

Therefore, control your senses and your mind

See the entire universe as the Self

And see this Self in me

Its Supreme Sovreign. v.9

In this way you will come to know

And realize that the Self within you

Is the same Self of all embodied beings.

Once you know this

Your mind will be completely satisfied

And all obstacles will be removed. v.10

Same exact message as the B. Gita, so they confirm and support one another. The problem is . . . how does one do this? Yes, okay, meditation. Will meditation by itself accomplish all this? I guess it just might.

Thankfully, Uddhava says just what I want to say: Essentially – Thank you for this wonderful advice. I see why you are saying it. And I'm certain it is perfect advice. However . . . I am weak. I can't see my way to doing it. Am I doomed, since I am so tangled up in this world, in this reality the way I perceive it? The illusion you wove into creation is strong, and I am so very attached to this body, which I perceive as mine – "I am completely immersed in the ideas-of-I-and-mine". Renouncing it will be most difficult for me, so please teach me how to carry out your instructions. v. 16

For even Brahma and all the gods

Are committed to the illusion you have created:

That the perceived world is a reality v.17

In v.18 he calls Krishna "Narayama," which a footnote explains is one of the 22 names of Vishnu and can also mean "abode of humankind."

Krishna answers by saying that some people have broken through the illusion by their own efforts. "The Self is the real teacher of all people, who are endowed with an intelligence that is able to discern the real from the unreal." V. 20 No matter how stupid we look, or how deluded, Krishna reminds us we all have Self, which is not deluded.

The Self is most easily realized

In the human form . . . v.21

Through Samkhya and Yoga

Meaning jnana and raja in Huston Smith's terms. Here, as in the B. Gita, the two are complimentary, go together, are done in conjunction with one another. Krishna reiterates that it is the human body in which the Self can be most easily attained, and "it is here in the human body that I may be discovered as the Self. But not by the ordinary means of perception" v.23.

Okay, it is through the self that we may come to know God. We know that. But how? Krishna tells a story, a parable, to get the message across.

The story is about a king who meets and admires a young Brahmin sannyasin and asks how he got to be so spiritually advanced. The youth replies he learned all from the earth, air, space, water and fire; the sun and moon, dove and python, sea, moth, bee and elephant. From honey, arrow-maker, serpent, spider and insect.

And then he details what he learned from each one. I'm about done writing for the day. What struck me right away was the incredible, amazing grasp of physics Indians had thousands of years ago. Will write about that tomorrow.

June 10

Back to the 2^nd Discourse, in which Krishna is telling the story of the young Brahmin who learned from 24 teachers. The one's that speak to me most right now are these:

From the earth I learned to remain undisturbed

Even while being oppressed

By those under the sway of their own destiny.

The earth taught me not to deviate

From the course that I set for myself v.37

From the air I learned

What it means to be a yogi

To move about freely in contact with all things

But attached to no thing . . . v.40

That the yogi comes and goes through many bodies

Yet remains in untouched stillness . . . v.41

From the fire I learned how to burn brightly

Through the power of practice.

From fire I learned we need only the food

That the belly can burn now.

From fire I learned to accept what is given to me

And to let the fire of my practice

Transform what is impure and make it pure v. 45

From the sun I learned non-attachment

The sun draws water up into the atmosphere

And then returns it as the gentle rain.

This is surely what it means to live as a yogi

Accepting the experiences that are freely offered

And letting them go when they are withdrawn. v.50

Then comes a terrible story about a dove family, who love one another so much they don't need anything else, don't look outside their own nest, and then a fowler captures their young babies and first the wife/mother then the father, become trapped by their unwillingness to let go of the little ones. "Anyone who becomes so attached . . . will come to the same end." v. 73. And then, evidence for the number of lives we live before getting to be human, the last verse of this dialogue is:

We have to soar high

To attain this precious human birth,

Which is like an open door to liberation.

We must not act like that dove,

And fail to look towards that

Beyond our home and family v. 74

I am really attracted by the idea of learning from the earth, and of course one can learn a gazillion things – could find an example to teach just about anything. But I think what I'm liking is the idea that when I have one of those insights from studying nature, I don't have to be so hesitant, so cautious. Why not just say, "I learned this . . . " and let the insight become part of what I know I know?

[I think what I was referring to here was the fear I had as a Christian that the science would come into conflict with the doctrine, as it so often has; it may not have to, but it very often has, and it very often still does. So there is a tension between my scientific work and my parents, for example, who, even if they don't argue, make faces like they'd like to about things I accept as undisputed fact; undisputed because there is so much evidence that other arguments just seem silly]

In Dialogue 3, this lesson continues.

He says the wise know pain and pleasure will come on their own and do not seek them out. Like the python we should take what food comes our way and accept being hungry sometimes as part of our destiny. In this way we won't "chase after things that will pass away." V.4

Like the full and constant ocean,

Which remains always the same

Whether the rivers of the earth

Flow into it or not

The sage should remain in that awareness,

Even as joys and sorrows come and go v.6

He speaks of the importance of controlling the senses, says we should be like bees who just take a little from here and there, but unlike the bee should never store "more than the hands and stomach can hold" v.11. He preaches sexual celibacy, as passion will bind us. And then the dialogue ends with the story of Pingala, the prostitute. It is the story of Everyman (or woman). We work hard to prepare a place for ourselves as she spends all day preparing herself for night. She has the hope that a rich man, or men, will bring her happiness through wealth and security. But as the night stretches on and no one comes, she begins to turn her thoughts inward. The "pain of disgust for the life she was leading" . . . "such pain often becomes the sword that cuts through material longings and awakens dispassion" v.28.

For no one, O great king, in whom a disgust

For things of this world

Has not arisen

Seeks liberation.

It is from this disgust that discernment arises

And the ideas-of-I-and-mine are challenged v.29

How many times in this present life have I felt that disgust? So many! About my life with Roger – even before, with alcohol and school. Then his abuse, and several times with speed, my own relationships with men, and alcohol lots of times, and being a victim. Over and over have I experienced this.

Wow. Verses 37-39 are so like what I've been feeling with this physical pain: "Despite the life that I have led the Supreme One has smiled on me." "Had I been truly unfortunate the despair of this world would not have been born in me." "With complete love and devotion I accept this gift that has been bestowed on me" v. 39.

Let me be grateful for this life I have been given, with all its many opportunities to see that wealth, luxury, financial security, the admiration of men, the escape of alcohol and drugs, physical fitness, beauty, etc., are not what bring peace and joy. Truly, while it seems sometimes it would be a lot nicer to be healthy, wealthy, and beautiful, would that really move me closer to where I want to be? The evidence all says "no." And while I'm still not ready to become sannyasin, am still working toward a little security, I can learn to be grateful for what I have, including this intense and unceasing pain.

June 4-7 , 2007

2009-02-24T09:34:00.000-06:00

June 4, 2007

[More detailed discussion of history of relationship with Dad, Mom, their divorce, etc.]

It feels good to have let go of my need for him to be a certain way. I guess I am coming out the other side of grief. I had to let myself mourn the breaking of the family and the loss of the father figure I had in my mind. It is kind of strange, like a hole where there once was an aching tooth. Keep poking it with the tongue, but the pain just isn't there anymore. Wow. I guess all this stuff I'm doing is actually working.

I think it happened this way: once I saw what I was doing, that I was trying to force Dad into my image (or imago, as the object-relations folks would have it), and that I was angry at another human being when I don't know what their path will bring them . . . Once I was able to see that Dad's true Self is God, is like my true Self, IS my true Self, I just didn't feel angry or even hurt anymore. Strange, but true.

The world really is what we think it is; we can utterly change our relation to the world by thinking something different. Wow. I just keep being amazed, filled with wonder and with joy.

Quickly, let me write about the Gita's message today.

The faith each man has, Arjuna,
Follows his degree of lucidity;

A man consists of his faith,

And as his faith is, so is he. v.17:3

This is kind of what I was just saying. As my faith in the wisdom of Krishna deepens, my self changes. As I acknowledge in my heart the truth of the Gita, my views, attitudes, beliefs, emotions and values change. With little conscious attention or effort, my self has emptied of anger and become full of compassion. What an amazing, beautiful thing – more so because I can feel it is just the beginning, just a small taste of what will come if I become more disciplined. I have yet to follow Easwaran's suggestion of meditating 30 minutes a day on a text (for me St. Francis' prayer). I will do that. I'll get there, and I feel so excited about what further miracles might happen inside me.

June 7

I am in the 18^th and last Teaching: The Wondrous Dialogue Concludes. Always relevant, the Gita here is speaking of renunciation and relinquisment. Krishna brings up a debate:

Some wise men say all action

Is flawed and must be relinquished;

Others say action in sacrifice, charity,

And penance must not be relinquished. v.3

Krishna declares his decision, which must be taken as final. The very fact that he makes a decision says to me that God, brahman, does learn and change. Krishna decides that action is not to be totally relinquished, i.e. we are not to sit down in a monestary or under a tree and never get up again.

Action in sacrifice, charity,

And penance is to be performed,

Not relinquished – for wise men,

They are acts of sanctity. v. 5

But even these actions

Should be done by relinquishing to me

Attachment and the fruit of action –

This is my decisive idea. v. 6

We are to perform prescribed actions. So, rituals, prayers, all the traditional Hindu stuff. Do the labor prescribed by our stations in life, and our caste. Applied to me – I need to do the work of being a daughter, sister, wife, friend and the work of teaching, service and research. Maybe also some religious ritual. Do these things as best I can, but relinquish the fruits; do not become attached. If I get good evaluations, I need to offer them up in loving sacrifice. Don't allow pride and individuality to delude me into taking personal credit. Same with all my actions.

A man burdened by his body

Cannot completely relinquish actions,

But a relinquisher is defined

As one who can relinquish the fruits. v. 11
We have these bodies for a reason. We decided to be bodies in the first place. And because of nature's qualities, the gunas, we must act. But it isn't me that acts, it is nature. In v. 16, Krishna says that a person who sees himself as the agent of his own actions "cannot be said to see."

He goes on to explain things I don't really get, and don't feel ready to completely get, about agency, action and knowledge. It seems like it might be a useful expositon for my research, as well as my life, but I'm not in a mental space to completely decipher the meaning.

Know that through lucid knowledge

One sees in all creatures

A single, unchanging existence,

Undivided within its divisions v. 20

I think this is enough for one day . . . one lifetime. Keep remembering that all existence is one. That will greatly help my relationships at work if I just hold on to it.

June 8

[After reading the evaluations from my spring courses – one class took a big dive]

I really need to dive into the Gita! I am feeling so hurt, and like such a failure. Which is incorrect – I did not fail. I made some mistakes, I'm not perfect, but I didn't fail. And the students are commenting about a course, and how it went for them. They are evaluating the instruction; not me as a human being. And furthermore, it isn't my Self – its just whitethoughts, who is learning an awful lot this life about a lot of things. Stumbling is supposed to happen.

So I'm going to re-read the 18^th Teaching. What will I do after that? I may start again at the beginning, but I do have another text . . . we'll see.

An agent called pure

Has no attachment or individualism,

Is resolute and energetic,

Unchanged in failure or success v.26

An agent said to be passionate

Is anxious to gain the fruit of action,

Greedy, essentially violent, impure,

Subject to excitement and grief. v. 27

An agent defined by dark inertia

Is undisciplined, vulgar, stubborn,

Fraudulent, dishonest, lazy,

Depressed, and slow to act. v. 28

In all of Krishna's descriptions in this teaching and the previous, I see myself mostly in the passionate category. Like here, I am excited when my evaluations are good, full of grief when they are bad. I am greedy, anxious for the fruit. I put in so much work, and tried to offer it up, yet here I am, still attached to the work and greedy for results. There are sometimes hints of dark inertia. I feel as if I am still fighting the tempation to be lazy and depressed. I know I'm stubborn and terribly undisciplined about some things.

So I am sitting in passion, but closer to dark inertia than to lucidity. I see the goal. I can be resolute and energetic. I need to use what energy I have to become immune to failure and success. Let go of the fruit of action. Whether the class was a success or not depended on a lot things and people. When things go well, who is that for? Not for me. I offer that up in sacrifice. Need to let go of the failure, as well.

I teach because it is my dharma to teach. I try to improve because I hope my students will come to understand more things. Not because it will bring glory or prestige, but because that is what I am here to do.

Each one achieves success

By focusing on her own action;

Hear how one finds success

By focusing on her own action v.45

Arjuna, a (wo)man should not relinquish

Action she is born to, even if it is flawed;

All undertakings are marred by a flaw,

As fire is obscured by smoke. v.48

Justifications for the caste system, but I can see utility in these verses. Keep doing what I am supposed to do. Don't worry too much about the flaws inherent in any system. Just do the work and let the chips fall where they may.

If I am in your thought, by my grace

You will trancend all dangers v.58

Different subject, but I love the verse:

You must not speak of this

To one who is without penance and devotion,

Or who does not wish to hear,

Or who finds fault with me. v.67

An anti-conversion stance. I love it.

It's Okay to Be a Three Year Old (June 1-3, 2007)

2009-02-22T13:22:00.000-06:00

To think there was a moment I was worried I might lose the pain before I could learn enough! Seems a little silly, in retrospect. Obviously, I haven't learned near enough yet, as I keep learning the same lessons over and over again. It seems like every couple weeks my body lets me know it has a new plan for how I can learn something more about either patience, humility, or something equally wonderful to have and equally unpleasant to actually obtain. I'm afraid I'm being particularly dense this time around about accepting things as they are. I find myself railing against the endless winter though it is only February, and being angry when it seems I went through surgery for nothing because the problems are reasserting themselves, or when new physical problems develop. I wish my larger Self, the universe, God, my body - whoever is in charge - would just give me a little time to rest and recoup before I had to deal with another round.

Now, how is that for whining? And some of you thought you were good at it! hah! I'm telling you, I am not doing a good job of practicing detachment or acceptance. But I'm working on it.

June 1, 2007

It hasn't been easy, this past week. In fact, it has been so hard that I feel I'll never recover. I'm sure that can't actually be true. I hope and pray that in a week, this will be all-but-forgotten and I'll be revelling in the relief the epidural will bring. Please let it! I'm worried that the shot isn't going to work, that all of this will have been for nothing, physically, since it hasn't kicked in yet. I guess I could look it up in my journal, see for sure how long it took last time. It was gradual, snuck up on me. Perhaps if my head and spine weren't hurting, the side would also stop.

I simply have to accept that I am doing what I can. Make sure that I am doing all I can, and let the rest go.

I had some success yesterday, remembering I am not whitethoughts. Still seems funny to write. Keep thinking that if I progress along the path I'm travelling, the purpose of journaling will change or go away. Why spend so much time writing about an "I" that doesn't exist? Still a long way away. I still believe in whitethoughts. Things are shifting in me. I've begun to feel, when I slip into begging, that I am praying to my Self. I still feel funny saying it because in the Western Christian context it sounds delusional, but my inner picture of God, of whom I am praying to, was first an overlay/hologram type image of Jesus/Krishna – meshed and overlapping and coming in and out of focus. But now I'm starting to see me in there as well, and J, and Indy. A good step, in part because it highlights the ridiculousness of begging for anything – from one's self? If one has the power to affect reality, just do it! Alas, I'm not that capable of directing my will yet. Probably for the damn good reason that I'm not remotely wise enough to use that power correctly.

For example, would I have given myself the lesson in humility, helplessness, detachment and meditation of last week? No WAY! I would give J a job – a high paying teaching job, and take away my own pain. Pretty amazingly selfish, eh? First thought wasn't about Doug, or our goddaughters, or Mom and Dad. So – okay. Thank goodness I don't have (conscious and direct) access to the reality machine. In which case, don't expect begging to disappear right away. Begging is a relief, a release. Begging may be the wrong word, but really that is what it is. Pleading? Throwing myself on the mercy of whoever is in charge?

Point – I am at least beginning to figure it out. That I – or my real Self is in control. What I'm finding, by thinking of myself in the third person, is that my compassion for myself grows. I do begin to see her and her struggles more objectively. But also it is bleeding over into how I see J, and my compassion and love for him also grows. It's after 7, so let me just say this – the 15^th Teaching supports the identification I am making between my Self and Krishna/Jesus/God.

When the lord takes on a body

And then leaves it . . . v.8

Men of discipline who strive

See him present within themselves;

But without self-mastery and reason,

Even those who strive fail to see. v. 11

I dwell deep

In the heart of everyone v. 15

Other is the supreme spirit of man,

Called the supreme self,

The immutable lord who enters

And sustains the three worlds v.17

Whoever knows me without delusion

As the supreme spirit of man

Knows all there is, Arjuna –

He devotes his whole being to me. v.19

June 2

[Detailed discussion of session with pain therapist]

Phyllis had an inspiration while watching me meditate, that mudras might be helpful for me.

I know for sure there are important things to learn from pain. Maybe I have to get to the point where I am truly grateful for each twinge before the pain will go away. Wow; it's hard to get there. I am fighting resentment. I know in my head that life is not fair, that all we ought to expect is more suffering, and that in the grand scheme of things, I have it very easy. I know that there are parts of me that feel resentful toward God and the Universe and all these other people walking around with no pain. Couldn't they stand to learn some patience? Some non-attachment? Disinterest? Sacrifice? Love? Why me?

Oh geez. Silly! Because I know why me! Because me wants to learn those things. My larger Self, for sure. But even my conscious self. I want, with all my heart, to be a better person. So the pain is a way to do that. The pain is a gift, given in love, to provide me an opportunity to learn to be a better person, in all the ways I understand that to mean, and probably more. That means I can't waste it. What if it heals, goes away without my learning anything? Wouldn't that be terrible? I should appreciate every precious moment, as they may go away and never come again. Wow. Can I do that? What does it mean about pain medication? I don't think I'm ready to embrace the pain so much that I give that up totally. I do still have to work. But maybe I can begin to ask myself, if it isn't to do a duty, fulfill a responsibility, at those times I can let the pain be what it is. Even with the meds, there is plenty of pain to learn from.

I guess the lesson for today is that one must fulfill one's duty regardless of discomfort.

June 3

[Discussion of pain (always), work to be done (always) and the proper use of a journal]

One thing I'm consciously working on is getting better control over my thoughts. I have always spent a lot of mental energy replaying conversations, having imaginary confrontations, and especially fixating on moments and issues that angered or hurt me. Easwaran – and of course the Gita – reiterate that we must have mental discipline. Not just when sitting down to meditate but all of the time. Why do I allow my mind to replay a hurtful scene, or to dwell on a slight, or imagine a thousand different ways my students might hate me? Yes, occasionally it is helpful to rehearse something, but most of the time such yammering serves no helpful purpose. So I have been trying to catch myself each time my mind begins. And here again the mantra saves me. I attempt to redirect my mind's attention to the mantra, and let go of the replay or rehearsal. It is quite difficult. A minute later I find my mind has returned to the same old sad story, and I have to re-direct it, over and over. Easwaran promises, based on a lot of experience, that eventually I will have to redirect it less often, and that it will become less frequent that the mind even begins down that road.

Easwaran promises that each repetition of the mantra is like one shovel-full of dirt, bringing us closer to the center as we dig our way down. Thus the mental energy that was getting wasted in an imaginary argument is now being used, being harnessed, to bring us closer to god.

I have so many opportunities for this. Perhaps everyone is like this, but I feel I may be one of the worst offenders, as my mind is a real chatterbox. It never shuts up. If I can manage this turnaround, it will mean I have made an automatic-shovel, and can be digging my way toward God at a constant, steady pace. A way to turn a negative personality trait into a positive god-seeking tool.

Also, I want to report that I have more moments that I used to in which my mind is still. It is wonderful. Obviously, as soon as I recognize the stillness I've created a ripple, but maybe I'll get better about just letting it be, as it becomes less of a novelty.

Hey – maybe that's why I've been able to enjoy going to the movies more – my mind is actually able to attend only to the film for longer chunks of time, instead of rattling on about other things. And all of this growth has happened before I've even been able to begin meditating! At least, meditating the way I intend to.

It's possible that I had to do some of this work, get some practice with the mantra, before I was able to meditate. My mind may have been so undisciplined that it simply couldn't bring itself to truly contemplate meditation. It was last Saturday I felt ready to try. But the headache was truly too intense and I just could not stand to sit up for the full 30 minutes. I feel ready again. I'm eager to see what results daily meditation will bring when I've begun to see such wonderful benefits from just getting better at remembering to say the mantra, and from studying the Gita, of course.

I am a little worried that I am too focused on the fruit. But I think I should let go of that worry. I am too focused on the fruit – the clear, calm mind. The loving, patient, wise personality. But oh well! We all have to start somewhere. I am not mature. Big deal. Neither are three year olds. They aren't bad for being three and not 30, or 90. That is just where they are. If, in terms of meditation, or self-discipline and contemplation, I am less evolved than an infant – well, so be it. I'm an infant. A fetus, even. I need to be more compassionate toward myself.

If my brain begins reciting an old argument or repeating a stupid song, there is no need to berate it, yelling and punishing and being mean, as is my wont. No, just gently correct. Gently redirect. A kindly, "No dear, let's think about God instead" is much more appropriate. I need to remember how young and immature this person is. There is no need to yell at her. Just kindly, with compassion, steer her into the right path.

I know Christianity does not have to be punitive, that in fact Jesus taught compassion and forgiveness. But I picked up very bad habits as a Christian; habits of self-hatred and self-punishment. I categorized my behavior as "bad" or "wrong" any time it was less than Jesus-like perfection, and took myself into terrible cycles of guilt and remorse and shame. I refuse to bring that baggage into this new place. There is no judgment here. No final Judgement Day, no hell, and no punishment except what you give yourself. Be who and where you are. Try to grow. Learn from your mistakes. Correct yourself when you catch yourself taking an unhelpful turn. That's it. No scourge. No inventive self-tortures. Those aren't helpful. They are not kind, patient, compassionate, gentle, forgiving, disinterested – and therefore are not true, not correct. So leave them alone.

There is a lot in the 16^th and 17^th Teachings about this. In the 16^th, The Divine and Demonic in Man, Krishna describes each type of man. The list of adjectives is worth memorizing and repeating, but here I want to note that they apply to one's dealing with oneself, too.

Hypocrisy, arrogance, vanity,

Anger, harshness, ignorance;

These characterize a man

Born with demonic traits v.4

Is it not hypocrisy to preach compassion and then be cruel to oneself? Is it not arrogance and vanity that cause me to think that I alone of all humans should be held to Jesus' standards for himself? What ego to believe I should be perfect at the start! Anger and harshness directed at myself – just a small creature – are just as wrong as if directed at someone else – a small child, a bunny rabbit.

Confused by endless thoughts,

Caught in the net of delusion,

Given to satisfying their desires . . . v. 16

Submitting to individuality, power,

Arrogance, desire, and anger,

They hate me and revile me

In their own bodies, as in others v. 18

And in the 17^th Teaching, Three Aspects of Faith, Krishna, is explaining the "threefold mature of faith inherent in the embodied self" v.2, and after describing sacrifices he says:

Men who practice horrific penances

That go against traditional norms

Are trapped in hypocrisy and individuality,

Overwhelmed by the emotion of desire v.5

Without reason, they torment

The elements composing their bodies,

And they torment me within them;

Know them to have demonic resolve v.6

I am no longer even self-disciplined enough to torture my body in penance, but since childhood this has been my bent. My sinfulness is in how I hypocritically require perfection from myself in exchange for love. It is hard for me to accept the verdict of hypocrisy. The thing I most dislike, most hate, in myself and others. But look how the word keeps showing up in the context of self-punishment. I can't deny it. Ouch. So I have to stop doing these things in my head.

My guess is, from the little experience I've had, that once I am able to be kinder to myself, I will find I'm more compassionate toward others, as well.