Notes From a Cold Spring...or, I Have Heard What the Talkers Were Talking: Silent Retreat, Yoga Blog Version

If we become too serious we will lose our way.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

...John Lennon sang I don’t believe in yoga, and, as I believe I’ve said before, I don’t believe in it, either...I practice it...make an inquiry into it...no beliefs involved...

...and I’ve been doing a lot of that, of late...really...you can ask the local Philly yoga teachers....even if my half moon continues to suck...

...as well as returning to a daily meditation practice....

...but I don’t have much to write about it...so haven’t been...in case anybody's noticed...

...and am increasingly irritated by what other people write...so haven’t been reading much...at least, not about yoga...and don’t really get the impression I’ve been missing much...though people sure do keep writing...

I have heard what the talkers were talking...

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

...with all the incessant pontificating, marketing, and arguing going on, been thinking it might be a good idea if all the writers and talkers...from revered gurus to marketers of yoga pants to snarky yoga bloggers...continued to practice...if practice they do...and, really, it's fine if they don't...but tried checking the impulse to jabber on and argue about it...

...a lengthy collective silent retreat...

...starting with me...

...just an idea...

...namasmotherfuckin'te, folks...

More Dispatches from the Magic Mountain

...seems like it happens again and again with the meditation thing...every time I think I’m getting somewhere...or, y’know getting nowhere since there’s nowhere you need to go...opening things up, going DEEP, it goes haywire...seems all I can do is fidget...can’t get past the minor discomforts of the surface...as there’s some kind of hyper-vigilant sub-conscious life-guard blowing his whistle, yelling “come back in, there’s rocks out there, there’s sharks, go too deep and you could drown”...
 

...Jack Kornfield compares training the mind to training a puppy, but the mind’s a lot harder to train, and makes much bigger messes...

...two or three yoga classes a day, in between lengthy program sessions of intense meditation and discussion of compassion and mindfulness...sympathetic joy and trauma...loneliness and equanimity...kale and tempeh...peace and trauma...empathy and rage...

Show me that I’m everywhere and get me home for tea...

George Harrison
 

...didn’t even know it was officially contemplative week at Kripalu...so not only are we generally expected to be quiet within our group...with a suggestion to be totally silent for the week...but the dining hall is silent for all meals, and hallways are mostly filled with whispers...while I, of course, am committing what’s gotta be pretty much the ultimate in apostasy for a meditation retreat...multi-tasking...here both for the retreat and to reconnect with friends from the teacher training two years ago...so, y’know, I couldn’t, like, not talk to them....today, we were supposed to be practicing mindful eating at lunch, but I wanted to meet up with my friend for the noon vigorous vinyasa class, which left me really hungry and with less than fifteen minutes to eat...so I wolfed down a tray-full of stuff with great abandon, just mindful enough to have some consciousness of the fuller experience I was missing...

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloud cover thick. I try to stay
just above the surface, yet I’m already under
and living within the ocean.
Rumi (Coleman Barks, trans.)

...Wednesday morning...not feeling my best...(though, admittedly, it’s kinda like that bumper sticker about the worst day fishing vs. the best day at work)...woken by the alarm...6:15...best not to remind myself I don’t actually have to go to yoga class...gentle yoga...not gentle enough for the stiff, sleepy curmudgeon...then breakfast...pretty good, but disappointing after the French toast yesterday...then on to the first session...incessant sitting makes my knees hurt more every day...and I’m even sleepier than I was in yoga class...and who the hell cares what Thomas Merton said?....then walking meditation...I hate walking meditation and he’s telling us to go outside where it’s snowing, and I didn’t even bring shoes...they’re back in the room with my jacket and hat...at least it’s better than more sitting...go to the room, then outside...walk mindfully, matching footsteps to the in-breath and out-breath...across the grass and down the hill...to the spontaneous realization that everything I see, everything that exists, is infinitely, unspeakably beautiful....notice after a while that everybody else has gone back inside...guess I missed the bell, again...make my way back up the hill...

...cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown...

Van Morrison, Alan Watts Blues

...Friday morning, now...major snow storm blowing in...no way I’m driving home in that...guess I’m trapped at Kripalu ’til it’s over...nothin’ to do but sign up for a weekend vinyasa workshop...stay ’til Sunday...as misfortunes go, it’s not bad...

Return to Hogwarts

...January hit like a giant hunk of ice in the forehead...days of severe lassitude...not much work but that little bit took all day...endlessly seeking minor forms of stimulation, trying and often failing to avoid the ones that make things worse in the long run...

...this morning, dragged myself out early through a brushing of snow, drove five hours north to Kripalu, for the first time since the yoga teacher training two years ago...where I'm gonna spend the week in a meditation retreat with Jack Kornfield...Meditation for Freedom and Compassion Everywhere...(should definitely work better than meditating to right-wing talk radio to teach myself to be less compassionate...in line with my reverse-Boddhisattva vow not to attain full enlightenment until all sentient beings in the universe are as miserable as I am)...(just kidding)...

...hugged some old friends, mindfully chowed down the healthiest lunch I've had in a long time, took a walk in the woods, went to yoga class, had the healthiest dinner I've had in a long time, went to the first meditation retreat session...where they urged me to turn off the electronic devices and be silent for the week...oops...felt like I had a minor yet satisfying psychedelic experience, took a walk down to the beach in the dark to look at the stars while listening to Miles Davis In a Silent Way on the purple ipod...oops, again...maybe gotta wean myself a bit...

...now, it's almost 11:00 and I got yoga class to go to at 6:15 in the morning...oh yeah...

Seasonal Affective Disorder

...bleah.........................

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You Better Do As You Are Told, You Better Listen To The Radio

So you had better do as you are told.

You better listen to the radio...

Elvis Costello

 

...so here's the deal...I think I got into writing because I've never been so good at spoken communication...have a tendency to stumble and say things that are, y'know, impolitic....so, thanks to my growing fame as a yoga blogger, I've been asked to go on the radio...

 

You turn me on, I'm a radio...

Joni Mitchell

 

...seriously...from 1-2:30 Pacific Time...that's 4-5:30 for us more urbane, sophisticated, non-surgically-enhanced East Coasters...I think...the accidental yogist will be interviewing yoga bloggers...yes, yoga bloggers...who are gonna tell the people all the things their mama shoulda...or something...at Kill Radio...which operates out of L.A., but, thanks to the wonder of the interwebs, you can listen to it anywhere by hitting on this handy-dandy link....apparently you can even download it later as an mp3 and listen to it at your leisure, in your car, while having sex, or even make it part of your yoga class playlist, right in between Snatam Kaur and Rage Against the Machine....anyway, the Yoga for Cynics portion of the show should start around 2:00/5:00, preceded by the likes of It's All Yoga, Baby and Daily Downward Dog....I'm gonna set a sincere intention not to use any foul language...check it out...



The Christmas Yoga Mat (a really deep and touching holiday story for the whole family)

The photo below is of the yoga mat I’ve been using for the past year or so...or, more specifically, the family Christmas tree, as seen through one of the larger holes in the mat I’ve been using for the past year or so...

 ...whereas this one is my fancy-schmancy so-heavy-it’s-gonna-add-a-whole-new-level-of-athletic-challenge-to-biking-to-yoga-class, ready-to-be-used-by-cockroaches-and-Keith-Richards-after-a-nuclear-war, 85-inch (since, to me, nothing says yoga more than being able to tell the guy next to me "mine’s bigger than yours"), brand new Christmas miracle Manduka mat...under the same tree...

 ...so, needless to say, since this is, of course, one of those ever-so-deep-and-spiritual yoga blogs, there’s a far deeper and more spiritual message here...when you really think about it...with your heart, as well as your mind...about renewal and hope and...um...peace on earth...or something...

...okay, it’s basically a very crass and materialistic kinda modern Christmas story about getting cool new stuff...(kinda like I wrote about here)...

...I’ll try to be more deep and spiritual, next time....for now, oh man, am I psyched about my new yoga mat...

Happy Holidays, y’all...

Notes on the Winter Solstice and Our Most Recent Apocalypse

...I swear apocalypses are happening every couple months these days...whether based on the Book of Revelations, Mayan Prophecies, or somebody just having a bad day and spreading the news on Facebook....but, like I always say, who doesn’t need a good Apocalypse now and then?

Apocalypse, we’ve all been there,

The same old tricks, what should we care?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

...been watching this movie called Decasia: The State of Decay...made up completely of old film stock that’s breaking down...in some cases almost completely melted...leaving only ghostly, rapidly disappearing traces of whatever hopes and dreams went in to it, whatever was meant to preserved...images lost and devolving into chaos, soon to be nothing....and, by the way, it makes a really cool-looking movie to space out to...
 

Oh well. If the world doesn't end tonight, it's not the end of the world.
Salman Rushdie

...in addition to being the Apocalypse, the day that just ended here on the east coast of the United States was also, of course, the winter solstice...when darkness reaches its peak for the year, only to gradually give way to light, day by day, until the process reverses itself six months from now....works for me...