Sunday, May 29, 2011

No Illusion, Just the Experience (Building From the Ground Up, Part Five)


Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit
Wisdom is not putting it in a Fruit Salad

the Internet

...was reading this major political/philosophical French novel on the plane, then turned on the computer, put in a Netflix to watch some episodes from a T.V. show...the older woman next to me said she liked my choice of amusement, from Malraux to Buffy....I said somehow, in my mind it all fits together...

...read blog posts recently from a couple different people lately talking about their disillusionment with yoga...and, believe me, I understand...been a disillusioned activist for a wide variety of causes and candidates, disillusioned fan, disillusioned student, disillusioned member of a number of different subcultures, disillusioned friend, disillusioned traveler and/or resident in numerous supposedly cool places, etc...

The pure products of America
go crazy—

William Carlos Williams

...thing is, in order to be disillusioned, ya gotta be illusioned in the first place...and I came in to yoga as a serious skeptic...or, ya might say, a cynic....never saw a room full of blissed-out smiles without suspicion...never got all warm and fuzzy thinking about India or listening to old men in robes with thick beards and thicker accents...never had any doubts about the ability of the marketplace to corrupt the purity of ancient traditions, but never saw that as a problem, since I never bought into the idea that any of those ancient traditions were pure in the first place...

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time—or even knew selflessness or courage or literature—but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
Annie Dillard

...mostly, I came to it thinking it might help with a few physical and psychological issues, and trying to be open to other possibilities...and certainly, along the way, I’ve gone through my moments of irrational exuberance...thinking this next yoga retreat in paradise is gonna cure everything that ails me...(viewing my own wistful notions with irony, or course, and laughing at them, but, secretly, believing all the same)...and—guess what?—it didn’t...and, certainly, I’ve gotten sick of it...

...like not long ago, almost went all weekend without any yoga, after a week of not much...(or, at least, not much by the standards of somebody whose gotten to the point where he considers going a weekend without yoga a big deal)...and really didn’t feel at all inspired to do anything about that....but, then, late Sunday afternoon, decided to at least roll out the mat, stretch my neck a bit since it felt stiff...as it does when I don’t practice...maybe a little pranayama, since that’s always good for a little buzz, at least...ending up going pretty intensely for an hour and a half or so.....and feeling awesome.....like it may have been the best practice I’ve ever had on my own...better than most classes...not that there’s a competition, or anything...even with distractions of various kinds...calls that had to be taken, as tends to happen outside the cozy confines of a class...but even those seemed somehow to fit...yoga and day to day life seeming closer than usual...making the practice feel both awesome and incorporated...(not to be confused with immanent and transcendent...though a headier and/or more spiritual yogi than I might wanna get into that)...finding value, in the end, in saying namaste to myself...no illusion, just the experience...

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Strap Yerself to a Tree With Roots (Building From the Ground Up, Part Four)


Strap yourself to a tree with roots, you ain’t goin’ nowhere...
Bob Dylan (Happy 70th!)

...wasn’t writing much for a while, there...and still finding it awfully difficult.....you need a comfortable place to sit to write...and, no offense to my ever-beloved Ikea chair, that sturdy, soft but supportive seat has often seemed to be missing...replaced with a fervent desire to retreat and hide...dig a hole and bury myself...a metaphor superficially similar yet inherently, in spirit, distinct from that of being rooted...though distinctions can bewilder...

...we would argue that the greatest irreverence in yoga is to leave any dogma, conscious or unconscious, unchallenged.
yoga 2.0

...this is where dogma comes in, for some people...senses of the sacred that separate and exclude, providing that save haven with walls and battlements...a fortress as much as a refuge...

...but I’m getting away from the point...which tends to happen when yer not properly rooted....all those sacred scriptures I tend make fun of talk about the problem of grasping...the solution offered being non-attachment...making the grasping of scriptures themselves as inherent-answers-to-everything somewhat ironic...but, again, I digress....the common comforting view of the skeptic...which, truth be told, I tend to grasp toward, myself...is that this is a position of denial...

The shadow side of Buddhist practice is what I call “premature nonattachment,” which is actually avoidance masquerading as spiritual attainment.
Thanissara

...a denial! a denial! a denial!
Kurt Cobain

...in friendship...at least in an the abstract, or maybe retrospect, if not so much within the full catastrophe of everyday life...the difference between compassion and grasping can be seen pretty clearly...one creates union, the other attempts to do so, and may appear to succeed, but instead makes real closeness impossible...one grows lasting roots, the other clings desperately but, in the end, leaves us drifting...

...standing in tree pose...vriksasana... setting my drishti through the window toward the crux of a green tree branch...leaves dancing in a frenzy with the wind, as I remain rooted, still...almost...for a minute or two...

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Alone Together, Together Alone (Building From the Ground Up, Part Three)


...useta see yoga class as pretty much like any other educational venture...a place to gain useful information and/or skills...(and, y’know...maybe meet some babes)...that could then be effectively utilized elsewhere...with that absolute elsewhere always and essentially the focal point...or drishti if ya wanna get all yogic about it...and, in the case of yoga, that meant a reasonably quiet, and, in some sense, spiritual space, by myself...the inherently anchoritic practice of the serious yogi walking that path so fine that it can only be walked alone, like it says in the Bible and the Upanishads and that Grateful Dead song, toward enlightenment or at least a better relationship with oneself and maybe a bit less depression and anxiety in the morning and knees that won’t give out from biking up all those hills...or something like that...

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way....
Matthew 7:14

The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over...
Katha Upanishad

The path to happiness is so narrow that two cannot walk on it unless they become one.
Unknown

If I knew the way, I would take you home...
Robert Hunter, Ripple

...then, however, with an enticing mixture of compassionate guidance, collective experience, sense of community...(seriously, for all the stories I read online about people sniping about each other’s designer yoga wear...not to mention the nasty arguments online yogis get into...I rarely meet any but the nicest people in yoga classes...creating a sweet supportive sadhana in which it's perfectly okay that I try and fail again and again to get so much as a toe off the floor in side-crow...parsva bakasana...knowing that we’re all, in our own ways, struggling along our own paths, and it’s nice to have sympathetic company along the way)...yoga class itself kinda became the thing...and practicing solo became what I did when for one reason or other I couldn’t go to a class...and, even then, usually skipped it...having become, inadvertently, my own disappointing substitute teacher...thinkin’ damn, looks like I’m stuck with myself today...

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn.
André Gide

You gave up all the golden factories,
to see
who in the world you might be
...
Joni Mitchell

...and, then, such an outward and interactive focus goes along quite neatly, I think, with that part of Yoga for Cynics mission statement that goes something like...if I remember correctly...yoga is about opening...

...and yet, I realize, that’s not all...

...no, no, don’t worry, I’m not gonna start throwing vedas and sutras and florid potpourris of ancient beliefs at ya...though, for some people, that stuff certainly qualifies and may be essential for grounding...

...which is what I’m talkin’ about...or trying to, at least...(with, perhaps, all the more relevance now, on the day after the alleged apocalypse...which I wrote about yesterday, here...serving, perhaps, as a kinda reminder that life here on earth is what we’ve got to deal with...and that might be for the best)...

...what I mean is the establishment of a stable if ultimately provisional base from which to open...that mulabandha thing...the Shiva thing as it relates to the Shakti thing...trust me, I’ve read about this shit...the reasonably solid foundation from which the asana grows and expands upward and outward...the still point...or perhaps, a comfortable self...

...which can be hard to find...and might require openness...which, like I said, requires grounding.....as always, it's a work in progress...

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Difficult Yoga/Difficult Yogis (Building From the Ground Up, Part Two)


The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
Donald Barthelme

...my 84 year old mom and I have our own little yoga ritual...goes kinda like this:


Mom: I’m so stiff!

me: Y’know what’d really help with that, mom?

Mom [anticipating, correctly, that I’m gonna say yoga]: Shut up.


...then, such an attitude isn't exactly unique within my family...I'm one of a long line of difficult people...and, while there are lots of reasons I practice yoga, because family members pestered me to is quite certainly not one of them....so, as it's turned out...call it karma or the luck of the draw, as you will...somehow, at some point, I went from too difficult to practice yoga to becoming a difficult yogi...

Whatever it is you are craving at the moment, to be driven by such impulses means that, on a deep level, you don’t believe that you are whole as you are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...ultimately, if all ya can do is have arguments in your head no matter how many asanas and attempts at meditative states, what can ya do but have arguments in your head?....it used to be when I was in a crappy mood in yoga class I felt like that was a problem...since, y’know, all these serious yoga types were so mellow and peaceful, filling up with bliss like wealthy SUV owners at the gas pump...halfway between yoga studio and astral plane...positive energy bouncing off 'em like beads of slobber from a Saint Bernard’s gooey lips...even if none of it landed on me....now, however, having become somewhat of a serious yoga type myself, instead of becoming like them, I’ve realized they’re not so different from myself...and if I’m feeling crappy practicing yoga, then I can practice practicing yoga feeling crappy...

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Building From the Ground Up, Part One


...sitting at the usual coffee shop, drinking the usual coffee, thoughtlessly cogitating the usual misgivings, apprehensions, and regrets...self-judgment, ennui, and mild depression...life as usual seeming like one big obstacle course with no clear path apart from that defined by the obstacles themselves...

To be able to free oneself is nothing; the hard part is being able to live with one’s freedom.
André Gide

...trying to fly away might have been your first mistake.
Bob Mould

...but, idly there in my favorite sunny window seat, the thought comes that I like where I live......(not my apartment, so much...though it’s not bad, really...its problem, for the most part, its messy inhabitant...and the messy thoughts he wakes up with...more internal, that is, than external...though the Upanishads, I think, say that’s all one & the same)...(Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 438:901: ...don't believe everything ya read in the Upanishads...)...coffee gone, irresistible high-calorie toasted buttered cheddar and black pepper biscuit reduced to tasty crumbs I pick up with a dampened fingertip to eat one by one...thinking I really should be getting on with the day but focusing dreamily out at the corner, naturally illuminated...center of my laughably crunchy community...food co-op, meditation studio, alternative bookstore, alternative pet store, alternative whatever the hell that store is, alternative kid's store...run by somebody who’s also a yoga teacher...more certified yoga teachers here than plumbers, certified public accountants, or Republicans...by far...more organic vegan gardeners than people who’d admit to eating fast food or shopping at Wal-Mart...tree lined sidewalks, bicycles with baskets, two churches down the hill, one Unitarian, the other Presbyterian but with a lesbian minister...a community justifiably famous for its effortless integration, though the skin tone in the coffee shop's conspicuously lighter than that in the public school across the street...but, it takes just a beautiful seven mile bike ride following the Wissahickon Creek and Schuylkill River through the park, past the sculpture gardens and Art Museum, to get downtown...residents notably friendly, usually laugh at my jokes about scoring organic crack on the way to yoga class and wanting to call myself a Mt. Airyan but concerned that might give the wrong idea...moved all over the country to live in famous hip communities: Boulder, Olympia, San Francisco, Burlington, Flagstaff, Ithaca, had some fun but couldn’t wait to leave each and every one...then ended up back in this area where I grew up somewhat unwillingly, out of necessity...it's a long story, and kinda personal...to find myself nearly four years later thinking, sea of troubles and all, I wouldn't mind staying for a while....and that’s not a bad place to start...

Monday, May 2, 2011

Waves...


A little revenge and this too shall pass,
This too shall pass...
Bruce Springsteen

Shanti shanti shanti