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...

Homophobia Sucks

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
Walt Whitman

I can go off on an angry political rant to make even those who agree with me uncomfortable at the drop of a...actually you don’t even need to drop a hat, or anything....I do it spontaneously. And that’s exactly why I don’t bring politics into Yoga for Cynics much—it’d be too easy, and would end up consuming all else. That’s the inherent problem with that great, creative rage...ideals of peace and unity making a person so righteously angry as to end up snarling and barking and putting up walls.

The goal is to be positive, but not in that cheesy New Age pretend-shit-doesn’t-stink kinda way, though it's always a fine line. Yoga, to me, is about opening, and cynicism is about closing, and I’m hoping maybe humor can be a bridge between the two.

But cynicism isn't inherently bad. If people tell you it is, ask for their wallets and keys and credit card numbers. There are things we need to defend ourselves from, things we need to oppose, things we need to speak out against. In a couple of conversations recently, I’ve tried to put as positive a spin as possible on Amendment 8, casting it as a reminder not to be complacent, that there are still battles to be fought, right here and right now, and that anyway, things are steadily moving forward, that we’re still only twenty years away from a storied administration that proclaimed “morning in America” while ignoring the AIDS epidemic and we've sure come a long way since then. But I don’t really expect anybody to be mollified by that. The only thing more hateful than homophobia is trying to hide it behind one's God. I was struck by the thought when the beautiful new First Family walk on stage Tuesday night that my country is better than I imagined, but that doesn't mean we don't still have some serious shit to work on.