The More Un-Yogic, the Better?

What is here is elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere.
Vishva-Sara-Tantra

Folks, you know I’ve never been a fan of yoga. If I wanted to spend all day on the ground sweating in a contorted position, I would eat another gas station hot dog.
Stephen Colbert

...sometimes I arrive at yoga class in what might not be considered the most, y’know, yogic mood...at some strange juncture in a difficult day, full of anxiety, anger, and/or general misery, exacerbated by the trip to yoga class, driving through traffic in the rain or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike...or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike in the rain, the guy who nearly killed me though I had the right of way having the nerve to yell at me...you get the idea...leaving me tromping in and rolling out my mat in a an utterly wired and generally negative frenzy....really, there couldn't be a better time to practice yoga...

...making me especially grateful for these kind, calm, and centered teachers who help me to let go...

...though, of course, as I’m learning, now, it’s a bit more complicated...or maybe simpler, but more difficult...if, ultimately, more rewarding for that...when I am the yoga teacher...

Tidings of Comfort, Joy, and Weltschmerz

The jewel of modern consciousness is compassion. But its worms will become confusion, world-view overload, self-doubt, and paralyzing narcissism. The purpose of Yoga will be to dig carefully through the worms to extract the jewel.
yoga 2.0

Because if this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.
Stephen Colbert

...wrote something a while ago called Compassion Can Be Complicated...(the title got changed on me)...citing famous Buddhist Pema Chodron on idiot compassion that causes us to do for others only for the sake of making ourselves feel better, without actually helping anybody...

...but things get even more complicated when the goal is to feel worse...(as, contrary to more simplistic views of human nature, is quite often the case)...

weltschmerz {German, from Welt world + Schmerz pain}: mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
Merriam-Webster

...there’s a often a fine line between feelings of compassion for the whole world’s pain and a self-indulgent wallowing in a sense of unhappiness-greater-than-oneself...comfortable rapture in a miserable sublime...between making an expansive sense of compassion part of a personal spirituality and forging religion out of depression...

the notion of some infinitely gentle,
Infinitely suffering thing
T. S. Eliot

...worshipping an egotistical and infinitely resentful deity fed with continual sacrifices of pleasure...our own and that of those unfortunate enough to be close to us...a simultaneously self-righteous and self-lacerating attitude of how-can-you-enjoy-yourself-with-so-much-suffering-in-the-world...as if refusing joy here will somehow ease suffering elsewhere...

...the dominant idea, I think, even if it’s seldom stated, is that we have very limited capacities for either joy or compassion...that the two are separate, and greedy, and one takes from rather than feeds the other...that happiness necessitates callous indifference to others’ pain, and real compassion inherently involves turning away from happiness and toward our own pain...receiving only a booby prize of self-righteousness...which might, paradoxically, make you feel good, in a way...though, ironically enough, it’s the complete opposite of compassion...(if often mistaken for it, in some circles)...(if you feel strongly about how much more compassionate you are than other people, you’re probably not)...

...if there’s a spiritual mode I can get with, it would have to be one that allows the parallel lines of joy and compassion to merge...a love that, in the face of suffering, grows only stronger...

Notes from a Postmodern Yogi...Bear

...always been a big guy...bit on the hairy side...kinda slow and lumbering...with a sweet tooth...and a grouchy temper....have been referred to as that big lumberjack guy...but, far more often, as a bear...uso, in Spanish....apparently, if I were gay, that’d make me part of a subculture...but, then, I’ve generally fit in with subcultures only slightly better than with the larger cultures they exist on the fringes of, so maybe it’s just as well...even if it was kinda cool for a while when the grunge look came along and I was suddenly fashionable...but those things never last...

I turn into a bear every so often. I feel myself becoming a bear, and that’s a struggle I have to face now and then.
N. Scott Momaday

...have seen seven bears in the wild...the first, in the Tuolumne Meadows campground in Yosemite, was huge...seemingly fearless as it ravaged campers’ picnic supplies...turning to show its teeth and moving as if to charge when people got too close...which was certainly all the message I needed...though, after a while, a ranger came along, picked up a few pebbles and got the bear running with a few well aimed throws at its gigantic furry ass....the other six were along the Appalachian Trail...mostly crashing through underbrush at great speeds to get away from apparent danger...me....and then, maybe a week after the last, in the wilds of New Jersey...really...saw a few in cages, also just along the trail, down below Bear Mountain in New York, near the Walt Whitman statue...where tourists from the city shot me ugly looks, assuming, apparently, by my backpack and dirty, hairy thru-hiker's appearance, that I wasn’t the kind of person they wanted anywhere near their picnics...

And the number one threat to America is... Bears.
Stephen Colbert

...modern society wasn’t built with bears in mind...that much is clear...a culture of frenzied production and consumption looking ever askance at hibernations of any length, as well as the furry wildness of bears, in general...

“Well,” said Pooh, “we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.”
A. A. Milne

...haven’t been too productive lately...somewhat indolent...attempts at decisive action like swimming through viscous sludge...struggling a bit, and then sinking...down through the floor, into the earth...to hibernate, like postmodern bears do, with the i-pod, DVD player and cheap greasy food from the Chinese take-out place down the street...but also books, yoga mat, and meditation cushion...making me a postmodern yogi bear...and I’ll crawl out when I’m good and ready...

So meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you
And even though your friends may stop and stare
Just remember that's a bear there in the bunch with you
And they just don't come no better than a bear
Lyle Lovett