With Blasphemy So Heartfelt

Sexy Sadie, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
John Lennon

...so...now that the yoga cynic is a totally professional officially responsible certifiably spiritual liability-insured kinda yoga teacher with an actual weekly Yin class...Sunday nights, 7:00-8:15, mere blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, just across the river from the grave of America's preeminent yogi who probably didn't know he was one, Walt Whitman...that even, purportedly, involves getting paid...hopefully enough to cover said insurance...I might have to start talkin' like one....no more o' that snarky irreverence...in the words of the Buddha...if I remember what was quoted on Facebook correctly...say nothing that wouldn't look nice superimposed on a pleasant photo of the sun setting over a tropical beach on a motivational poster...

Everybody's just a little bit homosexual,

 whether they like it or not.

Allen Ginsberg

...on the other hand, just went to see this singer named Jessica Lea Mayfield...whose songs are kinda like country music that's really noisy and dirty and bad for you....she has an album called With Blasphemy So Heartfelt...and it occurred to me that, while I respect that some of my views are offensive to many people's deeply held beliefs, and, therefore, generally (though, admittedly, not always) try not to shove said views in said people's faces, I think it's not said enough that the offended might consider respecting that those views they consider so blasphemous may be every bit as deeply held by me....that the pious have no monopoly on depth of feeling...

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.
Winston Churchill

...most liberal-minded spiritual types, including most western yogis I know, tend toward some form of universalism...seeking to embrace all beliefs with the notion that, ultimately, all boil down to the same thing...having something vaguely to do with love, oneness, and/or mystery...and, don't get me wrong, I find that a very lovely, compassionate, genuinely peace-seeking way of looking at things...even if, logically, it's kinda seems to me like looking at a God Hates Fags sign and saying well, if you just ignore the "hates fags" part....

By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
Shakyamuni, the (mythic/historical, as opposed to Facebook) Buddha

...the question, it seems to me, is whether it's possible to see difference and neither recoil from it nor try to reason it away....what if they really don't think and feel deep in their hearts the way we do?...does deep difference necessarily imply hierarchies of superior and inferior, require walls to be built, judgments made,  rocks to be thrown, offense to be taken?...could it be that these vast gaps in understanding are signs of an uncertainty deeper than anything we might think we know, believe or hold sacred?...couldn't we, in the immortal words of the Au Pairs, truly be equal but different?...

Dr. Jay's 2,864th Discourse on Equanimity

...it's not that I don't care about missing the lecture on equanimity, but I'm okay with it...
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(for Frank Jude Boccio....thanks for a great week at Kripalu!)

There's No Such Thing As An Original Sin

...driving Philly’s infamous corridor of angst, the Schuylkill Expressway, with the radio on, heard an old Elvis Costello song...I’m Not Angry....with one line that goes:  there’s no such thing as an original sin...which I’ve always thought was kind of a clever play on words and traditional Christian doctrine...

...sin isn’t a word I use much...associating it, as I tend to do, with traditions in which any baby worth knowing seems to have drowned in the guilty bathwater a long, long time ago, leaving a tub I have little interest in entering....though I do think an awful lot about faults and mistakes...and all kindsa not particularly commendable behavior...mostly my own...

...and, gotta admit, even while basking in recrimination and self-loathing, I tend to look at these little blemishes on my character as kinda special...unique, even...enough that the world might recoil in horror if the charges against me were read in public...

...like, y’know, I’m one badass evil kinda dude...

 

...but, the truth is, it’s the same old tired crap...stuff millions if not billions of people around the world are probably guilty of at this very moment...that’ve been causing problems for a hundred thousand years...not particularly good, maybe, nothin’ to be proud of, some of it best apologized for, with reparations made, in fact.......but that’s all...

 

...like somebody I was helping with her college application essays a little while ago, who wasn’t sure what to say about a period of her life which was notably blank on her résumé...said she didn’t want to mention that she drank herself into jail and rehab...which was understandable...

 

...and yet, I told her, you’ve had a drinking problem....you’re not an axe murderer....half the people on the admissions committee have probably had drinking problems....that it was best be to simply be open about it...

...and she got in....one of those admissions officers even noted how touched she was by the honesty of her essay...

 

...(it should be noted, that, even if you are an axe murderer, that’s hardly a groundbreaking accomplishment....have you cleaved as many heads from necks as Genghis Khan? I don’t think so....so if that’s how you’re planning on making your mark, might as well forget it...it’s been done)...

...there’s no such thing as an original sin....and not need to go through life as if our faults are anything special...

Yes, This Blog Still Exists...

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.
Don DeLillo

...some time ago decided I was gonna focus on practicing yoga and not think about it so much...read about it less...certainly stop arguing about it...and, for the most part, that's been a good thing...

...though, as a result, have also been writing about it a lot less....as readers may've noticed...but, then, I'm writing about other things less, too, as I try to work on a novel about dysfunctional superheroes...which I haven't been doing much in recent weeks, either...okay, let's fact it, I been slacking...

...anyway, more recently been practicing yoga a lot less, too, due to the injured arm...iced as I type...(was telling a friend about it, said it was getting better for a while, but then the recovery seemed to plateau....she asked if I was icing it...I said I was until it started feeling better....took me a couple minutes to make the connection between those two answers)...

...nonetheless, went on a yoga retreat with my friends and teachers John and Diana at a hilltop villa in the Umbria region of Italy...

...yes, that's actually the place...ancient stone buildings with modern infinity pool, hot tub, and yoga studio....before and after which, spent time in the magical city of Florence...

 



...as well as Barcelona (see also the lovely Antonio Gaudi doorway, at the top of the post),





and Madrid...



...after so much quality time with Miro, Picasso, Bosch, Botticelli, and ancient, storied rivers of red wine, wasn't easy to settle back into the autumn at home...been doing a lots of meditation and mindfulness mini-retreats, and, a few weekends ago, a Yin Yoga teacher training with the amazing Corina Benner in an area of South Philly not long ago infamous as the city's mafia battleground, now one of it major hipster neighborhoods...impermanence, y'know...

I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'
William Butler Yeats, The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water

...but, anyway, told some fellow students about my semi-legendary blog...figured it might be a good time to post something...anything...for whatever it might be worth...

I had a discussion with a great master in Japan... and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

Alan Watts

This Is Not Yoga

The line between exploring and experimenting and simple and shameless self-indulgence can be difficult to see...but easy to ignore.
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 111:895

...if there's one thing yoga bloggers like to talk about even more than yoga, it's...y'know...not yoga...as in [outraged yet self-consciously calm and mindful tone] this commercialized/sexualized/nothin'-but-asana/glorified-gymnastics/new-agey/unhealthy-body-image-based/generally westernized/low-grade-celebrity-infested/sexist/egocentric/generally-corrupted-from-its-pure-roots-in-pure-uncorrupted-and-always-totally-spiritual-magical-mystical-Indyaaaa-where-they've-certainly-never-been-patriarchal-or-had-a-brutal-caste-system-or-oppressed-religious-minorities-or-had-abusive-gurus-or-anything-else-that-I-know-of-but-if-they-did-I'll-blame-it-on-western-influence/let's-face-it-just-not-as-spiritual-as-I-am crap IS NOT YOGA...

...but that's not what I'm talking about here....like I always say, in order to be disillusioned about yoga...or anything else, for that matter...ya gotta be illusioned in the first place...so that, most likely, the sooner that illusion gets dissed, the better...

...no, I’m here to talk about non-yoga in its purest form...by which I mean not doing that asana practice with all those vinyasas and sun salutations and twists and bends and stuff that, for better for worse, we have come to define as yoga AT ALL...which, thanks to some badly strained muscle fibers in my upper left arm, is what I've been practicing lately....and this non-yoga, let me tell you, really, really sucks...

 

...I mean, really, if you are the kind of insane freak who feels the need for a serious hardcore daily yoga practice, and yet sometimes wonder, cynic that you are, if it’s really worth all the time, money, and effort, there’s simply no way to find a truer, deeper appreciation for the practice than to fuck up some part of your anatomy so that you have to take a thoroughly unplanned extended break...

...one thing that’s not said enough, except on yoga blogs, where it’s continually brought up like yet another revelation that nobody’s ever thought of before, is that you can get hurt practicing yoga....but, of course, it’s not yoga’s fault...and that’s true...in my case, as in most such, the problem is not practicing mindfully...continuing to push oneself in the practice even though the body is sending clear warning signs, until those warning signs get pronounced enough that they can no longer be ignored...

 
...(of course it should be noted that some yoga injuries are at least partially the fault of unskilled or unmindful teachers...but that's not my problem...my teachers are awesome...and I can hardly wait to practice with them again)...

...and so I ice my arm, bike, meditate every day, and generally work on being more mindful, of my health and other things...trying to use this time away from the practice as a necessary step back to heal and assess...which is a good thing...

...but that doesn’t mean I have to like it...

Not in any danger of realizing full enlightenment any time soon...

...such a drag to want something sometimes, one thing leads to another I know, sang Chrissie Hynde...distilling the first two noble truths of the Buddha, along with the law of causation, into one bouncy rock n' roll nugget....suffering caused by self-centered desire spiraling into only more desire and, hence, more suffering....I know all this shit, really...even if it doesn't seem to be doing me much good, at the moment...

...I'm as much a chemical hybrid as any GMO...hate to see my weight on the doctor's scale, and wouldn't want it anywhere near scales of justice...any tribe I'd be a member of is quite certainly lost, and yet my neuroses have their own zip codes and Wikipedia entries...so much water, but no place to piss...

...had a dream I was back in high school, and also back to teaching college...but refusing to leave the breakfast table, seeing no point in trying to learn or teach anything....even more miserable upon actually waking....by early afternoon decided to blow off both yoga class and the meditation sangha, do anything that absolutely had to be done, then get in the car, drive across the Walt Whitman Bridge...Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road...to the Jersey side, not stopping 'til the ocean...Surf City...[cue Beach Boys, Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, whatever the hell you like...]...just to get some sand between the toes...

...there's a lot to be said for some sand between the toes...

Haiku?