Lost My Sacred Mala Beads Last Night at a Hipster Pool Party

Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
Aitken Roshi

...everything you gather is just more that you can lose...
Robert Hunter

...lost my sacred mala beads last night at a hipster pool party...yeah, I hear ya: what’s a yoga cynic doing with sacred mala beads in the first place?!...is he perhaps being ironic?....actually, no....got ‘em at Kripalu on one of first nights of the teacher training, passed out with a mantra...om namo bhagavate vasudevaya...even if I can’t say what exactly that means to me....then, a night or two before leaving, passed them around ceremonially through the group...as, you might say, a means of tying us and our experience together like sacred beads on a string...to be taken metaphysically or metaphorically...and I’ve worn them every day since, feeling that connection, in some way or other...but now they’re gone, dropped somewhere, apparently, when I was changing my clothes before or after going in for a swim...

...biked over there first thing after coffee this morning...found nothing but empty plastic cups and broken pool toys in the trampled grass...

...headed downtown to yoga class soon after...felt a drop or two a few blocks from home but didn’t think that was anything...then a light sprinkle along the Wissahickon path....turning to a not so light sprinkle and then a steady rain by the time I got to the Schuylkill...not thrilled to show up soaked and muddy, but no desire to turn around and go home, either...hell, you don’t hear those old school yogis saying dude, I was gonna go meditate naked in the charnel ground with rocks hanging from my junk but checked the weather on-line and looks like it might be a tad inclement...and, really, it's not bad, biking through the rain...

Practicing Yoga for the Wrong Reasons? Who the Hell Cares?

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.2

Some come to laugh their pasts away,
Some come to make it just one more day...
Robert Hunter

Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner...
Lily Allen

One night a week, I work at a residential rehab for women coming from the most challenging backgrounds—long-term addiction, rape, prostitution, poverty, prison, childhood incest, loss of children, every imaginable kind of abuse. I bring my expertise in reading and writing, in hopes that they’ll get their GED’s, maybe go back to school, or simply learn to narrate their experiences in writing; they bring PhD’s in suffering.

I feel particular admiration for some of the older women, those most scarred and humbled. As bad as life can get—the stuff of nightmares that leave us shaking in our beds, afraid of falling asleep again—they’ve been there. They’ve known Hell, and what it’s like to claw their way out, only to slip and tumble backwards into the depths, again and again and again. And yet, here they are, still trying.

Then there are some of the younger women—still vibrant and cute enough to hide their scars, and still naive enough to think they can run away from it all, there because it beats jail; the older clients say they haven’t hit bottom yet. Often, as I arrive, many of the clients are on their way out the door, heading to a weekly outside meeting—a twelve-step group beyond the confines of residential rehab, allowing them to incorporate their experiences of recovery within that sequestered world with those of people on the outside...many of whom are men. While everyone, generally, cleans up a bit for the outside meetings—hair done, a little mascara, a skirt in place of sweatpants, maybe a touch of jewelry—a few of the younger clients take it a bit further: wearing thick layers of makeup, low cut blouses, jeans tight enough I wonder they don’t cut off circulation. One put on thigh high black leather boots with stiletto heels, fishnet stockings beneath a short leather skirt and bustier week after week, resisting the entreaties of staff members to the effect that this really wasn’t appropriate for Narcotics Anonymous.

But, though their attitudes seem be blatantly off, though they may be missing the point, though their dressed-up-get-messed-up choices in couture might be a complete mockery of the well-established values of twelve-step programs and recovery itself, they keep going. They’re encouraged to. And there’s a reason for that. Whether they realize it or not, they need help—badly, and such resistance only serves to put that need into stark relief. And it may be that in these meetings they attend for, apparently, all the wrong reasons, they will, in spite of themselves, find the help they need. It’s better to be there with the wrong attitude, in other words, than not to be there at all.

Meanwhile, the serious yoga world’s full of outrage that so many people see yoga as a means of getting a firm butt...or to show off one’s firm butt in the latest designer yoga clothing and compare said butt and clothing with those of others in the room...or to enjoy other peoples’ firm butts so tightly wrapped in that expensive stretchy stuff. The women at the rehab, from what I've seen, appear to see morning yoga as an excuse to go outside and smoke cigarettes.

That’s cool with me. They might learn something and it might help them, in spite of themselves...

Moving, part one

...I’m moving...not far, just a few blocks, a bit deeper into West Mt. Airy, State of Heavily Caffeinated Sadhana, USA....nonetheless, it causes me a lot of anxiety...not that there’s really that much to do...just packing crap up...dealing with the fact that Comcast cut off my internet service five days early, so that I have to go to the pizza place around the corner to get on-line....no, despite what you may have heard, the blogger’s life is not always glamorous....getting the new place ready and gradually lugging stuff over, then renting a truck for the bigger things, then cleaning up the old place....shouldn’t be too much work...I don’t own that much...certainly a lot less than most people I know, particularly those anywhere near my age...though, actually, I’d like to own less...or, at least, to feel like there’s less that owns me...

...everything you gather is just more than you can lose...
Robert Hunter

...I’m feeling the need to let go of a lot of stuff...much of which doesn’t require a moving van...and requires more than a toss into a dumpster to really be rid of....though I’ve got ideas, my brain's been feeling all gummed up...stuck...weighed down by seemingly endless clutter....wouldn’t even be making this move if a friend hadn’t talked me into checking out the new place...owned by his soon to be mother-in-law...and, even then, only if it was still available once my lease was up...

...even some recent posts here have felt rather obligatory...from my perspective, at least...as if the energy’s shifted somewhat from got this amazing stuff I gotta share with the world toward shit, it’s been three days since the last post, time to crank another one out....then, without a doubt my worst discovery as a blogger has been that of the omnipresent stat counter...carrying with it the poisonous idea that a thousand unique visitors—most of them winding up here thanks to misleading google searches and leaving quickly once they find there are no mp3’s of Dylan and Lou Reed songs I’m always quoting, or instructional diagrams for eka pada kapotasana or supta baddha konasana—are somehow more important than a handful who’ve actually connected in some meaningful way with something or other written here...and, apparently, based on comments, there've been a couple of those...so, fuck numbers...better to write from the heart, or else write nothing...

...my point is to make a move that involves doors opening to more than just a different couple of physical rooms...to go from stagnation to clear flowing vitality...to slip gently out of old patterns, let go of used-up perspectives, old thoughts and feelings that might’ve been useful once but now would best be left in the dumpster with all that styrofoam crap from all those boxes I’ve been digging out to pack up my books...

...though that, of course, is easier said than done...

This is It

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Walt Whitman

...was talking to a friend while walking to dinner in Mexico about the Yoga Sutras...she didn’t like the part about abstinence...I don’t either...then, I don’t particularly care...

...not that I’ve got anything against Patanjali...whoever he was...just don’t see any reason why disagreeing with something somebody etched on parchment in India thousands of years ago should be a problem...any more than if it was written in Philadelphia yesterday...or vice-versa...

believe it if you need it; if you don’t just pass it on...
Robert Hunter

...for every love thy neighbor there’s an injunction to kill thy neighbor for one highly spiritual reason or other...for every ancient discipline of self-realization, there’s an even older caste system that labels some inherently holy, and others untouchable...for every life-saving medical procedure there’s a new weapon of mass murder...for every nice modern idea like democracy, there’s a nasty one like fascism....neither tradition nor innovation is inherently good or bad...valid or invalid...wise or stupid...

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

Totally Boring Post Where I Talk Seriously About Yoga & Stuff #1

...somebody made a remark about a recent post to the effect of hey, it actually has something to do with yoga! He had a point, and it's one that strikes me at times, particularly when, having just written another post about David Bowie albums and naked hot tub parties, I see Yoga for Cynics listed under the heading of Yoga Blogs on the sites of some of its erudite and strikingly good looking yoga-blogging readers....then, to me, writing this stuff is yoga...in the sense that it's part of an ongoing attempt to be more open...positive...peaceful...all that crap....then, actually, what I don’t write...or at least don’t post...might be more significant in that regard....hell, I could spew bile all day long...and, in fact, it’s awfully tempting to spend hours every morning ranting to the wireless multitudes about everybody and everything that pisses me off...which is exactly why I don’t do that...except, of course, in the form of comments on other peoples’ blogs....

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.... There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
Annie Dillard

Then, it’s pretty evident that yoga freaks tend to fill out a pretty broad spectrum...with what could be termed yoga fundamentalists at one end (am I getting myself in trouble yet? Probably...), with literal Hindu beliefs, hardcore vegetarianism, celibacy, and reams and reams of ancient dogma...and, at the other, people for whom yoga is a competitive sport and an excuse to buy lots of expensive and fashionable products...with the one end perhaps seeing the other as offering a badly corrupted and diluted version of a pure spiritual product coming out of the mists of a far more pure and spiritual time and place...to which those on that end might reply that they’re freeing useful practices from a tradition bogged down with myth, superstition, and outmoded ideas, as well as enhancing those practices with all the modern world has to offer....when you’re dealing with an ancient discipline that focuses on the here and now, some tug-of-war is probably inevitable...

believe it if you need it; if you don’t just pass it on...
Robert Hunter

Personally, I’ve never believed in an Indian garden of Eden that got ruined by the Western snake...nor do I get all fuzzily spiritual when surrounded with the unprecedented array of designer products now available at the local overpriced yoga boutique...neither tradition nor innovation is inherently good or bad...and the wisdom to be found in ancient texts is no more inherently valid or invalid than that found in the latest magazines...though, admittedly, both are more reliable than anything you’re likely to read in blogs....

Procrastination as a Lifestyle Choice

he not busy being born is busy dying
Bob Dylan

...haven’t been doing much productive lately...some editing and tutoring to not quite pay the bills...working with recovering addicts, writing this blog, practicing yoga, biking, a few other things...but not exactly doing my part to fulfill the hard-working, pulling-up-by-the-bootstraps American dream...more in fact, like the modern American reality of deficit spending and lack of accountability...and I’ve tended to think of that as a problem...and some of it—like that last couple of items—definitely is... but maybe not all...

Nonbeing penetrates nonspace.
Hence,
I know the advantages of nonaction.
Lao Tzu

...procrastination and inertia might be more useful than they seem...which is not to say that not doing shit is a good idea...necessarily...though there is stuff that’s better off not being done...and that really shouldn’t be done at all...or even thought about...actually, I disagree with myself about that last bit...everything should be thought about...because it’s being thought about anyway, down below, on an unconscious level...so it needs to be brought forward...looked at and understood....but, actually, the darker recesses isn’t really where I meant to go with this...I was thinking not of those deep awful urges from the id...even if there might be something to all that stuff about idleness being the devil’s play pen...though, if so, it’s the angels’, too...and that’s my point, I think....idleness is simply the space between something and something else...

Who can stop what must arrive now?
Something new is waiting to be born...
Robert Hunter

...in some cases, admittedly, inertia is caused by fear....the ongoing lack of real effort to get my novel published would be a perfect example of that...but I’m talking about other stuff...practical stuff...stuff that can make me money but leaves me cold....coldness freezes...can make life a glacier...slow moving, destroying whatever’s in its path...

One day you’ll wake up in the present day
a million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be....
Ian Anderson

...sometimes procrastination happens because people deep down know that what’s to be done won’t get them any closer to what they want and need, and might prevent them from getting there at all, despite all necessary considerations....and inertia is the ground in which new, as-yet-unknowable life is going to grow...if we let it...

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi

Peace, Love, and F... Off!

revolution in society must begin with the inner psychological transformation of the individual.

If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value.
J. Krishnamurti

Here's me, saying peace, love, and...you get the rest, somewhere around 1986, in a dorm hallway at Boston University...a professed pacifist, actively opposed to apartheid in South Africa, Duarte's bombing in El Salvador, the Contra death squads in Nicaragua, destruction of the world’s rain forests, and, in general, sincerely dedicated to working for peace, justice, equality, and looooove between my brothers and my sisters aaaaaaall over this laaaaaaaand...

...as well as intent on making sure nobody fucked with me like they did in high school...much as I seemed doomed to be an outsider...and hated the insiders, anyway...but honed my verbal skills to where I could shred anybody who pissed me off...or even irritated me...finding solace in casual acts of vandalism that cost everybody on my dorm floor their deposits...if any of you are reading this, that was a joke...but doing it all in a way that was socially respectable...because it was clever and funny...that’s one difference between college and grade school...in grade school there’s no need for subtlety...kids act out their issues by calling other kids faggots or shoving them into lockers...in college, you’ve gotta be clever...though, in the end, it amounts to the same thing...the same endless and endlessly hurtful and pointless battle.....

You can’t close the door when the walls cave in.
Robert Hunter

After a while, I left there...dropped out...went to San Francisco to follow the Grateful Dead, then wandered around Europe, then came home to work for Greenpeace in Philly, had a couple minor run-ins with the law before ending up back in school in Olympia, Washington...at Evergreen, those who were weird in other places were pretty much the norm, and those who were weird there would most likely have been committed anywhere else...actually, I suspect some of my friends eventually were...since you can’t stay in college forever.....

I’d rather stay here, with all the madmen
than perish with the sad men roaming free....
David Bowie

Here’s the thing about the Pacific Northwest in the late ‘80’s...just barely pre-both grunge and Microsoft...while, in much of the country, the conservative inquisition of the ‘80’s seemed to finish what the punk reformation started in stomping out any idealistic vestiges of the ‘60’s still smoking behind the bushes...(yeah, I’m mixing historical metaphors all over the place, but it’s fun)...and such efforts got no end of immoral support from ‘60’s idealists themselves whose concern for peace ended with their draft eligibility, who voted for the ex-governor who’d shot at them in People’s Park when they realized he’d be good for their stock portfolios...from Santa Cruz to Seattle, those organic roots sank deep...counterculture becoming conventional in its own ways...paranoia striking deep before growing comfortable and old...as even my old friends from Dead tour became what I affectionately came to term granola fascists...full of love and compassion for all living things...except for other people who didn’t live and think exactly as they did...strangely reminiscent of the Christian fundamentalists I grew up around...and, no doubt, that some of them grew up around, as well...rebelling until they became exactly what they were trying to escape...if with better taste in music, and, certainly, cooler attitudes about partying and sex...but at least you can drink a Pepsi with the fundie crowd without subjecting yourself to “constructive criticism”....

Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
George Clinton

Many, it seems, in the process of trying to free their minds, do little more than create colorful new cages...which isn’t to say that freeing your mind isn’t worthwhile...or that changing society isn’t necessary...in fact, we're probably in the biggest trouble ever if both don't happen on the largest of scales awfully soon...but it may be a lot more complicated than we think....