Awakening: Compassion, Contentment, Etc.

...saw a group of young guys...looked like college kids...a block or two down Sansom Street from where I live...standing on a corner taking pictures of themselves and laughing...a second look showed what was so funny....a homeless man lying unconscious on the sidewalk, and they, arrayed in their brightly colored polo shirts, tennis shorts, and unexamined privilege, taking selfies with him...

...from my bike, across the intersection, I wanted to yell you stupid assholes!!!!...just to let them know that somebody passing by didn't think they were nearly so clever as they thought...to just maybe make them think about what might be wrong with finding amusement in the suffering of those less fortunate than themselves...possibly thereby awakening apparently dormant compassion in an admittedly roundabout and perhaps contradictory way...but didn't...

...wondered what someone more enlightened than I might've said....not that it was hard....no doubt, there could be all kinds of gentle ways to start a meaningful dialogue, and I'm sure that if Thich Nhat Hanh or Nelson Mandela had been there, that's just what they would have done...

...but...in order to do that, myself, I realized, I'd have to awaken my own sense of compassion...for them...and as it was, couldn't think of any way of doing that short of knocking their heads together...

...maybe the point here is that sometimes you need to work on yourself first...one's own angry, cynical, yet still strangely idealistic self that can't stand the thought of people finding fun in an unconscious homeless person, even though worse things happen every minute...and one might in the moment like to make worse things happen to them...

Sunday morning, and I'm falling...
Lou Reed, Sunday Morning

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

 

...I just dunno...right at this moment, I'm trying to practice contentment...sitting here on a late Sunday morning in the threadbare but ever-comfortable Ikea chair in a filthy apartment in my (clean) underwear, listening to some really really good music, reading and writing stupid shit on Facebook, and alternating between a tall glass of room-temperature water with lemon (the yoga crowd says it's good for me) and some tasty hot coffee (in Sanskrit, they call it prana), having been too lazy from the past couple days' bike rides to get up and ride across town for morning sangha practice...grateful there's nothing much that absolutely has to be done today except to figure out what I'm teaching in my 7 pm Yin Yoga class this evening...and pay some end-of-the-month bills...but eyeing the three books I've started reading in the past couple days (not even mentioning the novel I'm ever-so-slowly writing)...kinda wishing I had a smart, sensitive, beautiful girlfriend with whom to share an endless lazy brunch, but....recognizing that it's all okay...really not bad...not bad at all...pretty good, in fact...practicing that...

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...

Possible Yoga Terrorists and Paranoia Striking...Somewhat Shallowly

...back when I was a serious political activist, my friends all thought they were being watched...positive all the vegan potlucks were under tight surveillance...spies in every circle of self-affirmation....the international combine quaking in fear at the thought of kids temporarily out of school knocking on doors to save whales, smoking bongs till they couldn't form coherent sentences, talking about but not actually reading Marx, and blasting early Zappa at three A.M....one guy I knew went for months telling all the freaks at the local co-op the CIA was watching his every move, getting little in response but yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re watchin’ me, too before finally being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic....

Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you....
Kurt Cobain

...which is not to say that I don’t think anybody’s out to get me...hell, every time I get stuck behind some jalopy going ten miles under the speed limit, I’m sure it’s part of a conspiracy to mess with my life...for that matter, in the late 60’s, when I was a little kid, my dad, a psychiatrist—yeah, I know, that explains a lot...shaddup—ran into a guy he’d had committed...on the street...and the guy said I know where your children play...and, as it turned out, he did...Rittenhouse Square in Philly...whenever I’m down that way I keep my eyes out for that guy, likely in his eighties or so, possibly moving about with a walker, still looking to abduct me after all these years....

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
George Orwell, 1984

I’ve been asked to be a community organizer for my local yoga friends...or sangha if ya wanna get all spiritual, sanctimonious, and Sanskrit-like about it...creating some kind of on-line entity, I think, and maybe more...might have to hug people or something...not too clear on that point at this juncture....anyway, I know what yer thinking...how might this community organizing crap impact any plans I might have to run for the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America?

Jesus was a community organizer...
The Internet

It’s a real concern, too...just who are these people?...how do I know none of them have dark pasts as yoga terrorists? how do I know, a few election cycles from now, I won’t be seeing video clips at every commercial break showing a seemingly mild and benevolent yoga teacher saying as you move from uttanasana to utkanasana, visualize death to America...?