tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11858544340350267192024-03-13T16:40:31.165-04:00Rajanaka SammelanaYou are the Secret the Universe Tellsdbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-3181445136003588302023-09-06T09:30:00.001-04:002023-09-06T13:06:15.691-04:00Creating Collisions of Value<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">All I have is a voice<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">To undo the folded lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">—-W.H. Auden<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">W. H. Auden discovered his calling when, at the age of 15, a classmate asked him if he’d considered writing poetry. By the age of 23 his Poems had won him acclaim well-deserved. I first came upon Auden’s work as a young man when in India I encountered the translations and interpretations of the sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa through the work of Christopher Isherwood. I was not only looking for sagely wisdom from the modern Bengali sant, I was in search of searchers.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSyHw8ZMDcT_mypI3-rheNDxpa8xUdoTdUn8etCIrgx0Ge8Q7HDZ2Y-DMr9Ua_EtmrsvCerWgZ9VUYW9PnaKgRCruWFMoKVml2zO7nLUNNP79jfZebPxEy3HpHY25BMQEG1V8JIM2gNsgNqdvLK0KsvqyoPkEqxkxeI63mL4I_dwuXYref-I4xfsEslio9/s1250/pigmentrajanakacoleridge22.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1250" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSyHw8ZMDcT_mypI3-rheNDxpa8xUdoTdUn8etCIrgx0Ge8Q7HDZ2Y-DMr9Ua_EtmrsvCerWgZ9VUYW9PnaKgRCruWFMoKVml2zO7nLUNNP79jfZebPxEy3HpHY25BMQEG1V8JIM2gNsgNqdvLK0KsvqyoPkEqxkxeI63mL4I_dwuXYref-I4xfsEslio9/s320/pigmentrajanakacoleridge22.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">I needed to know who had come before me, what they had found, and how they’d brought their encounters with India into their personal lives. Isherwood, I soon discovered, was a complicated person and when I found out a bit about his relationship with Auden, well, one thing led to another. Auden was not interested in India’s spiritualities but his voice pierced my soul.<br /><br />During the time Auden collaborated on plays with Isherwood in the 1930s, the young poet began a complex journey involving politics, love, and a relentless pursuit of the soul. When in 1947 he won the Pulitzer for his long form poem The Age of Anxiety, Auden established himself as a voice of the age. The war was over but the depths of anxiety were only beginning to emerge in a world threatened by the price of nuclear victory and harrowing revelations of the evil made manifest during the Holocaust. What human beings could do to one another brought into painful focus the deep conflicts that reside in every soul. Anxiety might not be only another feature of our experience: it is the soul’s light casting shadow as a constant companion. And what might we do about that?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">During this same time in my own India journey reading about Ramakrishna ad then Isherwood and Auden, my studies of Jung were deeply connecting, I felt like what these sages, storytellers, and poets were offering was the primary resource, the well-spring from which Jung was developing his theories of analysis. This provided my first collision with Jung’s notion of colliding.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">What makes us grow, Jung says, is bringing our ego in collisions, that is, into troubles, anxiety, sorrow, even suffering. Now it’s important to understand that the ego is not itself a problem, at least not necessarily. In contrast to some readings in India where ego is nothing less than the problem to be solved or even eliminated, for Jung the ego focuses human consciousness and is rooted in the unconcious.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">Without a strong ego we cannot obtain or transform the content of our inner experience and a weak ego will succumb to mere impulse and reaction. Thus while the ego can be selfishness, it can also be the source of altruism—ego as such is morally neutral and is better construed in terms of how we create agency. Engaging ego-consciousness is a key to creating purpose and direction and, importantly, we are free to choose and make choices because our ego can learn and we can move with, through, even past the powers of mere impulse and emotional reaction.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">Sometimes we need to hold our egos in check because it’s freedom is limited, we’re so eaily and profoundly moved both by internal events and what the world is offering up. In his Aion, Jung told us that the ego “is not a simple or elementary factor, but a complex one…which cannot be described exhaustively.” He is telling us here that we are somatic, physical beings and psychic ones and that these are commingled, integrated complexities: what we feel in our bodies and conjure in our minds are coextensive. The ego is body-based insofar as it experiences itself through the body but it is as much the case that the body that the ego expriences is psychic: we are body imagers, not just bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">To develop a closer and more empowering connection with our selves we are going to have to learn how to engage with our ego collisions. Those experiences are going to happen, there’s no avoiding our inner conflicts, anxieties, and sorrows. But we’re going to have to take great care because the word is collision and that can be problematic, even catastrophic in terms of inner turmoil. An important strategy is to invest in creative potential, taking up modalities of inner expression that give us purpose and meaning. You might paint, do your yoga practice, write in a journal but you gotta get in to get out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">When we study mythologies together we enter into cultural virtuosities creating structures, symbols, and modalities of self reflection that can give voice and invite participation—-the collisions we are experiencing can be brought into images and framed in ways that allow us to deal with the difficult work. Myths are hard to understand but one of their great purposes is to soften the blow, make accessible the harder truths despite the fact that they themselves can be difficult to penetrate. When we can dismiss as so much fairy tale or flummery we are using it to protect us from its more challenging messages. But when we take the time, learn together, and put the myth into a context of healthy conversation, then the collisions become opportunities, we deflect less and engage more.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">It can feel “demanding” when we try to make meaning out of mythology but what we now know is that we are dealing with collisions. How could it be otherwise? Best not to go it alone, like I said. Best to bring along sages and storytellers and poets who can provide the resource and the insight. To develop our own, best to make the effort in safe company.<br /><br />Here’s a bit more from what I wrote about this morning.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"><br />We must not lose our voices, resign or relinquish, forsake or surrender. Stay in the conversation and allow, even create what Jung called “collisions.” We collide when the world and our inner self find incongruity, discomfort, impediments or vexations. Our natural tendency is to retreat, allow the withdrawal to bury the experience.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">When we can’t “collide” then our circumvention turns this shadow experiences into latent resentments and painful, undisclosed feelings. We usually try to camoufloge and disguise further, dissemble, stifle, and duck. Next thing you know we’re acting out and we don’t know why and it all compiles. So what can we do? We have to unfold the folded lie, as Auden puts it. We have to give permission for the collision and be kind enough, gentle enough, committed enough not wreck ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">There isn’t only one way to lift those shrouded curtains of the soul but it’s not going to be easy because seeing yourself isn’t easy. The power of storytelling, mythic symbolism, and thoughtful contemplation can shelter and at the same time encourage disclosure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">We don’t have to lay ourselves bear, exposed and unprotected to address the inner collisions. But when we commit to the endowments of human genius in the cultural grace of the story, we can learn how to release and unwrap the inner narratives. Myths conceal themselves behind veils of truth so that the anxious unknown becomes less daunting, so we can enter into a more delivering, exonerating conversation with the self. The undiscovered territory is you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;">This week we begin again our studies of the mythic possibilities: Thursday with poems and songs to Goddess Kali, Saturday with a fresh, innovative look at Krsna stories, and Sunday in the greatest tale ever told again and again: Mahabharata. You can find the Zoom links in your Newsletters But I’ll put them here too. Come if you can. We’ll make some safe collision, play inner bumper cars with the self in the cherished company of friends. Don’t try too many collisions all by your lonesome. Best to keep good company because you will become the company you keep. See you soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro", serif;"> </span></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-17416693198460642952023-01-03T09:45:00.007-05:002023-01-03T17:00:22.969-05:00A Story in the News, Rajanaka, the Past and Future of Yoga<span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />"I read the news today, oh boy...and... the news was rather sad..."</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /> As you know I've only had a peripheral connection over these many years with the "yoga world." The person mentioned in this NPR story cited below was not known to me, personally or otherwise. I am sad for her family, her friends, her students, for her. She died of a pulmonary embolism. I know that can happen to anyone because I too have lost friends suddenly this way. I have nothing more to say about this particular case and person. In a world in which love can be measured in grief, the depths of grief are unfathomable. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">May love find more to measure even if it too is unfathomable.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">My reason to write is to comment about this well-known yoga teacher's involvement in conspiracy theories, QAnon, vaccine-denial, and the rest that has caused us all so much pain and confusion.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-gA0ykFw_qHI02jjjFaIQMj4RF79-pNwXPAvlTXQaxUJCZy52ascJ2Jl9ZD6EmGt7_g4zoFfVhEPuX6HTze-vfCvVB319GTzlwLuTbI09eoZWs4tzciuADjFR4tfgobDMzT_wb8XIEmlUQTOHLOa8AV3FnDjgxAmZu62kgnDtKelCnotOXjebj_Clw/s624/crownotend2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="471" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-gA0ykFw_qHI02jjjFaIQMj4RF79-pNwXPAvlTXQaxUJCZy52ascJ2Jl9ZD6EmGt7_g4zoFfVhEPuX6HTze-vfCvVB319GTzlwLuTbI09eoZWs4tzciuADjFR4tfgobDMzT_wb8XIEmlUQTOHLOa8AV3FnDjgxAmZu62kgnDtKelCnotOXjebj_Clw/s320/crownotend2.png" width="242" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have heard, again all second hand, that the conspirators are rampant in the yoga world. In the article Matthew Remski makes the point that it's not uncommon with the "find your own truth" crowd. (For the record I have always had a wonderful, genial relationship with Matthew who came once to a seminar. I hold his work in warm regard.)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ironically, historical yoga philosophers (at least the ones writing in Sanskrit) have never been about finding "your own" truth. That would be a terrible misreading of their claims. Rather, their aim is usually about bringing you to experience *their* versions of truth, especially their conclusions (siddhanta) and dogmas. This is true of Hindus and Buddhists (and Jainas, etc) alike. The goals are undoubtedly personal and experiential but they are decidedly not <i>yours</i>---these are constructed as arguments of persuasion "verified" personally in experience.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is an important distinction becasue this renders Rajanaka (n.b., Rajanaka simply means what Appa taught me) once again entirely outside the mainstream of these traditions. Rajanaka is obliged to yoga traditions by sharing resources---mythologies, queries and questions, ideas and values along with practices. But Rajanaka has no siddhanta as such, it is more method than goal, and I suppose we should say that it aligns itself more closely with the methods of scientific truth-seeking and tasks rooted in shared, empircal learning aka academics.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">A Rajanaka critic once said to me that "this makes Rajanaka just another strategy of secular humanism." I offer no objection to this characterization. Rajanaka loves Hindu lore, the history of religions, the artistry and passion of the Indian tradition in all its forms---and all forms of serious learning and artistry, in all culture and history. </span></span><span data-offset-key="t2ah-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><span data-text="true">We are seekers of a shared humanity, of </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><span data-offset-key="t2ah-1-0">human</span></span><span data-offset-key="t2ah-2-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><span data-text="true"> achievements, the imagination and the power of creativity in fostering a life of values, tolerance, integrity. We're here to learn and converse about things we think are compelling and important because they contribute to shared concerns.</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Appa made this point with me on day one: we are here to learn, to take processes of inquiry seriously, to ask better questions and understand how "truth" is a process, provisional, empirical, experimenting with facts. We are learning about ourselves, about the world as we have been made and as we make it. It's called a Vidya---the word is cognate to the English "verify" or "verification"---he said, because Rajanaka really is like science, knowledge refers to hat we verify using our senses and minds, in reason and in shared empirical studies: our learning is not perfect, just the best we can do in learning.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">As most academics would likely put it the problem with conspiracies is not unlike the problem with "finding your own truth." This is not a serious way to learn. "Seriousness" is something of a technical term to us: it implies methodologies and the pursuit of shared learning. Those not trained academically, skeptical or hostile to academic methods may not fully appreciate the effort placed on "seriousness."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But let me be clear with you good folks: Rajanaka loves seriousness and has little use for conspiracies or the nonsense that passes these days as "truth." Reducing to "your own truth" is a slippery slope to foolish solipsism and, worse, a kind of stochastic nihilism. That's a fancy way of saying that you think your own opinions (whenever you are thinking or feeling them) are not merely valid but <i>sound</i>, important, true because you say or believe them to be. This is a kind of subjectivism that can be dangerous but it is certainly the opposite of "serious." All experience claims made in good faith are valid but not all qualify as sound. We observe this important distinction.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I would be happy to explain the distinction further but I think this can suffice for now. The link between Trumpist conspiracy/QAnon nonsense and yoga worlds in this "personal truth" creates a swift path to stochastic nihilism. In no time things are true because you say them, feel them, believe them---and more likely because you hear them and follow along.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">The whole point of "seriousness" as the alternative is to learn how to think critically, read closely, and write argumentatively. This is my mantra to undergraduates; this is what we are learning to do. It is precisely the same in Rajanaka. I am not here to teach you <i>what</i> to think. I am here to help you learn <i>how</i> to think.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thinking is no small matter. It requires information and methods to sort out misinformation and disinformation. When Rajanaka disagrees or rejects or criticizes yoga traditions (or religions) it does so using historical facts and sources. Our aim to point out the process of argument that is implied or stated. "Argument" is another misunderstood term (like "seriousness"). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Argument is how we conduct rational discourse, it is not a quarrel as such. We ask what are the assumptions, evidence, reasons, and conclusions drawn. It is the very process of learning itself. Rajanaka makes no religious arguments because religions begin with the notion that their conclusions, like their assumptions, are beyond disproof. More correctly, there are matters we believe withstand the critical method and so deem true and thus what remains isn't skepticism but the persistence of method. What could be disproven remains even if we are reasonably sure we have arrived at a fair and honest provision, a truth as such. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rajanaka takes this stance common to scientific and indeed to all historical critical method: we are vigilant in the pursuit of facts sharable because we share methods. Some religions, like certain elements of modern Buddhism, claim not to function like religions (where assumptions and conclusions are theoretically disprovable). But I've yet to find such a Buddhist like our pal the Dalai Lama who didn't subscribe to non-empirical, non-verifiable (by method) claims.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some such claims are clearly not in the least dangerous to the common wield. In other words, there's lots about religious claims that don't do damage, even things that are downright helpful. Like "be a good person" or "be compassionate" for which there may be little argument to sustain the case. We're not reducing the world to argument, only looking for ways to have a sensible conversation about what makes us human.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I study religions professionally not because what they teach is "true" but because I seek truths. Truth is what happens when you share in a conversation that takes facts seriously, that enjoins human achievement to human fallibility and flaw. Truth depends on asking better questions, learning to formulate argument and attend to what is serious--and that too is a learning process.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Conspiracy is hearsay, gossip, nonsense, repeated as if it were true but without the processes of serious or honest learning. That's where Rajanaka stands, if you wanted to know. We are serious about learning and we mean to study yoga to engage life as fully engaged human beings. Serious learning can be soulful though it need not be, it doesn't have to be. What I mean by that is we can ask "how does this really matter to me or change the world or effect life." How does what I learn create purpose, meaning, and value in my life?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Truth isn't necessarily about relevance or application but it can be. Art can move us and shape us and change us and reveal things in our hearts we know, we feel, that are true. Sometimes the facts alone don't suffice. But they are never not the facts. So it's no small matter. The "what" is not the "so what." Understanding that distinction is helpful to having further serious conversations. "Serious" doesn't mean un-fun or boring. But it does ask more from you than your "own truth." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Cited article:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">https://www.npr.org/2023/01/02/1146318331/yoga-guru-qanon-conspiracy-theories</span></div><div><br /></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-19574284862549954792022-07-21T11:33:00.002-04:002022-07-21T11:33:45.268-04:00Appa Tells Us About Love and Loyalty<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">An Appa Story </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">Notebook dated 1985</span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">One day I took a rickshaw home to Sumeru from the city because it was raining really hard. I negotiated the fee with the driver amiably taking into account the hardship and he was eager for the fare. I was carrying a huge bundle of fruit and stuff, otherwise I'da' walked.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq_aedUjk7kj6pne_iBV_pYUXVfwww_3mDBLzgkz6ZwZQm6dkYO7CR_wwBlaXjKjsV7WxZrw3_2e3lskF-sovEjPHCrV5L8VeBewmqWzDvYmSIzpb0RDrADMAEgXi9pLk8Az9cAF55telmUI9WuPDhKvb8ic1_3Es_nyAxSuhy-bF5wazKzLnWZ0J0UA/s1664/AppaPortrait.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1507" data-original-width="1664" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq_aedUjk7kj6pne_iBV_pYUXVfwww_3mDBLzgkz6ZwZQm6dkYO7CR_wwBlaXjKjsV7WxZrw3_2e3lskF-sovEjPHCrV5L8VeBewmqWzDvYmSIzpb0RDrADMAEgXi9pLk8Az9cAF55telmUI9WuPDhKvb8ic1_3Es_nyAxSuhy-bF5wazKzLnWZ0J0UA/s320/AppaPortrait.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">Anyways we get home and the rickshaw driver demands an unusually high fee. I pay him what we agreed and added some but not all of his (genuinely unfair) demand. He shouted an obscenity at me in Tamil and this brought Appa from the house. He was irate that such language be used at his doorstep, in front of his mother and children. He then said to the fellow, "How dare you speak to that man with such lanugage. Do you know who he is?" And I was, well, nobody really, just a guy in his 20s living in India. When the rickshaw fellow used bad language towards Appa I came running out of the house in a rage befitting Bhairava and his dog. Appa turned abruptly to me and pointed to the third floor. He was arguing vociferously with this fellow but turned to me in his usual wonderful eerily calm voice: "Go into the house." I could do nothing else.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">Later we had a bit of a talk about the incident and I apologized for the matter wholly. He assured me that I did the right thing. "If we let him cheat you then he will cheat anyone. And he will cheat more vulnerable foreigners. No one should be cheated. You already paid him much more than the fare. You did the right thing because you can afford that, it is a generous act. But how he behaved we may not excuse so easily." This was all very Appa.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">But then he made me cry, 'cause I could not help it. He wanted to make a point, so he told a story. He said, "You love me and want to protect me too. I know you are loyal to me and I am loyal to you. Do you know why? Loyalty is a true friend to love but they are companions and they are not the same. Love is Varuna, who is Sovereign. But loyalty is like Mitra, the Friend who is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><i>always</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"> at his side. Mitra knows that loyalty is always being challenged, not like their love. Now, this is not a bad thing. Loyalty is something that will be tested and because it is earned and then it is re-earned; loyalty never turns an eye from the truth. That is why Lord Varuna keeps Mitra so close. He loves him but he welcomes these test. They have earned each others' hard won loyalties. Their love, well, that they can't help."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">I sad and worried for those whose loyalty is blind, whether it is gurus or politics or whatever it is. Loyalty is best with your eyes open. You can close your eyes sometimes when you're in love. That can feel right too.</span></span></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-67584965418834770782022-04-08T19:08:00.001-04:002022-04-08T19:17:40.461-04:00How We Learned Together<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">These are the weeks in April when I celebrate my teacher’s birthday, remember his teaching, rejoice in his life, and grieve his passing. I’ve tried over the years to describe what it was like learning with him. Today I was reviewing some very old notebooks, more like log books of times spent in India with Appa. This transcribed passage is from my 22 year old self, dated April 1978:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is nothing to prove, nothing even</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">on</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">offer.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is simply</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">here</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you want *it* you will have to notice it and its value.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you want it you will have to understand how to get it.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you expect anything from the teacher other than what he does</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">you have not yet understood the opportunity.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is nothing</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">for sale though he may make the opportunity</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">appear</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you don’t understand</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">all of the terms under which all of this happens that too is</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">not</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">going to be explained.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">You are going to have to figure out what you want and then figure out how it is being offered because</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">it is not being offered.</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">it is simply being</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">done.</i></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />We might think when people do something or make something that their work will also somehow be <i>on offer</i>. The work might be for sale or for hire, or it might even be for free because that too can <i>appear </i>to be<i> </i>the <i>offer</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We want to know the terms, the cost, the effort and time it will take: we want to know if the offering is something worth it to us. It only seems <i>normal</i>: we want to know what we might be getting and getting into, and likely have all sorts of questions about <i>the offering and the offer</i>.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzGDHTfsTeDw1T59Vls_ABD_A4vtVP5ZAHfpdkUPFHnSDzfPJQPEg7Rjt20Gzk4SQL_a_Di-BRB9k1yeV4kKLv7brDaBnGA5fWXTQ70GwKlI8eNVZgtk1N2WzKnhhvMxrhiSX6lCzoGGjVb7L7MIp0B-qTfDMf2RB9wYbJwMraUt-tpSTy25t9GaVYew/s960/srividyaphoto.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzGDHTfsTeDw1T59Vls_ABD_A4vtVP5ZAHfpdkUPFHnSDzfPJQPEg7Rjt20Gzk4SQL_a_Di-BRB9k1yeV4kKLv7brDaBnGA5fWXTQ70GwKlI8eNVZgtk1N2WzKnhhvMxrhiSX6lCzoGGjVb7L7MIp0B-qTfDMf2RB9wYbJwMraUt-tpSTy25t9GaVYew/s320/srividyaphoto.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />When I encountered my teacher it seemed to me at first that what he had chosen to do with his life and what he accomplished <i>was</i> somehow <i>on offer</i>. He had studied, he had credentials, experience, and a long history of engagement with his work. What would I have to say to receive or do to acquire <i>that </i>?</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">He never once asked for terms nor did he set conditions or a price, not even after I gathered the courage to ask him to teach me about his work.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">He wasn’t offering something of great value for “free.” Every moment of life is one less moment we have to live and from mere respect for time we should consider seriously questions of value. He did not put a price on his time or his work but did make himself <i>available</i>. How do you pay for someone’s true experience or repay a debt that seems beyond any measurable compensation?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s not wrong or wrong-headed to consider monetary value on value received. In fact, it seems to me wrong to think that we would not somehow try to make compensation, offer some kind of remuneration. If none is suggested, none asked for, that doesn’t mean the work is “free” any more than we are freed from the notion of just rewards or offerings. Things of value can have a price no matter who decides it. If we are not prepared or willing or can’t pay that price then that is merely another life circumstance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When I started my journey all I knew is that my curiosities had somehow brought me to a complex body of images and suggestions, into words and ideas where one thing had led to another. There was history, a subject and in fact many subjects, there was learning and clearly a process of acquiring skills and understandings.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Any of these endeavors would take time and involve remaining a person in the world with responsibilities and ordinary costs of living. None of those matters were ever going to simply disappear---that is not my good fortune. But what relationship we can we create between what we long to learn, <i>who we want to be, </i>and making a living in a world that promises us none?<br /><br />I didn’t have a plan or a goal because I didn’t even know what it was that I had found. I felt confident that what appeared seemed only the very tip of an iceberg and that the iceberg was unfathomably vast and genuinely beyond my abilities to fathom. The subject involved complex ideas, implied arguments and materials that even at the surface level appeared exotic, unfamiliar, and labyrinthine. I had no idea if these pursuits really were worth the time and whatever efforts they might entail.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I remember as a kid having heard in school that Albert Einstein had important theories. So, I went to the library to get my hands on his work, copies of the original documents. How better to learn? Of course what I found was so utterly beyond my comprehension that I had to reconsider, well, <i>everything </i> I thought I was trying to do. Things worth doing are not only likely hard to learn but may well leave us wondering how even to start. It wasn’t only what Einstein apparently knew, I couldn’t fathom what he was doing much less how he learned it. Of course, he went to school, he had teachers, he applied himself. This too seemed to be <i>on offer</i> if one has the curiosity, the aptitude, the commitment to the work.<br /><br />But with respect to my teacher’s work, that can only partially be learned from things <i>on offer</i> because of the simple and practical fact that he worked as a University professor. If I enrolled in his classes he was contracted and obliged to offer precisely what was expected. I soon learned that his professional offerings were only fragments of what he had done but not what he <i>could </i>do, much less what he <i>was</i> doing. What he offered as a “professional” was only a fragment of who he was and what might be learned.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What my teacher might teach if only I knew how to learn was never <i>for</i> sale and never went “on sale.” What you might learn or receive from him was somehow available if you first understood <i>those</i> facts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“It isn’t that what we might do together is intellectual or “spiritual” that matters about the work. Nothing should cause us to believe our work is different from any other <i>endeavor</i>. I might be making pottery or building furniture. What would it matter? What there is to do in life and how we choose to do, that may not have anything to do with one’s job. One is somehow curious and interested in the work or not. What is “produced” might be sold and those sales may provide a living. One’s work as one’s artistry, can do many of the same things as any job and there is nothing wrong with having a job, making offerings or sales. Some of the skills I have learned help provide my living. Of course, people must find ways to sustain themselves. But if someone wants to learn what I have learned there is no need for me to make an <i>offer</i>, though it might be available to learn. My job, my profession, that is only a portion of myself, as it is for anyone. Why should I want something from you that you have not asked of <i>me</i>?”</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My teacher never said “this is what I do, this is who I am, would you like to learn this.” He didn’t even imply as much. He never spoke about the value of his work in his own experience, much less how others might benefit from it. He expressed no attitude regarding accomplishment or objectives; there was no suggestion of profit, advancement, or gain.<br /><br />When I asked him why he did his work he said it had come to him first as something curious, that it had somehow called to him and turned into a way of life. He was now just doing his work.<br />Is it important? Perhaps not to the world, he said.<br />Is it valuable? So long as we try to avoid particular harm to the world then we should be free to live as we choose.<br />You don’t sell your work? I make a living from work I do. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What I eventually came to realize is that I would have to learn how to ask for what was never being offered <i>until I could ask for it</i>. At that point, the “offering” was commensurate to commitment and a process of learning how to ask the next question, about what seemed to be the next thing in the learning process.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Among my first lucky stumblings I came upon a quotation that said three-fourths of everything remains hidden, unknown, or unseen. There were few clues to explain further the value or the purpose of the pursuit. I had curiosity, even romance and mystery but that I realized was all of my own making---the clues uncovered expressed no particular interest in creating any interest. There was no pitch, no seduction, no vending, no deal to be made, no demands, and nothing to market. This situation was never less true so the very idea of <i>something </i>being <i>on offer</i> was actually never the case. There was no interest expressed in eliciting my interest or anyone else’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If my teacher’s work were completely private, if no one had ever noticed or asked, I am confident that it would have made little difference to him. If no one came along to carry forward his traditions of learning---what he knew was clearly passed through a process of learning---he wasn’t going to be concerned. He felt no need to carry forward, spread, or advance any agenda.<br /><br />He wasn’t doing his work so that others would profit from it though, he conceded when pressed, they might well find it meaningful and worthwhile. After all, he did and that suggested others’ too might find it worthwhile. That may sound selfish or self-preoccupied because there is no expressed motive of altruism or service to community but neither did he ask or expect benefit, reward, or acclaim. If there was inspiration, influence, or an evocative muse, none was deliberate, none was being implied. Once we engaged together in learning there were no obligations, no incentives, nothing expected.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So what happened was this: I found a person I had reason to believe knew <i>something</i> about matters of real curiosity to me. I went to ask him a bit about what he knew and if he would teach me. He respectfully listened, gave me his time, and at the end of our first “interview” he said that he would be here, at his desk, in this place tomorrow at certain hours. Could I come to see him? His affirmation was in his smile. He wasn’t cold, haughty, or indifferent but neither was he particularly <i>more </i>inviting. He was being himself, doing his work, and I could come or not. This arrangement, as it were, was never made more complex or conditional.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It soon became clear that our relationship was entire, meaning that so long as I “showed up” he too would “show up” with all of his gifts and abilities. I would ask for things and then be assigned tasks that would be in pursuit of those requests. He never graded or evaluated. Each day he would express or suggest things that were clearly in furtherance of my curiosities and the queries I was able to make. I was never praised or cajoled, never admonished or approved. We simply continued our process day after day. I never asked for “input” nor did I receive any assessments or valuations. I was learning how to learn when there was nothing being offered or sold, no bargain, no requirements, no obligations. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I once asked him, while living in his house, what we would do if I did not come that day to learn together. He said, “I hope we would at least have lunch” and he laughed a little.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-604053873758844392022-02-01T02:34:00.004-05:002022-02-01T02:55:17.560-05:00Liberated from Liberation<div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="6l7if-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6l7if-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Live<span data-offset-key="6l7if-1-0"> long and prosper.
I went to India hungry for an awakening that would relieve me of the burdens of everyday existence. Despite falling in love with Hesse's percipient critique of the Buddha in his parallel voice as Siddhartha, I still wanted the some supernal conclusion. I did not fathom yet the Ferryman's river because I wanted something more, something that would save me from the world and from myself.<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6l7if-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span data-offset-key="6l7if-1-0"><br /></span></span></div>As a complement and very much an alternative to the Buddhists, I had come across the great Sankara. Here, in the nearly impenetrable prose of formal Sanskrit argument, was what I thought the cathartic release.<br /></span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-0">Sankara shamelessly told us that this vale of tears is the result of a cosmic malaise, a false super imposition of mistaken identities---like a rope for a snake, called adhyasa---and the result of our individuated ignorance made apparently manifest by karma, also a construct of mis- identifications, which shrouds us in falsity.
When I met Appa, barely 20 years old, I came prepared with a thorough, memorized to the last run on sentence, appeal to Sankara's catursutri (the "four sutra'') that opens his commentary on the Brahmasutra. I didn't think myself clever or certain. Far from it. I wanted to meet someone who would make the advaitin argument come alive, someone who had lived the meaning of Sankara's exposition. I wanted the One so that I could put an end to the falsity of Many. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpc0GGaQRe1U2LjUYpCjiI36ypExkKOQdUty8ZO0Acq3mDFEMr34XKnrJG82Fn-wV_sD40GhTsXAMzzOSJz7VzOWig861FeWsHquHOSjwzHi9A_V36YJRlr0HTMSCrxJpyVFMbVrXXpghUkvwMyQcaDDAPT-fdFfCrFSK5VfZ2-ZuJe3gOxQuxyHBooA=s916" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="916" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpc0GGaQRe1U2LjUYpCjiI36ypExkKOQdUty8ZO0Acq3mDFEMr34XKnrJG82Fn-wV_sD40GhTsXAMzzOSJz7VzOWig861FeWsHquHOSjwzHi9A_V36YJRlr0HTMSCrxJpyVFMbVrXXpghUkvwMyQcaDDAPT-fdFfCrFSK5VfZ2-ZuJe3gOxQuxyHBooA=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br />
In our first meeting, or maybe our second, I said as much to Dr. Sundaramoorthy, who in typical form sat quietly and listened to the pedantic musings of a twenty year old seeker. My heart was in it and my head was wrapped around the best translations of the original text (in those days, Thibaut, Swami Gambirananda, and these are still in my opinion quite competent and accurate efforts.) Oneness promised that our original state was free of the limitations and conditions of our mortal coil. Oneness promised that we didn't need heaven anymore than we needed consolation or care for our otherwise certain sufferings. I wanted </span><span data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">that</span><span data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-2">.
Appa agreed to explain at any length Sankara's ideas and how his incontrovertible claim of "direct experience" (anubhava) would deliver its promised aim. I would be delivered from the world, I thought. And he made good. I had barely any Sanskrit but Appa, patiently, deliberately, in sentence by sentence exegesis pulled the text apart. He was charitable to its argument, serious in taking Sankara seriously, and he was generous to consider both the argument and my puerile line of questions.
Over about a month of daily meetings, not long after we met, Appa provided more than a perspicacious scholarly rendering of Sankara's meanings, he spoke with heart about what this revered philosopher wanted from life. When we concluded, I thought to myself, this man has realized Sankara's Oneness and if only I could be as rich in soul, I too could come to such a liberation.
Then in subsequent weeks Appa just as meticulously, just as soulfully began to unravel the great one's case. As he sorted it out I first paused---could he mean to be saying that the Oneness promise was itself the problem? Not the solution but the problem precisely because it is expresses the hope that life could be about something other than this vale of tears? And what did Oneness tell us of life's small joys? Of our loves and relationships of care and concern when Sankara insisted, without compromise, that the awakened realized life was nothing like the taunting, dangerous, problematic twists and turns of embodied existence?
Appa wasn't about to discredit the great Non-dualist. But neither was he going to conceal his own alternative vision, a vision that could not be more diametrically opposed to the Liberationists---and by that he meant all of those who insisted everyday is but bondage and that liberation is liberation </span><span data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">from</span><span data-offset-key="3p9gp-0-4"> those experiences. Whatever the promise of freedom-to, our freedom-from was to be complete, at least in their view.
Appa, over the course of the next month, did something I could not have even imagined. He liberated me from liberation.
<span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Life, he suggested, with all its outrage and capricious misfortune, with lila we love and lila that dismantles every claim to relief, leaves us to revel not in a certain absolutism, a liberation. Oneness poses no ultimate answer and raises no important questions. Rather we are invited to sustain ourselves in the face of an unrelenting world in which every illumination not only reveals more in the shadows but creates more too.</span></span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="4t1oo-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4t1oo-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4t1oo-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="aoh3g-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aoh3g-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="aoh3g-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Alas, the more brightly we burn, the more shadow we cast. Whatever else comes through the veils of awakening, we are as mortal beings meant to live in the mortal world for all that life might present.
Appa had redefined yoga as a pursuit of gratitude for the life we have received. He wasn't saying we should be grateful for the hurt or the suffering as such, only that we who dare to love will be chastened by all that love entails.</span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="ea9od-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ea9od-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="ea9od-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="9o9vc-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9o9vc-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="9o9vc-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Should we care for each other, should we love even more deeply then surely will come face to face with grief---and should we be blessed to live long and to prosper some too, we will have to learn how to live with ourselves when grief becomes love's brightest illumination.
I have been lucky to love as Appa describes. It is how I still love him. It is how I have come to love so many who I will never see again in this life, whose absence I feel in every breath, whose presence I sustain in heart and memory but who I miss desperately. Sometimes I have to reach into the pain of loss more deeply, not to find a deeper joy but to recognize that the pain is how love's alchemy will change us again.
I'm sure you too have a long list of those losses---the people who have meant so much and, well, the regrets, disappointments, failures, and lapses that you know are yours. Whatever else is true, you know what you have done.</span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="98kk2-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="98kk2-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="98kk2-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To live with ourselves is the hardest thing we do when we dare to consider these shadows real. We may not see them, for they are too hidden, and we may not learn from them because that is never easy. But to engage a life lived, that is what we call yoga, for all that a life can bring and all that we do and have done.
The array of emotions we feel and the deeds we do to offer up better, such efforts are never easy. We have to face what we cannot control and there's no take backs, no do overs: we can look back but never go back, and the path is forward.
That path does not lead to some liberation that frees us and neither does it offer any final repose, at least if you ask me. There's no heaven, no God to forgive you, no judgments but those we render upon ourselves and are rendered. You may say that we should not judge but rather merely receive, accept, repent. But that too is its own judgment of what a life could be.
We're never not judging when we are still in our wits, no matter how we might hope that others don't judge too harshly or that some Almighty might do for us what we cannot. Like anyone hoping mercy, I likely wish for better than I deserve.
But perhaps it is enough to let the anxiety and vulnerability to these very mortal truths inform what next I choose. When anxiety creates value we have arrived at something more human than just fear or pain. We can make better choices because that vulnerability speaks to possibilities.
Appa taught that to be human comes with no promises of joy or liberation. But it does come with the power to make promises to bring others some morsel of joy if you are willing to bind yourself more deeply to their care. Alas, Sundaramoorthy relieved me of the burdens of liberation and instead invited me to perils of bondage, bondage to love that invests as much in joy as it does in grief.
He invited us to think about being grateful for this brief, strange reality of being alive. So instead of sending me on a journey to meditate on soporific indifference or in pursuit of metaphysical relief, he asked me if I would like to continue to sit nearby and to carry on this conversation about being just human.
Just being human was enough he said to make us wonder at all that life might entail. Shall we take to heart what happens when we decide to care about those we have lost and those we will leave to forge ahead?
Look first to gratitude if you can, if you have been so fortunate and privileged to make your way, and then ask yourself what you want to create---not because you are some divine being of unlimited possibilities but rather because you are not, because you have learned that your limitations, like your human condition, is the blessing from which all goodness will emerge.</span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="6g22n-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6g22n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6g22n-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I bet Jonathan the tortoise knows a thing or two about living long and loving all he can.</span></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="b21i1" data-offset-key="a7ejb-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 8px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a7ejb-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span data-offset-key="a7ejb-0-0">
</span><span class="py34i1dx" color="var(--blue-link)">https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/01/31/oldest-animal-tortoise-jonathan-/</span></span></div></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-80600756439904122392022-01-01T11:11:00.005-05:002022-01-01T12:45:03.132-05:00New Year's 2022 and The Turning Towards Grace<p> <span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">Saturday, January 1, 2022</span></p><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">Aho’Rajanaka! Bho! Bho! Sukhiya Zālā!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">Warm New Year’s greetings from far too warm Bristol. Here’s to laughter aplenty and time well-spent, health and time to do what you love most with those who make all the difference a difference can make. I want to thank you because you came in 2021 to make learning and contemplation a joy together. You brought grace and that’s something we should talk about more. With all we have endured, you made the effort and we’re all the better for it. For my part, I know you’ve kept me sane (well, you know, relatively speaking), centered and committed, and determined to make this crazy world sumthin’ good. Let’s carry on. First a few invitations, then on to a tumult of grace, a veritable donnybrook, brouhaha, rumpus---Grace should come like a cete of badgers, a sedge of bitterns, an obstinacy of buffalo, a quiver of cobras, a flamboyance of flamingos, and a business of ferrets. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd0PI8g2g8w5q7pIC6K8tfcWRaPKUEB6KSTNw4F8N3RlheQ60aAaV7TEjo4CqTZS3xEMPkXkd0_PAiZRRGhoNI-NEeaGTuK_DisvGPcEHQPWF1L0x8qjjZeSueu0o_RoSs49CkWu6bo4FTIkLFjsOmudDenv6dp8YjiUebloFm1iB8dtzgbjeemzS0XQ=s1280" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="936" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd0PI8g2g8w5q7pIC6K8tfcWRaPKUEB6KSTNw4F8N3RlheQ60aAaV7TEjo4CqTZS3xEMPkXkd0_PAiZRRGhoNI-NEeaGTuK_DisvGPcEHQPWF1L0x8qjjZeSueu0o_RoSs49CkWu6bo4FTIkLFjsOmudDenv6dp8YjiUebloFm1iB8dtzgbjeemzS0XQ=s320" width="234" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">On New Year’s we get to collect and recollect, start anew, and consider what it means to find joy in rearranging the disorder that makes life both sweet and, well, not less complicated. We don’t ever really start over because we’re always in the middle of things. But finding out how to keep moving and find a moment’s peace is our human condition. Celebrating our feeling human is the very soul of Rajanaka teaching.<br /><br />And celebrating that kind of “turning towards” is “keeping things to rights” or <i>pradaksina</i>. When you use <i>pra- </i>as a prefix to a Sanskrit word it often means forward, towards <i>and </i>sometimes it can mean apart, distinctive, even falling apart. The word <i>dakshina</i> gestures gratitude, and often as a gift or even a monetary offering. Put this together as <i>pradakshina</i> and we are charged simultaneously <i>to keep moving forward</i> and <i>towards</i> even as we deconstruct <i>and</i> put things to rights.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">If that sounds paradoxical I’d bet you’re not surprised. Life invites us to step into what’s possible and to receive what’s true with or without our consent---and then create, innovate, and rearrange to refresh the next breath. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"><br />As you would expect, the cultural “rules” of <i>dakshina</i> in India can be complex. For example, in temples offering <i>dakshina</i> to the priests is considered requisite, a virtual <i>nitya karma</i>, while the effort to make an offering to one’s own teacher may not be made without acknowledged “permission.” The priest must be paid---it’s only fair and right---but the teacher is charged to decide if, when, and what <i>dakshina</i> is offered. Why the seeming incongruity?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">I think it’s because we recognize deep in our hearts that the most important experiences in life cannot be paid back---grace more artlessly defined: you don’t earn it, you may not “deserve” it, and you sure can’t pay it back</span><i style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">. Dakshina is a way of saying that the best things in life are not free but come freely.</i><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> And just how to we express gratitude for such blessings? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">In Zen it is said “to surpass the teacher is to repay the debt.” That charge is riven with irony and accompanied by the deep humility that we feel when we know in our hearts that we have been graced and that it seems impossible ever to surpass our teachers, much less repay our debts. I know I feel that way about Appa---everyday I am in wonder at his generosity of time and energy and heart---and so many others with whom I have been blessed to study. Many of those teachers are simply the things all around us, like the pup who loves me without conditions (and maybe there are treats too) or the spider that weaves and waits, from whose patience I learn a new respect; some teachers are only in books or dreams or perhaps even in the unconscious. So again we should ask, how might we express gratitude for all the grace that has come?<br /><br /><i>Pradakshina</i>. We can continue to step forward, take it all apart, put it all back together, turn with the heart opening to the center and expanding to our boundaries. Shall we try together? Shall we do this again and again? I look forward to seeing you whenever you can make it in 2022. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"><br />sapremakulasmaranam, with loving affection of the community of the heart,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;">Douglas<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Constantia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-35287865067981393352021-11-03T11:52:00.003-04:002021-11-03T12:15:03.255-04:00More About Tradition & Transmission, More About Rajanaka Learning & History<p><span style="color: #050505; font-family: times;">In last Saturday's Conversation (31 October 2021) I was asked what about Rajanaka had changed or what had I evolved since Appa offered up his understandings. What innovations or interests had I brought? I will write more about those matters with greater specificity soon. This is a wonderful query about our learning and what Rajanaka means. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is indeed quite a bit of information that I’ve uncovered since Appa and I studied together. I try to make clear where the research has gone and how it turned up. One of the interesting features of these traditions is how material is withheld and how reluctant folks can be to part with it.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZkIn5KLmxyo/YYKrLWOShtI/AAAAAAAAE_A/doqFSnfMDXccPXpIthpW_3492BvlxabtQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1593/Fujiwara-Ken-A.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1341" data-original-width="1593" height="269" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZkIn5KLmxyo/YYKrLWOShtI/AAAAAAAAE_A/doqFSnfMDXccPXpIthpW_3492BvlxabtQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Fujiwara-Ken-A.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #050505;">Some of you know about the old Sabanayaka Diksitar priest who I would visit in Chidambaram and a few of you made the journey to his house to meet him. Ananda Kuncitapada Diksitar was the nephew of Rajaratna Diksitar, the priest who took in Appa’s mother and the whole of his family, took them in off the streets when they had nowhere else to go, when they had been cast aside from their lives in <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">the</span> village a some six years or so after Appa's father passed. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #050505;">Poverty and familial controversies had left them homeless. Literally on the verge of <o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: times;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">beggary, Rajaratna Diksitar took in a widow and her children. Our Appa never forgot that act of generosity and the goodness it brought. It was undoubtedly as important a moment in his life as any that would shape his character.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">Appa was raised in Rajaratna’s house, adopted officially into his family (he and his wife Tangamma were childless), and so began the story of his relationship to scholarship, to the great Natarajar Temple, and to the worlds of Rajanaka. Appa was only six or seven when they moved into the Rajaratna’s home. Down the street lived Rajaratna’s sister, married of course to another Diksitar, and Ananda Kuncitapada was their son---he became our family’s principal contact inside the Temple after Rajaratna passed in the 1980s. He was about ten years younger than Appa. Ananda Kuncitapada knew his time was coming---he passed in 2015, as I recall--- and he asked me to spend time with him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">With all of our pilgrimage pals safely on their own, I returned for five or six long conversations into the evening and the very early mornings. It was then he gave me a stack of texts, with explicit instructions about how to treat them, and told me things that I know he’d not told me or Appa earlier. I was curious if these stories, particularly involving important characters in Rajanaka lore like Ayyappa, Tillai Kali (and Her temple forms), Panchamukha Anjaneya Hanuman, and others, were things he’d learned since those conversations we had together in the 1990s or <i>if he had simply not told us</i>. I never asked him about this but I suspect that he knew most of it all along and was working out the rest over the years---a combination of both withholding and his “new” learning. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #050505;">These subjects involve deeply private, personally important matters and in the worlds of Tantra there are differences between secrecy and privacy. Secret matters are concealed usually to prevent the “unqualified” from access to information deemed potentially “dangerous.” In truth, that danger can be social opprobrium, embarrassment, or any number of other issues that involve how “powerful” ideas or actions may be restricted. Sometimes restriction itself is a form of power but the “sacred” is, as we know, often a defined </span><i style="color: #050505;">as</i><span style="color: #050505;"> permission and prohibition. To control access is to manage power and the sacred is <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">power</span> when one has the keys to open <i>and </i>close doors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #050505;">Privacy differs from secrecy inasmuch as it involves more personal feelings. Rather than <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">traditionally stated</span> restrictions it may feel inappropriate to discuss one’s own experiences. Why? Certainly humility and the sanctity of the heart are in the mix but who knows exactly why people keep their own confidences? There is also an old convention that matters not asked for may not necessarily be revealed. One gets the information one is capable of asking for (cf., Gita 2.70ff) while at the same time it can feel awkward, rude, or graceless even to ask. How can you learn if you can't ask? How does one know what to ask for if information is withheld? If this situation sounds “contradictory” or at the very least complicated, you wouldn’t be wrong but that wouldn’t change matters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">Appa was particularly used to my stumbling, sometimes coarse lines of questioning, and yet he genuinely <i>invited </i>me to ask <i>any </i>question, <i>every question</i>---not just the ones apparently permitted. I might still have to work hard for those questions and his insights. It could be difficult to know where a line of inquiry was going but as usual, little by little, again and again the task was to stay on the trail, to be persistent, to have the courage to speak up.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">He may not offer everything all at once. He may tell me to wait. He may offer bits and pieces to see how much more he would reveal or over a course of time. It can be complicated talking to a person of his depth and erudition even if he trusts you, loves you, and wants you to have what you ask for. You learn to follow his clues and leads, use indirectness when it seems the better way to get around, and don’t give up if he deflects or says “another time.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">It was important to know when to poke and when to pause in any line of questioning and I wasn’t always so adroit or skilled. With Ananda Kuncitapada or other members of Appa’s Rajanaka <i>Mandali</i> (i.e., the circle of conversants) the situation was more delicate. As much family history and trust we shared over the years, as deep as our affections ran, there were still matters of privacy to consider. I think no matters of <i>secrecy</i> were at last ever concealed from me---there was nothing in texts or practices that I asked to learn that was withheld, no esoterica left unexplained or concealed---but I feel just as confident that Ananda Kuncitapada kept much in his heart that was his own musings and experiences. As far as we both knew, there were no others left to share in these studies or who knew these stories or who were curious to make these lines of inquiry. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">How much was <i>transmission</i> passed along? How much was culled from research? How much had been uncovered over decades of contemplation and critical analysis? I asked myself these questions whenever I spoke to any members of the Rajanaka Mandali. One thing is clear: they all agreed that <i>transmission </i>was far less important and vital to the processes of learning than <i>tradition</i>. There were transmitted texts and practices that could be imitated and understood---this kind of learning could take time but it was only a matter of diligence and understanding what anyone interested and committed could be taught.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">But it was their understanding that transmission is not the core of a spiritual life but merely a process of access and information, To reach that center of one's own experience demands a commitment to tradition.<br /><br />I have written about the difference between transmission and tradition before. It is a matter, I think, that translates across many kinds of learning when we consider matters of provenance and the processes of personalizing what one has received.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">Let’s go back for a moment to the citation from one of Japan’s National Treasures, the late potter in the Bizan-style, <a href="http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/kaneshige-michiaki.htm"><b><span style="color: #dca10d;">Kaneshige Michiaki</span></b></a> (1934-1995). He put this difference between transmission and tradition this way,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times;"><i>Tradition is sometimes confused with transmission. Copying Momoyama pieces is transmission. Producing contemporary pieces incorporating Momoyama period techniques is tradition. Tradition consists of retaining transmitted forms and techniques in one's mind when producing a contemporary piece. Tradition is always changing. A mere copy of an old piece has not changed; it is nearly the same as its prototype of four hundred years ago. Tradition consists of creating something new with what one has inherited.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br /><span style="color: #050505;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">This take us to the second feature of our recent conversation about how things Rajanaka have “changed” over the years, particularly with me. But truth to tell, Rajanaka is something of an outlier inasmuch as “innovation” or what Michiaki calls “something new” is often construed as deviation, alteration, or even departure. Transmission is typically regarded in Tantric traditions as the <i>direct </i>imprimatur of one’s lineage. The suggestion is that truth is recursive, a perfect (re-)iteration of what is past.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">Appa regarded any such transmission as religious palaver, not something we could take seriously on the basis of the merits of learning. In other words, we can’t inherit our learning---or our character, our commitment, or achievements-- but for the ways we must make them all our own through hard work. No tapas, no claim to tradition. And as for transmission, that too is tradition insofar as whatever was passed along must be made relevant to context and times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">Rajanaka is a tradition with many currents. We can identify those currents and contents relatively easily. It takes up the south Indian worlds of gods, Vedic and Tantric lore, embracing the enormity of Hindu cultural creativities in literature and the arts and sciences. But above all Rajanaka is not merely <i>what</i> we learn it is <i>how </i>we learn.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;">Rajanaka is learning to learn. Put another way, it is learning to be educated, not merely to learn. We are always emulating what we admire or regard, adopting from nd reflecting on others. But what we are in the business of becoming is ourselves and living with that complexity of self, indeed creating more complexity and more selves of depth, consideration, and care: that is the business of Rajanaka. When once I asked Appa what is the greatest human possibility he said, “To appreciate more deeply our shared humanity, to savor our own, to feel empathy for others.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-24027165650664429712021-10-18T11:50:00.007-04:002021-10-18T12:11:09.208-04:00Transmission and Tradition A Note about Rajanaka Values<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Before the Gita Session yesterday I got on a bit of jag about how the claims to perfection and accomplishment (siddha/siddhi) and “realization” are a positive detriment to learning.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Let us leave aside for the moment that the yoga traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) assertion that certain individuals are more than merely empowered, gifted, skilled examples of a shared humanity----that this is dehumanizing, that it sets apart these persons and not only deprives them of their humanity but in effect tells the rest of us how we are inferior (or not yet them).</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T9kPKV7-ggg/YW2XwxyGiqI/AAAAAAAAE98/NYLT-Z69seQyYMeytv5GEkZ7KLIJObpnQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_6425.HEIC" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T9kPKV7-ggg/YW2XwxyGiqI/AAAAAAAAE98/NYLT-Z69seQyYMeytv5GEkZ7KLIJObpnQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_6425.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">The refutation of the ersatz-divination of human beings, which is actually at the heart of all bondage/liberation traditions, makes Rajanaka an outlier, heresy, perhaps even beyond the pale. Appa was adamant that we should honor even revere accomplishments hard won but that all this comes at great cost---personal, emotional costs---that casts real shadows. The more brightly we burn the more shadow we cast.<br /><br />Attainments or capabilities however worthy are anything but perfection: we’re going to need the unwanted, complex shadows and flaws that come with them in order to learn; we’re going to need grief to love; we're going to need to admit our unfinished, incomplete, even unwholesome selves if we are ever pry more deeply into the pursuit of betterment. And anyways there’s no getting around it: we’re just human. And that’s enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">You’ve heard that before around here, I’m sure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">The further point I want to be clear is that we when we substitute veneration and charisma for accomplishment and the difficult tasks of learning we conflate and confuse important issues. The once-serious Shankara tradition rooted in the discourse of argument and gnostic awareness is now little more than an emblem of that past and a devotional movement. Don’t mistake me if participating in a community of loving souls does your heart good, who would object? But projecting on a guru supernormal abilities much less moral superiority is a prescription for self-delusion, bypass, and an invitation to corruption; it effectively discourages our own hard work, the trial and error, the worthy experiments that may fail.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">The notion that any such superiority is a birthright (cf., Abhinavagupta’s claims about being conceived in a Tantric ritual) or a transmission of lineage inheritance is the stuff of religion or, as we in the reality-based world might say, nonsense. But in fact it’s worse. It’s an invitation to diminish one’s worth, abdicate the responsibilities of a shared humanity, and resign from the demanding ardor that might actually contribute to a wiser, more compassionate human experience. <br /><br />We cannot replicate another’s experience and there is no state or ideal, no Buddha, no Siddha, no savior or supernormal beingwh o we can copy. Transmission is copying, it’s getting what they got, or so we're told. We’re not faithful reproductions of the past. Rather, we’re each a furtherance of what has come before with no guarantees of better or success but by self-application and luck.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Ardor (tapas) mustn’t be for the sake of transcending or extricating us from our limited, conditional reality but because hard work might just allow us to live a little better with ourselves and each other. </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">As for "attainment," well, there's always more and our failures are as important as our successes.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">We all wish there was a way out, something more that relieves us of our human sorrows and the existential truths of ordinary limitations. But alas Rajanaka offers something that I think is far better than a transmission that falsely claims power and authority beyond the human condition. Rajanaka is, in fact, not a transmission at all. It is a tradition. And, yes, it comes not only from our own hard work but from an inheritance of learning that has been taught and passed from teachers to students.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">To finish this last point we can get some help from the late Japanese potter <a href="http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/kaneshige-michiaki.htm" style="color: #954f72;">Kaneshige Michiaki</a> (1934-1995), a master of the Bizen-ware style:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Tradition is sometimes confused with transmission. Copying Momoyama pieces is transmission. Producing contemporary pieces incorporating Momoyama period techniques is tradition. Tradition consists of retaining transmitted forms and techniques in one's mind when producing a contemporary piece. Tradition is always changing. A mere copy of an old piece has not changed; it is nearly the same as its prototype of four hundred years ago. Tradition consists of creating something new with what one has inherited. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">This means that Rajanaka is <i>yours</i> as are all the traditions you inherit. We are not seeking to replicate, to reproduce an enlightenment, or to receive a transmission so that we can somehow have what “the great ones” achieved. Instead we are invited to the more challenging task of creating something new from our inheritances, something that might make our teachers proud. “To surpass the teacher is to repay the debt.” We may believe that we never quite arrive at such greatness but that, of course, is not the point. Make tradition. Make the living promise to do the worthy ardor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-24470519040820939892021-06-01T11:08:00.006-04:002021-06-01T11:20:45.358-04:00Tandava as the Calm Inside the Storm<p> <span style="font-family: Athelas;">June 1, 2021</span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Aho’Rajanaka,</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">I hope this finds you well coming through the Memorial Day weekend, both with a renewed sense of <i>some </i>normalcy with family and friends and just some time to refresh. I spent much of the weekend reading and preparing for our Session on Natarajar tomorrow, which will be more storytelling and myth than has been. There's so much more and tomorrow will take you through some of the essentials of the mythology and imagery with clarity and care. More about that in a moment.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hzhE1COt2sE/YLZNcpl8nlI/AAAAAAAAE4g/ItANrvssulggYm2Y9xLgU7TsFscpCK--wCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/28A6A4A9-BD6B-48A1-9BA4-78E70E29A468.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hzhE1COt2sE/YLZNcpl8nlI/AAAAAAAAE4g/ItANrvssulggYm2Y9xLgU7TsFscpCK--wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/28A6A4A9-BD6B-48A1-9BA4-78E70E29A468.JPG" /></a></div><br />When I really take a break I read things like some folks eat comfort food. I have comfort reading and my list is actually kinda’ short---Mahabharata, the Iliad, Tolkien, and Patrick O’Brian. I drop in on Rilke, Dickenson, Keats, and the Bard too. Actually, there are a lot of things that bring me comfort when I’m especially tired of thinking about “now how am I going to describe or explain <i>that</i>.” I’m thinking of <i>you</i> when I think about putting things to words whereas my pure comfort reading invites me merely soak in the familiarity, like a plate of momma's pasta: I let Tolkien or O’Brian do all the work and I just enjoy <i>listening</i>, whether reading or actually listening. But when I think about what most draws me to my versions of “comfort” in any of these works it is that all of them have one or another kind of <i>tandava </i>that comes from the heart of Rudra and Kali. Lemme ‘splain some.<p></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Tandava is the dance of possession, it’s when you gotta’ move and that your movement, inside and out, physically and emotionally, when the whole of your being is wholly involved, thoroughly engaged. Tandava is samadhi without the chill. You see we associate the word samadhi with calm and equanimity, and in the Patanjali-sense of yoga with the idea of release, attenuation of movement, with <i>nirodha</i> or ceasing. But we Rajanaka as the children of the non-binary Natarajar think of samadhi as calm rage, as a fury of deeply focused passion and care and intense concentration, at once deliberate and spontaneous, something that is calculated but wholly uncontained by the purity of its being “born together” (<i>sahaja</i>) with no second thought required.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Tandava is Rajanaka’s reinterpretation of samadhi, not as the relinquishment of passion or feeling but rather a mind not released from thought, a whole person making the deepest connection with all that we can feel and think. We arrive at equanimity because there is so <i>much</i> attention paid (hence the place where consciousness (-<i>dhi</i> in Sanskrit) is in same-ness (<i>sama</i>-, thus <i>samadhi</i>). The ancient Rudra is blood red with passion and howling at the moon but as calm as Alec Guinness as George Smiley or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kali Ma, well, she’s the momma who never loses her cool even as the blood drips and the demons piss with fear. You get the picture. But in both we see the <i>proto-tandava</i>, the elemental passion and thought, the care directed towards being as cool as Toshiro Mifune doing his samurai schtick and as furious as the unexpected tsunami, tha afternoon in Tokyo when a really ticked off Gozilla decides to make an appearance. Unleashed calm may seem paradoxical but that is precisely the point.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Now Frodo and Sam are running <i>towards </i>the fire. O’Brian’s Aubrey reminds us dozens of times “there is not a moment to lose.” Achilles may be taking his time to enter the fray---and it does take the death of Patroclus to get bring him to his turning point and who has ever had more patience with the nihilists than the heroic Yudhisthira of the Pandava? But in every case there’s that <i>tandava </i>thing: an inexorable calling from the heart to bring into motion the intentions and actions that must be engaged <i>now</i>, because there is a <i>past</i> and the need for a better <i>future</i>. What is calculated is spontaneous, what is chosen is made to look effortless but that is because virtuosity is making something difficult look easy. Worthwhile things are hard things and the “trick” is no trick at all, it is to make it all appear seamless even when flawed, decisive because doubt is now another empowerment, anxiety <i>isn’t</i> under control but neither is it controlling: the dance goes on and you have to decide whether you’re <i>in </i>or sitting it out.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Now sitting it out isn’t rest or taking a break or recovery---sitting it out is abdication, apathetic, inattentive, or passive and that is the unwholesome opposite of tandava. We need to become as persevering and diligent in the <i>power of rest</i> as we are engaged in the fight. Learning to rest may well be harder even than rising to the occasion of the activity because <i>rest is work</i>. Yup, think about it. If rest isn’t a critical aspect of our work then we have reduced rest to procrastinating, to the languid and indifferent. Now all of those things happen to everyone too so let’s not get too high minded here: the best of us indulge the shadow of rest less than perfectly. It’s only human to make these ordinary “mistakes” and it’s the job of yoga not to punish or merely admonish ourselves for making them but rather to figure out how to live in greater salubrity. Living with yourself is life’s most challenging privilege.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">In today’s NY Times there’s an interesting piece called “How to Take a Break.” I can’t say I endorse or agree to all of the proposals in this article but it does raise the important issue, which is that we humans need time to rest and need to make rest a part of our lives as important as any work. As I’ve already said, I don’t think of rest as the opposite of work but rather both active and restful time as integrated into a life of purpose and meaning. Just how you do this for yourself is crucial. It too is <i>tandava</i>, as the Rajanaka call it. <br /><br />I’ve had some rest this week and my focus and passion has improved over the last two days. I mean I can notice the effects of an efficacious “downtime,” even if that’s nothing more than a power nap. Oh and here’s the link to the Times bit: <a data-cke-saved-href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/business/dealbook/quality-work-breaks.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/business/dealbook/quality-work-breaks.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/business/dealbook/quality-work-breaks.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage</a></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">TOMORROW, we resume the Wednesday Course on Natarajar, Tillai Koothan, the Dancer of the Amaurosis Forest. We’ll be talking more about tandava of course and about the structure of the mythology and storytelling tradition that brings us more deeply into the yoga, the engagement we need with our hearts, our bodies and minds. I warmly invite you to come. We’re going to tell great stories, the kind that matter, the kind that change your life. <br /><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Saprema, with affection, </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Douglas</span></span></span><br /><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">ps you can find that ^^^course now archived on rajanaka.com.</p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><br data-cke-eol="1" />dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-18299161827121381842021-04-09T21:19:00.000-04:002021-04-09T21:19:14.539-04:00 Why There Are No Ethics Nor Ethical Theory in the Yogasutra<p><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is a misreading to conclude that the Patanjali <i>Yogasutra</i> has, in fact, any interest in directing a moral life. The text uses modalities of behavior, intention, and directives to action for the purpose of creating a method that prepares the aspirant for the achievement of samadhi and/or nirodha.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lqQpjfEKG8s/YHD82x_U8NI/AAAAAAAAE2o/mgS9MIPVclkKCQA6EY2k5g6CYzR68tyRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s420/1324266_39299371.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="420" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lqQpjfEKG8s/YHD82x_U8NI/AAAAAAAAE2o/mgS9MIPVclkKCQA6EY2k5g6CYzR68tyRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/1324266_39299371.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="ev380-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ev380-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="ev380-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="31vlu-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="31vlu-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="31vlu-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">The purpose of yamas and niyaman as such is not to lead us back into the world in order to lead an ethical life---certainly there is not value added project associated with such a life except as it facilitates the further processes of introversion and excision _from_ the world.
Thus, there is no morality as such in Patanjali's yoga and what is proposed has to do with furthering the relinquishment of karmas and the extrication of one <i>from</i> the world.
To be moral would be to commit TO the world and I challenge anyone who reads YS to show me how this text commits us to a further engagement with the limited and conditioned world. It's purpose is precisely the opposite. To wit, to prepare us and create a circumstance of experience----be that physical, mental, or emotional---for furthering our introversion for the purposes of arriving at a state that renders us immune to mental trauma caused by change. This is the so-called citta-vrtti-nirodha.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="bjp6b-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bjp6b-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="bjp6b-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">The idea is to attenuate and then </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-1" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">cease </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-2" style="font-family: inherit;">little by little any and all such involvements with the world. There is no such commitment to deepening commitments of action in the world---that would only cause further karmic malaise and thus further implicate bondage. Morality is merely prepatory or heuristic on a path that entails further disinvolvments
If we are to compare, this is why Krsna in the Gita does have a buy in to the moral order insofar as he is admonishing his pal Arjuna to get </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-3" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">back</span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-4" style="font-family: inherit;"> to the fight, </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-5" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">win</span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-6" style="font-family: inherit;"> the war, and </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-7" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">get on </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-8" style="font-family: inherit;">with it in a society that has standards and principles and even values. One can argue that that admonishment is also not moral as such but legalist. We are enjoined to align our intentions with behaviors that are enjoined and commanded by virtue of social rules, or Dharma.
We aren't being asked to be good. We're being asked to act in certain ways and that our intentions about such acts inform and have consequences about those actions. The actions themselves that are enjoined might be </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-9" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">construed </span><span data-offset-key="dh3pj-0-10" style="font-family: inherit;">to be moral but that is not the reason they are to be enjoined nor would it matter. The fact is that they are commanded as such, that they are social expectations of the law to be met. That they are deemed good is epiphenomenal once again: their goodness is not their point, their execution in totality is the point.
But just what the natural world of karma has to do with the ethical remains a more open argument because it begs the question, just how does the natural world reward or punish any action on the basis of intention or value?</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="ejumv-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ejumv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="ejumv-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="ddc91-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ddc91-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="ddc91-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Here we can argue tha the Gita is influenced by Buddhists and others who claim that moral intention has natural effects. But where is the evidence that Krsna thinks this? Where is the evidence that this is more than just a claim about how the world works? There is none, as far as I can tell. The ethical as such is of no mind to the world of power.
The answer I think is that there are no morals as such but there are rules and expectations. If you want to think those come from intentions, it wouldn't change a thing. Our cultural lives are anything but immune from the implications of our beliefs or actions expressed and our lives in the natural world are deeply if not wholly culturally affected (when it is not determined).</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="8opf6-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8opf6-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="8opf6-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="b1asg-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b1asg-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="b1asg-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">What I mean is that culture will reward and punish us for our ethics, be they intentions, words, beliefs, or actions and that means we as natural beings with bodies will be deeply influenced and affected. What culture can do to us will influence our physical an and emotional well-being as creatures.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="fvnq1-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fvnq1-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="fvnq1-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="3vl36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3vl36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="3vl36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Is that ethics as such? I think not precisely because what is at stake is not goodness but a sense of physical and mental health that is required to undertake the further practices enjoined as yoga. That yoga---to say it again---does not invite us to live ethically in the world but to intend and act in ways that relieve us of the burdens of being in the world.
I think that what we call ethical certainly influences our lives because human beings depend upon and are formulated culturally and socially. Thus, our actions or intentions have implications of outcome and consequence whether or not we mean it but apparently particularly when we mean it.
Krsna in the Gita wants out of the morality business as quickly as he can make that happen so that he can resume the regular order of a powerful but amoral universe. Yogasutra never was in the morality business, not even a little, not for any reason that has to do with the agendas of yoga.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="43fjl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="43fjl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="43fjl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="4490o-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4490o-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="4490o-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">The only exception to this argument I can muster is that if we are unethical this gets in the way of the projects of introversion and reidentification with immortal (always immune) Self. Thus we entangle ourselves in even worse karmas when we violate moral dicta but otherwise the issue is not to become moral but to stop acting in the world in ways that implicate further karma </span><span data-offset-key="4490o-0-1" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">at all</span><span data-offset-key="4490o-0-2" style="font-family: inherit;">.
Let's put it more plainly, Yogasutra gives no fucks for the moral dimensions of a given behavior or intention except insofar as it creates some, more, or any consequences that would interfere with the project of yoga, which has to do with disentangling with the world. There is no bodhisattva doctrine of saving others; there is no call to compassion or empathy.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="esret-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="esret-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="esret-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="4etjs-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4etjs-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="4etjs-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">How would any of that lead to eliminating false identification with the temporal? How would any commitment to entangling oneself in moral choices make it clearer that one is not merely the conditional, material reality but the ever perfectly free disentangled by nature Spirit that is Purusa?
The strategies of yoga purported by the Yogasutra are, at best, influenced by Jains and Buddhists insofar as they all agree to espousing relief, extrication, DISINTEREST in acting or reentering the world. There is no concomitant commitment in YS to saving others from their karma or claiming that ethical behaviors are for </span><span data-offset-key="4etjs-0-1" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">ethical</span><span data-offset-key="4etjs-0-2" style="font-family: inherit;"> purposes. One acts to relieve karma, </span><span data-offset-key="4etjs-0-3" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">not to do good as such
</span><span data-offset-key="4etjs-0-4" style="font-family: inherit;">Just what is the world for but leaving it? Until you grasp this agenda of the YS you do not understand its most basic interpretation (according to Vyasabhasya). Some later interpretations espouse moral action as karma relieving but is this the same as making a commitment to some kind of social good or personal conscience?</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="7dije-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7dije-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="7dije-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="ebd53-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ebd53-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="ebd53-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I fail to see how that would matter if one's goal is not to stay in the world to do good but rather to arrive at a sublime state of exemption. Once you get that that is the ACTUAL agenda then all further questions of ethical actions are, at best, epiphenomenal or irrelevant. I hope this makes it clearer that there is no ethical theory nor are their ethical injunctions made in the teachings of Yogasutra. </span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5t5c9" data-offset-key="7mf7t-0-0" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 8px;"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-21266817024488710062021-03-19T09:26:00.004-04:002021-03-19T09:26:21.350-04:00 Burn on, So Long as You Can<p></p><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="87hei" data-offset-key="963tg-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>I was up early with the pup---she did some business, ate, played, and is in a cur-snooze. I was thinking about everything, which is somehow yer job when you finally figure out that you'd better get one. I write selfishly because I have to get it out and then figure out if it "goes out" in public. (Twice as much is never "published.") So here goes.<br />***<br /><br />There is an ironic twist to self-evolution in the traditions of yoga. The more we engage to become that better version of ourselves, the more we must come to trems with living with who we are.<br /><br />We can claim transcendence, that we have surpassed and relinquished our karmas, accumulated and no longer deciding for us, but is that the task? Are we getting past our past or moving forward because we have a past?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUuMMTB6K8w/YFSmZpqE_oI/AAAAAAAAE0A/wGU34PLzmzoM6pXgNZR9d0eDv6ePgSpMACLcBGAsYHQ/s991/appakalpakam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="991" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUuMMTB6K8w/YFSmZpqE_oI/AAAAAAAAE0A/wGU34PLzmzoM6pXgNZR9d0eDv6ePgSpMACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/appakalpakam.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The option to take the bypass and claim that the different person we know ourselves to be is no longer the person that once was. But this is the mistake that will almost surely lead to less than who we could be if we are willing to receive into our ever-new self (Skt. <i>abhinava</i>-) the all of the self of light and shadow.<br /><br />We'll never see all of those shadows---they hide from us and we hide them, for worse and sometimes better---and we'll never see all of the light, which would blind us with the false conviction that we've arrived, that we're complete, actualized and so discharged from the past.<br /><br />To invest in progress we have to allow who we have been to become a teacher to the artist we seek to become. In Rajanaka this is, in part, the relationship between the seated dancer Daksinamurti, the teacher, and Nataraja, the artist. One of the most important things that Nataraja shows us is that even our most exquisite artistry is an expression of the hard-won conversations with our shadows.<br /><br />Instead of mere regret, contrition, and embarrassment, we have a chance to incorporate, literally, to put them in the body so we can connect more honestly, converse more deeply. The further we are willing to step into the darkness that follows, the more light the horizon of the self reveals.<br /><br />The irony of our unfinished self is that it keeps us moving when we are at once supported and cajoled. No one likes to hear that we need some nudge, that we prefer complacency to being jostled or poked. It can feel like being you're being forced, bullied, or hustled. And it can actually be some or all of those wrong-headed and morally indefensible affronts to the self.<br /><br />To feel the difference between the charge to act and being shoved is part of the challenge to keep moving. The alternative is a quiescence that is more empty than purposeful. Life itself may have offer no greater purpose but that is why we have to engage to create it.<br /><br />We are at once called to become a better version of ourselves and that everything about this endeavor is an invitation to burn. That's the Sanskrit tapas. The purpose of making the burn burn is to remember that in the ancient world all light is heat. We burn for the sake of the light.<br /><br />We can also seek to illumine for the sake of opening to the shadows. Those missing or broken pieces have always been present but too often are left unattended, whether they are before or behind us. It's easier to claim it's all behind us when it should be clear that what we are doing now that is so evidently success is our conversation with the need to engage all of ourselves, with shadows companions of awakening.<br /><br />Let me say out loud what prompted this little sermon. (Personally I hate sermons but that's why I write them: to try not to hate them when I need to hear them and of course would prefer not to.) I was thinking about President Biden who now some sixty days into his term has not given a press conference. Joe has been in public service nearly his entire adult life and some 44 years in office. He's said and done so much in public that one could select evidence to suits whatever might be the preferred conclusion.<br /><br />The reputed gaffe-machine however has not gaffed much at all and the strategy to avoid the insipid culture wars that Republicans would prefer (because they have nothing else) is leading to something of a quiet revolution. Much is proposed, important power has been delegated to persons who are not only capable but representative of real change.<br /><br />Even Mitch is scared of what is coming, so scared he is threatening retaliation knowing he's lost the power he once wielded so ruthlessly. Biden won't be ruthless---that is not Rudra's way. He will howl and weep because he has bled and bleeds. He seems to have some sense of what it takes to make the ruddy into the auspicious.<br /><br />I am not delivering beatitude, Joe is not beyond criticism, and he may fail. I think he knows this. I am sure I feel that same way about myself. But it's not fear that motivates. It's the understanding that you gotta keep your head in the game and rage on to make the wheels turn.<br /><br />It's too early to tell if much of what is hoped for will be accomplished but it has led me to think that Joe has in fact learned from the past, both personally andprofessionally, that he burns and seeks to bring more light.<br /><br />But the key to his wisdom---at least that is my projection---is that he has not forgotten his shadows, particularly his own losses which have alchemized his soul. He doesn't have a future that isn't present but rather a future he hopes to help others realize. He's no saint and may yet not prove "transformational" but there is something more than cleaver politics going on.<br /><br />I think he wants to make a difference---and we so return to the irony that caught my attention this morning again. You gotta want to do the right thingand do the work to become a better version of yourself for others. We all have plenty of past to remind us what it feels like to stumble, hesitate, falter, tilt, and sometimes fall.<br /><br />No one likes to do that again but we know we will. That's why we might actually stand a chance. I'm further along in life now. I don't yet see the light coming for me and I'm grateful for that. It will. There's more behind than ahead. But that's what now makes the yoga all the more important.dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-83452082580357545022021-03-11T22:02:00.000-05:002021-03-11T22:02:00.752-05:00 A Note About the Auspicious Night and One Year of PandemicThe irony of this Sivaratri falling on the anniversary of the day that COVID was declared a world pandemic shouldn't be lost on us.<br /><br />What has been take from us all and hurt so many over this past year surely cannot be understated. But what has been revealed in these difficult times has not only tested our mettle. We have also been invited to seek out what lies more deeply within our hearts and minds. It's not all light and surely not all joy. But that too is a point the universe never fails to make. What then do we do with all of that?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AdMNqwoaRZ0/YErZlLaEbaI/AAAAAAAAEy8/kf-c2rs8slgBX95BA0YmFf3WfC87NFdiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/natarajaappa.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AdMNqwoaRZ0/YErZlLaEbaI/AAAAAAAAEy8/kf-c2rs8slgBX95BA0YmFf3WfC87NFdiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/natarajaappa.JPG" /></a></div><br /><br />In body and soul we mean to live through these challenges, with our honest experiences of grief, and stay committed to all the love we seek. We may yet weep and bleed and howl more than we've bargained for and in ways we never expected but that is the Rudra, the Heart that seeks the Auspicious we call Siva. And that is what lies within each of us who breathe to love this strange gift of life.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>"When He playfully began His Dance His twisted locks of hair whipped in frenzied ecstasy spraying the water of the Heavenly River in all directions,And with each drop appears an auspicious destination marked by His Presence:Surrounded is That Lord by forms of divine joy and the host of all embodied feelings: I delight in the One's Graceful Curved Foot."</i> </blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>---Kuñchitanghristava of Umāpatiśivācārya</i></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>To come face to face with all that is otherwise hidden is called Siva's Night, Sivaratri. What is otherwise hidden by darkness is revealed when darkness too is seen to offer its own strange light. </div><div><br />Sivaratri is another seam in the fabric of Being, a Time to create Maya rather than resolve or even puzzle choices. To invite ourselves to the Auspicious Darkness---the literal meaning of Sivaratri---is to turn time inside out and step into another side of one's self: it is chance and the risk we might take to opportune vulnerability.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tonight we see the dark side of the dark side of moon and the day as night; we remember the forgotten and forget to remember; and so it is auspicious to sing into the otherwise prohibited dark hours, to be awake when otherwise you would sleep. Perchance to dream! Enjoy Sivaratri for the paradox it refuses to resolve and the embrace it offers without conditions.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-16710067996858057722021-02-23T09:31:00.002-05:002021-02-23T09:31:31.175-05:00The Middle Expanse and Keeping it HumanWhen we're calm enough that the world demands less at the moment we try to situate ourselves between that's true, dammit and how do I think I know that? This we might call the middle of the midline.<br /><br /><br />You can "expand the midline" and you can think you've actually found some "middle". Rajanaka uses the word "maya" to remind you that the very best you have and all you need is of human creativity. We're the measurers even when the measure and the measured is more or other than just us---it remains a human process and so unfinished in every mortal life. No one gets out alive and however certain that is, it's certainly ironic that what we can say we know is about processing a process.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kJTn9NHueNw/YDURsV6FIAI/AAAAAAAAEyU/RiyyKTWEuHYfRcGD6cN88DtBoG077QhrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1390/151937766_10159188176680842_4944123599921218217_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1390" data-original-width="1242" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kJTn9NHueNw/YDURsV6FIAI/AAAAAAAAEyU/RiyyKTWEuHYfRcGD6cN88DtBoG077QhrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/151937766_10159188176680842_4944123599921218217_o.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div><br /> One of the lessons you learn quickly when you read real Indian philosophers is that they are ideologues, purists, willing to take on their comers but never willing to concede, budge an inch, or compromise their need for certainty. Before anyone tries to say that Buddhists aren't like that or that _their_ teacher isn't like that (say, me, telling you that Appa was assuredly NOT like that...), I would suggest you spend more time reading in Sanskrit or Tibetan or You Pick. The need to be right is not terribly different in most western writing because who holds an opinion that they don't believe is true? That would be someone else's opinion.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is an ironic player in this game of right, the Jainas argue for a view called Syādvāda, which is rightly called the Maybe Doctrine. And of course they argue for it adamantly (a good thing imo) but without any room to suggest that they will revise or reconsider if the evidence warrants. No one does that. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have been in countless seminars with current HH Dalai Lama (before he got too famous to be serious with a small group) and he always maintains that the Tibetan versions of Prasangika Madhyamaka, which is the official doctrine, is open to counterargument or revision. The word "prasangha" means impasse, bringing things to a logical subversion of "all views." Funny, that never happens. Not ever. This doesn't make him particularly intolerant in the sense of being anti-something (HH DL won't argue with the theists even though TBism has lengthy and detailed arguments against the existence of a god-creatore or a god-eternity).</div><div><br /></div><div>We could say as critical students of the study of religion that such dogmatic claims (e.g., Buddhist emptiness, or any) are part of what make them religious but this is not far from the same tune that secular contemporary philosophers or certain scientists sing. To wit, they insist that their experiment is squares the circle of being both valid and sound argument, which is really no different than saying it is true. Or True if you like that kind of Kashmir Shaiva or Vedanta use of Capital Letters to be All Authoritative and Stuff. You know, Consicousness Is Blissful. Pick Your Claim, Okay? I'll stop now.<br /><br />I write about this here for two reasons.</div><div><br /></div><div>First, I mean to help folks without professional exposure to the materials to understand what they actually say. Not what some person who can't read the languages but is an "authority" because their "experience" says. I'm not pointing fingers here but I am, as usual, warning intelligent, curious, serious students that history includes records that aren't as flexible as someone's mere impressions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, I mean to map out a wee bit of Rajanaka teaching here that strikes me as yet another thing that keeps me thinking. ("Rajanaka" here means the way Appa taught thinking, including his heretical take on 99% of Indian philosophies. It also means that I am interpreting him and you can too.) The idea goes like this... Rajanaka likes facts and arguments that ring true. Who doesn't? Well, there are cynical fascists who act in bad faith to manipulate people with lies and tell you that there is no such thing as any fact. You know, "people are saying..." and that is not only insidious, it is morally contemptible and intellectual fraud. So Rajanaka would like to land on "we're sure about that," "we think that's true because of the evidence and argument, "we think O.J. did it and that it should have been proven the first time." Stuff like that. We think you can fly to the moon if you have science and the courage and money to do it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The facts it takes for any of those arguments to be true---both valid and sound---are things you can count on and things you can count. The math is often MORE real than the evidence or the experiments we can yet perform. Ask Einstein and don't ask "god" about that, okay? But what makes the Rajanaka view so...curious is how Appa refused to let the need for clarity, which closely approximates certainty, to become the closed-case of some Ultimate Truth. This puts him much closer to modern science than any religion, including all of the Indian ones. He wasn't saying that there aren't real facts or truths like math can provide. He advocated for our trust and confidence in the human ability to find things that are true and to abide in them, to work with them, to assert their power and purpose and _truth_. But he saw just a wee bit of light under the door. Not doubt exactly. But more like incomplete sentences. Like this one.</div><div><br /></div><div>In other words, we can not only find out things that create a ground (we dally with the mythic Mahavishnu and Mahadeva and Devi to tell such stories too), but we get a certain kind of human purpose and _joy_ from the way things true ring true. The way they fall on the pallet, the way they taste. How they help us get through the hard stuff in life. So even when something really hurts and that hurt will never really heal or cure or finish hurting---- I think of Appa's premature death or maybe even his death at all since I miss him every single day, the way I do mom---he was saying that the facts of the matter are important parts of creating a deeper human life.</div><div><br /></div><div>So we love and grieve and there are things we know---I will not see Sundaramoorthy again but in my dreams and meditations, and until I do not because I will not be but dreams and meditations myself (if anyone has them!). I will, like you, enter the great vast oceans of collective history, including the collective unconscious, and that is about all I am willing to say. <br /><br /><br />When people talk about after-death in "you never know" tones and smiles, I take that as an effort to feel better about personal extinction. Why should I care to dissuade (to be right?) other than that to remark that I think it is particularly interesting how humans soothe themselves with a world they don't control and by definition can't fully comprehend. The mysteries of non-comprehension lead me to no faith or belief that is beyond or, for that matter, Beyond. Your call? Call? I jest here. I mean to smirk a bit again at what we would like to be true when we have nothing more than the want to write that story. The plane has landed so let me pull up to the gate here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Appa could argue with them all because, truth to tell, he'd done the work. He knew what they had said and understood it. But to make his own joy, to make a life of purpose and meaning, he chose to admit that human knowledge is at its best when it focuses on creating meaningful ways to love and create and endure and dissolve into a grace that conceals from us what we will never know or can't know.</div><div><br /></div><div>He wanted to love life knowing as best he could what is fiction because that fiction can be powerfully humanizing) and what is fact because those facts are indifferent to what we believe or feel about them except for the way those feelings inform our dealing with life. We need to be sure "enough" and not too sure. We need to be clear as we can but not too clear that we can't see more or next or another. We have to hold tight but let go and the difference there makes quite the difference that makes meaning. ***Postscript exchange...<br /><br /><br />"...my two cents: direct experience counts too."<br /><br /><br />My reply: it sure does. The risk of relying on it is that it quickly approaches the boundaries of solipsism---we then use it as an excuse, as in "that's my opinion," or "that's my belief" or "faith." Okay, it's also impossible to argue with because it's not an argument, it's a belief, a faith, an assertion. Arguments aren't perfect, thank goodness, so they can be wrong and righted, but the question Rajanaka asks is if the argument is valuable, not utilitarian as such but does it serve something greater than itself. This is my qualm with Quine's logic strategies---the argument doesn't care about people, it just cares about being right. Your point is superbly taken.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-65930466117860889262021-01-10T12:41:00.005-05:002021-01-10T14:30:39.517-05:00On Understanding Rajanaka as a Spiritual Philology<p>Tomorrow I'm being interviewed on a podcast about the meaning of yoga. So I offer here a few notes from my journal. I cull notes to remind myself of ideas and phrases.</p><div>It's never been terribly easy to describe Rajanaka teaching. The core of that challenge isn't about describing our methods---we use accepted, nay routine forms of critical and scientific method, we have humanist aims and goals, and we lean into Jungian interpretations of myth and ritual. We are devoted as much to the truths that science creates as genuine human achievements and mean to integrate the most contemporary understandings into our "practice" (sadhana).<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dAaAA-VW3cg/X_s7ecwdYhI/AAAAAAAAEuo/08-tkNexVGQjz4mQD25TEoksI0d69lgsgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1588/askeveryquestioncrow.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1588" data-original-width="1588" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dAaAA-VW3cg/X_s7ecwdYhI/AAAAAAAAEuo/08-tkNexVGQjz4mQD25TEoksI0d69lgsgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/askeveryquestioncrow.jpg" /></a></div></div><div><br />Our challenges have to do with both traditionalist and modern Hindu interpretations of our common sources, i.e., a broad sense of canon. The reason is that Rajanaka has its deepest ties to the Nataraja/Tillai Kali temple myth (and ritual) tradition and the Srividya goddess Tantra. Our interpretations however take us far from the traditional goals and claims of liberation and supernormal powers---because our goal is humanist: love your life, there is no "problem" of samsara. </div><div><br /></div><div>Rajanaka shares the core aim of older pre-Hindu Vedic religion expressed in the phrase, "give to me, I give to you" (dehi me, dadami te), not as mere transaction but as reciprocity and care for oneself and for others. You know all of this, I think, because I never tire of telling you how the original Rajanaka mandali (circle of conversation) in India were making the same points (albeit without universal agreements, inasmuch as they were a diverse bunch). </div><div><br /></div><div>Once we no longer endorse any explicitly religious (or mystical) claims, we can reconsider how religious practices, like rituals, meditation, pilgrimage, myths, art, etc.) inform our humanist aims. This is important to us because our "practice" can be confused with religious goals and be confusing because we take religious "contributions" as serious data and endeavors. After all, we closely connect with many religious practices and source materials; we just don't share their traditional interpretations or meanings. Specifically, practices like pilgrimage and darshan have always been at the heart of Rajanaka. These things get you out there in the world and deeper inside yourself. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now if ya' think about it, one of the important things Rajanaka does might be called "spiritual philology." The problem with _that_ is that virtually no one knows the term "philology." (Disclaimer: I am by profession a comparative philologist. I made my bones reading texts and describing what they say without prejudice or preference. Trained in the comparative study of religion and philosophy, my work has been both philological and anthropological, meaning I study classical texts and languages and I study actual humans and cultures.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So what is philology? It's not a common word.</div><div><br /></div><div>Philology is literally "love of words." All definition, formal and more idiomatic, extend from this etymological point of departure. "Spiritual" can mean a lot of things to folks, so let's add that into our mix and sort this out a bit. Words are essential to our humanity. It is only because we have words that human beings are capable of complex tasks (wanna go to the moon?) and, more importantly, organize themselves culturally to create informed meaningful relationships with each other, with vital matters like justice, law, and the furtherance of moral life. (As an example, think of how Ramayana or even the American Constitution (presumably) uses "law" (dharma) as a way of defining our humanity, human ideals, and possibilities.) We can accomplish remarkable things because we have words and can attend to their use and meaning.</div><div><br /></div><div>The love of words is a gateway to the soulfulness that extends into other artistic endeavors. However, Rajanaka teaches that _all_ artistry, in a far broader sense than word-love, brings us into processes of valued human investigation and expression---thus music, art, dance, craft, practices like asana, you name it, if what you do is a pilgrimage of soulfulness, a journeying into the heart, than your practice is a Rajanaka sadhana (spiritual practice). Feelin' Soulful? Caring about the world, the planet, nature, yourself, each other, people you don't even now? Exploring those experiences deeply? How do _you_ do that?</div><div><br /></div><div>If words as such aren't your thing, share with us what you do and what it means to you. That's the idea. So "spiritual" here means "soulful" and what I mean by that is that you are moved deeply in body, heart, _and_ mind. The somatic, emotional, and intellectual are of a piece, woven into the fabric of a human life. Soulfulness is an effort to deepen sensitivities of all sorts, to reach down into our shared humanity and to extend further into our individual experience. You don't have to love James Browns' music but he taught us that soul reaches _through_ words and sounds and music. As the Boss once put it, "when I'm gone I would like to have been known as a soul man." That's it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you looking for more soulfulness in your life? What are you gonna do about that? Find your artistry in the things you do, live your love life deeply and seek connection to inquire into what is important (and what is by comparison merely transactional)---that's called yoga. Now let's get back to philology because we spend a lot of time in Rajanaka with story telling and the love of wisdom (philosophy) that means to inform our psychology and every day life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Formally, all philologists do linguistics but not all linguists are philologists. This is because philology studies languages while linguistics is the study of language. Thus linguistics tells us how languages work (this is inherently comparative) while philologists study particular languages, usually through historical study (i.e., ancient material that comes forward into more modern forms). Not all philologists are comparativists. One can be a philologist of, say, Greek or Latin with little interest in other related (or not) language and culture. (Thus all Classicists are philologists and only a few are comparative philologists who might also study Sanskrit or some other sources.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Philology studies the history of language as a window into culture, ideas, history, and language itself. In the less formal sense, philology is the study of texts as well as oral and written records in their original form. Philology then translates and interprets those works. But for what purpose? That depends. Academically it solely for the purposes of explanation using historically sound critical methods. Rajanaka wholly endorses and plays that game. But in Rajanaka it is ALSO for our "spiritual", soulful purposes, not merely lucid understanding. We can put down that marker between academic philology (which means to understand and explain without greater personal investments) and "spiritual philology" but they are thoroughly complementary and not at all opposed. Deeper truth is our common goal.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is from this important task of spiritual philology that we move into other realms of human inquiry, particularly philosophy and psychology. Our philosophies focus on Indian sources but are not at all limited to them because we are comparativists---we take in whatever we find, like honey bees looking for the nectar across history, continents, cultures, and traditions. Our psychological studies look to Jung and the contemporary cognitive sciences. Rajanaka loves us some science because science looks for truths (durable and shared) and everything has to do with keepin' it real. I hope this was a little helpful or clarifying about, you know, the love of words and a soulful life.</div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div>This footnote comes from a dear friend who has been to India with us and ridden with us on the rails for many years, with deep love and respect for his insight here: </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">I was recently asked what made Rajanaka Yoga different than other yoga systems. After the initial, "A lot," I started by quoting Douglas quoting Appa, "The universe has no meaning, no purpose, and no goal." Of course that always gets the quizzical look as people do tend to expect something more seemingly "spiritual." I told them that whether sitting at the fire as the priests are chanting the Rudram or at the Met for La Boheme or at The Globe for Much Ado or walking along a path through the woods or putting the curry leaves in the oil at the right moment--not too early, not too late--Rajanaka looks at the way that meaning is constructed, particularly, but not exclusively, how it is constructed through language and then explores how those meanings, given name, become the structures of purpose and meaning that both define who we are and who we might become.</span></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-78182197379760186122021-01-01T16:50:00.006-05:002021-01-01T16:55:50.710-05:00 Resolutions and the Ever-New Year<p><span style="font-family: Athelas;">New Year’s is, of course, the time of the year we focus---and usually only for a moment---on making resolutions.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">We’re going to get lots of advice about making resolutions, about how to achieve our goals and why we fail, and we’re going to hear much the same next year.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">If we make resolutions every year we might want to think about making them just as ever-new every day and what that might mean.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">If we talk about resolutions principally in terms of success and failure, we’re going to miss what is great.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Let’s try for better.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kTwevvojpCA/X--Y1zU3T6I/AAAAAAAAEt8/Sj4rkdaO_LEr7-xZnChnE5Ax8VQlWX2iQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1588/%2Bnoteverythingishardcrow.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1167" data-original-width="1588" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kTwevvojpCA/X--Y1zU3T6I/AAAAAAAAEt8/Sj4rkdaO_LEr7-xZnChnE5Ax8VQlWX2iQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/%2Bnoteverythingishardcrow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Greatness invariably includes success and failure but it speaks more directly to values, to worth and the possible.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">When something has great value, we may succeed and fail time and again. When things are worth it, we measure success more honestly and accept failure as another inevitability. When we take to heart what is possible, we may not have all the choices we might wish for but can receive the grace to create choices we endow with resolve. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">We have arrived again at the importance of resolutions because they give us pause. It is in that pause we have opportunity to create further interest---and interest means acceleration and, if we are smart about that, direction.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">The greatness of resolution is that it does not resolve so much as invite us to direct our deliberations; it prompts us to initiate design, foster purpose, and so bring us to terms with choice. What do you want? Why do you want it? What are you willing to do to make what is possible <i>possible</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Athelas;">Greatness, like resolve, resides in the questions we ask that will encourage, entice, and provoke us. Greatness entreats us not to finality but to inclusion, inclusion that compels us to receive change as opportunity rather than reversal, as invention and advance drawing us more deeply towards what is light and shadow. The more greatness, the more shadow kindles illumination---and so more shadow with which we must sooner or later contend. That the gift of light burns is resolve.<br /><br />In Sanskrit we call such resolve and the act of resolution-making <i>vrata</i>. The simplest translation is “vow” and the reason that suffices is because, if you think about it, we make very few vows in life, take even fewer oaths, and likely spend far too little time thinking about what we are doing when we do. This is where the traditions of India can help again: we must never underestimate the power of contemplation to encourage clarity even if it cannot produce certainty. <br /><br />Now one who makes a vrata is called a <i>vrātya</i> and that too is worth further consideration. One old meaning of “<i>vrātya</i>” is a person of ordinary or low stature deciding to act in ways that propose change for the better. However we assess our self-worth, we might arrive at the better if we begin with our ordinary self. What is extraordinary isn’t other than that ordinariness, it is what happens when we make a vrata, ourselves vrātya.<br /><br />The extent of the word “vrata” should help us further understand what is at stake. A vrata is an inner act of the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">will, it is a soul-yearning for soulfulness; it is self-command made on the inside meant to be brought outside; it can mean laying down a law, which may in fact be the original meaning of “law”---something that is laid down so that it can be seen and considered and made known to one’s self and others.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">Sometimes the vrata is the commitment, that to which we commit <i>and</i> our obedience, our service, and the sphere of action in which it all occurs. In other words, a vrata is an environment, a domain for change. No one changes significantly by being coerced but rather by receiving change as an experience of choice and circumstances that will define boundaries.<br /><br />A vrata then is a sphere of action, a function not of mere code and conduct but of practice and creativity. Taking vows is a personal matter. Turning a vow into an oath is meant to objectify, to instantiate for public or institutional purposes. Thus we vow <i>personally</i>, but we make an oath with the promise of accepting public accountability. A vrata means to connect the two, that is, it implies the yoga, the connection between our self-promise and the oath’s self-endorsing powers that apply, whether or not we can keep our promise. To wit, the vrata binds us to freedom by inviting karma to take its proper place between what we feel inside and what we commit to doing for all to see. <br /><br />In Rajanaka tradition the making of vratas is an everyday yoga, something that prevents the ordinary from becoming anodyne and the extraordinary from becoming merely balmy. We ask ourselves to do hard things not because they are hard but because they are worth it. Sometimes that can be just getting out of bed and getting dressed in the 11<sup>th</sup> month of pandemic isolation. Sometimes it involves making a plan a year, two years, ten years in advance to do something worth it, to follow up, follow through, like making again a pilgrimage that you know invites being more uncomfortable that you need to be.<br /><br />Difficult things are rare because we rarely do what is difficult unless we have to. The purpose of a vrata is not to make the difficult more easily done but rather to <i>do</i> what is difficult. For that we are going to need help, no matter how much we try to help ourselves. This is why a vrata is made personally but is expressed in virtual terms like an oath. This is why a vrata is best made by reaching into the soul and making soulful what you claim <i>for</i> yourself <i>with </i>others.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">A vrata can be individual---it might even have to originate there, inside <i>you</i>, even if it is suggested or offered or comes from circumstance rather than self-invitation. But the soul of the vrātya belongs to the community that sees in vrata that some things are worth the trouble, worth the effort, are difficult and rare---and that our best hope lies in the ways we support one another.<br /><br />However alone we are, our best self is made plural by the relationships we create to live in dignity <i>and </i>through resolutions. Our vratas must be living, which means they must move, adapt, do their work with a dynamic temporality that combines the merely mortal with purpose that out outlives the moment. We participate in something more abiding than what time can rot when we bring our vrata <i>into</i> time knowing that it too is like the plural self: time is not one, not two, and achieves its only form of “perfection” by replacing itself with itself, time and again. When we cannot do that for ourselves, memory will achieve it if the resolution meets the demands of greatness head on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">Our recursive self brings resolution to life again and again so that little by little we can open to more selves, to deeper relationships, to the prospect that in this brief, moral life we have made promises worth keeping. Should we succeed, we live to do it all again. Should we fail, we live to do it again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">The greatness of our vow lies in how we decide for ourselves and for each other what is worth our intention and actions, what is worth loving and so with it the prospects for grief that come with true experience.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Athelas;">If this sounds too solemn or portentous then let us be gentle with one another, let us ask no more from ourselves than is possible and no less than we should. How that is decided is up to you. We will be here for you, which is why you might consider your next resolution. Make every resolution ofand ever-new resolution. Be that <i>vrātya</i>, the maker of the vow, to be more than you are right now because that is possible, again and again.</span><span style="font-family: Athelas;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Athelas;"> </span></i></p>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-43399116088154405362020-12-21T15:33:00.000-05:002020-12-21T15:33:40.236-05:00 A Few Lines for Winter's Lila and the More Ahead<p></p><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="51gc5-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="951kq-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="951kq-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="951kq-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">When you're in the middle of it, it's not too soon to look for a bit of horizon where lies a glint of light. Be wholly present and if you can, feel the future even if it's only in song, sing on.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="at29a-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="at29a-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="at29a-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="carf8-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="carf8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="carf8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="detqj-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="detqj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="detqj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Push off, and sitting well in order smite</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="bki1-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bki1-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bki1-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="3cbqa-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3cbqa-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3cbqa-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="4bv3h-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4bv3h-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4bv3h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Of all the western stars, until I die..."</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="8i7oe-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8i7oe-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="8i7oe-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="f7i56-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f7i56-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="f7i56-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Not yet, I say, not yet. But I feel confident in saying that most of us could use a vacation. Yet, there is work still before us. We must act, not merely endure. We continue to rise up, do what we can, hold each other close. It's what we will do for each other and we're learning everyday how to do for others we don't even know. Who knew Dharma would be so important?</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="9j446-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9j446-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ygar21GyNsA/X-EGXjJs_yI/AAAAAAAAEtc/9TFstQcLaZkKliiV9be3wO1-EpdE3SmuACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/7871c994f1ac9a3b4eee799730a43c1d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="500" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ygar21GyNsA/X-EGXjJs_yI/AAAAAAAAEtc/9TFstQcLaZkKliiV9be3wO1-EpdE3SmuACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/7871c994f1ac9a3b4eee799730a43c1d.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span data-offset-key="9j446-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="5lqh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5lqh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5lqh-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Winter is here in Bristol. It's time to light a fire. In times like this---wait, there are times like _this_?---I surely count blessings and I grieve for those less fortunate, less lucky.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="b7tla-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b7tla-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="b7tla-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="5hmd1-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5hmd1-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5hmd1-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Truth is, I hope you're not going too far from home just yet. I hope you're staying especially close. We've found a few other ways to create adventure during this time under the stars, east and west.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="abhlr-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="abhlr-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="abhlr-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="bl91q-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bl91q-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bl91q-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I want to say it's getting easier but I don't think that's quite yet true. Thank goodness for the technologies, at least as means, that give us that chance to talk, see each other some. And that's not a simple matter either for the challenges of goodness before us. In our "we'll have to make do" time, we've made time for one another. Let's keep doing that. We can step forward, best we can, and we will have each other. Let's do that again and again. If you need a hand, let me know.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="f4let-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f4let-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="f4let-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="7hhcm-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7hhcm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7hhcm-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Now, there are other things we have to receive for the lila, for better and worse. When the break goes the other way and you must feel more deeply the shadows of helplessness that follow in the light of facts. It's important to go to every place where there's soul. Even these harder truths, 'cause its personal sooner or later. Then you have to take extra care of each other.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="1egod-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1egod-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1egod-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="uv2h-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="uv2h-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="uv2h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="d4k5k-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d4k5k-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="d4k5k-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He furleth close; contented so to look</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="5h5ja-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5h5ja-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5h5ja-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">On mists in idleness—to let fair things</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="a0dt8-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a0dt8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="a0dt8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="bcvk8-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bcvk8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bcvk8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="i7h8-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="i7h8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="i7h8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Or else he would forego his mortal nature."</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="3ikna-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3ikna-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3ikna-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="befeh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="befeh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="befeh-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I would not forego this mortality for anything that claims better or more. No reward would be greater in heaven for me. For to know heaven, is to have had such friends. Keep looking here, and we'll find each other again soon. Stay strong in will and we will make the rest possible because we're not alone. </span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="393b1-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="393b1-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="393b1-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="fg6h1" data-offset-key="1faa-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1faa-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1faa-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Have a Sunday and stay by the fire, inside and out.</span></div></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-83799669424113182772020-11-16T11:46:00.003-05:002020-11-16T11:46:52.700-05:00 A Note to the Worlds of Yoga Students About Thinking Critically<br />I write this morning in support of my dear friend Noah Maze and others who have raised the alarm about conspiracy theories, QAnon-like madness, and a certain lack of seriousness and judgment that we have witnessed in what might be called our "worlds of yoga."<div><br />We're not talking about Trumpists per se taking their sycophantic pledges of fealty or those stepping into the madness of denial or alternative facts led by their grievances. Few of those folks I believe I have met in my classes or among my social media friends. We are rather talking to people who we have met in our classes, people who have claimed to be students of yoga, if not our students. Yoga means to make connection; it enjoins us to take to heart our feelings, become aware in body, speech, _and_ mind. We need to know that all human beings are vulnerable to processes of learning that can confuse and even delude anyone.</div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrmbZpn-LWw/X7Ks2-NfQCI/AAAAAAAAErY/rLIHQleJ_0YMbmE-mMrpf-9DttXa1ZNsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_3475.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrmbZpn-LWw/X7Ks2-NfQCI/AAAAAAAAErY/rLIHQleJ_0YMbmE-mMrpf-9DttXa1ZNsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3475.JPG" width="320" /></a></div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Yogis like to think of themselves as freedom loving beings making deeper connections--- since yoga does fundamentally claim to further the process of connection whether that be physical, emotional, or cognitive. But there has always been in yoga worlds claims about learning, evidence, and voices of authority that we should be ever-vigilant to understand. Voices of authority can stand for truth but also for that sense of "us" that we all long to make. Yogis usually think they are leading their own way but the need to follow is just as prevalent and can be easily as misleading. How do we keep our hearts in places of concern and character? How do we engage, connect, make yoga with thinking and learning to think?</div><div><br />Certain tendencies of authoritarianism, particularly the foundational feature of following the leader with singleminded loyalty and confidence in whatever "facts" are presented has roots in almost every religious and spiritual tradition. Belief can be an abdication of wits, of evidence and reason, of thinking for oneself but it can also be a part of our most reliable mechanisms of self-correction and revision. We're like to believe _something_ and we need to know _why_ we do.</div><div><br />It's also the case that traditions that formulate authoritarian views may invite us not to follow like sheep but to use our heads and get our hearts on right. Are we really being asked to think or are we being asked to believe? If we can connect these two endeavors we stand a chance at making a more effective connection, a better yoga. That such "reasoning" for oneself might do little more than confirm an authoritarian claim is all too evident. We need to know that we are believing when we do and we need to connect what we believe to what we do, to consider the implications and consequences of our views in the world.</div><div><br />The world is far larger than whatever _your_ beliefs are. And while the world may give up its facts only to we mere humans, we have to know what makes our human knowledge and understanding worth its weight. We may be all we have but we are what we have. Yoga means to teach us how to make connections to ourselves and to more than ourselves and that is no easy task. But thinking is art best learned and practiced with care and skill and time and effort---that too is a connection to yoga itself. We're going to need heart---courage---and we're going to need care and take our time to learn how to learn.<br />More dangerous than the need to believe is the need to follow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our need to belong makes all of this worse because we human beings like to think that as individuals we have a measure of autonomy. Who could disagree that we are able to construct our own worlds? But we are never not social, even when pandemic keeps us apart. We are always being made by nature, history, culture, and the facts of life. It is also our current states of pandemic apartness that are exacerbating the madness that abdicates facts, latches on to conspiracy theories, and fails to do the critical work of accountability. Our circumstances for learning are never easy and now they are harder.</div><div><br />The most important things in life in truth are not hard to learn but they are hard to accept and to address with honestly and moral sobriety. So you got this, right? Life is hard, it's gonna hurt. Leaning about what to do about that first noble truth is no small matter because that too is going to be hard. Sticking with the unfolding of truths that are provisional, unfinished, and human complicates our desire for truths to be more than human. But we are the best we got and using the gods or the buddhas or the sages to tell us what's what is no invitation to be less capable as a critical thinker. So how to do that?</div><div><br />Let me suggest three strategies to help us understand when we are being less than critically adroit. Perhaps these methods can makes us bit more capable of dealing with the information that bombards us. Nothing new here because we don't need new methods: we need to get better at ones that have been proven to help. I've culled these from the basics of modern critical thinking that applies to all subjects in the arts and sciences. Whether we are studying human cultural beliefs or behaviors or the findings of science, we need the processes of thinking. How you learn to think will tell you a great deal about what you think and what others may be thinking.</div><div><br />(1) Are you asking every question, including the ones that are uncomfortable or may cause "trouble"? Are you asking good trouble questions? What do you want from those enquiries? AND what kinds of questions are others asking, _which_ questions? The questions we ask tell about what we want, what we need and fear and hope and believe. Study the questions and you will have a better idea about the answers being given. Are people asking the only the questions they feel permitted to ask? Do they know that they are asking questions because those are the questions they _can_ ask? If it's all answers you are getting there are still agendas, still needs and wants being met and we should ask about what we think those are.</div><div><br />(2) Are you following the evidence? Are you asking if your sources are reputable? What makes your evidence reliable? And are you aware enough to know that the evidence might indeed change your mind, cause you to revise and rethink? You may not be rewarded for your progress and the need to belong to the group may interfere with learning if that learning runs afoul of the group think. Know too that if you're out there all alone you may need to check in with those in groups who have their critical wits switched to the on-position. Ask where the evidence originates and then how it is being used.</div><div><br />(3) Everytime you think you are certain think again. Not to doubt everything---for who would hold an opinion that they don't think is true? But to recognize that clarity is not certainty, it is merely the best you have and that that is all you have. When clarity touches the facts matters are _more_ certain but be careful always with _final_ certainties that prevent the next worthwhile question.</div><div><br />Forgive my prosaic, college professor need to say these things but there is a lot of distressing and admittedly dispiriting discourse in my newsfeed from people I would have never expected to have become so vulnerable to thinking that fails the tests of criticality. Time to get our heads and hearts from merely spinning to moving with greater care.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-5269873908549646392020-11-06T11:33:00.003-05:002020-11-06T11:34:12.807-05:00 Meditation For Sale<p></p><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="65gd" data-offset-key="e1k88-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="65gd" data-offset-key="914k9-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="914k9-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="914k9-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I've been party to some conversation lately about "meditation." If you are wondering those are sort of hate quotes, not because I hate meditation but to suggest that the meaning of the term is worth a chortle before we get all solemn and serious. Never pious. Piety is never a virtue but that is another matter.
Meditation is both more and less than what we usually mean by the word . That's my point of departure here. What you discover looking out at the world that already might be interested in the topic is rife with irony, as we'll see.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-50iIMgqNQkk/X6V6yScBm3I/AAAAAAAAEqg/gotp2W5_dDUtDW-GPoz8bzWs9k-mAx8iACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_3459.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-50iIMgqNQkk/X6V6yScBm3I/AAAAAAAAEqg/gotp2W5_dDUtDW-GPoz8bzWs9k-mAx8iACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3459.JPG" /></a></div>
But to keep it plain: Quietism is the order of the day. Chill. Less stress. Less anxiety. One of the big website businesses is, after all, called Calm. My problem with this is that it is only the most elementary requisite to what meditation _needs_ to become if it is to be more than a soporific stupor.
Early Buddhism has provided the bulk of inspiration for these modern kinds of meditation sold to first in the yoga world and now beyond to, you know, normal people. "Mindfulness" is the big sell, of course, and you have to go only a few further steps to get to something like the loving-kindness crowd where being a good person is also the purported outcome of learning meditations.
Okay, be nice and get quiet inside is great. I'm immediately bored by this. But that isn't because I couldn't be nicer or dislike calm. But you mean </span><span data-offset-key="914k9-0-1" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">that's it</span><span data-offset-key="914k9-0-2" style="font-family: inherit;">? A few bits of context. What's being sold as "Vipassana" however isn't vipassana (insight), it is almost only its traditional complement, samatha, (chill, serenity) and the basics for this sell are lifted almost verbatim from the Pali canon traditions of Theravada Buddhism.
The mindfulness sell also is sure to leave out two more features besides any serious effort at analysis (vipassana): the deep disdain for _all_ worldliness and the goal that claims ultimate relief from the human condition itself aka buddhahood. Those Pali canon inspirations in the modern meditation sale are in it for the chill bit, a kind of first level therapeutics for dealing with a life that will continue to spin and be spun out by a relentless world of desires (samsara). That will keep you meditating the same way you keep riding your exercise bike. Do it regularly and you will get the result: more chill, less stress. Who could object? But </span><span data-offset-key="914k9-0-3" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">that's it?
</span><span data-offset-key="914k9-0-4" style="font-family: inherit;">They aren't keen either on too much ardor (tapas) much less the more rigorous ascetical values that would require disaffection coupled to dissociations from everyday concerns. Those are rooted values in early Buddhism that prompts the purpose of meditation itself. But let's not labor the details. And please, don't got right away to "higher consciousness" or "deeper states": snake oil is everywhere for sale, always has been.
All of this easy to understand because most people just want a bit less stress and anxiety just to carry on with what they are already doing. Real change in personal development is not in the works because what meditation _could_ be has been reduced to quietism without much further introspection. We let stuff "come up" (because it will) but we rarely learn more about dealing with it. That would require words, concepts, analysis, and further implementations.
We are being told to close our eyes but not to look within. We are not taught much of anything about how to use our powers of _critical_ introspection and imagination to illumine our shadows and go deeper into the oceans of thought and feeling. Those processes imply mind, ego, and awareness and god forbid you take those things seriously as assets to be cultivated and made further investments. We are being told how to divest rather than invest in ourselves. We're told that calming down, feeling less stress or anxiety is the goal of the investment. It's barely the beginning.
To wit, there is no more "vipassana" that would break into the issues that we must address---apparently, once you are calm there is no need to do the kind of work that invites you to receive more information about yourself, the stuff that is deeply buried and is not all pleasant. You meditate to relieve strife not to realize it's potencies. There is not the slightest suggestion that the potencies of strife, like deep inner rage or desire or feelings that disturb, are potential assets and could invite further investments.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="65gd" data-offset-key="b667l-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b667l-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="b667l-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Becoming more receptive to more of what's going on inside does indeed require the power of calm. You've surmised at this point that my claim is that this is only the very beginning of the work. Let's leave aside (can I say dismiss, please?) the idea that we are waking up our "inner divinity" or illumination or liberation or any such religious assertion about what are called generally attainments. Just fergitaboutthat "spiritual" (it's really religious) bit and focus for a moment on the idea that calm is actually the prerequisite for inner study, serious introspection, and further consideration of ourselves as individuals, as human beings that have been made by forces greater than ourselves---like society, history, DNA, you name it, but all the stuff you don't actually choose.
This means that analysis or introspection must begin _from_ some semblance of calm and proceeds _not_ first to personal choice, free will, or some claim about empowerment but to a critical awareness of what makes us that we do not decide or choose. This is what most traditions call karma, and I hope that is obvious enough to keep this argument moving forward. We calm to begin to deal with ourselves not as we choose but as we have been created.
Just to stick with the helpful teminology of the Buddhists, the word "vipassana" is etymologically something like rendered 'discrete seeing'. (Oh and if you're not aware vipassana is Pali and vipashana is Sanskrit and that sorta' does matter (a lot) when we discuss the actual historical sources.) We must first see with perspicacity how karma---history, culture, language, family, larger systemics and structures, etc.---makes us and then move on to what is inside us as individuals that we must contend with as our _own_ experience.
What lies within that experience is more than we remember just like it is more than we choose. But that we can 'go there' through the powers of meditation is what this analytical side of the methods and practices assert. This means that meditation is actually aiming towards deep introspection, critical analysis, the uncovering and unburying of the experiences and forces that make up a greater totality of our actual lives. Let me put this in a familiar metaphor.
As old as the Veda is the idea that three-fourths of creation remains unseen, only one-fourth ever revealed (cf., RV 10.90). Now put this in very simple human experiential terms. We identify principally with waking consciousness and take reality to be directed from that kind of experience. But we dream and have deep sleep and then there is "the fourth", which if it is not some religious claim of liberation might well be our collective unconscious. Thus, we are waking, dreaming, dreamless, and collective-unconscious beings and only one-fourth is really given its due. We have few skills in investigation the other three-fourths and especially what is literally called the fourth---turya/turiya is what Vedantins call it but they mean it to be "beyond" and so some kind of ultimate relief. The collective unconscious offers no such reprieve from the mundane. It is the storehouse of experience that is built into each of us that informs and authorizes the other kinds of consciousness experience.
Rajanaka teaching could not only care less about claims to liberation in (as) this fourth state but invites one to consider that life isn't for achieving exemptions but rather further and deeper involvements with ourselves.</span></div></div><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="65gd" data-offset-key="4lptl-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4lptl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4lptl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Meditation is only _one_ way to break into the four kinds of human experience (waking, dreaming, dreamless, collective unconscious) and there are lots of techniques and strategies of practice. Those we can discuss at length elsewhere.
My point here is to say that the purpose of all such breaking (into, through, as, with, etc.) is to _find out more_, to explore, experiment, and delve into realms that turn into more effective connections that broaden and deepen our love of life. Yoga means engagement and the idea at its heart is that we have to learn to engage if we want to engage more, if we want to live more fully, more connected to more features and selves we possess and can create.
My personally favored forms of meditation have little to do with quietism and eyes shut. Mine happen to be darshan, pilgrimage, and then writing, reading poetry, mythology, studying art and literature of all sorts, philosophy and thinking. Yours likely happens with yoga mats too but me, not so much.
"Meditation" does indeed mean to look inside, but it is to see and feel and think _more_, not less. It means to open up and connect to more of you so that you can figure out how to live with yourself (selves). But who wants to do the work? Business knows this and so sells you calm. Religion knows this and so sells you "states" or attainments or, worse, "liberation."
Trying to sell the harder part will never be less hard because there's no requirement for we humans to become more human. The ardor it takes and whatever payoff it will relieve some anxiety and stress but it will also cause a stir, it will cause more churning, more twists and turns, more days in the maze of feelings and thoughts. Wasn't that supposed to, you know, stop? Actually, no. Connection means the tandava, the dance inside, is even a wilder ride. And who wants that? I do.</span></div></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-9509347352015315052020-11-03T09:29:00.003-05:002020-11-03T09:29:24.633-05:00An Ayyappa Vrata to YouThese are the times that try the soul. Is there any other kind of time? But you know when there is more at stake. Sometimes everything is at stake. That's what is happening right now.<div><br /></div><div>There is a call for soulfulness and we need ways to talk about that. Gratefully there are ways. You may have to work for this one so be patient, read on, and think about it after you're done. Ayyappa is here to help. Ayyappa is feminine, masculine, both and neither. There are traditions of Ayyappa and there is Rajanaka Ayyappa and, honestly, that is not much like the others. That needed to be said.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SZCp3ZFOgo/X6FpG2P8zDI/AAAAAAAAEqE/WB5Q4J6PMVgmxgAeSlinHaKfso4tCvNagCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3469.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SZCp3ZFOgo/X6FpG2P8zDI/AAAAAAAAEqE/WB5Q4J6PMVgmxgAeSlinHaKfso4tCvNagCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3469.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div>On Friday night I made an <i>Ayyappa vrata</i>. A <i>vrata</i> is an ordinance of the will, you might call it simply a vow or a resolution, but its purpose is to hear your beating heart when there's noise and storm and inner restiveness. When isn't there? And who is there to listen? If you bring yourself to the task, then you are Ayyappa and the vrata sings the body electric,</div><div><br /></div><div>You can make a vrata anytime but its contrary purpose is to bring yourself nearer your core and your boundaries. Something of an oxymoron, no? Yes. It can 'be still this beating heart' or race with it. It can be tune out the noise to hear the silence or it can be listen for all of the voices and everything else that just sounds like noise. You needn't tune out that analogue noise behind the music; you can let it do its job too. </div><div><br /></div><div>The aim of vrata is to withstand the storm and to enjoy it; to make restiveness a power to be garnered, like the mekhala, the belt that you see Him wearing so that he assumes a perch, a vantage point, the perspective you need, especially in the bows of toxic tillai trees. A vrata holds you together because lokasamgraha, "grasping for light" is a reason to live, as Krsna reminds when he explains why human birth is remarkable for its gainsaying and chance.</div><div><br /></div><div>A vrata doesn't require words nor need it be declared for others. Some may notice and ask why you look the way you do or that you seem to be onto something or in the middle of something. Something is different during the vrata that has emerged from the time before and carries into the time after. Vratas need boundaries to make boundaries that can be crossed, traversed, clarified, or violated. That is because you are looking for the space in-between, the serpent's way through, which means there is a way over or into, across the parapet, the barricades of thought and feeling into the dark, towards the unconscious which is not without its own passages. Rarely straightforward and you may get lost but the journey progresses though it surely twists and turns.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rage leads the way, not as anger but as fury and passion and tears and blood. It's Rudra's roar and Kali's feverish solitude. It is Ayyappa in the forest of feelings where he keeps the company of ghosts. We should let the lyric help us, because it's about ghosts. The ghosts you meet, the ones you love inside you, the ones you hope to meet and the ones you wish you didn't. But they are all there and vrata is to become the sovereign of those ghosts for just long enough to know that you serve them and they serve you, like it or not.<br /><br /></div><div><i>It's your ghost moving through the night</i></div><div><i>Your spirit filled with light</i></div><div><i>I need, need you by my side</i></div><div><i>Your love and I'm alive</i><br /><i>I can feel the blood shiver in my bones</i></div><div><i>I'm alive and I'm out here on my own</i></div><div><i>I'm alive and I'm comin' home</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Vrata is in the first word of Odyssey, the Greek menos. Here is the first line of the poem. Vrata needs poetry because it is the long way home.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Rage---Goddess sing in me and through me</i></div><div><i>to the story of one skilled in all ways of contending,</i></div><div><i>the wanderer, harried for years on end,</i></div><div><i>the one who twists and turns...</i><br /><br />So don't mistake this rage for anger alone, it is what we call in Sanskrit <i>tandava</i> or in Old Tamil <i>tulannku</i>: it is possession and being possessed, all the selves hidden are invited. You're not sure who will come into enough light to be seen but they all recognize you because you have come to sing and to listen to the Sirens and the Great Devi who has sung you into being. It is all of the personas and all of the archetypes because they are all inside you, some never realized, others familiar enough to called acquaintance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Become Ayyappa to one another. That is something more, even more than friendship if that is possible. And it is.</div><div><br /></div><div>We would all like to return to a womb of safety if we could but that will have to wait till this life ends. There are no safe places. There are just places where you drop, like the liquid fire---call that place bindu but don't mistake it for the destination or the escape hatch, it's more like the cliff in front of the wall that is you, like you, not you, and always more than you. More confutation to consider but not for too long, you don't have forever until it's too late. Keep going.</div><div><br /></div><div>She will decide when it's time for Time to be all that remains. You will disappear into the darkness someday. Not today.</div><div><br /></div><div>You're not alone, crows. You have each other because while you make the vrata alone, you travel in murders and parliaments, following the moon it's called, like wolves of the moon, <i>lupi della luna</i>. Watch where you walk because there are <i>nagas</i>, snakes beneath your feet showing you the way if you are careful to honor their danger. The road is not smooth up the mountainside, towards the boundary, into the core. <br />Embrace the fury---in Sanskrit, the <i>manyu</i>, the <i>samrambha</i>. (It's not that you need yet another word here but words can help. Samrambha is a commingling of vehemence, eagerness, ardor, impetuosity and care. It is rendered auspicious by choosing character in a potency of choice.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Keep going, use intrepidity and, at the same time, try to be still as the naga who knows when to move and when to still. Instinct commingles with choice. Manifest the gift of your <i>sarpadrshti</i>, the serpent's vision whose light is ahi, literally made of anxiety made an asset. Everyone knows that the world is filled with terrors and all the rest of the unexpected, uncontrollable, unfinished possibilities that surely come. Most ignore this but never the Ayyappa.</div><div><br /></div><div>Your vrata can only be a private matter because it is your resolution at work and it is your darshan because it is you doing the seeing. Darshan means to place oneself nearer the boundary to peer into the light of the heart's sanctum. That womb follows the roots of banyan that grow up and root down again. Sometimes you are pushed or you have to wait to have your chance to see. Sometimes you are invited in but you never trespass. That would be unseemly, that would not be Ayyappa.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's personal, it's not selfish. Sometimes your darshan is help others have their darshan. And while seeing appears to be the most important operative metaphor---since darshan is the seeing that looks into the dark using the slightest flame as your guide---it is never far from all of the other senses and feelings you ordinarily possess; you come to look and hear and touch and smell and taste and in all of these ways to test the will.</div><div><br />Your resolution for darshan is an experiment in the making and in being made by determinations and choices, even promises, but nothing is guaranteed, and going without certainty is always best. Resolve needs no certainty because it is an experiment in virtue, not in goodness but in courage, in the heart. You may fail but you won't fail to learn something if you are willing to wait and think and fast. (Do remember Hesse's Siddhartha here, okay?)</div><div><br /></div><div>This vrata is for Ayyappa to become Ayyappa so a word more about that. We'll keep it simple for now. In Tamil ayya is the word you use to address someone you don't know politely, kinda' like "sir"or "hey you" but in a particularly kind way. It is also the word you use to honor the ones you know and love best. Instead of using their given name you say Ayya as if to say <i>Beloved</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, with that kind of love and affection unmasked but made easy and comfortable in any situation. It is a signal of care and approbation and tribute to friendship. It is a way of deferring without submitting, of offering distinction and esteem without being maudlin or insipid. Hear here the voice of MLK, Jr. calling you "brother" or "sister" and you hear Ayya. The extra -<i>pa</i> on the end is still more affection and you can add that in Tamil to nearly anything you love or use it as it's own word. It's like the -ji ending that we borrow from Hindi, same same, in Tamil -pa is -ji. Got that, Ji? I hear you, Pa.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ayyappa means bringing some decorum and decency to a world in which there may be none. It is the choice to be more than what the world made or even what it seems to demand. When you realize that the natural world has no care but provides what you need and society and culture move you but can't make you, you can become Ayyappa.</div><div><br /></div><div>For Ayyappa is the decision to be better and more than you have to. It is to live with your wounds and cares and passions and losses and victories---all with the choice to be decorous in a world that can defile you. It is not so much rising to the occasion but the determination to respect, to love life and to love others' lives as if they do too.</div><div><br /></div><div>To make an Ayyappa vrata you need only say <i>Saranam Ayyappa</i>, "Refuge is Ayyappa" as you approach your boundaries and make pilgrimage to the liquid fire that flows in your living veins. See others as Ayyappa even if they do not. Dignify this fragile humanity we share and act as if there is more in all this strife than selfish interest. Then say it again to yourself when no one is listening but you. You don't ever have to say it aloud but say it when you need to make a resolution that will not end even when the time of the vrata concludes. Then do it all again. I am off to cast my vote, to try to help end this nightmare.</div><div> <i>Saranam Ayyappa</i>.</div></div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-4704045762245010422020-11-01T08:57:00.003-05:002020-11-01T09:12:12.954-05:00Before the Storm: Candid and Innocent, Neither Cynical nor OptimisticFending off the demons will be no small matter for the coming week. The demons will be your own---the worry, the fear, the anxiety that is not unwarranted or false. They will also be real and out there doing what they can. The demons millions of minions may be delusional, defrauded, naive, it really doesn't matter but they are not going to change their stripes and suddenly be our friends once this all goes down.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qJ2tMg8iKDg/X56-smYWJuI/AAAAAAAAEps/vA-3WZyvIo0rtjH1v-WIW2Tt-sJMWWKJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/theprisoner.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qJ2tMg8iKDg/X56-smYWJuI/AAAAAAAAEps/vA-3WZyvIo0rtjH1v-WIW2Tt-sJMWWKJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/theprisoner.JPG" /></a></div><br />I'm hoping for a victory worthy of the gods. That is, one so convincing that they must cower back into their orc dungeons thus letting us breathe and heal, even just for a moment. Even in the event of resounding, unambiguous victory---say, a Biden win in NC, AZ, maybe not in FL or OH, but then PA, WI, and MI---there will be Trump and his cult. I'm sure the lawyers are ready. There's a piece in The Atlantic about how to deal with a coup, yes, a coup, which is real enough an idea that it's neither alarmist nor mere hand-wringing. You do have smoke alarms in your house, right? (We just spent a small fortune, deeply unsatisfying as an expense because a fire _really could_ happen as much as you do all you can to never need those alarms. Same deal (<---add Joe voice here for reassurance.) <br /><br />The more the cult tries to intimidate and suppress the vote, the more resolute we must become that every vote is counted. There is no time to hesitate much less cower. I am heartened by the people standing in long lines who will not be stopped. Will young people actually show up in real numbers that make a difference? Never before has a party so shamelessly attempted to defeat democracy, which means they are certainly not done when they lose. The cult will not accept defeat because they cannot deal with truth in any honest way. If they do win then we know that America is a failed state and we'll each have to make choices about what is possible.<br /><br />In yesterday's Saturday Conversaton I hammered some of the binaries that make demons demons and outlined how to avoid becoming the monster we can all become if we fail to fathom what's before us. We have the tools if we know how to use them. The tools are candor and innocence. The monsters are cynicism and corruption. The impediments to understanding the differences that make the most difference are false hope and untempered optimism.<br /><br />Candor is not cynicism, it is the hedge, the way to truth. We must accept that truths too are incomplete and provisional, that they are all too human is what is sparing us the delusions of certainty and the kind of righteousness that makes certainty so dangerous. But we can sure enough. We can use facts and face the music. We need not give up on truth---we must not---because it's what we have and the demons know this too. That is, they know that our candor can be turned to cynicism and that is what they have chosen to do. Their own cynicism is delusional not because it lacks candor but because it indulges in the joys that cynicism provides: certainty, incontrovertibility, the self-righteous choice to claim superiority as an entitlement. Indulged cynicism brings many favors but none favor decency or truth.<br /><br />Cynicism is not only defeating the idea that we _can_ keep it real and must, it is the choice to degrade and destroy that there is anything at all that stands behind your candor, that there _can_ be truth or facts (albeit human as they always are). Demons use candor for the purposes of cynicism to degrade our humanity, to cause us to choose demon over the human divines. There are no perfect, infallible, always correct, immune to cynicism gods. There are just human gods, which means deeply flawed but resistant to cynicism---and always still vulnerable.<br /><br />Choosing not to indulge the cynical may not tell you who you want to be but that is for another day: it is there to tell you who you need not be, who you can choose not to be and sometimes that is enough or it will just have to do. Can we do better and more than that? Oh yes. But it will take more time and commitment. Choosing not to starve your inner monster is a way of creating the opportunity for more. The dragons in the dungeon can create a pause in the plot line and where that plot line goes depends on what you do with the demons inside yourself. We all have them.<br /><br />Staying human-divine is no small matter. There are no god-gods, no divine divines, just human gods and human divines---that means there's always imperfection, flaw, vulnerability, and possibilities for better and worse. We aren't wholly in control of these matters because demons are the first to tell you that you can be the master of the universe and master yourself. Don't buy it: the world makes you in far less commanding formats of self. <br /><br />But the demons do have a point: the world taken seriously (use your candor) is a very, very dispiriting, rough ride filled with hypocrisy and failed ideals. Your ideals and aspirations and values, which are never going to be perfectly realized, are nonetheless worth having. That does not require faith in the sense of someday my prince will come or there is going to be a heaven. Rather it is a matter of deciding for better, for more than cynicism when that is what is before you. Candor doesn't allow you to make fantasies more real than they are (and neither does it deny you a fantasy, which means you can still play air guitar in the mirror if that's your thing.)<br /><br />The other requirement to fend off the monsters is to cultivate an innocence that nurtures sympathy and empathy. The presumption of innocence is more than some legal posture. It is the moral hedge against the certainty of guilt that we will otherwise project and use to advantage over the innocent. We must be vigilant not to corrupt the possibility that we could be wrong or that we need to be giving benefits and doubts their productive place. You see someone or something and no matter how "deserving" they might be of the plight they are suffering, you argue their innocence before guilt.<br /><br />Optimism is false innocence. It is the fantasy that they are not only not guilty but couldn't be, or they didn't do it when candor demands the otherwise possible; they could indeed be guilty or are getting what's coming to them because they brought it on themselves. We need more innocence than optimism because it provides more honest inquiry. How big your nose looks today, grandmother; how big your teeth, says Red Riding Hood. Her innocence makes for query and doubt that empowers her to act. The wolf will do anything to eat you. (Apologies to real wolves.) <br /><br />Optimism isn't required for innocence to keep away the demons. What we need is to put innocence in front of guilt, not to protect us from candor but also to protect us from giving up on decency. The monsters don't care about decency or sympathy, much less empathy: their selfishness, corruption, and graft tells them that the only truth is their personal experience. This is why some monsters alter their views when it happens to them or to the people _they_ care about: then "suddenly" they see that their personal experience confirms what could have been known with a dose of sympathy and the cultivation of empathy. Alas, don't count on the demons to be less demoniacal. Chances are they will be more selfish and as corrupt than you think is possible precisely because you can't imagine that, because you're _not_ that demonic.<br /><br />What the gods know is that the demons are far, far worse than your imaginings, that monsters are real, don't become one and if you think you can't become one that is no guarantee you won't. Demons are radicalized gods or at least once they were because they all started out as human. There are no gods or demons that aren't human though humanity can be forgotten, hollowed out, forsaken, and corrupted beyond reclamation in this current birth. Evil becomes real when there is no reason to think otherwise, no evidence to mitigate, no innocence left to retrieve.<div><br />What it takes to be human only begins when we know that we can fend off the monsters. We can defeat them but they will come back. We can not become them even in our efforts to defeat them and in gaining the power that we need not to grant them power. Not becoming the monster is something we really can do but it takes some understanding and practice. We have to practice not being monsters and understand what it means to be one. No small task given it can turn us into what we need not become. We can become more human divines but again, that will take some time because it demands we integrate shadows---another topic entirely.<br /><br />The understandings we need defeat cynicism and wage innocence, refuse the war once the battle is won. To become better, this is just the start. We are only at the very beginnings of what we call yoga and greatness, the mahā, is still over the horizon. That greatness is possible but only when we understand that the demons are real. More soon. Because there is always more.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-64912823260800536592020-10-20T14:54:00.005-04:002020-10-20T14:54:55.381-04:00 Got Anxiety? Part 2, More About Anxiety as Asset and Liability<p></p><div class="bi6gxh9e" data-block="true" data-editor="5mmqt" data-offset-key="5o9d9-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>It's the end of the world and we know it and I feel fine? Maybe not. I am inclined to take on the prospect of America failing because if it does it fail it will be because more people voted for racism for whatever reasons than showed up not to resist it or because justice was stolen. Lots of things can go wrong.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTUQhiYlu1Y/X48yXAKXYUI/AAAAAAAAEpM/pI82p26-o3ER5-K28lyCAVbJyHUylMcEACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3394.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTUQhiYlu1Y/X48yXAKXYUI/AAAAAAAAEpM/pI82p26-o3ER5-K28lyCAVbJyHUylMcEACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3394.JPG" /></a></div><br /><br />But I think today that Trump, along with the Senators and all the way down ballot, are going to face truly crushing defeat. However, Trumpism isn't going away nor the horrors that created it. What created it is smallness, certainty, and a genuine failure to appreciate how the world invites more complexity, never less. You would have to reduce to an issue or just reduce to say yes to Trumpism and that is entirely possible. Today (I mean TODAY) I'm feeling like that Trump will fail but most assuredly not the causes of Trumpism. If you're not nervous and upset about what could happen, I have no idea what planet you live on.<br /><br />It's hand wringing, pearl clutching, angst, anxiety, ahi time. Ahi is another Sanskrit word for snake (naga) and serpent (sarpa). Possibilities like the truest human self are made by in large part by forces we don't control, didn't make, and and can't know. Add complexity and every effort to make the world simple, or reduce self to something essential (Vedanta), simple (more Vedanta or just plain unreflective), or non-existent (peskyB'ists again), we bump into Emerson reminding us that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."<br /><br />We may _think_ we like consistency or would love to embrace real certainty but such thoughts quickly and always become more problematic, to say nothing of being just plain wrong. The price of clarity is the similarly "satisfying" but wholly unproductive belief that there is somehow less world and real finality (i.e., no more) when of course that would be another short cliff leading to another long road. Worse, we say we got this when there is more, no end, and we don't actually got this yo.<br /><br />Delusions can feel good. We may have _some_thing but not all. Life, like self, will permit us to sojourn briefly in our serene complacencies and assume whatever delusion of surety is today's soporific remedy. Whole religions (think: umm, yoga) are devoted to advancing the delusion that life has a solution.<br /><br />But the myths know better. That ahi (n.b., YOU are that anxious serpent) inside you will wake up soon enough to remind you that if you don't embrace being that ahi, procure it, use it skillfully and with some effort remain engaged despite all of the concomitant terrors and inevitable horrors everything will get even worse not better.<br /><br />In other words, if you are in touch with the trauma that is natural to the unknown, you stand a better chance than staring down that inner consciousness cobra, hood espeliering like the wisteria eating your house one vine at time that you don't really notice until you realize it is _really happening_. Then you can figure out what you can do rather than be destroyed by it.<br /><br />There's no transcendence, cure, nirvana, or other exemption from the complexity of a self that refuses to be confined by a desire to contain it or reduce it to singularity. The plural self ever remains three-fourths hidden and we never get to encroach on that percentage precisely because the more we learn, the more self appears that we have yet to learn.<br /><br />That was supposed to be the simple explanation of this situation of being human. Let me try again. If we recognize how our anxieties lead us to our hearts rather than away from them, we can love and grieve in ways that allows us to take the next steps, live to die another day, live to live with what is just true about a world we don't control. Less victim, more participant is the idea: dancing with your devils is better than letting them haunt you.dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-14057579465105798052020-10-19T02:02:00.000-04:002020-10-19T02:02:12.532-04:00About Soulfulness, Artistry, and Future"Just tell the truth about your own life, what you're experiencing, what you're seeing and dig into it. Don't be afraid of it, confront it. Let's see where it comes out. Let's describe our most intimate relationships with the hopes that other people can see themselves in our work."---Bruce Springsteen quoted by Steve van Zandt, talking to the Band.<div><br />I want to say thank you. You keep showing up. If there's going to be any future worth creating in this troubled world, it's going to take the likes of you. Where would we be without each other?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OO6UWgNRQX4/X40rwRfwe5I/AAAAAAAAEo8/383yk0XePjY3q1au38n2jqATUr_pvcCLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/rooftop.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1318" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OO6UWgNRQX4/X40rwRfwe5I/AAAAAAAAEo8/383yk0XePjY3q1au38n2jqATUr_pvcCLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/rooftop.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>But there you are for Saturday Conversations, with all of their eclectic madness and occasional disorganization and hours of preparation, all of which seems to disappear as soon as we lift off. And Gita Sessions for their reliable indifference to sticking to the text but also never really leaving it either. You've been there now for months and there's no end in sight really. I'd tell you that you've saved me but that would underestimate the truth, which is that you really did save me. I don't presume any such drama on your part but I'm confident you have felt deeply too. I no longer shy from the tears anymore than I shrink from the argument. With you folks, I know humanity stands a chance. It's your goodness, your curiosity, your commitment. I think to myself after every session: How he would have loved to have met you too.<br /><br />Since pandemic and this madness that has infected America, you have dedicated yourselves to a deeper sadhana, a soulful life of learning, company, and conversation. "You kept returning," Appa said when I asked him, "Why me?" It wasn't about talent or ambition though what I lacked in one I tried to make up in the other. It was about the good company. It was for love. That's just got to said.<br /><br />"Rajanaka" as we know it together turns 20 or thereabouts this year. But it doesn't matter how long you've been around. What matters is that you've been willing to reach into your heart, offer yourself up, to stand in yoga as Krsna puts it. Yogasthah. In these troubled times you've all managed to look across the horizon to ask what more there is even as the world burns and rages and quarantines and some people can't even wear a mask to keep their neighbors safe. But you have all this and then some.<br /><br />Tonight I was reading an interview with Nils Lofgren and Steve van Zandt about the new E Street Band album that will be released in full this coming Thursday. Yeah, I know, here I am talking about Springsteen again. And I'm not trying to make you like anything I like. Music leads the way, like other art, and we're all made to hear our own songs. But this record is going to come some 10 days before the election and whether it stirs your soul or not, whether its lyrics about love and friendship, grace and death are to your tastes, what it _means_ to do is remind you that art is something we are going to _need_.<br /><br />We're going to need to do a lot of hard work if there is to be a reckoning with all that has been hurt. But we are also going to need art to heal. We're going to need art to address these terrible challenges we will face, some deep and foreboding, and with those who will not love us even if we offer an open hand. We'll do what we can, you've proven you will go as far as it takes to create community and conversation. But I tell you, we'll evolve, perhaps even take a few steps towards progress if we make art that bares our souls. <br /><br />In Rajanaka the soul is not a metaphysical fact or an argument made through dialectic. Soul isn't something we contest or need to prove---or disprove. (Those pesky Buddhists. Gotta love'em.) Soul traverses through feelings, all feelings, but it's not itself a feeling. Soul is what _moves_ feelings. It is the prime mover within us and requires no cause or reason, no maker because it is the creator. It takes courage and humility to bare your soul. It takes work to dive deeply into parts unknown, unasked for, into shadows hidden by the light that creates them. Soul is a journey best taken together even when it is wholly ours.<br /><br />Soul happens when we dare to turn ourselves inside out, what the Tantrikas call, what Rajanaka calls uttanita: the extended, the upside down, the contrarian way. Art dares to move with and against, towards and away at the same time; the soulful doesn't resolve such paradox so much as it brings out its beauty and power and strife and value. Your art is whatever you do that makes that happen for you and it's your artistry, your soulfulness that changes the world. Don't suffer alone. Don't be alone unless you want to. Share that journey and your artistry becomes a gift.<br /><br />Becsuse art emerges from soul it can't help but create more soul, more connection. It's no small task to learn how to reach into the unconscious and from that source create the forms of memory that express the heart's secrets, its wishes and desires, hopes and fears. Some of us do that with music or dance or in our commitment to a yoga practice or in raising children and caring for them, or even through the power of food and love and other forms of human care for the world.<br />Soul comes from the depths but means to reach the surface. What happens then isn't something we can completely control or direct but it is ours to experience. The worlds of yoga, worlds of care, of artistry are truly astonishing. Soulfulness is the liquid fire, the source of rasa, the essential, the elixir; it is the self coming into its own light, emerging from mixed up, muddled up, shook up worlds that invite us to _see_ ourselves and _be_ ourselves at the same time.<br /><br />Everyone has the talent but not all get their chance. And somehow it doesn't seem to burn as hot for those who never kindle the fire. Or maybe they never learned how. And as we have come to learn over the past four years, soul can be callow, damaged, and even empty. There are no guarantees that the soulful will be found or cultivated, much less evolved into distinguished artistry and authenticity and take the shape of the integrity of self. But most folks, given the opportunity to love deeply will find the soulful because they will experience joy and pain and they will grieve too and likely find their way to offering something of what they have learned and felt. <br /><br />Now I confess, the real reason for this note was to cite from this interview in Forbes what Bruce told the band when they got together to make music. <br />That could have been Appa those years ago because that is what he offered. He wished for me---and for you---that chance to tell the truth about your lives, to not be afraid of what you find and to share it because it is in your soulfulness we will all grow, each into our own artistries. If the love we give is equal to the love we take--- to quote those other guys who put it all on the line--- we'll have lived enough.<br /><br /></div><div>Sing on, Rajanaka. And dance like Nataraja is delighted you've come. Kali is holding you close. If all that seems a bit much, well, we've got even more stories to tell. I hope to see you more, and soon. If we dare to tell our truths then we will have a future. Better yet, together.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-62981631775331870132020-09-04T10:02:00.007-04:002020-09-04T10:08:19.962-04:0045 Years and More Broken Pieces and SammelanaIt's 45 years now since Born to Run was released in 1975. Yeah, that matters to me but this isn't about that. Or is it?<div><br />This post is not likely going where we might think it's going. You may get bored. Writing these sentences last, it's also a mixed up muddled up shook up maelstrom of metaphors, more like curry in hurry than a carefully prepared word cuisine. Truth is, I woke up thinking and this mighty rad gumbo of ideas and mixed up metaphors was what was happn'n.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iVAJIPHzDio/X1JKOho5Q4I/AAAAAAAAEnw/40d7okSMdYYVkwa2IuGNfwqK1q74svSrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/borntoyoga.2-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iVAJIPHzDio/X1JKOho5Q4I/AAAAAAAAEnw/40d7okSMdYYVkwa2IuGNfwqK1q74svSrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/borntoyoga.2-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br />I went to India looking for the path to liberation and for someone to take me there. Though barely more than a teenager, I had read Buddhist sutra and Shankara's Advaita and I wanted to be in that game. I wanted to be able to engage those worlds on their terms and achieve their ends. I didn't realize how I was making the same mistake again.</div><div><br />As a kid I'd taken myself to church to hear what was supposed to be so important. And it was inasmuch as they were talking about the origins of meaning and how to create a life of goodness. It took awhile to figure out just how their versions of these vital human concerns were either another "who would think otherwise" matter or, far worse, a manipulation and exploitation that plays and cons you for their own purposes. So either we're talking about things that need to be beyond dispute---"love your neighbor"---or you are being handed a load of nonsense---"he died for your sins," "your reward will be great in heaven."<br />I didn't yet surmise that these same issues follow around _every_ religion or spiritual path, particularly in their corporate and institutional forms. When I went to India I was still looking but I thought they had the answers, in their traditions, that I could stand under their umbrella to withstand the consequences of all the rain.</div><div><br />Appa agreed to teach me the sources in the original and his traditionalism was my personal guarantee that I had found the guru. Who could not love this man at first sight? He wasn't seductive and there were no saffron robes or titles or claims but his authenticity was irrefutable, as much as his erudition and integrity. It was when he began to offer his own interpretations and critiques that everything started to change.<br /><br /></div><div>It's as if we all have to stand in the rain. The world is pouring rain, whether it's personal, social, political, you name it, the storm is raging. It's going to challenge us to find a place to stand, ways to withstand and perhaps find some kind of refuge. Everyone does that and, if we are lucky, we receive love and learn better how to give some so we can live in our own skin, endure the outrageous fortune. But for me that was not enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'd been lucky, loved aplenty as a kid but when I went looking for meaning---and I mean from adults who were somehow supposed to know---I was disappointed in the answers and then disappointed in their character. They'd opened their umbrella and allowed me to step under, to share it with them but the umbrella was made of fixed dogmas and institutional straw. I figured that out before I went to India. What </div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't realize is that I was just looking for _another_ umbrella, just another corporation's story that would offer shelter from the storm.</div><div><br />The "institutional" storytelling gives you answers and reminds you that they are the correct ones. The corporation welcomes you in to participate in _their_ story and if you deviate too far you get in trouble or, like my own Italian grandmother, you get excommunicated because your story can't meet their expectations. My grandmother was excommunicated from the Catholic Church after she divorced by grandfather who had abandoned them---he was deeply traumatized with PTSD after serving in WWI and one day disappeared. To receive the benefits of the New Deal she had to prove destitution, which included three little girls. My mom the middle daughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now that horror story of the church may not be unusual but my point isn't merely to castigate or accuse, it is to point out that we are punished for dissent. Step out from under _that_ umbrella and you are pretty much on your own. </div><div><br />What I didn't really understand when I met Appa is that he had not only been reared under a wide and encompassing umbrella of traditions, practices, doctrines, and customs, but that he had stepped out from under its shelters. Somehow he had freed himself from the Matrix while still being in the Matrix, in fact, without ever leaving the Matrix. He had not disowned or disavowed, he hadn't been busted for heresy or been found out. He didn't want to leave or abandon his worlds entirely. He didn't do what I'd done even though he too was born to run. He knew however that "it's a death trap, a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we're young." How's that for a slew of mixed metaphor and allusions?</div><div><br />But in his own quiet way, Sundaramoorthy had fomented in his heart and mind a revolution. He didn't believe that the umbrellas of tradition understood traditionally were any real shelter at all. The rain is no illusion but the umbrella as it was made by his traditions didn't provide enough honest shelter---and after all there is no stopping the storm, the storm eventually takes us all. Rudra and Kali never fail to have their ways.</div><div><br />Appa had his own version of the slow burn, the coming to terms with the storm that we call Rudra and Kali. It wasn't like mine but it was all the same storm. I had the chance to run, he couldn't. Then I got lucky and I ran into him just as I was figuring out that you can run but the storm doesn't stop no matter where you go. I thought he'd show a way through the Buddhists or the Hindus that would finally provide that shelter. I wanted _his_ umbrella to do the job.</div><div><br />But as he began to teach I started to grasp his point. First, that the sources of tradition do indeed raise the important questions and provide plenty of indirection that helps---myth, ritual, practices, ideas, maps that aren't entirely useless. He set about helping me understand what the corporations of tradition were teaching. We all really face the same storms: love and grief, joy and sorrow, mortality and, well, what more, what else?</div><div><br />Next, he never relented in telling me to query and question, to use my own wits, be honest with feelings and ideas, and not capitulate to belief, to adherence, to any dogma or doctrine that he or anyone else was claiming to be the real shelter, the <i>only true</i> shelter, the <i>correct</i> shelter from the storm.</div><div><br />Last, he urged me to have the courage, to look into my own heart---the very meaning of the word "courage"---to see how we share the storm and _need_ an umbrella, need to be part of traditions and histories and, at the same time, not to be co-opted into complacencies of belief, into dogmas that are mere salves or bypass. We can commit to both learning from traditions and a relentless contrariety that refuses to believe or just follow. We aren't all alone in creating our path, we can't make it all up for ourselves---that is folly, self-importance, and lead you to believe that wearing tie-dyed clown pants to a black tie wedding is somehow being yourself.</div><div><br />Rajanaka is the contrariety he collected with that small group of fellow seekers. Its beauty lies in its willingness to see the value of traditions---ideas, questions, practices, customs---and also embrace its own otherness. Appa was adamant in his refusal to capitulate to dogmas or claims that were only fake umbrellas raised between you and the storm---"When I was liberated from liberation, I was at last free to be human."</div><div><br />But he knew he needed, that we all need, shelters from the storm, that it's wise to carry umbrellas in the rain. He could draw deep inspiration from the many languages of tradition, the symbols, forms, and practices but he was just as determined to speak in his own dialect that might become yet another kind of language. His was a dialect that began as something like Srividya and Natarajar's Shaivism but it became another language, one rooted in an understanding so different from its source that it warranted that new designation---it was a new language that had emerged from the old ones. Rajanaka is that method and that language, grounded in the principles of contrariety, of critical thinking and humanism. </div><div><br />He once said that we gain advantage because we humans have the power to use language but that when we understand that we are formulating with rules (whether we know it or not), then breaking rules and making new rules becomes part of our growing awareness; then with love of a reformulating grammar we can reshape our experiences, we can move matters along into other kinds of expression. We need to know that we bind to rules to make sense of a world that we cannot control but we are not more bound to rules that control us than we are. </div><div><br />Let me try that again. He was saying we need to come into our own voices to hear ourselves and communicate more deeply with others so that we can share a shared humanity. He was saying we cannot allow that process of personal growth and communication to abandon what we share and what we have learned from the past, from the corporations of tradition---and yet we must try to become our own voice too. That strange need to be part of something more (because we are) and come to our own critical processes, that is the great commingling, that is what we call sammelana. Another meaning of the word "sammelana" is to a gathering for celebration. What Rajanaka celebrates is our ability to make something more once we shatter the mirror and dare to look for the broken, missing, and extra pieces that we piece together to see more.</div>dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-15959754246174935562020-06-15T15:40:00.000-04:002020-06-15T15:46:00.903-04:00Rage On, Calmly or Not, But Do Rage On<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Charles Blow in today's NYTimes makes an important case for "insatiable rage." He explains why the passion, the rage and indeed the outrage we see in the streets, continuing and expanding into the greater causes of civil rights and the failures of American Experiment, cuts so deeply. This isn't about merely about "winning" or persuading or effecting reform or law---it is about deep, abiding collective feelings that must find expression. <br />
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The collective hopes, dreams, frustrations, indignities, violations, and abuses of Black Americans will be heard and must be acted upon. There is no appointed moment for this to cease, and I mean for protest somehow to end.<br />
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Among the important features of this movement, the courage and determination of peoples' oppressed to be heard and to provide inspiration and witness to this criminal history and neglect. Personally, I hope there is enough endurance and perseverance to extend all the way to November. We must not underestimate the opposition. They will do everything they can to thwart progress including lie, steal, and cheat---because they always have. If too quickly we may return to diffidence and timidity then the cause will once again fail. This is Mitch McConnell's answer to every bit of progress: wait it out, the liberals don't have the votes and more importantly don't have the commitment. He must be wrong this time.<br />
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Everything about future depends on it. Justice denied must rage on so that it becomes justice served as our daily faire. I am heartened truly by the sensibilities of sympathy and empathy that have arisen too in support for those so long oppressed and denied. There are White Americans out there protesting and I hope they learn, listen, and show up on November 3rd too. We who have lavished in unearned privilege must act to make real amends, and have the decency to be stalwart in support and actions.<br />
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"Rage" is not something that Americans value or appreciate as a virtue. It can be a hard sell even around here. What I mean by that is Rajanaka's teaching about Rudra and Kali and the Sammelana characters whose rage is a key feature of their identity. Rage means a relentless passion for values, for what's -worth- the fight and knowing when it's going to be a fight.<br />
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Rage also entails living to fight another day when you won't win the day. Rage means living with yourself when you have failed or disappointed or _are_ disappointed. Rage takes it a step further because you have to live with trauma for the sake of the rage ahead. I have argued elsewhere that the utter outrage we feel about symbols of hate is wholly warranted. That freedom of speech protects the symbols' use privately or on private property is a price we should pay. Does that cause us more rage? Does that cause us more rage? Does it cause harm and trauma? Of course it does. No one is spared, never, expect it. Don't acquiesce. Don't give in. Rage on.<br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>That is one of the things that Rudra, Kali, and company are showing us: that there is no world in which we escape the hurt or the trauma that might well be demon-inflicted. We can manage the demons and must but we can't rid ourselves of them nor of all the damage that they will do. We live with the damage, with mitigate it and try to relieve the pain, but every cause of goodness and every form of freedom has its price. What we gain from censorship we may well lose in freedom. I'm not suggesting that this is in any way a settled matter.<br />
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THAT is a feature of the rage too. The rage refers to the complexity, the irresolvable, the ambiguities, the compromise, the impurity and inauspiciousness that we WILL have to live with. Life doesn't have a cure for what's wrong. Life give us the rage to feel and express and address our rage. Rage keeps good company and that means rage should never be left in isolation or separated from other qualities we will also need: like patience, fortitude, sympathy, compassion, and care. Rage on, calmly.<br />
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Here is the reference to the piece by Charles Blow: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/opinion/us-protests-racism.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage</div>
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dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185854434035026719.post-14581686680739787542020-04-27T10:12:00.001-04:002020-04-27T10:12:02.968-04:00The Great Game, the Art of Making Trouble, Rajanaka's Game of Rudra and Śrī<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>The Art of Making Trouble, Revisited The Great Game or How to Play Rajanaka's Game of Rudra and Śrī</i><div>
<i><br /></i> I asked Appa once what we actually share with the Tantrikas and other philosophers since his views were so unlike the mainstream. To say the least. His answer was "the art of making trouble." This warrants a bit more explanation.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We can call this by all sorts of names and descriptors. We can call it Rudra's Game, because of all of the gods of the Veda, Rudra is the most respected, the most loved, and the most feared. Rudra is ghostbusters, both sweeter than honey and more fierce than fire. This Game also means Kālī Śrī's game with Śiva. She plays to win, never any other way. It's fun and it's often frustrating and difficult and it can hurt. It is a game of intimacy and respect that will succeed and also fail but always aims for greatness, mahā. Greatness means a game worth playing because it is has value past the immediate or apparent.</div>
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It is the Great Game. We might liken it to the Magic Theatre. It is not for everyone and the price of admission is your mind, your heart, maybe your soul. It is a game of soulfulness, not a war for the soul. It is for living, not for the feint of heart, and it is the learning (vidyā) of auspiciousness, that is, radical affirmation. If it doesn't bring you to health, you are playing too hard or have made mistakes. Revise. </div>
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<br />Appa always first described Rajanaka as having the values of the Old World and the Old Gods, that is, the Vedic gods and the Tamil Mother. Simply put, this means"give to me, I give", what we might just call "live long and prosper," and dismisses (or refutes) the foundational model of bondage/liberation that characterizes Hindu, Buddhist, and other later Indian worldviews. This also eliminates or ignores "achievements" like enlightenment, supernaturalism, supernormal powers, and most of what we associate with "religious" claims.</div>
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We turn towards the world, pravritti, rather than away from it (nivritti) and as for what others claim, that is for their consolation. Next, he said we share content with the later traditions---myths, rituals like puja, practices like darshan, and other methodologies that don't arrive until the Tantra puts down its markers. This is where we arrive at the Śrīvidyā with all of its imagery, narrative, and symbology---and with that a comprehensive interest in everything that enters Indian worlds through it, like poetry, music, literature, and "temple worlds."</div>
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But if we Rajanaka so deeply disavow and disagree with the philosophical and interpretive understandings, why do we still engage and are we any longer "Hindus"? Or to put it another way, why do we argue with them and what do we call ourselves if we are so unlike them?</div>
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<br />Appa smiled and said, "Heretics?" But I pressed on, "Why do we engage them at all anymore? Is it because we share in their images, stories, and practices?" Of course this was an important consideration, he said, but the crux of the matter is _how_ we learn. Rajanaka is built on <i>how we learn, not merely what we learn. We aren't told what to think. We are taught how to think. So how do we learn to think?</i></div>
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Tantra, like other philosophical discourse in India, is built on evolving a method of "argument." This doesn't seem "very yogic" to people who have no idea what these traditions are actually like, especially in philosophical Sanskrit. So let's explain why this isn't merely meanness or prattling sophistry.</div>
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The heart of the matter is simple: you only really learn _more_ when you never stop making trouble, either for the other guy or for yourself. You honor the goddess, to put it metaphorically, when you confront your dice-game accuser with another kind of skillful game. What you must learn to do is create a productive and progressive experience that challenges, that pushes you forward to explain, defend, argue, revise, reconsider, evolve your views. The paradox needs to be in place: take the stance that you think you are "right" or that you understand and then do everything you can to undermine your own position. </div>
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You can explain this succinctly to civilians but they likely won't understand what you mean when you say, "read closely, think critically, write argumentatively." So let's unwrap that present and tie with a bow. Then rip it open like a puppy playing with something that she shouldn't be destroying. Hehe...</div>
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Here, more basics:</div>
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*Take no quarter, give no quarter: be relentless, unremitting, rigorous, dogged, even ferocious. It's Rudra unleashed.</div>
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*You argue without end, without final conclusions. You argue to defend your best argument knowing that you must try to undermine yourself.</div>
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*No harm is meant, no ill will. You are permitted nothing petty or vindictive. Invective and accusation are wholly prohibited.</div>
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*Indian writers don't like sarcasm nor are they particularly funny, and that's a damn shame. So if you want to tease or self-immolate, feel free but be nice about it.</div>
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*You must represent the other's point of view with _more_ generosity and an even better, more gracious benefit of the doubt. You make _their_ case sympathetically and as powerfully as you can. Your opponent comes out smarter and better for your efforts to defend them. Then you rip it all to shreds.</div>
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*In the process you learn that your own arguments wobble, they have pitch and yaw, they are not airtight or perfect because nothing is. You can be wrong and you need to know that that is your advantage. You can learn from mistakes because you will make them.</div>
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*The goal is to wobble but not waffle. No careening from idea to idea. No floundering, oscillating, or lurching. Do not allow the ship to breach just because you are determine to skid the waves of this storm. You must learn how to sway and stumble and recover and keep going.</div>
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*Evolving means moving little by little, no big breakthroughs because if those happen then your argument wasn't very good to begin with. So, check that, change large if you are largely wrong. Change some every single time. Never be stuck, you are not permitted to be haughty, recalcitrant, fractious, obstinate, or contumelious.</div>
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*You can be wild, feral, and defiant but not at the price of being dangerous, willful, or undisciplined. Think risk, think more risk, then think if that is prudent at all. Never be so imprudent that you put at risk things that really matter.</div>
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*You can only do these things with others who are in the game. The game is Rudra meets a dissonant world in which recursive and order are always giving way to mutation and chaos.</div>
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*When you meet people who don't know how to play, teach them if they want to learn. If they can't learn for whatever reasons---they are sensitive, they are too imprinted or old, they just don't want to---don't try to make them. Just be nice, let them have their world. Not everyone needs to play Rudra's Game.</div>
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*Never forget that the point of this Game is to become Śrī and Śiva. That means, auspicious in every way possible and that means "always more", trying to be healthy and better for it to yourself and others. Never forget that Śrī is always Kālī and Shiva is always Rudra Nataraja. Never less fierce, or aghora in Sanskrit.</div>
*If the Game gets easy, make it harder. Take up something more challenging, never get complacent, never too assured. You are either on the throttle or you are hitting the brakes. No coasting.<br />*Be Vyāghrapāda. That means, Have Tiger Paws. Never fail to use them. Know you can hurt yourself because you have tiger paws and use them as deftly, as soft hands.<br />*In other words, rage on, calmly.</div>
dbrkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18323403103114744193noreply@blogger.com