Thought I'd Something More to Say

Yow! Mortality on the mind this week, and then this morning as Chris, Brynn, and I were driving to the massage school listening to The Dubber Side of the Moon,  Time comes up. Both Chris and I are brought to tears. That doesn't happen often anymore, a song hitting such an emotional chord, much less one that synchronizes Chris' and my clocks.  Maybe it's the timing. We're in our 40's now for god's sake, shorter of breath and, well, you know the rest.

Not sure what brought on the awareness and, gasp, acceptance of the fact that I'm gonna die someday. It may have been the National Geographic article on earth's population reaching 7 billion this year. Yes, I think that's when it hit me. The video clip on the Web site is a bit too glib. Hey! Let's party like it's 2010! We only need space the size of Rhode Island for all of us to dance around? Misses the point that we're not the only Earthlings and that there's a dependency, nay, inter-dependency, for all life remaining balanced. Frankly, National Geographic disappoints in this respect. Didn't expect that from them. But getting back to my little, personal epiphany: the idea of 7 billion of us breathing in the air put my sense of self into perspective. Things could get bad for us or for our grandchildren, or somehow we'll all manage to muddle through this overpopulation with smiles on our kissers, but one thing's for sure, I'm going to live a while longer, and then stop doing that. Ticka, ticka, tock! Look at the clock!

I think I'll try to be awake for my remaining years.  How about you? I watched a clip this morning of Pattabi Jois leading a group of yogis through the Primary Series." Beautiful, but probably filmed 20 or so years ago. Where are these legends of yoga now? Guruji is not here anymore. This doesn't change my reverence for my chosen life's practice, but it puts it into perspective. I have loved my yoga this week--my body and breath coordinated, and I moved in ways that surprised myself. I'm not going to stop, but I also have to know that this is temporary. It won't do me any good to hold fast to this image of me practicing yoga like this forever and ever. Yoga wakes me up, but it could also put me to sleep if I slip into rigid thinking.

I'm off now to guide a group through the asanas, encouraging their breath, and, I hope, a sense of presence. I'd like us to slow down and stop chasing the sun for an hour, even as we salute it. I'm wishing these yogis, and you, an alive Saturday with a distinctive lack of quiet desperation.

That's What I'm Tallkin' About

This was in my inbox this morning. Check out Tricycle's article on mind/body-ness. This is the sort of practice that resonates for me.  Something to ruminate this week and write on next. Maybe.

Technology Schmechnology

"With all of our information slipping into the wireless realm, people have never needed yoga and other practices to ground them into their physical bodies more." 

~ Dulcinea Circelli - Los Angeles based yoga teacher, writer, Artist

I borrowed the above quote from an acquaintance's, a fellow yoga teacher trainee with me two years ago, Facebook page. This has been a major theme for me the past few weeks ever since that class on new literacies I mentioned in an earlier post. I have the same question now as I did then: What does it mean to be a human, embodied, in all this digital zaniness? And there's more to that question than meets the eye. I paid attention this week to how frequently I'm drawn into this collective consciousness that is our technology. I've convinced myself that it's useful, and indeed, it can be. I found a decent video clip on YouTube to supplement my science lesson on seed dispersal for my 2nd graders. Ideally we would have wandered into a dandelion field to see the blizzard first hand, and if I could find a plant that bursts and flings its seeds, that would have been more powerful. Since neither of these experiences were immediately accessible, the clip taught more than a dry lecture from me could have done. The grand finale of the clip was a rhino pooping. No way I could duplicate that.


So it's all useful stuff, right? Eh, not so sure. I know I'm going to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist here, but we, the bulk of the planet's nearly 7 billion inhabitants, are so easily led by the nose by pretty advertisements, misleading information that must be true 'cuz it's on the net, time ticking away at games when the flesh and blood people sitting next to us go unnoticed. How many of our opinions have been formed for us by these entertainments? I read another article this week on Ecological Buddhism, a bit depressing, but necessary to look at, I think. The interviewee mentions how the science of social control is so refined these days that it takes all a meditator can do just to be aware of it, let alone resist. (And then to read that perhaps the best a meditator can hope for is to be able to bear the unbearable when the shit hits the fan...Where's the jewel in the shit?) So there's that. 

No doubt you've heard about the tree octopus hoax, right? I'm pretty sure I'm the last person to catch wind of it. Well, there's this weird thing about being human that enables us to believe really absurd things--sometimes the more absurd, the more tenaciously we believe them. Tree octopus is case in point. Now there doesn't have to be an internet or TV or iPhone in order for this strange idiosyncrasy to manifest itself, but I'm thinking there's something about the electronic world that links directly with a more primitive area of our brain when we plug into it. We don't even recognize that our strong reactions (or lack thereof) to news and events have been conditioned, created really, by something external and not always in our best interest. 

Didn't Star Trek teach us anything?

Then there's the esoteric view. Aside from being a time vortex, getting caught up in little virtual dramas is a lot like living in the future or snagged in the past, anywhere but here, really. There's no "here." It's an un-zen, un-yoga noplace to be (or not be). Here's Zen iconoclast Brad Warner's opinion on the subject. 


Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I still plug in. Obviously. I'm doing it right now. But maybe I'll plug in a little less frequently, choose reality over virtual reality whenever possible. Now that this is written up, I see that I would have much rather written on the other side of the issue, about embodiment and the way my yoga practice grounds me both in my physical body and in the present. Yesterday I watched a gymful of sweaty Zumba dancers shake their booties while I waited to teach my class. They looked happy. They looked alive. There were 30 people at my class, too, getting curious about these strange, fleshy mechanisms and how they work.  Yoga and meditation do seem needed more than ever, to explore the mind and inquire about what THIS is, this body/brain/mind/life thing. A topic for next time, perhaps. For now, I'm going to quit writing and go scratch my cat behind his cute little cheek tufts.

These Are The Days it Never Rains But It Pours

The word "retreat" has been on my mind this week that has seemed like just too much mindless running on a treadmill. I even looked up a Zen retreat in Santa Fe--still thinking about that one. Several quiet days of not doing could do me a world of good. Yes, that's a romantic view of it. I know it's harder than it looks. I'd be wrestling with urges to seek out entertainment that couldn't be found, no Facebook or YouTube to fritter away the hours. Who knows what else would bubble up when all other distractions were limited? And still, I could go.

I received an email requesting my submission for the Parent Council newsletter of my children's school. The sender apologetically asked for our blurbs so that she could get this newsletter out in this busy time of year. What makes this time particularly busy? I don't deny it, but what? Is it the hustle and bustle of Valentine's? President's Day? The incredibly beautiful intimation of spring we've got going on outside even as I write? The only thing that makes it busy is us.

Looking for some solace, and probably some escape, I stumbled on the exquisite performance of "Under Pressure" with David Bowie and the mystery performer who says as much when she cuts off the sound as she does belting it out. Who is she? If you know, let me in on the secret. There are a couple of lines I swear I heard for the first time, "It's the terror of knowing what this world's all about," hits me with a sense of what we see when we strip away our pretenses and ideas about what's what. Seeing. And then transcending an old-fashioned, romantic notion of love for something that dares us to care "for the people on the edge of the night" as well as for ourselves in a new way.  The song recharges me with its undercurrent urgency.

This morning I allowed myself to wake naturally. With every intention of planning out a yoga class for this Sunday community that's gathering momentum, I sat down with coffee in hand and laptop in lap. I did a quick check of some blogs and took a peek into one I don't read as often, Mind Deep. The author has posted a number of videos of Jon Kabat-Zin. Telling myself I didn't have time for this, I don't have time to spend an hour watching a video on meditation, no, I've got a yoga class to prepare, I've got to correct a stack of spelling tests and homework assignments and make Valentine's cards for each of my 27 students, and read my assignment for class this week, and look up restaurants to celebrate V-Day with my significant others, and, and, and, and I'm glad I watched the entire clip.  Retreat! Drop everything! What is THIS? (I don't know!)

Maybe you don't have the time either, but dip your toes in for a few minutes and see.   If you can watch the entire clip, there's some good insight in the last ten minutes about being human when Kabat-Zin mentions Philip Zimbardo and a lecture entitled "The Banality of Evil." At the very least, this clip did me good in the way Bowie does, in giving me a motive to take up meditation that has nothing to do with attaining enlightenment and everything to do with simply finding an awareness of what THIS is, and looking love in the face when it dares you to change your way of caring for yourself.

Will the Real Bad Asses Please Stand?

I went to a real live roller derby last night for the first time ever with spouse, brother, and sister-in-law. I was prepared to find some kind of outlaw rigged warehouse scenario surrounded by Harley Davidsons and oil barrel firepits, even though I knew my pre-purchased tickets were awaiting me at will-call at the Salt Palace. We parked in the new underground parking, an asceptic-appearing maze of garages, and although I've never seen the movie "Saw," I had the eerie sensation as we ascended a narrowing, still-under-construction staircase to the street that we were being funneled into a psychopath's lab where we'd be required to undergo seriously demented trials if we were to see the sun rise again. Instead we were spit out facing entirely the wrong direction. With four of us, though, we were able to orient and hike back toward the event building, the palacial Salt Palace. We walked through the front doors, past a grand ballroom. Roller derby in a carpeted ballroom? Nah. We headed down a long ramp past the gun and hunting expo and display after display of taxidermists' quarry. At long length we found a simple sign that said "Roller Derby" with an arrow pointing us back from whence we had come. Completing the loop, we followed a series of signs around several corners, spiraling down to the cement floored basement. No elevated, slanted derby track ala "Whip It," but a duct taped oval with folks camped out around the perimeters on plaid picnic blankets. We took our seats in the convention center chairs and settled in to figure out how in the hell roller derby is played (and why). The why was easy. It's campy, fun, and an outlet for repressed female aggression. Turns out the rules aren't that complicated either. It wasn't long before I was cheering on Honey Delunatic, Alley Kitten and the other rollers for the Black Diamond Divas.

But with a 20-minute intermission while the Jr. League took the track I had time to survey the crowd. Exactly what kind of people frequent Utah Roller Derby? Not all stereotypes applied. A few tats, sure. Nose rings? One or two, but also beauty shop quaffed post-middle agers with grandchildren, young kids with their parents, a handful of overweight teens. In short, the kind of crowd you'd see at a state fair or small town city parade. Where were the punks? Where were the bad asses? This brings me to my point, it's not easy to spot a true bad ass these days.

I'll admit I've never been good at spotting them. In Jr. High I'd been warned about reading The Catcher in the Rye, and so of course I read it. I was prepared to be shocked by evil but instead found a character so human and, I realized, not so unlike me: confused, beginning to see behind the curtain of adult competency. These sorts of surprises have come up again and again. A favored example is scrappy barfly Charles Bukowsky harboring that bluebird fugitive in his heart, letting it out to sing once in awhile when no one else will hear.  I suspect Skatey Gaga and Nico Noir would be less frightening face to face than Senator Orrin Hatch or, say, Glenn Beck. But I could be wrong about these guys, too.  Perhaps.

Tweet, tweet.

No Self

Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.


How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!




The Buddhist idea of no self is not quite what Emily had in mind, I imagine, when she wrote one of my favorite of her poems, but it's a nice tangential reference, and maybe not so far off the mark. My yoga/meditation practice lagged behind this past week, but in the back of my thoughts I danced around with the awareness of having no solidly defined identity so to speak. I like to think I'm a little more concrete, and I act as if I am, but at the edges there is only a vague outline and something a little more flexible and fluid--open to change. I don't know if you've had the experience of waking up one morning knowing you're not the person you were even yesterday, let alone two years ago. It's an uncanny sensation the first time you experience it, but more interesting than surprising once you accept it. 


Here are Stephen Batchelor's words on the subject:

"...the person is nothing but a fleeting configuration of the fugitive elements of body and mind; that there is nothing substantial to it, nothing enduring, nothing constant."

This is a departure from the religious education of my childhood where I was taught to "hold to the rod," Wicked, heathen double entendres aside, I was instilled with a sense of urgency at pinning myself down, perfecting it, grasping at "Truth" with the unrelenting tenacity of a pit bull. But I never could be that constant. I doubt anyone can. I imagine anyone who comes close would be a rather formidable figure to confront--all that rigidity and rightness supplanting a natural compassion for the living, breathing others out there.


Another contradiction was the story of the wise man building his house upon the stone rather than the sand. I understand the good sense behind a solid foundation. This is a yoga basic: rooting down into the earth, feeling a solid connection to your core, allows for an almost effortless lift and extension in Virabhadrasana, for example.

Maybe Buddhists would not disagree with building on solid ground either--the solid ground of awareness! It makes a certain common sense. But in terms of pinning down the self, it sounds more like turning to stone than building on it. Batchelor goes on to say that a rigid individual would not be able to act. It takes having no self, paradoxically, to be able to move. 
The chapter I'm currently reading, however, has me a bit more baffled by Buddhism. I'm attracted to the practice of meditation and its potential for awakening. Emptiness and no self, as I understand these tenets, ring true. But Batchelor describes other more metaphysical elements in Buddhism (a mind separate from the brain, for example) that sound as archaic and entangled as the convoluted doctrines of Mormonism specifically and Christianity in general that do not jive with the world as I perceive it. Seems this is what we human beings do with the seeds of a simple, liberating philosophy--pin it down, construct institutions around it, and blind ourselves with dogmatic certainty. I'm more and more convinced that embracing ambiguity and uncertainty is a more valuable and honest stance to take. I'll let my morality be based on actions that mitigate rather than contribute to suffering here and now and leave ideas about hereafter and disembodied souls for other speculators. As for giving myself a religious or philosophical label, I'd rather join Emily and the other nobodies. Shhhh! Don't tell! 

The Light is Already On

Just sharing a bit that made me feel good this morning. I'm foregoing 6AM yoga class in light of the fact that the rest of my day will be filled with teaching, meeting the parents of my students, then leading a yoga class. No time in between to eat or take a pee.

The Lazy Little Guide to Enlightenment