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Prajna Offerings (Our Blog)
Without music, life would be a mistake.
– Nietzsche
Reality is merely an illusion,
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”
Alberti Einstein (1879-1955)
Flowers fall when we cling to them,
“Flowers fall when we cling to them, and weeds only grow when we dislike them”.
Dogen, Zen Master
There never was a struggle or a battle which required greater valor than when a person forgets or denies oneself.
Meister Echkart
The things we really need ….
The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless “I” that is all we know as ourselves.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.204
Waiting for one voice?
To wait for one voice to bring it all together is as pointless as waiting for no one. Bring all things together under the Equality of Heaven, allow their process of change to go on unimpeded, and learn to grow old. What do I mean by bringing everything together under the Equality of Heaven? With regard to what is right and wrong, I say not being is being and being is not being. But let us not get caught up in discussing this. Forget about life, forget about worrying about right and wrong. Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there!
Chuang Tzu - The Book of Chuang Tzu
With the sun gone, it is as if the sky is asleep.
So it is with the movement of any great light
That which it makes brilliant by its rising
Is closed away into darkness when it falls.
Kalidasa, Kumarasambhava 8.43
How shall I start teaching an active elderly student?
Dear Maya,
I would start with supported standing poses paying attention to how they stand and balance with support of a wall or counter top. poses like utthita hasta padasana. Legs spread apart ….feet accurately placed and arms extended in line with the shoulders. Parsva Hastasna learning to rotate the front foot and thigh with out losing their alignment. You could also begin with virabhadrasana 2 (warrior pose ) with the hands on the wall or the waist. Do all the standing asana against a wall for support . With a continuous practice of the asana the appendicular skeletal structure will improve and one learns the sense of movement and mobility within the poses bringing greater ease inside.
A poem by William Blake
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
Through the world we safely go.
The Practice of Letting Go
For some time I have thought that yoga demands an ongoing willingness to let go. We train physically by practicing asanas to loosen our bodies to unglue stuck hamstrings, loosen overly bound tendons and and unmoor organs that have become fixed. Not only do we experience stickiness in our physical structure, but we all too often get stuck by events or circumstances in our lives. Psychological sticking may be more debilitating than physical tightness, and too, they are often coupled together.
Much of our training on the mat is preparation to let go. Reflecting on transiency is imperative to actualizing letting go. Situations in time are continuously dissolving like snowflakes that fall onto the hood of a car with its engine running. That all things dissolve is referred to in the Tibetan practices of Mahamudra ³liberation upon arising. As a thing comes into being, it is destined to dissolve‹it has the “mark” of dissolution.
Letting go is to liberate upon arising. This entails allowing things to change. Letting go is to acknowledge that nothing stays the same, all is impermanent and things change shape, change orientation, change substance. It is liberating to allow things to morph. This morphing is the Tao and letting go is to be in the Way of the flow itself.