Saturday, November 10, 2007

A Prayer for Jumpin John

Jumpin John was not one of the murderers in the Quaker Meetinghouse last weekend. Nor was I.

Nor did I name him Jumpin John. He named himself, reflexively, as we circled the room adding positive, alliterative adjectives to our names. We were also asked to invent gestures that pantomimed the names and to say the name and give the gesture throughout the weekend. It was the first exercise in an intense, 20-hour, Alternatives to Violence Project workshop.

Trust the Quakers to find a disarming way to begin a difficult topic. I should probably mention, since most people won't know, that the Quakers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for their work against the Nazis.

Jumpin John's brief introduction didn't mention the mandate that sent him to an anger management course, but as a cab driver with an enormous chip on his shoulder, it was quickly evident that this could be a scary man to have drive you home late at night.

My conflict issues quickly paled next to John's. I was there to see if I could really address the questions advertised on the workshop poster, like "Do you find it difficult to say 'No'?" "Do you avoid people because of unresolved conflicts?" "Is it difficult for you to let go of grudges?" To which I can answer "yes, yes, and oh definitely".

I named myself Gentle Jessica. Not because I think I'm especially gentle, but because it is the quality I'd like to bear in any conflict. And because I believe that if I can't find the most gentle place in my heart regarding some recent and very difficult personal conflicts, I will be destroyed by lingering anger. It's sink or swim time for me.

The two murderers, the actual convicted killers who had both served hard time in prison, were two of the workshop facilitators.

Honestly.

But think about it, who is more intimate with the heart of violence, and with all of its outward forms, than someone who has committed the ultimate violence, and then had every opportunity to think about it for years on end while living in the most violent prisons in the country?

From these men I learned that in order to deal gently with conflict, we start with a gentle prayer. Transforming Power is at the heart of this idea, and it starts in our own hearts. We pray for someone who disagrees with us, who scares us, who violates us, and consciously turn prayer into the words we speak. It transforms us, and it can transform a potentially difficult situation.

It helps to understand that "Hurt people hurt people." So when someone is hurting us, we identify that they may be working from their own fears, anger, pain. We accept their feelings, hear their thoughts, and are careful not to meet anger with anger, fear with fear, pain with pain.

Jumpin John injected loud angry humor into any conversation he could. He posed questions to the group that reaffirmed his right to be angry at the assholes, fruitcakes, freaks of the world. He really was enjoying himself, although his fear and pain surfaced like that of a small child hoping to be soothed in his outburst.

It was really instructive how quickly anger becomes cartoonish in the lack of any real resistance.

He became a group project: A lonely old man who had drunk away most of the people who mattered to him, and who alienated and scared the people who paid him to drive them home. It was hard, finally, not to turn to Jumpin John and ask "What part of your brain do you want to live in? What part of your heart? It's totally up to you."

I haven't spoken with Jumpin John this week, but I really think he got it. And I have a little prayer for him: to befriend the people he meets, and to become the sweetest, most popular driver in his little town.

I actually believe this could happen, but it's the same for any of us, we have to actively release, actively give up our cherished right to be mad.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ecstatic Mystic

The words may have little or nothing to do with the great hawk migration I watched on Sunday afternoon. It was whispered in my ear, I think, as I slept last night, or the night before; by a friend maybe. It had the sweet urgency of a gift that needed unwrapping. With no idea of what it meant, I woke up and googled the term.

Maybe it was the echo of Quaker meeting that Sunday morning. But the word "l'inespoir" was what floated on my breath in the silence, pressing for delivery. This is a French word used by Kashmiri Shivaite Tantra teacher Daniel Odier to describe the state of having no clingy expectations of life, enjoying rather an immediate and thorough experience of what actually exists as it happens.

Another woman stood, though, and said that "emptiness" was the word she was hearing. It seemed just right to me. In the wisdom of the Quaker unprogrammed service, if words need to be spoken, someone in the room will do it, even if you feel you're not the right person, or aren't hearing the words clearly enough to share.

She explained that "emptiness" came to her as a direction - that one should empty her mind, so she could discover that the love she was looking for was already sitting in her heart. Another way of hearing "l'inespoir".

There is poetry in the expectant quiet of a Quaker service. And mysticism, I suppose.

But the term ecstatic mystic to describe non-dualism is new to me even though the traditions I read seem to fall in the category. Kabbalah, Tantra, Zen, Quakers are all non-dualist: we may have some nasty habits and look like hell, but we are all godstuff with great potential.

Which seems fundamental to appreciating the astonishing joy of our lives on this planet. "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." That's Carl Sagan, and non-dualism. Peter Matthiessen, the nature writer, weaves these things together brilliantly. I've spent the last two months in The Snow Leopard, which may be longer than his trek to the Crystal Mountain in Nepal actually took, although I don't know because I haven't finished, circling back as I am through the chapters.

What I can tell you is that the hawk migration was breathtaking. Few were visible to the naked eye, but with a decent pair of binoculars and a still hand, you could actually watch hundreds of hawks "kettling" up in the wisps of the clouds: lifting on thermals in soaring paths.

From the ground, you couldn't hear the joy of the hawks, but the joy of the hawk watchers sounded something like this: "two dozen shorties kettling in the big gray cloud 2 o'clock from the 2nd cuppola".

I don't suppose we have the technology yet to examine those whispers we hear, feel, know so clearly, that bear us to love.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Beautiful Greetings

Na Mu Myo *Ho* Ren Ge Kyo

This is the proper greeting to a monk or nun of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist order. Three times, with deep bows, hands in prayer in front of your heart, a warm smile.

If you have trouble with that for any reason, "hi - how are your feet? have you had lunch?" works just great.

It is a relatively small sect, started in 1947 as a response to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They do two things - they walk very, very long distances - across continents, it can take years - and they build peace pagodas, or stupas.

On September 1st, Jun-San Yasuda, the nun who started the Grafton Peace Pagoda, will begin a walk from Grafton, New York, to the site of the World Trade Center to promote awareness of the global climate change. She will arrive on September 11th.

I spent some time with Jun-San in the summer of 1993. With little else to do - no job, no debt, no larger intentions - I showed up with a puppy and a tent, and worked: lifted rocks, cleaned potatoes, chased my puppy out of the moat.

Inspiration for the entire summer came at a Finnish sauna party at the Maine home of a dear friend. When I expressed concern about the enormous amount of time in front of me and my questionable lack of direction, people volunteered their projects. Among them was Debbie Chess, a sculptor commissioned to create the scenes of Buddha's life for the peace pagoda.

There was no grand excitement in those weeks. From Jun-San I learned many things: not to worry when my puppy ran across a freshly raked Zen rock garden; the unspoken secret of truly exceptional - and organic - flower beds; the etiquette of the outdoor Japanese bath; and to love the grace in the lilting cadence of that greeting.

I learned my first vegetarian lesson - to eat whatever a loving person cooks for you - whether it is vegetarian or not. I was not a vegetarian at the time but was concerned that well-meaning Girl Scouts were dropping off pork buns for Jun-San.

I also learned that when the group ran out of money for the scaffolding under which the giant dome of the peace pagoda was to be built, a Japanese structural engineer miraculously showed up and taught volunteers how to cut saplings from the surrounding woods and tie them into a sturdy scaffolding. And so the giant dome continued upwards.

The peace pagoda was in every respect a wonder to me. At 5:00 am volunteers sleeping in the main house walked the grounds with drums, blessing the site, each morning newly scaring me and the puppy into an awed awakening. I'd peek out the side of the tent, praying they wouldn't come over, lift the flap and invite me to join them.

I watched people carve prayers from different languages and traditions into the cement bricks we poured, like teenagers carving their love lives into fresh sidewalks. And from this vagabond group of volunteers reflecting on the passion that had erected the giant stupa, I saw that Buddhists love miracles as much as Christians do.

Jun-San's walk is being supported by many spiritual organizations along the road from Grafton to Lower Manhattan. I heard of this particular walk from some Quakers in Westchester. She will sleep at night in homes as people offer and eat as loving people feed her.

It isn't the longest walk she has taken, but I have learned that her loving-kindness will touch people's hearts and hopefully illuminate the value and art of thoughtful, low-impact living.

Here is Jun-San's most recent schedule:

Millerton 9-2-07
Ten Mile River / Dover Plains 9-3-07
Pawling 9-4-07
Brewster 9-5-07
Yorktown 9-6-07
Peekskill 9-7-07
Ossining 9-8-07
Dobbs Ferry 9-9-07
Fort Lee 9-10-07

Friday, August 24, 2007

Fuzzy Bazillapedes

I wake up from a nap on my meditation cushion in the late afternoon sun of an August day. Head on the cushion, blanket below my shoulders, feet stretched out towards my bed. Yesterday I met my ex-husband to put to sleep the puppy we raised, but today I am still.

The sun filters through the screen door and boat masts clank brightly outside.

I know I was humming a mantra when I fell asleep, but on waking what I recall are the long feathery bugs with a bazillion legs I've seen skimming across the floor when I've turned on a light in the middle of the night. I guess they come out of gaps in the floor boards of this old house, or chinks in the fireplace, close to where my pillow is right now.

May he be safe. May he be happy. May he be peaceful.

I suppose because it's daylight, or because my sadness has given way to exhaustion, I'm relaxed as I wonder if these are centipedes or millipedes or something altogether different. Not long ago I gave to a hospital thrift store stacks of nature guides that belonged to my grandfather. And I wonder if I gave away his guide to insects. I know I held onto books of Eastern Birds, Shells of the Atlantic Coast, Trees, and Night Skies. They keep me good company in this garret studio on the little harbor. But I gave away many that pointed to other places and times.

My grandfather is buried in a quiet town in South Carolina, his body strangely confined in a steel vault that will separate him from the natural world indefinitely. He did not live that way, so it's nice to think that each book might provide a moment in someone's life where they step outside and look at a flower or some local creature in a new way. I remember Georgia O'Keeffe's observation "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time."

On the first page of each book he wrote his name in elegant, long letters. I like to think of them being scattered like seeds around this little town as people pull them from the shelves and carry them home, tucked under an arm. I wish I'd added my own inscription to each of the books: "This was my grandfather's book. I hope you enjoy it." And maybe dated them. Or maybe added the dates of his life and how he grew up hunting and fishing in the woods of Appalachia, son of a town doctor who died much too early in a car accident. Or how frustrated he was by the hernia that kept him from serving in World War II. And how incomparably gentle he was.

It is said that the karmic balls the Buddha started rolling 2600 years ago are still rolling. So it was a small, happy measure to share these books that mingle my grandfather's karma with that of this little town.

I will probably not mention the fuzzy bazillapedes to my landlady, although she is fascinated by every aspect of this house. It was built by her grandmother, who kept her writing desk in the very spot my computer now sits.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Faith, Florence and Faith

I suppose cranky doesn't fall within the realms of surprising beauty. Usually cranky is what gets between us and real beauty. Recently I believed, correctly, I think, that a daylong retreat last Sunday with Sharon Salzberg would help me shake out a recent crank.

"Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience."

That's from Sharon's beautiful book, Faith, and what she's pointing us to is self-love. If you don't know her, Sharon is a American Buddhist teacher. She teaches loving kindness and mindfulness meditations, and on recent Tuesday evenings you could find her at Tibet House in Manhattan teaching free workshops.

In the Buddhist tradition, if you dig deep enough inside, clearing out all the stuff that can swipe your attention, what you find is your best self, your Buddha Nature, and this, the deep self-love, is the place Sharon would like you to know and trust.

Here's one of her loving kindness meditations:

May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be peaceful.

This meditation repeats and circles, expanding slowly, and finally embracing every person and all living creatures:

May all creatures be safe.
May all creatures be happy.
May all creatures be peaceful.

This includes, although not specifically mentioned, the waiter who probably spit in your lunch when you changed your order, or the person staring harshly at their neighbor on the subway. Try it - it's really quite lovely.

And while Sharon suggests these words, she allows for variations, so on Sunday I found myself adding, May I be kind, May I be loved. And I generously asked for the same for all.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised, on a karmic level, at the people I ran into from my own circular yoga path at this retreat she was teaching with Krishna Das at the Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan.

(I suppose I should post a warning: that link on Krishna Das goes to a Caribbean-style Hare Krishna mantra. I worry every time I do something like that - I promise, I haven't joined a cult, but I'm not going to go into here why I find these mantras so beautiful. Ah - per lovely GD's comment, this is South African Township style Mahamantra.)

Greeting A-G's at Will Call was Florence, an Upper Westside writer I met in 2004 at the Indian ashram of Amma, the Hugging Saint. I would not have placed Florence, since the last time I saw her she was wearing a white cotton sari, but she kindly recognized me and said hello.

Florence now has the exquisitely beautiful name Sri Lalitambika. I don't know what it means, and I don't know if she's signing checks like that, but it was given to her by Amma and it seems to me a wonderful gift, and charge, to have your essence named by a living saint.

At the far end of the spectrum, in my mind, was a yoga teacher from a gym in Greenwich whom I had found disingenuous - no, actually I found her deeply irritating - because she could not successfully pronounce "Adho Mukha Svanasana", the Down Dog pose, even though she tried again and again as she led us through the vinyasa. I remember thinking, "Girlfriend, just leave it alone." I suppose it's no accident the loving kindness meditation begins at home.

And here she was, after 6 months of yoga practice, 1 month of teacher training, and a year now teaching in Greenwich, shaking her shimmy to Krishna Das, and meditating with Sharon. And probably blowing open her heart just the way I did, maybe better. And I wonder, what, exactly, does better mean?

Rachael, my Veg Baba and dear yoga buddy, was also there, although I didn't see her. And Faith Fennessey was there, the first of Rachael and my teachers at Jivamukti.

Turns out Faith was standing on line in front of the ballroom just ahead of me. I remember noticing her shoes, but standing directly between the two of us was a Tall Hamptons Blond on her cell phone trying to find her date. It seemed to me that this was not a bleached hair kind of event and I felt genuinely infringed upon, enough so that I couldn't even see my adored yoga teacher just ahead of her.

Instead my monkey brain raced along identifying the collagen lines in the woman's cheeks and lips, noticing the stunning blues she had layered and juxtaposed in her outfit, and feeling sorry for the squeaky appeal in her voice when she finally got her date on the phone.

And my reaction was emblematic, really - judgmental, insecure, unkind - exactly the stuff that gets between us and our Buddha Natures, according to Sharon and Krishna Das. Fortunately for me, I happened to sit down next to Faith in the ballroom and we had dinner together. I wish we'd seen Rachael to bring her along. And maybe if the blond woman hadn't actually found the only cordoned seating in the house, she might have been sitting between me and Faith, and I might have thought to invite her to dinner, too.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

One Fine Day

One fine day, I hope, the man I love will ask me out for a cup of tea. In the meantime, at the advice of friends, I am thinking about whether I can vibrate like that which I desire, to paraphrase Esther Hicks. The Universe, according to the Hicks, will give you what you want if you know how to ask for it and correct vibration is part of the key, as I understand it.

I'm wondering though, if that which I desire is a big old rugby player, just as an example, do I really want to imitate and emit the vibrations of a big old rugby player? And what if I should manage that with any amount of accuracy? What does that say about the big old rugby players I might attract? I'm 5'7" and barely 120 pounds. See the difficulty? I should probably actually read Esther Hicks' book before I try any of that, but last Saturday I thought I'd go to St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC and spend some time in a beautiful and heavily vibrating Gothic Cathedral. I should mention that the man I love is Catholic.

Out in front of St. Pat's, it happened that the Hare Krishnas were having a parade down Fifth Avenue and I took some photos of their bright orange floats against the stately backdrop of the Cathedral. I was reminded of just how much fun it is to jump into the middle of a parade with a camera even though I don't have a press pass anymore. A New York City cop, when he's on parade duty, really doesn't care. It's exhilarating and you should try it.

Every time I walk into St. Patrick's, I regret that I haven't asked my sister, who married into the Catholic church, whether I'd offend anybody by being there, or whether I'm actually allowed to put any of the holy water on that knot in my forehead. I hate to mention it after the fact.

There was a wedding starting inside the vast space, lots of tourists, cameras, incense and candles. To the extent anyone was worshipping, it was in the Lady Chapel on the side and that's where I sat down. And so I listened and watched and thought about the Latin American man in the pew ahead of me, and the Polish being spoken behind me, and the flash of the cameras, and the lighting on the altar, and the random chords of the organ vibrating the pipes in anticipation of the bride. It was enough to sit very still and be thankful of the beauty and love that erected this sacred building and to notice the people it nurtures on a daily basis with its wide open doors, many of whom are virtually invisible to the larger society around them.

St. Patrick's Cathedral hosted many funerals and memorial services after September 11th since so many of the City's firemen and police officers are Catholic. It served so many and became the locus of a great deal of prayer and healing. It is one of my favorite places in the City and I always pass back through it's doors grateful but aware that I need to spend more time understanding the nuances of its faith and ritual.

My sister has already told me that as divorced non-Catholic, it is highly unlikely that I would ever be allowed to marry in the Catholic church. No matter. I am aware on this fine day that at this point it is also unlikely I will marry the man I love, because it actually looks doubtful that he'll get around to asking me out for tea. Uma Saraswati, a yoga teacher at Jivamukti, once pointed out that one of the nice things about yoga is that it teaches you that if you really love blue, but one day you get green instead, you don't let it ruin the entire day. Another view to consider when the Universe seems to be ignoring you.

With that in mind, I headed up to Central Park. I took a free fly-casting lesson offered by Trout Unlimited, sat and watched the herons in the pond next to Bethesda Fountain, and then cut across the park to Lincoln Center. When I asked a security guard at New York City Ballet whether the box office was open, he pulled out a free ticket he'd been given and handed it to me with a big smile. So I sat for the rest of the afternoon, and watched Wendy Whelan dance The Nightingale feeling that any day could really turn out to be a very fine day.

Friday, June 15, 2007

A Girl Thing

Dolly has been cleaning my teeth for a dozen years now. Today she wanted some flight time on the office's new power bleach machine and decided I could not go home without the pearliest white teeth. John, my dentist, agreed I was a perfect candidate.

I asked the price, was offered a generous discount, and bit.

5 hours later, with my gums shedding skin like a scalded snake, I have to say, my teeth have never been more beautiful, and I had a great time. It was a girl thing. Dolly and Marilyn, the office manager, admired my basket-of-flowers handbag, talked about how I'd have to start drinking coffee and tea through a straw, and decided they'd take care of me on their lunch break while John was at the gym, since the schedule was otherwise full.

Marilyn turned on a gentle jazz station she thought I'd like, and while Dolly was setting up the alternating bleach and pain killer applications, protective waxes, gauze, mouth pieces and vaseline, we talked about dating again at "our" age, and why you should never trust a man who brings you flowers. Someone said something about sensitivities, but I was distracting myself with one of my own recent dating horror stories.

They brought out John's camera and took a "before" shot and matched my teeth against a dummy to show just how bad they were. I was a D-3. As Dolly covered every inch of my face with one form of protection or another she told me how her aunt in the Dominican Republic had gone on-line and found her cousin, who's way too skinny, a husband from Canada.

I asked whether they'd get out the deep childhood tetracycline stain I've had for 30 years, but Dolly told me firmly that she was not going to let me leave without perfect, I mean, perfectly white teeth. Dolly is an artist and while she was thoughtfully applying various goos to my teeth I wondered whether the pink lipstick she was wearing would look good on me if I had teeth as white as hers.

When she was done, she gave me a screwdriver and directed me to rap on one of the metal surfaces near me if I needed her to come back in while the bleaching machine was on. Sensitivity is the polite word for a freezer burn that starts to register in your teeth about five minutes into this procedure and spreads with each application up into the bones of your head and neck. I considered using the screwdriver, but decided I wasn't going to be a crybaby.

Dolly didn't take any of the gauze out of my mouth after the first application, or I probably would have mentioned that I was having a little burning sensation, but she was also busy discussing the progress with Marilyn and deciding which teeth needed more attention. Women have very high pain thresholds, I thought, and figured I'd survive.

In retrospect I realize that I might have whined a little had John been doing this, but he didn't get back from lunch until all the gauze was finally coming out of my mouth and Dolly and Marilyn were congratulating me on going from a D-3 to an A-2 on the color chart. Anybody knows that's a huge step in beauty progress.

And really, they look great. I'm hoping that by tomorrow morning the bleeding will have stopped and I'll still be motivated to do the first of the three daily applications John told me I'd need to get out the deepest of the stains. He hinted that a bunch of Advil would probably be a good idea. But it was the comradery that was so nice. It's the same in the beauty salon or manicure shop. Marilyn, by the way, thinks red lipstick would be a great look for me. I may not be smiling at anybody for a few days, but as soon as I can take the paper towel out of my mouth I'm going to try a few colors.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Curling Around om

I use the word "curl" gingerly anymore, because I used it, poetically, I thought, in my very first love letter and that letter was unacknowledged by the receiver. So now it belongs in the realm of heartbreaks for me if I'm not careful. That probably seems overblown to anyone who talks about curly hair, or wisteria curling around a tree trunk, but I try to find other words.

I mention this only as an example of how a word can resonate strongly in a person, although maybe it's not a great example if you've never tried to talk about your path curling around another person's. Yogis, however, recognize this to positive effect: chanting the name of god to create the hum of god in one's body, for instance.

If the hum of the universe, or god, has a human name, according to the ancient yogis it is "Om". And they believed that in saying "Om" a person not only speaks the name of god, but also starts an incredibly healthy vibration of god internally up along the spinal cord to the brain. That's onomatopoeia to the ultimate degree, it seems to me, and highly useful.

So contemporary yogis were not surprised when the Hubble telescope discovered that the universe hums, and quantum physics told us that matter is made up of energy waves. Nor were they when scientific studies showed that humming to yourself for a few minutes raises your spirits.

It seems natural that saying the name of god to yourself for a few minutes should be helpful since it directs your thoughts to god. And yoga is meant to be a very grounding way to connect the physical, mental and spiritual components of our human existence into one god-loving frame of mind housed in a carefully maintained temple.

So just as the language we know as Italian was systematically built, or let's say codified, around the poetry of Dante, Sanskrit, the language of yoga, was built for prayer. There is another word that is said to be onomatopoeic for the concept of peace: Shanthi. That's actually what peace sounds like according to yogis. As an English-speaking people, we have some reason to care about Sanskrit since words like devotion and service derive from it.

As I understand it, many Sanskrit mantras, or prayers, are constructed from particular sound vibrations and connect you with the talents of different Hindu gods. "Aum Gam Ganapataye Namaha" is the mantra of Ganesha, the god of new beginnings. I am in no position to explain how the vibration of the seed word "Gam" is meant to move you past your mental obstacles to a clear new understanding of difficulties, but millions of people in India, of all religious persuasions, pray to Ganesha in this way. If it works, I'm all for it.

I find this quite fascinating but there are less esoteric ways of understanding prayer.

In his Foreword to the 2004 The Best American Spiritual Writing, Philip Zaleksi writes:

The following, from the London "Sunday Express" of January 25, 1959, exemplifies the saving force of words. It describes the actions of three soldiers, marooned on the Greenland ice cap during World War II, who sought solace through prayer:

They knelt in the sunshine, praying continually. There was only one prayer they all knew, and they chanted it together unceasingly, as children recite a memorized lesson, uncomprehendingly. "Our Father, which art in heaven . . ." they chanted right through to the end, and then straightway back to the beginning again, hundreds of times, as though rescue depended absolutely on their maintaining an unbroken stream of prayer.

This ceaseless devotion buoyed their spirits, steeled their wills, and seemed to have played a key role in their ability to survive until help arrived. Contrast this with the avalanche of violence, hatred, and terror that assaults us daily through television, movies, newspapers, magazines, and the bestseller lists. What effect does this poisonous lectionary have upon our faculties of perception and cognition and in turn upon our ability to meet the world with faith, hope and charity? Words have consequences; writing is a moral act.
And so perhaps I blog not only to heal with words, but also to heal all the good words that have misfallen and now hurt unintentionally.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

At the Lotus Feet

This should have been my first post to Om Trekker:

I offer my humble prostrations to the lotus feet of Sharon Gannon and David Life.

Americans don't say stuff like that, though, do we. We say "Thank You", of course, if we think of it, or if we're especially well-raised and it rolls off our tongues as easily as "Caddy!".

To say that we bow to the lotus feet of a teacher is to say that we offer our gratitude and love in the most physical, active, engaged form. And in America, apart from our Charitable Activities, what we do is sit in hard pews and say "Amen" when it's appropriate. I'm not judging, just noticing.

Sharon and David started the Jivamukti yoga school. If you've been to a yoga or meditation class in the last fifteen years, even if it was held in a gym in Des Moines, you can thank Sharon and David. I leave it entirely up to you whether to bow to their lotus feet.

"The hottest and best yoga in town is performed at the unapologetically spiritual Jivamukti "— claimed New York magazine, and The New York Times, among others, has agreed. At http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/, click "Classes" and then click the little pink box up top that says "What is Jivamukti Yoga anyways?" and you'll find links to many articles about the impact they have had on American culture. Anybody famous who "does" yoga most likely started at Jivamukti: Christy Turlington, Sting, Madonna, Russell Simmons, etc.

But had you told the fat woman crying into her yoga mat in October 2001 that she would one day gratefully offer her full prostrations to the lotus feet of anything, or anybody, I can tell you she would have raised an eyebrow sarcastically, decided it was not done, and fled to Starbucks with her everlasting Christian soul intact.

The lotus flower, if you're wondering, represents the expansiveness of our souls which are always perfect even in the muddiness of our daily lives. And the feet of a guru are said to be holy.

Exactly what I was crying about, though, is still hard to say. I know Jivamukti was the first place I felt safe after my city was bombed the month before. I also know that I often wept in relief when the hardest parts of the class were done: I'm deeply competitive and pushed hard in what I called the "Kick Yer Ass Yoga Class." Yoga teachers will tell you that yoga is not a competitive sport, but whether it was my ego or asana practice that hadn't evolved, I don't know. Maybe it was just seeing myself in the mirror in stretchy tights.

Typically, my mat got drenched in the forward-bending poses. These happen after bunches of sun salutations where the "relaxation" of down dog made my jelly arms shake and buckle, and after the thigh-scorching warrior poses. The forward-bending poses are counterposes to the real demons: the heart-openers.

It's not easy to remember, while you're leaning over a computer at a job you hate, or clutching your purse on a subway, or hunching your shoulders as you step through the door into a marriage that is falling apart, that hour-by-hour, Prozacked or not, you are closing your spine and ribcage down hard around your heart.

So a posture that asks you to press your chest forward, and open your heart nakedly and lovingly, is scary. And usually, in the counterposes that followed a heart-opener and allowed me to bend towards my legs and hide my face, I wept.

Now, although I make a point of thanking a teacher every time I leave a class, I've actually only thanked Sharon once. She and David were teaching a string of five daily workshops last year, each alternating teaching and taking the workshop. In 5 years of practice at Jivamukti, this was the first time I'd been in her class. I'd always heard she was a "hard" teacher and my asana practice was still what I'd call experienced beginner, at best.

After her beautiful workshop, I thanked her and effusively told her that it was my first class with her in five years at Jivamukti. And when I told her why her face fell.

The next day David taught, and as he was asking the 80 people in the room to do handstands in the middle of their mats, which probably 3 people could actually do, he started talking about hard yoga teachers. And he talked about the difficult, really impossible asana he was asking everybody to try.

"When a yoga teacher asks you to do something hard in a yoga class, they are giving you the opportunity to approach something challenging in a controlled, loving environment: on a padded mat. And when you kick up into your handstand and start to fall and you're afraid, doesn't that feel a lot like the fear you have when you start a new relationship and it starts to tip into something more? So what a hard yoga teacher does is help you learn to recognize and approach fear."

Really. All that and a great workout!

Jivamukti took me much farther though, because as I started to physically open my heart and began to deal with the things I was afraid of, I decided to crack it wide open. Quakers, vegetarianism, India, divorce, and a move out of the City all followed in breath-taking succession. So did a 60-pound weight loss and quitting Prozac.

Sharon and David have recorded some of their classes and workshops. I think these are better than any of the studio recordings because the humor and love really come through. The last one on the list is a workshop of David's that I attended on November 3rd, 2006. I haven't heard the recording, but he began by asking students to define the emotions they experience in the different poses of the sun salutation and then he renamed the poses with these emotions. I offered him the word "gratitude".

These days, as I drive over to Stan's Yoga Shala to practice asanas in the manner taught by Sharon and David's guru, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, I try to say a little prayer of thanks to the teachers at Jivamukti and the beautiful path they blazed through American culture with their courageous lotus feet.

There's a Sanskrit prayer at the end of each Jivamukti class:

Lokaha Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu

which translates:

May all beings everywhere be happy and free.

Sharon and David have added:

And may I, in some small way, contribute to that happiness and freedom for all.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Susan Palwick's June 8 Carnival of Hope

Here is Susan Palwick's Carnival of Hope. Susan has always astonished me with her energy. Have you read her blog yet? She takes her enviable package of talent and wisdom and speedy intelligence and shines it onto other people with love and care.

Susan, thanks for shining your love my direction. I am really looking forward to the wisdom you've gathered in the other blogs in Carnival of Hope!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

The Color of My Prayer Rug

I don't technically have a prayer rug, at least not like those unrolled and pointed towards Mecca five times each day. But in replacing the yoga mat that my landlady will not let me put in the washer even though it truly needs it, I tried to consider the impact color and pattern would have on the quality of my morning practice.

This is overkill in some circles, I realize, but when you unfurl your mat in a yoga class, it seems to me you're claiming your colors.

Obviously, I could use the mats offered by the studio, but you need to consider that unless the studio washes the mat after me, the person who used it before me probably sweated as profusely as I will and then rolled it up tight and put it in a dark place. I'm really not being a snob about this.

Another option is the standard sticky mat that outlet stores dump by the dozen. My last mat was one of these. They come in beautiful colors and speak of someone who has taken the first step in a yoga practice. They're not environmentally correct, but for low-cost entry, I'm all for it: the first thing is the practice, adjust your carbon footprint elsewhere. But you do need a way to wash it.

I know a couple of designers have come out with high ticket mats. I'm not going there: handbags are my fetish and that's plenty. Rubber mats are nice, cushiony, but I'm not wild about the latex smell. There are Yogatoes towels, hemp towels, etc. - all of which I stepped over because what I really wanted was a Mysore rug.

The colorful, cotton, woven rugs are something I've seen in classes over the years used by people who have astonishing Ashtanga practices. The thing is, when someone goes and stays the 0ne-month minimum (three-months preferred) with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India, chances are they will come home with a Mysore rug and it speaks to me of achievement and direction.

And while I have travelled to India, I did not go to Mysore, so I don't feel I've earned the rug. But I really wanted one because I love them, and because I think I can get one past the washing machine patrol downstairs. I'd also like to think that one day I will study in Mysore.

I went into NYC to buy my rug because not every yoga school carries them and because I really did not have time to wait for mail order - the stinky mat situation was dire. The color was the thing. And I walked between Jivamukti on Broadway and 14th Street, East West Book Store at Fifth and 14th, and Integral Yoga at 13th across 7th Avenue looking for exactly the right vibe.

The folks at Yogatoes have a chart marking the colors of the different chakras and the deep rose color I love so much is said to be very grounding. It actually felt kind of loud for a yoga mat and I wasn't sure I wanted to draw attention to a bright beautiful Mysore rug that I did not earn.

What I brought home instead felt humble and nurturing. It is a warm brown like the Connecticut soil and as soft as a puppy's ear. It has pretty sky-blue stripes on each end. This morning I rolled it out for the first time, and pointed it towards the waterfall. And I was really OK knowing that my mat will not speak of my achievement, but only my direction. As Sri K. Pattabhi Jois says "Practice, practice, practice and all is coming."

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Wind Horse and Cell Phones

Let's say for a moment that Tibetan Buddhists are correct and that divine energy can lift a prayer written on a piece of fabric and blow it into the wind for the benefit of all of mankind. The more the wind blows, the wider the healing. Technologically, it seems to me, on a spinning planet, the wind becomes a pretty clever delivery system for an inspired task. The scientists out there can just sit back down.

The Wind Horse is the specific divinity in the Tibetan tradition but the prayers are universal: peace, prosperity, health, for everybody, even people who don't believe in the Wind Horse. Anyone touched by the wind, and that really would be everybody.

This is prayer at the moment of incarnation, pointing out towards the infinite and I just love the idea. Really so much more thoughtful than Western flags which advertise particular acts of imperialism, are bracketed by historical wars, and are as exclusionary as passports.

Here's an experiment: Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that the little breeze blowing across your cheeks holds a sweet prayer for you from someone you've never met. Lift your head and smile, and inhale that breeze. Really. Receive the gift and let it swirl around your loving heart. As you exhale it, add your own little prayer and let it lift back out to the Wind Horse for the next person.

The Rubin Museum, which is dedicated to the art of the Himalayas, has a little side exhibit where visitors are invited to write their definitions of peace on blocks of paper of traditional blue, white, red, green and yellow, and then hang them with those of other visitors. This is lovely because it engages each of us in sharing the prayers we hold for each other. Regrettably, I did not stop to see what people had written or share a prayer of peace myself. Nice, right? I was actually trying to find someone when I walked by and never got back to it.

It seemed to me recently, though, that if the Wind Horse is really doing such a thing, imagine if we could also further bounce those prayers off satellites and move them around the planet at light speed to many places at once: beneficent text messaging as prayer practice.

I tried this once, but my carrier was not enthused and only a few people received my text message, or got it. What I sent was a quick explanation, and what seemed the most appropriate prayer to begin my practice: Om Mani Padme Hum. This mantra (prayer) is taught by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is about compassion. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and exiled political leader of Tibet and is said to be the incarnation of Avalokiteshwara, the buddha of infinite compassion.

I don't know the names of the satellites I was trying to use, or if they have names as wide and beautiful as Wind Horse, but maybe someone could think about that. One person called me in response and when I explained what I was aiming at, suggested that standard computer email might work better, but somehow that feels like chain mail and just not the same.

I wonder, would we feel differently about people using their cell phones around us if we knew they were whispering prayers up into the atmosphere? Om Mani Padme Hum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_prayer_flag



Sunday, June 3, 2007

On Creation

In the stillest moments of meditation, when my brain finally releases into the generous hush that is neither sleep nor prayer, I find I am starting to Blog. This is a concern.

Maybe it's a Quaker thing, but I think there's a difference between my inner circuitry of sensual perception that helps me feel the elements of a poem, for instance, and the larger Creative impulse. The second would be something beyond my own monkey brain who might actually one day have something important to say me if I'd just sit still enough for it, so this is no small matter.

Of course, whether she/he intends me to write about it is something else. And as a dilettante blogging on spiritual things, it's just so easy to say "Oh ho! Now that's nice! I better find a pen!" and to begin taking notes in the quiet, rather than allowing the deep listening that is so nurturing, even if nothing is Heard. And I try to remember a Chinese proverb shared by a friend at work: "Time spent sharpening the knife is never wasted."

I've consulted some experts on this.

Julia Cameron, in her introduction to her classic guide on creativity, The Artist's Way; A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity, introduces the concept of God as "good orderly direction or flow". For her there's only one creative element.

What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher Power. . . . The point is not what you name it. The point is that you try using it. For many of us, thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place.

She quotes William Blake:

"I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me."

It seems to me William Blake reached a rare place in his cosmos where he could do three things at the same time: sense his own creativity, hear The Creative, and compose, which is why he's William Blake.

So maybe I am nearing a point where I want to leg up into one of these rare seats, but am certainly nowhere near encompassing all three at once. I think I'd like to be and that's where I get into trouble.

Right now the plan is to just sit in whatever seat I can get into that will stay still for me and see what happens. A little less caffeine would probably help.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

A Book of Days

It's a Dixieland laundry day in this Book of Days.

The ferryboat out to one of the town's island beaches started running today. To celebrate, they've hired a charming Dixieland Band to play on the ferry. So back and forth, I hear the music gain as it nears and lessen as it heads off into the Sound.

I'm not a fan of Dixieland music per se, but it has added a layer of happy punctuation on the day reminding me to look outside of my window and notice the folks on the ferry. It's my day for laundry; their day for the ferry; someone else's day for something else.

Maybe they are in another city. London has been on my mind. So maybe they are in London and today in London, on their little street corner, something equally sweet is happening. Maybe there's a festival. I could check the Internet, but won't. It's enough to wonder.

It occurred to me while I lived in New York City, a home to people from all over the world, that I needed to celebrate a wider range of holidays than those offered by the standard U.S. banking and stock exchange calendars.

For instance, the serendipitous, swirling flutter of cherry blossoms in Kyoto causes a holiday where people jump up from their desks and picnic under the trees. Could midtown Manhattan handle such a holiday? Could Central Park possibly hold all of the revellers?

Or the holidays of the Indian calendar. There are the birthdays of the gods and seasonal observances and cultural landmarks.

I enjoy thinking, for all the anger and war happening right now, that somewhere on the planet, people are gathering to celebrate some aspect of being alive. A Book of Days, as I would write it, would include them all.

Really, Not a Potty Matter

Tonight, I'm embarrassed to say, it was the paper toilet seat covers in the Rubin Museum which connected me most viscerally to the nuns from Nepal chanting hymns upstairs. My mother would probably tell me to stop right here and start again differently.

The nuns are traveling in the US to share one of the Tantric traditions of Tibetan Buddhism called Chöd. They are performing ritual dances and chants and playing the damaru drums associated with the Hindu god, Shiva. It is the first time these practices have been performed outside of the Nagi Gompa Nunnery in Nepal.

Let me say right here to American readers that yes, I said Tantric, but no, these are not sexual practices, so please grow up.

According to the program: "Utilizing the special meditation techniques, the practitioner cuts through his or her personal demons - neurotic, self-cherishing and the accompanying painful negative emotions." I can tell you, without having first read the program since we got there after the lights were down, that the chants immediately hit the spot in my forehead just about where my eyebrows are most deeply knitted together, and it was with great effort and discomfort that I held on to my cherished, ego-driven thoughts through the rest of the program. So maybe this is why I found it so much easier to think about toilet seat covers.

Many meditation practices like these are aimed at the egotistical "I want what I want, when I want it" that brings us misery when things don't happen as planned. Without telling you specifically what has me tied up in knots, or who, I can say that the chants seemed pretty well designed and knew exactly where in my brain these things reside. And so I retreat to a much less personal topic.

It is my long-ingrained habit to notice public restrooms of any convenience in Manhattan. Most New Yorkers can direct you to McDonalds, Starbucks, train terminals, some rest stations in the larger parks. But I can tell you that the bellhops in front of the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue will gladly point you through the lobby to the lovely marble tiled powder rooms. If you try this, please have on clean clothes and smile when you ask.

So while I was adding the Rubin Museum restrooms to the mental list, with an asterisk for toilet seat covers, I remembered the nuns upstairs, and the public toilets I found in India. Maybe I'm treading on your own tender spots by describing the relative convenience of Western toilets, but if you've spent time on a dusty bus through local villages in India, or many, many other places, I'll bet, it's a really nice thing to find even a fairly comfortable and private, uh, privy.

In India they generally involve a porcelain basin sunk into the ground over which one hovers, or squats as best as one's Achilles Tendons will allow (a yoga practice comes in handy here). There's always a cold water faucet on the left, a bucket for rinsing the larger surfaces, and a 1/2 liter measuring cup for rinsing the smaller ones. I'm guessing Nepal is not too different. I tell you this only as background.

It was the fine, crinkliness of the paper covers that set me wondering what the nuns thought when they saw them. Someone asked the nuns what their meals are like at the nunnery and one nun, a fugitive from China who spoke English best, told sweetly about simple meals of rice and barley and vegetables. And I thought of the cost of producing such a luxury as toilet seat covers. And just how damn fancy we are. And just how much we can want what we want when we want it.

But back to the chanting. Was it the plainness of their voices? The harmonic vibration of the sound? Or was it their demeanor, which spoke of slight awkwardness in sharing, in front of an auditorium full of people, their prayer practice? Maybe it was my understanding that as nuns, they do not carry with them the intense desire for something elusive that can get lodged between the eyebrows. At any rate, these gentle sounds tugged at the knotted skin on my forehead, and I resented it.

If I were braver, perhaps I would attend the workshops they are offering this weekend because really, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I decided it was safer to just buy the book.

Monday, May 28, 2007

The Love Wars

The little harbor has been something of a Love War Zone this weekend.

A fraternity of neighbors are nearly five hours into the third day of Bean Bag Toss Torture.

Initially a lovely backyard family game, the clatter of bean bags on plywood, and roars of "Whoa!", has rarely quit at all this beautiful weekend.

On earlier weekends, the soundtrack to this game was a pretty good party mix. This weekend it has crystalized into only one song, played a couple of times each day: "Love is My Religion".

And while I'm finding Other Things To Do and Other Things To Listen To, I am watching this irritate my Downstairs Neighbors significantly, since they are much fussier than me.

It seems maybe the bean bag toss has turned into something of a Discussion Among Neighbors. There were loud snippets of "The Landlord Said..." floating along the lawns and water today and I'm seeing sheepish looks in the mornings as the party messes are cleaned up.

Today, Downstairs is having a soiree of their own, and they are loudly playing their own love music - Frank Sinatra.

For a "weighty" Quaker, this might become a spiritual exercise in peace-making. But since there's actually no such thing as "friendly fire" in a war zone, even a Love War Zone among respectable neighbors, I'm reluctant to enter the discussion.

I've resisted the urge to visit the Boys with a Parchese set, for instance, or Scrabble, or even badmitton. Or perhaps a game requiring skill. Nor have I brought over a 6-pack of good beer and asked if I could play too.

I haven't hired someone to steal the bean bag game, called my landlord, called their landlord, or started a game by myself at 5:30 am when I get up for my Ashtanga class, since I am taking the High Road.

The politics that rule this roost will to have to sort it out and hopefully it won't take all summer. I may pray for rain.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Heaven with Alik

Another train ride to Manhattan wearing the interview suit and heels. Into my bag, next to resumes, I have placed a little digital camera because New York is always surprising. But it's on the Greenwich platform that I receive grace.

A grandmother and granddaughter are sitting together on the platform, not on a bench, but down on the cement platform itself, under the big sign that says "Greenwich." The little girl is sitting between her grandmother's legs, wearing her large sunglasses, and holding an enormous book that spans both of their laps.

And they are reading together and tooting - I mean, pulling their hands like a train engineer pulls a train horn and saying "Toot! Toot! Toot!"

The platform is beginning to collect commuters, and these two travellers are having an exceptional time waiting for the train and tooting. I can't resist them.

I walk over, apologize for interrupting and ask the grandmother if I can take a picture and email her a copy. They are so deep in play that it takes a minute for them to notice me, but she smiles broadly and agrees, and her granddaughter leans back into her breast, lowers the glasses on her nose and tips her head for the camera.

For her 4th birthday, I learn in an email the next day, Alik has chosen a train trip from Larchmont to Greenwich, and lunch with her grandmother, Mary. They would have also gone to the Bruce Museum but it was closed, so they went to Diane's Bookstore, "and had a grand time."

I also learn that two months earlier Mary lost her husband of 43 years. They were both college professors in Duluth, MN. And while Mary is thanking me for being a "grandmother's good fairy" for taking their picture and sending her a copy, I am grateful to them for the unabandoned joy they shared with each other in the presence of strangers. She tells me she will tell the story for many years to come.

My friend Gerry sent me the end of the hell/heaven story.

The warrior, overcome with anger and hate at the monk, drew his sword and prepared to cut his head off right there and then. As the sword swung, the monk said "That is hell."

The warrior hearing this, stopped and dropped the sword at once. Overwhelmed, he began to cry tears of gratitude for his newly melted heart. The monk then said "and that... is heaven."

And thanks to Mary and Alik, I have gone to my interview with a grateful, wide open heart. A little piece of heaven.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Hell, and Heaven?

Thank you Anonymous commenter [see below]. In your beautiful version of this story, the warrior riles himself with no help at all from the monk. That seems exactly right, doesn't it? -JB

I'm looking for the ending to a Buddhist story I once heard in a yoga class. I should have heard the ending but maybe there was a cramp in my leg, or the teacher spoke softly. However it happened, I missed it.

Here's the beginning.

A very rich, successful samurai warrior has conquered all of the neighboring kingdoms but finds himself deeply unfulfilled and unhappy. He decides to go to a mountaintop to ask a wise monk about the nature of heaven and hell.

He takes along an impressive entourage of his family and soldiers and advisors. After a long and arduous journey up the mountain, the warrior locates the monk and humbly asks him to please tell him the nature of heaven and hell. He explains that he has been successful in all of his worldly pursuits but is still very unhappy.

The monk ignores him, and walks away, but the warrior, not used to be being ignored or embarrassed in front of people, runs after the monk asking him again. The monk continues to walk, leaving behind the warrior, who is growing more angry by the minute.

Finally the warrior grabs the monk and spins him around and shouts his question: "I have come a very long way and demand an answer!"

The monk looks at him and says loudly "You overblown, ugly, arrogant pile of crap! What makes you think I would share the secrets of heaven and hell with such a stupid and disgusting man." And the monk continues like this while the warrior turns red in the face and begins to draw his sword.

Just as the warrior is about to cut the monk's head off, the monk says "Look how angry you are, my friend. That is the nature of hell."

Sadly, I missed the definition of heaven.

I'll suggest that heaven is to ignore the negative words that someone says to us, or that we say to ourselves, and to live in the moment. Buddhism and yoga are always reminding us that most of our internal lives are self-constructed and have little to do with what is actually going on around us at each moment in time.

But I'm sure the ending is more elegant than that. I will find out.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Muddy River and Child

Searching for some beauty yesterday, I landed on Liberty Street in Manhattan, a block south of a lively Happy Hour, a block west of the hole that is the World Trade Center, and a block east of a children's playground next to a swollen, muddy Hudson River. As I arrived, the police were starting full-on hunt for a child who may have been thrown into the river strapped to his stroller.

There was a police helicopter loud and beating the water just off the Esplanade where divers were suiting up. A stretcher had been pulled close to the railing, and the police were starting to manage the deepening crowd of joggers and dogs and children from the playground. They cordoned off a staging area for emergency workers who were still arriving.

As I watched the water and the stretcher and the faces of the people around me, a boy with red hair and freckles ran up to a young cop and asked him what was going on. "Oh nothing," he said. "They're shooting a movie." And the boy ran back to his family, smiling. I am sure he went home and told his friends about the very cool movie that was made in their neighborhood tonight.

The cop turned and said "No way I'm going to tell him." But he told the man next to me. And we all looked back at the stretcher and the divers and the awful water, muddy from storms the night before.

I remembered that cops and reporters are exposed to things like this all the time. And as I stood watching the emergency workers, I could see horror flicker into the faces of the younger ones, while the older ones seemed more focused and quiet. And I wondered how many were stationed in the area back in 2001.

I went into the City specifically looking for the Camino de Paz labyrinth at the foot of West Street in Battery Park where Quakers meet on Thursday nights in warm weather. Sally has spoken lovingly of it and whenever she does, I'm sure I know exactly where she means, but each time I've tried to attend, I've gotten lost and frustrated. Tonight I ended up at a formal boxwood garden next to Liberty Street which a cop assured me was the labyrinth I was looking for.

Unable to be still, I walked the scattered edge of the crowd, looking for my Quakers, winding past dog leashes and many children in many strollers, praying someone would find that one stroller, and one mother's child, and then everyone could go home, hug their families and share a warm meal. And I wondered if people know just how much another person may wish for a child in their lives and how deeply blessed they are if they have one.

As I started to leave, a man walked up to me with a baby in a papoose on his chest; his wife stepping to my side.

He leaned in to ask me over the roar of the helicopter "Maybe a lot of people have asked you, but do you know what happened?" His baby's downy face was close to mine, smiling, and I was breathless.

And I wept for a second, caught my voice and tears, and told him, repulsed at the words, and grateful his baby was too young to understand.

And I turned again, and starting walking back south to the subway at Bowling Green, unwilling to try to cross the World Trade Center site for a closer subway uptown.

On the train out of Grand Central, I called my dear friend, Liz. She asked me if I had read the Harry Potter books and explained that down at Liberty Street tonight we were in the presence of a Dementor - an entity that completely sucks the happiness out of a place. She agreed I probably needed some prayer and a hot bath. And then she caught me up on the lives of her husband and teenage children.

Later that night I called the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information and explained that I'm not with the media anymore, but know them because I once published a newspaper in Northern Manhattan. I know they are the only source of breaking police news in the City.

The detective told me that the reports are unconfirmed about whether a child was in the stroller or not. One witness said the stroller was open; another said the stroller was closed. The search had been called off for the evening but would resume in the morning.

So I have been sitting on this post, wondering whether I further the Dementor by telling the story, as it can now suck a little happiness out of anyone who reads it. Ben Franklin advocated a free press, but warned that a publisher has a responsibility for the welfare of his readers.

On the other hand, it is good to know that children may need extra care because people can do evil things. And maybe mothers know that is where prayer and meditation come in - to still the Dementor so that we can wisely see how to help.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Grass in my Neighbor's Toes

Last evening was stormy and neighbors around the harbor tucked themselves away. Sunday was glorious, though, and I sat by the water with a book.

My elderly neighbor joined me, pulling a hat down to the top of her sunglasses, and drawing up a lounger. She smiled, commented on the evening and the water and opened her book.

I don't know my neighbor's name, although I'm sure I've heard it. In saying that I'm aware of the differences between writing a newspaper and a blog. Here, I don't need to know her name - she is very warm, has a Swiss accent and lived in Tanzania for her husband's work in the 1970's.

Like this we sat together and read.

It has been a very long time since I've sat in a back yard and read with a neighbor. In New York City, there are too many people going too many directions, so if you manage to sit still for a moment in some quiet beautiful place, chances are the person nearest is not sitting still at all, but has just flown by on some errand.

Or maybe it's a park bench and you sit next to someone, but never speak to them. Or if you speak to them, or even chat for a moment, chances are you'll never see them again. Cities have their downsides.

But there's my neighbor with her blue crush hat and big glasses. She is reading a library book about bipolar children. I think this could have something to do with a grandchild, or maybe another neighbor's child, since she does not have young children that I know of. But I do not ask. I am reading a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and western scientists about the nature of emotions.

Mostly I'm not reading, though. Mostly I'm watching some swallows dive over the juniper tree above me and I'm watching the piece of flowery grass stuck in my neighbor's toes. She has walked barefoot through the yard to the lounger on the water's edge.

By the time my grandmother was this woman's age, her mind had been emptied by Alzheimer's. It was a very scary place for her. But I remember that it brought her no end of happiness to receive a bouquet of flowers since every time she saw the flowers, they were new to her and she would ask who had sent them. If you made sure not tell her how many times she had already asked, she was delighted and really grateful all over again.

Unlike my grandmother, this woman is enjoying her advanced years fully aware, but hasn't noticed the grass in her toes. And I sit wondering if there is grass in my toes, and glance down, hoping there is. I am looking forward to the summer.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Stan's Ashtanga Yoga Shala

To speak of the quiet breath practice of Ashtanga Yoga feels almost to disrupt it: a wind across the surface of still water. But why have words at all if not to share something inexplicably lovely?

Greenwich Yoga is perched over the dam of a refurbished old mill. Early this morning, before the hedge fund capital of the world springs awake, the only sounds I hear are the hum of my breath, a quiet roar of water coming over the dam, and my inelegant jump-backs to chaturanga dandasana.

Stan Woodman has just started offering Ashtanga as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois teaches it in Mysore, India. It is a rare opportunity. Last week I enrolled, and today I was the only student in the room.

Unlike so many of the wonderful yoga styles available, in Ashtanga there is no music to engage the mind, or to coax one through a particularly difficult asana sequence. There is growth through the Primary Series as one gets stronger and more flexible, but as the sequence is the same every morning, there is no drama of "What cool thing is next?" Just quiet movement, quiet breath, and a warm room.

Stan stood to the side, reminded me of the standing sequence he began teaching me last week, helped me align my slight scoliosis a few times, and told me that eventually my toes will actually glide back to chaturanga. He also agreed, when I asked, that I had miscounted my breaths.

I found myself miscounting when I remembered that my teacher was watching or when I worried whether I had counted correctly. My earliest challenge then is to drop the worry, drop the ego when I forget the sequence, and to stay present in the breath.

Mitchel Bleier is teaching Anusara yoga at Saraswati's Yoga Joint in Norwalk. He talked about the breath in a class recently. He noted that we cannot, of our own volition, simply stop breathing. It is as though the universe is breathing us, and not, in fact, the other way around. He said that we might even understand that the universe has actually chosen us to breathe into.

I love teachers like Mitchel. They help me understand the challenging Eastern ideas in yoga. But how divine to walk up to the waterfall and let it all drop away to a sea of quiet breathing.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Blessings of the Milk Baba

Yesterday I was blessed by the Milk Baba.

All of us visiting the Greenwich Yoga studio had the option of being blessed by this little Hindu holy man who sits under what is said to be more than six feet of dreadlocks wrapped around his head - 52 years of hair.

In the previous hour, I'd understood little of what he said. I heard him mention Krishna and Buddha and Shiva, but his English was minimal and my Sanskrit worse. I'm pretty sure he said nothing about Jesus.

Which raised the Christian question for me - Can he be holy? Is he really in a position to bless me when he's clearly idolatrous?

I liked his smile, though, which lit whenever the yoga students sitting upright on bolsters around the room in front of him forgot to chime in with his call and response singing. I also liked his words on inner light and the love that people can share with each other, even when they're from Nepal and claim to find divine insight by drinking only milk for 17 years.

By living on only 2 litres of milk a day, I gathered, he was able to clear his mind of craving, first the craving of food, then the craving of other bodily desires, and then the larger cravings of his ego. This brought him intense happiness. And he is travelling the U.S. to share the bliss of simplicity.

So I left the studio wearing the string of red and yellow that he tied around my wrist. They are the colors he wore on his forehead to signify that he had said his morning prayers. I know the string is meant to stay on until it has absorbed as much of my bad karma, or sins, as it can bear, and then it will drop away. It was the perfect accessory to my outfit: a long pink shirt-dress I bought in India a few years ago, tan A&F capris, and silver ColeHaan flip-flops.

Driving home from the Milk Baba, smelling the rose oil he rubbed on my hand, I could also smell the lilacs in season in Greenwich. The Avenue, our Rodeo Drive of the East, was packed with shoppers. And despite the fumes rising from the cars ahead of me, I thought "Why go see the Milk Baba for blessings of happiness when Greenwich is plenty lovely? Kate Spade has great bags; and the woman who just walked by looked like a movie star."

And I rued the fact that I would probably need to make a second trip out to the grocery store as I hated to go in wearing the long shirt-dress.

So today, in Quaker Meeting, when a man stood and spoke of religious fanaticism and intolerance as the greatest root of war, what he said rang inside me for a few minutes.

I believe that to be tolerant, every person has to explore their own spiritual edges - where does my soul end and yours begin? Is holiness so deeply universal that we might each understand it even if you pray to Shiva and I pray to Christ?

I stood and shared the blessing I received from the Milk Baba and my thoughts on why he might actually be holy. Others also stood and spoke of their own exploration of other religious traditions and what they had learned and how they had grown. And this, as part of the Quaker process, is to describe and define how we bring the idea of peace into the world. For my part, it meant accepting and cherishing a little piece of love and blessing from the Milk Baba.

These seemed like fair questions and thoughts in the context of the Iraq War, where the US is fighting to claim oil that does not belong to it, and where the issues of religious intolerance are large.

The last person to speak was a plain-clothed, plain-spoken woman sitting next to me. She shared that she sincerely hoped people understood that the earth is plentiful and there is plenty to go around, that we need not be scared. That was all.

She didn't look at my shiny ColeHaans, or mention consumerism by name, but the greed of some in the face of the true need of others is the more material cause of our current war and it will be an even larger problem as the planet's population grows.

So it's her and the Milk Baba. And me and my karmic string that I'm not sure is going to match my interview suits this week.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Cob Houses

"How can we separate your hands and hearts from ours in this clay of earth?"
-- Dr. Ramu Manivannan, Director, Buddha Smiles
Kurumbupallayam, Tamil Nadu, India, January 2004

Cob houses, it may interest you to know, are not made of corn cobs.

In the brick-burning village of Kurumbupallayam, Dr. Ramu Manivannan recently bought several large cow fields where he is building a school for poor and orphaned children. Kurumbupallayam is the village next to the ancestral home of his mother and a place where Mani, as Dr. Manivannan is known, has deep roots.

He prefers not to use the bricks of the local village, though, since mud, once it has been fired, does not peacefully release back to the earth. Like the International-style cement block houses going up as India prospers, brick becomes landfill material in a country with no landfills once its need has expired and the materials have failed. And even cement cannot indefinitely rebuff the monsoon that sweeps over the Eastern Ghats in June, returning in October along the same path. In fact, cement buildings in South India are most notable for their black moldy stains and walls puckered with humidity.

Cob, the material Mani has chosen for his school, has no pretensions of being as independent, as indifferent, as brick or cement. Cob is clay, sand, straw and water, mixed with bare feet on tarps or in pits, and pressed into the shape of walls. Cob walls require a good foundation, solid roof, and regular application of mud, lime or cow dung plaster. With care, a cob building can last hundreds of years.

Gandhi's ideas on care, trusteeship, and education are deeply interesting to Mani.

Mani's first cob schoolroom went up in January 2004 as part of a natural building workshop organized by Kleiwerks, Cob Works, and the natural building team from Buddhist monk Sulak Sivaraksa's ashram in Thailand. 150 banana trees were planted to filter graywater, and organic farming is envisioned as an integral part of the education of orphans and children whose parents are too poor to allow them to go to school. With Gandhian intent, just as these children will learn to read in the hours after their workday, they will continue to learn and practice the trades and crafts of their villages.

Like most of the 15 or so people who crawled across the planet to build a school in cob, and who returned home with clothing forever red-stained with the clay of South India, I discovered Mani's workshop on the World Wide Web at http://www.kleiwerks.com/.

Mani doesn't have a website, yet. But I am interested that he have one soon and I've begun to wonder, WWGD [What Would Gandhi Do] with this clay earth finely draped with the conduit for shared human intention?