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.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post - nice to read about your thoughts on the workshop (which I couldn't attend).

Regarding Lalitambika, it is a compound Sanskrit name combining one of the names of the Goddess Lalita, in her aspect as Mother. Lalita Devi is the Goddess when manifesting as beauty, so her name is that of the most beautiful form of the divine Mother.

The linked Krishna Das track isn't Caribbean style, though it shares cultural roots. It was in "South African Township" style. I know this because I had the honor of singing in the recording as part of the response group - and then dancing joyfully to it.

I can't wait until someone sings the Mahamantra in Salsa style!

Jai Ma