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.