So, civility has been a big theme in the national discussion lately. And people talk about it like getting to that place would be a major accomplishment, and involve real sacrifice and transformation. As I've listened, I've thought, shouldn't civility be the very lowest requirement for human interaction? If all we strive to do is keep the hostility we still entertain simmering just below the surface, and only strive to be civil, to quote Phish, it's a bit "like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze", isn't it? The ugliness is still gonna fester!
So, while the national conversation has been asking so little of our public figures, I came across an article in Yoga Journal this week that can inspire the rest of us to lift our intentions a bit higher. It's by a teacher of Zen Buddhism named Frank Jude Boccio, and is about a Buddhist practice called "metta karuna". It's a practice that we as individuals can undertake to make love and compassion our default mental position... something that would be infinitely more transformative to a culture than simple civility!
It is a progressive meditation, and it starts with the expression of love for ourselves as individuals... tender appreciation, love for our strengths, the recognition that even the desire to be happy comes from a healthy place in us that deserves our appreciation and nurture. This part of the practice all by itself is something people need acutely in our culture at the moment: just like the heart pumping the most oxygen-rich blood to itself first in order that it be healthy enough to provide health to everything it serves, this practice invites us to sit and be deliberate in loving and manifesting gratitude for the good in ourselves. It asks us to feel our heart center, and without judging it as good or bad, wish it happiness, peace, wholeness, health, relief from suffering, and watch how those words and phrases feel as we receive them. Which ones do we resist? Which ones bring the most gratitude and emotional relief? Sit with ourselves (which is a holiday in itself!) and just nurture and garden our own internal landscape.
Then, it's from that place of having salved our own raw places that the meditation on metta karuna turns outward. Looking out over our landscape of people, we can start with the people it's instinctive and easy to love: may they be happy, may they hold themselves tenderly, may they be free from suffering and the roots of suffering, may they be safe, may they feel the love of the people around them. And, from there, the meditation shifts to a neutral person, and from there, to a person it is not easy to love.
When I did this meditation for the first time, I was surprised both by the person who came to mind when I thought of who it was hard for me to love in that moment, and by the process that happened in my head as I went through the meditation for that person. I felt my own hard edges melting, where I didn't even know they had been hard. After all of that self-nurturing, there were still places in me that felt as dangerous as swallowed pieces of glass. And, as I nurtured my hard person in meditation, the same forgiveness that was necessary for me to extend outwardly in order to be honest in the meditation, became something I also had to extend to myself.
I think that's what Ghandi must have been talking about when he encouraged people to "be the change [we] want to see in the world", and what Jesus meant when he said to judge a tree by the fruit it bears. We can only really ever change ourselves, and will drive ourselves crazy trying to control or change anyone else, but when our tree is healthy, the fruit we bear is so much more nourishing to the people who sit in our shade and enjoy it!
Frank Jude Boccio's article is absolutely worth the study, and is the just the first in a series of three. Here's the link, with my best wishes! http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2601
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Beauty at the Edge of Fear
Recently, I set sail on an adventure for which some of my dearest and most consistent supports were unable to accompany me, and so it also set me thinking about the mental yoga of playing at the edge of fear. Jnana yoga is the yoga of challenging the mental rigidities that keep us locked in patterns that are only ours because they are familiar, not necessarily because they are healthy. Jnana invites us to reach mentally beyond what is familiar. Just like on the mat, when we dance at the edge of what's comfortable, and learn to breathe and relax, and build the strength to exist steadily in new territory, the simple experiences of everyday living ask us to move beyond what is familiar, and free our minds to grow and become flexible.
Yoga teaches that, the same way pain is the sign post for the body's edge, fear is the sign post for the mind. And the beauty and wisdom of physical practice therefore becomes a powerful teacher, and invitation to exploration, for the mind. In hatha yoga, we follow our energy body in the direction of physical freedom and strength, opening places where our flow of energy has been blocked, and energizing areas that have been allowed to remain limp in our every day living and moving through the world. Just the experience of bringing blood and oxygen, extension and strength to a place in our bodies that has been lacking it is invigorating. So, following the same spirit of exploration into the act of living, and learning to exist with integrity and deliberate attention even at the edge of fear, can be transformative.
As I began to recognize that this change was coming whether I wanted it or not, my first reaction was nearly paralyzing fear. I wept with it, fought it with my logic, my prayers, spent incredible amounts of energy pushing it back. It was actually on the mat that I recognized how full of tension and resistance my body was. My body, that I know so well, and that usually moves with eagerness and fluidity, loving its breath and welcoming wide open ranges of motion, was positively locked up with resistance. And, it was breathing and relaxing my body's edges that broke the dam, and all of the emotion I had been piling up against this change came crashing out of me on that sacred little mat.
The beautiful thing about this new experience has been the recognition of that calm, solid, wise and unshakable thing that remains at my center, guiding my thoughts, my words, my impressions and organizing my memories, as unchanged even while the supports on which I had so depended were removed. Yoga calls it Shiva -- the part of ourselves that is modeled after and linked to the Divine, and that will remain after the destruction of our bodies. The Hindu chant "Om namah shivaya" pays tribute to that divine center. There is always stripping away in life, and there are always shifts in the proximity and definitions of the elements that surround us, but it is only the degree to which we, in our attachment to our favorite parts of a world that is by its very nature temporary, resist the changes that determine how traumatizing those shifts are. In life, as on the mat, resistance is the thing that makes us suffer. Without resistance, when we finally allow ourselves just to step out into the unknown and learn to breathe freely and stand steady, we extend the limits of the possible.
So bon voyage, my fellow explorers, vaia con Dios into the wild unknown!
Yoga teaches that, the same way pain is the sign post for the body's edge, fear is the sign post for the mind. And the beauty and wisdom of physical practice therefore becomes a powerful teacher, and invitation to exploration, for the mind. In hatha yoga, we follow our energy body in the direction of physical freedom and strength, opening places where our flow of energy has been blocked, and energizing areas that have been allowed to remain limp in our every day living and moving through the world. Just the experience of bringing blood and oxygen, extension and strength to a place in our bodies that has been lacking it is invigorating. So, following the same spirit of exploration into the act of living, and learning to exist with integrity and deliberate attention even at the edge of fear, can be transformative.
As I began to recognize that this change was coming whether I wanted it or not, my first reaction was nearly paralyzing fear. I wept with it, fought it with my logic, my prayers, spent incredible amounts of energy pushing it back. It was actually on the mat that I recognized how full of tension and resistance my body was. My body, that I know so well, and that usually moves with eagerness and fluidity, loving its breath and welcoming wide open ranges of motion, was positively locked up with resistance. And, it was breathing and relaxing my body's edges that broke the dam, and all of the emotion I had been piling up against this change came crashing out of me on that sacred little mat.
The beautiful thing about this new experience has been the recognition of that calm, solid, wise and unshakable thing that remains at my center, guiding my thoughts, my words, my impressions and organizing my memories, as unchanged even while the supports on which I had so depended were removed. Yoga calls it Shiva -- the part of ourselves that is modeled after and linked to the Divine, and that will remain after the destruction of our bodies. The Hindu chant "Om namah shivaya" pays tribute to that divine center. There is always stripping away in life, and there are always shifts in the proximity and definitions of the elements that surround us, but it is only the degree to which we, in our attachment to our favorite parts of a world that is by its very nature temporary, resist the changes that determine how traumatizing those shifts are. In life, as on the mat, resistance is the thing that makes us suffer. Without resistance, when we finally allow ourselves just to step out into the unknown and learn to breathe freely and stand steady, we extend the limits of the possible.
So bon voyage, my fellow explorers, vaia con Dios into the wild unknown!
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