I often experience the unique pull and push of paradox in life. The other morning, on the way to class, I was driving on a quiet country road, no other cars about, very few houses, 25 mph speed limit, and a couple of beautiful does (yes, female deer) crossed in front of my car. I stopped and watched them. The first one came to a fence and stopped completely in her tracks, calmly gazed about briefly then pushed herself seemingly without effort straight up into the air, tucked in her legs, and hung suspended in that split moment between going up and coming down, then glided downward to the ground on the other side of the fence. The perfect balance between sthira and sukha. The second doe following behind her also walked up to the fence, came to a complete standstill, then gracefully glided straight up into the air, hung suspended with her legs tucked in, as though some invisible string were attached to her center pulling her upwards toward the skies, and glided slightly forward just enough to clear the fence to land on the other side. I was so inspired I talked about the event in class, read a Hafiz poem about listening to the inner voice that shouts Yes! Yes! Yes! to every luminous movement in Existence. As I continued my drive to class, a few moments later I saw a flock of buzzards eating at the carcass of a deer alongside the road. It's paradoxical to one moment see the luminous life dance and grace of movement in a deer jumping effortlessly over a fence, and in the next moment see another deer that's collided with a vehicle and been sent, perhaps with excrutiating pain and suffering, into the bloody dance of death.
That morning the sun was shining bright and I made an unusual discovery before leaving the house. I was printing out some information on the chakras and my eye was drawn to the orange color of the Svadisthana chakra, right below the navel, the lower abdomen. Lesson: the right to our feelings; a connection to our sensing abilities and issues relating to feelings; our ability to be social and intimate. Imbalance: Eating disorders. Alcohol/drug abuse. Depression. Low back pain. and so on. I opened my book "Sadhus--India's Mystic Holy Men" to page 88 where there's a photo of a holy man dressed in bright orange holding his pastoral staff (danda), or rod of divination, a symbol of spiritual power, carried by brahman ascetics. I looked up on my wall, and again, there he was was in a photograph I took 17 years ago while traveling in Nepal and India (1991). I looked at the publication date of the book: 1993.
It's not really all that unusual that I would photograph an ascetic who would get photographed again by someone else a couple of years later and get published in a book. What is kind of strange to me is that I enlarged that photo and it's been hanging on my walls for 17 years and I've looked at the Sadhus book countless times, and never noticed the ascetic on my wall was one and the same as the ascetic in the book.
More paradoxical than all of the above are the false realities we create, then buy into them, then discover it was all an illusion, a story we made up. Maya. It can all change in a second. We reawaken again and again only to learn we were asleep. We learn to play with life, with ourselves, with others in a way that is liberating, that is alive and zesty and juicy and also compassionate and caring, where things are open to surprise, and that all that happens has consequences. To be genuinely playful is "revolutionary." If we revere and recognize the world as the play of the Goddess Shakti principle, we can join in and imitate this play in everything we do. In Sanskrit, it's called lila.
That morning the sun was shining bright and I made an unusual discovery before leaving the house. I was printing out some information on the chakras and my eye was drawn to the orange color of the Svadisthana chakra, right below the navel, the lower abdomen. Lesson: the right to our feelings; a connection to our sensing abilities and issues relating to feelings; our ability to be social and intimate. Imbalance: Eating disorders. Alcohol/drug abuse. Depression. Low back pain. and so on. I opened my book "Sadhus--India's Mystic Holy Men" to page 88 where there's a photo of a holy man dressed in bright orange holding his pastoral staff (danda), or rod of divination, a symbol of spiritual power, carried by brahman ascetics. I looked up on my wall, and again, there he was was in a photograph I took 17 years ago while traveling in Nepal and India (1991). I looked at the publication date of the book: 1993.
It's not really all that unusual that I would photograph an ascetic who would get photographed again by someone else a couple of years later and get published in a book. What is kind of strange to me is that I enlarged that photo and it's been hanging on my walls for 17 years and I've looked at the Sadhus book countless times, and never noticed the ascetic on my wall was one and the same as the ascetic in the book.
More paradoxical than all of the above are the false realities we create, then buy into them, then discover it was all an illusion, a story we made up. Maya. It can all change in a second. We reawaken again and again only to learn we were asleep. We learn to play with life, with ourselves, with others in a way that is liberating, that is alive and zesty and juicy and also compassionate and caring, where things are open to surprise, and that all that happens has consequences. To be genuinely playful is "revolutionary." If we revere and recognize the world as the play of the Goddess Shakti principle, we can join in and imitate this play in everything we do. In Sanskrit, it's called lila.
(See also The Yoga of Breath, a Step-by-Step Guide to Pranayama by Richard Rosen).
