Pixellate

 

Vipassana means to see things as they really are. Some of us know this term as a technique of meditation. It occurs to me that seeing things as they really are means breaking things down to their smallest parts and looking at each part. Then we find that each part is in fact, or can be, distinctly different. The overall picture might appear a certain way. We might feel that we too are a certain way, but when we break it down we can find that there are many different realities. Like when we zoom in on an image and find that it is perhaps not as cohesive as we thought. In fact, each little bit of information, each truth is distinct, having its own reality. One is not more true than another. It is not possible to say, “I am like this”, because sometimes I am not.

There are many thoughts as to what the bump on the Buddha’s head means, called the ‘Ushinisha’, artist’s representations symbolizing a top-knot, or super-intelligence, or the flame of supreme knowledge. However the small spiralling bobbles to me feel like pixels, little distinct truths, realities, choices. Each one contributing to the whole, but retaining its own consciousness. Perhaps seeing the bigger picture necessitates acknowledging each of our different spiralling realities and not judging which is the right way of being.

Just a thought.

Pranams,

jjz

 

 

 

Room for the Life

Hanuman – the very best ‘gut-barer’

Please don’t be alarmed – I wrote this in 2006! All is well. I just found this writing as I was sorting through some old papers. I can see that my awareness has changed a bit since then, but I was happy to see some of the same ideas about space were active in my mind at that time. Now all I do is think about space! You might also recognize Kate Bush in the title…

Pranams,

jjz

A friend has described me as “one of the best gut-barer”, and I may be about to prove him correct. I have just been diagnosed with a 19cm ovarian cyst which I believe has grown in response to a long-term suppression of my desire to make art again.

In my favourite image of the Hindu deity Hanuman, he uses his hands to pull his chest wide open to reveal that what is inside him is God. Hanuman reminds us that we’re meant to have space–in us, around us, for the divine to flow. So perhaps I come second to Hanuman; what is inside me can only be revealed once I let go of a few things.

My surgeon’s name is Art. The irony is not lost on me. After all, art and life should not be separate. It is difficult for me to accept that I cannot un-do the cyst myself. That realizing the value of my expression will not counter the inner manifestation.

Why do the events of life occur as they do?

In India, rivers are sacred. The river is a symbol for our soul’s journey. Water flows to wherever it finds the least resistance. If we were able to do the same, without judgment or fear, I believe we would be almost purely spiritual. The river is also seen as feminine. Like the river, I suppose the fluid of my cyst flowed to where there was space–a space not respected enough or filled by my own creative expression–and I did not resist it. My cyst grew in the place where a women’s biological ability to create begins, my ovary.

Art, with scalpel, will carve out space within me; space that I was not able to protect for myself, with my solitude and care and expression. As a yogi, an advocate of all methods natural and alternative, my body, my thoughts and my emotions are my own laboratory. I believe that I both cause and cure disease. How did I not notice that I was being over-filled? A vast pool of anger, hurt, fear, and pretending to be what I am not.

Why does the river flow where it does?

All we can ever do in life is take the path of least resistance. That’s what a path is, something that is cleared for us. Sometimes we recognize this space only once it has been filled. Our spiritual practices can empty it. Our care, our health, our meditation. What kind of yogi am I? What kind of natural health practitioner am I, that I accept the knife? I have never for a moment believed that a knife can heal, however I am faced with having to trust the ebb and flow of life, and hoping that if I allow him, Art can create the space that I was not able to.

I thought I could heal myself by a mixture of Chinese herbs and by giving attention to each of the truths that I’d carefully concealed from both myself and others. The old feminist motto, “the personal is political”, altered slight by my practice of yoga is now more like, “what’s in me is likely in you too”. We are all one. I am ready to have all of the things that I concealed about myself exposed and their wounds excised. I desire to bare my guts, as always, however there is a new awareness of love brimming in me. I now open my heart and the most beautiful and inappropriate moments. I tentatively express this–drawing a big, pink flower of a heart with wings.

I imagine myself like a drop of water on a leaf. In time I will move down the leaf’s spine and as I near the tip of the leaf I must gather courage and allow for that leap into the river to join, to merge. At the moment of the surgery, I will fall silent like the drop of water. We cannot force the elements after all, despite our best intentions. Perhaps in life there is a natural movement towards space. In our silence and acceptance of what is, an endless expansion.

I don’t know exactly how to prepare for my surgery, my leap from the leaf. My belly has grown swollen, tender. I decide to prepare as if I’m pregnant, opening my hips and quieting my mind for the old life that is about to pass through me–yet hoping to return home with something new and, like Hanuman, with a little more faith in the flow of life.

People

The Yellow Paparazzi – ruthless in their quest for the shot!

I’ve been thinking lately about people, how we need to constantly adjust our way of being with others. There is no rule-book. Sometimes we need to bend and yield, sometimes the compassionate action is not so soft. As someone walking the path, aware of the complexities that ego presents, constantly re-assessing your role with others. How to be gentle without being manipulated? How to integrate your thoughts and intuitions about others into what you imagine their reality and needs to be? Sometimes getting it wrong, for certain, but in those moments having the strength to continue forward with a confidence. Growing.

Confidence – I did buy the beads!

And this is not to mention the idea of karma. We all have intricate contracts with one another, which remain unknown to us. Only through intuition we can perhaps have a glimpse of how we are to act. I think sometimes that intuition is simply confidence, or making an effort to set aside fear from our interactions with others. Our legal system, our medical system, and perhaps even our education system seem terrifically fear-based. Fear prevents us from taking the right action, the maybe mucky compassionate one, perhaps the one that is needed. Cultivating a quiet, relatively fearless mind becomes that act of compassion. As Swami Sivananda says, “meditate, it is the only way”.

Varanasi – mala re-strung!

The other thought I have is that life is only just this….people. Our beautiful, inspired interactions as well as our muddy, frustrating ones. All of them valuable.

Thank you.

Pranams,

jjz

T Stal

Accommodating Others by Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Continuing with sharing writings that have profoundly influenced me. This particular talk by Swami Dayananda changed for me what it means to lead a spiritual life. I hope you enjoy!

Swami Dayananda at the Ganga with Kamandalu (water pot)

Vedanta is a teaching about oneself. Vedanta is an inquiry wherein one discovers that the real meaning of the word ‘I’ is the self who remains unchanged from childhood to youth to old age, whose nature is pure awareness that is absolute contentment and love, and who is free from any sense of limitation. To appreciate yourself as that limitless wholeness you require a mind that is prepared to assimilate that knowledge. For the one with an unprepared mind, Vedanta is like calculus for a person who is learning basic mathematics. In Vedanta the preparation required is a mind that has, in relative measure, that which it seeks to discover in the absolute sense. If the self is absolute contentment, then the mind of the seeker must be relatively content. If the self is absolute love, then the seeker must be a relatively loving person, a person who happily accepts people and things as they are.

To gain such a mind means to develop certain values and attitudes and to be clear about them as far as understanding their importance. Accommodating others is such a value. In fact, anger is due to lack of accommodation. If you expect the world to conform to your desires, then it is your own expectation that brings anger to you. Accommodation is an understanding that the other person behaves as he does because he cannot act contrary to his nature. You have no right to expect something different from him just because it suits your needs. If you think you have a right to ask him to change, then he has the right to ask you to let him live as he does.

In fact, only by accommodating others, allowing them to be what they are, do you gain a relative freedom in your day to day life. In many ways, everyone interferes in everyone else’s life. Everyone creates a global effect by his or her actions. Ordinarily you just look at things from a small perspective, and you find the person you are angry with looming large before you. In fact, you are never free from anyone’s influence or from all the forces in the universe. Nor can you perform an action without affecting everyone else. Even your statements will affect others. Therefore our freedom needs to include the fact that we are all interrelated.

Even the swami is not free. A couple of people passed by when I was at a zoo. One said to the other, “Did you check out the new one?” People often make such comments. I try not to disturb people, but it seems that my clothes, the traditional robes of a renunciate do cause them to react. I have made a decision, and it will definitely affect others. If I am disturbed by others’ comments, then I gain only that much freedom that they grant me. But if I reverse the process, if I give freedom to others to be what they are, to that extent I am free. So I do not argue with them. My freedom is the freedom that I give them to have any opinion they want about me, even though it may be wrong.

Thus, there are benefits to accommodating people as they are. If someone makes a comment about you, allow him to do so. If the comment is not true, you usually try to justify your actions and prove him wrong. If you are objective, you can see if there is any validity in his criticism of you. If he has put you down for his own security, give him that freedom and then you are free. What tightening can you do to a bolt when the threads are not there? Similarly the world can disturb you only to the extent you allow the world to disturb you. And you do not allow the world to disturb you if you give the world the freedom to do what it wants within the rule of society. By changing yourself totally in this way, you gain according to your value for accommodation, relatively abiding contentment and freedom.

Practicing accommodation you come to terms with yourself psychologically – with yourself as a personality. That is what we call yoga-sadhana. It is not an exhaustion of impressions (vasanas) but an understanding of certain realities that are there. Look back at the situations, the people and events, which disturbed you in your life. They are not mere memories but remnants of reactions. A reaction is not something you do consciously. You cannot consciously get angry, for anger is not an action but a reaction that takes place, something you have no control over. Reactions create a great impact on you and become part of your psyche. They are aspects of the personality of a person. In fact, they are false, born of a lack of alertness on your part. Memory itself is not unpleasant. Unpleasantness is there in your mind because of lingering reactions and emotions which have become as though real. Therefore recall those people and moments that caused you pain. Or perhaps you carry guilt because of some hurt you caused another. In the seat of meditation recall them all and let them be as they are. With patience you are free yourself from all residuals of the reactions.

When you look at the blue sky and the stars, or the birds and mountains, you have no complaints about them and you are happy. You see the rocks on the riverbed; they did not do anything to please you. Yet you are happy because you accept them as they are, and therefore you are pleased. The river flows in its own way; it does not bother you. You do not expect its fullness to be greater or to flow in a different direction. In fact, you seek out natural spots because they do not invoke the displeased person, the angry, hard-to-please person that you seem to be. The demanding cord in you is not struck by them. You are one with the situation, an accommodating self, without the need of the world doing anything to please you.

Thus, you are a pleased person with reference to a few things. That is the wedge you have to create in yourself. When you go to the mountains, the mountains do nothing to please you but you find you are pleasing to yourself. See how pleased you can be, and bring that pleased person to bear on all situations and people who had displeased you and whom you had displeased at one time or another. Then look at yourself just as you would when you look at nature. Accept others as you accept the stars. Pray for a change if you think you or they need to change, and do what you can to promote change. But accept others first. Only in this way can you really change. Accept others totally and you are free; then you discover love, which is yourself.

Toronto, Canada - July 1985

Knowledge

A sort of Lineage of Mothers

In these final days of Navaratri I am thinking about knowledge…as I should be. However this year it has sunk in a little deeper than it has before, but also left some questions for me. That is that the goddess grants knowledge but that she also deludes. She manifests as error and confusion as much as she is also wisdom. Swami Sivananda says, “there is no wonder in this. In spite of intelligence, all creatures are struggling for the sake of belly”. The divine will always prevails. You could say, ‘trust in the flow of life’.

The question that I am left with is that Navaratri seems an occasion for those who want to change, to transform themselves. Literally to purify and to triumph over negativity. We are told that truth alone triumphs and that by purifying and encouraging abundance, we open the door for wisdom to enter. We have the strength of the divine Mother and creative energies at this time to do it. Our sadhana at this time is more potent, more directed, will better reveal where we need to change. But what of those who don’t want to change? How can I, as a teacher, as a friend, as a daughter, as a human being better serve those who don’t want to change? Those for whom the sword of Kali may be too sharp?This is not really a question specific to Navaratri, but this is what has come up for me this year.

Swami Sivananda perhaps answers it here,

“The message of the Mother is: become a practical embodiment and champion of positive idealism, relative usefulness without attachment to the world, self-perfection, equal vision, balance of mind, motiveless service to humanity, unselfishness and absolute humility”.

Happy Dussehra or Vijaya Dasami

Pranams,

jjz

Dispelling Illusions on the Path by Swami Radhananda

There are several short pieces of writing that I carry around with me everywhere I go – because they have really influenced me, and continue to help me on my own path, focusing on what is most important and forgetting the rest. In the interest of sharing these I will post them here for you over the next little while. The first is an article published in Ascent Magazine, July 2004 by Swami Radhananda. I hope you enjoy it!

Pranams, jjz

 

Chehel Sotun Palace, Isfahan, Iran

Why do we focus on the light? We need a symbol for the power that’s greater than we are. I call it ‘light’ because it’s the subtlest image. When I refer to Divine Light I am referring to the Essence, God, Divine Mother, Consciousness or Higher Self. The mind needs something to focus on. Light is a good symbol because it has the capacity to bring clarity or awareness. If you’re sitting reading and you have a dim light, it’s very hard to see the words on the page. So you get a brighter bulb. In the same way, if you bring light into your life, you begin to see your life more clearly, you begin to read it. Spiritual practice is bringing the Light of awareness into daily life.

I find it difficult to be in the Light for long without seeing what is going on. The light will unmask illusions as it enters your life. It’s the same with studying the Kundalini system, a teaching which is a precise blueprint of our spiritual evolution. On entering the system you will come in contact with the Light and the Light will reveal your root issue. You start at the beginning with the human condition of survival: anger, competition, jealousy, greed, pain, fear. These things will inevitably be revealed by Light. This is the reality. When you study yourself and do spiritual practices, what you are generating will nourish either your awareness of the Light or those basic survival tactics. Learn to read your life, take responsibility, because you will be shown what it is you need to do. You can choose growing into the light or you can stay in the dark and grow more angry, depressed, self important and deluded.

People starting on the spiritual path often think it is full of silence, light and Om sounds, but it’s a CRASH! Mental and emotional turbulence is not unusual on the spiritual path. The path is not la-de-dah. It is a working through of our conditioning. It is a turbulent thing, it has to be. We’re on this human plane, learning about being human. If we were perfect, then we would probably be on another plane where everybody’s perfect, learning something else.

It is difficult when you have an idea that spiritual life and daily life are separate. What does it mean for you to lead a spiritual life? You have to be realistic.

If you get liberated from your concept of what spiritual is and get real about what being a human is, your life will take on a different meaning.

If you take Eastern tradition without translating it into your own life, or you are rigid about Western religions taking their ancient ideals of meditation, prayer and austerities literally, you will be limited. When you go beyond the formality of the practices, to the Essence, to the Light, all the traditions basically say the same things. Milarepa, Christ, Buddha, Sivananda, Swami Radha, they have all taken life as a gift for learning. It’s not about the robe you wear or living in a cave or a convent, it’s about living with yourself and knowing yourself so you can be of benefit to others.

The purpose of spiritual life is to bring quality into life through the Light of awareness, understanding and compassion, not to get what you want or to be content in an illusion. People play games to get what they want on the spiritual path. Why? Because they are not committed to the Light and they are not serious about finding out who they really are. There are many games:

• The honesty game. You play at being honest, so honest that you’re spectacularly honest. You can admit anything. Next week you can admit something else. The “honesty” becomes a substitute for change.
• The child game. Acting like you can’t do anything for yourself, that you are “spiritually helpless”.
• The humility game. You act very humble. Behind these actions there is a strong desire to be recognized as humble.
• The justification game. Everything that you do has an excellent reason (for being done), so there is no room for the light to come in. There’s no room for anything to come in. The rational mind takes over, figuring everything out and making it tidy.
• The holy one game. Where you show all the actions and words of being holy, but there is no generosity or consideration, only the appearance of
  holiness.
• The pseudo spiritual language game. Using words like “transcendence”, “cosmic vision” or “one with the universe”. The words are a façade when people don’t want to look at themselves; the language loses its meaning.
• The spiritual partner game. Using your partner as an excuse to not go forward with your own evolution. You “wait” and “support” the other so you can both go together. Nothing happens. Neither goes anywhere. What are you supporting?
• The dream lover game. People often come to spiritual life looking for emotional gratification, “a dream lover” or “soulmate”. If you are not looking for your own soul, what is the purpose of a spiritual path?

One thing for certain, the Light brings pressure. You might have the expectation that when you get to that point of being lighter, life will be easier. But the Light is bound to bring pressure. That’s its job. Your faith will be tested. You may get into a painful situation or get despondent or depressed. Light will pressure you to question your life, your actions and what has brought you to this point. If you cooperate with the Light, it will give you the ability to see through your illusions.

If you don’t cooperate with your own evolution, or ignore the Light, things become worse. Look at your everyday situation. Is there tension, disagreement, conflict? The Light wants something changed so it will create this dissonance. This isn’t a bad thing; it creates awareness that something has to be addressed. Will you just let it go, avoid the situation? Would that be compassionate?

Compassion isn’t “niceness”. It can be fierce. The most compassionate action is to break the cycle of illusion. Illusions are built from unrealistic expectations. They create a sense of a false reality. That’s the thing with the Light, it keeps breaking the pots. Krishna breaks the pots and keeps things moving, so your life doesn’t become a museum. He frees the rich butter to become available instead of being hidden away.

You can ask for the Light of understanding to reveal what you need to see in yourself and it will happen. Reality takes on a different form. The Light keeps breaking the illusions and bringing us to a subtler and subtler place inside of ourselves. It becomes the building block.

Can you see what reality is and not just what you want to see?

Reality is always better than an illusion.

 

Full Circle

I am very happy to share a couple of images submitted for my project by two yogis and friends, Manni and Sue. I’m presenting them together because I really saw these two together thematically. Both are artists, which I feel I can relate to. To my thinking an artist tries to come to terms with the immediacy of being a yogi, or perhaps it is more likely a yogi trying to understand why one should make things. I’m surprised that more artists are not also yogis; a mind that has been taught to think in abstraction can understand yoga very deeply.

“Om Shanti” by Manni

I just knew that Manni would apply her unique perspective to my question about understanding an asana. This photo is called “Om Shanti” in reference to the feeling of quiet and peace experienced in the asana. Turning the world upside-down just makes more sense, as she says. It is that kind of willingness and commitment to turning everything upside-down that makes the asana so potent. The addition of the circle becomes quite interesting. We can see a peace symbol, but it’s upside-down which some take to mean the antithesis of peace or, three, non-radioactive alpha particles flying off an aneutronic fusion reaction. Which end is up? It gets a bit crazy. But I don’t think it’s necessarily about either this or that. I see it as coming full circle. Sometimes in life we move away from something; we think we’re done with it, we’ve outgrown it. But you can find yourself (sometimes a loooooong time later!) circling back to it, but this time with a different mind, a different perspective. It’s also possible to come full circle in terms of interest or belief. Sometimes initially we don’t like something and then at a certain point it becomes the thing we like the most. Attraction and aversion (rage & dwesha) might actually be the same sort of thing. Which brings to mind a quotation:

“Hell is other people”.

˜Jean-Paul Sartre

Hilarious! It can certainly feel like hell to get inside someone else’s head, but yoga teaches us that hell is perhaps our own mind foremost. We often occupy a state of fear, worry, doubt, anxiety, when we can learn to consciously choose something else.

“Four-fifths of our energy is spent in the quarrel with bad taste,

whether in our own minds or in the minds of others”.

˜William Butler Yeats

Da Vinci”s Vitruvian Man

The obvious connection to me is to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, considered the ideal human proportions or “Canon of Proportions”. Certainly yoga is often mistakenly thought to be about the perfection of the body, when it is actually about the eventual perfection of the soul. To this end, the body is merely a temporary vehicle of the soul.

I’ve also learned that people often circle back into my life in just such a way, sometimes moving from one sphere into another. It has been interesting for me to connect with others more through the yoga sphere than in other ways that I might have known them. I’m very pleased that Sue circled back into my life in just such a way. I’ve never seen Sue in a Headstand before, but here it is – and it looks perfect and peaceful. I’m so pleased!

Sue’s Headstand

Sue’s Headstand is in a very specific spot however. It looks to be private. In this exact spot, she feels stable; other environments maybe a little shaky. We’re all finding our place in the world. When we find stability through an environment or situation, this allows for an inner flowering or unfolding to take place. The Headstand also reminds us that we’re in the world, but ultimately not of it. We take root and then we transcend.

Yoga is life. It’s nothing else.

“You’re just a bunch of molecules until you know who you are”.

˜Cary Grant

Thanks for submitting these photos, Manni and Sue! Inspiring indeed.

Pranams,

jjz