Archive for November, 2011
Good Dog, Buddy
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
“Do you want to know what it is like to die? Think of the thing you treasure the most and drop it! That is death.”
~J. Krishnamurti
If you were to ask me: Who is your Guru? I would have to answer: my dog, Buddy.
We made the decision to put our dog, Buddy, down August 11th after witnessing him in such terrific pain and imbalance that he began to fall over like a child’s stuffed toy without warning.
I spent the preceding hours before the vet came to our home just lying down in his bed with him. A few people asked me what I was doing…“nothing, just lying down with Buddy”. This seemed like the most honorable way for me to acknowledge his place in my life; after all he’d been following me around for the past 12 and a half years no questions asked.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross worked with terminally ill patients in a hospital near Chicago in the 1960’s where I grew up. There, she formulated generalized stages of dying, like: denial, anger, bargaining and finally, surrender. However, in reality there are no stages but only the incessant changes of the mind. A moment of denial or anger opening into acceptance until a moment later the mind curls back on itself in depression, fear, trepidation and confusion. It is the roller coaster mind constantly changing, opening and closing, fluttering in the face of reality. Buddy didn’t go through any of that, he just followed along until he couldn’t anymore and then it became my job to step in on his behalf.
I pulled out all my books on death and dying, the ones I went to to find solace in order to try to understand my mother’s death 10 years ago. It was interesting to read my notes in the margins, see what I had underlined and to reflect on how time affects our grieving. I found this passage: “If the dead be truly dead, why should they still be walking in my heart?” When my mother died, I remember turning to the hospice worker asking her: “ Where did SHE go” incredulously. She replied: “She’s IN you, in your sister, your aunt and everyone whom she loved.” This explanation made sense. We like to make everything last forever, but it is important to include loss in our philosophy of life. I also found this quote: “It is said that when Plato was very near death a friend asked him to summarize his life work. Plato came out of a coma to answer. He looked at his friend and said simply: practice dying”.
At the end of each yoga practice we “practice dying” with the pose of the corpse, called Savasana. Some believe it to be the most important and the most difficult pose. It is easy to skip over Savasana, rationalizing with oneself that we don’t really have the time. But that’s like saying we don’t have the time to let go and so we walk around instead in a place of holding; holding onto what, an illusion of control? When recently asked, “Is death real or an illusion?” one of the remarkable teachers of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition answered: “death is a real illusion”.
The day and night before we put Buddy down a steady stream of family members, neighbors, and friends came by to share stories, look at old photographs and just sit around with Buddy. Others phoned, others still emailed ~ the love and support was boundless. We can learn a lot from a dog. I know I did: sit, stay, breathe deeply, and love unconditionally.
Practice dying. Practice Savasana. Let go and forever walk in the hearts of those whom you love.
A guru is someone who brings you into the light. Good dog, Buddy.
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Saving Time
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Steve and I were walking the other day in Vancouver where we came upon a house on a big hill with a large clock set into the bricks of an old house, a clock on the outside of the house. It was a large, industrial sized clock, something you might see in a high school cafeteria; black hands, white face, easily readable from a distance by many who, from across the way might need to see it, might need to know that in 5 minutes they need to start packing it in and get on with business. But this particular clock faces the ocean and looks out onto North Vancouver and announces to anyone trudging up the hill on Sasamat Drive what time it is, that time IS, that it marches on. “WHO”, we wondered rather incredulously, is this clock for? “Time on the outside, peace on the inside” I quipped to Steve, fantasizing that inside that home there were no clocks and that perhaps in the midst of this urban sprawl, this family made a pact to put time on the outside thereby proclaiming peace on the inside! I wondered as we marched on, what this might look like, it was beginning to sound almost yogic.
What is time? I began to shift my attention to this beloved existential question. Time, Aristotle speculated, may be motion. He added, however that motion could be slower or faster but not time. Aristotle did not have the privilege of knowing about Einstein’s theory of relativity in which time also becomes amenable to change. Similarly when Einstein was working to develop the theory of general relativity and proposed the revolutionary idea that mass curves space and alters time he did not know that the universe was expanding. This discovery, by astronomer Edwin Hubble, came 13 years after Einstein had published his theory of General Relativity. Had Einstein known this he may have incorporated those ideas into his theories.
Our memory creates the past; conscious perception of events gives the feeling of present. Future is a mental construct patterned on the memory experience of the past. The concept of time emerges, then as our mind tries to make sense of the world around us, which is filled with change. Measurement of time started early on in human development. There are plenty of clues in every language in the greetings and the meetings. Time of the day is related to the position of sun in the sky or its absence thereof. There is dawn, sunrise, early morning, morning, mid morning, noon, afternoon, late afternoon, evening, sunset, dusk, night and mid night. Then there are years, months, weeks, based on the earth’s yearly orbit around the sun and the changing seasons. Once we started using clocks, watches, and then digital time we got completely disconnected from the original method of measurement and time developed a life of its own. Time becomes evident through motion and is measured by comparison with other motions. Sunrise sunsets, night and day, the changing seasons, the movement of the celestial bodies are all indicative of continuous change. The aging process is a reminder that molecular motion and interactions are also at work and are a part of time. Alas, I am not a physicist.
In yoga, we move into stillness as we begin to observe ourselves in this very moment of time. Body and mind are ever changing, always blooming and the mind incessantly stays thinking. But underneath all that movement, all that “time” is complete stillness. It is vital that we give ourselves the opportunity to “practice” stillness, as it can slip away along with time, unnoticed and lost to what we call the past. In noticing time, we become aware of how we spend it and our feelings about that. A friend told me she felt guilty taking time for herself one afternoon “it isn’t productive” she said. But we must do this, we must allow ourselves time for self-care, to transition, to connect with our self , others, and our community. We need time to reflect and to pause in order to know from a deeper place what is right and true for us, get into time. Stilling the mind through the practice of yoga allows the habits of thought to recede and the world to appear immediately, without the obstacles of concepts or time getting in the way of our direct experience. Michael Stone says this: ”When the breath and mind move together as one, the central channels of the body open to the present moment, which is none other than what is occurring now. Like tracing a sound back to its source or seeing the water that makes up a wave, we keep the mind so intimately connected to the breath that the two become inseparable”.
We need to know what time it is, from (ahem) time to time, to get to the next moment and to show up for what is important, so I appreciate clocks, watches and other time pieces. I also appreciate what I take to be the bold metaphor and reminder to keep time on the outside, peace on the inside.
Take control of your inner time, the time you create for yourself: be bold, clock in with your self and what makes you tick.
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Richard Freeman
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Richard Freeman in his beautiful book, The Mirror of Yoga begins by saying these words: “Yoga begins with listening. When we listen, we are giving space to what is. We are allowing other people to be what they are, and we are sanctioning our own bodies and our own minds to fully manifest. Yoga also begins in the present moment. Many classic texts, such as the Yoga Sutra by Patanjali, start with the word atha meaning, “now”, which refers to this very notion. In the context of the Yoga Sutra, the use of the word atha means we have come to a point in our lives where we are ready to wake up from our conditioned existence and our habitual ways of behaving, thinking, and interacting with the world. It insinuates that we are ready to get real and to discover the essence of all existence that lies deep down in the core of our own heart and at the center of our being. It is from this experience of the root of life in the present moment that a yoga practice can actually be generated. Patanjali’s use of the word now implies that we have most likely tried many, many other things in order to wake up and to find happiness. We have probably pursued all different types of pleasures, and perhaps we have explored various philosophical teachings and disciplines and maybe even religious practices in order to give life meaning. But still, something is not quite right. When all our attempts to find meaning are seen to have been inadequate for the job, then we come into our present situation and this is where the practice of yoga truly begins; right here, right now”.
“Yoga” my teacher has often said, “is no big deal”. This is one of the most endearing qualities of her’s; to be able to take something so old, so sacred, so revered and turn it into something that needn’t be onerous. In fact she often equates yoga to music and “conducts” her classes in a symphony of movements that seem to somehow transcend yoga, it’s subtle and it makes me giggle even though giggling isn’t really allowed. But that’s the point about yoga, there are laws and rules (called Yama and Niyama) but they merely serve as a sort of boundary in the passageway that helps us come back to now. They, as road signs say: Be truthful, have integrity, create freedom from addictions, let go. They remind us to live simply, find contentment, embrace purity and refine ourselves so that we can surrender to this present moment that some people call God. But the present moment can be scary and it isn’t always comfortable. “Now” as we know it can be elusive, as it slips between the cracks of our fingers. So much happens in the moment despite our seemingly rabid attempts at times to keep ourselves from it; we walk and plan for other things, we talk to friends while sometimes doing something else, it’s multitasking and efficient and also habitual. Yet what we do now will shape the next now, or tomorrow.
It is essential to come back to our now, to our practice, daily or at least regularly. The practice itself can be simple, simple is good, but regular. We need to regularly show up for ourselves; simply and right now.
I am aware that I am now in a place of transition in my life. My time is spent differently and where I spend it are not the same places I have always spent it. I have experienced loss and things have changed. But these things are universal, indeed so many people I meet are in transition. Perhaps this too speaks to the notion of now and how now is no longer.
We have reasons (obstacles The Yoga Sutras call them) that we don’t show up for yoga, not class necessarily but our own yoga, whatever that means to us. In Yoga Sutra-speak these obstacles are: illness, fatigue, doubt, carelessness, laziness, attachment, and delusion. But, we are told, they can be eliminated if the mind is repeatedly brought to a single focus. This single focus can be through the breath, by chanting OM or something else that speaks to you. But, it is about being, now.
The way of yoga is not a single, linear path. Rather, it is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought process and finally to lay bare our true human identity.
Get to know yourself, get to know yoga, now.
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