guru

What exactly is a guru? And is a guru a necessary part of the path to enlightenment? The word comprises gu, which means darkness, and ru, which means the destroyer of that darkness. As with any great teacher, then, the guru is one who understands darkness and can also dispel the darkness by illuminating it. But what does that mean, exactly? Teachers arrive in many forms... books can illuminate the way. Any of my lovely yoga teachers are continually illuminating the path for all of their students. But does that make them gurus? My understanding of a guru includes the idea that this person possesses the ability to transmit energy to the student and, through this transmission, can dissolve spiritual ignorance or energetic blockages that prevent the student from understanding and dispelling the darkness they possess. So, by this standard, does that mean a person who can bestow shaktipat is necessarily one's guru? I have a friend who has received shaktipat twice now from a local shaman, but I don't think either of them view their relationship as that of guru and student. So what makes a guru more than just a teacher? And how does one determine whether they've encountered a guru? The Dalai Lama says to "rely on the teachings to evaluate a guru: do not have blind faith, but also no blind criticism."

karma

The concept of karma is, naturally, a recurring theme in our philosophical discussions at yoga school. Though we have talked about it a lot, I have to say that I don't feel any more comfortable with the concept than I did at the outset. I think I have, perhaps, a better understanding of it, seeing it now as more than simple cause and effect (though, that is related to it) and viewing it more as action that ripples out in all directions, affecting the past, present, and future. So, there are actions and there are responses that correspond to those actions, but it is not necessarily a 1 to 1 linear causal relationship.

What I have trouble with, however, is the notion that somehow we all get exactly what we deserve or require. On one level, I can see the potential benefit from experiencing all things, high and low, good and bad, easy or difficult, because, at least if one is truly present and aware, one can learn from any and all experiences, and thus advance in personal and spiritual endeavors. But, from there it seems to delve into seriously mucky territory, because it is rather a short leap then, to say that the person who was born into poverty or warfare is somehow acting out their karmic inheritance, or working out their karmic relationships, that somehow their previous actions have created or influenced their present circumstances. Again, on some level, I can follow the logic, because a person born to abhorrent circumstances still has the opportunity to respond to them, and, based on that response, may advance spiritually, burning off karmic debt, or what not.

I guess what makes me uncomfortable is this seems like a very easy, too easy, way of accounting for economic inequities and other, worse, injustices in the world, and thereby somehow justify classism and all the other stupid hierarchies and ~isms that are so intensely problematic. You know, logic that says, well, we have been born to privilege and therefore we must have done something to deserve it, or we would have been born into something else... and I can't get on board with that idea. Which is to say, while I feel I have a clearer picture of karma (which is much more nuanced than I've indicated here) I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.

rumi

I love Rumi. I love poets who translate other poets (they're really the only ones I trust with translation of poetry). This poem was read at kirtan tonight:

Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Welcome difficulty.
Learn the alchemy True Human Beings know:
the moment you accept what troubles
you’ve been given, the door opens.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar
comrade. Joke with torment
brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.

That undressing, and the beautiful
naked body
underneath,
is the sweetness
that comes
after grief.

~Rumi (tr. Coleman Barks)

on faith

The whole concept of faith is one with which I have struggled immensely. Those close to me have told me on more than one occasion that I am one who possesses too many doubts to be that certain of anything that I would just "have faith" without some other sort of evidence to corroborate it. And yet, I have found I often inexplicably rely on my intuition, which is really just a kind of knowing, but a knowing that depends on faith that what one's gut is saying is somehow as reliable as any fact.

Something in that assessment doesn't sit right with me though. I am tripping over the relationship between faith and belief and the difference between that and knowing. Knowing doesn't really require faith, it is not a supposition; for all intents and purposes, it is fact. But where is the basis for this fact? Sometimes we know things to be true until further information comes along to upset that equation. The earth was known to be the center of the universe and the geocentric model persisted until greater knowledge upset what had been accepted as fact. You can thank Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler for the heliocentric model. That, too, persisted until new knowledge came into being when Herschel and Hubble posited our earth in the middle of our galaxy, which existed in relation to other galaxies... which is to say, how does one manage to have faith when even facts fall apart in the face of our ever increasing apprehension of reality?

I don't know that I have a satisfactory answer to this question. I just know that it has something to do with the heart and observation of the universe and, I feel, not a whole lot to do with doctrine and dogma. It is a participation in the act of knowing, then?

gayatri

We have been given the assignment to spend a week chanting the gayatri mantra. This is one of the few mantras I was already familiar with, since the lovely RMH spent a period of time a couple of years ago repeatedly chanting this mantra (I think it was once a day for a month), and I do think it is a lovely mantra.

This was the first version I had heard, followed by this, but neither of them really resonated with me (the latter one, specifically, sort of made me want to dance around the room in a mildly silly fashion - which I wholeheartedly endorse - but I couldn't get into chanting it). Finally, I came across this version by Mahendra Kapoor, which appealed to my apparent preference for more a more moody take on this mantra.

In any case, the experience of chanting this mantra was a positive one, but I am unsure of its effect on me, mostly because I think it felt a little forced on my part and I don't know if it was a matter of feeling pressed for time, and therefore less engaged in the practice than I would have liked to have been, or if, as a fellow yoga student of mine put it, it's just not "my jam."

yoga anxiety?

I wasn't feeling well this morning and thought I had sent a text message to my teacher Hari-Bhakti, but it evidently didn't go through. Obviously, I would have preferred to feel better and to have made it to my morning asana class, but apparently I fell asleep again only to have awful yoga anxiety dreams. Now, it's possible that my dream was a reflection of my anxiety about having missed class, or perhaps, as was pointed out to me by a dear friend, my body actually needed that extra bit of sleep to process anxieties that I had already churned up and needed to be dealt with. In any case, the dream was sort of fantastic, in the sense of hitting pretty much every angle of anxiety available.

Pretty much the dream went like this: there was my teacher H-B, only in my dream she had this wild pink hair and was really really fashionable. I mean like super-model guru fashionable. And she was casually sitting in a chair saying to me (with a cadence and tone completely unlike her natural speaking voice), "Well, you know, maybe you're not pure of heart enough... This practice really takes commitment and hard work and maybe you're just not dedicated enough to attain any kind of enlightenment." And as though that weren't painful enough, the dream then flashed back to my arrival at that morning's class (because in the dream I had made it, but I'd made it an hour late). I walked in to find that the whole class had choreographed an elaborate yoga dance routine, replete with song, and they were performing it flawlessly. It was more complicated than a professional marching band field routine. And H-B was very casual about that, too. "Oh, yes, we just threw this together this morning." And I couldn't believe it. It was the sort of thing that would have taken weeks to develop and several more to execute flawlessly. "You must really be a great teacher," I told her. But she wasn't having it. "All of my students were just so into it, you know?" And I stood there, trying to figure out how this could have possibly happened, how anyone could have accomplished all that in an hour, and I stared in amazement at all of my fellow students' smiling faces.

But that wasn't enough. My dream wanted to make sure it had tripped every anxiety laden circuit available to it, and it was then that dream H-B revealed to me that they had ALSO taken a comprehensive midterm that morning and that it was not something I could make up. So, there I was, stunned, feeling completely like a yoga school flunky destined for spiritual failure and a lifetime of un-enlightenment. It really, really sucked. But then I woke up. I decided right then that perhaps I should be kind to myself and accept that I had missed class and that, rather than beat myself up about it (or anything else related to yoga school) I should instead regroup, refocus my energy, and rededicate myself to this adventure, and do so with a spirit of wonder and joy and NOT with all the weird stuff my dream was directing my attention toward. Yikes.

kindness

Yesterday, my teacher Diana read the following poem at the end of class and I love the poem and the poet, so here it is:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

~Naomi Shihab Nye

meditation

My experience with meditation has been long, varied, and often unfruitful. There was a time, when I was much younger (perhaps 20 years ago?), that I practiced meditation regularly, sometimes as often as twice a day. I was just discovering yoga and had been immersing myself in eastern philosophy and, as luck would have it, my professor and friend brought our class to a zen center in the santa cruz mountains. Immediately, I fell in love with the idea of meditation. But in practice, I found it was quite difficult to do.

What I discovered was a lot of monkey chatter. I would later come to call this "thoughting" since most of it didn't involve actual thinking, but rather random acts of thought just sort of happening independently and without much (if any) conscious direction. It was a little horrifying. Even on those rare occasions in which I could settle the noise down a bit and begin to approach something like stillness, no sooner than I was beginning to experience what I think may have actually been real meditation, the monkey mind would start up again and exclaim, "Look! You're doing it!" or some other nonsense, and before I was even finished patting myself on the back, the moment was lost to me...

My understanding is that this experience is quite normal and that a lot of the practice of meditation involves just showing up to the practice and putting in the time, much like what established writers seem to do with their writing practices. Show up. Pay attention. Put the time and effort into the practice. And, maybe, hopefully, if you're lucky, the rest will eventually sort itself out. So, I am embarking on yet another effort to get down with a solid meditation practice. So far it has not been terribly fruitful. It seems as though there is more monkey chatter now than ever. I'm choosing to view this as the result of churning up a lot of stuff internally through my engagement with yoga and yoga school lately, and that, having now been churned up, that junk is free to dissipate and get flushed out with any other unnecessary garbage. This is my current operating theory anyway. Wish me luck.