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Category: yoga
in a nutshell, from Anastasia [book] “The Space of Love” by Vladimir Megre
“So everything starts with a clean-up, eh? And how do you suppose that’s all going to happen?”
“Conscious awareness is the point of departure for any venture. The aspiration of one’s thought finds the most effective path, just like a stream in Nature.”
chapter 21 – Should we all go to the forest?
“And just how the Creator created everything? And what instrument did he gave to Man for creativity?”
“Thought is the chief instrument of the Great Creator. And thought has been given to Man. Creations are true when thought is brought to fruition through the soul and intuition and feelings, and the main factor here is and will always be: the purity of one’s awareness.”
chapter 23 – Re-creating Shambala
excerpts from “The Space of Love” by Vladimir Megre, book 3 from Anastasia / Ringing Cedars series
there it is, yoga or vipassana in a nutshell, from Anastasia.
[book] Why I sit – Paul Fleischman (excerpt I)
I heard about Paul Fleischman for some time now… again just before the 10-day retreat in Dhamma Dvara, then after I come out of noble silence I found his books on the library shelves in the center’s Lobby.
I took and start reading this small booklet curious about his writings… cause it came to my attention many times and never went into explore it. I noticed my mind reacting to the title (“hmm, “therapeutic action of vipassana..””).. let got of this thought and moved on opening the book.
Here are some excerpts from the booklet… in different posts… I could just post here the whole second part of the book (the “Why I Sit” section)… I relate, resonate…
And now, as I took the adhiṭṭhāna (Pali for strong determination, decision, self determination) an effort, intentionally correct and sincere, his writings are somehow validating (don’t know if this is the correct word for what I feel and mean to say here) my efforts.
So, here it is…
II
Although the practice of Vipassana is not a religion in the sense of buying into or swallowing dogma, ritual, or blind faith, I think it is critical to practice “religiously”: that is, with devoted centrality of commitment. Meditation as a desultory practice, an amusement, an occasional hobby in a cluttered life, has little effect, and may stir up more confusion than it relieves. Unfortunately I have seen intermittent, self-directed meditation used to hide from reality, to devalue painful dilemmas, and, in one instance, to aggrandize the self to the point of madness and suicide.
Vipassana references itself to universal human wisdom rather than to particular culture forms. It is non-sectarian in thought. Its framework is mirrored whenever people ponder the art of living. For example, Thoreau wrote, in Massachusetts, in the nineteenth century: “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, forever again… To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest art… no method or discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert …”
The potential therapeutic actions of Vipassana include increased self-knowledge, deepened human trust and participation, integration with and acceptance of one’s past, deepened activation of one’s will, increased sense of responsibility for one’s own fate; greater concentration, deepened ethical commitments, firm yet flexible life structures and disciplines, fluid access to deeper streams of feeling and imagery, expanded historical and contemporary community; prepared confrontation with core realities such as time, change,
death, loss, pain, leading to an eventual diminution of dread, anxiety, and delusion; fuller body-mind integration, decreased narcissism, and a fuller panorama of character strengths such as generosity, compassion, and human love. Each student starts at a different place, and progresses individually; there is no magic and no guarantees.III
Meditation is most therapeutic when it is not looked upon for therapeutic effect, but is put into practice as an end in itself, an expression of an aspect of human nature. That aspect is not a single attribute, like one slice of a pie, but a sustaining, synthesizing, creative force in all other aspects, like the heat that baked the pie. It is more like the bony skeleton than like one limb. So meditation expresses something about the integrated process of a person,
rather than being merely a means to ends in other spheres of life.
Meditation expresses that aspect of us which can receive: the non-selective embracing receptor. We can know ourselves as member cells of an integrated whole.
Occasionally a person will feel this way during special hours of special days: watching a sunset from the rim-rocks of a sandstone canyon in a wilderness of pinyon pine and ancient ruins. These moments are inspirational, serendipitous interludes. Meditation entails the systematic cultivation of this formative human potential as a lifelong centering enterprise. While some activation of this receptive, inter-penetrative, non-judgmental mode is the foundation of any art or science, any significant engagement of the world, it has been most exquisitely expressed by certain writers, like Tagore, Whitman, Thoreau, the Socratic dialogues, Chinese and Japanese Zen poets, and the nameless authors of many classical Pali and Sanskrit texts from ancient India.
This equanimous, aware, unfiltered, receptivity is the sine qua non of religious experience (as opposed to mere religious membership or affiliation). Opening it up makes us feel whole and alive just as eating does. There is no need to rationalize supper as being therapeutic; it is an essential expression of life itself. Similarly, to open up and know with our being is not health-giving, but life-giving. […]But when we open to receive the whole, a great darkness floods in too. Our previously selective, circumscribed flashlight cannot illumine it alone. We can no longer exclude the devouring mouths of time, the Hitlerian epochs cauterizing living limbs of whole centuries, civilizations, peoples; our fears for ourselves and all we love seem like ephemeral flecks of spray foaming up and vanishing endlessly on a boundless endless ocean. Human culture itself, with its religious and artistic and scientific geniuses, has provided candles, torches, even suns for us, that reveal miraculously the dry land between the seas. Vipassana is one of these. It is a technique that enables us to hear the wisdom of life itself, contained in our organism just like the wisdom of hunger, revealing the deepening shaft of vision, determination, more indomitable skill and gentleness in service of the life in which we live. Inside us and around us is the maker for whom we care. Vipassana meditation is one way to activate an enduring, sustaining love in the web of all contacts.
Students who undertake training in this discipline will find themselves walking into a large, dark hall at 4:00 AM. Around them will be one hundred silent, seated, erect friends along the way, men and women, professors and unemployed travelers, lawyers and mothers, who have been there, morning after morning, day after day, for ten days. Darkness will fade, there will be fewer stars, the crescent moon will glow alone, birds will unroll a curtain of life before the new day, and then depart. The hall will be light, yet still, motionless, silent; a chant will begin, whose twenty-five hundred year-old words simply point us towards the best in us; and even slightly bleary and dry, the students may motionlessly reach up and pluck an invisible jewel of immeasurable worth.
Excerpt from book “Therapeutic Action of Vipassana, Why I Sit”, by Dr. Paul Fleischman
This lines reminds me of the many talks we had with Ronen about Yoga, about a personal practice, the fashionable Yoga, what’s happening now in the world with people in search for a path, a true teaching, a true teacher, a true – non-illusory mean of coming back to center, a mean of finding the teacher inside…
embraced by softness
today I didn’t know if I want to be on the mat
in the last days, weeks, I haven’t been… (since 3.09).
I came anyway… as I did some other times, trusting the “I don’t know” and being with the … let’s see what’s coming… unfolding, being informed…
there was a softness, embracing me the whole practice… soft, grater then me…
I was offered a big embrace of softness…
I was RECEIVING this softness…
even if my upper back, shoulders and neck was stiff (at least in the first half of the practice)…
even when I am mechanistic in the asana…
this softness was with me all along today on the mat…
supporting me…
I was offered a surprisingly spacious breath
I feel my core regaining a soft vitality
not hurting anymore
for the first time since Pearl left again, I felt the warmth of my womb
I can receive,
I am embraced… by something greater then me
tat tvam asi
reverence of approach
An apprenticeship with sorrow invites us to learn the rites of grief and to practice a reverence of approach, as Irish poet/philosopher John O’Donohue suggests. He writes, “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach… When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us.” How we approach our sorrows profoundly affects what comes to us in return. We often hold grief at a distance, hoping to avoid our entanglement with his challenging emotion. This leads to our feeling detached, disconnected and cold. At other times, there is not space between us and the grief we are feeling.We are them swept up in the tidal surge of sorrow and often feel as though we are drowning. An approach of reverence offers us the chance to learn a more skillful pattern of relating with grief. When we come to our grief with reverence, we find ourselves in right relationship with sorrow, neither too far away nor too close. We have entered into an ongoing conversation with this difficult, holy visitor. Learning we can be with grief, holding it softly and warmly, is the first task in our apprenticeship.
Approaching sorrow, however, requires enormous psychic strength. For us to tolerate the rigors of engaging the images, emotions, memories and dreams that arises in times of grief, we need to fortify our interior ground. This is done through developing a practice that we sustain over time, Any form will do – writing, drawing, meditation, prayer, dance or something else – as long as we continue to show up and maintain our effort. A practice offers ballast, something to help us hold steady in difficult times. This deepens our capacity to hold the vulnerable emotions surrounding loss without being overwhelmed by them. Grief work is not passive: it implies an ongoing practice of deepening, attending and listening. It is an act of devotion, rooted in love and compassion.
One of the most essential skills we need to develop in our apprenticeship is our ability to stay present in our adult selves when grief arises.
impermanence and an instant
The realization that everything is subject to change may be the greatest obstacle to happiness. We welcome those changes that bring moments of delight and satisfaction – the birth of a child, the recovery from illness, financial gain. Yet, even in these moments, we sense movement. Change takes away the beauty and energy of youth. At peaks of health we know that we will again experience injury and illness. Possessions acquired through wealth can be lost or lose their power to gratify. Change always seems pointed toward a sense of loss, inevitably of life itself.
And yet it is precisely in this understanding of the inevitability of change that the meaning of Yoga enters our life and beckons toward happiness.
This is Yoga as the progression into the new.
Thank God I have met Sayagyi U Ba Khin and Goenka through Adi de la Brad and Geonka’s teaching assistants, Nathamuni-Krishnamacharya through his lineage Desikachar-Paul-Ziva-Ronen.
Ronen was asking me yesterday if I see the benefits of Yoga into my life, mostly now when I am into a… living-situation 🙂 let call it.
OH, GOD! Thank GOD I have chosen to start learning to breath (in 2007) and still practicing… thank god I know everything changes… when I know… when I don’t I am humbly reminded… thank god for the softness I can be with in my darkest moments… thank god for the breath which is not mine and yet fills me with live and vibrancy…
I have a new practice for a couple of days now. The focus of my practice is the giving into the exhale, the letting go… and receiving (or see what’s coming, discovering there) in the inhale. In the first time I was on the mat in the new practice, I had a moment…
a moment when I was the giver…it was on an exhale quite at the beginning of the practice… it was an instant realization
there were so many in that instant… that THIS might be my last breath… this is everything I can offer… yet it is not mine… I am just a tube… I don’t know what will follow, what is after… yet I totally trust…
today I (let’s call it) celebrate… 21st of August 2007 was the first day of my first vipassana course… was the day when I started to get into anapana-sati…
I was starting to bring life… breath.. back into this amazing vessel which is this body… to grasp death and life are part of the same coin… and are here every moment, in every breath I… take (?)… I am offered… Universe is filling me with every breath… star dust… sacredness.
I am offered this experience, along with so many other sacred spirits along the way…
not easy traveling… but.. PPFFF!!! FULL!!! of everything what life means!!…
in my yesterday practice PERSEVERANCE come to me… patience and perseverance, with softness. in the last days I go to the mat with Tirumalai in my heart… being grateful for all the effort he put in this lifetime for humanity (there are so many others!!). I am here to assume some effort… for my Spirit, for all the beings which are on the way.
even when my asanas are mechanistic, I can see that, can be with that.. or if I don’t see (am), I catch it as it has just passed… accept that and move on …. with perseverance… don’t lose time and energy in judging… putting more effort (attentiveness and presence) in being into the moment… a new breath is here… inhale.. exhale… this is what I can offer, letting go…
heading to the mat in reverence… celebrating each breath at a time…
may all beings be free of suffering,
may all beings be happy,
may we all know pace and harmony inside.
poem by Krishnamacharya
OH, sleep mind,
Praise Lord Krishna, remember the God of Knowledge.
Pray to the Teacher,
For, when the body becomes weak and depleted,
Your education will not save you.
Knowing for sure that all the objects you come
into contact with are impermanent.
Do not get lost in them, instead,
Again and again resolve to be aware of the Eternal Self.
Where is the conflict when the Truth is known,
Where is the disease when the mind is clear,
Where is death when the breath is controlled,
Therefore surrender to Yoga.
Men desires objects when tender in ages,
Enjoys them when young,
Seeks Yoga when middle aged and
Develops detachment when old.
One who is deeply absorbed in God and with a firm mind
Salutes Him with all his heart, everything He desires,
And the Lord smilingly asks,
“What more do you need?”
Regular Yoga practice steadies the mind,
Regular chanting develops initiative and intelligence,
Unwavering meditation results in extraordinary benefits,
And the repetition of Mantra helps in self-realization.
Speak the truth that is pleasant,
See everyone in the light of friendship,
Remove the body of its toxins, and acquire
The best of education, humility and wealth.
Regulate the breath,
Be happy and link the mind with the Lord
in your heart.
So reveals Yogi Tirumala Krishna,
As a message for humanity.
Poem by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya
Krishnamacharya and all the humble spirits
last night around 4 am I woke up with Krishnamacharya in my mind and heart.
I am reading these days “Yoga and the Living Tradition of KRISHNAMACHARYA”, written by his son T.K. V. Desikachar with R.H. Craven… and feeling so grateful to further discover the humbleness of this… man.
last night I had this deep feeling of gratefulness for all the spirits that touches my life and brought me to this moment… spirits what keeps humanity living, what cares for life…
all came to me last night…
my father come to me… the first time when I met humbleness in this lifetime was in my father… he was offering so much for this world, in his context, without asking for anything in return, having this deep trust that all is good… and being good and doing good just as a way of living… i recognized this later… when he was not around in the physicality.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh come to me… he offered my a glimpse of what love and life can be… lit my life in some of the most “darkest” moments… moments that got me into the light… his humbleness offered me hope… i always knew there is something grater then me and my “issues” and he touched that in me… he was gone from this physical world when I found him… but so grateful to live some of my lifetime when he also lived (departed 1990).
Buddha, Saya Gyi U Ba Khin, S.N. Goenka (departed 2013), Adi and all the teaching assistant of vipassana that I met come to me… when I met Rodica at Dumbrava… I felt she’s humbleness embodied… one of the the most soft , loving (metta) and determined (adhitthana) women i met in this lifetime.
i remember the fourth morning of my first vipassana retreat, 24th of August, 2007, 4 am, my mind didn’t want to wake up to go to the meditation hall (“I am tired, I want to sleep”)… I knew the the hall was full, I was still in bed… judging myself heavily for that. she came to my room, put on the light and with the softest-loving and firmest voice I’ve ever heard she said “it’s time for you to come, we are waiting for you”. and she stood there, her eyes down, in noble silence, creating space for me to pass the door, holding me soft in her heart… no trace of judgment, felt her love giving me power to stand up and move…she was the one whom I feel supported by, in the moment I entered the full hall waiting for me – noticing later that was the most shameful moment of my life :).
Rodica it’s always in the background of the Dumbrava Vipassana Meditation Center… like a beckon… holding the space with her love, compassion and humbleness.
then Pantajali, Nathamuni, Krishnamachyara (departed 1989), Desikachar (departed couple pf days ago)… all this lineage what brought and continue to hold the teachings of Yoga into the world.
I woke up this morning wanting to specifically know more about Krishnamacharya… I WANT to be on the MAT, to know him (his qualities) through his teachings… and not only…
most of the times I go to the mat (or sitting) I invoke these great spirits and in closing my sittings send metta to all the people who are touching my life, opening myself to all these spirits…
I feel humble and grateful living these times… surrounded by the people I am surrounded… living along with great spirits who deeply care for this world and for the people… for keeping humanity human… for bringing back the true nature of us, for efforts that they… we 🙂 [mind: “is this humbleness?]… put in for remembering, manifesting who we are in our pure true essence… for looking at the veil of illusion, delusion… for recognizing the power that lies within…
on to the mat…
moments around the mat
there are moments when I want to go on the mat and moments when I don’t have the wanting yet I have the doing of going to the mat… when I feel driven…
there are moments of preparing the mat… each of the candle lightning, setting the polystyrene, mat, block, taking off my accessories… in those moments I usually look at myself and my attitude towards going on the mat…
then there are the moments before the practice, the moments of arriving into position, the moments when coming into the practice, settling on… looking at the mind… the state of being…
there are moments before the asana…
the moments when breath and movement are aligned…
the moments of spacious inhale, attentiveness to the directionality, in the thorax, as my lung inflate towards the diaphragm…
and the moments when inhale ends… the moments after the inhale…the moments between the inhale of exhale, the moments before the exhale… then the exhale…
the moments when length of the inhale / exhale is not enough… the moments when I look at this, smile inside and move on… moments when I judge myself for that…
the moments when I see the yawning, laziness or sleep kicking in and the moments when I bring that into the attention and move on…
the moments when my mind is away and the ones when I notice that and bring it back…
the moments when I am not there and do a “wrong” repetition or the moments when I don’t know which number of the repetition it is that and exactly that is informing me about the state of the mind in those moments…
there are sometimes (many, still) the moments at the end of an asana when I think forward to what follows, noticing my content 🙂 about knowing what follows in the sequence of the whole practice…
there was also one moment when I felt so asleep that I went to sleep right there, ON the mat, just because my mind was keeping telling me “come on, you cannot sleep ON the mat!” 🙂 I could… really well!!
there are moments after the practice when I sense a dissatisfaction feeling… smiling and moving on with the day (to the next practice in life)…
there are moments when I don’t see the moments… or when I don’t know how moments passed…
there are moments when I know “I didn’t do it right”… and moments when I look at my mind thinking “I am doing it right”… both sides of the same coin… time to keep “en guarde”.
there are moments of still mind, completeness, wholeness… that are here many times after the practice, a deep satisfaction beyond the satisfaction of completing one practice in that day…
the moments when I wonder why am I doing this… and the moments when there is a complete trust and deep knowing about the doing and the meaning of it beyond that specific moment in time and space…
solutions that help to overcome the problems
“solutions that help us to overcome the problems[…]
- adopting a more positive attitude towards others;
- correctly taught techniques of breathing;
- regular and far-reaching inquiry into the role of senses*;
- inquiry into the mysteries of life itself;
- recourse to the counselor of someone who has mastered similar problems;
- inquiry into our dreams, our sleep.”
[1] Health, Healing & Beyond YOGA and the Living Tradition of KRISHNAMACHARYA, chapter “The Ancient Teachings” – T.K.V. Desikachar and R.H. Cravens
*my note: vipassana is an deep inquiry into the role of senses and what’s beyond senses. anapana is a technique of following the breath.
the essential purpose of Yoga practice
The essential purpose of yoga practice is to reduce avidya so that understanding can gradually come to surface. But how can we know whether we have seen and understood things clearly? When we see the truth, when we reach a level that is higher than our normal everyday understanding, something deep within us is very quiet and peaceful. Then there is a contentment that nothing can take from us. It is not the kind of satisfaction derived from gazing at a beautiful object. It is much more than this. It is a satisfaction deep within us that is free from feeling and judgement. The center of this contentment is the purusa.
T.K.V. Desikatchar – The Heart of Yoga. Developing a Personal Practice – 8 The Things That Darken the Heart