Monthly Archives: February 2009

What if it is mainly in the minds of Americans that ashtanga is a rigid law? Is that because it’s what we need it to be? So that then we can break free of it and find our liberation? We are so much more interested in catharsis than practice. We turn everything into a liberation […]

I’ve been reminded to update my word inventory. Here’s the going attraction-revulsion index. (Last year.) Likes: Arriviste, Apocryphal, Alterity, Apposite, Aporia Bayesian, Bellweather, Beseige, Brass Tacks, Blowtorch Cantankerous, Cavalcade, Caterwaul, Crack (adj.), Coracle, Crux Dreck, Desultory, Dawdler, Dulcimer, Discretion, Divination Eschaton, Epigraph Forecaster, Field, Fosforo, Fathom Good God Hidebound, Halcyon, Heresiology Inane, Ignite, Innumeracy, In […]

Practice with others, no teacher. What I'm doing. I sense, again and again, that practice brings together three streams, known variously as: Energy—Method—Community, The Truth—The Way—The Life, Buddha—Dharma—Sangha, &c. The first–some kind of God-energy, a sovereign Spirit–is what we map on to the person in the teacher or therapist role. Easily. But where do you […]

Still no tock. I may crack my heart right open for tryin’ though. This is difficult to talk about, this auto-body work. But I felt two new sensations in recent weeks and think they might be useful to a very few readers out there. Everything went black this morning when I fell out of scorp […]

Let’s say Sherilyn Fenn is god. And the cherry stem she ties in a neat little knot using an inscrutable play of the tongue—the cherry stem is some particular human folded impossibly over and through in to purna matsyendrasana. The full maht-see. A supple knotted plaything hidden in the mouth of god. Not everyone is […]

How Enlightened Are You? A Test If you can live without caffeine or nicotine If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains If you can resist complaining If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time If you can take criticism and blame without resentment If you can […]

I left a university library book in Budapest’s Hotel Andrassy a number of years ago, and lost another one last fall somewhere between Colorado Springs and Boulder. And I’ll probably risk university property and my own sketchy rep with the circ desk again next month—seems less a hazard than trusting whatever informal book exchange I’ll […]

Long days at the desk, this term. I love it. I’ve rigged my little paper lamp near the window where, having finally won the game against the motion sensors, I sit otherwise in the dark. For a week it has rained, a static-dampening pour that sent my focus a little more inside and left the […]

A model: Spiritual Bypassing Index: the time elapsed between event A and event BS, where A is the occurrence of real, juicy pain or struggle or conflict and BS is the utterance of some nondualist cliché. Or, maybe: advaita bromide : experience :: fidgets : vinyasa They’re escape-doors. Escape doors are nice. We have to […]

159. As children we learn facts; e.g., that every human being has a brain, and we take them on trust. I believe that there is an island, Australia, of such-and–such a shape, and so on and so on…. 160. The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief. 161. I learned an enormous […]