Here to Mecca · 13 March 2009
Blue-dark mornings of daylight savings: driving the long curved road that leads from my house to the shala under a brilliant waning moon, early enough to catch the roosters waking in the country-sized estates that line San Vicente. Jasmine is just starting to push through the morning cool; when I return it’ll be heady summer and the moon will look the same.
I’m in a weird space. Work has been amazing, but also shitty. That’s my practice more than practice. These advanced theories that practice is suffering and self-noting, that it’s just mental and physical hygiene that prepares you for more important practices… to be brutally honest, I’m just not there: and the theories feel so outside of anything like participating in nonduality or just being on the breath. Maybe it is more interesting to hold back from saying what yoga is. But work… this is indubitably a field of loss and gain, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. What "arises" in that space is way more revelatory of where I’m at in my maturity. It is useful in that sense. But the point is also that I become useful. It is nice, not distracting or bullshit delusion, if unsustainable to become absorbed like this.
What if I brought the principles of practice to my work? Get out of your own way, follow the rules, just do it systematically with all the energy and focus that you have. Well… I’d never have a creative thought. But still, might reduce the less useful fluctuations.
So, packing today. Let’s see:
manduka,
bikini,
vitamin C.
I think that’s everything.
Oh, download Shinzen Young for the ipod. And gather together the many items I am supposed to courier to Mecca—so much for taking care of the ounces so the pounds take care of themselves. And practice disguising the bend, so nobody gets the big idea to slam me to the thighs in chakra bandasana.
Otherwise, I’m happy to surrender to what will be and don’t much care what that looks like. Am I excited? Nah. But interested, yes. And content about it. So after a long-awaited memorial service tomorrow, I’m off. Time now to write a little speech for that other pending goodbye.
A couple of little feathers that have drifted by recently and stuck to me, from the following sources. First, a speaker at the business school in a lecture I watched to update myself on developments in the “strategic management” literature, absurd capitalist self-help regime that it is. Pretty good insight though. Second, a distillation of Christopher Titmuss’s discussions of relationship. And third, a reading of Shinzen Young.
Making decisions prematurely is the mark of an amateur.
Lovingkindness is a practice, not a feeling.
Live your own life, not someone else’s.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: arbitrage
, astanga yoga
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Sunscreen!
Posted by: Carl · Mar 13, 12:48 PM · #
A magnifying glass. To see the details… :)
Posted by: Gregor · Mar 13, 02:07 PM · #
aww… I was wondering where you’ve been. Started to think your spring break was in full swing, Mecca style! This totally cracked me up because it’s exactly what I would do (if I actually needed to disguise it, which I don’t because there’s nothing to disguise!): “And practice disguising the bend, so nobody gets the big idea to slam me to the thighs in chakra bandasana.”
I hope you’re able- and willing- to share a lot of your experience. You of all people would see it like no one else. I’m excited for you!
Have a great time! And yes- sunscreen!
Posted by: Liz · Mar 13, 03:38 PM · #
Bon voyage chère Chouette!
xoxoxoxoxo
Posted by: joy · Mar 14, 12:04 AM · #
“You of all people would see it like no one else.”
I want an Owl’s-eye view!! :-)
Posted by: karen · Mar 14, 07:14 AM · #
Ala k’i sira dyan. Ala k’i segi nyumanye! (just back from a Muslim sacrifice, I am full of ‘blessings’!) Bonne route et bon retour, ma belle!
Posted by: Fatou · Mar 14, 10:36 AM · #
There you are, had seen no hide, no, hair, no feather of you for ages, was starting to worry.
How long are you going for? What reading matter did you decide on in the end.
Is the memorial service for your mentor/friend who passed recently. I have one coming up for a mentor and friend of my own, not looking forward to it. He went two weeks ago today, very very suddenly, completely out of the blue (he cycled 25miles round trip to work every day) only 42, he taught me repairing and I worked beside him every day, asking him little things here and there (very generous with his knowledge). Only guy around here who was curious rather than disparaging on finding out I do Yoga. Can’t Imagine not seeing him everyday. Anyway, can imagine how tough today must have been.x
PS Shinzen sounds interesting, let us know how you find the cd’s
Posted by: grimmly · Mar 14, 01:04 PM · #
ha en fantastisk resa min kära uggla! xxxxx
Posted by: chitta vritti · Mar 14, 02:35 PM · #
Have a safe trip!
Posted by: V · Mar 15, 07:48 AM · #
safe travels and have fun!
Posted by: tova · Mar 15, 07:49 AM · #
Hey, I’m late on being a joiner here! :)
Bonne journee!
Posted by: patrick · Mar 15, 02:11 PM · #
Have a safe trip. Am sad to be missing you in LA this time but I’ll be back again in May.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Mar 16, 04:32 AM · #
Meep. Heathrow.
I love planespace. So trancey.
Watched An Inconvenient Truth in transit. Should be required on international flights.
Also: leave it to the Brits to stratify their planes into FOUR separate classes.
I will hydrate now.
Love flying. I could do this all day.
Oh wait, I just did…
Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 16, 04:38 AM · #
P.S. Maybe should get some sleep on the next leg? Hyperactiveowl.
Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 16, 04:39 AM · #
Have a glass of wine as soon as you get your first meal on the next leg. I’m serious. And FWIW, I love BA :-)
Posted by: V · Mar 16, 08:46 AM · #
So excited! I’m checking back every 2 hours.
Posted by: joy · Mar 16, 02:04 PM · #
How does one reconcile the obvious contradictions in watching and “Inconvenient Truth” and burning all that jet fuel, let alone all the other biomass/planet toxic stuff that goes into the life of a jet? I know, buy offsets, yet somehow that seems shallow and an end around. I don’t know how these ahimsa yogis rationalize their travel agendas from country to country, workshop to workshop… etc. On the other hand, here we are and we do the best we can given the whats in front of us. I am not trying to lay a guilt trip on the mystical trip. Indeed, these are the types of “damned if you do and damned if don’t” things our pal Arjuna put to Krishna so many thousands of years ago. I am hypocritical as well as I am planning a trip to Asia in a few months. I struggle with the non-sustainable aspects of modern travel in the face of a very green ahimsa.
I love looking at the skin of the earth from 30 thousand feet, you can see all the pockmarks and rifts and pores. And then there is the modern human industrial development which is reminiscent of a squamous cell carcinoma on sun damgaged skin with multiple metasynchronous lesions that soon may over take the whole intugement.
O wayfarer, O pilgrim – sweet travels to you.
Posted by: e&sj · Mar 16, 02:25 PM · #
Drank the wine V but still didn’t sleep. Well, two stints of 90 min.
But on this end, it is interesting what a little espresso will do…. bbbbbuuuzzzzzzz….
buzzzzzzzzzzzz….
Off to find some people now…
Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 16, 07:07 PM · #
Ooooh you are there!!!! :-)
Posted by: V · Mar 16, 08:23 PM · #
hi (0v0)
have a great trip and experience. i’ll love reading about your insights about Mecca. And yes, loving kindness is a practice, not a feeling.
In keeping with everyone’s sentiments, here are mine in Chinese:
有一个伟大的旅行
hugs 拥抱
Arturo 魏涛
Posted by: arturo · Mar 17, 03:46 AM · #
Hi everyone and thanks.
Grimmly, that’s harsh. I’m sorry. Take care over there. I flew over the English countryside, an irrational patchwork on the crinkled soft earth—nothing like the stale regiments of Montana industrialized agriculture. So gorgeous, the land there.
John, yeah, I love looking down. We also flew over Muscat and its neighboring oil-statelets in the night. Perfectly straight gated zones of community, lit up blazing in the desert and connected by straight bright highways. Amazing. I badly want to visit Dubai, even now.
I don’t know how these ahimsa yogis rationalize their travel agendas from country to country, workshop to workshop… etc.
From what I can tell, they genuinely don’t. They just feel connected to the earth by appreciating its beauty without considering the earth is connected to them. Thinking happy thoughts feels nice, and negative thoughts are bad for you. Eh?
You’d think all that Bhagavad Gita reading would take the edge off the head-in-the-sand aspect.
Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 17, 04:28 PM · #