I got my fourth tattoo this weekend. It was my largest (size of a face), longest (two hours), most complexly designed (lots of little lines running over differently sized curves), and most intense (on ribs and touching hips).
Getting a tattoo is so meditative, despite its intensity (and I don't call the feeling pain - it doesn't operate on me the way that pain does). I kept very still, didn't clench my toes or fists, and barely had any muscle spasms (something that did happen with my first hip tattoo). I breathed into any discomfort, and tried to still my thoughts. I imagined my body moving up to the needle instead of it moving down into me - when I mentioned it, my artist concurred that that really works. I turned on my yoga teaching mindset and thought about which bandhas I was engaging. I traced the sensations like a map across my hip and rips, trying to determine where it felt better (I think my back ribs felt best, with hip and front ribs coming in as more intense). I also noticed the times when I was wrong about where the needle actually was. I bathed in the buzz and the smell of the ink.
I didn't think twice about wandering through the shop with my shirt hiked up (which, to be fair, I don't think twice about in kickboxing, either). I walked barefoot (same). What I said, when the artist and my friend asked about how I felt, was that I was okay. And I was. When it got tough, that moment ended, often replaced by a good moment. Sometimes just letting my gaze unravel its focus was helpful. Sometimes I curled one set of toes. I though about my mom, my ex-boyfriends, my friends, my cat, my homework. I got Writing Ideas. I thought about all the things the tat and I would experience together. I took in as much of the experience as I could, and when I left, I felt a high like the one I got after my first (fifteen minute) tat.
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Yoga Is
I've been thinking about the general pressure in the fitness world to make yoga "for" something. I read a lot of fitness mags and get headlines emailed to me, and they often scream, "Yoga Poses for a Better Butt!" "Tone and Tighten with Yoga!" "Yoga Your Way to a Sexy You!" (I made that last one completely up. It seems plausible.)
Look, I'm a yoga teacher, and I've been practicing for years. I know that yoga tightens and tones. But what bugs me about headlines like these, particularly at a time of year that is all-too often focused on "improvement" and "resolutions" and "doing better" (phrases that I am all too susceptible to believing, just like you may be) - well, hell, let's keep some practices sacred. Let's let yoga be. It is what it is and it does what it does, but it shouldn't be saddled with reasons. We have enough pressure out there. Let's keep our spiritual practices empty and see what comes to fill them.
Look, I'm a yoga teacher, and I've been practicing for years. I know that yoga tightens and tones. But what bugs me about headlines like these, particularly at a time of year that is all-too often focused on "improvement" and "resolutions" and "doing better" (phrases that I am all too susceptible to believing, just like you may be) - well, hell, let's keep some practices sacred. Let's let yoga be. It is what it is and it does what it does, but it shouldn't be saddled with reasons. We have enough pressure out there. Let's keep our spiritual practices empty and see what comes to fill them.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Teaching Out in the Open
All of my teachers this semester hold their tricks and challenges out in the open. Some have shared personal stories in the service of the topic at hand. All have discussed their scholarly practices. It's a level of academic engagement in the highs and lows of the profession that I haven't seen since the conversations I used to have with my mother, a professor of psychology. The communication lines were different in my master's program. Though many of my professors there shared their honest experiences, there's a level of professionalization in the doctoral context that I think institutionalizes their honesty a bit. We're being treated, to some degree, as future colleagues, which is such a meaningful move. My yoga teachers make similar moves that chip away against the divide between teacher and student. They talk about the poses that challenge them, problems they overcame, things that bother them. They do it with love, underlining the yogic belief that we are all works in progress.
This aspect of my academic and professional training makes me think differently about what kind of teacher I want to be. There's less performative drama and less hierarchy, but more listening. I try to be this kind of yoga teacher, and next year I hope to be this kind of college teacher as well. The wall between teacher and student breaks down when these qualities come in, and it will be my challenge to keep that wall down, or at least low, in lecture settings and in situations when I need to discipline. A version of the latter scenario can come up in yoga - when a student attempts a pose for which the class hasn't warmed up, for example - and in those situations, I've found it's pretty easy to shift from warm to stern and back again. The balance of that in my college teaching experiences will be interesting to compare.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Multi-Tasking with Yoga
I know. Not at all the point. Yoga is about focus, about yoking (literally) the physical body to the breath with the ultimate goal of releasing each individual's potential energy (traditionally, prana, or lifeforce) and ultimately, eventually, step-by-step, attaining a higher truth.
It takes abhyasa - sustained practice. It's a concept I had tattooed on my arm after graduating from teacher training. I believe in it. It's hard, and it takes time, but it's so worth working toward.
That said, I also believe that sometimes even a little bit of unfocused yoga is better than none at all.
Take my personal practice today. It's the last day of 2013. This year has been fraught with tragedy and pain for me. Family and yoga and kickboxing and writing have held me up when nothing else would. I honor these things above all, up there with my mother's blessed memory and my belief that each person on this planet has the capacity for positive change. Today's a day when I'm leaving lots of loose ends untied in order to make meaning. I'm no longer tethered to the feeling I always used to have when December rolled around, the feeling of needing to finish all chores and errands and start the new year without anything hanging over my head. It's a near-impossible task, I saw time and again. This year, my mother's last year on this planet, is different.
I was on my mat, sweating it out after an intense kickboxing morning. The cat crawled under my leg as I panted through my evolving Hanuman (full split). She didn't have room to stand up straight, which means I'm getting closer to the full expression of the pose. I worked through other sequences that I'd like to teach in class. I breathed. And then, from the top of my mat, I realized I hadn't dusted my bookshelf in a while. I paused to get 'er done, and then I tried out more yoga shapes.
When you don't have time or energy for complete focus, spurts of focus are okay, I think. Yoga is part of my busy, sometimes fractured life, and I'd rather have it punctuating chores and writing and other pursuits than not present in my day at all. Sometimes those spurts shift my whole day around - I toss myself up into a headstand and come down with a new idea for a section of a paper, or calm my racing thoughts with a few minutes of pranayama (breathing exercises).
Your yoga, as my teachers teach, is yours. It's nobody else's. It should look and feel like you, even when it's changing you from outside to inside and back again.
It takes abhyasa - sustained practice. It's a concept I had tattooed on my arm after graduating from teacher training. I believe in it. It's hard, and it takes time, but it's so worth working toward.
That said, I also believe that sometimes even a little bit of unfocused yoga is better than none at all.
Take my personal practice today. It's the last day of 2013. This year has been fraught with tragedy and pain for me. Family and yoga and kickboxing and writing have held me up when nothing else would. I honor these things above all, up there with my mother's blessed memory and my belief that each person on this planet has the capacity for positive change. Today's a day when I'm leaving lots of loose ends untied in order to make meaning. I'm no longer tethered to the feeling I always used to have when December rolled around, the feeling of needing to finish all chores and errands and start the new year without anything hanging over my head. It's a near-impossible task, I saw time and again. This year, my mother's last year on this planet, is different.
I was on my mat, sweating it out after an intense kickboxing morning. The cat crawled under my leg as I panted through my evolving Hanuman (full split). She didn't have room to stand up straight, which means I'm getting closer to the full expression of the pose. I worked through other sequences that I'd like to teach in class. I breathed. And then, from the top of my mat, I realized I hadn't dusted my bookshelf in a while. I paused to get 'er done, and then I tried out more yoga shapes.
When you don't have time or energy for complete focus, spurts of focus are okay, I think. Yoga is part of my busy, sometimes fractured life, and I'd rather have it punctuating chores and writing and other pursuits than not present in my day at all. Sometimes those spurts shift my whole day around - I toss myself up into a headstand and come down with a new idea for a section of a paper, or calm my racing thoughts with a few minutes of pranayama (breathing exercises).
Your yoga, as my teachers teach, is yours. It's nobody else's. It should look and feel like you, even when it's changing you from outside to inside and back again.
Monday, October 14, 2013
The Shape of Surprise
I'm a schedules person, generally, and I set goals. I like to have plans and I like to accomplish things. I am not fabulous at relaxing without another person to motivate me. (Motivate me. See? Even relaxation can be a goal - even when it should, arguably, just be.)
To honor the beauty that I know exists in openness (as yoga and my upbringing both teach me), I'm setting myself some mid-fall non-goals. They're only goals insofar as that's how my brain works. They aren't check off-able, or schedule-able. They just exist.
Make room for serendipity - and room within time, really.
Breathe more deeply.
Know that most things return. Most experiences repeat.
This is the life you're living. Live fully within it.
Nobody's keeping score but you.
More people admire you than you even can imagine.
To honor the beauty that I know exists in openness (as yoga and my upbringing both teach me), I'm setting myself some mid-fall non-goals. They're only goals insofar as that's how my brain works. They aren't check off-able, or schedule-able. They just exist.
Make room for serendipity - and room within time, really.
Breathe more deeply.
Know that most things return. Most experiences repeat.
This is the life you're living. Live fully within it.
Nobody's keeping score but you.
More people admire you than you even can imagine.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Murakami's Running as Metaphor
"I think certain types of processes don’t allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform—or perhaps distort—yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality."
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Murakami wasn't talking about yoga here, but he did a hell of a job evoking it. If you're doing a practice like Ashtanga or Sivananda that encourages structure, how do you find freedom? It's easy for me at Laughing Lotus (where variation within structure is the name of the game), but I love Ashtanga places too, and I'd like to bring my bodily creativity into the time-tested pattern of asana.
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Murakami wasn't talking about yoga here, but he did a hell of a job evoking it. If you're doing a practice like Ashtanga or Sivananda that encourages structure, how do you find freedom? It's easy for me at Laughing Lotus (where variation within structure is the name of the game), but I love Ashtanga places too, and I'd like to bring my bodily creativity into the time-tested pattern of asana.
One way to do this is through breath. Breathing literally (yes, literally) makes the yoga yours. It brings it into your muscles and sinews. Deepening your breath can deepen the pose. It will deepen the pose, whether it does so physically or not. Your energy body will be shaped differently, and your chakras will open. (More on this later - I'm delving into some amazing chakra books and am about ready to shape that knowledge into some of my writings).
What about personal practice? How can something that you do daily - that may frustrate or annoy you just as it energizes and lifts you - become part of you without turning you into a robot? My personal practice used to be fairly robotic. I focused more on the counting of the breath than the feeling of the pose. I didn't listen to my body when it requested modifications or props (and if you're not careful, friends, it will request them more vociferously and rudely than you'd probably like). Now, I try to think more globally. I give myself a maha pose to work up to. I focus on a chakra. Really, what I'm doing is bringing my favorite (or most challenging) moments of my yoga classes home, and making them part of me where nobody can see.
What about Other Things Than Yoga? I'm about to dive back in to academia, which doesn't always encourage the kind of creativity you might think.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Lila(s)
My amazing teacher Emily talked in class yesterday about lila (लीला), the Sanskrit word for "play" or "concept" (as in "the play of good and bad"). She used it as a way to emphasize that the bad and frustrating is part of life along with the good. This was something I really needed to hear, and it's a concept that I think the Western world (at least!) could use more of. My world definitely could.
We don't always show our best selves, after all. Sometimes we make bad decisions. Sometimes we sell ourselves short. Sometimes our mind blanks.
We are always fighting to be the most ideal selves we can be, to have the most ideal life we can imagine, and we forget to leave space for the mistakes and missed steps that inevitably come.
This isn't license to ignore our goals and morals, of course. It's simply, I think, a way to allow us to be imperfect people while striving toward being our truest, best selves. It's the only way to appreciate the many millions of facets that make up each of us as people.
(In case you need a way to remember it: my favorite flower is a purple or pink one that in French is called "lilas," a gentler word than its English equivalent. No connection in meaning, but I like linguistic play.)
We don't always show our best selves, after all. Sometimes we make bad decisions. Sometimes we sell ourselves short. Sometimes our mind blanks.
We are always fighting to be the most ideal selves we can be, to have the most ideal life we can imagine, and we forget to leave space for the mistakes and missed steps that inevitably come.
This isn't license to ignore our goals and morals, of course. It's simply, I think, a way to allow us to be imperfect people while striving toward being our truest, best selves. It's the only way to appreciate the many millions of facets that make up each of us as people.
(In case you need a way to remember it: my favorite flower is a purple or pink one that in French is called "lilas," a gentler word than its English equivalent. No connection in meaning, but I like linguistic play.)
Movement (by (W)Rote)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the qualitative and intellectual differences between writing by hand and typing. (There's research out there, I know, and it's on my "delve into" list.)
Here's the fear I have of paper: it (can) turn(s) good ideas into ephemera that doesn't go anywhere.
I stand in a ballroom, freewriting at a piano, and even as I let my creative juices flow, I am thinking about the hassle of retyping when I get home, the pressure of my hand on the paper, the fear that I am consigning my ideas to closed off-ness. This is why I want, currently, to scan all of my college and grad school notes - to keep them usable. But really all it is is a matter of intention. Take the materials and use them. Of the rest, let go whatever no longer serves you.
Just move. Move on paper. Move on a keyboard. Find a spot in which to settle and be still, but let your thoughts out. Don't imprison them. Set it up to set it free, as my yoga gurus say. What good are they locked on paper or locked in a Word document? Let them fly.
Here's the fear I have of paper: it (can) turn(s) good ideas into ephemera that doesn't go anywhere.
I stand in a ballroom, freewriting at a piano, and even as I let my creative juices flow, I am thinking about the hassle of retyping when I get home, the pressure of my hand on the paper, the fear that I am consigning my ideas to closed off-ness. This is why I want, currently, to scan all of my college and grad school notes - to keep them usable. But really all it is is a matter of intention. Take the materials and use them. Of the rest, let go whatever no longer serves you.
Just move. Move on paper. Move on a keyboard. Find a spot in which to settle and be still, but let your thoughts out. Don't imprison them. Set it up to set it free, as my yoga gurus say. What good are they locked on paper or locked in a Word document? Let them fly.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
My Inspirations
My teacher Dana Flynn asked us to portray what inspires us. She emphasized thinking about what inspires us today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow.
Since breath is literal inspiration, I realized that I am currently being held up and pushed forward by things having to do with the movement of air. I wrote all this down more freely than I often do, letting my thoughts motivate and my fingers follow.
*
"Can you give me a knockout / I'll turn it inside out."
--Air Waves
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Come as you are / As you were / As I want you to be."
--Nirvana
Kickboxing. (Gineen and Vlad and Emmanuel have helped me direct my breath and movement to a more badass place than I thought possible. They've given me a place to put my anger, and reasons to see past the things I thought I couldn't do and turn them into daily habits.) I can now put my old selves and my current self toward the same brave purpose, and there I find my eternal self.
* *
"Jailhouse gets empty."
--Sublime
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso
"I'm not afraid."
--Eminem
Forearm stand. (Because of Dana and Sheri and Mary Dana, I am flying up the wall daily, and I am awestruck at my own ability to push aside the boundaries I've built for myself. I love this feeling.) I'm more free than I thought I could be.
* * *
"Take my hand 'cause I know what you're going through / At the time I had no way of knowing"
--Cut Copy
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
--Mary Shelley
"He walked in circles till he was crazy and he lived that way forever"
--Neko Case
The unseen. (Ali and Emily have opened my eyes to the subtle body and its powers.) I breathe into what I don't know and can't touch, and I'm suddenly aware of the energy that pulses through me and around me, and the things I can do to direct it into different physical and mental places.
* *
"I love you 'cause you tell me things I want to know."
--The Beatles
"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
--Dolly Parton
"And just where you are might be the right place / might be that sweet space / you don't know."
--Blind Pilot
And, of course, my mother, the one who gave me breath in the first place, and held me through all life's difficulties, and and taught me to think as openly as possible. She is here with me as I breathe now, tracing her finger down the bridge of my nose like she did to calm me when I was a baby. Her baby. Her breath.
*
"And who believes that my wildest dreams and craziest schemes will come true?"
--The Turtles
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Today is the greatest day I've ever known / Can't live for tomorrow"
--Smashing Pumpkins
Since breath is literal inspiration, I realized that I am currently being held up and pushed forward by things having to do with the movement of air. I wrote all this down more freely than I often do, letting my thoughts motivate and my fingers follow.
*
"Can you give me a knockout / I'll turn it inside out."
--Air Waves
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Come as you are / As you were / As I want you to be."
--Nirvana
Kickboxing. (Gineen and Vlad and Emmanuel have helped me direct my breath and movement to a more badass place than I thought possible. They've given me a place to put my anger, and reasons to see past the things I thought I couldn't do and turn them into daily habits.) I can now put my old selves and my current self toward the same brave purpose, and there I find my eternal self.
* *
"Jailhouse gets empty."
--Sublime
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso
"I'm not afraid."
--Eminem
Forearm stand. (Because of Dana and Sheri and Mary Dana, I am flying up the wall daily, and I am awestruck at my own ability to push aside the boundaries I've built for myself. I love this feeling.) I'm more free than I thought I could be.
* * *
"Take my hand 'cause I know what you're going through / At the time I had no way of knowing"
--Cut Copy
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
--Mary Shelley
"He walked in circles till he was crazy and he lived that way forever"
--Neko Case
The unseen. (Ali and Emily have opened my eyes to the subtle body and its powers.) I breathe into what I don't know and can't touch, and I'm suddenly aware of the energy that pulses through me and around me, and the things I can do to direct it into different physical and mental places.
* *
"I love you 'cause you tell me things I want to know."
--The Beatles
"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
--Dolly Parton
"And just where you are might be the right place / might be that sweet space / you don't know."
--Blind Pilot
And, of course, my mother, the one who gave me breath in the first place, and held me through all life's difficulties, and and taught me to think as openly as possible. She is here with me as I breathe now, tracing her finger down the bridge of my nose like she did to calm me when I was a baby. Her baby. Her breath.
*
"And who believes that my wildest dreams and craziest schemes will come true?"
--The Turtles
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Today is the greatest day I've ever known / Can't live for tomorrow"
--Smashing Pumpkins
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Thai Yoga Massage: Snippets
I am in a cab, late for the Thai yoga massage training I've been awaiting for weeks. I'd feel worse about being late on the first day if I didn't feel so exhausted and nauseated. I slept till 7:30, when I had intended to run first and arrive early.
While in cab: we pass by Lawrence House. Hi, Mama.
I can get my tattoo now. I've made some brave decisions and commitments. Maybe that is what I was waiting for.
As I sit in my training, I see a light glancing off the window across the way. It's a small ball of fire, seemingly disconnected from anything terrestrial. At the very least, it's source doesn't show through our big window. It's only there for a second, and nobody else seems to notice. Hi, Ma.
I write a message to her on the bathroom wall, in the provided chalk.
During our discussion of the four Brahma Viharas, someone says, decisively, "I'm going to be okay with that." It's not a prediction - it's an action. This distinction knocks me flat for a second. I think about what such a pronouncement could do to and for my life.
Upekkha, our teacher tells us, can be defined in English as equanimity or as non-prejudice. I am struck by the link between those two concepts. I have already linked metta and chesed, but that's because the English translation is the same. This comes from the other side. As I muse over the connection between the words, I realize that part of my own difficulty with the idea of losing contol can be mitigated by the following mindset: so I didn't get to do the thing I wanted or accomplish the thing I expected. What will I get out of this day instead? Get is active here, not passive.
In the discussion of the term, someone brings up her bipolar diagnosis. She says that she renames the stages in order to see them in a different light and (I suspect, knowing something about naming) in order to be more in control. She also wears grey when it reflects the complexities of her mood. I wonder if I have such a power color.
Another way to look at it, in the language of this practice: tension is potential energy that's been tied in knots.
While in cab: we pass by Lawrence House. Hi, Mama.
I can get my tattoo now. I've made some brave decisions and commitments. Maybe that is what I was waiting for.
As I sit in my training, I see a light glancing off the window across the way. It's a small ball of fire, seemingly disconnected from anything terrestrial. At the very least, it's source doesn't show through our big window. It's only there for a second, and nobody else seems to notice. Hi, Ma.
I write a message to her on the bathroom wall, in the provided chalk.
During our discussion of the four Brahma Viharas, someone says, decisively, "I'm going to be okay with that." It's not a prediction - it's an action. This distinction knocks me flat for a second. I think about what such a pronouncement could do to and for my life.
Upekkha, our teacher tells us, can be defined in English as equanimity or as non-prejudice. I am struck by the link between those two concepts. I have already linked metta and chesed, but that's because the English translation is the same. This comes from the other side. As I muse over the connection between the words, I realize that part of my own difficulty with the idea of losing contol can be mitigated by the following mindset: so I didn't get to do the thing I wanted or accomplish the thing I expected. What will I get out of this day instead? Get is active here, not passive.
In the discussion of the term, someone brings up her bipolar diagnosis. She says that she renames the stages in order to see them in a different light and (I suspect, knowing something about naming) in order to be more in control. She also wears grey when it reflects the complexities of her mood. I wonder if I have such a power color.
Another way to look at it, in the language of this practice: tension is potential energy that's been tied in knots.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Upekkha
Here we are at the final of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
This is maybe the hardest brahma vihara of all for me. I live my life on an emotional rollercoaster, and I always have. I tend toward the happy, except in periods of sadness. This year of such deep mourning finds me in a near-constant spiral between the two extremes.
Buddhanet again: "In the practice of Upekkha Bhavana one first selects the neutral person. Bearing him [sic] in mind one reflects that he is the owner of his own Kamma. [...] When one does so with understanding, the even state of mind with regard to the person arises." What interests me about this passage is the notion of equanimity as a characteristic of a person as well as a way of relating to that person. "The neutral person," it seems to me, isn't necessarily an even-keeled one, but they may be touched by your equanimity towards them. It's a little bit like paying it forward.
When I think of trying to regard someone with that "even state of mind" even as my joys and sorrows cloud around me all the time, I imagine ascending to a small cloud, above the riot of sunshine and rain, and observing the person from there. Up there, all of the preconceptions and assumptions and other baggage one might carry with regard to a person fades away, and all you are left with is the connection between that person and you. The world might be a better place if we all had those little clouds to tote around.
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
This is maybe the hardest brahma vihara of all for me. I live my life on an emotional rollercoaster, and I always have. I tend toward the happy, except in periods of sadness. This year of such deep mourning finds me in a near-constant spiral between the two extremes.
Buddhanet again: "In the practice of Upekkha Bhavana one first selects the neutral person. Bearing him [sic] in mind one reflects that he is the owner of his own Kamma. [...] When one does so with understanding, the even state of mind with regard to the person arises." What interests me about this passage is the notion of equanimity as a characteristic of a person as well as a way of relating to that person. "The neutral person," it seems to me, isn't necessarily an even-keeled one, but they may be touched by your equanimity towards them. It's a little bit like paying it forward.
When I think of trying to regard someone with that "even state of mind" even as my joys and sorrows cloud around me all the time, I imagine ascending to a small cloud, above the riot of sunshine and rain, and observing the person from there. Up there, all of the preconceptions and assumptions and other baggage one might carry with regard to a person fades away, and all you are left with is the connection between that person and you. The world might be a better place if we all had those little clouds to tote around.
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Mudita
Halfway done. Now, the third of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I've gotten better at sympathetic joy over the years. Buddhanet defines it thusly: "Mudita means sympathetic joy or rejoicing at others' happiness and prosperity. It is the opposite of jealousy or envy, and therefore it is suitable for one wishing to overcome it. The object and near cause of sympathetic joy is the prospering or happy being. So one who wishes to develop mudita should select such a person who is doing well spiritually and materially. Preference will of course be given to spiritual happiness as it is a more true and lasting type."
I'm pretty prone to jealousy and envy in a knee-jerk kind of way. As I've gotten older, I've worked harder and harder on making it just a knee-jerk reaction, and making congratulations just as automatic. I still get envious of people when they have something I want, but automating congratulations makes it easier to be happy for them immediately, and then when I reflect on it, I find an even more genuine kind of happiness for them.
I also think that part of being able to practice mudita is keeping joy about your own circumstances and achievements close to the surface. What better way to combat envy of what another has than to stare straight at your own pride in what you have? It' a rationalized way of getting to mudita, maybe, but it's a start.
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I've gotten better at sympathetic joy over the years. Buddhanet defines it thusly: "Mudita means sympathetic joy or rejoicing at others' happiness and prosperity. It is the opposite of jealousy or envy, and therefore it is suitable for one wishing to overcome it. The object and near cause of sympathetic joy is the prospering or happy being. So one who wishes to develop mudita should select such a person who is doing well spiritually and materially. Preference will of course be given to spiritual happiness as it is a more true and lasting type."
I'm pretty prone to jealousy and envy in a knee-jerk kind of way. As I've gotten older, I've worked harder and harder on making it just a knee-jerk reaction, and making congratulations just as automatic. I still get envious of people when they have something I want, but automating congratulations makes it easier to be happy for them immediately, and then when I reflect on it, I find an even more genuine kind of happiness for them.
I also think that part of being able to practice mudita is keeping joy about your own circumstances and achievements close to the surface. What better way to combat envy of what another has than to stare straight at your own pride in what you have? It' a rationalized way of getting to mudita, maybe, but it's a start.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Karuna
On to the second of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joyt
4. Upekkha: equanimity
It seems to me that one immediate difference between metta and karuna is one of vectors. Loving kindness doesn't have to go in any one direction or have any particular target, but compassion is transitive. (It's also reflexive, but more on that later.) As the reliable Buddhanet has it, "it is clear that the degree and quality of compassion comes with the degree of understanding of what suffering is."
My life is turbulent right now - in the last six months, I have lost, to illness and death, two close friends and, worst of all, my mother. Now my uncle is dying, as well. Now feels like a particularly apt time to think about compassion. I'm receiving a lot of it, from more directions than I probably even know. I'm working on showing it to myself as much as I can. I tend to be pretty exigent where habits and expectations are concerned, and I'm trying to learn how to loosen up a bit, to give my grieving soul a little more freedom to breathe.
I'm also making sure that I show compassion to others. Even so-called "silly problems" can be important - we all have them - and I've been taking care to let my friends know that they can still vent to me and confide in me. If I haven't said it directly, let this be their notice that this is true. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed every day without the love that I receive from friends and family on an hourly basis, and I need to make sure that they know that I'm sending it right back, just as my mother always did.
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joyt
4. Upekkha: equanimity
It seems to me that one immediate difference between metta and karuna is one of vectors. Loving kindness doesn't have to go in any one direction or have any particular target, but compassion is transitive. (It's also reflexive, but more on that later.) As the reliable Buddhanet has it, "it is clear that the degree and quality of compassion comes with the degree of understanding of what suffering is."
My life is turbulent right now - in the last six months, I have lost, to illness and death, two close friends and, worst of all, my mother. Now my uncle is dying, as well. Now feels like a particularly apt time to think about compassion. I'm receiving a lot of it, from more directions than I probably even know. I'm working on showing it to myself as much as I can. I tend to be pretty exigent where habits and expectations are concerned, and I'm trying to learn how to loosen up a bit, to give my grieving soul a little more freedom to breathe.
I'm also making sure that I show compassion to others. Even so-called "silly problems" can be important - we all have them - and I've been taking care to let my friends know that they can still vent to me and confide in me. If I haven't said it directly, let this be their notice that this is true. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed every day without the love that I receive from friends and family on an hourly basis, and I need to make sure that they know that I'm sending it right back, just as my mother always did.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Metta
The Four Brahma Viharas are:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I'm going to devote four posts in the next two weeks to an examination of each of these as part of my homework for a Thai yoga massage training I'm about to take.
Metta is a word that I've known for most of my life, at least in terms of the sounds of its letters. My mother had a college friend named Metta. People talk about it a lot in yoga and in peace and justice circles in which I participate. When I started studying Judaism, I learned it again as chesed, which also translates to loving kindness. (It's interesting that the term in English is mostly used as a translation for other terms. I'd bet there's a word for it in Irish.)
Buddhanet (linked above) says that "the direct enemy of Metta is anger." In the wake of my mother's death (and the deaths of two close friends preceding hers and additional family illness shortly after her death), I've spent at least part of most days angry in some form. Now feels like a perfect time for me to take stock of the relative frequency of anger and metta in my life, and work on decreasing the former by increasing the latter. I can't reject my anger entirely, because that wouldn't be true to how I feel, but I'm happy to try to make it smaller. I first learned that love vanquishes anger from my mother, and then from The Beatles. The concept seems much more simplistic in English than in Sanskrit, but not necessarily any easier to deploy. Without having looked at the other three principles, I wonder if there is any sort of enemy of sadness. It can't be happiness. I feel both simultaneously on a regular basis.
What's especially interesting to me in the texts is the link between Metta and concentration. Any time I'm angry, I definitely feel that my anger makes it hard for me to focus on anything but my anger, and it makes it hard to show loving kindness to anyone, least of all the object of my anger. Sometimes movement is the only way to shake me out of it. That's deliberate. Ive also had what i think of as surprise infusions of loving kindness toward a person I'm angered by. Sometimes it starts with pity or regret, but it ends in a rush of love. Even if it's fleeting, the fact that it sometimes appears makes me wonder if my yoga is having more of an impact on my spirit than I sometimes think.
Buddhanet also says: "The cultivation of this state of mind [of Metta] is called Bhavana or normally translated as meditation. When we cultivate it, it becomes strong, powerful and useful. It brings us abundant, deep and intense peace and happiness. The cultivation of it involves the following:
1 The concentration of metta. Concentrated, it becomes strong and powerful.
2 Metta is also trained so that it can be given to anybody. That is, it is flexible, versatile, universal and boundless.
3 When this potent force has become powerful we can make use of it to produce many marvels to make everyone's life better.
To do this effectively one needs the method. Acquiring the skill requires patience. With experience one improves."
That's a lot to unpack, but I quote it all in case it's helpful for someone, and to remind myself to return to it when I need a metta boost.
Bringing things back around to the beginning, a simplistic look at the sounds of the word compares it to the English adjective meta, one of my favorite words. Intellectually, I know they don't have any connection through their shared sounds, but more imaginatively, the concept of metts seems pretty darn meta to me. It should be, at the very least - couldn't we all use more loving kindness that, in referring back to itself, never ends?
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I'm going to devote four posts in the next two weeks to an examination of each of these as part of my homework for a Thai yoga massage training I'm about to take.
Metta is a word that I've known for most of my life, at least in terms of the sounds of its letters. My mother had a college friend named Metta. People talk about it a lot in yoga and in peace and justice circles in which I participate. When I started studying Judaism, I learned it again as chesed, which also translates to loving kindness. (It's interesting that the term in English is mostly used as a translation for other terms. I'd bet there's a word for it in Irish.)
Buddhanet (linked above) says that "the direct enemy of Metta is anger." In the wake of my mother's death (and the deaths of two close friends preceding hers and additional family illness shortly after her death), I've spent at least part of most days angry in some form. Now feels like a perfect time for me to take stock of the relative frequency of anger and metta in my life, and work on decreasing the former by increasing the latter. I can't reject my anger entirely, because that wouldn't be true to how I feel, but I'm happy to try to make it smaller. I first learned that love vanquishes anger from my mother, and then from The Beatles. The concept seems much more simplistic in English than in Sanskrit, but not necessarily any easier to deploy. Without having looked at the other three principles, I wonder if there is any sort of enemy of sadness. It can't be happiness. I feel both simultaneously on a regular basis.
What's especially interesting to me in the texts is the link between Metta and concentration. Any time I'm angry, I definitely feel that my anger makes it hard for me to focus on anything but my anger, and it makes it hard to show loving kindness to anyone, least of all the object of my anger. Sometimes movement is the only way to shake me out of it. That's deliberate. Ive also had what i think of as surprise infusions of loving kindness toward a person I'm angered by. Sometimes it starts with pity or regret, but it ends in a rush of love. Even if it's fleeting, the fact that it sometimes appears makes me wonder if my yoga is having more of an impact on my spirit than I sometimes think.
Buddhanet also says: "The cultivation of this state of mind [of Metta] is called Bhavana or normally translated as meditation. When we cultivate it, it becomes strong, powerful and useful. It brings us abundant, deep and intense peace and happiness. The cultivation of it involves the following:
1 The concentration of metta. Concentrated, it becomes strong and powerful.
2 Metta is also trained so that it can be given to anybody. That is, it is flexible, versatile, universal and boundless.
3 When this potent force has become powerful we can make use of it to produce many marvels to make everyone's life better.
To do this effectively one needs the method. Acquiring the skill requires patience. With experience one improves."
That's a lot to unpack, but I quote it all in case it's helpful for someone, and to remind myself to return to it when I need a metta boost.
Bringing things back around to the beginning, a simplistic look at the sounds of the word compares it to the English adjective meta, one of my favorite words. Intellectually, I know they don't have any connection through their shared sounds, but more imaginatively, the concept of metts seems pretty darn meta to me. It should be, at the very least - couldn't we all use more loving kindness that, in referring back to itself, never ends?
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