Laughing Lotus Love Blog

Amma Mama

2010-07-14T20:40:01Z

     It's a mystery of the universe that we can be looking at God and judge Her by Star Magazine standards...

    My uncle went to Amma's program in Dallas and wrote me a detailed email of all of his observations of the experience. What stood out to him the most was that both Amma and her leading Swami were (in his opinion) overweight. Oh my Goddess-- I cringed while reading and re-reading that quick slash of criticism-- are you calling the Divine Mother fat?! It was hurtful to feel darling Amma Ma judged by such superficial standards, but then I thought, Oh My Goddess, are we calling the Divine Mother fat all the time?!

     The shock of this superficial judgment made me realize I had been doing the exact same thing (maybe slightly less obviously) during the programs in New York. I was happy to be there and excited as I am every year Amma comes, but in my mind I was also host to a cranky streak, wishing people would move and let me get a better view. I started judging the experience by the actions of people around the hall--why couldn't my fellow volunteers be less frenetic while they sat people? It's a hectic process to get thousands of people seated and oriented, but did they have to do it so harshly? Etc, etc, etc.

     But everything changed once I had Darshan. On my way up it was like spiritual airport security. My Darshan token, S1, like a number at the DMV, was checked and double-checked as I neared the center of the blossom that is Amma's hugging seat. Once I made it that close, having persevered my own obstacles of impatience and pettiness, I glimpsed Amma in her simple and glorious task of Embracing the World. Once you finally do make it up there, the residue of the challenges you passed through to make it there melt away. Amma really is shining with LOVE! You can feel it pulsating from her. In that bright, clear light anything besides just Hugging and Loving life is extra, an unnecessary distraction. Why had I wasted my time even considering the weight of the program around me? Suddenly, in Her arms, enveloped in soft fat, my only rational thought was "Don't Let Go"! My outward eye of judgment to the program was no different than wishing it were skinnier! If Creation is the Divine Mother manifest, than any criticism of ourselves or others is calling Amma Fat! She is what She is and I believe it is Amma's deep-soaked acceptance and compassion that make her so radiant.

     There is an apt Yogi Tea bag quote that comes to mind now: "Where there is Love, there is no Judgment". Amma teaches this in her hugs. It is as if she is saying, "Isn't this enough? This Love--isn't it enough?" The dichotomy between my thinking beforehand and my feeling post Darshan was a lesson in the sharpness of mind and the softness of abiding in openness. This is the power of a Teacher, to lead you into an experience of yourself you can't access on your own. Practice grows naturally out of longing to return to that feeling. I still complain about waiting in line in life, but I am feeling more trusting that the judgments are just passing and that it's, big, plump, juicy, PHAT unconditional Love that makes the world go round.

Bhagavad Gita: In the Beginning was the Word

2010-01-16T18:37:18Z

Every year I read the Gita, but do I sing the Song of God? And I don't mean the Baptist Church Choir Song of God, I mean the quotidian one-woman a cappella ditty that expresses my connection however meagre to the divine. Or let me put it to you this way: ever have one of those moments where you're reading and your eyes and moving left-to-right across the page and you're following the words, but you're not quite taking them in? Or maybe, even though the words are in your native tongue, they have begun to resemble Aztec symbols rather that actual words. But you're there, you're getting the gist of the gist. You're reading it. You're soaking in it. And sometimes you light upon a sentence that resonates. "It's all temporary," you tell your roommate, your doorman or your cactus. "The heat, the cold, the pleasure, the pain. This too shall pass." And you feel it so much and you're ready to make it though all the rashes and the breakups, the head-cases and head-colds. Due to this aha moment, you sit down with the Gita, start reading and the same thing happens again. Only now you're peeved because Krishna spoke to you before. Is he on a yoga retreat? As Shirley Bassey would say, "Where do I begin?"

I say, if you really want to read the Gita, practice bibliomancy; let the book fall open to a particular page and check in a sloka or two. Then close the book and meditate on said sloka for a few. How does one warrior's deep, deep doubt/fear on the eve of battle transliterate into my life experience? I don't have Krishna as my charioteer, I have the conductor on the F train and nice and s/he may or may not be, I am not having a dharmic dialogue with her/him. Only I am having a dialogue with myself which some would say is insanity but enlightened others would recognize as the first step towards understanding the ubiquity and transcendence of my divine.

One of the only things I learned in grad school is that the word is meaningless outside the context. What I learned reading the Gita is the context is meaningless outside the Word. This is called metaphor and it's akin to applying the use of historiography to the making of legend, or rather, dharma. Think of Achilles. Homeboy didn't want to fight the war either. He hid in his tent with his boytoy Patroklus and wouldn't come out even though the Greeks were needing them some Achilles. It wasn't until Hektor slew Patroklus that Achilles got amped up enough to go out there and so some serious damage. Goodbye Trojans, hello Rome. When Orestes was told to slay his mother for killing his father, he just did so without too much thought. He CERTAINLY weren't no Hamlet. My point is that somewhere between just do it and four days a week on the couch is a middle ground where the divine lives, breathes and blossoms. It's a resource which, if we open to it, can lead us to The Source. If the Source scares or annoys you, good. Just feel this fact: to everything there is a season. Every war has the eve before, the week before, the month before. Nothing is out of the blue. Yet every war also contains the during and the after: peace. The question is, could you see your divinity in during your regular life as much as you do in your martial advent so that just maybe, at the eleventh hour, you look up, breathe into your own divinity and you just do it. Thus you are no longer the blind-seer, you are insight itself. You are dharma. You are Krishna.

The Price of Rebirth or I Can't Get it for You Wholesale

2009-12-25T19:37:28Z

It's never as good as the first time, though there is something to be said for a star-studded comeback. Just ask Cher. Or Shiva. Or Yeheshua Ben Nashri, AKA Jesus of Nazareth. Now there's a resurrection. Just when you think life is absolutely at its most excruciating, suddenly, you're born anew. And while Cher may need a team of expert stylists to turn back time, the Anointed One only needed to leave his mortal body in order to become God the Son. Much like Ganapati becoming Ganesh. NB: Both are the products of virgin birth. I'll give you my life's in a turnaround.

To be born again in its most literal sense is not only the first move towards enlightenment, but also part of an essential step on the career path away from fear and nepotism and towards understanding the true power of the self. A prime pre-Yeheshua example of the power and challenge of being twice born is Dionysus, son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. When Zeus' actual wife Hera found out about her lothario hubby's canoodling, she sought to destroy both babymama and child. Disguised as an old hag, she persuaded Semele to beg Zeus to present himself to her as his divine self, which he did, and as no mortal can behold a god in his true form, Semele died, forcing Zeus to nab the baby and sew it into his mighty thigh for incubation purposes. Thus was Dionysus, whose power would later rival that of his own father, born again, or should I say, delivered twice by C-section. As a side note, Lord Dionysus who wore his hair long like a girl and was somewhat of an esoterrorist, would later retrieve his mother from Hades and make her a goddess, thus Semele, like Mary, is also twice born. Rebirth: it's not just for men anymore.

Meantime, let's consider the modern mythos: Luke Skywalker with his beloved Rabbi, Yoda, in the Dagobah Yeshiva. Luke enters the Tree of Knowledge to fight his mortal enemy: his father, Darth Vader. Only when Luke manages to flick off Darth's mask with his manly light saber, does he finally see his true enemy: himself. Oy vey! Thus, by understanding his Shiva Nature, Luke is able to lift his rattrap X-Wing from the bog of past consciousness and be reborn as a Jedi Warrior. Only, to quote my dear friend Mary Childers, "Sometimes you have to cleave to leave." IE, in order to be reborn, ya gotta get radical, as in e radice-- from the roots. And ya gotta dig real deep to detach those stubborn buggers. And sometimes it feels like a break-up or a murder or an evisceration, your guts spooling from your belly like a sacrificial lamb to some cause you can't quite articulate; Think of YHWH--insert the Hebrew letter Shin and YHWH becomes Yeheshua and you basically have the New Testament. It's so much more than a copy-writing coup; it's the reification of an entire religion with just one little letter. It's simple but it sure aint easy.

Just imagine Paul in Damascus. It's not like the big change just happens, you must make it happen and then keep that bad boy going. IE: Rebirth is not only evolution, it's revolution and it's bloody and you gotta get with a whole new crew. Not to mention rebirth's absolutely an inside job, an esoteric metamorphosis from which you emerge, bleating and tender as a lamb. All right, I'll buy that it already feels like you've died and been reborn a gabillion times, but you're not Cher or Ganesha or Luke Skywalker and you don't have any of Jesus' street cred. But the beauty of rebirth, at least in the yoga tradition, is that you get to pick yourself up after every savasana, roll up your mat and be reborn with every practice, nay, every breath. As Shakti needs her Shiva, so creation needs destruction. Either that or a bigger closet.

Distance versus Detachment: Kierkegaard's Third Remove

2009-12-14T03:27:37Z

One evening, way, way back in 2005, I was teaching the art of the introduction to my creative writing class at Hunter College. "You want to give enough information that the reader accompanies you on your journey," I said. "But not so much information that they feel they've read the whole story before the end of the first page. It's a delicate balance, like dating. You should be who you are, but you don't have to be everything you are all at once. Otherwise, why buy the cow?"

Later that night, grading papers at a local French joint near my then apartment, I found myself in a conversation with a tall, attractive musician whom I'd noticed there before and with whom I'd exchanged glances. After his set, this musician, who played an instrument called an ud (pronounced ood), was very charming and talkative and came to sit down and share a salad with me. We talked about John Coltrane's big, sweet notes and the genius of Henry Miller. The next thing I know, we're the last people in the place and he's offering to walk me home. Clearly, I agreed. The night was clear and crisp and even though he told me he just got out of a long relationship and was in a "weird place," I invited him upstairs.

That was Monday. When Saturday rolled around and he hadn't called, I hearkened back to his remark about the ex and chalked it up to a nice experience with a talented being and tried to forget about it. Unfortunately, I ended up the following Monday grading papers at the same joint. Only this time I was wearing an overly-revealing revealing wrap dress. I was also waiting for him. I could feel it. The thing is, earlier that same evening, teaching my class, I'd been talking about the idea of truthful distance (AKA control) versus detachment. You want to feel something, but you want to have a little perspective, otherwise, your piece (and, let's face it, your peace) runs the risk of being a rant instead of a story. The distance is actually a more effective tool to communicate true feeling than the raw feeling itself. The non-attachment IS connection. It's closeness. That's Kierkegaard's third remove and if he were alive today he would be a big proponent of AOL's Send Later button. If Soren were really mad at Ludwig, maybe he would type out the enraged ending-the-friendship email at four in the morning, but he would hit Send Later, snuff his candle and go to sleep. He would wait until the next day to review what he wrote and delete for something with a slower, deeper burn.

That night, as I crossed Atlantic Avenue with my musician and his ungainly ud, I knew I was making another heart-mistake, but was having a hard time steeling that better brain. So instead of getting to my door and saying, "Thanks for walking me home," I began to deliver a huge and hugely personal soliloquy about my not-so-distant past: my novel that wasn't published, my ex-boyfriend who was stalking me and the fact that I was about to move in with my parents at age 37. "I have crow's feet," I told him. "Lines. Nipple hair. My butt is sagging and my pap smear's irregular and sometimes I get so lonely I can't believe it. I can't believe that this is me. How did this get to be me???"

We never spoke again; though he did text me a week later about some long johns which he'd left in my apartment. I'd donated them, along with a bag of other clothes, to Partnership for the Homeless. I spent about fifteen minutes composing an overly lengthy, cute text re: his pants and what I'd done with them. But then I clicked "Send Later" and didn't.

Blind Date

2009-12-03T16:06:17Z

Imagine your best friend in the world--I mean your absolute, diehard, fair and fowl weather bestie-- sets you up on a blind date. Now s/he's your BFF, s/he knows you. What's more s/he knows what you really want in a mate, what's best for you and s/he actually wants you to have it. So you know in your heart of hearts when s/he says, "I have this great person for you: beautiful, funny, smart, spiritual, strong, kind, loyal, hard-working, decent, the perfect height," she really means it. And even though you haven't really been feeling like yourself lately, whoever that may be, you accept the offer. Vast preparations begin. The outfit, the hair, the nails. A flurry of phone calls and texts are exchanged with other friends on the topic of true and lasting connection with someone or thing besides yoga, Emile Zola and Dynasty reruns. Another friend, Esther, cautions you against getting too excited. In past situations that have promised even an inkling of possibility, you've become deracinated and acted like a sex-crazed maniac or a human testimony to suffering and survival and thus immediately excised any and all connection. People have literally run screaming.

The fateful evening arrives and you feel good: pretty, together, tranquil. The apartment's clean. You're wearing new boots. Sexy underpants. Perfume. Cole Porter's crooning softly in the background--You're the Top. You're dreamily wafting about your living room in a state of humorous non-attachment. In other words, you've never been more you in your life. The buzzer bleats. You adjust your hair, exhale a sigh and go to open the door on yourself.

Om namah shivayah. Standing there in your well-lit hallway, looking sparkly-eyed and hopeful, and perhaps wearing a little too much mascara, is you. And you really have to look at you. Drink you in. Connect. You have to go out to dinner and a movie with yourself, with all your crow's feet and baggage and doubts. You have to stop talking, talking, talking and actually listen. To yourself. You have to love yourself and all your scars, moles, experiences and quirks. Would you set yourself up on a blind date with you? What's more, would you call yourself the next day? Could you, would you commit fully to a healthy relationship with yourself, even when the cable's out, there's no good books in the house and you're grouchy? When you imagine your future, are you in it? As you sit there at your computer, drinking your coffee, are you there, fully realized in all your faults and blessings? Can you see, really see, yourself and fall in love all over again. And again. And again.

The next morning, your best friend calls to see how things went. At first you're laconic but then you open up. "S/he was pretty nice," you say. "A little older than I hoped, but there's a lot there. It was challenging but very, very real."

Gratitude

2009-11-25T15:23:54Z

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful. Especially staring over a dead bird at your grandmother who quite possibly loves her Beefeater Martini more than she loves you. You have to get uber-yogic just to make it to the pumpkin pie. Smiling beatifically, almost as though you'd recently lobotomized yourself with a serving fork in your parents' powder room, you ask, "Can some one please pass the spinach casserole?" Only no one is listening because they're too busy discussing which hotels in Rome have the highest quality safety bars installed in the bathroom. You look around, at your cousins who are practically half your age and getting married--remember last year when you had a fiancé?--at your mother who is ladling sweet potatoes onto your thirty-five-year-old brother's plate and you say, unerringly, "Thank You, Krishna, for THIS moment ." As my dear friend and teacher Jen Guarnieri would say, It's all a dharma talk.

Speaking of dharma, last Thanksgiving, when I was engaged to a TV chef and really thinking I was on The Path, my brother, who is deathly allergic to nuts, ate a bite of cranberry sauce that somehow had a walnut in it. For twenty minutes, we waited for him to go into anaphylaxis or worse (nothing happened by the way). During this period while we flapped around the kitchen and the dining room panicking, my grandmother remained calmly at the table with her Beefeater. Maybe she was prescient about the nothingness that was really occurring? Maybe, at 96, death is so close it's a part of your everyday routine and you're just thankful for the entertainment? I wish I could be like that, sans the hooch, natch, and perhaps a little more selfless, but still, I wish I could remain centered and balanced no matter the situation.

The thing is, I can. I just don't always. I fly off the handle. Worse yet, I don't even recognize the handle when somewhere deep down in my anahata, I know that it's right there, this mythical handle on all things blissful, and all I have to do is let go. Okay, it's challenging, and the manifested universe keeps throwing these curve balls--O former fiancé, where are you roasting your brussel sprouts this year?--and you were always bad at sports. Or rather, how does a walnut end up in the cranberry sauce of a man who is allergic? Who put it there? God? Maybe to achieve balance in all things familial (which is really ALL things, AKA samskara), it's best to expect the unexpected, let go and roll with it. Thankfully.

The Five Elements

2009-11-18T03:18:17Z

Last night I decided reality television is the clarion call of the apocalypse. This worried me because I hadn't packed a getaway bag. Or rather, I had, but there was so much stuff in it I couldn't possibly schlep it all without an entourage. So I called my cousin Hannah Leah and asked her if she would take it: the break ups, the make ups, the crying jags and the make outs. Only she was going through a turbulent split herself and didn't really have the space or the time. My parents wanted to shoulder my burden--well, they'd caused it, hadn't they?--but I felt that at 40 (40!) I should have the moxy either to deal with it or split it between us, which ultimately left me with just a third. Still more than would fit in an overhead luggage rack but this, this I could manage. Thusly, I bequeathed my childhood, teens and twenties to my progenitors and took my thirties to the mat. Oy, vata day!

What we deem to be reality is actually a figment, muzzy and overwrought, like a fax of a fax of a fax. When Descartes declared, "cogito ergo sum," he was iterating the catch phrase for the age of enlightenment in which reason/intellect ruled the day and the day was long. The body became separate from the mind and the mind disenfranchised from the spirit. I think therefore I spam. Or, more aptly, you Kant always get what you want.

Only here's where things get sticky: when the mind is free to form its big ol' ideas, it begins to create stories about the relative quality of its own being-ness. It reads. It remembers. It compares and despairs. It separates itself from the unmanifested reality. Okay, it's a fantastic if bumpy ride with some hot sex and a lot of great books, but it's a far cry from the Pancha Mahabhutas--the Five Elements--which are the only things on Brahma's beautiful earth that humans have NOT made up. They predate and postdate it all. Feel that fact.

I know, I know, you're saying, what about my cat? My cat's real. Only your cat's comprised of the Five Elements too: fire, water, earth, space, air. In manifested form the five elements become not only your cat, but also the tridosha--three qualities--whose interplay determines the nature of the individual. That's YOU. The awl of the mind is a powerful tool, so powerful it can spend six days pondering a sixty second exchange with one's boss or six years pondering a six week relationship, but space came first. Now matter how sorry grateful, regretful happy you may think you are, you simply are. It's mental but it's elemental. And that's the reality. As Popeye would say, I am what I-AM.

The Manifested Universe or Where did I Put My Equilibrium?

2009-11-07T04:11:26Z

In sixth grade there were three types of kids: the ones who excelled at dodge ball, the ones who somehow managed to be ambivalent about it and the ones who feared it. For the fraidy-cats, the very notion of standing there, exposed and panicked, while normally kind and decent beings hurled balls at your head seemed anathema to thinking existence. Whoever invented this game was clearly not an indoorsy, uncoordinated strategist--rather a sadistic savage who folded her/himself back into the pages of Lord of the Flies when s/he went to sleep at night. Simultaneously, it seemed there were also the kids who actually knew how to dodge the ball and have this strange thing called fun. Were they born with this knowledge or did their progenitors teach it to them? And what was so wrong with glee club?

In the cosmic universe, that is, the world beyond the physical, there are triguna--three qualities--that exist in a state of harmonious equilibrium. These qualities are Sattva (light, truth, purity), Rajas (activity, change) and Tamas (darkness, inertia). In the manifested universe, as in the actual day-to-day world with all its schleppiness, worry and wonder, these three qualities exist in every living thing in an ever-shifting state of imbalance. Thus the dodge ball conundrum: the ragasic maniacs chucking large, round objects at your innocent face, the sattvic beings who calmly played the game and the tamasic beings who sat on the sidelines reading or pretending to have their periods. Only here's the kicker: The ragasic kid throwing the ball was technically playing fair (sattvic) unless s/he wanted to hurt someone intentionally (tamasic). The Artful Dodger, ducking and running, manifested elements of Rajas while the non-player, practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), was quite possibly Sattva incarnate. It's all a matter of perspective.

On the mat, we experience a kaleidoscope of thought versus action in which the asana RE-present our predominant guna at that particular moment. True, some people tend towards the rajasic. Especially New Yorkers. They take every vinyasa. Others are more slow moving and tamasic, which is not necessarily a pejorative, because both Rajas and Tamas are simply outward expressions of imbalance in the ascension towards Truth. Think of handstand. Do you kick and fling your legs willy-nilly, do you sulk and refuse to come into the prep or do you calmly yet assertively attempt the shape regardless of the result or what the person next to you is doing? Maybe it's not a question of recognizing your dominant guna as much as RE-cognizing your experience of the manifested universe by playing the game with an open mind even if there are giant balls coming at you from every direction. Yes, there are things you can eat or not eat to balance your guna. It is a science after all. And yet, perhaps the whole science is simply the RE-cognition of the experience as you're experiencing it. With heart. Who knows? Maybe now I'd enjoy a good game of dodge ball if the opportunity arose. The truth hurts, but then slowly, so slowly, it doesn't.

Out of Whack: Let's Get Metaphysical, Physical

2009-11-01T16:58:11Z

Several days ago I was thinking about the Tridosha (the three bodily qualities) and how vata (air) I am. We're talkin' textbook. While my friend Fred is the ultimate pitta (fire) and his boyfriend Blake a definitive kapha (water and earth), I was obsessed with the fact that I have every possible vata attribute down to the "dry, voluminous hair." And I felt good. Or rather that I belonged to a special club of creative, friendly beings with dry skin. Then I realized I'd been cross-referencing the list of vata balance characteristics with the symptoms that occur as a result of vata imbalance. Like any good vata, I panicked. Then my Jewish nature kicked in and I called to make an appointment with a renowned Ayurvedic doctor. Only, this being vata season, AKA Fall, I couldn't get an appointment till January. Figures.

Frustrated, I called my friend Tovah, a wellness expert and fellow yoga teacher, who told me to eat less salad, more soups and rub myself with warm sesame oil. This suggestion, however sound, led to smell like a veggie stir-fry for a number of days. If only Tovah had indicated raw sesame oil instead of toasted! If only I had taken her up on the soup! Clearly, it was time to get metaphysical. Only which direction-- east to Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga with her Five Elements, or west to Empedocles and his Four Humours? The latter certainly worked for Shakespeare. Then I thought of Hamlet, the indecision, the torment, the melancholia... True, being out of balance makes for interesting conflicts, thus theatre, novels and rock ballads, yet where are the solutions? Is the quest for perfect balance paradoxically causing greater imbalance? And how do we find the fulcrum if we already standing on it?

In the physical realm, IE the world as we know and perceive it, we are often encountering roadblocks to a quality of being we have deemed "balance." (Often, we provide our own roadblocks.) The seasons change, we feel out of whack. We move, someone leaves us or the weather shifts, we feel out of whack. Thus, the deep longing to smash ourselves back into balance like a cosmic whack-a-mole at the county unfair of the universe. It's all lila, I suppose. Only here's the dilemma: no matter how many times we slam, that deranged mole keeps popping up somewhere else. In fact, the very concept of motion is imbalance. The second you pick up your foot to take a step in any direction, the body reflexively counteracts this motion so you don't fall flat on your face. If the physical body is able to rebound and move forward all day long, so too the mind-body and eventually, one hopes, the soul-body. You may or may not need the oil of five thousand non-toasted sesame seeds. Indeed you may not need anything at all. Because you already are. In balance.

Amma Kali or Are You My Monster?

2009-10-26T02:11:16Z

The other night my friend Fred announced he didn't believe in God, that religion and spirituality were just an opiate imposed on the suffering masses. Clearly Fred had never seen Godspell. That said, even though it rankles me when people make such sweeping pronouncements, I decided not to argue in favor of the Divine. Instead, I simply asked, "How's that goin' for ya?" And Fred shrugged and replied, "Not so good."

The following day, a dreary one, I was pondering what it means and doesn't mean to be bound to a set of pre-ordained structures that define the way we eat, drink, pray, have sex and wear clothes. Was horror progenitor H.P. Lovecraft correct in his assertion that the universe is fundamentally monstrous or did I just need a yoga class and a sundae? Is the monster inside or out? And whatever happened to metaphor?

I took these and other questions to Adi Shakti, AKA Kali: the demonic yet benevolent mother goddess, the incarnation of Maya and the destroyer of egos. Talk about on the rag: homegirl is covered in blood and wears a necklace of oozing, bloody skulls. 108 to be exact. And they're all kvetching non-stop about everything under the moon. Moreover, she's got four arms one of which is holding a sword and the other your severed head/ego. Meantime, she's flashing the abhaya--fearlessness-- and varada--blessings--mudra while she's stomping on Lord Shiva's chest; and she breastfed and possibly birthed the guy. Just another family dinner, I guess. Or rather, the mind is a terrible thing to taste.

"What kind of mother are you?" I asked. "What's did I do to deserve this?" Only I couldn't quite catch Kali's response over the chatter of the 108 blathering heads, which were either my maya--illusion--or my own ego--dissolution--raveling and unraveling my self with every crushing step. For this I went to Hebrew school?

Unnerved, I pondered further. Surely our beliefs, whatever our opinion of the Great Equalizer and his/her existence, are a manifestation of our ego and Kali has to stomp those suckers too. That's just part of her dance. But here's the deal: revolution's a bloodbath. Could it be that Kali is time itself--kala--simultaneously dancing, procreating and wreaking havoc in my blessed wrecking ball of a head just before she rips it off and wears it as an earring? Though a scenario we may justly seek to avoid, in the Cosmic Reality Kali's actions are merely monstrous in the word's most literal form: from the Latin monstrare- to show, reveal. As in, show me the monster.

"Oh my Goddess," I thought. "Fred's right. And wrong. I have to call my mother."

The Burden of Eden: Ram, Sita and Life in the Love Lane

2009-10-17T13:46:10Z

It's difficult to date a super hero. They're busy, unreliable, moody. Most make promises they can't keep. But that's the hegemony of promises: AKA well-intentioned resolutions reliant on the notion of life in a permanent external honeymoon state rather than a journey towards internal, self-sufficient bliss. Think of Superman and Lois Lane, Aeneas and Dido, Ram and Sita. Now, as adults, we all know the honeymoon stage is just that: a stage, even if we're blindly standing smack-dab in the middle of it. And yet, save deep suffering, we cling to the idea of perfection and permanence in all external states of being, especially where relationships are concerned. Meantime, we're so busy polishing the pedestal of what was and what could or should be that we not only don't notice the man behind the maya--illusion-- we also strive to maintain the maya like there's no manana.

Take Ram and Sita. Star-crossed lovers whose tempestuous honeymoon is the divine equivalent of Groucho Marx's Hello, I Must be Going. Sita loves Ram so much she follows him into exile only to be kidnapped soon after by his rival. As if that weren't enough, after Hanuman rescues her from Lanka, Ram's peeps cast aspersions on Sita's fidelity. After all that time in captivity how could sexy Sita not have canoodled with the dashingly villainous king? In order to test her purity, the people of Ayodhya make Sita walk through fire. Which she does. Willingly. In fact, sister jumps right in. Luckily, she manages to escape unscathed. That said, you can't go home again. Even after a visit to the proverbial burn unit. Or rather, you can but somebody moved all the furniture around and changed the wall paper and you liked it better the old way. IE the honeymoon stage. Prithee go back, you cry nostalgically. Remember the time? Remember?

Next thing you know, the good people of Ayodhya starting trash-talking Ram. "If it were my wife, I wouldn't take that Sita back," they say. "Not after all that time with another man who's been dishing out the jewelry like there's no Ramayana." So what's the seventh incarnation of Vishnu to do? He's made a promise to his public. In other words, it doesn't matter what quality sirloin Lois Lane's got frying in her pan, when Superman's gotta go, he's gotta go. Only this time, it's Sita who's gotta go. Into exile. And she's pregnant. With Ram's twins. Don't worry, Valmiki saves her and she raises her kiddies in his hermitage where they sing songs of praise to Ram all day. One afternoon, Ram happens by the forest and hears the chanting. At last Sita is both expiated and manumitted. So what happens? Mother Earth swallows her up. As she is interred, Ram realizes his mistakes. Thus the relationship actually evolves. End of honeymoon. Or shall I say beginning? Middle? Life is in a permanent state of transition with nostalgia as its bellows and clinging as its camouflage. Meanwhile, somewhere between the first kiss and the funeral is the rising and dying fire. It may be a slower burn than you thought you wanted, but you can walk through it. In fact, not only are you walking through it right now, you are it. For the love of Ram.

Shiva vs. Vishnu

2009-10-11T15:13:54Z

Among the Trimurti-- Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Sustainer), Shiva (the Destroyer)--the past, present or future sufferer is often drawn to Shiva rather than Vishnu or Brahma This makes sense. Shiva's got the danse macabre, the five heads, the elephant man for a kid. It's demonic yet human. Also, every culture starts with the idea of death and dissolution. Indeed the root impulse of all culture is to band together to create rituals that attempt to stave off death. And I don't just mean exercise and under-eye cream. Just as the mind needs its obstacles or it's just jelly in a jar, civilization needs the monster behind the wall and civilization is that very wall. AKA it's what you do all day long. As Zorba the Greek once said, "Life is how the time goes by."

Interestingly, it is in sustaining our day-to-day selves that we perceive the idea of a plateau or, worse yet, an impasse in the practice of our amazing lives. Then we get aggravated. I mean, how many years will it take me to go from crow to headstand? It feels like Shiva himself is lowering the floor away from me when actually Vishnu is challenging me to garner my true self and turn what seems like a death-defying drop to a manageable plop. And what's the worse thing that can happen? I fall on my head? It's only five inches from the ground. Besides, it is in the course of the impasse, the course of readying ourselves, that we deepen who we really are. It's seems terrifying, but it may just be riding the wave. Think of it as soul surfing.

Only here's the radical part: What we perceive as nothing is really everything which is no thing at all. Trippy, but the Gita describes Vishnu as being beyond human perception. Not bad for a guy with four arms. Not to mention two of his ten avatars are Ram and Krishna. Though even they seem to get more airtime. But that's the thing with Vishnu: even though he's the middleman in the Trimurti, indeed the gig with the least accolade, his consort is Lakshmi (Abundance). Not only is Lakshmi quite attractive in her own right-- the Hindu Venus on the Half-shell-- but she is also the personification of Maya (Illusion). Thus Vishnu (the Sustainer) needs Illusion in order to propagate and keep on keepin' on. It's all in the in impasse, baby. Only what if the impasse is actually a crossroads? What then? How will the time go by? Or rather as Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Ganesh

2009-10-05T14:48:58Z

A life without obstacles is akin to a sock without a foot: practical but limp. Just ask Ganesh. The son of Shiva and Parvati, baby Ganapati was beheaded by his own father just for hanging out in the doorway while his mommy took a bath, thus blocking Shiva's entrance to his own home. Clearly, Shiva's reflexive and some might say overbearing response was highly upsetting to Parvati. After all, it had been a difficult labor; Parvati had created her beloved progeny from her own oils, sweat and tears. Subsequently, there was a lot of turbulence in the home. What could Lord Shiva do but replace Ganapati's head with that of an elephant? End of domestic dispute. Beginning of Lord Ganesh, remover and creator of obstacles, lord of intelligence and rider of the musica--the mouse/rat, AKA the subjugated demon of the ego. You gotta admit: the guy triumphed under seemingly impossible odds.

Meantime, when we non-elephant heads perceive obstacles in our path, we feel emotions that run the gamut from aggravation to outrage. We may even begin to compare and despair: why is my path so blocked while Esther's seems so free? She sallies forth with nary a concern, "getting" everything she wants so easily: a gigantic brownstone, a loving spouse, healthy children. The other night, having dinner with Esther and feeling blocked and somewhat jealous, I kept thinking of Gore Vidal's famous quote, "With every success of one of my friends, a small part of me dies." Remove my blocks, Ganesha, I later prayed. Make my path smooth and simple--an easy passage. For god's sake, haven't I suffered enough?

Days later, Esther called me to complain about a situation with her husband. She was doing all the work in their household and thus she felt caught in a trap of her own making. "I wish my life were more like yours," she admitted. "A life where anything can happen." That afternoon, it hit me that we often mistake possibility for obstacles, rather than vice versa. After all, most obstacles exist in our own minds. They are maya--illusion--rather than some dire fate or unjust external reality. "You see?" we cry triumphantly. "You see how blocked I am?" If only we could understand the obstacles as a challenge and thus supplant suffering with problem-solving, even acceptance. After all, without our obstacles we are just a baby in a doorway: unformed, mushy and dependent, neither here nor there. The obstacles make us who we are with all our thorniness, bruises, wisdom and beauty. Our memory like the head of Ganesha, burdensome yet ultimately enlightening. Our karma--action-- like his hatchet, cutting through the bondage of desire and expectation. The calloused foot to fill the sock and take us where we're going.

Welcome

2009-10-05T14:46:53Z

Welcome to the Laughing Lotus Love Blog: an ongoing discussion of the themes and ideas around which our temple and our asana practice revolve and evolve. In the spirit of Sister Sledge, we are family and our blog is your family dinner: loving, loud, and provocative in the true spirit of the word--pro voice. Your voice, that is. It is our Lotus hope to connect not only teachers and students, as indeed we are all teachers and students, but also teachers and teachers, students and students; feeding our community and family not just with cookies and tea, but the music and light of the mind. We are all on the path; some of us just need to talk about it more often. So meditate and weigh in. Speak out, family. Roll out your mental mat. We yearn to learn about you, from you and with you.

In love and service,
your Lotus