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Filtering by Category: The Laughing Elephant
These days we’re hearing from many students too that their practice has been impacted in unexpected ways by the pandemic. Some, not so driven, others more so. Some longing for Mysore community, others feeling less connected and moving away from practice. Many finding new expressions of practice (chanting, farming or social activism, to name a few) that seem more relevant to their body or the times.
Read MoreOne of the things I like about meditation practice, is that you’re not really sure what you’re supposed to be doing, or whether you’re even doing it or not. Eventually, you may realize that whatever arises, in terms of self-torture, is totally dependent on a certain frame of reference. It’s like it’s a game that the mind has created: a language game, in which you’ve decided that meditation is supposed to be bright. Then as you sit there, other things arise besides brightness, and so you decide that your meditation is no good based on just the axioms of that game—that meditation equals brightness. And then you think, “Well, I’m not going to play that game anymore.” Then a minute later you decide, “Oh, meditation is actually darkness!” Then what arises isn’t darkness, and you’ve failed again. Every trip that the mind makes, every vṛtti, is a little story, and is totally dependent on context.
Read MoreThis past year has been a doozie. Which is putting it nicely. As we move into 2021 in contrast to what any of us imagined a year ago when the virus was first discovered, much of the world is still in lockdown and things in some ways seem to be getting more tenuous. Yet, there is more to the story than that. The pandemic emerged in a splintered world, surfacing amid some of history’s worst social and political turmoil that reflected longstanding, widespread inequality and disregard for others which fueled anger, deceit, mistrust, and fear. The pace of life and work for many had become so imbalanced that there seemed to be not enough time to do more than feverishly tread water to keep afloat. So when the pandemic hit, it became vividly clear that though we might have had the impulse to just get back to “normal” as fast as possible, going back to the way things were was neither possible nor desirable.
Read MoreIf you think you’ve been in lockdown for an inordinately long time, it’s not your citta vṛttis gone wild, it’s pramāna; correct perception. On-again-off-again, the world has been ordered to stay in place for almost a year! Like good yogis, we’ve watched waves of changing emotion and mind states come and go. There’s been relief for the stillness, gratitude for the space and time to reflect, empathy for those suffering, all punctuated by our individual brand—sometimes neurotic, always sacred—of dealing with the endless unknown; agitation, anxiety, numbness, fear, confusion, boredom, depression and so on. Our freedom of movement has been tampered with for so long that sometimes it feels like a tangle of reluctant roots are sprouting out of our feet to penetrate the earth in a scheme to keep us immobilized forever. When will the subjugation from this lockdown ever end? But it could be worse.
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