thoughts on how we fit into the web of community, family and society
A friend wrote an email to me this morning that in a recent office move, the plaster ganesha he’s had on his wall broke. Not to worry, though, he had been given another one to sit on his computer. Ganesha, though sometimes hailed as the remover of obstacles, does not so much remove them as…
It is hard to believe that having arrived home only two weeks ago from my trip to India that I have already gone on and returned home from another trip. As I looked out the train window at the landscape that still holds my interest though I have seen it hundreds of time, but yet…
When I saw this on the sidewalk, I wondered whether it was litter–the content of a note unless autographed by someone famous is still litter if it is discarded on the street; or was it a note that slipped out of someone’s hand who would miss having the phone number and the reference; or was…
Dear Friends, Midnight of the new year found me sitting in a hotel room near the Chidambaram temple at festival time engaged in intense conversation while listening to wild music and chanting and the cracks and explosions of fire crackers. Quite a change from my long-standing practice of making a healthy meal, doing a long…
In Anusara yoga, one of the ways the first principle of “opening to grace” can be experienced and practiced is as a radical expansion of the capacity to receive and appreciate the very wonder of being. During my visit to India with Professor Douglas Brooks, I found myself repeatedly thinking of the concept of radical…
I was not witness to the most abject poverty in India (both because of where I went and because of how I was guided). These makeshift, but semi-permanent shelters seen from the window of the bus made me think of the Occupy movement. They are nothing like those of Occupy and much of what Occupy…
Only after walking along the two lane streets in a sari and sandals, sharing the road with exhaust-fume spewing buses, three-wheelers, motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, cows, goats, dogs, street vendors, and pedestrians amidst dust, puddles, sewage, potholes, cowpats, dog shit, goat turds, and piles of organic and non-biodegradable trash, could one understand how a campaign to…
The New York Times just published a lengthy article on “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” The response of one of my fellow certified Anusara yoga instructors was “duh!” This conversation greets me as I am about to offer a free gentle and therapeutic yoga class at Willow Street Yoga to invite new and continuing…
This pilgrimage is shortly coming to a close. I do not know what it will bring nor what I will bring home (I actually wrote this entry on December 16th). What I do know is that I will be eager to share all the learning and visions and use them to seek more peace and…