The Fire We Desire & The Fire(s) We Need (a Tuesday post & a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Music, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion, Science, Suffering, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: A. S. Klein, Anna Murray Douglass, Ayurveda, Black History Month, CBS Sunday Morning, David Hogg, Declaration of Sentiments, Frederick Douglass, Geoffrey Chaucer, George L. Ruffin, Helen Piitts Douglass, Jamie Woon, kabbalah, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Wilde, Parkland, Peter Cook, Rita Braver, Robert Pirsig, Saint Valentine, Seneca Falls Convention, shabda, siddhis, Underground Railroad, Webster's 1828, William Goldman
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is the post for Tuesday, February 14^th and (technically) the 14^th special Black History note. Today’s word is gratitude and I am grateful for you. Some parts of the following were originally posted in 2021 and 2022. Some context, class details, and links have been added or updated. My apologies for not posting before the Noon class.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

“And, [L]ove – True [L]ove – will follow you forever.”

– “The Impressive Clergyman” (Peter Cook) in the movie The Princess Bride by William Goldman

No one can be surprised that “words” are one of my favorite supernormal powers. In fact, śabda (or shabda), ranks as one of my top six siddhis or “powers.” Yet, there’s also no denying that words are not only one of our super powers, they are also a form of kryptonite – especially when we’re dealing with English. The English language seems to have as many rules as exceptions and as many homonyms that are homographs as homophones. And if the homonyms that sound the same but have different meanings and/or spellings (homophones) and the homonyms that are spelled the same but have different meanings and/or pronunciation (homographs) aren’t confusing enough, there are words that just have different meanings to different people – or different meanings based on the context. The word “love” is a prime example of a word that can mean different things to different people and at different times.

If you mention love on February 14^th, a lot of people in the West will automatically think of “romantic love” – which is kind of ironic since Valentine’s Day started as a Catholic saint’s feast day and that saint may or may not have had anything to do with romantic love. Neither does romantic love have anything to do with the fact that the African American abolitionist, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass celebrated his birthday on this date is – although, his reasons for doing so are, loosely, connected to it being Saint Valentine’s Day.

“The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape, and agape is more than eros. Agape is more than philia. Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.”

– quoted from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/17/1957)

In the song “Gravity,” Jamie Woon sings of loving “a girl who loves synchronicity” and who “confided that love, it is an energy.” We humans (in general) have a tendency to block and/or limit that energy instead of “passing it on,” as the girl in the song does. And, we often use words to limit that energy. Some languages have different words for different kinds of love. Ancient Greek, for example, has érōs for sensual or passionate “love” or “desire;” storgḗ instinctual “love,” “affection,” or familial love (which can also extend to friends and pets); philía, which can be translated as “friendship” or brotherly love and was considered by some to be the “highest form of love;” and agápē, which is also described as unconditional love and “the highest form of love.”

Early Christians co-opted the Greek agápē and added to it their own understanding of the Hebrew chesed, which is sometimes translated into modern English as loving-kindness and stems from the root word (chasad) meaning “eager and ardent desire;” and includes a sense of “zeal” (especially as related to God). However, even in the Hebrew Bible (and the Christian Old Testament), chesed has been translated (in different places) as “mercy,” “kindness,” “lovingkindness,” “goodness,” “kindly” “merciful,” “favour,” “good,” “goodliness,” “pity,” and even “steadfast love.” There’s also a couple of places where it is used with a negative connotation. Judaism (and, particularly Jewish mysticism) also have words like devekut (which might be described as an emotional state and/or an action that cultivates a state related to “cleaving” or clinging to the Divine). Additionally, there is an understanding of a fear/awe of God (that also migrated into Christianity).

In English, we have a tendency to just use the same word for multiple things. Sometimes we add qualifiers like “brotherly” or “romantic;” but, sometimes we just use “love” – which, again, comes with different meanings and associations. During a Monday night in 2022, when I asked people for a word or phrase that they associate with love, I got some really phenomenal answers: acceptance and compassion, bravery (specifically as it relates to social change), trust, all the people that [one] cares about, and giving. To this list, I added earnest.

The “Valentine’s Day” portion of the following is partially excerpted from a 2021 post about “Being Red,” which includes a story about red and the Lunar New Year, as well as how this all ties into the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the upcoming Lenten observations.

“EARNEST, adjective

Ardent in the pursuit of an object; eager to obtain; having a longing desire; warmly engaged or incited.

They are never more earnest to disturb us, than when they see us most earnest in this duty.

Ardent; warm; eager; zealous; animated; importunate; as earnest in love; earnest in prayer.
Intent; fixed.

On that prospect strange

Their earnest eyes were fixed.

Serious; important; that is, really intent or engaged; whence the phrase, in earnest To be in earnest is to be really urging or stretching towards an object; intent on a pursuit. Hence, from fixed attention, comes the sense of seriousness in the pursuit, as opposed to trifling or jest. Are you in earnest or in jest?”

– quoted from Webster’s Dictionary 1828: American Dictionary of the English Language

Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People premiered on February 14, 1895, at the Saint James Theatre in London. It is a love story (or love stories) of sorts, but it is also a comedy of errors and a social satire full of love, love triangles, double entendres, double lives, mistaken identities, the dichotomy of public versus private life in Victorian society, and so many trivialities that one can hardly be blamed for questioning that about which one should be serious… or earnest. Like his other plays, Earnest was well received and marked a professional high point in Wilde’s life. However, it also marked a personal low point: Wilde’s trial, conviction, and imprisonment for homosexuality – which was illegal in Victorian England. Earnest would be the last play written by Oscar Wilde and, some would argue, his most popular.

While English speakers around the world might not come up with the same definition of “earnest” that was known in Victorian England, I would expect there would be some consensus around it meaning “serious” and “true.” On the flip side, the color red means something different to everyone. Webster’s 1828 dictionary clearly defines it as “a simple or primary color, but of several different shades or hues, as scarlet, crimson, vermilion, orange red etc.” – but even that doesn’t begin to address the fact that, on any given Sunday, the color signifies different things to different people all over the world. I say, “on any given Sunday,” but just consider Sunday the 14^thin 2021 [see link above], when red was associated with Valentine’s Day, The Lunar New Year celebrations (in some countries), and even the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Many people associate Valentine’s Day with red hearts, cards, chocolates, flowers, romantic dates, and romantic love – a very commercial endeavor – but it didn’t start out that way. The day actually started as (and to some still is) the Feast Day of Saint Valentine, according to the Western Christian tradition. There are actually two Christian martyrs remembered as Saint Valentine, but the most well-known is the 3^rd-century Roman saint (who is honored on July 6^th and 30^th in the Eastern Christian tradition). According to the legends, Valentine was imprisoned for practicing Christianity during a time when Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. Before and during his incarceration, Saint Valentine had several conversations with the Roman Emperor Claudius II. Throughout these discussions, the emperor tried to convert the priest to the Roman pagan religion (ostensibly to save the priest’s life) and the priest tried to convert the emperor to Catholicism (theoretically to save the emperor’s soul, and the souls of all that followed him and his decrees).

Around this same time, Valentine had multiple interactions and conversations with the daughter of his jailer. Julia, the daughter, was blind and one of the last acts Valentine reportedly committed (before he was executed) was to heal Julia’s sight. After he was martyred (around 269 A. D.), Julia and her household converted to Catholicism in honor of Valentine. His feast day was established in 496 A.D.; however, around the 18^th century, many additional details of the story started cropping up. One such detail was that Valentine married Christian soldiers who had been forbidden to marry (possibly because it would divide their focus and loyalty). Another detail was that he left Julia a letter and signed it “Your Valentine.”

“For this was on Seynt Velentynes day,

Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make,”

“For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,

When every fowl comes there his mate to take,”

– quoted from the poem “The Parliament of Fowls” by Geoffrey Chaucer, translation by A. S. Klein

As to why red became associated with Valentine’s Day, there are lots of theories and they all come back to those embellishments which focused on Saint Valentine as the patron saint of lovers. Some of those embellishments are attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer’s works about love – and love was associated with the heart, which people associated with red. Additionally, a red stain is traditionally viewed in the Western world as the sign that a woman came to her marital bed as a virgin – a view that is not scientifically factual. Still, the idea persists and there’s some very suggestive, subliminal messaging going on there.

But, let’s go back to the idea of the heart being red. Yoga and Ayurveda, as they come to us from India, use green to symbolize the heart chakra (i.e., the energetic or spiritual heart), but of course, these systems also recognize that the physical heart is red when exposed to the air – or it’s being depicted by an artist, which is why the Sacred Heart of Jesus is depicted as red.

Speaking of the energetic or spiritual heart: Swami Rama of the Himalayan tradition taught that we all have three hearts: a physical heart, which for most of us is on the left; an emotional heart, which for most of us is on the left; and that energetic or spiritual heart of the middle. That “heart center” includes the arms (also fingers and hands) and connects the hearts within us and also connects our hearts with all the hearts around us. Chinese Medicine and their sister sciences of movement, including Yin Yoga, also map the vital energy of the heart through the arms.

Going back to Jewish mysticism: In the Kabbalah, the sefira (or Divine “attribute”) of chesed is related to the right arm. It is balanced by gevurah (“strength”), which is the left arm, and tiferet (“balance”), which is the upper torso and includes the physical heart. These energetic paradigms really reinforce Robert Pirsig’s statement that “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

“Indeed, some have called me a traitor…. Two things are necessary to make a traitor. One is he shall have a country. [Laughter and applause] I believe if I had a country, I should be a patriot. I think I have all the feelings necessary — all the moral material, to say nothing about the intellectual. But when I remember that the blood of four sisters and one brother, is making fat the soil of Maryland and Virginia,—when I remember that an aged grandmother who has reared twelve children for the Southern market, and these one after another as they arrived at the most interesting age, were torn from her bosom,—when I remember that when she became too much racked for toil, she was turned out by a professed Christian master to grope her way in the darkness of old age, literally to die with none to help her, and the institutions of this country sanctioning and sanctifying this crime, I have no words of eulogy, I have no patriotism.[…]

No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard, on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightening scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”

– quoted from the 1847 speech “If I Had a Country, I Should Be a Patriot” by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born somewhere in Eastern Maryland in 1817 or 1818. If you’re wondering why I can name the exact time and place that Oscar Wilde’s play premiered a few years later (not to mention the exact time and place of that illustrious playwright’s birth), but cannot specify the time and place of one of the greatest speakers and writers of the 19th Century, it’s because Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. So, there is no heritage birth site you can visit (Covid not withstanding) in the way you can visit 21 Westland Row (the home of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre in Dublin). You could visit Cedar Hill, the Washington, D. C. house that Mr. Douglass bought about forty years after he escaped from slavery. But, the historical marker related to his birth is at least four miles from where it is assumed he was born.

By all accounts, he was born on the Holme (or Holmes) Hill Farm and most likely in the cabin of his grandmother, Betsey Bailey – which is basically where he lived for the first part of his life. His mother, on the other hand, lived twelve miles away and died when he was about seven years old. Some of his vague memories, as he recounted in his third autobiography, included his mother calling him her “Little Valentine.” Ergo, he celebrated his birthday on February 14^th.

Most of what we know about the abolitionist, statesman, and activist, comes from his speeches and his writings, including three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; My Bondage and My Freedom, and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In some ways, each book is an expansion of the previous books, with the third being the most detailed about his escape and activism*. As he explained in his the final book, he left certain details and facts out of the first two books in order to protect himself, the people who helped him escape, and some of the people associated with him.

Since slavery was still active in the United States when his first book was published on May 1, 1845, Mr. Douglass also relocated to England and Ireland for two years in order to ensure he would not be recaptured. While he was in Europe, his supporters paid ($710.96) for his emancipation. That’s about $26,300.66, in today’s economy, that went to the person who had enslaved him.

“This is American slavery; no marriage—no education—the light of the gospel shut out from the dark mind of the bondman—and he forbidden by law to learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the neck. If the father attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he may be punished by the whip in one instance, and in another be killed, at the discretion of the court. Three millions of people shut out from the light of knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that must result from such a state of things.”

– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

According to his first autobiography, the wife of his second owner, Mrs. Sophia Auld, started teaching a young Frederick Douglass the alphabet. When the lessons were discovered and forbidden, he overheard Mrs. Auld’s husband telling her that an educated slave would be unfit for slavery. This motivated Mr. Douglass to teach himself to read and write. The more he learned, the more he was motivated to be free. He was further motivated to escape when he fell in love with a free Black woman named Anna Murray, who was also a member of the Underground Railroad.

The success of his autobiographies changed the way some people – specifically, white abolitionists – viewed him and treated him. It expanded his audience and also uplifted his platform. While some pro-slavery advocates still saw him as a puppet and a parrot, abolitionists realized that he was actually an intellectual capable of giving very vivid (and compelling) first-hand accounts of the atrocities of slavery. Critics persisted in doubting him, but again and again, he dismantled their doubts and defamation. Furthermore, as he advocated for the civil rights of Africans in America, their descendants, and for all women, he lived a life that had been previously denied him.

“The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one-sixth of the population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?—what must be the condition of that people? I need not lift up the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state of things as I have just mentioned.”

– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray married on September 15, 1838 – just twelve days after his escape from slavery. For a while, they lived under an assumed surname. Frederick Douglass made a living as a public speaker, writer, and publisher. He traveled the world, served as a diplomat, and also served as an Army recruiter. Throughout his lifetime, he influenced people like Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. He was the first African American to be nominated for vice president (in 1872); the first African American person to receive a vote for president during a a major parties roll call (in 1888); and, if we want to get technical, one of the first people to publicly protest Civil War era statues. (He specifically objected to the way former slaves were depicted.)

Frederick Douglass started the first abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, whose motto was “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.” He was also the only Black person to (officially) attend the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and the only Black signer of the Declaration of Sentiments.

“Believing that one of the best means of emancipating the slaves of the south is to improve and elevate the character of the free colored people of the north, I shall labor in the future, as I have labored in the past, to promote the moral, social, religious, and intellectual elevation of the free colored people; never forgetting my own humble origin, nor refusing, while Heaven lends me ability, to use my voice, my pen, or my vote, to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race.”

– quoted from “CHAPTER XXV. VARIOUS INCIDENTS. NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE—UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION—THE OBJECTIONS TO IT—THEIR PLAUSIBILITY ADMITTED—MOTIVES FOR COMING TO ROCHESTER—DISCIPLE OF MR. GARRISON—CHANGE OF OPINION—CAUSES LEADING TO IT—THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHANGE—PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR—AMUSING CONDESCENSION—”JIM CROW CARS”—COLLISIONS WITH CONDUCTORS AND BRAKEMEN—TRAINS ORDERED NOT TO STOP AT LYNN—AMUSING DOMESTIC SCENE—SEPARATE TABLES FOR MASTER AND MAN—PREJUDICE UNNATURAL—ILLUSTRATIONS—THE AUTHOR IN HIGH COMPANY—ELEVATION OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR—PLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE.” of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray-Douglass had five children. Rosetta Douglass worked on her father’s newspapers and eventually became a teacher, an activist, and a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women. Lewis Henry Douglass worked as a typesetter at The North Star and The Douglass’ Weekly before serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass Jr. was also an abolitionist and journalist and who, along with his father, recruited for the Union Army during the Civil War. (Lewis and the two Fredericks would also co-edit The New Era.) Charles Redmond Douglass, also a publisher, is remembered as the first African American to enlist in the Union Army in New York and was one of the first African Americans to serve as a clerk in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau). He also worked for the United States Treasury and served as a diplomat (as did his father). The fifth Douglass child, Annie, died as an adolescent.

Anna Murray-Douglass died in 1882 and, in 1884, Frederick Douglass married a white abolitionist and radical feminist who was two years his junior. Helen Pitts Douglass co-edited The Alpha and eventually worked as her husbands secretary. After her husband’s death in 1895, the second Mrs. Douglass purchased Cedar Hill from the Douglass children (because her husbands bequest to her was not upheld) and worked to establish the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. After her death in 1903, the properties reduced mortgage was paid off by the National Association of Colored Women and is currently managed by the National Park Service.

“Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

– quoted from the “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech by Frederick Douglass (July 5, 1852)

Please join me today (Tuesday, February 14^th) at 12:00 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Tuesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.

NOTE: After the Noon practice, I remixed some of the before/after music after the Noon practice – which is slight different on each medium. The Spotify playlist includes Frederick Douglass’s entire “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, recited by Ossie Davis. The YouTube playlist features a portion of the speech recited by direct descendants of Frederick Douglass.

Practice Notes: This practice is all about heart opening – however, it may not be in the way you expect. There is also some unexpected ways to engage the hips.

“But I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.”

– quoted from “CHAPTER V.” of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

*NOTE: The full title of the third autobiography of Frederick Douglass is Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, Including His Connection with the Anti-slavery Movement; His Labors in Great Britain as Well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission–
Also to a Seat in the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as United States Marshal by President R. B. Hayes; Also His Appointment to Be Recorder of Deeds in Washington by President J. A. Garfield; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life; With an Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin, of Boston.

We keep saying “Never again,” but how earnest are we? (Warning: This video briefly contains disturbing images and sounds.)

### “I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Earnest.” ~ OW ###

The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, First Nations, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Music, Pain, Science, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Adam Kirsch, Allan Bloom, Benjamin Jowett, Black History Month, Brown v Board, Davis v Board, Dorothy Vaughn, Ellington West, HBCUs, Hidden Figures, Hilary Kates Varghese, HistoryMakers, James West, Keith Jarrett, Kevin Murnane, Matilda Omega Miller West, Mike Szczys, Miles Davis, NAACP, NASA, Plato, Pullman, Samuel Edward West, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Technology, Wookiefoot
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for February 10^th. The word for this date is groundedness. Click here if you are interested in other events and people I’ve covered on this date.

“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”

– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)

(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)

If we consider the very beginning of something (or someone) as Socrates and the others do in Plato’s Republic, we find that everything (and everyone) begins as a flicker of something out in the ether. We can call that flicker an idea, for lack of a better word, or we can call it a need – the word Plato uses. Either way, that flicker of something (or someone) is out in the either and then it gets grounded and rooted into something (or someone) – or it sets off a spark – and then from that conception there is creation and then being/existing in reality as we know it. And, even though we can follow that train of thought, there are a lot of things we use on a regular basis that we don’t think about in this way.

We don’t often think about the initial idea/need – unless our need is sudden and acute. Neither do we think very often about the space between that initial idea/need and all the steps that brought it into reality – which means, we don’t think about the people we have to thank for things we use everyday. But, let’s say we were going to think about the inventor of something – like, let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the microphones (and speakerphones) in our phones and other electronic devices. Let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the technology inside hearing aids, audio recording devices, video recorders, baby monitors, computers, and cell phones.

Be honest. If you were to imagine such a person (or people), what’s the first idea of a person that comes to mind?

Be honest.

Would you be surprised that one of their parents worked for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Langley Research Center? Probably not. Would you guess that they were still in college when they started inventing things that would change the world? Probably not. But, if you weren’t think of this person in the context of this special post, would you imagine someone whose grandparents were enslaved and who was born in a house because the local hospitals wouldn’t admit their mother (that NASA employee)? Possibly not. And yet…

“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”

– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)

Let’s start with Matilda Omega Miller West. She worked at Langley Air Force Base as a teacher and also as one of the NASA (human) computers that we now recognize as “Hidden Figures.” In fact, she was distantly related to Dorothy Vaughn, who became the first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center when she was named acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949. Mrs. West was also an active and prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as at least one other organization that the government viewed with suspicion. When she lost her job at NASA because of her political activism, she started teaching at a Native American reservation in Pennsylvania. She was married to Samuel Edward West, who held a variety of jobs, including owning a funeral home owner, working as an insurance salesman, and as a Pullman porter on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Wests had two children (James and Nathaniel); however, as they had to travel in order to work, their two sons were left in the care of Matilda West’s mother – who had formerly been enslaved.

The oldest of the West children, James Edward Maceo West, was born February 10, 1931, in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was a super curious kid, who wanted to understand how things worked. At an early age, he was taking things a part and poking around in things. He once took apart his grandfather’s pocket watch and discovered it had 107 parts, but then couldn’t put it back together again. Another time, he found a broken radio in the trash and set out to fix it. When he thought he was successful, he needed to plug it in; so, he climbed up on a bed, held onto the brass headboard, and plugged into a light socket. Needless to say, he shocked himself and probably would have died if his brother Nathaniel hadn’t knocked him off the bed. The family would have probably loved it, on some level, if either of those incidents had discouraged young James West from tinkering. Since, however, he was not deterred, they had to find other ways to channel his energy and inquisitive nature and he ended up working with a cousin who wired electricity for houses in rural Virginia.

“Describing the experience later, he said that when things happen that he doesn’t understand ‘… I have to figure them out. I have to learn. And that’s essentially what led to some of the discoveries that I made, you know, the curiosity. Well, why does nature behave in that way? You know, what are the compelling parameters around the way nature behaves? And how can I better understand the physical principles that I’m dealing with? You know, it’s still a big part of my life.’”

– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)

Growing up in Farmville, in the twentieth century, was challenging for African Americans. It was a time when education and job opportunities were subpar in areas like Virginia. There was an all-white school across the street from where he grew up. There was a an all-Black school (Robert Russa Moton High School) on the other side of town; but, that school lacked some very important resources, including: a gym, a cafeteria, indoor bathrooms, and blackboards. There were no science labs and a lack of classrooms, in general, meant that some classes were held inside of a school bus. On top of all that, R. R. Moton High School received the discarded books from the all-white school; so, they were dog-eared and out-of-date.

James West was scheduled to start high school long before 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns Powell led a student strike in April 1951, and long before Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Docket number: Civ. A. No. 1333; Case citation: 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952)) was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Since the Wests valued education, and had the means to do so, they decided to send their son to Phenix High School in Hampton, Virginia. Phenix HS, established the same year James West was born, was an all-Black feeder school for Hampton Institute (now known as Hampton University), one of the private Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs), and it trained students to be teachers, even requiring them to be student teachers. The Wests expected their son to to follow a plan that included pre-med at Hampton, medical school, and a job with an uncle who had built a clinic and started a practice – and he did follow the plan, for a while, but he was still compelled to tinker.

“In life, racism was my biggest obstacle. I always felt like if I was white, would I have had a better life? I don’t know because I really do have fun. But I had to pay attention to things that more directly affected me than others. For example, I got an email from a colleague a few days ago that said basically I wish I hadn’t accused you of conspiracy theory as much as I did. We used to have lunch together and talk about the disparities between the races, and now he finally understood why I was so upset by getting continuously stopped by police on my way to work through an all-white community.

Now more people understand why the fear is there.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

In high school, James West and a friend built their own telephone system. When he graduated from high school, he followed the plan, but he couldn’t get into it; so, he made plans to transfer to Wilberforce University (another HBCU) in Wilberforce, Ohio. His parents tried to dissuade him – even introducing him to two Black PhDs who couldn’t find jobs because of their race. James West, however, had that will and determination – that compulsion – that can only be considered a calling. He would not be moved off the course he had set for himself. But then, he was drafted by the United States Army during the Korean War.

After being wounded in combat, and receiving two Purple Hearts, James West went back to school. This time he decided to study Physics at Temple University, an integrated school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were, however, some race-related challenges. Temple was founded around the idea of study groups, but the study groups in his department kept rejecting him because of his race. Taking a page from women in his family (like his mother and Dorothy Vaughn), James West decided to show the white students what he could do – what his mind could do. Being able to solve complex equations earned him invitations to the very groups that had rejected him. Suspecting that he might face similar issues on the job front, he applied to pretty much every internship he could find. In 1957, he started his first summer internship at Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Nokia Bell Labs) and felt like it could be his professional home.

“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As part of his internship, James West started working in the Acoustic Research department where he studying interaural time delay (ITD), which is the time lapse between when each ear detects a sound and is a major part of how humans locate the source of a sound. The lab was re-purposing microphone technology, but the results were limiting their research – the system produced frequencies so low that very few people could hear the full spectrum of frequencies. The future Dr. West, still in college, dug up a German research paper (on solid dielectric elements) and completely revamped the test equipment. His new system produced more sound; thereby, creating better testing conditions. The professional scientists were impressed and James West was energized when he went back to school. Two or three months later, there was a problem: the intern’s system had stopped working. Since none of the professionals had done the research to understand the system, they sent the young Temple student a ticket back to Murray Hill, New Jersey.

James West could fix the problem, but he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. In order to make that guarantee, he had to understand the technology better. That was his need; that is what compelled him to make an even better sound system. As he researched electrets (basically, electricity magnets), he started working with Gerhard Sessler, a scientist originally from Germany. Dr. Sessler was exactly five days younger than James West, but he his education had not been interrupted by war. He studied physics at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich (where he earned his diploma in 1957); earned his PhD (from the University of Göttingen in 1959; and then moved to the United States to work at Bell Labs. In 1962, James West and Gerhard Sessler invented the electroacoustic transducer, the technology for the foil electret microphone.

US Patent No. 3118022 would be the first of over 100 (US and international) patents for Gerhard Sessler and over 450 (US and international) patents for James West. It would revolutionize the way people hear sound via electronic equipment and it would change James West’s life. To this day, 90% of all devices that relay sound do so using this technology. As for it’s American co-inventor, he would never go back to Temple (as a student). James West would continue working at Bell Labs, moving over to Lucent Technology, Inc. after it was created through a 1996 divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation (which included Western Electric and Bell Labs). Throughout his career, his work has been published in journals and books.

After over 40 years of service, James West retired and was recognized as a Bell Laboratories Fellow. That same year, in 2001, he started teaching at Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research at Johns Hopkins has included studying the acoustics of hospitals in order to find noise-cancelling solutions and developing technology for a smart stethoscope that cancels out background noise and can detect things like pneumonia and lung cancer. One of his daughters*, Ellington West, is CEO of the company that would take that digital stethoscope to market.

“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As I already mentioned, James West has always been curious and he was fortunate to have parents and extended family that fostered his ingenuity – even when they thought he was applying it in the wrong way (and they withdrew financial support). But, he proved himself to his parents, just as he proved himself to the Temple study groups and to the world. He was named New Jersey’s Inventor of the Year in 1995; elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1998; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999; received an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2007; and received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (along with Gerhard Sessler) in 2010.

Throughout his career, Dr. James West has supported opportunities for others to follow in his footsteps and to stand on his shoulders: to fill needs and discover opportunities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and/or perceived ability. He is the co-founder of Bell’s Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE); helped create and develop the Corporate Research Fellowship Program (CRFP) for graduate students pursuing terminal degrees in the sciences and the Summer Research Program (SRP); and has served on the board of directors of the Ingenuity Project, “a comprehensive, advanced math and science instructional [non-profit] program for Baltimore City students in grades 6-12.”

“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”

– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)

Practice Notes: As I write this post, I am listening to jazz (beginning with Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert) – music I always associate with being fearless, engaging in fearless play, and improvising. A practice dedicated to James West would be a practice where we delve into how things work and how things don’t work (or don’t work well). Then, we would be fearless and play – remembering the rules of improv: not breaking the flow, saying “yes and,” knowing the rules in order to break the rules, and (from the musical side) playing what’s not there. This would be a vinyāsa krama practice, with “things placed in a special way” “for a step-by-step progression” towards a peak pose (possibly Naṭarājāsana, “Dancer Pose.” The primary goals here would be to have fund and to listen to your mind-body.

*NOTE: James West and his wife Marlene have four adult children: Melanie, Laurie, James and Ellington. I would normally include more information, but could not find accurate information about when/how they met and what the other West children do for a living. He does talk about his family and his life choices in the interview conducted by The HistoryMakers, but I do not have access to those interviews. Many of the above quotes (except where indicated) are originally from The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with James West, February 13, 2013. The HistoryMakers® African American Video Oral History Collection, 1900 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

### “And up on a hill in Rishikesh I came across a holy man / With shining eyes and a toothless smile / He grinned and this is what he said / ‘There’s nothing so tall we can’t climb over / There’s nothing so wide we can not cross / The time has come to raise your voices / The light burns brightest when all hope seems lost / Be Fearless and Play’” ~ Wookiefoot ###

From the Earth (a special Black History 2.5-for-1 note) February 11, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, One Hoop, Pain, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: Bhagavad Gita, Black History Month, Dr. David Axelrod, Dr. David Jones Peck, Dr. James Derham, Dr. James Durham, Dr. James McCune Smith, Dr. Rebbeca J. Cole, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Dr. Robert Tanner Freeman, Eckardt C. Beck, environment, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jesse Jackson, Julian Cribb, Lisa Depaulo, Lisa Perez Jackson, Martin Buber, Oprah Winfrey, Yoga Sutra 2.36
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

“You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!…. You get a car! You get a car! You get a car!”

– Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show, original airdate: September 13, 2004

This is the “missing” Black History note for Wednesday, February 8^th. It’s later than usual, because I got misled, bamboozled, tricked – tricked, I say – into believing something that doesn’t appear to be true. The thing is, it would have been really cool if it had been true and here’s why: When The Oprah Winfrey Show premiered on September 8, 1986, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American to host a nationally syndicated daytime talk show. She was following in the footsteps of Della Reese, Pearl Bailey, and Barbara McNair – whose talk shows were not aired nationally and did not last nearly as long as Oprah’s 25 seasons – and her show was one of the most popular, most watched, and most awarded daytime talk show in television history. Whether you are (or were) a fan or not, there’s no denying that Oprah and The Oprah Winfrey Show changed the way people interact and interrelate. It would also be hard to dispute the fact that the show (and it’s spin-offs) created more opportunities for people to have real encounters and true meetings, like the ones Martin Buber described, rather than purely transactional interactions. Since one of the most popular segments on the show was “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” I thought it would be cool to explain that one of my favorite things is having Ich-und-Du moments and then I could do my best Oprah impersonation.

At this point, you might be wondering why in the world I would even make such a random connection. Well, you see, as I mentioned before, I got misled, bamboozled, tricked – tricked, I say – into believing the show premiered on a certain day in February (which, clearly, it did not) and I got excited about the tie-in before I did my due diligence and fact checked the fact checker. That’s what I do, and what I encourage others to day: check, double check, and cross check – which is why I use 5 to 8 translations when I’m doing my sūtra studies. Normally, I do my cross-checks before I put pen to paper or fingers to keys. But, I was running late as I got ready for Wednesday practices, and left my fact checking to the last minute.

Double checking the facts (as you know them) doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes, it just means that you are practicing that dedication to the truth – and the truth was very important to two women born on February 8^th in two different eras.

Yoga Sūtra 2.36: satyapratişţhāyām kriyāphalāśrayatvam

– “When a yogi is established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear fruit. [Truth is the foundation for fruitful action.]”

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: When and where (and under what circumstances) a person is born matters. Those factors play a part in what opportunities a person has, how hard or easy it is to take advantage of those opportunities, how a person envisions their goals and desires, and who supports them – or gets in their way – as they make their dreams come true. Many people born in the last few decades have had the advantage of the times, what with the internet and other technology giving people access to information and experiences they may not have been able to imagine in an earlier era. If those same people were born in certain countries and grew up in certain socioeconomic circumstances, they also may have had the advantages of location. On the flip side, someone born in the next few years – especially in certain parts of the world, including the United States – may find their access to knowledge is limited and therefore their opportunities are limited. That’s a theoretical scenario, based on current events. What is not theoretical, however, is that that exact scenario has played out several times throughout the history of the United States. It was definitely at play when Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (née Davis) was born on February 8, 1831.

So, how on Earth did she become the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States back in 1864?

Dr. Crumpler, herself, said that a lot of it came down to timing and location.

“It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.”

– quoted from the Introduction to A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

As far as I can tell, Rebecca Davis was born a freewoman in Christiana, Delaware. I am unclear about the status of her parents, Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis, but I do know that Delaware was still a slave state when the future doctor was born and that, for some reason, her parents sent her to live with an aunt in Pennsylvania. Again, I don’t know why she was sent to Pennsylvania at a very young age, but it could have had something to do with the fact that Pennsylvania had abolished slavery in 1780 and the family had the means to send their daughter away. (There is another, slightly scandalous, possibility for why she was sent away, but I haven’t been able to cross check certain court records.) The aunt’s primary occupation was caring for the sick and young Rebecca grew up learning the trade of being a caregiver.

When she was twenty, she married a formerly enslaved man from Virginia named Wyatt Lee and they moved to Charleston, Massachusetts where she started working as a nurse. Mr. Lee’s young son, from a previous marriage, died within a year of their move. This could have sharpened Rebecca Lee’s interest in medicine, especially as it related to children, and it is an event that could have contributed to her interest in medical school. Keep in mind that this was long before anyone could earn a nursing degree in the United States. This was also at a time when white medical schools typically turned Black students away and long before there were any Black medical schools. Don’t get me wrong, there had been Black physicians practicing Western medicine – like Dr. James Durham (or Derham), who was enslaved in Louisiana and learned the medical arts from his slave owners; however, the first African American M. D. and pharmacy owner in the United States, Dr. James McCune Smith, actually earned his medical degree at the University of Glasgow (Scotland, 1837). Exactly ten years later, Dr. David Jones Peck became the first African American to earn an M. D. in the US.

In the 1850’s, the different doctors with which Rebecca Lee worked might have had different expectations about the roles and responsibilities of their nurses. Yet, she distinguished herself and several doctors recommended that she go to medical school. Now, it is possible that this was just something they said and they wrote recommendation letters without actually believing she would be accepted. Remember, at the time, 1860, most medical schools were white-only and less than 1% of M.D.s in the United States were women… white women. It is also highly probable that the suggestion was for her to go to medical school to become an even more phenomenal nurse. It is also possible that the physician(s) who recommended her had some pull with the medical school board. Whatever the case, she was accepted by the New England Female Medical College and received a tuition award from the Wade Scholarship Fund. She was the only African American student in the school.

Her husband died of tuberculosis in the Spring of 1863. Almost a year later, on February 24, 1864, having completed her coursework, written her thesis, and paid her graduation fees, she and two of her classmates faced the medical school faculty for their final, oral exams. Although, the board expressed some concern about her preparedness (to be a doctor), Rebecca Davis Lee and her two classmates were recommended to the board of trustees. On March 1, 1864, she was declared a “Doctress of Medicine.” She would be the New England Female Medical College’s first and only Black graduate. Dr. Rebecca J. Cole become the second African American woman to earn a medical degree in the U. S. when she graduated from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. That same year, Robert Tanner Freeman graduated from Harvard University, becoming the first African American to receive a degree in dentistry from an American university. Howard University (established in 1867), where my father earned his Ph.D., opened it’s medical school in 1868.

“Her later writings give no indication that she was aware of her status as the first black woman MD in the United States; indeed, until the later twentieth century, scholars had assigned that distinction to Rebecca Cole….”

– quoted from the profile entitled “Crumpler, Rebecca Davis Lee” in African American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

In May of 1865, Dr. Rebecca Lee married Arthur Crumpler, another Virginia-born man who had escaped slavery and was determined to buy the freedom of his family members, and became Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Records show that they had a daughter (born in 1870), but it appears she died before reaching adolescence. While Arthur Crumpler worked as a blacksmith for the Union Army, Dr. Crumpler stayed in Boston, where she continued her training and cared for (often poor) women and children. When the Civil War ended, she re-joined Mr. Crumpler in Virginia, where she not only tended to veterans, but also treated formerly enslaved people and trained them on how to care for others. A lot of what she called her “real missionary work” encouraged other African Americans to seek formal training as healthcare practitioners – even though she knew, first hand, that Black physicians and nurses were not always welcomed by others in the field. The Crumplers eventually returned to Boston, where Dr. Crumpler established her practice at 67 Joy Street. Throughout her career, she focused on preventative measures and what might be considered “alternative medicine.” She strongly believed that people would be healthier if they had a better understanding of their bodies.

Around 1880, the Crumplers moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts and it appears that Dr. Crumpler stopped actively practicing medicine. Three years later, however, she published A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts. Dedicated to mothers and nurses, the book featured notes from her years of practice and offered guidance in the care and tending of women and children. The first part of the book focused on “treating of the cause, prevention, and cure of infantile bowel complaints, from birth to the close of the teething period, or until after the fifth year.” The second part “[contained] miscellaneous information concerning the life and growth of beings; the beginning of womanhood; also, the cause, prevention, and cure of many of the most distressing complaints of women, and youth, of both sexes.” She covered everything from “How to Marry” (the first chapter) to “Artificial Nursing” (chapter nine) to “Teething made easy” (chapter seventeen) and it is one of the first medical publications authored by an African American.

While there are lots of little historical breadcrumbs related to Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s life, there’s very little known about what kinds of obstacles she faced. In addition to the concerns expressed by the medical school faculty after her final exam – which may been purely a concern about her abilities or could have been related to race – there are records of male doctors snubbing her, pharmacists refusing to fill her prescriptions, and some people saying that, in her case, M. D. stood for “Mule Driver.” She did not, however, let any of that stop her from healing or from helping other people heal themselves.

“Let us strive to know more about ourselves, –it is human, it is Christian-like to do so. Then there will be minds from which to select students for the college, that may come forth to the community graduates in Pharmacy, Surgery, Dentistry, and Medicine. It is well known that many noble-minded women have graced the chambers of the sick with good service, in different conditions of need, too; but at the present women appear to shrink from any responsibilities demanding patience and sacrifice, or rather seem not to rely on the union of their strength with that of our great Creator, in time of need.

What we need o-day in every community, is, not a shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.”

– quoted from “Chapter XIX. General Remarks.” in A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

According to the Bhagavad Gitā (2.31), everyone has a sva-dharma (personal duty) that “should be viewed as one’s responsibility to his or her highest Self, the Atma.” To answer the call would mean being the kind of person Dr. Crumpler said the world needed – “[someone not] shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.” – a person like Lisa Perez Jackson, who was born February 8, 1962. Rather than a healthcare practitioner, however, she is a chemical engineer who served as Commissioner of Environmental Protection of New Jersey (2/2006 – 11/2008) and Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey (12/2008). In January of 2009, President Barack Obama named her as the 12^th Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), making her the agency’s first African American director, a position she held until she resigned in February 2013. She currently works as the environmental director of Apple. Interestingly, some aspects of her background are similar to Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s background.

Like Dr. Crumpler, Ms. Jackson (née Perez) was adopted; developed her scholarly interest because of a crisis she saw around her; and accomplished much while married and raising a family. In Ms. Jackson’s case, she was born in Philadelphia and then adopted at 2 weeks old (by Benjamin and Marie Perez). She was raised in Pontchartrain Park, a predominantly African American neighborhood in the 9^thward of New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated valedictorian from St. Mary’s Dominican High School, an all-girls private Catholic high school. She was a National Merit Scholar and received scholarships from National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering & Science and Shell Oil Company in order to attend Tulane University, where she graduated summa cum laude (1983) before earning her Master of Science from Princeton University in 1986.

Knowing that she drove her mother out her flooding hometown in 2005, one might think that her interest in the environment started because of Hurricane Katrina. However, her interest actually started in the late 1970s when she, and so many others around the world, followed the coverage of the disaster that unfolded in Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York that was built on top of a landfill that leaked toxic waste. On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared that the site posed a federal health emergency and, for the first time in U. S. history, requested emergency federal funds to clean up damage from something other than a natural disaster. Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund Act, which would be administered by the EPA. But the damage was already done: a disproportionate number of residents were dead, dying, and/or living with birth defects.

“After a startling increase in [cancer,] skin rashes, miscarriages and birth defects, President Carter declared a State of Emergency over the site. [Eckardt C. Beck, an EPA scientist] warned that the ironically named Love Canal was far from an isolated case and there were probably hundreds of similar ‘“ticking time bombs”’ all over the USA. State health commissioner David Axelrod^[*] presciently described the event as a ‘“national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations.”’”

– quoted from “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” in “2 – Poisoning A Planet” of Earth Detox: How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet by Julian Cribb

*NOTE: Dr. David Axelrod, who is quoted here, is not to be confused with the political strategist and advisor who worked in the Obama administration.

In addition to working for Shell Oil during the summers when she was at Tulane, Lisa Perez Jackson worked for a non-profit organization that advocated for the timely cleanup of contaminated areas while she was at Princeton. So, she got to see the environmental issues from two different professional perspectives. Not long after joining the EPA’s Washington, D. C, office as an engineer in 1987, she moved to the New York office and worked on the team administering the Superfund. She met her second husband, Kenneth Jackson, towards the beginning of her 16-year tenure at the New York office of the EPA and they had two children within the first four years of their marriage.

Lisa P. Jackson had enough experience to know that when she became the first African American to head up the EPA she was going to be in sticky, icky, controversial situations. She had to know that one side of the aisle would almost always say the agency was overreaching and moving too fast, while the other side would simultaneously say that the agency was moving too slow and not reaching/doing enough. However, she had no way of knowing that an oil rig (Deepwater Horizon) would explode in the Gulf of Mexico, mere meters from her childhood hometown, a little over a year after her appointment. She had no way of knowing the disaster would lead directly to the House of Representatives passing a bill to cut the EPA’s funding or that she would be called to testify in Congressional hearings at least seven times in one month. Nor did she have any way of knowing that, before she stepped down (in 2013), she would be accused of mishandling private emails. All she knew, back in 2009, was that she was determined to make a difference – and make a difference she did.

Under her leadership, the EPA developed stricter fuel efficiency standards; recognized carbon dioxide and and five other gases as greenhouse emissions that create public health threats; and proposed limits on the amount of mercury, arsenic, nickel, and other toxic by-products power plants could routinely release into the environment. To this day, she especially works to make a difference in the lives of those disproportionately affected by environmental issues – those who, it turns out, are often found in the same groups that Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was serving back in the 1800s: poor people, minorities, veterans, women, and children.

“The first girls to attend [the Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy] were previously at the city’s lowest-ranked middle school. This year the school’s eighth graders earned one of the highest scores of all public schools in Atlanta on a state exam.

They’re Jackson’s sweet spot, these kids. African-American girls, who, like her, may have faced obstacles but are full of promise. ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘if these young women don’t grow up strong and talented and committed to our environment, then our country’s gonna suffer, not just them.’

Her speech hits home: ‘You have a right to clean air and clean water,’ she tells the girls, touching on one of her core initiatives, environmental justice—that is, to give a voice to the people, usually poor minorities, who are most severely affected by environmental hazards and calamities. ‘You have a right to have a healthy school to learn in.’ But such heady rights come with responsibility. The girls must be willing to do their part, she tells them—to blow past the wheezing stereotypes that only young men wearing pocket protectors are good at math and science, and that black women don’t set policy or lead. ‘You will bring clean air to your community,’ she tells them. ‘Which you can’t do if you don’t have the education.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

PRACTICE NOTES: Similar to a practice I would lead on Earth Day, this sequence would be grounded… but also have some groove to it. I’d probably lean towards a “detox flow” with a good number of seated poses and twists (if I was going to stick with a straight-forward vinyāsa practice) or a Yin/Yang fusion with something for the meridians associated with digestion. Of course, I would throw in Vṛkṣāsana (“Tree Pose”) and emphasize prāṇāyāma (extension and awareness of the breath).

“Jackson’s to-do list is ambitious, particularly given how much time she could be spending defending herself. But that’s not her style. She’d rather stay focused on the things that matter. ‘Our challenges are serious,’ she says. ‘The longer we wait to deal with our deteriorating atmosphere, the harder and more expensive it may get to address it. I am also a woman of faith, so I believe that we have a moral obligation to care for creation and future generations.

‘The conundrum is that the richer and more prosperous we become, the more we think that the environment is all taken care of,’ Jackson says. It’s simply not the case. ‘I have seen land completely ravaged by pollution. Environmental protection is not a spectator sport.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

### “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” ~ Jesse Jackson ###

Being Human, the prequel (the “missing” Wednesday post) February 9, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Bhakti, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Healing Stories, Hope, Kirtan, Life, Loss, Love, Mantra, Music, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Swami Vivekananda, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Amir Locke, Martin Buber, mythology, Rev. Ed Trevors, Ronald Gregor Smith, siddhis, Swami Vivekananda, Thomas Merton, Walter Kaufmann, Yoga Sutras 3.1-3.3, Zulu
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

For Those Who Missed It: This is the “missing” post for Wednesday, February 8^th. Most of the following information was originally included in (longer) Lunar Year celebration posts in 2021 and 2022. Some context has been edited or added and all music links have been updated. You can request a related recording via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

Check the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming practices.

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”

– Martin Buber

Martin Buber, born in Vienna on February 8, 1878, did not consider himself a philosopher or a theologian (because, he said, he “was not interested in ideas, only personal experience, and could not discuss God, but only relationships with God”). Yet, he is remembered as one of the greatest existentialist in the modern era. He was, specifically, a Jewish existentialist and professor of Chasidic mysticism who grew up speaking Yiddish and German at home and would partially earn a reputation as a translator (even translating the Hebrew Bible into German) and for his thoughts on religious consciousness, modernity, the concept of evil, ethics, education, and Biblical hermeneutics.

Known for his philosophy of dialogue, he was concerned with all the questions of existential philosophy – Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning / purpose of my life? – but, he came at the questions from a distinctly theist point of view. To Buber we could exist in a purely transactional manner, without any real connection – or we could live, really live, which required another…a “du.”

In his seminal work, Ich und Du, Buber described a state of being that relies on relationship to have meaning and purpose. However, said relationship must be based on an equal meeting; one that requires authenticity and acceptance rather than projection and conditions. The relationship must be real and perceivable, as opposed to being something created in the mind. The classic examples of this type of encounter are two lovers, an observer and a cat, the author and a tree, or two strangers on a train. In light of the recent Lunar New Year celebrations, we can even consider a person and their in-laws or a rich person and a beggar.

In all of the aforementioned cases, there is the possibility of engaging with other individuals, inanimate objects, and all of reality in a purely transactional manner that relies on mental projection and representation – which Buber would describe as “Ich und Es” (I-and-It). However, there is also the possibility of true dialogue, encounter, or meeting whereby the two entities connect and merge – which Buber described as “Ich und Du.” The difference between the two experiences or states, however, is not always obvious on the surface.

Martin Buber’s concept of “Ich und Du” is a particularly tricky for an English reader because there is no single English word that carries all the connotations found in the German “Du.” Translators can, as Ronald Gregor Smith did, use “Thou” to represent the kind of reverence one would have towards God. Or, translators can, as Walter Kaufmann did, use “You;” because it is personal, colloquial, and intimate. The translation by Ronald Gregor Smith was the one that completed during Buber’s lifetime (and under his supervision) – and it would have been the one on the mind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a he wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and at least one of his sermons. However, either translation is still tricky for English readers; because the “Du” Martin Buber intended is simultaneously personal, colloquial, intimate, and reverent.

“Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.”

“All real life is meeting.”

“All actual life is encounter.”

– quoted from Ich und Du by Martin Buber (English translations by Ronald Gregor Smith and Walter Kaufmann, respectively)

Consider that we can clearly see how falling in love with a stranger on a train – one to who we have never actually spoken – is not the same as falling in love with someone we have known all our lives. Yet, it is possible to grow up with someone and not actually know them. It is possible to live next door to someone for years and be surprised by their actions. So, it is clearly possible to marry someone and know as much about them (or as little about them) as the person who sits silently across from you during a meditation retreat – in that, we know some of their preferences and values, but we layer our impressions on top of that without knowing the inner workings of their heart and mind. Similarly, someone can marry into our family (or we can marry into theirs) and there can be an invisible barrier which prevents them from truly being family – or, we can love and accept them (be loved and accepted by them) in much the same way we love and accept someone to whom we are related by blood.

Another example would be how a parent feels about a child they adopt versus a child born from their body versus a child born to their spouse. Sure, there are less than ideal situations where there is always separation and distinction. Ideally, however, the difference a parent feels is based on personality not legality – and even then, ideally, there is love and acceptance.

Keep in mind that my examples are oversimplified. There is more to truly knowing another than time and space. We could still objectify someone and be objectified by them, no matter the time or proximity. According to Buber, moving from an “Ich und Es” relationship (to “Ich und Du”) cannot be forced. According to Buber, the change in relationship requires grace and a willingness to open to the possibility of a seamless merging, an absorption, of sorts.

And grace, which we are exploring in 2023, is often associated with faith – which is today’s point of focus for “Season of Non-violence.”

Yoga Sūtra 3.1: deśabandhah cittasya dhāranā

– “Dhāranā is the process of holding, focusing, or fixing the attention of mind onto one object or place.”

Yoga Sūtra 3.2: tatra pratyaya-ikatānatā dhyānam

– “Dhyāna is the repeated continuation, or unbroken flow of thought, toward that one object or place.”

Yoga Sūtra 3.3: tadeva-artha-mātra-nirbhāsaṁ svarūpa-śūnyam-iva-samādhiḥ

– “Samadhi [meditation in its highest form] is the state when only the essence of that object, place, or point shines forth in the mind, as if devoid even of its own form.”

Samādhi, the eighth limb of the Yoga Philosophy, is sometimes translated into English as “meditation” or “perfect meditation.” However, many traditions refer to the previous limb (dhyāna) as “mediation.” Additionally, throughout the sūtras, a distinction is made between different levels of consciousness, which Patanjali also referred to as (lower) samādhi. To distinguish the different experiences in English, some teachers will describe (higher) Samādhi as “Spiritual Absorption” or “Union with Dvine.”

No matter how it is translated, the final limb is not something that can be forced. It comes from a steady and consistent progression through the other limbs and especially through the preceding five – in that mastery of āsana (“seat” or pose) prepares one to practice prāņāyāma (awareness and control of the breath) which, over time, leads to pratyāhāra (“pulling the mind-senses from every direction to a single point”) which becomes dhāranā (“focus” or “concentration”) which, over time, becomes dhyāna (“concentration” or “meditation”) which ultimately can become Samādhi: a seamless merging of the seer and the seen.

This union between the seer and seen, is the similar to – if not exactly the same as – Martin Buber’s “Ich und Du” experience. According to Buber, life is holy and to really know one’s Self requires really knowing another and, in that knowing, one can know God / the Divine (whatever that means to you at this moment).

More often than not, to better understand the “Ich und Du” relationship, I think of Nara and Narayana, identical twins in Hindu mythology. Nara and Narayana are almost always depicted together and are identical – except that one is in a physical body and one is in a spiritual body. Nara-Narayana is referred to as “the spirit that lives on the water” or “the resting place of all living beings;” it is the ultimate goal of existence. However, until the twins become Nara-Narayana, it is Nara (in the physical body) who does the earthly work that allows for the spiritual connection. Once that connection is made, the soul is liberated and no longer burdened by the ignorance (avidyā) that leads to suffering.

“The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You/Thou to become; becoming I, I say you.”

– quoted from Ich und Du by Martin Buber (English translation by Walter Kaufmann)

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.

Here’s another example, straight from the 2022 headlines, that illustrates one of the many reasons why we need to stop objectifying each other!

“We find, in studying history, one fact held in common by all the great teachers of religion the world ever had. They all claim to have got their truths from beyond, only many of them did not know where they got them from. For instance, one would say that an angel came down in the form of a human being, with wings, and said to him, ‘Hear, O man, this is the message.’ Another says that a Deva, a bright being, appeared to him. A third says he dreamed that his ancestor came and told him certain things. He did not know anything beyond that. But this is common that all claim that this knowledge has come to them from beyond, not through their reasoning power. What does the science of Yoga teach? It teaches that they were right in claiming that all this knowledge came to them from beyond reasoning, but that it came from within themselves.

The Yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge, beyond reasoning, comes to man. Metaphysical and transcendental knowledge comes to that man.”

– quoted from “Chapter VII: Dhyana and Samadhi” in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

– quoted from Chapter 1, “Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away” in No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton

### As they say in Zulu, “Sawubona!” [“I see you!”] and “Yebo, sawubona!” [“I see you seeing me.”] ###

### I See Du ###

Space and the Power of Hearing(s) (a special Black History note, w/a Tuesday link) February 8, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Gandhi, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Men, Minnesota, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Poetry, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Alabama Supreme Court, Andy Wright, Beth Birmingham, Bhamwiki.com, birthdays on February 7, Black History Month, Charlie Weems, Christopher Isherwood, Civil Rights Movement, Clarence Norris, Countee Cullen, Creed Conyers, dreaming, Dred Scot, Eeva Sallinen, Ella Virginia Eaton Adams, Emily Sarmiento, Eugene Williams, Frank “Doc” Adams, Garth Brooks, Hallie Rubenhold, Haywood Patterson, HBCUs, James Baker, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mann Act, Myal Greene, niyamas, Olin Montgomery, Oscar William Adams Jr., Oscar William Adams Sr., Ralph D. Cook, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Roy Wright, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, santosha, santoşā, Scottsboro Boys, SCOTUS, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Sinclair Lewis, Supreme Court, Swami Prabhavananda, Tom Gordon, U. W. Clemon, Willie Roberson, yamas
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Tuesday, February 7^th. Please note that only the Tuesday evening practice references this profile. You can request a recording of the Tuesday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: The following includes a recounting of the Scottsboro Boys trials.

Post revised March 2024.

“It’s a bad habit we have: We tell the tale of the murder and not the murdered.”

“I’ll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case.”

“If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Rubenhold for Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.”

— quoted from the podcast trailer for Season 1of Bad Women: The Ripper Retold, hosted by Hallie Rubenhold

How we tell a story, especially a story about real life and real events, says a lot about how we feel about our circumstances. Same goes for what we read (if we are in the habit of reading for pleasure) and/or what other kinds of media we consume. On a certain level, it is all about escape. But, are we “escaping” because we need to decompress and give our brains a rest? Or are we “escaping” because we’re not satisfied with our lot in life? If it’s the latter, what would it take to be content, satisfied — happy even — with our lot?

These are the kinds of questions I pose during classes on February 7^th. They’re questions that serve as entryways into the practice of santoşā (“contentment”), which is the second niyama (“internal observation”) in the Yoga Philosophy. (Of course, for today, you can think of it as Number 7 in the philosophy’s list of ethics.) Answering the question requires turning inward and doing a little svādhyāya (“self study”), which is the fourth niyama. One way to turn inward and take a look at yourself is to reflect on what you would do and how you would feel in certain situations. Classically, it might be understood that such reflection would be done in the context of sacred text; however, it is also possible to simply put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

For example, would you be content, satisfied — happy even, if you were a girl born in “a little house on the prairie” — or, would you dream of something more? Would you stay on the prairie, unsatisfied, like “a hard luck woman” waiting for your man? Or, would you be like Laura Ingalls Wilder (b. 02/07/1867, in Pepin Country, Wisconsin) and make your dreams come true by writing about your experiences (and all the people you knew)? Even then, how many of your dreams would need to come true for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Or, perhaps, like Sinclair Lewis (b. 02/07/1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota) you were born in a northern town with “one light blinking off and on.” Would you be content, satisfied — happy even — or, would you dream of something more? Would you be the one in the song who never does the things they thought they would and never knew they could leave? Or, would you be the one, like Mr. Lewis, who left for the big city, wrote about your experiences (and all the people you knew), and became what everyone’s talking about down on Main Street? Even then, would you be grateful (and, therefore, satisfied) or would you be like Carol Milford and want to change everything?

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with dreaming, hoping, and praying for change. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve your situation and/or the situations of others. Nor is there anything wrong with wanting to change injustice laws and breakdown systems of inequity. You could be a common man, a simple man, a sweet man born in Tornado Alley — like Troyal Garth Brooks (b. 02/07/1962, in Tulsa, Oklahoma) — and dream of sharing your storytelling gifts with the world. But would you be satisfied? Would you be “happy in this modern world? Or do you need more?” And when would the “more” be enough for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Take a moment to consider being yourself in one of those other people’s circumstances. Then, let’s go a little deeper.

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7^th.

On Monday, I referenced the daily contemplation elements offered by the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace during this Season for Nonviolence. Remember, these are elements found in the teachings of both Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The element for February 7^th is dreaming and it brings to mind the fact that MLK (as well as Gandhi) dreamed of better worlds, more just worlds, more equitable worlds. They were committed to practicing non-violence and passive resistance, but they were not satisfied. They were not content (with the social status quo). Nor should they have been. Some things, after all, are unacceptable.

To practice santoşā, however, we must accept what is (i.e., what exists as it exists in the moment — or as we understand it to exist). Acceptance, in this case, does not mean that we just casually throw our hands up and accept violence, injustice, and inequity as basic staples of life. Neither does it mean that we ignore what is happening around us. Instead, the practice requires us to be truthful about the situation, our roles in the situation, and what we can do to change the situation. The practice also requires us to proceed with clear-minded awareness of how we are connected to everything and everybody and to be dedicated and disciplined in our practice of non-violence and non-harming. Finally, the practice requires that we practice non-attachment; meaning that we do all we can do and then let go with a kind of trustful surrender. This is basically a summary of 9 of the 10 elements that make up the ethics of the Yoga Philosophy.

The elements that make up the corner stone of the Yoga Philosophy overlap commandments found in the Abrahamic religions, precepts found in Buddhism, and values found in philosophies and indigenous religions around the world. These are shared values that stretch back into eons and yet we still have problems… big problems — which means we still need leaders, thinkers, and speakers who can hear what is needed in the world and respond wisely, safely, and justly. Such a man was born in Alabama, during the period of violence that directly preceded the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. His life and his legacy are yet another illustration of a dreamer who was not satisfied, yet made choices for which we can all be grateful.

“Editorials expressed hope that through participation in war, black citizens would gain opportunities at home. Among the outrages that the Reporter chronicled were frequent lynchings across the South, a topic that led [Oscar William Adams, Sr.] to write, ‘It is a shame before the living God and man that we should continue to preach democracy and permit such autocracy and savagery within our own borders.’”

— quoted from Bhamwiki.com (citing Gordon, Tom (May 2, 2018) “Civil decency. Human honesty.” B-Metro

Born in Birmingham, Alabama on February 7, 1925, Oscar William Adams, Jr. was the oldest of two sons born to Oscar William Adams, Sr. and Ella Virginia Adams (née Eaton). His brother, Frank “Doc” Adams became a great jazz clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader, who was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, Oscar, Jr. became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (in 1966) and co-founded Birmingham’s first integrated law firm and its first African American law firm. He also litigated a variety of civil rights cases before becoming the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court and a well respected member of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Just like with the other dreamers born on this date, to understand the story of Judge Adams, we have to look back at the causes and conditions of his circumstances — which means going a little deeper into history. And, if we are going a little deeper into Alabama history that informed the dreams of the Adams brothers, we can start with their father, Oscar William Adams, Sr., a journalist and publisher who founded The Birmingham Reporter in 1906.

Unlike Black newspapers published in the North at the time, southern media outlets like The Birmingham Reporter had to tread carefully and be circumspect in it’s coverage of race-related news. To be too critical in opinion pieces or — in many cases — too honest about the facts of certain news stories, might mean that the newspaper, the journalists, and their families could be physically attacked. By all accounts, Oscar William Adams, Sr. had a real knack for creating layouts and crafting articles that told the whole story without explicitly telling the whole story. He couldn’t always tell his readers what happened, but he could show them. He could juxtapose articles about 9 Black kids being tried for rape with articles about almost twice as many white teenagers being exonerated before a trial. His readers had to perfect the skill of reading between the lines. It was like his readers understood the practice of focusing, concentrating, and meditating on the space between the ears and the process of hearing.

“In this state of withdrawal, ‘Great Disincarnation’ the mental coverings composed of rajas and tamas dwindle away and the light of sattwa is revealed.”

— quoted from How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (3:42), translated and with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

That aforementioned example is not random; it is one of the ways Oscar William Adams, Sr. covered the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine African Americans teenagers (age 12 – 19 years old) who were accused of raping two white women on a train full of “hoboes.” Nowadays, people might think of hoboes, tramps, and bums as one and the same. During the Great Depression, however, people very clearly understood that a hobo was someone who was traveling in order to work (but didn’t have the means to pay for their travel). On March 25, 1931, a fight broke out (in Tennessee) on a Southbound train full of Black and white hobos, because a group of white teenagers declared the train “whites only.” Even though there were reportedly the same number of hoboes of each race on the train, the white teenagers ended up leaving the train. Defeated and angry, they told the local sheriff that they had been attacked by the Black teenagers. The sheriff — plus some local residents that he deputized — intercepted the train in Paint Rock, Alabama, and arrested the Black teenagers.

They also arrested two young white women (age 17 and 21 years old).

Now, if you know anything about “bad women,” you know that two unaccompanied white women traveling in the presence of men — especially Black men — didn’t have a lot of choices. They could be labeled as prostitutes — which, in this case (because they crossed state lines) would mean they had violated The White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, also called the Mann Act, and could face lengthy prison terms. The other option was to say they were raped. Unlike most of the men, the two women knew each other and were actually traveling together. They decided (or, possibly the older one convinced the younger one) that it was in their best interest to say they were raped. A doctor was called in to examine them, but could find no signs of rape or trauma. It would later turn out that no one could truthfully confirm if the women and the teenagers were ever even in the same car. But, none of that mattered: it was 1931; the teenagers would go to court in Scottsboro, Alabama.

At the end of three speedy trials, all eight of the nine teenagers — including one who was almost blind and another who was so disabled that he could barely walk — were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries. The youngest of the nine was convicted, but his trial ended in a hung jury, because they couldn’t agree on the penalty: some wanted him to receive the death penalty, despite his age. All of the cases were appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), which overturned the convictions and sent the cases back down to Alabama. A change of venue was granted and all nine headed to court in rural Decatur, Alabama in the Spring of 1933.

Despite the decision for the cases to be re-tried, all nine were under heavy guard and the eight previously sentenced to death were in prison garb. Despite arguments from the defense attorneys (Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky, who had also served as second chair on the earlier trials), the trials again had all-white juries. Despite the fact that the youngest of the alleged victims recanted, the defendants were again convicted. The first of the nine was convicted despite the fact that many of the jurors knew he was innocent. But, Decatur was Klan country and the Ku Klux Klan made it very clear what they thought the outcome of the trials should be and what would happen to any juror who didn’t convict and recommend the death penalty. Judge James Edwin Horton set the verdict aside and indefinitely postponed the other trials. He did this, knowing it would end his political career. He also considered a change of venue, but, in the end, the first of the Scottsboro Boys faced his third trial in Decatur.

With a new judge, but no National Guard protection, the second set of retrials took place in Winter 1933. They resulted in two more convictions. Appeals to SCOTUS, in 1935, resulted in the convictions being overturned and the Scottsboro 9 were back in court. This time, however, there was one African American juror: Creed Conyers, the first Black person to serve on an Alabama grand jury since 1877. The newly elected Attorney General served as the prosecuting attorney and the trials lasted from January of 1936 until the summer of 1937. After spending over six years in prison (as adults on death row), the legal fate of the Scottsboro Boys was as follows:

After 4 trials, Haywood Patterson (18 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison. This was the first time a Black man in Alabama had been convicted of raping a white woman and had not received the death penalty. He escaped in 1949; end up in Michigan; but then went back to prison on a different case in 1951.
After 3 trials, Clarence Norris (19 when arrested) was convicted and given the death penalty. His sentence was commuted in 1938; he was paroled (and jumped parole) in 1946. He was pardoned in 1976.
After 2 trials, Charlie Weems (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 105 years. He was paroled in 1943.
After 2 trials, Andrew “Andy” Wright (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled; violated his parole; and then was placed on parole again (in New York) in 1950.
During his 2nd trial, Ozie Powell (16 when arrested) was shot by a sheriff and suffered brain damage. Somehow, he pleaded guilty to assaulting an officer and received 20 years. The initial rape charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement. He was paroled in 1946.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Olin Montgomery (17 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Willie Roberson (16 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, Roy Wright (12 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.
After 2 trials, Eugene Williams (13 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.

NOTE: The number of trials (noted above) does not count appeals or the fact that the defendants were often in the courtroom when others were being tried. Nor does it reflect the fact that sometimes jurors were swapped (like school kids moving between classrooms). Several of the aforementioned had additional legal issues, but I have not listed them all.

In 1938, the Governor of Alabama (Bibb Graves) made plans to pardon those who were imprisoned, but changed his mind because he didn’t like their attitude and the fact that they continued to declare themselves innocent. In 2013, 82 years after they were arrested, the state of Alabama issued posthumous pardons for Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright.

“Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong.
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.”

— quoted from the poem “Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song” by Countee Cullen

The trials and tribulations of the Scottsboro Boys inspired a plethora of writers, including Langston Hughes (Scottsboro Limited), Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird), Ellen Feldman (Scottsboro: A Novel), Richard Wright (Native Son), Allen Ginsberg (America), Countee Cullen (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”), Jean-Paul Sartre (The Respectful Prostitute [La Putain respectueuse]), Utpal Dutta (মানুষের অধিকারে [The Rights of Man]); as well as creators of the musicals The Scottsboro Boys and Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys; musicians like Lead Belly (“The Scottsboro Boys”) and Rage Against the Machine (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”); and filmmakers and political cartoonists.

The events also, inevitably, shaped the thoughts and desires of Oscar William Adams, Jr. — who would have turned 6 years old shortly before the teenagers were arrested and his father started covering the story. He was 12 (the same age the youngest had been when arrested) when the final trials concluded and around 18 (the same age the first to be convicted was when arrested) when the first man was paroled. Can you imagine what it would have been like to grow up in the Birmingham at that time? Regardless of if you visualize yourself as you are, in that situation or if you see yourself as the junior Mr. Adams, can you imagine how this situation might have informed your opinions — of yourself, of people who look like you, as well as of people who don’t look like you? Can you imagine how this situation would have informed your dreams and your decisions about the world?

And, this is all without considering “The Talk.”

I can’t imagine any Black child being satisfied with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black kid being content with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black teenager not dreaming about a better world; a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.

“The black man does not wish to be the pet of the law. The more blacks become enmeshed in meaningful positions in our society, then the more that society will be come non-discriminatory. His goals and ideals will become identical with goals and ideals of the rest of society. To insist on special treatment, and demand and get integration in other aspects of society is to pursue inconsistent approaches. If a black man is allowed to go as far as his talents will carry him, he will not need special protection from the courts. If he is not, the courts will once again be asked for special protection.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

We can never know what dreams he would have had and decisions he would have made if Oscar William Adams, Jr. had been someone else’s son and/or had experienced Birmingham in the mid-20th century through someone else’s circumstances. What we do know is that after he graduated from high school, Mr. Adams, Jr. attended two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs): Talladega College, Alabama’s oldest private HBCU, where he earned a degree in philosophy (1944) and Howard University, where he earned a law degree (1947). We also know that he came back to Alabama to practice.

Soon after he graduated, Mr. Adams, Jr. was admitted to the Alabama State Bar and opened up his own private practice, where he specialized in civil rights cases. He worked very closely with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was instrumental in organizing the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. He became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (1966) and, in 1967, he and Harvey Burg co-founded the first integrated law firm in Alabama. Two years later, in 1969, he co-founded Birmingham’s first African American law firm with James Baker, an Ivy League lawyer from Philadelphia. The firm became known as Adams, Baker & Clemon, when the original partners were joined by U.W. Clemon, who would become a lot of notable firsts (including Alabama’s first African American federal judge).

Throughout his career as an attorney in private practice, Oscar William Adams, Jr. litigated various kinds of cases on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as cases focused on school desegregation (e.g., Armstrong v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Ala., 220 F. Supp. 217 (N.D. Ala. 1963)); discrimination cases (e.g., Terry v. Elmwood Cemetery, 307 F. Supp. 369 (N.D. Ala. 1969) and Pettway v. AMERICAN CAST IRON PIPE COMPANY, 332 F. Supp. 811 (N.D. Ala. 1970)); and voting rights cases.

He became the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court on October 10, 1980, when an Alabama Supreme Court justice retired due to health issues. Eleven days before he was sworn in, the court heard arguments for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980), a case about the death penalty and how it was applied. The court’s decision would include a history of the death penalty in Alabama and highlight a period of injustices. However, the court’s statement that “during part of Alabama’s history, [what offenses authorized the imposition of death] reflected the interaction and relative position of the races, especially during the period prior to the Civil War, when slaves and free Negroes were admittedly singled out for special treatment insofar as capital punishment was concerned. Nevertheless, with that one exception…” made it sound as if the death penalty was rarely applied to innocent people purely based on their race — completely negating the fact that (in their lifetimes) it had been thusly applied multiple times. Mr. Adams, Jr. was sworn in on December 17^th, listened to a recording of the argument and, two days later, wrote a special concurrence. It was his first official statement from the bench.

“In the early seventies, blacks argued for bifurcated jury trials, and this Court today has mandated such for the State of Alabama. In the seventies, blacks asked that sentences for rape and other offenses be not discriminatorily and freakishly imposed.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

After completing the remaining two years of the unexpired term he had assumed, he decided to run for the office. The largest bar associations endorsed him, rather than his white counterparts, and in 1982, he became the first African American to be elected (by popular vote) to a statewide constitutional office in Alabama. He served on the Alabama Supreme Court until October 31, 1994, when retired from the bench. After his retirement from being behind the bench, he returned to the front: working with the Birmingham law firm of White, Dunn & Booker (now White, Arnold & Dowd). He also served as co-chairman of the Second Citizens’ Conference on Judicial Elections and Campaigns.

Oscar William Adams Jr. was replaced with the state’s second African American Supreme Court Justice, Ralph D. Cook. It would make for a great story if, in the intervening years — between 1980 and 1994 and between 1994 and today — more African American lawyers had become judges who became justices in the state of Alabama. That would be super satisfying.

Unfortunately, I can’t truthfully tell that story.

Associate Justice Cook retired from the bench in 2001. John H. England Jr served as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court justice from 1999 until 2001. (His son, John H. England, III is one of a handful of African American judges serving in Alabama’s federal courts.) According to the Brennan Center for Justice’s 2022 update, Alabama is currently one of 28 states with no Black justices. Furthermore, it is one of six states where Black residents make up at least 10% of the population. Specifically, 35% of Alabama’s population is classified as people of color and 27% of the total population identifies as Black. Yet, all nine of the Supreme Court justices, all five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and all five of the Court of Civil Appeals are white.

Quite often, when statistics like these are presented, some people will say representation doesn’t matter as much as education and experience. Well, I am just grateful that more and more people are getting the education and the experience that puts them in the pipeline. That appreciation for the way things are changing is part of the practice of santoşā. If you ask me if I am actually satisfied and content to wait, I can honestly say that I have no choice; because I can’t (directly) do anything about it. And that acceptance (and awareness of what is and is not in my control) is the non-attachment part of the practice.

Of course, the next logical question is: Well, when will you be satisfied? When will you be content? When posed with a similar question, SCOTUS associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a pretty succinct answer. I’m not sure if it would be my answer; but it is worth considering what the country would be like — what the world would be like — if the tables turned.

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, ‘I’m sometimes asked, “When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?” And I say when there are nine. People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.’

Asking, ‘How diverse is diverse enough?’ still represents a tick–the–box mentality rather than embracing the types of cultural, innovation, and bottom–line changes we have described here. When organizations start to embrace the breakthrough diversity can represent, we can move beyond thinking about quotas and targets. The real change we are talking about takes us far past ‘the one/the few’ to as many hires as it takes to create a culture of belonging and move our sector into the future.”

— quoted from “What Is Diverse Enough” in “Chapter 4. A Clear Case” of Creating Cultures of Belonging: Cultivating Organization where Women and Men Thrive by Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard (forward by Myal Greene and Emily Sarmiento)

PRACTICE NOTES: I don’t necessarily have a standard sequence for a February 7^th practice, but it is a practice that leans towards having a fair amount of balance. Sometimes, after completing a portion of the practice, I pose the questions, “Would you be satisfied if this was the end of the practice? Would you grateful (if you got what you needed), or would you still be wishing, hoping, praying for what you wanted? What would cause you to be more grateful and, therefore, more joyful?”

Every once in a while, I’ll even throw in a tolāsana (scale pose).

### 7 of 9 (1857) ###

Salt of the Earth (a special Black History note for Monday) February 7, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Food, Gandhi, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Lorraine Hansberry, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Pema Chodron, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: Ahiṃsā, Ahimsa, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Arun Gandhi, birthdays on February 6, Black History Month, commandments, Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, Edward A. Pitter, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, Great Depression, HBCUs, Howard University, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Juana Racquel Royster Horn, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Lincoln School of Nursing, Marjorie Allen Pitter, Marjorie Allen Pitter King, Mary T. Henry, nursing, precepts, salt, Salt Satyagraha, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Seattle Washington, The Gospel According to Matthew, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, University of California LA, University of Washington, World Interfaith Harmony Week, yamas, Yoga Sutra 2.35
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Monday, February 6^th. You can request a recording of the Monday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: A portion of this post refers to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), but there is an opportunity to skip that section.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice. Donations are tax deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.

“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

– quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Some people laughed when Mohandas Karamchanda Gandhi decided salt would be the focus of a direct action, non-violent mass protest. People who are world leaders today scoffed, because they didn’t get it and they didn’t have his insight and vision. However, Gandhi wasn’t the first radical leader to emphasize the importance of salt. Jesus did it, in the Gospel According to Matthew (5:13 – 14), when he referred to his disciples as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” In both cases, the teacher whose name would become synonymous with a worldwide religious movement indicated that there was a purpose, a usefulness, to the disciples and their roles (as salt and as light). I think it’s important to remember that Jesus was speaking to fishermen, farmers, and shepherds – people who were intimately familiar with the importance of salt (and light). They knew that (different kinds of) salt can be used for flavoring, preservation, fertilization, cleansing, and destroying, and that it could be offered as a sacrifice. They knew, as Gandhi would later point out, that people in hot, tropical climates needed salt for almost everything – including healing.

Gandhi’s “audience” was different. He was living in a time of industrialization and the beginnings of these modern times in which we find ourselves. He knew that people laughed and scoffed, because they didn’t completely understand the usefulness and vitalness of salt. He understood that some people took salt for granted and, even within the pages,, he debated with experts about the benefits and risks of salt consumption. He also knew that some people – inside and outside of British-ruled India – just didn’t get the inhumanity of charging people a tax for something that they could obtain (literally) outside their front door; something that was part of the very fiber of their being.

Remember, the human body is 60 – 75% water… and most of that water is saturated with salt.

“Such a universal force [Satyagraha] necessarily makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe. The force to be so applied can never be physical. There is in it no room for violence. The only force of universal application can, therefore, be that of ahimsa or love. In other words it is soul force.

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

– quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

(NOTE: The general explanation and rules were followed by a section of rules of conduct for various situations, including for “an Individual” and for “a Prisoner.”)

As I mentioned last week, Gandhi’s grandson (Arun Gandhi) established the “Season for Nonviolence” (January 30^th through April 4^th) in 1998. The Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace offers daily practices based on principles of nonviolence advocated by Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated on January 30, 1948) and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was assassinated on April 4, 1968). We could think of these principles as little bits of salt, sprinkled throughout the days, but the thing to remember is that these principles are not unique to one culture, one philosophy, or one religion. Neither did these two great leaders/teachers invent these ideas. Ahiṃsā (non-violence or “non-harming”) is the very first yama (external “restraint” or universal commandment) in the Yoga Philosophy and one of the Ten Commandments according the Abrahamic religions. It is also one of the Buddhist precepts. Courage, smiling, appreciation, caring, believing, simplicity, education – the principles of the first week of the “Season for Nonviolence” – all predate Gandhi and MLK; they also predate Jesus. So, too, does today’s principle: Healing.

Healing is also the focus of people who are wrapping up World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), which was first proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2010. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/5 on October 10, 2010, and designated the first week of February as a time to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence “between all religions, faiths, and beliefs.” This year’s theme is “Harmony in a World in Crisis: Working together to achieve peace, gender equality, mental health and wellbeing, and environmental preservation” and it stresses the fact that we are all better equipped to deal with future pandemics and natural catastrophes when we come together and work together.

Of course, future pandemics and natural catastrophes are not the only things that plague the world. We also have human-made disasters and catastrophic events. We’re still dealing with some of the same things Gandhi and MLK – even Jesus – fought: people who who would take away another person’s ability to be a healthy, thriving, human being. Again, we could look back at salt… or basic civil rights… or we could look at what it (sometimes) means to be like August Wilson’s Risa, “a woman in the world.”

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

In addition to being the penultimate day of World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), February 6th is also International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Designated by the UN in 2012, this annual day of events aims to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of the practice of FGM, which is defined by the UN as “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons and is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women.” People who endure FGM face short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections, and difficulty in passing urine, as well as long-term consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and mental health. According to the UN, 4.32 million girls around the world who are at risk of undergoing FGM and approximately 1 in 4, or 52 million worldwide, experience FGM at the hands of a medical professional.

This is not a new practice. In fact, when I was in college (about 30 years ago) I had an argument with a male student who insisted there was no such thing as FGM. He was white, from America, and (to my knowledge) had not experienced much outside of his lived experience. He only knew what it was like to be him. If I could go back, and have that discussion again, I might dig a little deeper into why he was in such denial about something that (to date) has been experienced by at least 200 million living people. NOTE: That statistic only refers to survivors.

While the UN acknowledges that cultures are different and that all are in “constant flux,” the General Assembly also recognizes that, in order for cultures to survive, the people within a society must be able to thrive, enjoy basic human rights, and have the physical and mental wellness to reach their potential. Any one of us can think of this as someone else’s problem, but the truth is that (on some level) this is everyone’s problem to solve. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called, “on men and boys everywhere to join me in speaking out and stepping forward to end female genital mutilation, for the benefit of all.”

The good news is that FGM has declined, globally, over the last 25 years and a girl is one-third less likely to experience FGM than 30 years ago. All the good news category: more awareness means that healthcare professionals are in a better position to help FGM survivors heal from the physical, mental, and/or emotional trauma.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

– “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

Healing begins with people. I’ve seen this up close and personal all of my life, because I grew up around healers. My father taught in medical schools and ran research labs. My mother was a hospital administrator. Her mother went to nursing school with at least one of her sister-in-laws and a couple of her future neighbors. For the most part, they all went to HBCUs (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) in the South, because the times – and the laws at the time – didn’t give them a whole lot of other options. In some ways, my grandmother and her peers would have had very similar experiences as Black nursing students before and after them. In some ways, however, their experiences would have been very different – again, because of the opportunities that were available (or not available to them) based on the color of their skin. For instance, the nurses in my family definitely had to overcome obstacles, but (maybe) not the same walls that Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes had scale in order to become a nurse.

Born February 6, 1919, in Seattle, Washington, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes was the second of three girls born to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter. Mr. Pitter was born in Jamaica (like Bob Marley, who was born 2/6/1945) and came to the United States in as a captain’s steward during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. After leaving his position on the passenger ship, he became a King County Clerk and then a book editor and publisher. He also worked with the Democratic Party (the Colored Democratic Association of Washington). Mrs. Pitter was a direct descendent of Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and she knew how to protect her family against the hostilities they encountered. Their daughters (Constance, Maxine, and Marjorie) grew up in the tightknit household that emphasized elegance and education.

“Marjorie Pitter King remembered, ‘Politics opened doors for us and was very helpful. During the Christmas vacations, we were able to work at the post office and earn money to help with our schooling. It also helped my father obtain his job because he had been working on WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects. Then he went from there to deputy sheriff.’ (Horn)”

– quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

All three of the Pitter girls graduated from high school and made their way to the University of Washington. Like a lot of students, especially during the Great Depression, the sisters had financial struggles. To alleviate their economic problems, the youngest of the three (Marjorie) proposed that they go into business together doing things they had learned how to do at home: typing, printing, and writing speeches. They called their business “Tres Hermanas” or “Three Sisters” – and it would have been nice if all of their troubles could have been resolved through hard work. Unfortunately, -isms and -phobias don’t work that way.

All three of the sisters had to deal with racism that manifested as name-calling and teachers ignoring them. Then, they each had their individual crosses to bear. Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, the oldest of the sisters, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and became a student teacher in the Seattle School District, but was not offered a permanent position for many years. When she was finally offered a regular position by the school district, it was as a speech therapist. She worked with students with special needs for 18 years.

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King, the youngest of the three sisters, struggled academically and then struggled because there weren’t very many women in accounting – let alone Black women. She ended up transferring to Howard University in 1942, for her senior year; but then dropped out of school and went to work for the Pentagon (during World War II). Eventually, she got married, started a family and moved back to Seattle, where she started a successful tax company. M and M Tax and Consultant Services worked with clients all along the continental coast and Mrs. Pitter King’s support extended to language translation and letter writing. She also became the first African American to be appointed to the Washington State Legislature (in 1965); served as Chair of the 37th District Democratic Party; Vice President of the King County Democratic Party; and Treasurer of the Washington State Federation of Democratic Women, Inc. While attending the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she helped draft the National Democratic Party Platform.

Then there was Maxine… the darkest-skinned of the three sisters… who wanted to be a nurse.

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

Like her sisters, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes enrolled at the University of Washington. She enrolled as a pre-nursing student, but then she was rejected by the the Nursing School, because the degree required nursing students to be housed in Harborview Hall – and the Dean of Nursing would not allow an African American student to live with the white students. The future Mrs. Pitter Haynes had no choice, but to change her major during her junior year. She ended up graduating from the University of Washington, in 1941, with a degree in sociology. Then, she moved to New York City and enrolled at Lincoln School of Nursing where she earned the first of two degrees in nursing. She earned her second degree, a masters in nursing, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and worked in the city of angels before moving back to Seattle.

Maxine Pitter Haynes become the first African American nurse at Providence Hospital (now Swedish Medical Center/Providence Campus). She also served as education director for the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic and taught at Seattle Pacific University, from 1976, until she retired in 1981 as professor emeritus.

But, in the middle of all of that, in 1971, she went back to the University of Washington… as an assistant professor at the same nursing school that had turned her away because of her skin color.

We can look at that as progress and/or we can flip the coin and look at that as healing.

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. ”

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

PRACTICE NOTES: I decided to focus this practice on the ways the body naturally heals: with a little yin and a little yang; a little action/resistance and passive/resting. There was some dynamic motion (to engage the sympathetic nervous system) and also moments of resting and relaxing (to engage the parasympathetic nervous system). In a practice like this, I also highlighted ahimsa (as I did above) and different techniques for relaxing and getting “unhooked,” including the practice of cultivating the opposites.

I have several playlists related to Gandhi, MLK, and ahiṃsā. However, if I were going to put together a playlist specifically for today, I would throw in a little Bob Marley (see reference above) plus some Schumann played by Claudio Arrau (b. 2/6/1903), something by Natalie Cole (b. 2/6/1950), and – if I had the time – I’d look for something appropriate from the soundtracks of one of Robert Townsend’s movies (b. 2/6/1957). Also, cause I’m silly (and I could make it work), I might throw in the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (cause, Axl Rose, b. 2/6/1962); however, I might toss it into the before/after music along with this little ditty on YouTube, by an artist born 2/6/1966.

### “Unforgettable / That’s what you are” ~ Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole ###

Observing the Conditions… of the Light (the “missing” Sunday post) February 5, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Depression, Faith, Food, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Philosophy, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Chinese, Da Shuhua, Dashuhua, Dongfang Shuo, dumplings, fireworks, John Jeffries, Lantern Festival, Lunar New Year, pinyin, Spring Festival, tangyuan, Vipassanā, Wang De, weather, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit, Yuan Xiao
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Happy Lantern Festival! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is the “missing” post for Sunday, February 5th, which is also the 15^th and final day of the Spring Festival. Most of the information below was posted in some way, shape, or form in 2021 and 2022; however the view may be different now. You can request a related recording via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible.

“Always old, sometimes new…”

**– a riddle* (read post for clues, see the end for the answer)**

Philosophically speaking, part of our yoga practice is about bring awareness to what we know – or what we think we know – about ourselves and the world around us. Once we do that, we have begun the process of recognizing how what we know or think we know determines our actions, our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Our beliefs influence the we interact with ourselves, with others, and with our environment. Once we really get into it, we also start to notice when – or if – we incorporate new information into our belief system; thereby adjusting our actions as we grow and mature.

At some point, we may start to notice how our experiences shape our beliefs and how our experiences and beliefs determine what we chose to do on any given day. Hopefully, we also recognize that other people make other choices based on the their beliefs and experiences. If we can see that, be open to the reality of that, and maybe dig a little deeper into that reality, we gain better understanding of ourselves (and maybe of the world). In other words, we gain insight.

Vipassanā is a Buddhist meditation technique that has also become a tradition. It literally means “to see in a special way” and can also be translated as “special, super seeing.” In English, however, it is usually translated as “insight.” This insight is achieved by sitting, breathing, and watching the mind-body without judging the mind-body. Part of the practice is even to recognize when you are judging and, therefore, recognizing when you are getting in your own way. This can be seen as a (non-religious) form of discernment – which also requires observation – all of it is part of our yoga practice.

Of course, there are times when what we are feeling and/or the way we are feeling makes it hard to see clearly – which make me think about it the way we think about the weather.

Click here for a more philosophy on how Yoga and Buddhism are connected to a Catholic understanding of discernment.

“From the Balloon above the Clouds

Let this afford some proof, my dear Mr. Thayer, that no separation shall make me unmindful of you, — have confidence, — happier, I hope much happier days await you — pray tell my dear Mrs T. I salute her from the Skies… [this section illegible except for the word “pleasure”]… believe me as I ever have been,

faithfully yours,

J. Jeffries”

– quoted from Dr. John Jeffries letter sent via “airmail” to Mr. Arodie Thayer, November 30, 1784, as posted “Attention, Aerophilatelists” by Peter Nelson (on The Consecrated Eminence: The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College, 4/16/2012)

We talk about the weather all the time – and sometimes with limited knowledge of why we’re experiencing the weather we’re experiencing. Sometimes we are prepared for what’s to come; sometimes not. Sometimes we rely on professionals, and all their science and math and theories, to predict what to expect. Sometimes we trust the almanac (and the history of precedent and “superstition”). Other times, we feel more confident relying on our achy bones; the smell of the air; the pressure in our head/sinuses; and/or a certain kind of restlessness. Of course, sometimes, we observe all that and still ignore the observation.

John Jeffries, born in Boston today (February 5^th) in 1744, is considered America’s first weatherperson (even though he was loyal to the crown and would be banished from the new republic because of his loyalties). His birthday is observed (mostly in the United States) as National Weatherperson’s Day, which recognizes professionals in the meteorology, weather forecasting, and broadcast meteorology, as well as volunteer storm spotters, chasers, and observers.

The original Dr. Jeffries (not to be confused with his son, he became a famous ophthalmic surgeon) was a physician, a scientist, and a military surgeon who served with the British Army. A graduate of Harvard College (1763) and the University of Aberdeen, he started taking daily measurements of the Boston weather in 1774. He would eventually take weather observations from a balloon piloted by the French inventor Jean Pierre Blanchard on November 30, 1784 and a second trip on January 7, 1785. On the first trip, the duo flew over London to Stone Marsh, Kent. On the second trip they flew from England to France. In addition to making weather and atmospheric observations, Dr. Jeffries dropped four letters from the balloon on that first trip. Three of the letters were delivered to the appropriate recipients. The letter addressed to Mr. Arodie Thayer is now “considered the oldest piece of airmail in existence.”

“We buy blood oranges and tiny green lentils from a jar, chestnuts, winter pears, winy little apples, and broccoli, which I’ve never seen in Italy before. ‘Lentils for the New Year,’ she tells us.”

– quoted from “Green Oil” in Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

The opposite of John Jeffries “airmail” might be the orange “mail” floating some rivers today. As I mentioned over the last two weeks, some people celebrate the Lunar New Year for a handful of days and then go back to their regular routines. For some, however, there’s the Spring Festival: a 15-day celebration that culminates with the Lantern Festival. The Lantern Festival takes place on the first full moon of the Lunar New Year, which is tonight. One of traditional custom turns the event into something similar to modern-day Valentine’s Day. Traditionally, women would write their contact information on oranges and then toss the oranges in the river where men would scoop them up. Then, the men would eat the oranges. A sweet orange meant the couple could potential have a good relationship, but a bitter orange meant the match was best avoided.

The oranges in the river make for a pretty sight, but that’s not the main focus of the Lantern Festival – nor is it the most spectacular. In fact, weather permitting, anyone observing areas celebrating the Lantern Festival would primarily notice cities, towns, and villages adorned in red lanterns and lit up… almost like everything is on fire.

There are several different legends associated with the Lantern Festival. In one story, the Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han Dynasty wanted every person in every class to honor the Buddha as the monks would on the fifteenth day of the year. According to another story, Dongfang Shuo (a scholar and court jester) came upon a homesick maiden from the palace. To console her and lift her out of her despair, he told the young lady that he would reunite her with her family. Then he dressed up like a fortune teller and told everyone who came to his stall that they must beg the “red fairy” for mercy on the thirteenth day of the new year. If they didn’t ask for mercy, everything would burn down in a couple of days.

When the maiden, Yuan Xiao, appeared all dressed in red, people flocked to her. The only thing the surprised maiden could think to do was say that she would take a message to the emperor. Of course, Dongfang had already “tricked” the emperor and convinced him to tell Yuan Xiao to make her trademarked sweet-rice dumplings called tangyuan, because they were the favorite dessert of the God of Fire.

The whole town, and people from surrounding towns, came together to make the dumplings as a tribute to the God of Fire. As word spread, more people came – including Yuan Xiao’s family. And this is why Dongfang Shuo’s plan was so clever: In Chinese, the dumplings are 湯圓 or 汤圆 (pinyin: tāngyuán), which sounds like 團圓 or 团圆 (pinyin: tuányuán), which means “union.” While the round dumplings are enjoyed at a variety of events and festivals throughout the year, they are a staple during the Lantern Festival, which is actually 元宵節 or 元宵节 (pinyin: Yuánxiāo jié) – Yuan Xiao’s Festival.

“‘When you see it, it’ll affect you profoundly…’”

– Wang De quoted in the Feb. 19, 2019, The Strait Times article entitled “Blacksmiths keep alive the flame of China’s molten steel ‘fireworks’”

There are more variations on this theme, but the legend with which I am most familiar, and the one I share in the practice, is the story of the Jade Emperor and his favorite bird, a crane. This crane was beautiful and unlike any other bird or species. In some stories, the ruler of heaven and earth decided to treat people with a glimpse of the exotic bird. In other versions of the story, the crane got discombobulated and flew close to the earth. Either way, what happened next is why we can’t have nice things: Someone shot the exotic bird.

The Jade Emperor was furious and decided to send down fire breathing dragons to destroy the towns and villages. However, the Jade Emperor’s daughter warned the townsfolk and someone suggested that if they lit lanterns, started bonfires, and set off fireworks, the dragons – who are not very smart in these stories – would think everything was already on fire. The trick worked… on the dragons. The Jade Emperor was not tricked, but his anger had passed and he decided to offer a little compassion to the people on Earth.

To this day, people carry on the tradition of lighting up the skies. Traditionally, lanterns are made of paper, wooden, or jade. Some people will spend months designing and creating delicate lanterns that they will enter into competitions. Other people will make simple lanterns or purchase fancy store-bought lanterns. In addition to the plethora of basic red lanterns, there will also be animal-shaped lanterns – the most popular of which are in the shape of the animal of the year. Many of the lanterns will have riddles at the bottom – which adds to the fun, because if you know the answer to the riddle you can go find it’s owner and they will give you tangyuan (those sweet dumplings that sound like “union”) as a reward.

In addition to the lanterns, there are bonfires, fireworks, and a 300-plus years old tradition called Da Shuhua.

Da Shuhua is one of the English spellings for 打树花 (dǎshùhuā in pinyin), which is a 300-500 years old tradition handed down through families of blacksmiths in China´s northern Hebei province. It is sometimes referred to as the poor man’s fireworks, because it is produced from scrap metal that people in the remote village of Nuanquan give to the local blacksmiths. Dressed in straw hats, sheepskin jackets, and protective eyewear, the blacksmiths and their assistants melt down the scraps and then the blacksmiths throw the molten liquid up against a cold stone wall. When the liquid metal – which can reach up to 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius) – hits the cold wall, sparks fly.

The spectacular display looks like a blossoming tree and so the name of the art form translates into English as “beating tree flowers.” Although there are a few other places in China where this art form is showcased, it is traditional to Nuanquan. There is a square in the remote village (“Tree Flower Square”), which was specifically built to hold tourists who travel to the village to see the display. In addition to three days of performances at the end of the Spring Festival, the tradition is also performed during the Dragon Boat Festival. Also called Double Fifth Festival, this second event takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Lunar New Year (June 22nd, of this year).

Although UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) designated Da Shuhua as a prime example of China and Hebei province’s intangible cultural heritage, the tradition may be dying out. In 2019, there were only four blacksmiths trained in the art form and the youngest was 50 years old. Wang De, one of the four, had trained his youngest son; however, like so many of the younger generations, his son moved to the big city and started working in a different industry. His concerns, and hopes, for his legacy are not unlike those of his ancestors.

“‘It’s extremely dangerous and it doesn’t make much money,’ said Wang, who also farms corn to supplement his blacksmith’s income.

[…] Still, Wang De is hopeful he will return to keep the flame alive.

‘When we no longer can pull this off, people can learn from him. I have this confidence that (Da Shuhua) will be passed on.’”

– quoted from the Feb. 19, 2019, The Strait Times article entitled “Blacksmiths keep alive the flame of China’s molten steel ‘fireworks’”

Sunday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Lantern Festival 2023”]

*RIDDLE NOTE: The riddles at the bottom (or sometimes underneath) the lanterns, are literally called “riddles written on lanterns,” but are sometimes referred to as “tiger riddles,” because solving them (in Chinese) is akin to wrestling a tiger. They often have three parts: the riddle, a hint or suggestion (which is that the answer is in the post), and the answer. In this case, I took a page from Dongfang Shuo’s book and only gave you part of an English riddle so that instead of having one definite answer, there are three possible answers. Highlight the space between the hashtags for the answers.

### The moon (which is the original answer), a bit of history you didn’t know, and a legend from a culture with which you are unfamiliar. Let me know if you got the answer(s)! ###

FTWMI: Speaking of Rivers… (in the new year) February 1, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Hope, Langston Hughes, Life, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Poetry, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit
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Happy New Year! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

For Those Who Missed It: A versions of the following information was posted in 2021 and 2022. Class details and links have been updated. Please note that the eleventh day of the Lunar New Year is mostly a “break day,” although some people will honor their son-in-laws.

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

– from the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

Since 1976, February 1^st has marked the beginning of Black History Month in the United States of America. I always found it curious: Why February, the shortest month of the year (even during leap years)? I sometimes wondered if the reason had anything to do with Langston Hughes, who was born today in 1901.*

Born James Mercer Langston Hughes, the poet was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance and the first Black American to earn a living solely from writing and public lectures. In addition to poetry (including jazz poetry, which he started writing in high school), he wrote novels, plays, essays, and letters…so many letters. He wrote so many letters, in fact, that at one point he was writing 30 – 40 letters a day and, by the end of his life, he could have filled 20 volumes of books with his letters.

He traveled the world, wrote about his experiences in Paris, Mexico, West Africa, the Azores and Canary Islands, Holland, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, and the Caribbean – but he always came home to Harlem. After all, his patrons were in Harlem. They were also, in many ways, his inspiration, the very people about whom he said that he wrote: “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July.” He made a name for himself specifically writing about the Black experience, but (in doing so) he wrote about the American experience.

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white—

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That’s American.”

– quoted from the poem ”Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

Being an African-American born at the beginning of the 20^th Century meant that Mr. Hughes could easily trace his heritage back to slavery. Both of his paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved and both of his paternal great-grandfathers owned enslaved people. However, he could also trace his heritage to freedom and to a time when there was no question about freedom – as well as the time when people appreciated their freedom in new ways.

His maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, was African-American, French, English, and Indigenous American. She was also the first woman to attend Oberlin College. She married a man, Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed heritage, who died in 1859 while participating in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and eventually married her second husband, Charles Henry Langston. The senior Langston, along with his brother John Mercer Langston, was an abolitionist and leader of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, who would eventually become a teacher and voting rights activist. The Langstons’ daughter, Caroline (Carrie), would become a school teacher and the mother of the great poet.

“So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

– quoted from the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes

Raised primarily by his mother and maternal grandmother, Langston Hughes showed a definite talent and interest in writing at an early age. He was also devoted to books. Despite being academically inclined, he struggled with the racism in school – even when it seemed to benefit him – because he couldn’t escape the misconceptions, marginalization, and oppression that came with the stereotypes.

Still, he persisted. He attended Lincoln University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he was the classmate of the then-future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. And, when he had the opportunity to share his poetry with a popular white poet, whose poetry “sang” (and was meant to be sung), he took advantage of the moment – even though he was working as a busboy at a New York hotel where the poet (Vachel Lindsay) was having dinner.

“I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,”

– quoted from “I Dream A World” by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes and his words left an indelible mark on the world. As Black History Month is all about recognizing African-Americans who were influential to our society – but not always recognized by society; it’s not surprising that I often wondered if Langston Hughes’s birthday being on the 1^st was the reason Black History Month is in February. Well, as it turns out, it’s just one more example of serendipity.

Created in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian who was the son of formerly enslaved people, the annual celebration initially started as “Negro History Week” – and it was the second week in February for fifty years. Mr. Woodson started the week so that it coincided with the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln (2/12/1809) and the observed/assumed birthday of Frederick Douglass (2/14/1818), the abolitionist, who escaped slavery at the age of 20. The existence of this heritage month has inspired so many heritage and cultural observation throughout the year that the calendar, in some ways, reflects the United States: diverse and (academically) segregated. It has also changed the way some aspects of American history are taught.

“I look at my own body

With eyes no longer blind—

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that’s in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.

– quoted from the poem “I look at the world” by Langston Hughes

Please join me today (Wednesday, February 1^st) at 4:30 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You will need to register for the 7:15 PM class if you have not already done so. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Langston’s Theme for Jimmy 2022”]

*2022 NOTE: According to most printed biographies (that I checked), Langston Hughes was born in 1902. However, many digital sources indicate that he was born in 1901 – and this earlier date is based on research and fact checking reported for the New York Times by Jennifer Schuessler (in 2018). Curiously, the 1940 census listed his birth as “abt 1905;” however, this information would have been given to a census taker by one of the poet’s roommates. (Additionally, we know from one his poems that Langston Hughes didn’t think very highly of the “census man” and the accuracy of census information.)

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, playlists, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations to Common Ground are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

Revised 2/2023.

### KEEP ON A-CLIMBIN’ ON ###

Celebrating [the Grace of] Being Humans (mostly the music) January 28, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Yoga, Music, Books, New Year, Healing Stories, One Hoop, Life, Wisdom.
Tags: Haratio Walpole, serendipity, Lunar New Year, Nüwa, Haiwang Yuan, Michael Ann Williams, Nuwa
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“Happy Spring Festival!” and/or “Happy Carnival!” to those who are celebrating.

“Nüwa could not stand seeing the decimation of the humans and other creatures she had created. She was determined to rescue them. Facing such a large-scale calamity, Nüwa did not panic. Instead, she prioritized what she was going to do. She decided that the damage to the sky was the cause of everything, so she took to the task of mending it. She collected a great number of mulitcolored stones from a riverbed, built a furnace in the Zhonghuang Mountain, and, after forty-nine days, melted the stones and created a huge piece of colorful slate. Embedding the slate in the hole, Nüwa managed to fix the leaking sky. Her action produced an unexpected side effect: the shining colors of the slate added to the sky a moon, a rainbow, and numerous stars.”

– quoted from “The Origin of Human Beings“ in The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales from the Han Chinese by Haiwang Yuan (with Forward by Michael Ann Williams)

Please join me for a 90-minute virtual yoga practice on Zoom today (Saturday, January 28^th) at 12:00 PM. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Saturday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “02082022 Celebrating Being Humans”]

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

“This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called “The Three Princes of Serendip”: as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of the them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right….”

– quoted from a letter addressed to Sir Horace Mann, dated January 28, 1754, by Horace Walpole (The Right Honorable The (4^th) Earl of Orford, Horatio Walpole)

### ###

A Kitchen Story (or 2) on Day 4 (the “missing” Wednesday post) January 26, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Books, Changing Perspectives, Confessions, Depression, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Meditation, Movies, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Suffering, Tragedy, Vipassana, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: asana, Dr. Toya Webb, hatha yoga, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Kitchen God, Lunar New Year, Metta, Michael Cunningham, Pancham Sinh, Patanjali, priviledge, Spring Festival, Virginia Woolf, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit, Yoga Sutras 2.51-2.52
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“Happy (Lunar) New Year!” and “Happy Carnival!” to those who are celebrating.

This is the missing post for Wednesday, January 25^th. Like the playlist, this is a remix of 2022 posts (one of which was a remix from 2021). If you click on the link in the “CODA, redux,” please note that the beginning is similar (but the posts are different).

You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice\. Donations are tax deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.

CODA, redux

Do you ever think about what yoga and Virginia Woolf have in common? No? Just me? Ok, that’s fine; it’s not the first time – and will not be the last time that I make what, on the surface, appears to be a really random connection. It’s not even the first (and probably won’t be the last) time this week. However, whenever I circle back to this practice and this theme, I found myself thinking about different similarities. Last year, I found myself thinking a little more about mental health and the implications of having space, time, and the other resources to focus, concentrate, contemplate, and meditate. This year, I find myself thinking more about what it takes to tell our stories and the vantage point(s) from which we tell our stories – especially the stories we tell about our defining moments.

“A writer is a person who sits at a desk and keeps his eye fixed, as intently as he can, upon a certain object—that figure of speech may help to keep us steady on our path if we look at it for a moment. He is an artist who sits with a sheet of paper in front of him trying to copy what he sees. What is his object—his model?”

“A writer has to keep his eye upon a model that moves, that changes, upon an object that is not one object but innumerable objects. Two words alone cover all that a writer looks at—they are, human life.”

– quoted from the essay “The Leaning Tower (A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940.)” as it appears in The Moment and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

We all have defining moments in our lives. These may be moments that we use to describe the trajectory of our lives or maybe moments that we use to describe ourselves. Either way, when a single moment plays a big part in who we are and what’s important to us, we sometimes forget that that single moment – as important as it may be – is part of a sequence of moments. It is the culmination of what’s happened before and the beginning of what happens next; it’s just a single part of our ever-changing story. Even when – or especially when – that moment is the story, we have to be careful about how we frame it. It doesn’t matter if we are telling our story or someone else’s story; how we tell the story matters.

For a lot of people who are celebrating the Lunar New Year, the fourth day is the day when things start going back to normal (whatever that is these days). People go back to work and back to school. People who were able to travel to see family start heading back home (or are already home). Even though those celebrating the Spring Festival for 15 days, will reign in the festivities a bit. However, each day still has significance and special rituals. For instance, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year is not only the birthday of all sheep (in some Chinese traditions), it is also the day when the Kitchen God returns to the hearth.

According to one set of stories, the Kitchen God was at one time a man who, after gaining a certain amount of power and wealth, abandoned his first wife and married a younger woman. Years after the original couple divorced, the man fell on hard times. He lost his wealth, his power, his second wife, and his eyesight. He became a beggar on the streets. One day, the stories tell us, the man’s first wife saw her former husband begging in the streets. She was a woman of great kindness and compassion and so she invited him to her simple home and offered him a shower, some food, and a moment of warmth by the fire.

Remember, the old man could no longer see and didn’t know that this generous woman was the same woman he had treated so poorly. Full, clean, and sitting by the fire, however, he started to talk about his first wife. He lamented about his first marriage and the life they could have had if he hadn’t dumped her. In the process of soothing her now sobbing former husband, the woman revealed her identity and said that she forgave him. Miraculously, the man was suddenly able to see; but he was so distraught that he threw himself into the kitchen stove.

Legend has it, the woman could only save his leg – which became the fireplace poker – and the man became the “Kitchen God,” who leaves the kitchen alter just before the New Year and returns to heaven in order to give the Jade Emperor an accounting of each household’s activities during the previous year. In the final days of the old year, people will clean up their homes – so the alter(s) will be ready for the return of the gods and ancestors – and, sometimes, smear honey on the lips of the Kitchen God so that his report is extra sweet. Then the Kitchen God and other household gods return on the fourth day of the New Year.

I always imagine that some years the Kitchen God’s report is really, really, wild. Can you imagine? Seriously, imagine what he would say about the way we have treated each other over the last few years. Sure, some of us might not be portrayed too badly; but others of us….

More to the point, consider what happens when the Kitchen God’s report includes an update about someone’s defining moment(s). Just imagine a report from the beginning of 1882 (which would have been the end of the year of the snake); the fall of 1928 (year of the dragon); Spring of 1940 (year of the dragon); and the beginning of 2008 (the year of the boar). Imagine, even, the report from 1941 (another year of the dragon). What hard truths would have been in those reports?

“But the leaning-tower writers wrote about themselves honestly, therefore creatively. They told the unpleasant truths, not only the flattering truths. That is why their autobiography is so much better than their fiction or their poetry. Consider how difficult it is to tell the truth about oneself—the unpleasant truth; to admit that one is petty, vain, mean, frustrated, tortured, unfaithful, and unsuccessful. The nineteenth-century writers never told that kind of truth, and that is why so much of the nineteenth-century writing is worthless; why, for all their genius, Dickens and Thackeray seem so often to write about dolls and puppets, not about full-grown men and women; why they are forced to evade the main themes and make do with diversions instead. If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

– quoted from the essay “The Leaning Tower (A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940.)” as it appears in The Moment and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

Born Virginia Stephen in Kensington, England, on January 25, 1882, Virginia Woolf wrote nine novels (including one published shortly after her death), five short story collections (most of which were published after her death), a hybrid novel (part fiction, part non-fiction), three book-length essays, a biography, and hundreds of articles, reviews, and essays. Some of her most famous essays and speeches addressed the labor of writing – telling stories – and why (in the Western canon) there were so few accomplished female writers. For instance, In October 1928, she gave two speeches to two different student societies at Newnham College and Girton College, which at the time were two of the all-women colleges at the University of Cambridge. (NOTE: Newnham is still an all-women’s college. Girton started accepting men in 1971 and started allowing men to be “Mistress,” or head of the college, in 1976.)

These speeches about women and fiction specifically detailed why there were so few women writers who had earned acclaimed (and, to certain degree, why those that did often did so anonymously or with “male” names). She highlighted the absurd trichotomy between the two wildly archetypical ways women are portrayed in literature and the reality of the very different types of women in the room, let alone in the world. She also speculated about the works that might have come from a woman (say, in Shakespeare’s time) who had a helpmate to take care of the cooking, cleaning, children, and other household business. In addition to talking about the social constraints that prevented a woman from devoting copious time to the practical application of her craft – writing, she also discussed the social constraints and inequalities that could result in what would amount to writer’s block. All this, she detailed, even before she addressed the issue of a market place predisposed to highlight male writers. All this, she detailed, as she highlighted two (really three) of the things a woman would need to overcome the obstacles of society: (time), space, and money.

“… a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction…”

– quoted from the essay “A Room of One’s Own,” as it appears in A Room of One’s Own And, Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

“surājye dhārmike deśe subhikṣhe nirupadrave |
dhanuḥ pramāṇa-paryantaṃ śilāghni-jala-varjite |
ekānte maṭhikā-madhye sthātavyaṃ haṭha-yoghinā || 12 ||

The Yogī should practise [sic] Haṭha Yoga in a small room, situated in a solitary place, being 4 cubits square, and free from stones, fire, water, disturbances of all kinds, and in a country where justice is properly administered, where good people live, and food can be obtained easily and plentifully.”

– quoted from “Chapter 1. On Āsanas” of the Haţha Yoga Pradipika, translated by Pancham Sinh (1914)

When I first started going deeper into my physical practice of yoga, I looked into some of the classic texts within the tradition. One of those texts was the Haţha Yoga Pradipika (Light on the Physical Practice of Yoga), a 15^th Century text that focuses on āsanas (“seats” or poses), prāņāyāma (breath awareness and control), mudrās (“seals” or “gestures”), and Samādhi (that ultimate form of “meditation” that is absorption). Throughout the text, and in particular in the chapter on mudrās, there is a breakdown of how energy, power, or vitality moves through the body and the benefits of harnessing that power.

I would eventually appreciate how the text is almost a summary of the earlier Yoga Sūtras, but (as an English lit major), what first struck me was how similar Virginia Woolf’s advice to women writers were to these early instructions about a practice that can be used to cultivate clarity and harness the power of the mind. Additionally, the practice requires – nay demands – that we sit and turn inward (in order to consider our perspectives and vantage points), just as Ms. Woolf’s essays highlighted the importance of noticing a writer’s seat.

“But before we go on with the story of what happened after 1914, let us look more closely for a moment, not at the writer himself; nor at his model; but at his chair. A chair is a very important part of a writer’s outfit. It is the chair that gives him his attitude towards his model; that decides what he sees of human life; that profoundly affects his power of telling us what he sees. By his chair we mean his upbringing, his education. It is a fact, not a theory, that all writers from Chaucer to the present day, with so few exceptions that one hand can count them, have sat upon the same kind of chair—a raised chair. They have all come from the middle class; they have had good, at least expensive, educations. They have all been raised above the mass of people upon a tower of stucco—that is their middle-class birth; and of gold—that is their expensive education…. Those are some of them; and all, with the exception of D. H. Lawrence, came of the middle class, and were educated at public schools and universities. There is another fact, equally indisputable: the books that they wrote were among the best books written between 1910 and 1925. Now let us ask, is there any connection between those facts? Is there a connection between the excellence of their work and the fact that they came of families rich enough to send them to public schools and universities?”

– quoted from the essay “The Leaning Tower (A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940.)” as it appears in The Moment and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

According to Virginia Woolf, there was an undeniable connection between wealth, the education that wealth, and the success of [male] English writers in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. She saw that common thread of privilege as the very foundation of (and secret to) these writers’ success and described it as a tower, stating, “He sits upon a tower raised above the rest of us; a tower built first on his parents’ station, then on his parents’ gold. It is a tower of the utmost importance; it decides his angle of vision; it affects his power of communication.” She also saw it as a blind spot (for such writers and society) and noted that the tower stood strong well into the twentieth century. While the writers supported by this metaphorical tower sometimes had empathy for those less fortunate than them, she observed that they had no desire to dismantle the tower or descend from it’s heights. Furthermore, the tower (and lack of awareness about it) perpetuated misconceptions about women and about why there were not more women – nor more people from lower income brackets – in the ranks of acclaimed authors.

Here is where I see another similarity between yoga and Virginia Woolf’s work, because some people have misconceptions about what it means to practice yoga, what happens when you practice yoga, who practices yoga, and why people practice yoga. For instance, while the instruction for the Haţha Yoga Pradipika instructed a person to practice when they were “free from…disturbances of all kinds” (HYP 1.12); “free from dirt, filth and insects” (HYP 1.13); and “free from all anxieties” (HYP 1.14), the vast majority of people practicing in the modern world do so in order to free themselves from the various maladies that plague them. More often than not, these types of misconceptions stem from a lack of knowledge about the history and practice of yoga. Unfortunately, that lack of knowledge often causes people to not practice and/or to judge people for practicing.

Just as Virginia Woolf addressed misconceptions about women in her essays and fiction, the translator Pancham Sinh addressed some misconceptions about people who practice yoga and the practice of prāņāyāma in an introduction to the Haţha Yoga Pradipika. Part of the introduction is an admonishment to people who would study the practice, but do not practice it, stating, “People put their faith implicitly in the stories told them about the dangers attending the practice, without ever taking the trouble of ascertaining the fact themselves. We have been inspiring and expiring air from our birth, and will continue to do so till death; and this is done without the help of any teacher. Prāņāyāma is nothing but a properly regulated form of the otherwise irregular and hurried flow of air, without using much force or undue restraint; and if this is accomplished by patiently keeping the flow slow and steady, there can be no danger. It is the impatience for the Siddhis which cause undue pressure on the organs and thereby causes pains in the ears, the eyes, the chest, etc. If the three bandhas be carefully performed while practicing [sic] the Prāņāyāma, there is no possibility of any danger.”

Siddhis are the powers or “accomplishments” achieved from continuous practice. They range from being able to extend peace out into the world and understanding all languages; to being able to levitate and know the inner workings of another’s heart and mind; to the six “powers unique to being human.” Bandhas are “locks” and refer to internal engagements used to seal sections of the body in order to control the flow of prāņā. The three major bandhas referred to in the text are the same engagements I encourage when I tell people to “zip up” and engage the pelvic floor and lower abdominal cavity (mūla bandha), the mid and upper abdominal cavity (uḍḍīyana bandha), and the throat (jālandhara bandha). I typically refer to a fourth – pada bandha – which is a seal for the feet; however, in classical texts the fourth bandha is the engagement of the three major bandhas (root, abdominal, and throat) at the same time.

Before anyone gets it twisted, let’s be clear that this introduction is not advice to grab a book and follow instructions without the guidance of a teacher. In fact, Pancham Sinh specifically advised people to find a teacher who practiced and indicated that while one could follow the directions from a (sacred) book, there are some things that cannot be expressed in words. There are some things that can only be felt.

This is consistent with Patanjali’s explanation that the elements and senses that make up the “objective world” can be “divided into four categories: specific, unspecific, barely describable, and absolutely indescribable.” (YS 2.19) That is to say, there are some things that have specific sense-related reference points; some things that can be referred back to the senses, but only on a personal level; some things that have no reference points, but can be understood through “a sign” or comprehension of sacred text; and some things which cannot be described, because there is no tangible reference point and/or “sign” – there is only essence. To bring awareness to all of these things, we “sit and breathe” (even when we are moving).

“athāsane dṝdhe yoghī vaśī hita-mitāśanaḥ |
ghurūpadiṣhṭa-mārgheṇa prāṇāyāmānsamabhyaset || 1 ||

Posture becoming established, a Yogî, master of himself, eating salutary and moderate food, should practise [sic] Prâṇâyâma, as instructed by his guru.”

– quoted from “Chapter 2. On Prāņāyāma” of the Haţha Yoga Pradipika, translated by Pancham Sinh (1914)

Yoga Sūtra 2.51: bāhyābhyantaravişayākşepī caturthah

– “The fourth [prāņāyāma] goes beyond, or transcends, the internal and external objects.”

Yoga Sūtra 2.52: tatah kşīyate prakāśāvaraņam

– “Then the veil over the [Inner] Light deteriorates.”

“Unconsciousness, which means presumably that the under-mind, works at top speed while the upper-mind drowses, is a state we all know. We all have experience of the work done by unconsciousness in our own daily lives. You have had a crowded day, let us suppose, sightseeing in London. Could you say what you had seen and done when you came back? Was it not all a blur, a confusion? But after what seemed a rest, a chance to turn aside and look at something different, the sights and sounds and sayings that had been of most interest to you swam to the surface, apparently of their own accord; and remained in memory; what was unimportant sank into forgetfulness. S it is with the writer. After a hard day’s work, trudging round, seeing all he can, feeling all he can, taking in the book of his mind innumerable notes, the writer becomes—if he can—unconscious. In fact, his under-mind works at top speed while his upper-mind drowses. Then, after a pause the veil lifts; and there is the thing—the thing he wants to write about—simplified, composed. Do we strain Wordsworth’s famous saying about emotion recollected in [tranquility] when we infer that by [tranquility] he meant that the writer needs to become unconscious before he can create?”

– quoted from the essay “The Leaning Tower (A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940.)” as it appears in The Moment and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

When we “sit and breathe” a lot of things bubble up: thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories. Part of the practice is noticing what comes up and part of the practice is remaining the witness to what comes up (rather than engaging every little fluctuation of the mind). Contrary to some popular misconceptions, people who practice feel a lot – they’re just not always distracted by every thing they feel. Instead, they allow the different thoughts, emotions, sensations, and memories to pass back and forth between their conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind until the busy brain rests. They are not constantly cataloging what is specific, what is unspecific, what is barely describable, and what is absolutely indescribable; however, they are aware of all of these categories as they experience them.

One of the things we can feel, but not touch, is emotion. Emotions can come with visceral experiences and, in that way, can fall into the “unspecific” category. More often than not, however, what we feel is “barely describable” (or even indescribable) – and yet, writers are always trying to describe or capture the essence of what is felt. Virginia Woolf constantly endeavored to describe what she felt and what she felt she saw others feeling. Even more salient, she often focused on the disconnection between what her characters felt and what they could describe about what they felt. The author’s efforts were hindered, or aided (depending on one’s viewpoint), by the fact that she experienced so much trauma and heartbreak; much of which led to emotional despair.

“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”

– quoted from “Susan” in The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Click here if you want to read the 2022 post that details some of Virginia Woolf’s trauma and heartbreak.

“vapuḥ kṝśatvaṃ vadane prasannatā
nāda-sphuṭatvaṃ nayane sunirmale |
aroghatā bindu-jayo|aghni-dīpanaṃ
nāḍī-viśuddhirhaṭha-siddhi-lakṣhaṇam || 78 ||

When the body becomes lean, the face glows with delight, Anâhatanâda manifests, and eyes are clear, body is healthy, bindu under control, and appetite increases, then one should know that the Nâdîs are purified and success in Haṭha Yoga is approaching.”

– quoted from “Chapter 1. On Āsanas” of the Haţha Yoga Pradipika, translated by Pancham Sinh (1914)

“The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

– quoted from the essay “A Room of One’s Own,” as it appears in A Room of One’s Own And, Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

The Air I Breathe, one of my favorite movies, was released in the United States January 25, 2008. Inspired by the idea that emotions are like fingers on a hand, the main characters are known to the audience as Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow, Love, and Fingers – and their stories are interconnected, even though they don’t necessarily realize it. In fact, some of the most desperate actions in the movie are motivated by fear and a sense of isolation. Promotional materials for the movie proclaimed, “We are all strangers / We are all living in fear / We are all ready to change” and in the movie Happiness asks, “So where does change come from? And how do we recognize it when it happens?” Happiness also says, “I always wondered, when a butterfly leaves the safety of its cocoon, does it realize how beautiful it has become? or does it still just see itself as a caterpillar? I think both the statement and the questions could be applied to so many, if not all, of Virginia Woolf’s characters. They could also be applied to all of us in the world right now.

This time of year, the statements and the questions also remind us that change happens every time we inhale, every time we exhale – and we can make that change happen.

“‘For,’ the outsider will say, ‘in fact as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’ And if, when reason has had its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of England dropped into a child’s ears… this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion she will make serve her to give to England first what she desires of peace and freedom for the whole world.”

– quoted from the novel-essay “Three Guineas,” as it appears in The Selected Works of Virginia Woolf by Virginia Woolf

As I have mentioned before, I consider the 8-Limbed Yoga Philosophy to have very real-time, practical applications and I normally think of the physical practice as an opportunity to practice, explore, and play with the various elements of the philosophy. I will even sometimes use aspects of alignment as a metaphor for situations in our lives off the mat. Given ~~this last year~~ the last few years, however, I have really started to consider how āsana instructions from classic texts like The Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali and the Haţha Yoga Pradipika, can be more practically applied to the most basic aspects of everyday life.

For instance, if we spend our time on the mat cultivating a “steady/stable, comfortable/easy/joyful” foundation in order to breathe easier and more deeply, doesn’t it make sense to spend some time cultivating the same type of foundation in our lives?
Going out a little more, if we do not have the luxury or privilege of practicing “in a country where justice is properly administered, where good people live, and food can be obtained easily and plentifully,” doesn’t it behoove us to create that land?
Finally, what happens if we (to paraphrase yoga sūtras 2.46-47) establish a baseline for stability and then loosen up a little bit and focus on the infinite? Patanjali and the authors of the other sacred texts told us we would become more of who we are: leaner in body, healthier, brighter, more joyful, “clearer, stronger, and more intuitive.” In other words: peaceful and blissful.

“lōkāḥ samastāḥ sukhinōbhavantu”

– A mettā (loving-kindness) chant that translates to “May all-beings, everywhere, be happy and be free.”

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

– quoted from The Hours: a novel by Michael Cunningham

If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also call the TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.

If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk, you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).

“Realize that there is freedom in telling your story and that there is power in your words.”

– quoted from the November 2018 TedxDelthorneWomen talk entitled, “Change Your Perspective and Change Your Story” by Dr. Toya Webb

### BRING AWARENESS TO YOUR SEAT! ###

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A Joyful Practice

The Fire We Desire & The Fire(s) We Need (a Tuesday post & a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

“And, [L]ove – True [L]ove – will follow you forever.”

– “The Impressive Clergyman” (Peter Cook) in the movie The Princess Bride by William Goldman

– quoted from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/17/1957)

“EARNEST, adjective

Ardent in the pursuit of an object; eager to obtain; having a longing desire; warmly engaged or incited.

They are never more earnest to disturb us, than when they see us most earnest in this duty.

Ardent; warm; eager; zealous; animated; importunate; as earnest in love; earnest in prayer.

Intent; fixed.

On that prospect strange

Their earnest eyes were fixed.

– quoted from Webster’s Dictionary 1828: American Dictionary of the English Language

“For this was on Seynt Velentynes day,

Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make,”

“For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,

When every fowl comes there his mate to take,”

– quoted from the poem “The Parliament of Fowls” by Geoffrey Chaucer, translation by A. S. Klein

– quoted from the 1847 speech “If I Had a Country, I Should Be a Patriot” by Frederick Douglass

– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

“Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

– quoted from the “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech by Frederick Douglass (July 5, 1852)

– quoted from “CHAPTER V.” of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

### “I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Earnest.” ~ OW ###

The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”

– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)

(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)

“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”

– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)

– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)

Now more people understand why the fear is there.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”

– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)

From the Earth (a special Black History 2.5-for-1 note) February 11, 2023

“You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!…. You get a car! You get a car! You get a car!”

– Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show, original airdate: September 13, 2004

Yoga Sūtra 2.36: satyapratişţhāyām kriyāphalāśrayatvam

– “When a yogi is established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear fruit. [Truth is the foundation for fruitful action.]”

– quoted from the Introduction to A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

“Her later writings give no indication that she was aware of her status as the first black woman MD in the United States; indeed, until the later twentieth century, scholars had assigned that distinction to Rebecca Cole….”

– quoted from the profile entitled “Crumpler, Rebecca Davis Lee” in African American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

What we need o-day in every community, is, not a shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.”

– quoted from “Chapter XIX. General Remarks.” in A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

– quoted from “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” in “2 – Poisoning A Planet” of Earth Detox: How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet by Julian Cribb

“The first girls to attend [the Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy] were previously at the city’s lowest-ranked middle school. This year the school’s eighth graders earned one of the highest scores of all public schools in Atlanta on a state exam.

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

‘The conundrum is that the richer and more prosperous we become, the more we think that the environment is all taken care of,’ Jackson says. It’s simply not the case. ‘I have seen land completely ravaged by pollution. Environmental protection is not a spectator sport.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

### “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” ~ Jesse Jackson ###

Being Human, the prequel (the “missing” Wednesday post) February 9, 2023

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”

– Martin Buber

“Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.”

“All real life is meeting.”

“All actual life is encounter.”

– quoted from Ich und Du by Martin Buber (English translations by Ronald Gregor Smith and Walter Kaufmann, respectively)

Yoga Sūtra 3.1: deśabandhah cittasya dhāranā

– “Dhāranā is the process of holding, focusing, or fixing the attention of mind onto one object or place.”

Yoga Sūtra 3.2: tatra pratyaya-ikatānatā dhyānam

– “Dhyāna is the repeated continuation, or unbroken flow of thought, toward that one object or place.”

Yoga Sūtra 3.3: tadeva-artha-mātra-nirbhāsaṁ svarūpa-śūnyam-iva-samādhiḥ

– “Samadhi [meditation in its highest form] is the state when only the essence of that object, place, or point shines forth in the mind, as if devoid even of its own form.”

“The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You/Thou to become; becoming I, I say you.”

– quoted from Ich und Du by Martin Buber (English translation by Walter Kaufmann)

The Yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge, beyond reasoning, comes to man. Metaphysical and transcendental knowledge comes to that man.”

– quoted from “Chapter VII: Dhyana and Samadhi” in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

– quoted from Chapter 1, “Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away” in No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton

### As they say in Zulu, “Sawubona!” [“I see you!”] and “Yebo, sawubona!” [“I see you seeing me.”] ###

Space and the Power of Hearing(s) (a special Black History note, w/a Tuesday link) February 8, 2023

“It’s a bad habit we have: We tell the tale of the murder and not the murdered.”

“I’ll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case.”

“If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Rubenhold for Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.”

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7^th.

“Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong.
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.”