The Integrity of Speaking Truth to Power, Part 1 – The Part Where We Observe, Speak, & Move Like Thunder February 15, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Depression, Faith, Food, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Music, Mysticism, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.Tags: 14th Amendment, 19th Amendment, Anna Shaw, Bill T. Jones, bloomers, Dale Carnegie, Elisabeth Griffith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Galileo Galilei, Grand Duchess Christina, Ida Husted Harper, Seneca Falls Convention, Susan B. Anthony, Vipassana
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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 an abridged version of a 2022 post, which included information about the Lantern Festival. “Part 2” will be a special Black History note.
“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow in our souls. Every truth we see is ours to give the world, not to keep to ourselves along, for in so doing we cheat humanity out of their rights and check our own development.”
– quoted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention (and birthday celebration for Susan B. Anthony), February 18, 1890
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. It is a practice of observation – which is also part of our yoga practice.
“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him to find it within himself.”
– Galileo Galilei, as quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Born February 15,1564, in Pisa, Duchy of Florence, Tuscany, Italy, Galileo Galilei is remembered as the Father of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. The Indigo Girls even called him “the King of Insight,” which makes sense given the aforementioned definition of insight. Galileo was able to see things others had not seen thanks to advancements in telescope technology and also because he was willing to pay attention. He was open to new information and to how that information supported or did not support his understanding of what had previously been observed by himself and others.
Galileo was an astronomer, a physicists, an engineer, and a polymath who studied all aspects of physical science and invented the thermoscope and a variety of military compasses. He used the telescope to track and identify the moons of Jupiter; the phases of Venus (which are similar to moon phases); and the rings of Saturn. He also analyzed lunar craters and sunspots and supported Copernican heliocentrism (the idea that the Earth rotated on it’s axis and also rotated around the Sun). In fact, his observations became the basis of his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) – which was banned in Italy for a while and resulted in Galileo being convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church.
Despite the fact that the ban extended to the publication of his future books, Galileo wrote Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences while he was under house arrest. This latter work, which was basically a summation of thirty years worth of physics, could not find a publisher in France, Germany, or Poland. It was ultimately published in Leiden, South Holland and featured the same characters who were conversing in his Dialogue. There was one notable change in the characters, however, the “simple-minded” one that had previously been viewed as a caricature of the pope was not as foolish or stubborn. When the text made its way to Roman bookstores, it quickly sold out.
“But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.”
– quoted from the 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (mother of Cosimo II de ’Medici) by Galileo Galilei
Susan B. Anthony, who was born February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, was also considered quite controversial by the establishment of her time. Like Galileo Galilei, she was an observer. Her primary observations, however, were related to the social interactions of humans. She was a suffragist as well as an abolitionist and is remembered for her great friendship and collaborations with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women had different backgrounds made different life choices, but they were firmly united in the quest for equal rights.
The second-oldest of seven, Susan B. Anthony was born into a liberal Quaker household despite the fact that her mother (Lucy Read Anthony) was Methodist and her father (Daniel Anthony) was shunned (for marrying outside his religion) and disowned (for allowing dancing in his home). The Anthony children were taught Quaker values, as well as the importance of self-sufficiency and social responsibility. At least three of her siblings were activists. Ms. Anthony herself, attended a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia until 1837 when the Anthony’s, like so many, faced financial ruin and depression. She left school for a bit, but ultimately became a teacher at a different Quaker boarding school. By this time, the family had moved to New York and eventually joined what would become the Congregational Friends, and offshoot of the Quakers.
The Congregational Friends were active social reformers and many attended services at First Unitarian Church of Rochester, which was also socially active. Around the late 1840’s, the Anthony farm in Rochester had become a favorite place for activists to come together. One of those activists was Frederick Douglass, with whom both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would develop a friendship.
“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.”
– quoted from the end of Susan B. Anthony’s “Power of the Ballot” speech (probably on July 12, 1871) as printed in “Chapter XXIII: First Trip to the Pacific Coast (1871)” from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Complete Illustrated Edition – Volumes 1&2): The Only Authorized Biography containing Letters, Memoirs and Vignettes of the life of the World Renowned Suffragist, Abolitionist and Author and Friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Ida Husted Harper
In 1846, Susan B. Anthony accepted a position as headmistress of the girls’ department at Canajoharie Academy in Canajoharie, Montgomery County, New York. A year or two later, she was offered the position of superintendent or director of the women’s department. She was in Canajoharie, almost 173 miles away from her family, during the Seneca Falls Convention (July 19-20, 1948) and the Rochester Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 (on August 2nd), but at some point she was aware that her parents and her sister (Mary Stafford Anthony) had (at least) attended the latter.
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women’s rights convention organized by women (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Martha Coffin Wright) and it produced the Declaration of Sentiments. One hundred of the approximately 300 attendees to the conference signed the declaration, which Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with assistance from Mary Ann M’Clintock, had modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Cady Stanton (and her sister, Harriet Cady Eaton), Mrs. M’Clintock (plus her daughters Elizabeth W. and Mary M’Clintock and her half-sister, Margaret Pryor), Mrs. Mott, and and Mrs. Wright were among the 68 female signers; Frederick Douglass, Thomas M’Clintock, and James Mott were among the the 32 male signers.
Several online sources indicate that the three Anthony’s signed the declaration; however, they are not listed by the National Parks Service (NPS) and their names do not appear on the original document preserved by NPS. According to a media report included in The History of Women Suffrage, edited by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (published in 1902), no attendees at the National-American Convention of 1898 (February 13th – 19th, in Washington, D. C.) attended the Seneca Falls Convention. However, the report indicated that Mary W. Anthony stated that she had attended the Rochester convention and signed the declaration at that time.
Between her unhappy experiences as a student and the observations she made as a teacher, Susan B. Anthony found herself more and more disenchanted with the disenfranchisement of women and enslaved people. She didn’t have the same agenda as her parents and siblings, but she wanted to be paid the same as her male counterparts – for doing the same work. When she left the Canajoharie Academy around 1849/1850, she went home and found herself feeling more and more at home with the radical ideas around her. She even started to dress less and less like a traditional Quaker woman and more and more like a radical feminist. She even wore started wearing the pantaloons associated with the publisher and editor Amelia Jenks Bloomer. In fact, it was the erudite and entre Mrs. Bloomer that introduced Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851.
“It is often said, by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she has been my good angel, always pushing and goading me to work, and that but for her pertinacity I should never have accomplished the little I have. On the other hand it has been said that I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them. Perhaps all this is, in a measure, true.”
– quoted from “X. Susan B. Anthony” in Eighty Years and More (1815 – 1897): Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a writer; Susan B. Anthony was an organizer; and their friendship was the ultimate collaboration. By the time the dynamic duo met, Mrs. Cady Stanton was a proud wife and mother of four and would eventually be the mother of seven. Contrary to the social norms of the time, she believed women should control a couple’s sexual relationships and that a woman should absolutely have domain over her body when it came to childbearing. She was equally as bold about declaring her motherhood (when others were more demure silent) and would raise a red or white flag in front of her house depending on the sex of her newborn child. Of course, her “voluntary motherhood” required a compromise when it came to social reform and that compromise required her to be at home when her husband was away. Henry Brewster Stanton was a lawyer and a politician, who was traveling ten months out of the year in the 1850’s. So, Elizabeth Cady Stanton felt she was “a caged lioness.” Her partnership with Ms. Anthony made the compromise less restrictive.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote; Susan B. Anthony organized and spoke.
This relationship, too, required compromise – and not only because the ladies had different personalities and working styles. Susan B. Anthony stopped wearing bloomers so people would listen to her rather than get distracted by her clothes. And the whole Stanton family made room for “Miss Anthony.”
When the Stanton family moved to New York City in 1861, the women had established a finely tuned system. Sometimes they would write together, sometimes Ms. Anthony would take care of the kids while Mrs. Cady Stanton wrote – but both methods required the pair to be in the same place. So, whenever the Stanton’s moved, the set up a room for Susan B. Anthony and she became part of the family.
“Eventually Anthony supplanted Henry in Elizabeth’s affections. Both Henry and Susan moved in and out of her life and her household, but overall, Stanton probably spent more hours and days with Anthony than any other adult.”
– quoted from the “Methodological Note: Stanton in Psychological Perspective” section of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Elisabeth Griffith
The collaboration between Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not restricted to speeches. They co-founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society – after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was female – and the Women’s Loyal National League in 1863. The league, which used different iterations of the name, was specifically formed to lobby for the abolition of slavery. At one time they collected almost 40,000 signatures in support of abolition, which was the largest petition drive in United States history at that time. They also initiated the American Equal Rights Association (1866) and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (1869).
On January 8, 1868, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started publishing the weekly paper The Revolution. The paper’s motto was “Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.” In addition to women’s rights and the suffrage movement, the paper covered general politics, the labor movement, and finance. Ms. Anthony ran the business end of things. Mrs. Cady Stanton co-edited the newspaper with the abolitionist minister Parker Pillsbury. The initially received funding from the transportation entrepreneur George Francis Train – who shared their views on women’s rights, but not on abolition – but eventually transferred control of the paper to the wealthy writer and activist Laura Curtis Bullard, who toned “the revolution” down a bit.
The ladies that started it, however, did not tone down at all.
“Miss [Anna] Shaw said: ‘On Sunday, about two hours before she became unconscious, I talked with Miss Anthony and she said: “To think I have had more than sixty years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel!”’”
“I replied: ‘Your legacy will be freedom for all womankind after you are gone. your splendid struggle has changed life for women everywhere.’”
– quoted from the obituary “Susan B. Anthony” in the Union Labor Advocate (Vol. VII. May, 1906, No. 9)
Anna Shaw was correct: Susan B. Anthony’s legacy includes the 19th amendment to the United States constitution, which was ratified fourteen years after the Miss Anthony’s death. That legacy also includes United States v. Susan B. Anthony, a very public and very publicized 1873 criminal trial that changed the fight and helped change laws that had nothing to do with the suffrage movement.
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested, indicted, “tried,” and convicted after she and fourteen other women attempted to vote in Rochester, New York. The judge over the circuit court was the newly appointed Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Associate Justice Ward Hunt. The election official, a Mr. Beverly W. Jones, testified that when he said he wasn’t sure if he could register her, she asked him if he was “acquainted with the 14th amendment.” He also testified that when said that he was, and she asked if he would consider her a citizen, the Supervisor of Elections said there was no getting around her argument. After establishing that “the defendant was, on the 5th of November, 1872, a woman,” the judge instructed the all male jury – all male because women were prohibited from serving on juries – to find the defendant guilty without discussion or deliberation, which they did. Ms. Anthony was instructed to pay a fine, of $100 plus court cases, which she did not.
Because the judge refused to jail her (for refusing to pay the fine), she was unable to take the case to the Supreme Court. The other women, who also registered and voted in that election, were arrested, but never tried. On the other hand, the election inspectors who allowed them to vote were arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed (for not paying their fines). President Ulysses S. Grant eventually pardoned the inspectors and all of the attention from the trials pushed suffrage to the front of the women’s rights movement. Justice Hunt’s controversial actions during Susan B. Anthony’s trial resulted in years of legal debate and, in Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895), or Sparf and Hansen v. United States, the SCOTUS decision that a jury must apply the law based on the facts of the case; the court may not direct the jury to return a guilty verdict; a jury may convict a defendant of a lesser crime if that is part of the case (in some cases); and that juries can – but do not have the explicit right to – dispute the law.
Over the years, Susan B. Anthony gave hundreds and hundreds of speeches. In addition to giving up the “bloomers” she considered more sensible and reasonable, she was subjected to yelling mobs that would throw rotten eggs and sometimes even furniture at her. People would brandish guns and knives and, of course (I say sarcastically) she had to continuously contend with questions about why she wasn’t married. Her answers to the questions changed depending on her mood, or perhaps, who was asking the question. My personal favorite answer was when she said that she had never wanted to spend the majority of her life as “a housekeeper and a drudge [which she would have been had she married someone poor]” and neither had she ever wanted to be “a pet and a doll [which she would have have been had she married someone rich].” But, all that being said, she believed in a woman’s right to choose… whether she got married or not.
“Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.”
– quoted from the speech “Social Purity” by Susan B. Anthony
I will update this space with a link to Part 2.
Please join me today (Wednesday, February 15th) 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.
The Wednesday playlist that we used on Zoom is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “11122022 Having A Say, redux”]
The Wednesday playlist that I remixed after the practices is available on YouTube and Spotify.
NOTE: It felt off not to have music more directly the third birthday person, so I remixed the playlist. The timing for most of the practice will be pretty close to the recording. Both YouTube playlists feature several extra videos that are not available on Spotify. Some are speeches worth hearing. Some are music videos worth seeing. To make up the difference, the Spotify playlist has its own Easter egg.
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.)
### Speak! ###
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 8th. 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.
“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 7th. 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 7th. 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 7th.
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 7th 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 17th, 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 7th 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 6th. 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.
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“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 30th through April 4th) 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 ###
FTWMI: Focus+Concentrate+Meditate = Sweet Heaven (w/expansion) January 30, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Bhakti, Changing Perspectives, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Gandhi, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Lent / Great Lent, Life, Meditation, Mysticism, New Year, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Suffering, Swami Vivekananda, Tragedy, Wisdom, Yoga.Tags: Ahimsa, Arun Gandhi, Banlam, Bogside Massacre, Datuk Teh Kim Teh, Grace Chen, Hokkien, Hoklo, Jade Emperor, Lunar New Year, Martyrs' Day, Minnan, Mohandas Gandhi, Patanjali, Samyama, School Day of Non-violence and Peace, Season of Nonviolence, Shi Fa Zhuo, Yoga Sutra 3.4, Yoga Sutras 3.1-3.3
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Happy New Year! Happy Carnival! Many blessings to those celebrating the Jade Emperor’s birthday! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!
For Those Who Missed It: A version of the following was originally posted in February of 2021. Even though this was posted first, it is a continuation of yesterday’s “Getting Ready & Being Ready” post. Class details have been updated and a slight expansion has been added with regard to Martyrs’ Day / School Day of Non-violence and Peace.
“The Indriyas, the organs of the senses, are acting outwards and coming in contact with external objects. Bringing them under the control of the will is what is called Pratyahara or gathering towards oneself. Fixing the mind on the lotus of the heart, or on the centre of the head, is what is called Dharana. Limited to one spot, making that spot the base, a particular kind of mental waves rises; these are not swallowed up by other kinds of waves, but by degrees become prominent, while all the others recede and finally disappear. Next the multiplicity of these waves gives place to unity and one wave only is left in the mind. This is Dhyana, meditation. When no basis is necessary, when the whole of the mind has become one wave, one-formedness, it is called Samadhi. Bereft of all help from places and centres, only the meaning of the thought is present. If the mind can be fixed on the centre for twelve seconds it will be a Dharana, twelve such Dharanas will be a Dhyana, and twelve such Dhyanas will be a Samadhi.”
– quoted from “Chapter VIII: Raja-Yoga in Brief” in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda
Take a moment to consider where you put your energy, resources, effort, and focus. How much time, money, effort, or awareness do you put into loving someone? Or, actively disliking someone? How much energy do you spend dealing with fear or grief, anger or doubt? How much on joy or gratitude? It is generally understood that what you get out of a situation or your life is partially based on what you put into a situation or life. A more nuanced understanding of such an equation would highlight the fact that our energy, resources, effort, and focus/awareness all combine to produce a certain outcome – and this is in keeping with Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion. It is also consistent with text in Ecclesiastes and with what Rod Stryker refers to as the Creation Equation.
The problem many of us run into isn’t that we don’t know or understand the formula. The problem is that we don’t pay attention to what we are putting into the equation. Our time, energy, efforts, and resources get pulled in different directions, because our attention is distracted – that is to say, our focus/awareness is pulled into different directions. But, what happens if/when we sharpen our focus? What happens when we pull all our awareness and senses in and focus/concentrate/meditate in such a way that we become completely absorbed in one direction? Consider the power of that kind of engagement.
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.”
Yoga Sūtra 3.4: trayam-ekatra samyama
– “Samyama is [the practice or integration of] the three together.”
In the third section of the Yoga Sūtras, Patanjali outlined the last three limbs of the Yoga Philosophy and then, just as he did with the other elements, he broke down the benefits of practicing these final limbs. Similar to sūtra 2.1, there is a thread that highlights the power of three elements when practiced together. What is different about the final limbs, however, is that Patanjali devoted the majority of a whole chapter – “The Chapter (or Foundation) on Progressing” – to breaking down the benefits of integrating dhāranā (“focus” or concentration”), dhyāna (“concentration” or “meditation”), and Samādhi (“meditation” or “absorption”).
We can unintentionally find ourselves in a state of absorption, just as we can consciously progress into the state. We may think of it as being “in the zone” and it is something our minds are completely capable of experiencing. Even people with different types of ADHD can find themselves in this state of absorption. However, what Patanjali described, as it relates to the practice, is a very deliberate engagement of the mind – and, therefore, a very deliberate engagement of the mind-body-spirit.
There are, of course, times, when as individuals or groups we truly harness the power of our awareness and engage the mind-body-spirit in a way that could come under the heading of Samyama. Consider people coming together to raise a barn or to support a family in need. Think about grass roots efforts to register people to vote or change unjust laws. Think about how people raise money for a cause, an individual, or a community. Contemplate how someone’s focus shifts when they give something up for Lent. Although it is an extreme example, another example of a time when every fiber of someone’s being is focused on a single goal is when that goal is survival. One might do multiple tasks during such a period, but each task has the intention of ensuring survival. This is true of an individual and it can also be true of groups of people. In fact, throughout history there have been stories of individuals and groups of people who found themselves in such a situation.
One of those situations – where everyone focused every fiber of their being on survival is remembered and commemorated on the ninth and tenth days of the Lunar New Year. Legend has it that the Hokkien people (also known as Hoklo, Banlam, and Minnan people) found themselves under attack. The Hokkien were not warriors, but they came in close proximity with warriors because they were known for building great ships. One version of their story states that the events occurred during the Song Dynasty (between 960 and 1279 CE), while they were being hunted and killed; another indicates that they were caught between warring factions. Ultimately, to escape the carnage, they decided to hide in a sugar cane field – which, in some versions of the story, just miraculously appeared. They hid until there were no more sounds of horses, warriors, or battle. Legend has it that they emerged on the ninth day of the Lunar New Year, which is the Jade Emperor’s Birthday.
This year (2023), the Jade Emperor’s birthday falls on January 30th, which is one of six days designated as “Martyrs’ Day” in India. This Martyrs’ Day is the one observed on a national level, as it is the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948. Today is also the day, in 1956, when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s house was bombed and the day, in 1972, that became known as “Bloody Sunday” in Northern Ireland. Since 1964, when it was first established in Spain, some school children around the world observe today as a “School Day of Non-violence and Peace.” In 1998, Gandhi’s grandson (Arun Gandhi) established today as the beginning of the “Season for Nonviolence” (which ends on April 4th, the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in 1968. All of these remembrances and observations, just like the observation of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, are dedicated to the goal of honoring the lives of the victims (or martyrs) of past injustices and eradicating the violent tendencies that create more tragedies, crimes against humanity, and overall suffering. Today’s observations are also based on the foundation of ahimsā, one of the guiding principles of Gandhi, King, and those unarmed protesters in Northern Ireland. Click here to read more about these events and about how focusing on non-violence is part of the practice.
“‘From this story, we learn that unity, solidarity and the active participation of the community is necessary when it comes to facing challenges,’ said [Klang Hokkien Association president Datuk Teh Kim] Teh.”
– quoted from The Star article (about a version of the story where only some hide) entitled “Legend Behind Hokkien New Year emphasizes unity and solidarity” by Grace Chen (2/24/2018)
The Jade Emperor is sometimes referred to as “Heavenly Grandfather” and “Heavenly Duke.” He is recognized as the ruler of heaven and earth in some Chinese religion and mythology. In Taoism, he is one of the Three Pure Ones or the Three Divine Teachers. Fujian province (in China), Penang (in Malayasia), and Taiwan are three areas where there is a large concentration of Hokkien people and, therefore, places where the ninth day of the Lunar New Year is a large celebration. In some places the celebrations begin at 11 PM on the eighth night and can be so large that they eclipse the celebrations of the first day of the Lunar New Year (in those areas). In fact, the ninth day is actually called “Hokkien New Year.”
Those who are religious will go to a temple and engage in a ritual involving prostration, kneeling, bowing, incense, and offerings. For many there is a great feast full of fruits, vegetables, noodles, and (of course) sugar cane. The sugar cane is an important element of the Jade Emperor’s birthday celebrations and rituals – not only because of the aforementioned story of survival, but also because the Hokkien word for “sugarcane” (kam-chià, 甘蔗) is a homonym for (or sounds like) a Hokkien word for “thank you” (kamsiā, 感谢), which literally means “feeling thankful.”
Every version of the Hokkien people’s survival story is a great reminder that we can give thanks no matter how hard, how challenging, how infuriating, and/or how tragic our situation. Take last year – or the last few years, for instance: When we look back at all the hard stuff, all the grief, all the fear, all the anger, all the disappointment, and all of the trauma, we can get distracted and forget that there were moments of sweetness. Over the last few years, there were moments of kindness, moments of love, moments of birth and rebirth, moments of compassion, moments of hope, and moments of joy.
In other words, in spite of all the hard stuff, there were moments of sweetness. Take a moment to remember one of those moments; and feel thankful.
“‘Although we may not have an image of this deity in our temple, as long as devotees have the Jade Emperor in their hearts, their prayers will be heard,’ said [the Kwan Imm Temple’s] principal Shi Fa Zhuo.”
– quoted from The Star article entitled “Legend Behind Hokkien New Year emphasizes unity and solidarity” by Grace Chen (2/24/2018)
Please join me on the virtual mat today (Monday, January 30th) at 5:30 PM for a 75-minute virtual yoga practice. 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.
This is a 75-minute Common Ground Meditation Center practice that, in the spirit of generosity (dana), is freely given and freely received. If you are able to support the center and its teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” my other practices. Donations are tax deductible)
There is no playlist for the Common Ground practices.
The Lunar New Year Day 9 playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Lunar New Year Day 9 2022”]
The Martys’ Day playlist is also available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “01302021 Peace for the Martyrs”]
### DON’T BE GREEDY, BE GRATEFUL ###
Seeing Red but/and Finding “Accidental Goodness” January 24, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Abhyasa, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Life, Music, New Year, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Suffering, Vairagya, Wisdom, Yoga.Tags: Bösendorfer, David Shenk, Dr. Gerald Lynn Early, ECM Records, Improv, jazz, Köln, Keith Jarrett, Lunar New Year, Manfred Eicher, Miles Davis, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, svadyaya, svādhyāya, Tim Harford, Vera Brandes, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit
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Happy (Lunar) New Year! Happy Carnival!
“From a practical standpoint then, svadyaya is the process of employing the power of discernment and maintaining a constant awareness of who we are, what we are trying to become, and how the objective world can help us accomplish our goal.”
*
– commentary on Yoga Sūtra 2.1 from The Practice of the Yoga Sūtra: Sadhana Pada by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD
How do you react when things don’t go your way? What happens when you are very specific about what you want and/or what you need, but then you don’t get either? Are you quick to anger? Or, do you get “hangry” when you haven’t eaten and you have to deal with irritating situations? Do you “see red” at the drop of the hat or the blink of an eye? If so, there are (obviously) practices for that.
There are also handy tips (even if you don’t have a mindfulness-based practice). For instance, it’s good to get a good night sleep, eat when you need to, and – as much as you are able – avoid situations and people that push your buttons. Of course, just to be on the safe side, you could just not leave your house on days where you might be easily irritated. You know, like today, the third day of the Lunar New Year when some people will absolutely stay home and go to bed early.
Some portions of the following were previously posted.
“恭禧发财
Gong Xi Fa Cai [Congratulations and Prosperity!]
Gong Hey Fat Choy [Congratulations and Prosperity!]
– A common New Year’s greeting in Hanzi [Chinese characters], Mandarin and Cantonese pīnyīn [“spelled sounds”], and English
According to some Chinese creation mythology the third day of the Lunar New Year is the birthday of all boars. As I mentioned yesterday, some people will spend this third day of the Year of the Rabbit/Hare visiting the temple of the God of Wealth. Others associate this day with the “marriage of mice” and – in addition to providing treats as a “dowry” for the mice – they will go to bed early to ensure the mice have a peaceful ceremony. The belief is that if the mice have a peaceful ceremony, they will not pester humans during the rest of the year. In Vietnam, where people are celebrating the year of the Cat, this third day is a day to honor teachers.
Another reason people may go to bed early on the third night of the Lunar New Year is that, in certain parts of China, this third day is the “Day of the Red Dog” or “Red Mouth” Day and there is a greater danger of conflict on this day. People may also stay home and avoid anyone outside of their primary family circle in order not to say the wrong thing in anger – as a Chinese word for “red dog” is also a description for the “God of Blazing Wrath.” Some people also associate the tendency to say the wrong thing on the third day with the demon (or monster) Nian.
The Hanzi (Chinese character) for Nian also means “year” or “new year.” According to the legends, the monster Nian would come out of the sea or the mountain once a year looking for crops, animals, or villagers to eat. All the villagers would hide at this time of year, but one time an elderly gentleman was outside during the time Nian came to visit the village. One version of the story says that the man was a Taoist monk (Hongjun Lozu) who, like Br’er Rabbit, was a bit of a trickster. He some how convinced the monster that he would taste better if he could take off his outer clothing. In the version I tell in class, there is a big chase and the monster rips the man’s outerwear with his sharp teeth and claws. Either way, when the gentleman’s bright red undergarments are revealed Nian freaks out, because he is afraid of the color red (and loud noises). Therefore, it became auspicious to start the New Year (or even a marriage) wearing red; placing red throughout the village or town; and making a lot of noise.
“You always want to make it as good as it can be, but… But when you have problems that you can’t do anything about, one after another, you start forgetting what you’re actually doing, until it’s time. And that’s one of the secrets….”
– Keith Jarrett in a 2007 interview about his (01/24/1975) Köln Concert
In the 1970’s, 15-year old Vera Brandes started organizing jazz concerts and tours. At around 17, the German teenager started organizing the New Jazz in Cologne concert series. The fifth concert was scheduled for 11:30 PM on January 24, 1975, and it was going to be the first jazz concert at the 1,400-seat Cologne Opera House. The concert would feature a twenty-nine year old jazz pianist named Keith Jarrett, performing improvised solo piano pieces. Yes, that’s right, he was going to make it up as we went along – and the sold out concert would be recorded. (According to last.fm, the tickets were 4 DM [Deutsche Mark] or $5; Wikipedia indicates the 4 DM equaled $1.72.)
Here’s a few other salient details about the American pianist: He has perfect pitch and garnered some international attention (as a classical pianist) when he was in high school in Pennsylvania. He started playing gigs in Boston while attending Berklee College of Music and moved to New York City after about a year. In the Big Apple, he started making a name for himself, playing with jazz greats like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Jack DeJohnette, and the Charles Lloyd Quartet. By the mid-to-late 1960’s, he was playing and recording with his own trios and that’s around the time that Miles Davis invited him to join his jams (alternating and/or playing with Chick Corea).
Keith Jarrett and his own band of musicians – Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, (eventually) Dewey Redman, and a handful of other similarly accomplished musicians (including Sam Brown) – recorded over a dozen albums for Atlantic Records from 1971 to 1976. In that same time period, one iteration of the quartet recorded an album for Columbia Records; but then the label dropped him – theoretically so they could promote Herbie Hancock. Right around the same time the Columbia-door closed, another two others doors opened: Keith Jarrett and his quartet got a contract with Impulse! Records and he was contacted by Manfred Eicher, a German record producer and co-founder of ECM Records.
ECM stands for “Edition of Contemporary Music” and the label is known for high quality jazz and classic music – and musicians who give the side-eye to labels. It was a great creative dwelling place for musicians like Keith Jarrett and Steve Reich, whose music I have also used in some practices. The professional relationship between Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher led to the “European quartet” collaborations, solo piano albums, and, eventually, to that legendary concert in Cologne, Germany.
Here’s another important thing to know about Keith Jarrett: He has a reputation for being very, very particular about concert conditions. He doesn’t like audience distractions, especially when he is improvising, so – at the height of his career – audience members were given cough drops during winter concerts and he would sometimes play in the dark to prevent people from taking pictures. He is known for vocalizing while he plays jazz (but not, notably, when he plays classical music) and reportedly led people in group coughs.
Now, imagine you are a musician like this – one who knows their stuff and is also very particular about the instruments you play – and you are presented “the unplayable piano” just hours before you’re meant to play a groundbreaking concert. What if you were also hungry, tired, and sick?
Would you see red? Or would you “accidentally” find goodness?
“KJ: When I was a teenager, my youngest brother had a lot of issues, and didn’t go to school. He couldn’t go outside, so he couldn’t have friends, so he was basically a prisoner in my mother’s house. There was an upright piano there. And occasionally, my brother, knowing zero — meaning really zero — about piano, would work out anger or frustration, which he must have had gobs of, by going to the keyboard and just playing some shit. He didn’t know what notes he was hitting or what would come out. But I realized there were moments that were so good and they came from his ignorance. I’m not sure he even knew they were good moments. But I found myself thinking: how would a pianist ever — how do you approach that if you know the instrument?
DS: How do you find the accidental goodness?”
– Keith Jarrett in response to David Shenk’s question about having a willingness or eagerness to fail, in “Keith Jarrett, Part II: The Q&A” by David Shenk (published in The Atlantic, October 13, 2009)
Keith Jarrett is known for eschewing electronic instruments and equipment. Obviously, he appreciates the “need” for recording equipment and he has recorded music while playing electronic instruments. But, it’s not his jam – and it’s definitely not the kind of thing he would request for a solo piano concert in an opera house in 1975. No, someone like Keith Jarrett, at that point in his career, for that concert, would request the piano equivalent of a Rolls-Royce. And that’s exactly what he did; he requested a Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial, also known as the Imperial Bösendorfer or just as the 290.
The 290 is Bösendorfer’s flagship piano. It is an exquisitely beautiful concert grand piano with an equally memorable sound. In fact, it was specifically designed to be grander than any other piano on the market in 1909. And I mean that in every sense of the word grand. It has 97-keys and a full 8-range octave. For 90 years, it was the only concert grand piano of it’s kind. In 1975, it was easily recognizable by any professional pianist… but probably not by random stagehands (who hadn’t had any reason to deal with such a piano) and possibly not by a teenage concert organizer (who also hadn’t had any reason to deal with such a piano).
Keith Jarrett, however, immediately knew that something was off when he arrived at the Cologne Opera House to find a Bösendorfer baby grand on the stage. To make matters worse, he was tired after traveling and not sleeping for two days, his back hurt, and he was suffering from food poisoning. To add insult to injury, the piano was badly out-of-tune and basically broken. Some of the keys and the foot pedals, one of the distinguishing features on the 290, didn’t work properly. It was simply a rehearsal piano or something someone had put in a backstage corner to warm up their hands before the curtain went up. It was too late to find and move a new piano. Even if they could find what had been requested – or something close, like the Bösendorfer (which would have been 5 keys shorter) – it was raining and Vera Brandes was warned that moving such an instrument in that type of weather would make it impossible to tune in time for the concert.
“Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.”
– Miles Davis
Improvisation – in comedy and in music – is known for things like not breaking the flow (so, not saying “no”); and the concept of “yes, and…;” staying present; and being open to change. But, Keith Jarrett had made up his mind. He said no to that baby grand piano. He declared it categorically “unplayable” and said the concert needed to be canceled. And there’s no indication, anywhere, that he was being a diva. He was just being realistic given his history and his frame of reference. The fact that he was sick and tired just made everything worse.
But the indomitable Vera Brandes had a different history and a different field of possibility. She convinced him that she could find someone to tune (and repair) the piano onstage, which she did. She sent Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher to a restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat. In some interviews, Keith Jarrett has said that they didn’t eat much because (a) he wasn’t feeling well, (b) there was a mix-up at the restaurant and their meal was delayed, and (c) they had to get back to the theatre. At some point along the way, they decided to keep the recording engineers – because they were going to get paid no matter what – and record what the musician expected to be a horrible and embarrassing disaster of the first order.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t not even close.
Instead, the three improvised movements, plus the encore of “Memories of Tomorrow,” became the best selling solo album in jazz history and one of the best-selling piano albums. In the Spring 2019 issue of Daedalus, Dr. Gerald Lyn Early, who has consulted on several Ken Burns documentaries (including Baseball and Jazz), pointed out that Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts changed the sound and people’s understanding of jazz (not to mention, who played it); “…made solo piano playing commercially viable by showing that there was a considerable audience for it[;]” and “…proved that the public was willing to take such records seriously…”
From the very first notes, which sound like the warning tones the audience heard in the lobby before the show, Keith Jarrett carried the audience on a sonorous piano journey unlike anything they had ever heard. The album has been praised by musicians, critics, and publishers alike. It was included in Robert Dimery’s book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Eventually, much to the composers dismay, parts of the composition became movie soundtracks. Many wanted Keith Jarrett to transcribe and publish a score of the concert, which he finally, begrudgingly, agreed to do in 1990. The transcribed score, however, came with a very intentional caveat.
“For instance, on pages 50 and 51 of Part IIa there is no way to obtain, on paper, the real rhythmic sense of this section. There is much more going on on the recording, but this “going on” does not always translate into notes on paper. Many notes are inferred by the rhythmic sense; others depend on the harmonics or attack of the previous note(or notes). So, writing down all the notes would give more of a false view of the sense of this section than selecting some notes. And yet, even this selection cannot reveal the real sense of this section as an improvisation, where listening is what determines the music’s strength.
So – we are at, let us say, a picture of an improvisation (sort of like a print of a painting). You cannot see the depth in it, only the surface.
As a result of all of this, I am recommending that any pianist who intends to play THE KÖLN CONCERT use the recording as the final-word reference.
Good luck!”
– quoted from the “Preface” to THE KÖLN CONCERT: Original Transcription, Piano by Keith Jarrett
Please join me today (Tuesday, January 24th) 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. [Look for “0123-24/2022 Doing: Lessons in…”]
[NOTE: If it is accessible to you, please consider using the Spotify playlist as it contains the original music referenced in the practice. Even better, if you already have the album!
The original recording is not available on YouTube (in the US) without a “Premium” membership and, after listening to several different “interpretations” – which do not / cannot include the vocalizations – I decided the Fausto Bongelli sounded the closest to the original. Sadly, one movement is missing and so I used a recording by Tomasz Trzcinkinski, who was the first person to record the music using the transcription. There are also now transcriptions for other instruments – which I didn’t sample, even though I think some of them would be lovely. There are also “covers” using electronic instruments, which I’m considering a hard pass (even if it seems contradictory to the theme), out of respect for the composer. ]
You can, as I did, also listen to the Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford episode entitled, “Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano” where ever you get your podcasts.
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.)
Errata: The spelling of Tim Harford’s name has been corrected.
### Play On! ###
FTWMI: Do You See What I See? & Your Presence Is Requested January 6, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, Christmas, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Movies, Music, Mysticism, New Year, Pain, Peace, Religion, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.Tags: avidya, Epiphany, Epiphanytide, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Harrington Edwards, magi, Pamela Dellal, Pope Francis, Rev. Ed Trevors, Reverend Ed Trevors, Ryan Turner, Three Kings Day, Twelvetide, Whitney Houston, Yoga Sutra 2.20, Yoga Sutras 2.12-2.14, Yoga Sutras 2.16-2.18, Yoga Sutras 2.3-2.9
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“Merry Little Christmas, Epiphany, Theophany, Three Kings Day, & Twelfth Day of Christmas (for some)!”
For Those Who Missed It: The following is a compilation of related posts from 2021 and 2022. It contains two (2) very dark different sets of playlists. Links and some language have been updated. You can request an audio recording of a related 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, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible.
I. Do You See What I See?
“Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know (Know what I know)
In your palace warm, mighty king
Do you know what I know (Know what I know)
A child, a child, shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Let us bring him silver and gold, oh yeah, oh”
– 2nd verse of “Do You Hear What I Hear” by Whitney Houston
It’s been a while, hasn’t it, since a day went by and you didn’t think how can “they” not see the truth that’s right in front of them? It’s been a while, hasn’t it, since a day went by where you didn’t think, “What don’t they understand [what I understand]?”
Funny thing is, no matter who you are and what you believe – let alone why you believe it – you may have found yourself think or even questioning what has motivated people to do the things they are doing (or not doing) over the last few months (or years); which, of course, means that almost everyone is thinking this (or saying this) about everyone else. It seems really twisted, because it is; it’s all twisted up in avidyā (“ignorance”).
In Indian philosophies, like Yoga, suffering – the same suffering that has us asking what someone else was thinking when they did the thing they did – is caused by afflicted/dysfunctional thought patterns (kleśāh). The primary one being avidyā (ignorance), which is defined in The Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali as not understanding the true nature of things. For example, believing short-lived objects are eternal; believing something impure is pure; and believing something that causes suffering brings happiness are classic examples of avidyā. (YS 2.5) This basic level of ignorance becomes the bedrock for four additional forms of afflicted/dysfunctional thinking, all of which lead to more suffering. (YS 2.3 – 2.9, 2.12 – 2.14) After putting the way people think into context (and also explaining about functional thought patterns), Patanjali indicated that everything in the known or sensed world has two-fold purpose: fulfillment and freedom. (YS 2.18) In other words, everything we sense, think, and/or in any way experience can serve the purpose of changing the way we understand the nature of things and, therefore, change the way we think. If we have a better understanding of the world, we can have less suffering. (YS 2.16 – 2.17)
Knowing this, a practitioner might feel ready to move forward in their practice or even impatient to get to the time and place where they have less suffering – especially after the last few months or years. One might even wonder why the basic knowledge is not enough to change the world. Well, turns out there is a sūtra for that…
Yoga Sutra 2.20: draşțā dŗśimātrah śuddho’pi pratyayānupaśyah
– “The sheer power of seeing is the seer. It is pure, and yet it sees only what the mind [brain] shows it.”
The brain (intellect) and mind-body are powerful. So powerful in fact, that they will store information (for us) without us knowing the information is there and/or without us consciously paying attention to the information. If and when our mind decides something is relevant and/or we are ready to understand it, the information moves to our conscious awareness – sometimes as if it is the first time we have ever encountered said information. On the flip side, if we consciously (or even unconsciously) deny the relevancy of information – and/or don’t have the connecting information that puts everything into context – the information gets dismissed.
Don’t get me wrong, the truth can be right in front of our nose (like the tape that was on my glasses for the last few weeks), but the brain filters it out of our conscious awareness. As a result, to us, it’s like the information does not exist. We just don’t see it – just like the tape that was sitting on the bridge of my nose. The difference here, between facts in the world and the tape, is that I put the tape on my glasses and consciously gave my brain permission to ignore it (with full awareness of the fact that the eyes can work like that). But, every now and again, it was like the tape would “magically” (re)appear; every once in a while, I just couldn’t ignore what was right in front of my face.
For the last few days of the “12 Days of Christmas,” the playlist started with an instrumental piece called “Story of My Life” and, as a joke, I would say at the beginning, “Not my life, but…someone’s life.” That someone being Jesus; and while the different parts of Jesus’ life story get told by Christian liturgy throughout the year, they get told in different ways (and sometimes at different times) depending on the tradition and/or denomination. It’s as if, 12 different writers wrote the same story, but emphasized different parts.
Of course, by using the number 12, I am oversimplifying reality and dismissing the fact that humans make bad witnesses. I am, also, mostly leaving out the fact that while Christians may have the corner market on the story of Jesus, they are not the only religious (or philosophical) traditions that tell the story.
Neither are they the only ones in the story…. But that’s another story for another day. Because today, is all about seeing the story through a Christian lens.
“1. Chorus
They will all come forth out of Sheba,
bringing gold and incense
and proclaiming the price of the Lord.
2. Chorale
The kings came out of Sheba,
they brought gold, incense, myrrh along,
Hallelujah!”
– quoted from “Sie werden aus saba alle kommen” (“They will all come forth out of Sheba”), BWV 65 by Johann Sebastian Bach (translation from Pamela Dellal for Emmanuel Music, Artistic Director: Ryan Turner)
January 6th, is Epiphany, also known as Theophany (in some Eastern traditions) and Three Kings Day. As I mentioned yesterday, January 6th is almost always Epiphany, with the exception of some places in Columbia that observe this Feast Day on the second Monday of January (and countries that celebrate on the first Sunday in January). It’s also good to note that while since some Eastern Christian traditions use the Julian calendar, their January 6th falls on the Gregorian calendar’s January 19th.
“Epiphany” comes from the Greek word meaning “manifestation” or “striking appearance” and the root word meaning “to appear.” “Theophany” comes from a Greek phrase meaning “The Day of the Lights.” In Christian traditions, it is a feast day to celebrate Jesus being revealed as Divine, God incarnate, and God’s gift to the world. Some traditions specifically focus on the visit of the magi, which is why it is also known as “Three Kings Day.” In some Eastern traditions, the magi visit on December 25th and therefore the story of theophany focuses on Jesus’ baptism by his cousin John the Baptist and/or the first miracle attributed to Jesus (when he turned water into wine and during the Wedding at Cana).
There are masses and feasts on this day, as well as caroling. There is even some highly elevated singing, as several composers have written pieces for the day. In fact, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote several pieces for the various days of Christmastide and at least two pieces for Epiphany. One of those pieces, “Sie werden aus saba alle kommen” (“They will all come forth out of Sheba”), BWV 65, premiered today in 1724, to mark Bach’s first Christmas season as “Thomaskantor” (cantor at Saint Thomas) in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. I have heard that he composed the 7-movement Christmas cantata, with lyrics inspired by The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (60:6), in the first few days of the New Year (as the piece is dated 1724 and Saxony switched the Gregorian calendar in 1699).
“‘Its final cause,’ [Bach] wrote, ‘is none other than this, that it ministers solely to the honor of God and refreshment of the spirit, whereof, if one take not heed, it is no proper music, but devilish din and discord.’”
– quoted from God and Music by John Harrington Edwards (published 1903)
“3. Recitative B
What Isaiah foresaw there,
That happened at Bethlehem.
Here the wise men appear
at Jesus’ manger
and want to praise him as their king.
Gold, frankincense, myrrh are
the delicious gifts
With which they grace this baby Jesus in
Bethlehem in the stable.
My Jesus, when I think of my duty now,
I must also turn to your manger
and also be grateful:
For this day is a day of joy for me,
Since you, O prince of life
The light of the Gentiles….”
– quoted from “Sie werden aus saba alle kommen” (“They will all come forth out of Sheba”), BWV 65 by Johann Sebastian Bach (translation from Pamela Dellal for Emmanuel Music, Artistic Director: Ryan Turner)
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (2:1 – 12) is the only canonical New Testament gospel to tell the story of the “wise men” (as they are called in the King James Version). More modern versions of the text refer to them as “magi” and even “kings,” but traditionally they are only directly referred to as “kings” in a prophesy found in The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (60:1 – 6) and, perhaps indirectly, in The Book of Psalms (“Psalm 72: A Psalm for Solomon”) – both of which are in the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament. None of these cited texts reference a number, but most Western Christians consider them three (based on the gifts) … while some Eastern Christians consider them 12. Still others focus on the gift bearers as neither magi nor kings, but of shepherds.
It is also interesting to note, if you will patiently think back with me, that the “12 Days of Christmas” song does not mention magicians or scholars, but definitely mentions drummers. Classically, there are “12 drummer’s drumming” – which, according to the catechism myth represents the 12 points of faith in the Apostle’s Creed. Sometimes, however, there are 9 or 10 or 11, which means they could also symbolize the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; the Ten Commandments; or the eleven “faithful” apostles (respectively). I also find it interesting, and thematically beautiful, that the little drummer boy not only sees himself in the baby Jesus, but also brings the same gift: his presence.
“But what do I bring, you King of Heaven?
If my heart is not too little for you, then
accept it graciously,
Because I cannot bring anything noble.”
– quoted from the 3rd movement (Recitative B), of “Sie werden aus saba alle kommen” (“They will all come forth out of Sheba”), BWV 65 by Johann Sebastian Bach (translation from Pamela Dellal for Emmanuel Music, Artistic Director: Ryan Turner)
Some people wait until Epiphany or Theophany to add the Three Kings to their Nativity Scene – even though some cultures mark the change from Christmastide to Epiphanytide by taking their Christmas decorations down on the 7th. Some people have their King Cake or Twelfth Night Cake on this date, hoping to find the coin or the tiny baby Jesus figurine that indicates they will be extra blessed or lucky/fortunate in the year ahead. In some cultures, the person who finds the coin or baby is responsible for supplying the next year’s cake (which some people love and others think is not so lucky).
For those people who focus on Jesus’ baptism as a moment of revelation, January 6th is a day to gather by the water. Priest, pastor, or preacher led processions will make their way through the town or city until they reach the water. After blessing the water, the priest, pastor, or preacher will throw a cross into the water and some people will engage in a little “winter swimming.” In this case, the person who finds the cross is considered extra blessed. Additionally, some people will choose this date to be baptized, as it is a symbol of how they are changed.
“We often make do with looking at the ground: it’s enough to have our health, a little money and a bit of entertainment. I wonder if we still know how to look up at the sky. Do we know how to dream, to long for God, to expect the newness he brings, or do we let ourselves be swept along by life, like dry branches before the wind? The Magi were not content with just getting by, with keeping afloat. They understood that to truly live, we need a lofty goal and we need to keep looking up.”
– quoted from “Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord,” Papal Mass, Homily of Pope Francis (Vatican Basilica, Saturday, 6, January 2018)
For the faithful, a sermon or homily is a big part of Epiphany or Theophany. This is especially true in the Roman Catholic tradition. Pope Francis has (in my humble opinion) a definite knack for weaving the narrative of the story into present day application. In 2018, his homily encouraged people to be “imitate the Magi: looking upwards, setting out, and freely offering our gifts.” The modern day gifts that the pontiff mentioned were gifts of the self: “care for a sick person, spend time with a difficult person, help someone for the sake of helping, or forgive someone who has hurt us. These are gifts freely given, and cannot be lacking the lives of Christians.” He also spoke in terms of taking a risk and the importance of sometimes following what might not always seem to be brightest thing on the horizon.
In thinking about Epiphany, in a religious context, I often think about epiphany in the context of innovative or scientific discovery. For someone to have an ah-ha, light bulb, or eureka moment – for someone to have an epiphany – they have to be prepared. They have to know what they are seeing or hearing. They have to know the importance of what’s growing on a culture plate when they get back from holiday; otherwise they throw it away. They have to understand that the light touch that wakes them from a deep sleep is the touch of an angel and not the touch of their sleep-mate or cattle. Whether it is in religion or science or humanity, one must have faith in order to take a risk.
Last year 2020 was very different from 2017 and this year, in 2021, Pope Francis again reflected the times. He spoke, in some ways, very much along my way of thinking: that one must be prepared. In speaking of the magi, he said, “Worshiping the Lord is not easy; it does not just happen. It requires a certain spiritual maturity and is the fruit of an at times lengthy interior journey.” He talked about the importance of prayer and, again, the importance of looking up – lifting up one’s eyes in order to “‘see’ beyond the veil of things visible, which often prove deceptive.” Basically, he offered three steps in the form of three phrases, from The Liturgy of the Word, for a deeper relationship with God: “to lift up our eyes,” “to set out on a journey,” and “to see.”
Of course, we can only see, what we are prepared to see – which is the whole purpose of the journey, which we can only take when we look up (and around) and get curious.
“And it concludes by saying that at the time, ‘the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness’ (Lk 3:2). To none of the magnates, it to but to a man who had withdrawn to the desert. Here is the surprise: God does not need the spotlights of the world to make himself known.
When we listen to that list of distinguished personages, we might be tempted to turn the spotlight on them…. But God’s light does not shine on those who shine with their own light. God ‘proposes’ himself; he does not ‘impose’ himself. He illumines; he does not blind. It is always a very tempting to confuse God’s light with the lights of the world. How many times have we pursued the seductive lights of power and celebrity, convinced that we are rendering good service to the Gospel! But by doing so, have we not turned the spotlight on the wrong place, because God was not there. His kindly light shines forth in humble love. How many times too, have we, as a Church, attempted to shine with our own light! Yet we are not the sun of humanity. We are the moon that, despite its shadows, reflects the true light, which is the Lord. He is the light of the world (cf. Jn 9:5). Him, not us.”
– quoted from “Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord,” Papal Mass, Homily of Pope Francis (Vatican Basilica, Sunday, 6, January 2019)**
**NOTE: During the ZOOM Wednesday’s ZOOM classes on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, I cited the incorrect date for the last quote from Pope Francis. (At the time it was also mis-dated on the Vatican’s website.) I think 2019 is correct, but I could still be mistaken. My apologies for any confusion.
The vinyasa playlist for this date is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “01062021 Epiphany & Theophany”]
(Note: The playlists are slightly different for the before/after practice music. Also, I added Whitney Houston’s version of the song that was popping up in my head before the 2021 practice.)
### SEEING IS BELIEVING, BUT ONLY WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SEEING ###
II. Your Presence Is Requested
“What I really want to get to today is why the Magi came. What was it that brought them to Bethlehem? What was it that brought them to find Jesus and his family?”
*
– quoted from “The Epiphany Light: Another Reflection” by Reverend Ed Trevors (dated Jan 6, 2022)
On the surface, the embedded video below contains a direct message to Christians. However, if you pay attention, you will realize that the overall focus is for all: “Be a light.” Accept this invitation to be a light.
*
This Yin Yoga practice is accessible and open to all.
Prop wise, this can be kitchen sink practice. You can practice without props or use “studio” props and/or “householder” props. Example of Commercial props: 1 – 2 blankets,2 – 3 blocks, a bolster, a strap, and an eye pillow. Example of Householder props: 1 – 2 blankets or bath towels, 2 – 3 books (similar in size), 2 standard pillows (or 1 body pillow), a belt/tie/sash, and a face towel.
You may want extra layers (as your body may cool down during this practice). Having a wall, chair, sofa, or coffee table may be handy for this practice.
### OHR ###
FTWMI: The Power of a Good/Meaningful Push January 4, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Christmas, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Meditation, Mysticism, New Year, Pain, Peace, Pema Chodron, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.Tags: Carolyn Myss, David Brewster, Dr. Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, John Flamsteed, laws of motion, Pema Chodron, pranayama, Sir Isaac Newton, Stacy Flowers
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“Happy New Year,” to everyone!
For Those Who Missed It: The following was originally posted in January of 2021 and 2022. Class details, some links, and some references have been updated.
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An object at rest remains at rest, and object in motion remains in motion (at the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force).
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The acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables – the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object.
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For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
– Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion
Sir Isaac Newton proved that sometimes we all need a little push. At the age of 43, he published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which included his laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, and an expansion of Galileo Galilei’s observations and of Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion (which were themselves modifications of the observations and heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus). There are several elements in the Principia that can apply to the physical practice of yoga (and to the practice of the Yoga Philosophy). However, the most direct application comes from the laws of motion, the first of which is also known as “The Law of Inertia.” We can see these principles at work just by observing a tension-free belly rising and falling as the breath enters and leaves the body.
We can go deeper with the mathematics and the science; but, just for a moment (maybe even 90-seconds) stick with the breath. Notice the Inhale, the pause, and the exhale…. Notice that third law kicking in….
Also, notice how the “force” of the breath, which is a symbol of our life and a symbol of our spirit, is an agent of change – physically, mentally, emotionally, and even energetically. Just as lengthening the breath and observation of the breath (which all can be described as prāņāyāma) change things when we are practicing on the mat, they can be an agent of change off the mat. We just have to pay attention and stay focused. But, paying attention, staying focused, and even breathing deeply in and breathing deeply out can be challenging in certain situations… especially situations involving challenging people.
“Thirdly, that I do justly value your excellent disquisitions, and I am extremely well pleased to see those notions promoted and improved which I long since began, but had not time to complete. That I judge you have gone farther in that affair much than I did, and that as I judge you cannot meet with any subject more worthy your contemplation, so believe the subject cannot meet with a fitter and more able person to inquire into it than yourself, who are every way accomplished to compleat [sic], rectify, and reform what were the sentiments of my younger studies, which I designed to have done somewhat at myself…. Your design and mine are, I suppose, at the same thing, which is the discovery of truth, and I suppose we can both endure to hear objections, so as they come not in a manner of open hostility, and have minds equally inclined to yield to the plainest deductions of reason from experiment.”
– quoted from a 1675-76 letter from Dr. Robert Hooke to Sir Isaac Newton, as published in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by David Brewster
“I most gladly embrace your proposal of a private correspondence. What’s done before many witnesses is seldom without some further concerns than that for truth; but what passes between friends in private, usually deserves the name of consultation rather than contention; and so I hope it will prove between you and me….
But in the mean time, you defer too much to my ability in searching into this subject. What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in considering the colours of thin plates. If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
– quoted from a letter marked “Cambridge, February 5, 1675-76” from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Robert Hooke, as published in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by David Brewster
One might think when first reading the polite words and oh so charming letters between Dr. Robert Hooke and Sir Isaac Newton that theirs was a destined to be a friendship like that between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Or, if you have never heard of Hooke, that their correspondence was more akin to that of the epistles between Rainer Maria Rilke and the 19-year old officer cadet Franz Xaver Kappus, whereby the world becomes overly familiar with the work of one because of their letters – and, in some ways this would be true. Along with Nicolaus Copernicus, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, as well as John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley (the first two designated Astronomer Royal (whose observations Newton used in the Principia), Dr. Robert Hooke could be considered one of Sir Isaac Newton’s “giants.” But don’t get it twisted; Hooke and Newton were not “besties.” If anything, they could best be described as each other’s master teachers and precious jewels.
I often reference “master teachers and precious jewels” as people who push our buttons and get us hooked; people who give us master classes on ourselves; and/or people who add value to our life experience (even as they drive us crazy). These are the naysayers, the antagonists, the doubters, and our own personal heretics. They are the ones who never believe we can do something; hardly every give us credit when we do it (see Hooke and Newton, above); sometimes claim the credit for their own (also see above); and just seem to make everything harder. We can look at them as obstacles, road blocks, and detours on our journey towards our goals – or we can look at them as teachers. We can borrow a page from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and look at them as “the way.” Or, to paraphrase Stacy Flowers, we can look at them as the coach.
Stacey Flowers is a motivational speaker, mother, and “eternal optimist” who gave a 2016 Tedx Talk about “The 5 People You Need to Be Happy” (cheerleader, mentor, coach, friend, and peer). After last year the last few years, we might think of them as the five people who keep us grounded and focused. The way she counted them out, each finger was very intentionally chosen as a symbol for the role each person would play in someone’s life. For the coach, the one whose job is to push us farther than we think we can go and consider possibilities that seem outside of our arena, she uses the middle finger (which in some, but not all, cultures is a major league insult). The correspondence between Dr. Robert Hooke and Sir Isaac Newton are basically them giving each other the finger – without which some advancement in science might not have been made at the time.
“Every relationship you develop, from casual to intimate, helps you become more conscious. No union is without spiritual value.”
– from “Morning Visual Meditation” (Chakra 2) by Caroline Myss
Hooke and Newton’s debate about the existence and characteristics of ether and the nature of light started in a very public, and very acrimonious, fashion. There was some shift, between the public and private discourse; however, in that Hooke went from publicly stating that Newton basically stole his ideas to acknowledging how Newton continued his ideas. Meanwhile, Newton went from publicly giving Hooke no credit for the premise of the ideas – and, also, stating that Hooke’s conclusion “seems itself impossible” and was based on “both experiment and demonstration to the contrary” – to privately (in his letter) acknowledging Hooke’s contributions. But, again, this shift only seemed to be in private. In public, the disputes continued even past Hooke’s death. These disputes, along with disputes the good doctor had with other scientists, allowed Newton (and others) to paint a very negative picture of Hooke’s character.
Sir Isaac Newton also, reportedly (and as indicated above), had a contentious character. He is remembered, however, for his work. On the other hand, Robert Hooke is infamous for his plethora of disputes with other scientists (in a lot of different disciplines) – and many of those debates seem to be directly tied to Hooke trying to multitask. But, no matter how much some might want to consider him a waste of space, his disputes actually contributed to the advancement of scientific discovery. In part, perhaps because they were all members of The Royal Society of London (and, therefore, dedicated to “improving natural knowledge”), the others never completely disregarded Hooke’s insights and hypothesis. Instead, they continued the inquiry. Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but there seems to be little cognitive dissonance on the part of those with whom Hooke quarreled, because everyone was constantly running experiments and making observations in an effort to find proof of the truth – or maybe just to prove Hooke wrong.
“When I have got some more observations of it I shall bee [sic] able to tell you how long it will last and where it will pass[. At] present I dare not pretend to that knowledge.”
– quoted from a letter to “to Crompton [for Newton]” dated “December 15th (1680)” by John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal
On some level, we all know someone like Dr. Robert Hooke. We might even be someone else’s Dr. Hooke. Either way, consider how you feel when you encounter that person who pushes your buttons and/or is constantly telling you that you are wrong – or, sometimes (even worse), that person who refuses to see that they are wrong. Ani Pema Chödrön, the American Tibetan Buddhist nun, describes a tightening that happens when we get “hooked.” We don’t all feel it in the exact same place and in the exact same way, and the intensity may vary; but we all know that feeling. The question is: Do we always notice that feeling? Second question: Do we notice the beginning of the sensation or only when it is about to go nuclear (meaning our sympathetic nervous system is all systems go to fight, flee, or freeze)? Finally, what do we do when we recognize that feeling?
Ani Chödrön specifically recommends practicing the “4 R’s;” while others might just say, “Stop and breathe for a moment.” Either way, taking a moment to acknowledge what is happening (how we are reacting) and giving ourselves an opportunity to respond – rather than react – can be the difference between someone’s negativity being an obstacle versus becoming a way for us to continue moving forward. That moment when we pause and breathe and recognize that we are a step away from losing focus, can be the difference between succeeding in our goals (like Sir Isaac Newton) and failing to follow through on all our goals (like Dr. Robert Hooke). That moment when we pause and breathe and recognize that we are a step away from losing focus, can be the difference between making our way through (or around) an obstacle and being stuck.
What I’m saying is that that metaphorical push can be the force we need to make the change we want. This is especially true after last year the last few years and the negative energy that has followed us into this year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating letting anyone actually push you around – not even in a metaphorically sense and definitely not in a physical, emotional, and/or energetic sense. But, I do think it is important to acknowledge that we all push and pull each other on a certain level, because we are all forces of nature. While we may welcome, even solicit, a little push from someone we see as a mentor, friend, and/or peer; we may not always appreciate the shove from “the coach” we didn’t ask to coach us. Always remember, though, that there are many ways we can utilize a contentious relationships. Or, more specifically, there are many ways we can benefit from noticing how we react or respond to contentious relationships in our lives and in our practice.
Just consider, for a moment, how you (physically and mentally) react to the following:
When going by the Gregorian calendar, Sir Isaac Newton was born today (January 4th) in 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. As a scientist and a man of letters, Newton would have been fully aware of the Gregorian calendar, which Catholic-ruled lands started using in 1582 and Protestant German states in 1699. However, he lived his whole life officially using the Julian calendar (because England and it’s colonies did not switch until 1752, 25 or 26 years after Newton’s death). If you go by the Old Style, Julian calendar, Sir Isaac Newton was actually born on Christmas Day – a fact that really got some people hot (as in pissed) when it was pointed out on Twitter a few years back.
Speaking of Christmas, today (January 4th) is the 10th or 11th day (depending on when you start counting). According to the catechism myth attached to the “12 Days of Christmas” song, the gifts for these days translates to: “a partridge in a pear tree” for Jesus (and the cross); “two turtle doves” representing the Old and New Testament; “three French Hens” for the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity (Love); “four calling birds” for the four canonical New Testament Gospels (or their corresponding evangelicals, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John); “five gold rings” are the first Five Books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament (which provide the back story for the three Abrahamic religions); “six geese a-laying” for the six days of creation; “seven swans a-swimming,” the consistently most expensive gift, stand for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord) or the seven sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Six, Marriage, and Ordination); “eight maids a-milking” for the eight beatitudes (or blessings); “nine ladies dancing” for the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; “ten lords a-leaping” for the ten commandments; and “eleven pipers piping” for the eleven faithful apostles.
Please join me today (Wednesday, January 4th) 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 “01042022 New(ton’s) Beginnings”]
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.)
### (Don’t even get me started about….) ###
FTWMI: Sailing Into New Beginnings January 3, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Books, Changing Perspectives, Christmas, Healing Stories, Life, Men, Movies, New Year, Peace, Religion, Writing, Yoga.Tags: 12 Days of Christmas, Animalic, Herman Melville, Hobbits, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Moby-Dick, The Inklings, yoga, yoga philosophy
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“Happy New Year!” to everyone.
For Those Who Missed It: The following was originally posted in January 2021 and re-posted in 2022. I have made some slight revisions and updated some links and class details.
“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
– quoted from “Chapter LVIII. Brit” in Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
On more than one occasion, I have compared breathing to our “own personal ocean.” I even once honored one of my teachers by sharing that at the end of her classes people felt like there were floating on a surfboard after a spending a whole day riding the waves; muscles completely relaxed, the mind-body completely one with the rising and falling of the waves as they ebb and flow. Those are just my words to express very common experiences. And, before you ask; no, I don’t actually surf. I have, however, spent all day, for several days, learning how to sail and much of my young life playing and swimming in the ocean water of the Gulf. I also read a lot. And, the way the brain works, it’s not uncommon for me to make the visceral connection between something I’ve done and something I’ve read.
It happens with the very best of books: we find ourselves in the middle of a grand adventure, full of pirates, mutineers, and cannibals, or elves, dwarfs, and hobbits. There may be dragons to slay, train, or befriend; there may be fire on the mountaintop; there may be rings of temptation or friendship; there may be wagers in the middle of battles and so much merriment we can barely contain the laughter that pops out loudly enough that we find ourselves, suddenly, back in the our ordinary lives.
“Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?’ He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk.’”
– Frodo reminiscing with Sam and Pippin in “Book 1, Chapter 3: Three is Company” in The Fellowship of the Ring (Volume 1 of the Lord of the Rings) by J. R. R. Tolkien
The thing we sometimes forget is that our ordinary lives can not only lead us to great adventures, they can themselves be great adventures. We may not, as a young Herman Melville did when he set sail for the South Seas today in 1841, find ourselves actually taking part in a mutiny; landing in a Tahitian jail; escaping from that same jail; and then wandering around the island for two years before serendipitously befriending another great literary mind. We may not, as J. R. R. Tolkien was today in 1892, be born into a family of clock, watch, and piano makers; have an Aunt Jane who lived on a farm called Bag End (with no reference to us); and have cousins named Mary and Marjorie who made up a language called “Animalic” (inspiring us to make up our own languages); nor might we spend our adulthood in close friendships with some of the greatest literary minds of our time; and neither might we share those friendships with our son. Still, just as Melville and Tolkien did, we could write about our own lives and life experiences in a way that (sometimes) entertained and amused others. I say “sometimes,” because both authors produced work that has had mixed reviews.
While Melville’s first two sea-based novels met with quite a bit of success, his third book was so poorly received he said that he wrote the fourth and fifth just for the money. His sixth novel, Moby Dick, or The Whale, was first published in London in three installments and is now easily considered his most famous novel, but it was a critical flop when first published. On the flip side, Tolkien was surprised that his first book of fiction, The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again, turned out to be such a hit… with children – and was later surprised that he and his work inspired a very passionate, loyal, and scholastic fan base. Even though his books were heavily influenced by his Catholic upbringing, his experiences at war, and his fascination with all things mythical and mystical, he was not always a fan of other work in the “fantasy adventure” genre and thought people read way too much into his books.
“Call me Ishmael”
– quoted from “Chapter I. Loomings” in Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
“‘Nobody else calls us hobbits; we call ourselves that,’ said Pippin….
‘I’ll call you Merry and Pippin, if you please – nice names. For I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.’ A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. ‘For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.’”
– Pippin and Merry meeting “Treebeard” in “Book 4, Chapter 4: Treebeard” in The Two Towers (Volume 2 of the Lord of the Rings) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Remember that, in the yoga tradition, our ability to combine meaning with sound, remember and share the combination, and create and share a visual representation of the combination of sound and meaning all fall into one of the “powers unique to humans;” and, as I mentioned yesterday, the brain likes naming things. So, there is great power in a name. J. R. R. Tolkien was very clear about this on more than one occasion in his books and the idea of words being powerful is further emphasized by the fact that he made up languages to solidify the cultures of the different characters he created. Herman Melville, on the other hand, started off his most well-known novel with the introduction and naming of a character that plays a major role in the telling of the story, but a minor one in the action.
The opening line to Moby Dick, or The Whale is easily in the top 5 most well-known (and quoted) opening lines of fiction. It is extra interesting when we consider the name (Ishmael) as it is connected to the Abrahamic religions. First, the name is often associated with people of little means and few (blood) relational ties – and Melville’s narrator explains that he was both, at the time of the story, “having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore[.]” Second, the name itself can be translated into English as “God has hearkened” – meaning “God (has) listened.” Which begs the question, how can we (mere mortals) not listen?
“‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given, us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it. We should be very hard put to it, even if it were not for this dreadful chance.’”
– quoted from “Book 1, Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past” in The Fellowship of the Ring (Volume 1 of the Lord of the Rings) by J. R. R. Tolkien
“I try all things; I achieve what I can.”
– quoted from “Chapter LXXIX. The Prairie” in Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
In a normal year (depending on which study you read and the time period studied), only about 20% – 40% of people who make New Year’s resolutions actually achieve their desired goals. I know that’s a big gap, but either way you look at it over half of people who make resolutions don’t follow through. There are all kinds of explanations for this, and all kinds of “life hacks” to improve your odds, but ultimately it all comes down to little things. Little things and baby steps can make a big difference. They keep us focused on our intentions and they keep us progressing on the right track – even when there’s a detour. Little things and baby steps even help us appreciate the detour that is actually the scenic route. As we leave a year that was hard for just about everyone – and figure out a way to look forward to what’s to come – I wouldn’t be surprised if the odds are stacked against us.
Daunting thought I know. But, as Tolkien reminds us (in The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again), “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” So, think for a moment about the fact that something as small and powerful as a word, or a name, can change the odds in your favor. Now ask yourself: What name would you choose for yourself to indicate how you want to move through this New Year? What’s you symbol, what’s your sign, for this new beginning? What will be your own personal reminder throughout the year and thus, at the end of the year, part of your story?
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
– quoted from “Chapter XXXIX. First Night-Watch: Fore-Top (Stubb solus, and mending a brace)” in Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
“‘No!” said Thorin. ‘There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!’”
– quoted from “Chapter XVIII: The Return” in The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien
Even though many, maybe most, are still struggling with all those we’ve lost and everything we experienced, these last few years have reinforced the value of friendship, fellowship, kinship and a good laugh shared at the expense of no one. They have also made people reevaluate their values – although, again, this is one with which some are still struggling. But, no matter where you are in your journey, I encourage you to never underestimate the power of being nice, smiling, and eating a second dinner (and then dancing or walking it off, you know, Hobbit style).
Keeping that in mind, I just want to say, for the record, that I have not forgotten about those of y’all who are counting the “Days of Christmas.” To catch up, today is the 9th or 10th day (depending on when you start counting). According to the catechism myth attached to the “12 Days of Christmas” song, the gifts for these days translates to: “a partridge in a pear tree” for Jesus (and the cross); “two turtle doves” representing the Old and New Testament; “three French Hens” for the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity (Love); “four calling birds” for the four canonical New Testament Gospels (or their corresponding evangelicals, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John); “five gold rings” are the first Five Books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament (which provide the back story for the three Abrahamic religions); “six geese a-laying” for the six days of creation; “seven swans a-swimming,” the consistently most expensive gift, stand for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord) or the seven sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Six, Marriage, and Ordination); “eight maids a-milking” for the eight beatitudes (or blessings); “nine ladies dancing” for the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; and “ten lords a-leaping” for the ten commandments.
Note, again, that there are different versions of the list and the last four or five days worth of gifts deviate the most (in type of gift and order) from one version to another – which might be the cause of the effect of people getting all mixed up. In fact, The Journal of American Folk-lore, Volume XXX, No. CXVII (published July-September 1917, edited by Franz Boas), features an article on “Ballads and Songs” (edited by G. L. Kittredge) specifically listing a wide variety of versions that include (but are not limited to): “some part of a juniper tree;” “a-bleating lambs;” “a-bleating rams;” “fiddlers fiddling;” “bulls a-roaring;” “stags a-leaping;” “silver florins;” “golden pippins;” “hounds a-howling” – and a 78-year old singer from Massachusetts who, according to assistant editor Kittredge, forgot the eighth day gift on December 30, 1877.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
– The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians (2:22 – 5:23, NIV)
Please join me today (Tuesday, January 3rd) 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. [Look for “01032021 Melville Sails Tolkien Beginnings”]
“It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”
– quoted from “Chapter I. Loomings” in Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
– quoted from a letter dated “Midyear’s Day, Shire Year 1418” from Gandalf to Frodo, delivered by Strider/Aragon/Elessar in “Book 1, Chapter 10: Strider” in The Fellowship of the Ring (Volume 1 of the Lord of the Rings) by J. R. R. Tolkien
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.)
### Grace (Enuf) ###
HAPPY New Year 2023! January 1, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Bhakti, Changing Perspectives, Donate, Faith, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Japa, Japa-Ajapa, Karma Yoga, Life, Love, Mala, Mantra, Meditation, Mysticism, New Year, One Hoop, Peace, Philosophy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Vipassana, Wisdom, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.Tags: 108 Sun Salutations, Anthony Shumate, Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, Nguzo Saba, Nia, Sun Salutations, Surya Namaskar
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[“Happy New Year!” and “Kwanzaa, yenu iwe na heri!” – “May your Kwanzaa be happy!” to everyone who is celebrating!]
Part of the 6-piece “Monumental Moments” series by Anthony Shumate, 2015 (located in Buffalo Bayou Park, along the Kinder Footpaths)
TRANSFORM • RENEW • HEAL • ENERGIZE
Celebrate the New Year with 108 Sun Salutations 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM CST!
AND/OR
RELAX • RELEASE • REST • RENEW • HEAL
Celebrate the New Year with Yin+Meditation
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM CST!
The New Year is a beginning and an ending… and it is also a middle. On New Year’s Day we honor and celebrate transition with 108 Sun Salutations in the morning (10 AM – 1 PM, CST) and/or a Yin Yoga plus Meditation practice in the evening (5 – 7 PM, CST). We also put things in perspective. These practices are open and accessible to all, regardless of experience.
Please wear loose, comfortable clothing and make sure you are well hydrated before the practice. It is best to practice on an empty stomach (especially for the 108 ajapa-japa mala), but if you must eat less than 1 hour before the practice, make sure to keep it light. Make sure to have a towel (at the very least) for the 108 practice. For Yin Yoga, a pillow/cushion or two, blocks or (hardcover) books, and a blanket or towel will be useful. I always recommend having something handy (pen and paper) that you can use to note any reflections.
Use the link above for login information (or click here for more details about these practices and other practice opportunities related to the New Year).
The 108 playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “New Year’s Day 108 Ajapa-Japa Mala.”] NOTE: This playlist has been revised for 2022, but should still sync up with the 2021 recordings.
The Yin+Meditation playlist is part of the “12042020 Bedtime Yoga” available on YouTube and Spotify.
Both practices are online and donation based. If you don’t mind me knowing your donation amount you can donate to me directly. You can also email me to request my Venmo or Ca$hApp ID. If you want your donation to be anonymous (to me) and/or tax deductible, please donate through Common Ground Meditation Center (type my name under “Teacher”).
Please note that there is still no late admittance and you must log in before the beginning of the practice (so, by 9:45 AM for the 108 or by 4:45 PM for the Yin+Meditation). You will be re-admittance if you get dumped from the call.)
Part of the 6-piece “Monumental Moments” series by Anthony Shumate, 2015 (located in Buffalo Bayou Park, along the Kinder Footpaths)
Part of the 6-piece “Monumental Moments” series by Anthony Shumate, 2015 (located in Buffalo Bayou Park, along the Kinder Footpaths)
*Anthony Shumate’s “Monumental Moments” sculptures are located in Buffalo Bayou Park, along the Kinder Footpaths in Houston, Texas. They are unexpected reminders to “Explore,” “Pause,” “Reflect,” “Listen,” “Emerge,” and “Observe” – all things we do in our practice!
