A few thoughts on what has been less effective — in the practical sense — on this extended study tour to tropical climes, and which I would gladly let go on any return visit. While mostly personal preference, a little reality check for future travelers to India… Water Filter/Iodine Bottled water is available almost everywhere, …
Just before dawn only a few roosters have roused themselves — or never went to bed — and with most humans still in bed, I can hear the falling of the surf away here inland. Yoga is sweet and quiet, Manny still in bed; then a quiet seat in the restaurant gazebo and time to …
Just as you move into the body with awareness to free yourself from it — to no longer identify so completely with the physical body that your Self is veiled — just so with awareness you can lean into your thoughts, become intimate with the ways in which your mind works. Seeing your thoughts …
The waves amble onto the beach at a leisurely pace, one smallish wave every ten seconds, six waves per minute — as unhurried and undemanding as the restaurants or services here, a definition in action for the word languid. In some magical configuration of sea and sand, the waves which fall to earth are reflected …
A common misperception of meditative practice is that its goal is one of disowning the body. That becoming pure consciousness — of finding this "I" which is beyond the body — is a renunciation of the physical and the sensory. The deepest and broadest result of meditation is in fact the opposite. For the years …
Hm. The face of India changes yet again, and we poor freshmen have to shift our energies to make space for it. The beach at Palolem, in southern Goa, is every bit as riveting as we had heard it would be. The essential coconut palms providing shade overhead, the incredibly gentle surf that is warm …
The practices of meditation and asana, and even the practices of work and community with which I have been involved, have all been driven together in the force of this travel. As I understood it would be, at a knowing, if not thinking, level. It has not been a pilgrimage to empty tombs — a "temple-tour", …
Interesting to watch the broad movements of the brush, see what is being painted as we work our way across the country and through our allotted travel time. We began with the shock of arrival, followed that with the shock of the new, and the shock of being changed… then the shock of allowing change …
Fortunately, I can make a better report of this beach myself. Whatever was up with people yesterday (and I do include myself in that population) — the fights, the unsmiling eyes, the shabby shacks — seemed to have eased with the setting of the sun, and Manny and I found ourselves sitting up on the …
uma carta é o coração dobrado endereçado, enviado parcela de pétalas brancas pétalas derramando do livro aberto das mãos uma carta é coração destilado decifrado, recombinado em músicas de pétalas de flor pétalas oferecidas aos vasos abertos das mãos cinzas nas veias vegetais trilhas à caminhos traçam passagem-fogueira dos tempos deslumbrantes ao atardecer …
Manny says "another noisy city, where you can't walk and breathe at the same time"… and he is right. From 8.30am to 7.00pm, Mangalore presents the same toxic blend of autorickshaws, interstate and local busses, private passenger cars and Jeep lookalikes, bicycles and trucks and pedestrians; you breathe only shallowly, and return to your sleeping …
into the well a silent pebble falls and finds a voice a body sinks; the body's echo climbs into the light who cast the stone whose is the well who waits for the reply? The poem stands without the 3rd stanza koan, and stands as well without 2nd stanza commentary. Just as meditation stands without …