As metaphor (if you will) in the ancient system of Indian chakras, we humans wander through our days - some due east or due west, others in a sinuous trail to all the compass points - with a multiplicity of selves, meeting each event with मूलाधार survival instinct, स्वाधिष्ठान creative drive, मणिपूर reaching willpower, अनाहत passion and love, विशुद्ध communication and connection, आज्ञा wisdom, and सहस्रार relationship to the divine.

Finally.

This morning, March 31st, marks the beginning of an eight-month daily practice of yoga asana, meditation and spiritual study, in preparation for an even more intensive certification program to attain teacher status. I have walked along any number of similar roads, most often to some form of completion, as they led on to bigger ways or to smaller, more arcane ways… in all cases the next way. It have been a wonderful, challenging, art-filled life. I am excited about the next challenge.

Why did you reflexively contract when you read that title? Does it go back to the conservative’s 70s sound-bite, “tree huggers”, a term used (as usual) not to increase knowledge and understanding, but to ridicule and demean, the fear-response of a bullying child? Were you tainted by the bully’s threat?

Or does it touch on a sense of propriety which tragically - I have to use the word tragically here, because I imagine you as a child, reaching as a child does into a world of wonder and delight, opening all of the flavors and colors and textures and sounds and smells it offers - tragically, was some bleak “sense” of propriety laid over your heart, like a “black curtain over the windows of your soul”, that the brief and agreeable experiment in hugging a tree causes the heart to contract, and inhibition and embarrassment to crowd your mind?

– What if…

She opened a drawer in the kitchen, the one beneath the silver that held everything and nothing, like a purse, and dug about for a moment. She was sure it was there, just the sort of thing she would never throw out, and would never use. Half-empty blocks of twist-ties, a few clothes pins, the dull pair of scissors whose blades were loose, two corks, cheesecloth, three batteries as many years old (she took these in her hand). Her fingers reached deeper than the drawer would open, and aha! found the sticky-soft edge of a candle-stub lined up against the back wall, where the tide of shifting objects had rolled it and left it. She lifted it out, and closed the drawer.

It is wonderful to sit out the sleepless night, which the fire of anger has lit! Like watching the full moon rise over a lake, or sun ignite the ocean: a little light comes, then more and more, until a new whole landscape is revealed, in spite of yourself.

In the case of rolling and turning in your covers, your sheets tying you in a knot, or if not your sheets, your thoughts: when you have practiced the art of watching, and watching becomes a habit as opposed to effort… then the mind’s parade, illuminated, entertains, exasperates, troubles, triumphs. A blaring, dancing dream of possibility and otherworldliness, each idea capers in, accompanied with sense, each sense cradled in a rivulet of heat, at its heart an explosive charge: as one draws near its features clarify and colors smear, its sweat and power reek and roil, its face approaches, flares, then rears and turns away; another steers into your line of wonder, blunders into this and that, falls flat, lifts itself and shivers dust motes from its hat, winks, and thunders past; the smallest steps so softly it’s a whisper in the din, imagines invisibility and it within, its sound is thin, as if to hold it would draw finger into thumb, then what have you, what have you; a great volume of water crashes to the ground!; a paper figure passes, flicks your finger, catches tinder, touches flame to each encounter, makes a word a cinder, becomes a sheet of little substance, if it holds you leaves you empty, more crashes, this time ashes; then the brass; then drums; then drumming heels; then humming ears; echoes like ghostly fears; empty tears; farewells; stories left to tell; quelling; quiet; quit.

The light from the sun is everything - no reason to doubt the cultures who held it as Deity, or one of a pantheon of gods whose hand in our lives was blindingly evident.

Tonight the sun filled the sky, received by the full face of its consort moon, reflected with an anthropomorphic smile through the winter branches and from the winter snow, touching what was deepest darkness two weeks past, to brightest blue-washed avenues and fields, long vistas, shadows of night creatures sharp along the paths, and our steps revisited the moment we laid them, cups of snowcap, milky way, yesterday’s echo.

Eight inches of the whitest snow changed the landscape overnight. For those of us who revel in the New, winter is a wonderful season in New England, with a Wyeth palette and frequent face-lifts to keep the mind moving and the heart – like a child’s, still a child’s – smiling at the constant Christmas arrival of gifts.

I suppose you have to see them as gifts to feel them as gifts. I exercised before breakfast by clearing a path from door to drive, for myself and my cabin-fever cats. As I worked, the blurry wake-up thoughts began to drift (like morning mist under the influence of sun and breeze, I think), and what remained came into focus as though, with shovel in hand, I had rubbed my eyes and looked around: cool breeze throwing spinnets of flakes from the rooftop behind me, a murder of crows shouting something from the other end of the cornfield, two cats watching my work from two windows, sweat beginning in the warmer parts of my body, a small opening being cut from the white, in squares, like cake, like ice-cream, like quilt battening, like ash.

Michael James, on the practice of Sri Ramana Maharshi. From the Introduction to Happiness and the Art of Being.

Happiness lies deep within us, in the very core of our being. Happiness does not exist in any external object, but only in us, who are the consciousness that experiences happiness. Though we seem to derive happiness from external objects or experiences, the happiness that we thus enjoy in fact arises from within us.

Whatever turmoil our mind may be in, in the centre of our being there always exists a state of perfect peace and joy, like the calm in the eye of a storm. Desire and fear agitate our mind, and obscure from its vision the happiness that always exists within it. When a desire is satisfied, or the cause of a fear is removed, the surface agitation of our mind subsides, and in that temporary calm our mind enjoys a taste of its own innate happiness.

Happiness is thus a state of being – a state in which our mind’s habitual agitation is calmed. The activity of our mind disturbs it from its calm state of just being, and causes it to lose sight of its own innermost happiness. To enjoy happiness, therefore, all our mind need do is to cease all activity, returning calmly to its natural state of inactive being, as it does daily in deep sleep.

Therefore to master the art of being happy, we must master the art and science of just being. We must discover what the innermost core of our being is, and we must learn to abide consciously and constantly in that state of pure being, which underlies and supports (but nevertheless remains unaffected by) all the superficial activities of our mind: thinking, feeling and perceiving, remembering and forgetting, and so on.

The art of just being, remaining fully conscious but without any activity of the mind, is not only an art – a practical skill that can be cultivated and applied to produce an experience of inexpressible beauty and joy – but also a science – an attempt to acquire true knowledge by keen observation and rigorous experiment. And this art and science of being is not only the art and science of happiness, but also the art and science of consciousness, and the art and science of self-knowledge.

The science of being is incredibly simple and clear. To the human mind, however, it may appear to be complex and abstruse, not because it is in any way complex in itself, but because the mind which tries to comprehend it is such a complex bundle of thoughts and emotions – desires, fears, anxieties, attachments, long-cherished beliefs and preconceived ideas – that it tends to cloud the pure simplicity and clarity of being, making what is obvious appear to be obscure.

From “cannot imagine” to “will not accept”; from “will not surrender” to “can never forget”. The layers and levels we uncover in meeting this life challenge our small comforts. If we meet the surface, and draw it aside like a curtain that veils our senses, we reveal richer colors to our sight, intensify the sensation our exploring fingers find, satisfy the brightest/broadest savoring, remind us of a scent that drew us outward and upward, and make the dullest word with renewed connotation charge the mind.

One of the great strengths of the human psyche is its ability to create structures where there appears to be chaos, to build shelter in a storm of metaphorical proportion, and raise walls in the perceived world which are duplicated in physical form around us. The walls of our houses go up, and we count on them to protect us. Lines are inscribed around social circles - a church, an activity group, friendships - and we rest in the circle of their arms. We discover what works within the flow of work and daily living, and by repetition create patterns of behavior that demand less and less of our attention, that we lean on as we lean against a tree or feel solid ground beneath a footstep. Rote is rest, allowing us to give energy and strength to the challenges of the day.