Hello everyOne. Have a peace full 2009. Do this for yourself and our suffering world. It will catch on. I like R.E.M. last album Accelerate… full of 2 minute songs like the early days of pop. First track is… Living Well is the best Defense.
I am so glad Michelle and Barack will be in the White House. You could not have made it up. Would have been a good movie. A black couple with a Islamic name ruling America. It is the worst of times and the best of times.
I just wanted to remind everyone of the basic stuff. Here it is…
Yoga is the natural means of every person’s direct participation in the nurturing source of life. Through intimate relationships of every kind we realize this healing force, because life is about relationships. In Hatha Yoga, ha is masculine and tha is feminine.
Hatha Yoga has come out of the vast ancient tradition of Tantra, which is non-dual in its philosophy and based on the understanding that the source of life cannot be separate from the ordinary seen conditions of life. An asana practice is participation in the union of all opposites: left/right, above/below, front/back, inhalation/exhalation, inner/outer, spirit/form. All these opposites contain the male/female equation of life already in perfect union. Hatha Yoga is strength that is receiving.
Three of the most important relationships in my life have been with my teachers, U.G. Krishnamurti, Krishnamacharya and my mother. They were perfect examples of the complete mutuality of male and female character, absolutely strong yet totally receptive at the same time.
Krishnamurti used to tell me, “A yogi is genderless.” He believed that both genders are entirely active and neither one is dominant. Krishnamacharya’s view was that the non-dual practice of yoga is necessary to be intimate with life in every way. My mother taught me that we are all loved and cared for, and we love and care even if the limitations of our circumstances seem to be suggesting otherwise. She had a caring tangible emotional connection to all things.
All of my teachers helped me understand that in our culture, the feminine aspect has been devalued, due to the prevailing social patterns of male control. Men lose out too because it is as much a denial of men as it is of women. Motherhood and intimacy have suffered, and we have very little sexual wisdom in contemporary life. Yoga philosophy is totally the opposite. By embracing experience, we will know the source of experience.
If we really practice Hatha Yoga in all its aspects, we become more interested and able to receive life. The whole body is where opposites have perfectly merged. Sometimes it is felt as a measureless depth, an actual location to the right of the physical heart, the portal between source and seen conditions. It is the first cell of life where spirit took form as the union of male and female, and from which the whole spine and cakras flower.
The left/right, above/below, within/without, male/female qualities of life are already in union. I saw this in all of my teachers, but especially in U.G. Krishnamurti. He was a living example of how spiritual transmission can only occur in equal and mutually chosen friendship, not in the more common social dynamic of teacher/student power inequity. This mutuality is one of the vital transforming functions of yoga.
When we understand that we do not have to look for god or truth, yoga begins. The substance of reality comes bubbling through, and the current of life flows through us. We find this nurturing force in our natural state and all our relationships. We do not have to sacrifice our own health and pleasure to save this world. In fact, it gives us the kind of energy we need to work tirelessly to ease the needless suffering everywhere.
Inspirational, Mark. Your blog…. Inside Owl has nice words for you.
Let start with a joke… “Yoga is the natural means of every person’s direct participation in nurturing the source of life…” Person nurturing the source of life? Can a person, imagined, non-existent thing nurture anything? “Source of life”
Please don’t be angry, it’s acting – a troll thing. Try, it’s funny.
There is understanding of what you intended to say… that relationship is actually expression of the life energy. Fully agree … “life is about relationships”. Even better, life is relationships.
“The left/right, above/below, within/without, male/female qualities of life are already in union”… don’t stop there, please continue… when something is in union, what happens? From this (worldly) perspective, something in union ceases to exist. From another perspective, (that of life energy) those qualities never existed.
Similarly… When ““The substance of reality comes bubbling through” the sense of “our relationships” is ceased. There is no “our”. There are only relationships… there, here… existence… life.
Mark, we have come to the point of time where teachers (as you) must start directing the final Truth to your students. There is no “I”, no person, no individual. “Me”, “mine”, “us”, “our” etc… are false. From your blog there is clarity that you understand this, so why do you holding it? Why are you losing energy explaining male/female qualities? Leave that approach. Life-energy is Knowledge and Knowledge is known by Knowledge only. The Reality is in the Mirror of Knowledge. Leave your efforts to bring Reality to the level of experiencing. Leave male and female qualities. Leave knowing and not-knowing. Both are concepts, your attitudes. When both are left off, only “Existence” remains, which is pure state of Being. Only in such state does understanding arise. “That” is pure un-qualified Life-Energy. “That” can not be experienced or known. The pure Life-Energy’s nature is to “Be”. Teach your students to be. Let them Be that relationship(s) without sense of “being”. “I” will never expand to “Presence”. “I” must shrink so that “Presence” can cease. Teach “That” dear Teacher.
There is noOne from whom this world needs to be saved. Let your Own Light lead you from here. God blesses you.
Hey thanks Zee. That is actually a typo. Thank YOU. It should read “Yoga is direct participation in THE nurturing source of life.” However I am not against this idea of nurturing the source.. sounds like total surrender, service, devotion and would be a mutual exchange Love exchange. In fact devotees get a kick from nurturing their Gurus! But I am about to fix the typo.
I do see what you are saying and fair enough. I just know there is a liability in Shankaracharya’s non dualism where attention to objects is seen to be a problem that obscures Source. I say if the Source and the Seen are One Reality then the Seen (all ordinary conditions) are full and sufficient. There is no requirement to diminish ordinary conditions. In fact Yoga is the embrace of ordinary conditions including sex and all polarities. This is the means by which source reality is understood. This Shankarist habit, the Vedic philosophy that later developed into world religions, pervades humanity. It has put humanity in conflict with the natural state and our natural experience including individuation and sex. There of course is no problem in individuation and sex.
There can be no approach to Source, no progressive process, no looking, no seeking, Only Love existing as all.. all ordinary conditions. This is sahaj samadhi, the natural union we are all in. There is no requirement to deny or exploit as a method what we are Given. Nurturing Source is appearing as this extreme intelligence of Life, heart beat breath and sex, known as YOU.
All love surrounds YOU.
Thanks so much Zee for the inspiration.
I just attended your week-long workshop at Omega and Im writing now to thank you. I want to thank you for reminding me of something I have known deep inside but that had become buried. That which beats my heart is full of wonder. This life that is full of both beauty and pain is a gift and it is nothing but a nurturing force. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I had to be reminded of this. It is something like the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes and I allowed my self to be duped. I must admit I was seeking for something better, some form of self-realization or transcendence denying the life that has been given to me, this body, this reality.
Your teaching has given me a genuine and authentic yoga practice which brings me into intimacy with my body and my life. So to just say thank-you for this hardly seems adequate. I can only hope to repay this gift by my commitment to practice and to teach what you have taught me whenever and to whomever I can.
Yoga, it seems, has been highjacked by marketing and commercialism and the benefit it offers to humanity is at risk of slipping into some future obscurity of a new-age fad. I think you are something of a lone voice right now but your message is strong and I feel confident that it will reverberate strongly enough to overcome the noise of the current
trend. Like so many, I have nothing but great admiration for you.
Thanks
David