All One

Rocks, Cars, Shoes, Teeth
The hardness of things,
All One.

Coral becoming teeth becoming coral again.

Oceans, Rivers, Rain, Blood
The flowing of things,
All One.

Water becoming blood becoming water again.

Energy, Light, Heat, Desire
The fire in things,
All One.

Energy becoming desire becoming energy again.

Sky, Vapor, Gas, Breath
The life of things,
All One.

Air becoming breath becoming air again.

Dot, Plane, Interior, Dimensions
The place for things,
All One.

Singularity becoming dimensions becoming singularity again.

Void, Word, Vibration, Creation
The making of things,
All One.

Nothing becoming creation becoming nothing again.

Peace.

Chakrasana

Chakrasana

Now I create this body from rocks and rivers and stars.
Now it moves and breathes in time.

The air we share is our life.

Now I return this body to rocks and rivers and stars.
Now I remain as I am, All This.

Let Us Hold Hands

Let's all hold hands. The people who love Jesus with the people who love Buddha. The people who follow Vishnu with the people who follow the Tao. Let Atheists hold hands with Hasidim. Let the followers of Allah fast at Ramadan while holding hands with Wiccans. Let's hold hands respecting each other's humanness. Yogis and Sufis and people who meet in Longhouses. Agnostics and Catholics and Mauris following their ancient ways. If we are holding hands, we do not have to agree at all. I love the Jesus lover's love of Jesus. Let him love. I love the Siva lover's love of Siva. Let him love. Let the minds in our circle disagree, who cares? But don't let go. "Oh, my beloved brother, your ways are wrong!" Think it! Who cares? But don't let go. Let's stop trying to change each other. And when the end comes, don't let go. Let us go holding hands. Loving each other, let us go. And the one who is holding the key to heaven, open the gate, and don't let go. And the one who recognizes the path, lead the way, but don't let go. And the God who will not take us all together as one? Will we want that God? Or will we laugh together, holding hands and loving the expression on each precious face, perfectly content? Until we find the God who likes us all together as One.

Why Do I Teach Yoga?

I teach yoga to be the aliveness instead of the thingness.

The Little Bird

One of the most inspiring stories I have ever heard is the Buddhist tale, The Little Bird. I have retold this tale in my book in progress, Journal Workbook for Finding Peace Within (It's a working title.). I have a question for anyone who would comment. Many tellings end with a god being moved to bring the rain by the little bird's actions. I removed "god" from this retelling. Do you think it is still warm with that caring consciousness when told this way? Click on "comments" below to share your view.

The Little Bird

Once there was a little bird whose nest was high in the treetops of a beautiful, living forest. On a clear, blue morning the little bird awoke to a sense of panic all around. The forest was on fire. Looking down, he saw his four-legged, six-legged, and many-legged friends running away from the flames. Looking up, he saw all the birds of the forest flying in fear in every direction.

The little bird flew high above the forest. He saw that the flames were coming much faster than many of his friends could flee. To the west was a river. Quick as he could, he went to retrieve water. “Come with me,” he cried to the other birds, who were flying away from the dangerous heat. “Help me put out this terrible fire. See how our friends are suffering below in the forest.” The little bird filled his beak and began to fly back to the fire.

“Turn around, little bird,” the other birds pleaded. “You are flying into harm’s way.”

The little bird shook his head. He flew so hard that his wings ached. Below him the fire licked the heels of a family of deer. He opened his beak and dropped the water. His beak was so small that the little drop of water it held fell glinting in the sunlight only to evaporate in the fire’s rising heat. The little bird did not notice. He was already half way back to the river.

This time, he filled his beak and dipped his feathers in the river. The water made his wings heavy, but he flew back to the forest where so many of his friends had no means of escape. He opened his beak and shook his wings. Still, not a drop reached the fire below. Back and forth the little bird flew from the river to the forest fire.

His wings were scorched, his eyes watered from the smoke, his muscles ached, and his tiny lungs burned. Now, standing alone at the river, he gathered the last of his strength to make the journey back to the fire. The little bird did not notice the rain clouds gathering behind him. This time, as the little bird flew, silently, rain clouds followed. And back at the forest, just as the little bird shook his wings over the fire, the clouds burst open, and it began to rain. Tiny drops from the little bird’s wings fell with giant raindrops from the life-saving clouds. Rivulets traveled sizzling down tree trunks, and rolled across the scorched forest floor extinguishing every spark of the forest fire.

The little bird flew into the cloud to see who had saved the forest. But the cloud was heavy; it was hard to see, and wherever he flew, it seemed it was he alone.

Bird photo by Rob Palmer.

Why am I Practicing and Teaching Yoga?

I am practicing yoga in pursuit of yoga, union. In 1995, in my first yoga class above the Hoboken Farm Boy, Yolante Smit guided me into the corpse pose. I wanted that attunement and peace to last forever. The pose ended, the effect lingered, but eventually faded in the rush of traffic and work and worry. I am practicing yoga to transform my way of being, to yoke myself to that peace permanently. I know people who have done it. So, I know that it can happen.

The techniques of yoga, Patanjali's yoga, the yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, are compassionately given to us so that our fondest, most fragile hopes can be realized here and now. We hope we are not alone. We hope we can be happy. We hope there is meaning. Yoga holds myriad prescriptions for the myriad physical, emotional, and mental suffering of human being. In my time teaching yoga I have seen my students shed worry and tears for peace and laughter. I have seen them grow closer to the core of their being, their own peace, happiness, and certainty.

Every single one of us can find peace. I can't imagine anything nicer to practice or to share.

Don't Hate, Meditate

I have had some pretty high minded ideas throughout my life, as I imagine you have, too. I wanted to win a Nobel Peace Prize when I was about 8, because, well, duh... PEACE for crying out loud. I could feel it inside my soul with absolute certainty, absolute clarity, I knew that everyone could feel it, the truth of it. I knew that shared belief could overcome anything. I still believe that. What I don't know, is the word for that most obvious fact. "Peace," is a hippy word. The "peace sign" does not evoke that most obvious inner knowledge, it evokes a strung out, unbathed, menace dancing badly.

At about 15 years old, I started reading about inhumanity. I particularly remember reading John Hershey's Hiroshima, and books about the Holocaust. I wanted my eyes opened up very wide. I had a reason in mind for this reading. The reason was, "in case something like this happens again, I don't want to be a person who passively allows it to go on around me. I want to be very familiar with the signs and symptoms."

Two thoughts recently went through this mind that made me remember this project. These thoughts put me on alert, in case I might passively allow things to happen to my neighbors that in the clarity of hindsight would look a lot like everything I had tried to know better than. Wouldn't I have known better than to inter Japanese Americans if I had been alive in the 1940s? Or, if in Germany, wouldn't I have known better than to ghettoize my Jewish neighbors? Wouldn't I have known better than to dislocate American Indians if I had been alive during the Andrew Jackson administration? Or would I have been relieved that "someone" was "doing something" to "protect me" from a "threat?"

Someone whose thinking I respect recently said he believes we are in a religious war. Maybe so. What thoughts this war, whether it is economic, religious, political, or national, evokes in me will tell me a lot about my deep attachments, my deep identifications. Identifying "them" will tell me who I still, erroneously, believe "I" am. It will show me the distance I must travel to my Peace Prize.