April 18, 2021
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve posted here. And about that long since I stepped back from recording and performing to focus on writing a book.
As the book takes on more coherent shape, I’ve been thinking about returning to blogging.
How perfect then that on this day, when I realized this would be the best portal to post words to the chants we’ll be doing this evening, that music brings me back here.
October 8, 2019
Visitors to this blog know that over the last few years, my posts have been far and few between. This has never been about a lack of care. It has only been, and continues to be, about lack of time…
I started writing a book about my work earlier this year. The writing hums along but does require all my extra bandwidth. I’ve thought about pulling the plug on this blog, but it’s such a content-rich portal and has been such a labor of love, I can’t bring myself to take it down. And who knows, down the road, perhaps I’ll find the energy for blogging and compiling this book.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone who visits here. Do keep scrolling down through the archive. There really is a great deal of material here.
With love to you all.
SG
November 28, 2015
I started teaching Monday Night Class at the Princeton Center for Yoga & Health in 1997. I’d been a student of Siddha Yoga since the 1977 and had recently moved on from that guru-centric tradition. Although the paradigm of guru yoga no longer worked for me, I still found tremendous beauty, power, and wisdom in the yogic path. So I immersed myself in a process of discernment, separating out what I now saw as dogma and magical thinking from what I perceived as essential truth. Monday Night Class was born from that inquiry.
In Monday Night Class’ early years I clung to traditional texts and teachings. As I grew stronger in my process, I started taking more risks, allowing my inner vision to guide me. Class grew, year after year, developing, deepening, opening into its essential heart.
The Monday Night Blog began in 2010. We were working our way through Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the “Tao Te Ching.” Along with this text, I was bringing in sacred poetry, stories, and wisdom teachings from parallel traditions. It made sense to collect all this material in one place and the Monday Night Blog was born. Along the way, we started recording my dharma talks and class chanting, adding an audio dimension.
The demands of my life have forced me to cut way back on regular blogging. Hope springs eternal however, and I hope to return to more regular posting in the new year.
Thanks for visiting. We look forward to seeing you again and again.
Always,
SuzinG,
The Monday Night Blog 
This week’s portion of the Tao Te Ching reminded me of a line in Psalm 34 (33), verse 10, which can be translated (Grail Psalms): “Strong lions suffer want and go hungry/ but those who seek the Lord lack no blessing.” Another translation (RSV) makes the second part read: “… those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” In class, I had remembered the line as ‘those who trust in the Lord will lack nothing.’ A little different, but not so different. It seems to me that “seeking the Lord” or “trusting in the Lord” both refer to that state of being which the Tao Te Ching describes in so many ways but always circling back on the same thing–“If you stay in the center…” If you stay in the center, you will discover that you lack nothing, no good thing is missing.
Suzin has been making many interesting connections to other wisdom literature, as we go through the Tao Te Ching. This week I really felt how the subtle infusion of the Taoist perspective can open up deeper meanings present in the wisdom teachings I have encountered many times before.