Author: suzingreen

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May 15, 2011

Patanjali’s categorizing of the Pancha Kleshas, the five primal causes of suffering offers an elegant tool for deepening our awareness and through that deepening, getting out of our own way.  We talk a lot about dropping the narrative, practicing detachment, softening into the ground of Self. It’s all laid out in this handful of sutras. Here they are in Mukunda Stiles’ version:

II, 3
There are five primal causes of suffering:
ignorance of your True Self; [avidya]
egoism and its self-centeredness; [asmita]
attachment to pleasure; [raga]
aversion to pain; [dvesha]
and clinging to life out of fear of death. [abhinivesha]

II, 4
Ignorance is the fertile soil, and as a consequence, all other obstacles persist.They may exist in any state—dormant, feeble, intermittent, or fully operative.

II, 5
Ignorance is the view that the ephemeral, the impure, the pain of suffering—that which is not the Self—is permanent, pure, pleasurable, and the True Self.

My last post on this blog included an excerpt from the May 2 dharma talk. Here’s the rest of that rather free-wheeling talk:

Also, here is an excerpt of class learning the new Patanjali Chant which includes the first 3 sutras of Books One and Two. I’ll include the text below.

Atha  yogānushāsanam
Yogah  chitta  vritti  nirodhaha
Tadā  drashtu  svarupe  avasthānam

Tapah svadhyaya Ishvara-pranidhānāni kriyā yoga
Samādhi bhāvana artha kleśa tanu karana-artha ca
Avidyā asmitā rāga dvesa abhiniveśa pancha kleśā

Now we begin the teachings of Yoga. Yoga is the stilling of the thought waves in the mind.  Then we rest in our essential nature.

The practical means for attaining the state of Yoga consist of three components: self-discipline and purification, self-study, and devotion to the Lord.  These practices cultivate an attitude conducive to being absorbed in Spirit and minimize the power of the primal causes of suffering.  There are five primal causes of suffering: ignorance of our essential nature; egoism (the “I-maker”); attachment to pleasure; aversion to pain; and clinging to life out of fear of death.

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May 9, 2011

Back in the days when we were working our way through Stephen Mitchell’s lovely translation of the Tao Te Ching, it seemed a good idea to gather the parallel readings I was bringing from other traditions and post them in one place. And so began this blog-collection of sacred text, poetry, and story. Now, as we slowly work our way through the Patanjali Yoga Sutra, I am, needless to say, posting much less than before. My thanks for your patience. I do continue recording each week. I’ll upload an 8-minute excerpt from last week’s class here. I was talking about how we might work with what Patanjali calls the “kleshas,” often translated as the five primal causes of suffering. Enjoy…

Click here to listen to excerpt from last week’s talk on working with the kleshas…

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May 8, 2011 — Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to the Creative Pulsation 
Power of Truth, Majesty, Insight, & Compassion
Inner Luminosity that is Ground and Core of your Being…

To Nature
Orphic Hymn

I call to Nature, the mother of all, the mother who makes,
Heavenly, honored, goddess of wealth, sovereign,
The one who wins, who is never tamed, the narrator, the Giver of Light,
Stronger than the strongest, who gives her breasts to all….
Born of the night, all wisdom, carrier of light….
We see your footprints that whirl silently when you are still….
Forerunner, she who gets things done, giver of breath, feeder of all….
Goddess of earth, sea, air,
Bitter to the picayune, sweet to the large-hearted,
Wholly wise, wholly generous, guardian Queen….
You are father, you are mother, you are nurturer, you are nurse….
Creator of the world, sculptor, spring of richness, diversity of the sea,
Everlasting one, she who gets things to move, wholly wise, one who cares,
And never fails, one whose strong energy goes whirling,
Always river-like, moving in circles, changer of shores….
Having no fear, champion over all, you are fate and destiny, fiery Mother,
Never born or dying, you are continuous life and know what comes.
You are the Great Plenum and you alone give birth.
Holy Mother, we pray you in this season lead us
On to peace and health and increase of good things.

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April 2, 2011

Okay, here we go. I’m posting the dharma talk and chant from March 28 Class. Voice quality on the dharma talk is fine. Chant recording is heavy on harmonium. I only realized I should record after chanting began so was unable to position the mike to catch optimum voice. Nevertheless, I’m including the MP3 here. Seems better than nothing. Since everyone has been loving the new Patanjali chant, this will give you something to work with on your own.

Here’s the Dharma Talk:

Here’s the Chant: Patanjali-Yoga-Sutra Book One, Sutras 1-3

This beautiful poem came to me this week. It so evokes the process of Yoga, I’m including it here for you.

A Cloth of Fine Gold
-Dorothy Walters

You may think
that first lit flame
was the ultimate blaze,
the holy fire
entered at last.
What do you know of furnaces?
This is a sun that returns
again and again, refining, igniting,
pouring your spirit
through a cloth of delicate gold
until all dross is taken
and you are sweet as
clarified butter
in god’s mouth.

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March 20, 2011, Spring Equinox

What a long winter this has been.  And though there’s snow predicted here tomorrow, the promise of  warmer weather, longer days, and sweet Spring light is here. It’s been awhile since I’ve had the time and space to write a proper blog post. Class however has continued. I’ve recorded dharma talks most weeks which will be uploaded here as I edit them. I thank you for your patience as I slowly transition back to some semblance of normal life. And send love to you all.

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February 4, 2011

The life/death/life cycle being what it is, I’ve ended up taking a much longer break than anticipated. For me personally, this has  been a season of grief.  I lost not one, but two beloved aunts, two remarkable women who formed me in so many ways. My Aunt Maureen lived in England so we had precious little face time, but what a long and deep connection heart to heart. My Aunt Bunny lived in NYC so we got to spend much more time together. For that I am so grateful. I only wish I could have had many more years with both of them. Sitting with my Aunt Bunny as she moved through the process of dying was devastating, relieving, exhausting, heart-breaking, shattering, grief-filled — and somewhere, floating around the edges, the memory of grace. This life and our connectedness is so precious. The thread so easily severed. I want to thank everyone who’s reached out during this time. Your outpouring of love is such a gift.

I’m slowly returning to the shapes my life moved in before death intervened. Coming back to this blog for the first time in weeks, I see I started a post on 12/20/10. Our last class before the Winter Holiday Break. That was quite an auspicious evening: winter solstice, lunar eclipse, celestial cycles moving us towards 1/1/11.

Here it is now 2/4/11. Weeks later, and yet, the poem I read that night seems more perfect now.

On the Spirit of the Heart as Moon-Disk
Kojiji

Merely to know
The Flawless Moon dwells pure
In the human heart
Is to find the Darkness of the night
Vanished under clearing skies.

Huge thanks again to DanJ for being the Keeper of Monday Night Class — and for holding class so beautifully while I’ve been away. I look forward to returning this coming week. My love to you all.


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December 6, 2010

This week’s verse from the Tao Te Ching, #41, is at once self-explanatory and opaque, a perfect embodying perhaps, of Tao wisdom. Rather than dwelling on the verse, this week’s Dharma Talk focuses on working with chanting as a mindfulness practice. While listening to the the talk, if you interchange the Yogic term “Self” with the Taoist term, “Tao,” you’ll connect the dots between these two traditions.  Here’s the verse, followed by the talk which runs about 23 minutes.

41.

When a superior mam hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs our loud.
If he didn’t laugh,
it would be the Tao.

Thus it is said:
The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.
Yet it nourishes and completes all things.


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November 29, 2010

Here’s this week’s Dharma Talk on Verse 40 of the Tao Te Ching. Which comes at just about the halfway point… and at 4 lines, is the shortest of 81 verses. This week’s talk is a kind of free association on the verse. Rather than inspiring parallel teachings, I found myself intrigued by the brevity of the four lines and the significance of the number 4. Of course, I couldn’t talk about “non-being” without bringing in Dhumavati, the Wisdom Goddess personifying the Void.

40.
Return is the movement of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

I tend to hold being as the ground as in “ground of being.”  This verse reminded me of the deeper level, the level that is unfathomable and without bottom, which would be non-being or the so-called Void. While we really need no metaphors to wrestle with these concepts — and truly better to experience the state in chanting and meditation, still, the stories and imagery are so lovely. Here’s a bit from the mythology of Dhumavati quoted in David Frawley’s Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses:

Perceived as the Void, as the dissolved form of consciousness, when all beings are dissolved in sleep in the supreme Brahman, having swallowed the entire universe, the seer-poets call her the most glorious and the eldest, Dhumavati….among yogis she becomes the power that destroys all thoughts, indeed Samadhi itself….

Dhumavati is the void, wherein all forms have been dissolved and nothing can any longer be differentiated. Yet this void is not mere darkness. It is a self-illuminating reality free of the ordinary duality of subject and object… As such, Dhumavati is pure, perfect, and full Awareness in which there are no longer any objects. The Void is not merely emptiness but the cessation of the movements of the mind. Dhumavati is thus ultimately silence itself.

Small correction:

In my talk, I inadvertently mixed up the technical names of the Four Levels of Sound.

The Para levels is as I said, deep in the lower depths of being/non-being at around the naval chakra. This is where what we might call the “impulse  of a sound” begins. As the impulse moves towards oral expression, it enters into the Pashyanti level around the heart chakra where it is still not heard but getting closer, then into Madhyama level which is at the throat and finally Vaikari which is the actual physical sound. As the sound channels through the four levels it is influenced by the inner environment. So for instance, the impulse may be an angry response to something someone has said to us. But as it moves through the intermediary levels before Vaikari it may be toned down, refined, recalibrated, or suppressed. This is a big topic we’ll take up in subsequent weeks.

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November 22, 2010

Here’s this week’s Dharma Talk, along with posts of  readings:

39.
In harmony with the Tao,
the sky is clear and spacious,
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves,
and endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.

The Master views the parts with compassion,
because he understands the whole.
His constant practice is humility.
He doesn’t glitter like a jewel
but lets himself be shaped by the Tao,
as rugged and common as a stone.

As I said in my talk, we’ve moved into a section of the Tao Te Ching that seems very much its own. While I’m still able to find parallel teachings, they don’t flow as seamlessly from text to text as we’ve found in earlier verses. I suspect this has something to do with the construction of the Tao Te Ching. Since I’m not making a formal academic study however, I’ll  dispense with literary theory and simply post readings I found to be of a similar mind…

This first is a lovely quote from the great Sivananda, in Georg Feuerstein’s pocket anthology, Teachings of Yoga:

Smile with the flower and the green grass. Play with the butterflies, birds, and deer. Shake hands with the shrubs, ferns, and twigs of trees. Talk to the rainbow, wind, stars, and the sun. Converse with the running brooks and the waves of the sea, Speak with the walking-stick. Develop friendship with all your neighbors, dogs, cats, cows, human beings, trees, flowers, etc. Then you will have a wide, perfect, rich, full life. You will realize the oneness or unity of life. This can hardly be described in words. You will have to feel this yourself.

I was also struck by these lines from Rumi, pulled from a larger work in the Coleman Barks/Michael Green collaboration, The Illuminated Rumi:

Bend, Tend, Disappear

This is how you change
when you go to the orchard
where the heart opens….

you become
fragrance and the light
that burning oil gives off,

long strands of grieving hair, lion
and at the same time, gazelle.

You’re walking alone without feet,
as riverwater does….

Bend like the limb of a peach tree.
Tend those who need help.
Disappear three days with the moon.

Don’t pray to be healed, or look for evidence
of “some other world.”
You are the soul
and the medicine for what wounds the soul.

And in closing, as has often happened on this inter-spiritual adventure called Monday Night Class, the final word goes to Mary Oliver, whose poet-mind roams deep in the diamond essence of the Tao. Every word and every space between those words, shimmering with light and the fertile darkness…

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is the dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing
too, and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm
stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of
being lock up in gold.

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November 15, 2010

Starting tonight, I’ll be recording Dharma Talks and uploading them to this blog. This week’s talk is on the long side. If you’re new to this blog and/or not familiar with yogic thinking, it may be a bit heady for you. By all means give it a listen. But if it strikes you as a whole lot of something about nothing — or a whole lot of nothing about something — I suggest you simply read the post and leave off listening for another time.

Here’s this week’s reading from Tao Te Ching.

38.
The Master doesn’t try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.

This week’s reading is so dense, I thought the best pairing would be a couple of teaching stories. These two are told in Jack Kornfield’s Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart. The first, from the Christian tradition, struck me as a humorous example of the critique of fundamentalist religion (and in a broader sense, the fundamentalist mind) the Tao Te Ching is making in the fourth verse:

When the Son of God was nailed to the cross and died, he went straight down to hell and set free all the sinners who were in torment.

And the devil wept and mourned, for he thought he would get no more sinners for hell.

And God said to him, “Do not weep, for I shall send you all those who are self-righteous in their condemnation of sinners and hell shall be filled up once more…”

The second story is a lovely example of the mastery described in the first stanza of this week’s verse:

The rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
“Why aren’t you out fishing?” said the industrialist.
“Because I have caught enough fish for the day,” said the fisherman.
“Why don’t you catch some more?”
“What would I do with it?”
“You could earn more money” was the reply. “With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat to go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough money to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and mnore money. Soon you would have enough money to own two boats…maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man like me.”
“What would I do then?”
“Then you could really enjoy life.”
“What do you think I am doing right now?”