2.9.2013
For reasons beyond my comprehension, the WordPress program is not allowing me to include my brief commentary and clip of Om Namah Shivaya with the previous post. This should come at the end of the section on Navarna mantra:
So we don’t want to contemplate Descent without paying homage to this radiant force… A force that finds grounding, stillness, and completion in the subtle vibratory universe of the mantra Om Namah Shivaya.
I’m titling this post with a quote from the Thomas Merton poem I read at class on 10.22. “By ceasing to question the sun, I have become light…” For me, this line offers the essence of the path of heart. The mystery, the teaching, the practice. The poem itself is like a mantra. Radiant with shakti. Read it over ten thousand times. It will shape your inner being in its bliss…
O Sweet Irrational Worship
-Thomas MertonWind and a bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,Bird and wind.
My leaves sing.
I am earth, earth
All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this valley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!I am earth, earth
My heart’s love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my own appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.I am earth, earth
Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.
Here’s a clip of my 10.22 dharma talk. It runs around twenty minutes, riffs on poetry from Denise Levertov and Dorothy Waters, and ends with Merton.
This audio clip of class chanting Om Namah Shivaya runs around 13 minutes and ends with a 2-minute dharana on the Merton poem.
Here are the Levertov and Waters poems:
The Secret
-Denise Levertov
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not evenwhat line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so thata thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
linesin other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
forassuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
Taken
-Dorothy Walters
First, you must let your heart
be broken open
in a way you have never
felt before,
cannot imagine.You will
not know if what you are
feeling
is anguish or joy,
something predestined
or merely old wounds
flowing once more,
reminders of all that is
unfinished in your life.Something will flood into
your chest
like air sweetened by
desert honeysuckle,
love that is too
strong.You will stand there,
very still,
not seeing what this is.
Later, you will not remember
any of this
until the next time
when you will say,
yes, yes, I have known this before,
it has come again,
just as your eyes fold under
once more.
I sit at my computer assembling the elements of this post and there is so much I want to say to you. My heart overflows with the longing. But listening to the talk, re-living the poems, anything more seems redundant. So I will leave off here, bidding you adieu until we meet again, from my heart to yours…
It’s been nearly three months since I’ve written here. Coming back this evening I discovered content that’s been sitting since October, waiting to be fleshed out and published.
This is a talk I gave on 10.15. While the Path of Heart was still my principal focus, I was beginning to weave the Kali Work back into the tapestry. For the last few years, I’ve moved away from metaphors of the Sacred Feminine. This talk on the fire of love marks a shift back into that perceptual framework and articulates where we find ourselves when Kali awakens on the Path of Heart…
Here’s the Mary Oliver poem I read as a dharana at the end of my talk:
Maybe
-Mary Oliver
Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is
when something
different crosses
the threshold — the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water —
sometimes, for days,
you don’t think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was —
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer storm.Here are mantras [om namah shivaya and navarna] with a short dharana at the end of the clip:
And the last word goes to Mirabai/Bly. If you’re still wondering how to walk the Fire Path of Heart, here are operating instructions…
The Heat of Midnight Tears
-Mirabai
English version by Robert Bly
Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.
If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts,
Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves,
Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!
If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.
Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.
Although we had class on Monday, October 1, the recording quality was sub par, so no dharma talk or chanting posts for that week. Since turnout was small, we kind of had a re-do on 10/8. So this post covers both classes…
When I last left off on this blog, we were taking Monday Night inspiration from the Jewish High Holidays. Now that the “Days of Awe” have passed, leaving sweetness in their wake, we’re shifting focus to paths of love, devotion, the heart. Down the road we’ll probably spend time with classic yogic heart texts like the Bhakti Sutras and Pratyabhijna Hridayam. For now though, I’m not much interested in technique or philosophy. So these classes on the Heart will be mostly chanting, meditation, devotion-soaked poetry, and those handfuls of words that insist on coming through me as dharma talks…
These two classes opened with chanting of the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra. For those unfamiliar with this great mantra, here’s the text:
May we be freed from all the attachments that keep us bound….
The traditional claim is that this mantra bestows immortality. From my perspective, this is a bit of a stretch. It does however, facilitate a letting go. The kind of letting go we feel in that moment of Love before attachment enters the room. So it seems a perfect mantra to work with over this next cycle of classes.
Here’s a clip of the chanting:
This week’s dharma talk is a freewheeling riff on Love and the Heart… There’s an interesting anecdote about the Heart Cakra, along with references to Carlos Castaneda’s alter ego, Don Juan. Definitely worth a listen…
Finally, here’s a clip of Om Namah Shivaya with poems read at the end as dharanas before silent meditation…
Here’s a beautiful quote I did not bring to class but will add it for those brave souls on the path:
The Path of Love
is like a bridge of hair
across a chasm of fire.
-Irina Tweedie
And the last word goes to the poems:
The madness of love
is a blessed fate;
And if we understood this
We would seek no other:
It brings into unity
What was divided,
And this is the truth:
Bitterness it makes sweet,
It makes the stranger a neighbor,
And what was lowly it raises on high.
-HADEWIJCH OF ANTWERPAnyone who has waded
Through Love’s turbulent waters,
Now feeling hunger and now satiety,
is untouched by the season
Of withering or blooing,
For in the deepest
and most dangerous waters,
On the highest peaks,
Love is always the same.
-HADEWIJCH OF ANTWERPSo long as this breath fills your nostrils,
Why seek out fragrant flowers?
Peaceful, compassionate, patient, already your own master,
Why do you need to cross your legs to Know?
Once the entire world is yourself,
What could a life of solitude add?
O white Jasmine Lord-
-AKKA MAHADEVI
I do not call it his sign,
I do not call it becoming one with his sign.
I do not call it union,
I do not call it harmony with union.
I do not say something has happened,
I do not say nothing has happened.
I will not name it You.
I will not name it I.
Now that the White Jasmine Lord is myself,
What use for words at all?
-AKKA MAHADEVI
On the Spirit of the Heart as Moon-Disk
Merely to know
The Flawless Moon dwells pure
In the human heart
Is to find the Darkness of the night
Vanished under clearing skies.
-KOJIJU
Birth, old age,
Sickness, and death:
From the beginning,
This is the way
Things have always been.
Any thought
Of release from this life
Will wrap you only more tightly
In its snares.
The sleeping person
Looks for a Buddha,
The troubled person
Turns towards meditation.
But the one who knows
That there’s nothing to seek
Knows too that there’s nothing to say.
She keeps her mouth closed.
-LY NGOC KIEU
I’m still reflecting on sweetness and light, and the longing to merge into this luminous honey of the heart. As yogis we want to swim, dare I say, drown there. So I thought we’d open class with the Krsna Govinda kirtan. Here’s a clip of that. The sound quality is not great. I’m including it here because everyone loves this chant. [I’m happy to report I’m getting closer to returning to the studio. I need a few more months for the non-stop drama of my last two years to resolve. Once that happens, I’m looking forward to drowning in this music of my heart.]
And here’s this week’s dharma talk, which runs around 17 minutes. I read from Kabir & Rumi, two drenched souls who knew a thing or two about drowning. All text is posted after the sound clip:
Here’s the Kabir:
The darkness of night is coming along fast, and
the shadows of love close in the body and the mind.
Open the window to the west, and disappear into the air inside you.
Near your breastbone three is an open flower.
Drink the honey that is all around that flower.
Waves are coming in:
there is so much magnificence near the ocean!
Listen: Sound of bells! Sound of immense seashells!
Kabir says, Friend, listen, this is what I have to say:
the One I love is inside of me!
Yes, at the end of the day, it’s all about Love, and our longing, which is actually the connecting thread. Kabir says it far better than I:
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me and you will see a slave of that intensity.
Here are the Rumi poems:
1.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meetr them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.Welcome difficulty. Learn the alchemy True Human Beings know: the moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door opens.
Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade. Joke with torment brought by the Friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off.That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath is the sweetness that comes after grief.
2.
One night a man was crying, “Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising, until a cynic said,
“So I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, in a thick green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. The whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs no one knows the names of.Give your life to be one of them.
And here’s the quote from Lawrence Kushner’s, The River of Light:
There is a realm of being that comes before us and follows after us. Streaming through and uniting all creation. Knowing who we have been and will be. It contaminates our sleep with visions of higher reality and exalts our waking with stories. It is a river of light. “She is a tree of Life to those who hold onto her.” [Prov. 3:18]. Her branches and shoots are the nerves and vessels of this world coursing beneath our surfaces, pulsing through our veins. A blueprint underlying the cosmos. The primary process of being. The inner structure of consciousness. The way of the Tao. “And all her paths are peace.” [Prov. 3:17]. Just behind and beneath everything. If we could but stand it, everything would have meaning. Everything connected to everything else even as they all share a common Root.
This week’s recording of slow mantra had some technical glitches so I won’t post sound clips. Instead, I dug into my archive of not-yet-posted recordings and chose the first one that jumped out at me. Which was July 25, 2011. This was back in the days when Sri Dan was with us each week so we were singing much more kirtan. This class opened with Jaya Shiva Shankara. There were a lot of new people in the room that night so the recording begins with an introduction to this chant. You’ll hear Sri Dan on tabla. Sweet light. Enjoy.
I’m also including the dharma talk from that week. We were deep into Patanjali, swimming around in Book II. I was so struck by the threads between what we were talking about then and what we’re talking about now, I thought I’d leave the entire talk. Think of it as a bonus feature;) I don’t have time for a careful edit so this is one long 50 minute sound clip. Here’s a rough breakdown: Jaya Shiva Shankara, 0-26; dharma talk, 26-43; and there’s an interesting dharana on Om Namah Shivaya, 43-50. Once you click on the sound file, you’ll see the time and you can click around within the file:
Today, September 26, 2012, is Yom Kippur, considered the most sacred day of the Jewish year. While the traditional translation of Yom Kippur is “Day of Atonement,” some prefer to think of it as the “Day of At-One-Ment.” I much prefer this spin. I was thinking earlier today about this process of living in a state of “at-one-ment.” Which, needless to say, is the essence of Yoga. We use different language, tell different stories, practice a wholly different technology. And yet, this longing for at-one-ment, well, there it is, at the core.
So I thought today, okay, when do I get tricked into living in a state of at-two-ment. What tricks of body and mind shift me out of myself, splitting me into fragments that hardly recognize each other. What does it take to shift back into the long deep exhale of ONE….
It’s a great contemplation for every day of the year and perhaps, an especially great inquiry for the Days of Awe…
I’ll be posting this week’s class very soon.
May you be inscribed in the Book of Life, which is also the Book of Love, for another year, and for every year hereafter…
From my heart to yours…
This week’s class fell on Rosh Hashonah, the first day of the Jewish New Year. In Jewish tradition, the first ten days of the year are considered the High Holy Days, the Days of Awe. There’s a sense that over these first ten days we lay the blueprint for the rest of the year. So the suggestion is to spend this time in quiet contemplation, taking stock of how we’ve moved towards the light, and how we’ve moved away. Along with this intensive self-inquiry, it’s traditional to eat apples dipped in honey, a symbolic act for bringing sweetness into our lives.
So I thought it only right to offer this class to sweetness and light…
Hence, I added srim, the Laksmi bija mantra, to last week’s mix of Gayatri and Om Namah Shivaya — and brought in a group of Hafiz/Landinsky poems and a reading from Lawrence Kushner’s kabbalistic musings, Honey From the Rock.
For visitors unfamiliar with the Laksmi bija mantra, let me say a few things about srim — which I can’t properly transliterate here — fyi, it’s pronounced “shreem.” Srim is a seed mantra meaning it contains the full potency of the deity field. In this case, Laksmi, aka the power of splendor, magnificence, expansiveness, abundance… you get the idea. So the teachings go that whatever Laksmi touches grows into its most magnificent form. And sweetness is one of the attributes of Laksmi. This is a perfect sweetness. Not so sweet as to be cloying or just plain too sweet. This is the perfection of sweetness. The sweetness that makes us feel, well, let me say it like it is, positively delicious. We might say we experience the sweetness of Laksmi as a kind of effervescent grace. When all is right with our lives and infinity is possible…
Before I go on, let me also say a few things about Monday Night Class. There is much I love about this class. Its longevity. The people who find their way there. The depth and power of the teachings and practice. The sense of welcome, safety, and community. Sometimes though, I think what I love best is the sweetness of the laughter. Here’s a clip from this week’s class:
Here’s this week’s dharma talk. Which begins with the below posted Hafiz. This small group of poems offers an excellent teaching on what gets in the way of our ability/intention to live in and of our sweetness and light [and delight!] I’ll post the Kushner quote which I also read in this talk, below Hafiz. Kushner is writing specifically about Light. The two together make an excellent counterpoint on the topic of sweetness and light. Add in the mantras and we have a fugue for the heart…
Here are the Hafiz poems, from Daniel Landinsky’s book, The Gift.
THE SAD GAME,
Blame
Keeps the sad game going.
It keeps stealing all your wealth –
Giving it to an imbecile with
No financial skills.
Dear one,
Wise
Up.
TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth.
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
DROPPING KEYS
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
FIND A BETTER JOB
Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job.
I WISH I COULD SPEAK LIKE MUSIC
I wish I could speak like music.
I wish I could put the swaying splendor
of the fields into words
so that you could hold Truth
Against your body
And dance.
I am trying the best I can
With this crude brush, the tongue,
To cover you with light.
I wish I could speak like divine music.
I want to give you the sublime rhythms
Of this earth and the sky’s limbs
As they joyously spin and surrender,
Surrender
Against God’s luminous breath.
Hafiz wants you to hold me
Against your precious
Body
And dance,
Dance.
Here’s the quote from Lawrence Kushner’s Honey from the Rock:
It is no accident that all the great creation tales begin with light. Of all the things that the Creator might have first formed – mountains, waterfalls, stars, flowers, fruited plains, lions and lambs, leviathans and whirlwinds, single-celled creatures and man – He made light. First of all the Holy One fashioned consciousness.
Let us retell the story of this light which is a metaphor for spiritual awareness:
A light with which the Holy One began the creation. Let there be light and there was light.
In the Zohar we read further of creation. Some kind of dark flame – blinding flash – issued forth from the innermost hiddenness – from the mystery of the Ayn-Sof, the Infinite One….
A light that was so dazzling that by it…man could gaze from one end of the universe to the other. A light so powerful that is shattered earthly vessels. A light that if it fell into the hands of the wicked could return creation itself back to primordial chaos. A light that therefore had to be hidden away. And God made a separation.
A light that was set aside for the Tsadikim [the righteous ones].
Light is sown for the righteous…
A light whose appearance initiates creation. But it is a creation only able to withstand a tiny bit of light. Therefore the light had to be concealed. And so it is that darkness and incompletion and separation are the price of this world. While light initiates existence, existence conceals light.
For with the appearance of the light being began,
But with the concealment of the light
all manner of individuated existence was created…
Just this is the mystery of the work of creation;
And one who is able to understand will understand.
A light imprisoned in the shards of this created world, waiting for us to free it. Returning itself and us to the Creator.
A light so awesome that even a fraction of its splendor – just so much as a ray the thinness of a needle is all any of us need for unimaginable illumination.
Here’s a clip of this week’s chanting. I tried a different microphone placement, hoping to pick up less harmonium, more voices. Alas, I ended up with more harmonium. The call is quite clear, but I’m sorry to say the response is barely audible.
Finally, here’s a clip of the dharana I gave before gliding into silent meditation:
And when the topic is light, the last word goes to Devi, the Shining. This quote is found in the frontpiece of Ajit Mookerjee’s book, Kali, the Feminine Force. He cites Bhairava Yamala as the source text. I’ve never been able to find this text or any verse resembling the quote. A google search brings up nothing definitive. So I’m going to assume that Mookerjee had access to an unpublished text fragment and made this very beautiful translation. Wherever it comes from, whatever its source, it pulsates with sweetness, luminosity, and supreme bliss:
She is Light itself and transcendent.
Emanating from Her body are rays in thousands —
two thousand, a hundred thousand, tens of millions,
a hundred million —
there is no counting their numbers.
It is by and through Her that all things moving
and motionless shine. It is by the light of this
Devi that all things become manifest.
For the first class of the new fall season, it seemed only right to bask in the luminosity of Gayatri mantra. For readers of this blog who do not attend class, here is the mantra in transliterated Sanskrit:
As I wrote in the previous post, Gayatri mantra is considered the sound form of light. So Sanskrit, as a language of vibration, is offering us a sonic vessel of liquid light. Pour it into your bloodstream. Chant it with all your heart. Meaning is secondary, almost irrelevant. Still the mind loves something to dwell on, hence the beautiful imagery of the literal English translation:
Earth. Atmosphere. Heavens.
We meditate on the sacred light of the effulgent source.
Let that light infuse our entire being.bhur earth
bhuvah atmosphere
svaha heavens
tat that
savitur of the source
varenyam to be held sacred
bhargo light
devasya of the effulgent
dhimahi we meditate on
dhiyo thoughts, intentions, prayers
yah which (source)
nah our
procadayat should direct, urge, inspire
Here’s a clip of the first round of chanting from this week’s class:
Here’s my dharma talk:
This last clip contains a short dharana to ease into final chanting of the evening: a second round of Gayatri [approximately 26 minutes], followed by Om Namah Shivaya.
And the final word goes to Rumi. Here’s the text I read at class, from Coleman Barks’ & Michael Green’s, The Illuminated Rumi:
In any gathering, in any
chance meeting
on the street, there is
a shine, an elegance
rising upToday, I recognized that the jewel-like beauty
is the presence.Our loving confusion,
the glow in which
watery clay gets
brighter than fire,
the one we call the Friend.I begged, “Is there a way into you, a ladder?”
“Your head is the ladder, bring it down under your feet.”The mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe that when you push off with your foot, a thousand new roads become clear, as you yourself do at dawn, sailing through the light.
This a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free
Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in that place just right
We will be in the valley of love and delight.When the true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed
To turn and to turn it will be our delight
Till by turning and turning we turn into light…”
III,6. Perfect discipline is mastered in stages.III, 7. These three components – concentration, absorption, and integration – are more interiorized than the preceding five.III, 8. Even these three are external to integration that bears no seeds.III, 9. The transformation towards total stillness occurs as new latent impressions fostering cessation arise to preventthe activation of distractive stored one, and moments of stillness begin to permeate consciousness.III, 10. These latent impressions help consciousness flow from one tranquil moment to the next.III, 11. Consciousness is transformed toward integration as distractions dwindle and focus arises.III, 12. In other words, consciousness is transformed toward focus as continuity develops between arising andsubsiding perceptions.
I’ll be weaving these two, Patanjali Book III and the Laksmi Work together over the next few weeks. For now I want to get this week’s dharma talk, readings, and chanting clips posted, so will keep this brief.
Here’s a clip of this week’s chanting the yoga sutras:
There’s a hidden sweetness
in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes
out of the fire. The fog clears, and a new energy
makes you run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it
to some illusion and lose your power.
But even if you’ve lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.*********
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
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