Don't Know Mind

In Buddhism, there is the concept of Don't Know Mind.  When I used to practice Zen meditation, one of my practices was to meet each thought that would arise with the inner comment "Don't know, don't know, don't know."  What do I ever actually, really, truly KNOW in life?  It's profoundly difficult to even get to know my own mind, let alone to presume that I understand the inner workings of someone else's mind.  

And yet I shorthand other people constantly, reducing them to one dimensional cartoons: that person is a jerk, a demon, a loser, a saint, that person will never change, never heal, never come around.

I would venture to say that fixated mind is one of the biggest impediments to compassion.  When my mind is fixated, I can't be creative, I can't be kind, I can't imagine a greater outcome for the situation, I can't flow and surf the ever changing waves of life.  Due to some challenging and painful events in my community in recent weeks, I have gotten to know my own fixated mind even more intimately, as I have reduced the complex conditions and circumstances of other people's actions and words to simplistic caricatures, so that I can file the fear and grief I have been feeling into a convenient lock box deep inside.

But, hey, that doesn't work.  The truth comes out in dreams, in aching joints, in fatigue, in a general overall not feeling right about myself.  I know I'm not acting or thinking from spacious mind; I'm acting and thinking from narrow fearful mind, which never offers many options.  For me, I use the judgment/curiosity question.  Am I immediately judging someone or a situation?  If so, I know I'm in my fear brain, my primitive brain, the part of my brain that is simply reactive, and doesn't think at a very high level.  I'm just trying to protect this organism, I sense threat, I react and try to protect.  The irony is that the reactive mode just creates more pain and suffering for me, as I wall myself off behind my opinions like a barricaded castle.

In contrast, and this is the working edge of my life right now, am I in curiosity mind?  Hm, I wonder why that person acts that way.  In Buddhism, the concept of causes and conditions is also taught; there is no such thing as an isolated, independent action, event or even emotion.  Everything and everyone is a complex bundle of causes and conditions that led to a certain moment or a certain action.    If I can be curious, open-hearted, and compassionate about the causes and conditions inherent in everyone's life, I can live and perceive like the sky, watching the clouds flowing through her great endless space of heart.

I am committed to expanding my capacity for love and compassion in this lifetime, and believe me, it is a warrior's practice.  That's why in many traditions the image of the warrior is used to portray the difficulty of bringing more air and light into the fixated human mind.  One teaching says, "Changing a habit of mind is like trying to turn a ship in the middle of the Ganges River in monsoon season."

And yet, through the examples of great souls, great friends, and great teachings, I am hopeful that collective human mind can rise to the capacities it was created to embody: unlimited love, boundless compassion, endless space, profound courage. 

Yoga House on Fire

A fierce wave of clarity and alignment correction has torn through the yoga world in the last two weeks, and particularly through my world.  Two weeks ago, disturbing allegations about John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga came to light.  I have zero interest in cataloging that information here, and I certainly have no interest in proclaiming John Friend innocent or guilty.  It's not for me to say what he should or shouldn't do with his life.  I will say that his actions tore my world apart in the most intense way, and that I have been in deep grief for the last few weeks.  For me, there has been a death.

I always encourage my yoga students to stay open to every sensation, not to shut out the intense sensations, to breathe right into the heart of darkness, as it were.  Courage in the midst of fire, even if it's just the fire of your quads in a standing pose.  Basically, I am instructing and encouraging openness.  First instruction for meeting fear (i.e, grief, judgment, anger, and all the other fear siblings): open to it.  Walk around and look at it.  Shake fear's hand.  Ask fear in for tea.  Second instruction: stay, and keep coming back again and again to staying, not escalating, staying.  If you feel compelled to speak, ask yourself: are these words coming from wisdom mind or wounded mind?  If you're not sure, stay.  Wait.  Pause.  Meditate.  Breathe.  Third instruction for meeting fear: allow yourself to be vulnerable.  Instead of lashing out, opinionating, pressing send, or inflaming, turn around and hold the tender bird of your vulnerability in your heart hand.  That tender bird lives in every human being on this planet, even those you want to demonize. 

These are all daring, paradigm shattering yogic practices.  We should be good at these by now, we should be outstanding at these by now.  (I'm not scolding you; I'm talking to myself here now as well as y'all.)  When the proverbial shit hit the fan last week, it was such a big practice opportunity.  Did we practice?  Or just react? As Pema Chodron (my go-to girl for crisis) says, " When you speak what you’re afraid of from a natural intelligence free of hope and fear, you will know what to do; how to apply openness, trust, see something as the end of something and the seed of the next thing."

Our yoga practices are meant to lead us to such a sense of trust in ourselves, that we don't need our external circumstances to be any particular way, that we know how to catch ourselves with our practices, that when we're provoked, triggered, disappointed, we have a way to pull out of that.

We're kinda immature as a species, and my great hope is that yoga be one major crucible that can squeeze us through the chrysalis into more intelligence and compassion. We HAVE to do this, the planet depends on it.  Otherwise, won't this precious incarnation into human form have been wasted on this go-round?  Yogis, this is my call out to you to rise to your highest and to show the world that yoga is not some large corporation, some passing fancy, some opportunity to wear cute clothes, some marketing deal, some way to have a cute butt, some platform for self aggrandizement, but a fundamentally paradigm shifting heart mind guts sky traveler practice that changes a person radically from the heart up.  May this be so.

For our students at Seattle Yoga Arts, I want to reassure you that we're not going anywhere, that we remain devoted to the Anusara method because it is a beautiful and efficacious system of hatha yoga.  We will continue to offer you the same grounded, alignment based, heart uplifting yoga we always have.  The Anusara method came through John Friend but has now transcended him, informed and embellished as it is by so many talented teachers and amazing souls.  Many of you have reached out to us in the last weeks with statements of heart rending support and sympathy, and for your generosity of heart, I bow to you.  May we all travel this great path of yoga with the biggest hearts imaginable, radically loving.

The Depths

I think there is something in us that yearns for immersion - into water, into life, into love, into drugs.  The question is: how do we find depth in a world that bounces mostly on the surface of things, that stays in the shallows of life, so to speak?

I look for depth like a starving person looks for food.  I check out endless spiritual books from the library, reading Thomas Merton's journals and trying to understand how he thought, and how he arrived at his insights, how his mind learned to go so deep.  I read the instructions of the desert Benedictines and their deep analysis on how to deal with thought.  My meditation teacher, Paul Muller-Ortega, says that meditation is where you learn to go deep, and then you can apply that capacity to everything.  You go deep into everything, you break free of the shallow dimension of life.  I read the texts of yoga and I really get the insight they had; they were WAY less distracted than me and way less distractable.  They had this ability called focus, where they could hold to one idea, thought, contemplation, or vision for a long, long time, until the magnitude of it revealed itself.  When you can do this, you see into the miraculous nature of everything and, the texts tell us, you live in a state of wonder.

There is a separate society of people who are interested mostly in optimizing their experience of depth in life: not through outer outrageousness, like bungee jumping or skydiving, but through exploring the true capacities of the human heart and mind.  For me, this is the most fascinating investigation imaginable, and a worthy use of a life.   

I aspire to this, even more than ever getting my foot behind my head.  Knowing that what I pay attention to, I become, I have lately started a practice of holding a contemplation in my mind during the day.  Every morning I choose a short phrase or sentence, the kind of material that opens a door when you read it, and I hold it in my heart/mind as often as I can think of it during the day.  Sometimes I write it on a small piece of paper and carry it around, like keeping a wisdom teacher close by me during the day.

This practice is helping to train my mind to go deep, to not be pulled around by the nose by my emotional predilections.  If the phrase is a good one, it seems to apply to nearly everything I encounter in my day, and helps me keep a wide inner lens, which includes forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.  There's a lot of that in the depths, and I long to immerse myself there more and more.

Practice Every Day

When you practice yoga, meditation, or pretty much anything on a daily basis, you develop a relationship to yourself.  Themes and issues arise, to be met and moved through in a stream of continuity and creativity.  My meditation teacher Paul Muller-Ortega has a saying, "Random practice, random results."  

I clearly experienced this on my recent meditation retreat, where I was able to do a little yoga a few times a day before sitting for meditation.  One day I moved fluidly like the bobcats we saw near the meditation hall, and the next day I held wall push for one minute, forearm dog for one minute, and headless headstand for one minute.  A pulsation naturally developed between fluidity and firmness, between following something, and building something.

The structure has to be there in order for the fluidity to have something to dance within, including the structure of dailiness.  When I practiced just a little bit every day, even for 10 minutes, I was still familiar with the me from the day before; I hadn't lost myself yet in the accumulation of experience that happens so quickly in just a few days.  I remembered myself, and my body picked up where I had left off, like a good story that was yearning to tell the next chapter of itself.

If I wait too long between practices, it can feel like I am in a stranger's body, and I forget where and who I am.  I am starting all over, and there is an unfamiliarity with the instrument.  When I practice every day, I start to play this body medium more skillfully and with greater sensitivity.  And even with greater interest, since I haven't lost the thread of the music, the rhythm, and the joy.  I remember the particular twist of a muscle from the day before and the sensing I had about unwinding it, and I follow that spiral of body sensation to the next level of perception, and the next sense of inner instruction.  

In this way, practice becomes a magnetic daily attending to an ongoing storyline instead of any kind of harsh or imposed discipline.  It becomes something that weaves itself through your days like a haunting and compelling melody, filled with meaning.

Shooting Star Over Asgaard Pass

Midnight stumble out of warm tent,

light leaks through

     pinpricks in the quilt of sky.

Sudden star streaks directly over the jagged

high crotch of Asgaard Pass.

      "Come up," she says.

Dawn breaks, we toil and climb

vertical through boulders, scree, snow, gravel,

     sage, rare and brief mountain flowers.

We meet others, climbing slowly,

fellow devotees of the Church of High and Up.

The way demands our slow and mindful pace,

our liturgy of worshipping feet.

We imagine we may know her, we may have her,

and the unyielding secrets she possesses.

She brings us to hands and knees, she withdraws oxygen,

she demands everything.

In the end, her impenetrable rock face will never say:

     Here is where I came from,

     Here is what you are made of.

Radiance Lessons

For the last few months I used short readings from "The Radiance Sutras" by Lorin Roche (buy the book here) as inspiration for my yoga classes.  "The Radiance Sutras" are interpretations of verses from an ancient text more formally called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, an articulation of 112 methods of meditative experience.  Many of my students were very touched by these verses, so I'm recording them here, along with a rather free-form sketch of my teaching focuses for each verse.

"In any quiet moment when you are breathing, the breath may flow out and pause of itself, or flow in and pause of itself."

Class Focus - Attending to the pulsation of the breath as a guide.  Refining the breath, trusting it, and learning from it.  Waiting.  Listening to where the breath comes from.  Movement informed by breath.  Ease of breathing the most important thing.  Every breath in is a rebirth, every breath out is a connection to the source.

"Worship means offering your heart to the vast mystery of the universe.  It means being so devoted that you are willing to dissolve and be recreated in every moment."

Class Focus - Asana as an ephemeral, temporary art form, always coming into being, and then dissolving forever.  Seeing the preciousness of our imperfection and heartfelt efforts; offering that to the highest evolution.  What are you so devoted to that you would allow yourself to dissolve into it? 

"Experience the substance of the body and the World as made up of vibratory particles, and these particles made up of even finer energies.  Noticing this, breathe easily with infinity dancing everywhere."

Class Focus - Pulsation.  Attend to the inner pulse continuously.  Sensing into the subtleties of the micro-circuitry of the body.  Nothing is ever locked, solid, or hopeless.  Everything is shifting, changing, and rearranging itself.  No pose is ever repeated exactly the same; creativity is boundless.

"Attend to the skin as a subtle boundary, containing vastness.  Enter that shimmering, pulsing vastness."

Class Focus - Inner Body Bright.  Letting the skin breathe and expand out, like a knitted garment that opens flexibly.  The skin barely contains the sparkling, light-filled, creativity-infused power of aliveness that is wanting to express itself.  The outer body is in love with the inner body.

"The spine has secret passageways to the subtle dimensions of life.  Attend to the spine, gushing with radiant spaciousness."

Class Focus - Allowing the spine to be the central awareness in every pose.  Feeling the thickness of the spine in the body, its substantial support, and also sensing into the spine as a conduit of light, a tall pillar of golden light up the center of the body.  The midline as a sense of space filled with sparkles.

"The soul reveals itself to itself through gesture of hand, foot, spine, face and body.  The invisible loves the visible."

Class Focus - The body itself as a vessel of divinity, every movement infused with artful grace and potent vision.  The body as a way the Divine gets to dance, sing, and move in the world.  Asana as an expression of ultimate freedom.  The bound nature of being human as an opportunity to experience liberation.

"The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation, which is immensity.  The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside."

Class Focus - Foundation of any pose is what touches the earth.  Foundation as a meditative object, so mind settles even in the midst of a challenging asana.  First Principle of Anusara Yoga - Set the Foundation/Open to Grace or perhaps Set the Foundation in order to Open to Grace?  Anchoring the mind to the foundation creates the conditions for an expanded experience of the pose/life/being.

The Daily Round

I have a fascination with how people calibrate the 24 hours of each day so that they optimize the use of their energy.  Apparently, I am not the only one, because inevitably the students in our Immersions and Teacher Trainings are rabidly curious about how we teachers move through our days in order to make time for yoga, meditation, relationships, grocery shopping, sleep, and just being.

 I think we're fascinated with this because it's all about how we use our energy, and energy is life force.  It is limited, and the hours of the day are limited.  How do we choose to weave the tapestry of our days, so that we aren't exhausted, and so that our activities refresh us, inspire us, and make a contribution to the world we live in?

Tony Schwartz, founder of "The Energy Project" has a list of what he calls the Big Four.  They are: Skillfully Manage our Energy; Control the Placement of our Attention; Cultivate the Emotions that Serve us Best; and Define and Live our Highest Purpose."  And, look what's in first place: life energy.

My meditation teacher has a phrase he uses: the Daily Round.  And he says everything depends on the choices you make each day in how you spend your precious life force. 

Here is my ideal Daily Round, when I am not derailed by a dog throwing up, a gigantic traffic jam, illness, or travel.  On days that I teach, I leave the house at 4:30 pm or early in the morning.  I aspire to stick to this as best I can:

7:30 am - get up, shower, feed dogs, eat breakfast; 9 - meditate and study; 10 - practice yoga; 11:30 - work at desk; 1 pm - lunch; 2 - walk; 3 - work at desk, read; garden, errands, 6 - meditate; 7 - dinner with BF, read, art or music making; 11:30 - go to bed.

And here are some Daily Rounds of famous people:

Emily Dickinson

6 am - Get up; 7 - breakfast; 8 - study hour; 9 - meet for devotions; 10:15 - ancient history lesson; 11 - English lesson; 12 pm - Calisthenics; 12:15 - read; 12:30 - lunch; 2:45 - practice piano; 3:45 - to to homeroom; 4:30 - lecture in Seminary Hall; 6 - Dinner, then silent study; 8:45 - bedtime

Charles Darwin

7 am - Get up, take a walk; 7:45 - breakfast; 8 - work in study; 9:30 - go to drawing room, read family letters aloud; 10:30 - return to study; 12 pm - another short walk; 12:45 - lunch with family; 3 - lounge on sofa; 4 - another short walk; 4:30 - return to study; 6 - rest in bedroom while wife reads aloud; 7:30 - tea with family, backgammon; 10:30 - to to bed.

Vladimir Nabokov

6 am - Get up, begin writing; 8:30 - breakfast with wife, read mail; 9 - continue working; 11 - hot soak in bath, sponge on head; 11:30 - stroll with wife, eat lunch; 12 pm - nap; 2 - continue working; 7 - dinner, play Scrabble; 11 - struggle with insomnia for an hour.

Winston Churchill

7:30 am - Wake up, breakfast, read and dictate while in bed; 11 - take walk, drink whiskey and soda; 1 pm - three-course lunch; 3:30 - retire to study; 5 - another whiskey and soda, nap; 6:30 - get up, bathe, dress for dinner; 8 - dinner, drinks, and cigars; 12 am - retire to study again; 1 - go to bed.

What is your Daily Round?  Is it working for you?  How would you change it?  Do you feel hemmed in by time or do you have a sense of spaciousness in your days?  I'm really curious to know!