How to Stop Making a Big Deal About Your Problems:

                [Yes ~ Trust me ~ You DO want to stop making a big deal about them . . . ]

 "Meditation teaches us how to let go. It’s actually a very important aspect of friendliness, which is that you train again and again in not making things such a big deal.

When you have pain in your body, when all sorts of thoughts are going through your mind, you train again and again in acknowledging them openheartedly and open-mindedly, but n

ot making them such a big deal.

Generally speaking, the human species does make things a very big deal. Our problems are a big deal for us. So we need to make space for an attitude of honoring things completely and at the same time not making them a big deal.

It’s a paradoxical idea, but holding these two attitudes simultaneously is the source of enormous joy: we hold a sense of respect toward all things, along with the ability to let go. So it’s about not belittling things, but on the other hand not fanning the fire until you have your own private World War III.

Keeping these ideas in balance allows us to feel less crowded and claustrophobic. In Buddhist terms, the space that opens here is referred to as shunyata, or “emptiness.”

But there’s nothing nihilistic about this emptiness. It’s basically just a feeling of lightness. There is movie entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I prefer to see life from the view of the Bearable Lightness of Being.

 

 When you begin to see life from the point of view that everything is spontaneously arising and that things aren’t “coming at you” or “trying to attack you,” in any given moment, you will likely experience more space and more room to relax into.

Your stomach, which is in a knot, can just relax. The back of your neck, which is all tensed up, can just relax. Your mind, which is spinning and spinning like one of those little bears that you wind up so it walks across the floor, can just relax. So shunyata refers to the fact that we actually have a seed of spaciousness, of freshness, openness, relaxation, in us.

Sometimes the word shunyata has been translated as the “open dimension of our being.” The most popular definition is “emptiness,” which sounds like a big hole that somebody pushes you into, kicking and screaming: “No, no! Not emptiness!”

Sometimes people experience this openness as boredom. Sometimes it’s experienced as stillness. Sometimes it’s experienced as a gap in your thinking and your worrying and your all-caught-up-ness.

I experiment with shunyata a lot. When I’m by myself and no one’s talking to me, when I’m simply going for a walk or looking out the window or meditating, I experiment with letting the thoughts go and just seeing what’s there when they go.

This is actually the essence of mindfulness practice. You keep coming back to the immediacy of your experience, and then when the thoughts start coming up, thoughts like, bad, good, should, shouldn’t, me, jerk, you, jerk, you let those thoughts go, and you come back again to the immediacy of your experience.

This is how we can experiment with shunyata, how we can experiment with the open, boundless dimension of being."

From Pema's book How To Meditate

Mindfulness of breathing is your island,

where you can be safe and happy,

knowing that whatever happens,

you are doing your best.

This is the way to take refuge in the Buddha,

not as mere devotion

but as

a transformational practice.

You do not have to

abandon this world.

You do not have to

go to Heaven or

wait for the future

to take refuge.

 You can take refuge

here and now.
You only need to

dwell

deeply

in

the

present

moment.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

all that's left

francis paul poplawski jr.

april 29, 1949 - november 5, 2011

 

~

 

time it was, and what a time it was, it was

a time of innocence, a time of confidences.

long ago, it must be; i have a photograph

preserve your memories ~ they're all that's left you.

 

simon & garfunkel

"old friends/bookends"

 

 

 

 

~

Kalyani on "Our House"

~

 

This morning I read a powerful piece of writing by fellow yogini Kalyani, and received her permission to share it here. Regardless of your intellectual or political position on this issue, set aside "words and views", as Thich Nhat Hanh says, and allow yourself to experience this in your heart. Because it surely came straight from hers.

 

 

 

I grew up in a small farm town where guns were used for family hunting trips. I have memories of eating venison jerky and shooting cans off a fence with my dad. These are fond memories.

  . . . but I have also been plagued with memories of my dad coming home drunk, full of rage, and me at five years old and hiding under a desk as he shot blanks at my mom and me thinking she was dead . . . or going to bed at night with the same old threat that he could kill us all in our sleep, and then himself, and there was nothing we could do about it . . . or me and my mom secretly following him after he got into his truck to drive when he could hardly stand (to make sure he was safe) and he would drive out in the country, and then stop and get out and point the gun at our car and my mom would scream for me to get down, then it would get real silent and I would peek out from that backseat and he would be standing in the middle of the road with the gun turned on himself as we watched with held breath . . . some nights I would scream at him to leave and that no one wanted him there and he would lock himself in his room with the threat that he would kill himself, and me waiting in silence, sitting on the floor on the other side of the door listening, feeling guilty for saying what I said, as well as feeling guilty that part of me wished he actually would . . . then later as a teen when the thoughts in my head felt too heavy to deal with any longer, and I wanted to escape the chaos in my mind by any means necessary, I would hold that same gun that was used to threaten us, to my own head. For years I was obsessed with the thought of leaving a mess for him to clean up because I was tired of trying to clean up his mess he left me. At 16 I put myself on second floor because I was afraid I would pull the trigger. Thank god I never pulled the trigger. Thank god, even though we left the woman's shelter when I was 5 to live in that house for 10 more years, no one was killed. Things could have ended up very very very differently. In other households they have.

Our house was a sick house. A gun had no business being there. I support background checks and psychological evaluation for gun ownership . . . not because of some ideology or politics . . . but from direct personal experience.

About Kalyani:

 

Kalyani is a student of Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati and Baba Bhagavan Das, in the Lineage of Neem Karoli Baba. She teaches Yoga and Meditation Classes, Workshops and Retreats, and conducts community Kirtans and Pujas in the Kankakee IL area.

In 1996 Kalyani met Ma Vandana, a 75 year old nun who introduced her to Meditation, Tantra, Vedanta and her Beloved Mother Kali. Ma Vandana worked closely with Kalyani for 7 years and gave her the name "Daya", a Sanskrit name meaning Compassion.

It was also in 1996 that Kalyani first met Shree Maa of Kamakhya and Swami Satyananda Saraswati. This meeting awakened the path of Bhakti Yoga . . . the yoga of devotion, and started her deeper study of the scriptures and learning the ancient practice of Puja.

During that time she studied Kundalini Yoga at Spirit Rising Yoga Center in Chicago. She received her teaching certification and began teaching in 2002.

In 2002, Kalyani met Baba Bhagavan Das, with whom she received mantra initiation and her spiritual name "Kalyani" -- She who is Auspicious --  and began the practice of Nada Yoga, the yoga of sound, and became more and more passionate on her path of Bhakti Yoga and Tantric Shaktism.

In 2006, she received her Kali Natha Yoga Teaching certification at Kashi Ashram in Sabastion Florida under her Spiritual Mother, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, who bestowed upon her the beautiful name "Kali Ma" -- Mother who removes all Darkness.

In 2012, she reunited with her first Teacher, Ma Vandana, who now at the age of 90, has given Kalyani permission to pass on the teachings that she received back in 1996.

Kalyani looks forward to learning, growing and deepening her personal practice and devotion to Divine Mother and continuing her dedication to sharing this Love with others.

 

You can connect with her on Facebook HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

~

fire in the what???

I'm making plans to attend a 10-day vipassana retreat in August. During the course of my online browsing I came across a first-hand account of the experience which includes the following paragraph ~ That made me laugh so hard I cried. Should I reconsider?? Yoga siddhi, anyone?? 

 "Again at the same course, James and I got a ride to the center from a gentle, soft-spoken older man from Portland named Ian. We talked amiably on the way up and stopped to pick up tubs of tofu to bring to the center. Several days into the course, during a group sit, we suddenly heard a loud human cry/grunt and then the sound of a hard thunk on the floor. No one moved from their meditation, but I looked up to see Ian, dazed, slowly being raised up from the floor by the student manager. He had apparently passed out and fallen forward, knocking his head on the ground. He was escorted out of the hall and was gone for some time. I was worried. But he reappeared in the hall a while later with a white bandage taped onto his forehead and sat the rest of the course without incident. When day 10 came, and we could talk again, we asked him what happened. He said he had just been sitting there meditating as usual when suddenly sparks started shooting out of his butt and he was flung off his cushion, knocking his forehead hard on the floor. The assistant teacher told him that the sparks were nothing to worry about, it was just the eruption of a sleeping volcano of deep internal complexes. Good that it had come out. We rode back with Ian to the Portland airport, teasing him the whole way. Once we got home, James and I sent him a card thanking him for the ride, along with a protective helmet he could wear while meditating, lest he encounter any more sleeping volcanoes."

You can read the full account HERE.

 

 

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