tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68885360464170805262024-03-13T12:15:41.663-05:00The Literary YogiTextual Adventures in Yoga PracticeLeslie LaChancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13226869684110449429noreply@blogger.comBlogger2613tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888536046417080526.post-26707944005517502612011-12-17T10:12:00.000-06:002011-12-17T10:12:50.154-06:00The End of DesireIn the December issue of <i>Poetry</i> magazine, just inside the cover is an excerpt from the poem "Twigs" by Taha Muhammad Ali, printed in memory of the Palestinian poet, who died recently. The stanza reads<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">And so<br />
it has taken me<br />
all of sixty years<br />
to understand<br />
that water is the finest drink,<br />
and bread the most delicious food,<br />
and that art is worthless<br />
unless it plants<br />
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.</blockquote>With that splendor comes stillness and longing at once, the paradox of the contemplative moment. In fact, the entire poem, which appears in Ali's collection <i>So What? </i>resigns itself to longing, desire, attachment and finally, the non-attachment we speculate we'll find in death.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Neither music,<br />
fame, nor wealth,<br />
not even poetry itself,<br />
could provide consolation<br />
for life's brevity,<br />
or the fact that <i>King Lear</i><br />
is a mere eighty pages long and comes to an end,<br />
and for the thought that one might suffer greatly<br />
on account of a rebellious child.</blockquote>So the poem begins. It ends<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">After we die,<br />
and the weary heart<br />
has lowered its final eyelid<br />
on all that we've done,<br />
and on all that we've longed for,<br />
on all that we've dreamt of,<br />
all we've desired<br />
or felt,<br />
hate will be<br />
the first thing<br />
to putrefy<br />
within us. </blockquote>Oh, to release our hold on that dark desire, to say farewell to hate at last! Is it so, only in death? Alas. And isn't Mortality the perfect muse, birthing her twins, Hope & Despair?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"> </blockquote>Leslie LaChancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13226869684110449429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888536046417080526.post-87769095302173792752011-01-25T09:19:00.000-06:002011-01-25T09:19:59.676-06:00It's Still Winter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj084a_rkDm07P8k1TFT310bKhi79k8c0oKu1_U2qKtzW_8gR4VFAFKf-eNr0YTzS0KKG_AyS5FTuOlJcK_RIjmBY6NCfhnZfslMDYOgk9klaubsKGjOnd523omL86LPYnpIcDP5ewmrPw/s1600/DSCN1252.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj084a_rkDm07P8k1TFT310bKhi79k8c0oKu1_U2qKtzW_8gR4VFAFKf-eNr0YTzS0KKG_AyS5FTuOlJcK_RIjmBY6NCfhnZfslMDYOgk9klaubsKGjOnd523omL86LPYnpIcDP5ewmrPw/s200/DSCN1252.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>It's still winter in the Northern Hemisphere, though we have a bit more sunlight each day. In a mere few weeks, daffodils and crocuses will be poking up through the mud, and forsythia will froth up the hedges overnight here in Tennessee. Nevertheless, temperatures have been especially frigid in the North, well below zero recently, and we've had an unusual bit of snow in the South. Though I'm not a fan of cold weather, I do like the way winter stills the world and forces me to attend to what I might not notice in the excitement and busyness of the warmer seasons.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIxy8EnGAIL957oCsUFXlOLoRMTyUUZAZ1QsN6vvv8gG49LcL9QxUVkcCx2P8QxujmDT5UIXpWhs3q6zZ0RaGPx_L3E0K66nSjw-u_GxzRhxFwDMck0Gd7HBXYK29CqSIdjXxkF7GKQ0I/s1600/DSCN1248.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIxy8EnGAIL957oCsUFXlOLoRMTyUUZAZ1QsN6vvv8gG49LcL9QxUVkcCx2P8QxujmDT5UIXpWhs3q6zZ0RaGPx_L3E0K66nSjw-u_GxzRhxFwDMck0Gd7HBXYK29CqSIdjXxkF7GKQ0I/s200/DSCN1248.JPG" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnSIxofxOLMuRyYBOLhMeMfIWYkqEVS9TgwG__KTZZk4CPbsjBOOEey8wDseHcz3s4eQRfooE8rlcIyeJsKOe_-3aXrH2h4n_36zgV32LzTvtAg1CGZzRhgKmrA9xyB0LssAhcS2UZYI/s1600/DSCN1249.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnSIxofxOLMuRyYBOLhMeMfIWYkqEVS9TgwG__KTZZk4CPbsjBOOEey8wDseHcz3s4eQRfooE8rlcIyeJsKOe_-3aXrH2h4n_36zgV32LzTvtAg1CGZzRhgKmrA9xyB0LssAhcS2UZYI/s200/DSCN1249.JPG" width="150" /></a>Back in November, when the cold shredded the last of the bright leaves from the trees, I began to pay attention to how the trees' essential shapes were revealed. At first, the word I chose to describe those black branches against the cold sky was "unadorned", but that word was not exactly right. The trees were very much adorned, fringed still with old brown leaves that had managed to hang on, and dotted with squirrels' nests I would never have noticed when the trees were full and green. At the time, I was teaching Thoreau in my American literature course and kept returning to one of my favorite passages from <i>Walden</i>, one that I've already taken a look at in this blog: <a href="http://literaryyogi.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-purpose.html">On Purpose</a>. In the passage, Thoreau describes his rejection of typical worldly pursuits in favor of what he felt would be a more meaningful life of quiet contemplation.<br />
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I couldn't help but read the wintry, stripped down trees as a metaphor for what Thoreau was trying to do, paring his life down to its most essential nature. They also put me in mind of Patanjali's Sutra on Practice, 11.30. This sutra enumerates the yamas, or abstentions of yoga.<br />
<blockquote>The yamas are nonviolence, truthfulness, refrainment from stealing, celibacy, and renunciation of unnecessary possessions. (Translation by Edwin Bryant)</blockquote>The yamas are a summons to mindfulness in our day to day activities, markers on that path to our essential nature. Winter makes me notice the squirrels' nests, yoga awakens the consciousness. I'll still kvetch about the cold, but I want also to be grateful for the restraints of winter turning me inward as the season stills the world about us.Leslie LaChancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13226869684110449429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6888536046417080526.post-20550287820929872762010-11-18T10:41:00.001-06:002010-11-21T08:30:47.545-06:00On Song, Breath, and Wallace Stevens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVlnH9uyVyik4xvRmKrNbgJ52lkQnvEIUoXL4Hrs8kGJV3Zf8MIz3QaOY2d_gmbooPtgLXDzoUDSWhjFSuHUgPBNPHtDqX0Mp3_LOE5HQ5H22c5n47Gh4TQjki8ZBlIuu1bU0CrIX3GlE/s1600/BabyBirds_Miller_061705.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVlnH9uyVyik4xvRmKrNbgJ52lkQnvEIUoXL4Hrs8kGJV3Zf8MIz3QaOY2d_gmbooPtgLXDzoUDSWhjFSuHUgPBNPHtDqX0Mp3_LOE5HQ5H22c5n47Gh4TQjki8ZBlIuu1bU0CrIX3GlE/s200/BabyBirds_Miller_061705.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>A couple of days ago I heard a story on the radio about <a href="http://www.npr.org/2010/11/16/131359561/unfamiliar-accents-turn-off-humans-and-songbirds">human responses to regional accents. </a> The story mentioned that songbirds also have regional "accents" and that, like humans, birds recognize these differences. Curious, I searched a bit more for discussions of birdsong and accents, and I found <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129155123">another story suggesting that speech and language have their origins in song.</a> Then, like a good yogi, I started thinking about the role of sound in yoga practice, how chanting and bells and the sounds of the natural world help us find our way to our essential being...and then, of course, I thought about breath, how it sounds inside and outside the body. And I realized that, while breath and sound are both rather magical things, the space between them, that stillness between the inhalation and exhalation, that silence before and after the tone, are just as magical. So, of course, that all made me think about this verse from Wallace Stevens' famous "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird":<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2K_S-l_vrOI38lKCgOH4oMjATN7W-vnMdyZxKDdevhyVg5eGzLsWxRuOuyvnkNpCPRnz-hi00b7yLDzPmYsRPSiX2wq1DYX6Ap9DHe_VBOu8LazwLugUS3g3Vj556sGR0aP8yb0ISl4/s1600/Blackbird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2K_S-l_vrOI38lKCgOH4oMjATN7W-vnMdyZxKDdevhyVg5eGzLsWxRuOuyvnkNpCPRnz-hi00b7yLDzPmYsRPSiX2wq1DYX6Ap9DHe_VBOu8LazwLugUS3g3Vj556sGR0aP8yb0ISl4/s200/Blackbird.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I do not know which to prefer,<br />
The beauty of inflections<br />
Or the beauty of innuendo,<br />
The blackbird whistling<br />
Or just after.Leslie LaChancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13226869684110449429noreply@blogger.com