Yoga, Meditation in Action: Seane Corn (video)

Yogi Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Krista Tippett, Trent Gilliss (onbeing.org)

 

American Yogini Seane Corn

Yoga has infiltrated law schools and strip malls, churches and hospitals. This 5,000-year-old spiritual technology is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives.
 

Midwesterner Seane Corn ("Off the Mat Into the World") takes us inside the practicalities and power of yoga [mainly those limbs of an ancient eightfold practice focusing on physical postures and breath regulation]. Corn describes how it helps her face the darkness in herself and the world and how she’s come to see yoga as a form of body prayer. More

• Listen to the radio show/podcast
• When Yoga Gets Really Real  When I moved to Jerusalem two years ago, I thought for sure that I would continue my yoga practice, especially after having yoga present in my life in so many ways for so many years. And I thought that I would even find others in this holy city to practice with. A sangha (spiritual community), a space, a teacher...

Exploring Mysteries, Encouraging a Love Affair with Life Parker Palmer pays homage with words of wisdom on "the savage and beautiful country that lies in between."

  

Living with Yoga: rehabilitation

Molested at 6-years-old, Corn made a gift of that experience -- not in spite of it -- by transforming the shame and darkness. She works with child prostitutes and sex trafficking here in the U.S. and in Buddhist countries like Cambodia. She went through a period of drug abuse, sex abuse, and other efforts to numb out and check out. But when she faced and actually dealt with and transformed the shadow, she was able to venture on the road to becoming whole.

  

VIDEO: Body Prayer
Trent Gilliss (onbeing.orgj)

For Seane Corn, yoga is much more than a practice in flexibility. It’s a way of applying spiritual lessons to real-world problems and personal issues. One way she channels her energy and love is through a practice she calls “body prayer,” as she shares in this video from Yoga from the Heart.

She shared this perspective about “body prayer” in the show, “Yoga, Meditation in Action”:
 

“I trust that if I do my yoga practice, I’m going to get stronger and more flexible. If I stay in alignment, if I don’t push, if I don’t force, then my body will organically open in time.

“I know that if I breathe deeply, I’ll oxygenate my body. It has an influence on my nervous system. These things are fixed and I know to be true.

“But I also recognize that it’s a mystical practice, and you can use your body as an expression of your devotion. So the way that you place your hands, the ways that you step a foot forward or back, everything is done as an offering. I offer the movements to someone I love or to the healing of the planet.

 

Hope I can do yoga like Seane during this war

“And so if I’m moving from a state of love and my heart is open to that connection between myself and another person or myself and the universe, it becomes an active form of prayer, of meditation, of grace.

“And when you’re offering your practice as a gift, as I was in that particular DVD, as I do often, I was offering to my dad who’s very ill. And so when I have an intention behind what I’m doing, then it becomes so fluid. Because if I fall out of a pose I’m not going to swear, I’m not going to get disappointed or frustrated. 

Titling a Show on Seane Corn’s Yoga

“I’m going to realize that this is my offering, and I don’t want to offer that energy to my father. I only want to offer him my love. And so I let my body reflect that. And when you link the body with the breath, when my focus is solely on getting the pose to embrace the breath that I’m actualizing, then the practice, it’s almost in slow motion.

“It has a sense of effortlessness. When people can connect to that, it takes the pressure off of trying to do it perfectly. It just becomes a real expression of their own heart.

“Sometimes it’s graceful and elegant, other times it’s kind of funky and abstract, but it’s authentic to who the person is. It’s their own poetry.” More

Learn a New Word; Parker Palmer Reminds Us That Work Doesn't Define You; Yoga Mom and Child; The Ethics of Lockpicking?

This week inspired a lesson from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poetic reflection on being more than doing from Parker Palmer, a precious moment that will make you smile, and a peculiar story about a lockpicker that will make you think.

Yoga training and 2015 trip to India

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Jeanne Heileman (Yogaworks.com/Larchmont)

Come and see the wonders of North India with Jeanne Heileman (internationalyoga.com)

Yoga instructors Jeanne Heileman and Sarah Ezrin, YogaWorks, Larchmont More info

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YogaWorks trip to India with Jeanne Heileman

This free event is the perfect way to find out more about what makes the YogaWorks method, and YogaWorks Teacher Training, the gold standard for yoga in the U.S. and beyond. The session begins with a free hour class taught in the YogaWorks method followed by a information session led by the trainer. This session is highly recommended for students considering our teacher training, as well as serious students of yoga who are curious as to what taking a teacher training involves and how to take their yoga practice to the next level. Space is limited; RSVP recommended to hold a spot. There will also be a presentation on the upcoming trip to India. More

YogaWorks, Larchmont

Just east of Hollywood, California Larchmont Village has as a casual feel to it, the main street lively with foot traffic. Smack in the middle of the bustle sits Center for Yoga, a peaceful, homey studio steeped in history. Originally founded in 1967 by Ganga White (of White Lotus fame), Center for Yoga was the first yoga studio to open in Los Angeles. Maty Ezraty, one of the original YogaWorks founders, worked as a manager at the Center before moving on to open her own studio on Montana Avenue.
 

Spanning two floors, this charming space has three yoga rooms including a rope wall and a giant main room with high ceilings and a life-size Buddha. True to its classical roots, the studio attracts many devoted yoga students from the Los Angeles area. They come for advanced Mysore style Ashtanga and Vinyasa Flow Classes. Beginners also have a wide variety of Level 1 classes to choose from, like YogaWorks signature and Iyengar.

Enjoy a FREE WEEK of unlimited yoga, meditation, and exercise at YogaWorks

Join us on our trip to see the wonders of India, January 2015 (internationalyoga.com)

VAS: Buddhist "Rains Retreat" period begins

Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Abbot Dhammarama, Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara LENT/VAS 2014

How shall I spend the rainy season, hopping around or meditating? (onebigphoto.com)

On Sunday, July 13, 2014 from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara (LABV) temple will celebrate the commencement of the Rains Retreat period, often called "Buddhist Lent."

It is a period of intensive practice for monastics and a time when lay practitioners visit temples, monasteries, and pagodas to hear the Dharma (Teachings), engage in devotional activities, meditate, and establish their ties with monastics.

LABV will have weekly Dharma talks open to all on Sundays followed by Sri Lankan island cuisine. Many visiting monastics will deliver sermons, hold question and answer sessions, and be available to clarify points of controversy and uncertainty regarding the Buddha's teachings.
 

Sunday is the Super Moon of the ancient month of Asala. The lunar observance for those dressed in white includes an all-day virtue (sila) program where visitors are invited to observe the Eight Precepts for the day according to ancient Indian tradition from at least the time of the Buddha.

Rains Retreat

According to the ancient Theravada Buddhist tradition, the Asalha Full Moon Day marks the beginning of the Vas (Vassana) Season. Supporters of the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara will formally invite the resident monastics to observe Rains Retreat at 5:00 pm. Those observing the Eight Precepts earlier in the day are also invited to attend this auspicious and meritorious event.

There will be an opportunity to listen to the Dharma and practice meditation to enhance every practitioner's direct knowledge of the  Dharma and develop inner peace during the three months of this season. Weekly programs during this period will be:

• Dharma sermons,
• Sutra discussions,
• Meditation practice,
• Bodhi devotional ceremonies,
• Atavisi Buddha puja and more

Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

920 N. Summit Ave., Pasadena. CA 91103

(626) 797-6144

But why?
Wisdom Quarterly wiki edit

Buddhist monks traversing Pongua Waterfalls in Vietnam (sun-surfer.com)

 
The three-lunar-month annual retreat observed by Theravada practitioners during the Indian rainy season is called Vassa between July and October. In English, it is often glossed as Rains Retreat or Buddhist Lent, the latter by analogy to the Catholic/Christian Lent (which Buddhism predates by at least five centuries). For the duration of monastics reside at one monastery rather than traveling around. In some monasteries, they dedicate this time to teaching the Dharma or to intensive meditation. Some lay Buddhists choose to observe the period by adopting more ascetic practices, such as giving up alcohol, meat, and smoking if they are already engaged in these harmful activities. It may casually be called "Buddhist Lent," others object to this terminology. It is, after all, more of an obligation for monastics than lay Buddhists. How long someone has been a monk or nun is actually calculated not by calendar years but by how many Rains Retreats one has successfully observed. Most Mahayana Buddhists do not observe it, though many Seon/Thien monastics in Korea and Vietnam observe an equivalent retreat of three months of intensive practice in one location, and in Tibetan Buddhism this period of intensive retreat is called Yarne.

Perfectionism: Taking the Easy Way

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Brianna Sacks (k llingthebuddha.com)

"K lling the Buddha" is a glib koan that became a Mahayana slogan for "do not put idols on pedestals." We can become awakened without depending on others, that is, when we awaken, the truth we realize does not depend on anyone or anything. But getting their does depend on noble friendship. So even the thought of harming the Buddha, a liberator, offends Theravada sensibilities. It makes light of one of the Five Heinous Karmic Acts.

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Brianna Sacks (Huffington Post/USC)

Surrounded by ten other cross-legged and deeply breathing bodies rooted still in the thick India morning air, I felt a sense of triumph. I -- the buzzing, over-stimulated American -- was meditating.

 

My screaming hips and lower back quivered in resistance as I focused on the gentle rocking of my long breaths, silently repeating, “Hong Sau” as the monks directed. Swaddled in a red felt blanket under the swaying mosquito net of the Ananda Ashram’s makeshift temple, I had won. That’s how I saw my dip into the spiritual world -- something to check off my accomplishment list.

 

Some did try to kill the Buddha like Angulimala.

I pray to no religious leader, nor do I seek guidance from a higher power. I am a disciple of the great American religion of ambition.

• [Be lamps (dipa) unto yourselves, be islands (dipa) unto yourselves taking no other as a lamp or island with only the Dharma as your guide was the historical Buddha's final admonition (DN 16). See exact wording below.]

It hasn’t always been that way. Two very loving, comforting, metaphysically aligned parents brought me into this world, and I thank these people for my unique, spiritual childhood -- parents who often meditated against the trunk of an ancient oak tree shadowing our home because of its “powerful energy” or gathered with their handful of spiritual friends, who opened chakras and performed healing treatments. At breakfast my brother and I discussed last night’s dreams from our booster seats. Crystals and worn, ripped copies of the Kabbalah were my playthings. Everything smelled like incense. I sang Hebrew blessings over my preschool lunches, attended Hebrew school, was bat-mitzvahed, and later dabbled in Christian youth groups and momentarily found Jesus.

 

“Meditate, it will save you,” is what I grew up hearing. But I couldn’t.

When I was six, my parents asked me to draw the hurt in my soul because, as my mother says, I was born with a painful wound burrowed into my being. They kept the drawing -- one of a gray, black mass resembling a cave that lived inside my giant red, lopsided heart.

 

My mother calls me a machine, a robot wrought of skin and bone that can always push harder, do more, be better.
 

My unrelenting quest for perfection often produces debilitating panic attacks and pitfalls of depression. The number of times I have spent trapped in my car, hyperventilating, sobbing, trying to breathe into the phone while my mom on the other end of the line tries to calm me begs the question: “What am I chasing?”

Pausing, forcing myself to pull back the restless, insecure pieces of myself and look deep inside is a task I have been running from, fearing that if I do, I will get lost.

 

“You’re already lost” is a thought that often rings far off in my consciousness. But ambition is still my accepted method of self-torture.

 

So when I learned that my journalism class would be spending almost three days at the Ananda Ashram in Pune, India, before our reporting week in Mumbai [Bombay], I silently cursed everything. 

 

Meditation, which had haunted me my entire life, would put me on lockdown. In rural India, surrounded by grey shrubs, slow, shriveled cows, and red mountains, I would not be able to escape. More

What the Buddha said at the end
"The Great Final-Nirvana Discourse" (Maha Parinirvana Sutra, DN 16.33-35)

Theravada: The Buddha reclining into final nirvana, Thailand (DennisonUy/flickr)

 
33. "Therefore, Ananda, be lamps/islands (dipa) unto yourselves, guides (sarana) unto yourselves, seeking no external guide, with the Dharma as your island, the Dharma as your guide, seeking no other guide.
 
"And how, Ananda, is a disciple an island unto oneself, a guide unto oneself, seeking no external guide, with the Dharma as one's island, the Dharma as one's guide, seeking no other guide?
 
34. (1) "When one dwells contemplating (satipatthanas or The Four Foundations of Mindfulness) the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome hankering and sorrow with regard to the world; (2) when one dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, (3) the mind in the mind, and (4) mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome hankering and sorrow with regard to the world, then, truly, one is an island unto oneself, a guide unto oneself, seeking no external guide, having the Dharma as one's island, the Dharma as one's guide, seeking no other guide.
 
35. "Those disciples of mine, Ananda, who now or after I am gone, abide as a island unto themselves, as a guide unto themselves, seeking no other guide, having the Dharma as their island and guide, seeking no other guide: it is they who will become the highest (tamatagge), if they have the zeal to learn."

• VIDEO: Buddhist monks bless new Thai restaurant's opening

ZEN: Who in the world is Alan Watts?

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; AlanWatts.org

Zen Birthday Card: "Not thinking of you." (Piraro/bizarro.com)

  

Early Alan Watts, London (colorized photo)

Alan Watts was born in London in 1915, at the start of World War I. At a young age he became fascinated with the Far East, and at 14 he began to write and was published in the Journal of the London Buddhist Lodge before writing his first booklet on Zen in 1932. He moved to New York in 1938 and then to Chicago, where he served as an Episcopal priest for six years before leaving the Church. In 1950, he moved to upstate New York before going on to San Francisco to teach at the Academy of Asian Studies. Among Alan Watts' earliest influences were the novelist Sax Rohmer and Zen scholars D.T. Suzuki and Christmas Humpreys. In late 1950, he visited with Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in NYC.

 

Worldview

Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta [the "best of the ancient Vedas"] and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan.
 

"Why cats are awesome" (RantsRavesT)

After leaving the [Anglican] Church, he never became a member of another organized religion. And although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, he was criticized by American Buddhist practitioners for not sitting regularly in zazen. Alan Watts responded simply by saying, "A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away."

• Don't be like Alan, kids. Here's how to zazen
• VIDEO: Be like Alan, kids: Watch cartoons

Expect the unexpected, and you won't be disappointed ("Zen Comics"/Ioanna Salajan)

  

1950's and early '60's

Later wild-eyed Alan Watts, Berkeley

After teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, he became Dean and began to give regular radio talks on KPFA FM, the Berkeley free radio station. In 1957, he published his bestselling Way of Zen, and in 1958 returned to Europe where he met with C.G. Jung. He was an early subject in pioneering psychedelic trials and, after recording two seasons of the public television series "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life," traveled to Japan several times in the early sixties. By the late sixties, he had become a counterculture celebrity, and traveled widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe.
 

The adventures of a doctoral candidate in "PHD ZEN" (phdcomics.com/Jorge Cham)

 
Later Years

The animated Alan Watts is not just for kids

By the early seventies, Alan Watts had become a foremost interpreter of Eastern thought for the West and was widely published in periodicals including Earth, Elle, Playboy, and Redbook. He appeared on CBS television's "Camera Three" in 1969, and in 1971 he recorded a pilot for a new show titled "A Conversation with Myself" for NET, the precursor to PBS. When the series was not produced, he recorded the shows with his son Mark and his long-time audio archivist Henry Jacobs in 1972. Overall, Alan Watts developed an extensive audio library of nearly 400 talks and wrote more than 25 books during his lifetime, including his final volume, Tao: The Watercourse Way. Alan Watts died in his sleep in November of 1973, after returning from an intensive international lecture tour. More

(Wiki featured article, May 15, 2014) Mycena aurantiomarginata, commonly known as the golden-edge bonnet, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Mycenaceae. First formally described in 1803, it was given its current name in 1872. It is common in Europe and North America, and has also been collected in North Africa, Central America, and Japan... More

Join the Om Healing Circle of Los Angeles

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Kaustubhi (omhealingcircle@gmail.com)

"OM" (aum) is the primordial or cosmic "sound of the universe" (Didi/esotericonline.net)

 

Everyone is invited to visit and join the Om Healing Circle in Los Angeles. It meets every first and third Saturday of the month at 1:00 pm. Together, participants seek to heal themselves, humanity, and Mother Earth (Bhumi, Gaia, Pachamama...). Om is a seed (bija) mantra with powerful resonant effects.

• Kaustubhi: (323) 423-3371
• omhealingcircle@gmail.com
• Protective Chanting in Buddhism
• The Book of Protection (Paritta)
• Recommended CDs from SoundsTrue: Mantras for Meditation and Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand
• See the World, my Children. It's big!

Healing Mantras

Enrico Galvini (CEO of Bodhisattva Music) and his faithful dog recommend Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand holding the German version in the jungles of Costa Rica.

Thomas Ashley-Farrand explains the Vedic origins, meanings, and uses of mantra.

Aum & Garden's Body, Mind, Spirit Expo

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; AumAndGarden.com; KPFK.org

Aum & Garden is a retail gathering place in Sherman Oaks, California that celebrates life by offering a variety of products and services for inner and outer sanctuaries. 

Statues for the garden, candles for the home, books for the soul, A&G has much to add beauty to life. Meeting home and garden needs, classes, workshops, and media events in the Valley are all part of a mission to bring the world more peace, joy, and beauty. More

• Aum & Garden, 13363 Ventura Blvd.
• Sherman Oaks, CA 91423, (818) 788-3400

Spring Equinox: Happy First Day of the Year!

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly  VERNAL EQUINOX 2014

Flowers and fruits are possible thanks to bees (Teacher Julia/tx.english-ch.com)

The fragrant jasmine wafted all over the meditator (mostbeautifulflower.com)

 

In Bangalore (BBclix/flickr)

Happy "New Year"! (In Buddhist Asia, as in most of the ancient world, spring marked the New Year not an arbitrary Gregorian designation ruining a calendar once in perfect sync with Luna/Chandra our Moon, who gives us our seasons, and Sol/Surya our Sun, who floods us in cosmic rays). 

Happy Nowuz from Tehrangeles and Feliz Primavera from Olvera St., formerly Mexico (both well rooted in bustling Los Angeles)!

A new beginning

Meditating on a mandarava flower

With the renewal of Gaia/Bhūmi our Earth we, too, can make a renewed resolve to meditate or at least to be more "mindful" and present as our day unfolds. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, the adage goes, and whether we've heard it before or find it new and insightful, isn't it? If today is, can't we choose to do things differently from now on right at this moment? When else are we EVER able to choose, or do, or accrue karma/merit other than right NOW? So some say, "Now is all there is." Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Ram Dass, the Beatles in India, even the Panchen Lama and his elder would agree. We hear as savakas. We see it. We live it.

Meditation

Reclining meditation (pinterest)

Here is a fascinating meditation to breakthrough to serenity, insight, and self-knowledge. O, what I wouldn't give to be calm! (It helps to begin with a blessing to pre-direct the mind/heart, honoring the Three Jewels of the Enlightened One, the Enlightened Teaching, and the Enlightened listeners/practitioners. This will help if fear arises that one will be unprotected, "open" and susceptible to inimical-influences like spirits, as so many fundamental Christians, Catholics, and Muslims warn).

INSTRUCTIONS: Sit comfortably. Breathe deeply. Let go. Let go of thinking, breathing, sitting, doing, and let it happen. Let what happen? Serenity will happen. Accept the suffering and let it pass right through without holding on. (Resisting is a form of holding on).

When there is serenity, it becomes possible to gain absorption and develop successful insight (east coast) for liberation.

St. Patrick's Day celebration, SoCal

Seth Auberon and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Moonbeam, FollowYourHeart.com

I'll destroy the pagans and make sure snakes do not return with their nature worship! (CP)

Flowery bhumi-deva Pagan ceremony, Avebury (Solar/Shahmai Network/shahmai.org)

   

It might be better to be in Amherst, Mass.

CANOGA PARK, California - Deep in "The Valley," the world-famous stretch of suburban flatlands that end only as the sea and mountains and desert get to be too much, there is an interesting old park. Well, it's less grassy "park" than asphalt town: Canoga Park held its St. Paddy's Day party with a parade that began at the Madrid Theatre on Sherman Way with a sidewalk march. There were stilt walkers, bag pipers, the sanctified patriarch himself, and friends all over Old Town Canoga Park. It culminated in a lot on Owensmouth with live Irish music from Jerry McLean and tales by True Thomas the Irish Storyteller. (CanogaParkCal.com)

Follow Your Heart!

For health, longevity, spirituality, love, and herbal cures, FYH has it all at (818) 348-3240.

  

Yoga unites body, mind, and breath (spiritus).

The jewel of the city, however, what puts it on the map and makes it worth visiting, is an awesome institution called Follow Your Heart (FYH)! It's a health food store, a vegetarian restaurant, a health center with free seminars and group meditation, a yoga studio, a product brand, a hippie haven, a hangout bar none near the California communes of Topanga in the wooded hills above and behind Santa Monica and Malibu beaches. More

• So Bohemian: Topanga: Malibu's hippie cousin? (CNN)
• VISIT: 21825 Sherman Way, Canoga Park, CA 91303
• The Real History of St. Patrick's Day
• St. Patrick's Day: 5 places to find a bit of blarney