Patanjali Peace Quote

"When a person is established in non-violence, those in his vicinity cease to feel hostility."

~ Patanjali ~




Patanjali, in the third century B.C. (or in the A.D. 400s according to various scholars) compiled from earl;ier oral traditions a fundamental document describing the eight "limbs" of yoga.

It contains the following steps for achieving spiritual liberation:

1. Yama, the restraint of bad habits
2. Niyama, the cultivation of good habits in one's daily life
3. Asana, the adoption of steady and comfortable postures with specific physiological effects
4. Pranayama, special breathing exercises
5. Pratyahara, withdrawing the mind from objects of sensory perception, as in meditation
6. Dharana, concentration on selected objects
7. Dhyana, steady contemplation in which the sense of separateness of the self from the object of concentration disappears
8. Samadhi, the absolute, ecstatic experience of mystical unity with all of creation.

Dorothy Thompson Peace Quotes

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."

"Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism."

-Dorothy Thompson

A quote for Thursday

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

-Albert Einstein

Seane Corn Speaking About Yoga's Therapeutic Benefits For Those Suffering From OCD

On Krista Tippets Website Speaking Of Faith, I ran across this interview with Yoga teacher Seane Corn.



Seane Corn teaches yoga at the Exhale Center for Sacred Movement in Venice, California. She is the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS, and co-founder of "Off the Mat, Into the World."

She grew up in New Jersey and from the age of 11, she had suffered from an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. In the interview she explains how the practicalities and power of yoga is a healing force for in dealing with her OCD and helps her face the darkness within herself and the world.

The following excerpts are from the interview with Krista Tippett, a link below will take you to her website where you can listen to the full interview.

Ms. Corn: "When I was around 19 was the first time that a doctor had explained to me what it is that I had. Before then, I thought it was an interesting quirk. So did my family. I was obsessed with even numbers: four and eight. And I'd have to touch things in certain numbers: blink, swallow. If I walked into a wall, I'd have to walk in on the other side. And depending on my anxiety level, my obsession for balance became greater or less than. And it was also very much associated with death. I always felt that if I did things in certain numbers, I could prevent the death or dying of somebody around me that I loved. So by keeping my world in order, I can control bad things from happening. This wasn't conscious; I figured this out way later. It was just an interesting little survival skill that a kid out of balance created."

Ms. Tippett: "Yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting, interesting only because you found such healing. That yoga is, I mean, one element of yoga is about balance and in fact you had this disordered relationship, this very compulsive, anxious pursuit of balance in that disease."

Ms. Corn: "Well, I didn't know how bad my OCD was until my first yoga class."

Ms. Tippett: "Really?"

Ms. Corn: "Because I remember being in one of my first downward dogs and I looked at my hands and I noticed that one hand was a fraction of an inch further forward than the other, yet my shoulders were balanced. And I didn't understand, how do I get my hands to match but then my shoulders would be out of balance. And my heart started to race and I was, for the first time, really critically aware that both sides of the body aren't exactly the same. And the teacher said something in that class that was really life-changing for me. He said, "Breathe and everything changes." And what that meant for me was that as the anxiety came up, which it was, because I couldn't get my body in the right alignment, I just kept breathing deeply. And it was a sensation. Anxiety is a feeling. It's a sensation within the body. The deeper I breathed the more that started to pass, and it just became something else. And I thought, "Wow. I wonder if when anxiety shows up in my life if I can actually do the same thing, if I can just stay present and breathe and trust that it will change."

"The first time that yoga had a real impact on me was I was still living in New York. I remember the day. It was snowing. I had just finished a yoga class, and I was walking back to my apartment. And I had this really weird feeling in my heart, in my body, and everything. And I stopped because I was trying to identify, like, what it was that I was feeling. And I realized that I was happy. And, I mean, it was such an odd moment because I was young, prior to that class I was confused. I was with a guy at the time; I didn't know if I should stay with him, if I should move to L.A. You know, like any young person, I was just in the middle of my own little personal drama and basically lived each day thriving on that drama and was pretty miserable. I just had this sense that everything was unfolding, that I was in something that was bigger than I could possibly define. It was just such an odd little moment, and I thought to myself, "What was different? What changed?" And the only thing that was different was the fact that I took this yoga class. The seeds had been planted; it just hadn't awoken, and for whatever reason, that day I was ready to receive it."

Link to listen to the full interview:
http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/speakingoffaith/20080911_yoga_uc-corn.mp3


To access the Speaking Of Faith website, go to:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org

Thic Naht Hahn speaking about Mindfulness

. . . he starts with noticing the blue sky, always a good place to start if you ask me.
I hope you enjoy this.

Simple Sunday Thoughts

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
there is rapture on the lonely shore





There is society where none intrudes
by the deep sea, and music in it's roar.


-Lord Byron
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Tending The Flow

Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity.
Real calmness should be found in activity itself.

-Shunryu Suzuki
zen mind, beginners mind

I have been working on integrating my mindfulness meditation into my active day, into my life. It is very good for me to make the time to meditate, to set that time aside to be silent and still; to breathe and be with my thoughts.

But one thing that i have learned is that this calmness, this still point, this serenity needs to be brought into my daily activities. My first conscious encounters with this were during my time with the Wet Mountain Sangha, a group of Zen Buddhists who met once or twice a week to meditate. At the Wet Mountain Sangha there was sitting meditation, chanting, reading of inspirational works and discussions, even a book study group.

But what i enjoyed most beyond the sitting was the walking meditation. It was this small integration of an activity between twenty minute sitting periods where i learned to carry the stillness, the mindfulness into an activity.

Years later i am still working on integrating the serenity i achieve in my sitting meditation into my daily activities. This helps a lot with anxieties which arise in the mind.

Often when doing something, performing a task or duty, we expect an immediate result. I know myself fairly well these days and i know that i am someone who enjoys a sense of closure, a sense of accomplishment. I do not like jobs with no end in sight necessarily, i prefer work where when i am done working something is repaired or finished, created, healed or resolved. However, like mindfulness, some things in life are never finished, they are a process or a practice.

Some things are obvious, like eating or sleeping. Or, take the brushing of your teeth, once they are brushed, they must be brushed again soon and regularly.

But then there are other things which simply must be done and no immediate result is in sight, things which take patience. As a gardener i know that this is the case with growing vegetables. I can plant a seed, but its growth to maturity must be monitored and it must be cared for and its needs attended to. In this way, gardening is a long process, a continual flow which even continues into the winter with cover crops, and is extended to mulching and composting, the slow activities of worms and chickens as they contribute to the rich fertility of the soil.

Something i have struggled with for years is financial gain; the work to acquire money in a timely fashion. I have learned to slowly loosen this ideas grip on my emotional well being. When i was doing a lot of landscaping jobs, often the work would be completed for weeks before i ever saw payment. At times i felt that i was just working and not getting paid because of the time between the two events, and i often found this frustrating. I have come to see that my daily work, no matter what it is i need to do that day is all part of the flow of the abundance in my life.

David Skul, a friend and mentor of mine, refers to this as "tending the flow." I love that phrase, "tending the flow." I find that it comes to mind often when i begin to worry about the amount of work or time i am putting into a piece of jewelry or the writing of an article or a piece for my blog. Worries about "wasting time" arise but when i answer that thought with faith that abundance is on the way and give it room and time to grow and fruit in its own time, i realize that i am simply tending the flow.

It is much like gardening. I may go out, pull weeds, and water my garden, but there may not be any tomatoes that day.

I feed my chickens everyday whether they give me an egg or not. I am simply tending the flow. I am simply living and going about the business of life. I am being alive, doing what i have chosen to do in my life.

I recently ran across a quote by Nelson Henderson printed on a box of tea. It is a quote which added another dimension or level to my idea of tending the flow. It deepened the idea, or rather, it deepened my understanding of the flow i am tending.

"The true meaning of life
is to plant trees,
under whose shade
you do not expect to sit."