Celebrate Summer Solstice in NYC with Yoga

In celebration of the longest day of summer this coming Saturday, I'd like to invite those of you who live in and near NYC to join me for the following Yoga events--beginners and masters welcome:

Start the day with Yoga in Times Square:

See: http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/events_solstice.html

If you're in the mood for more, my studio, Golden Bridge Yoga, is holding a free open house for Kundalini Yoga study from 11AM-4PM.

See: http://www.goldenbridgeyoga.com/

Kundalini Yoga is the oldest and most powerful of all the styles and is rarely taught in the West. Contrary to internet rumors, it isn't dangerous at all and even one class will do amazing things for your body and mind. Golden Bridge is the preeminent studio for Kundalini in NYC and our teachers are brilliant and generous.

Hope to see you there!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

I apologize for the paucity of posts recently. As I've mentioned, I work as a director and one of my plays will be going up tomorrow evening. We work the night shift in theatre.

I have encountered some tremendous grace notes from the actors. I can see that they really are courageous people. I am also a little more open to acknowledging their fear on the night before a performance; that they are just professionals in need of some basic reassurance. I can provide that now, more meaningfully... and yet, in seeing their fear, I've become troubled by my role in this occupation. 

Flaubert kept a sign above his studio door which read: 

"Be orderly in your life so that you can be violent on the page."

I agree with the orderly part... and I still see tremendous value in ecstatic engagement with the violence of human stories... and yet... my mental focus and emerging sense of calm have been damaged by my professional engagement with "tragedy" onstage/on the page. 

This is a disquieting realization. Since I am not yet a master (in art or in practicing life), I am concerned about a certain kind of negative energy: the pain which one showcases when directing a play about human beings who are hurting. 

One cannot make art only from the POV of compassionate observer. I would say that good theatre moves beyond measured empathy with our characters. At some level (Method or other techniques) we must become them. There's a danger there that I didn't acknowledge or understand before.

I suspect this is something to ponder rather than act upon (no pun). Still, it's a bit disturbing to realize what one loves in life is potentially hazardous to health and spirit.

Battlestar G. is my Teacher Part II (spoilers)

For people who saw the finale. If we cannot forgive we will be in the last shot of the season. 

Religious people when faced with such imagery often say: repent now.

Frak that. Just forgive. 

Forgiving Dr. Mengele

I've shared this doc with quite a few people. The reaction is usually near violent disagreement. Yeah... the Ego dies hard.

A vibrator for your mind

Quantum physics and string theory have been subject to a lot of use and abuse in recent years by the spiritual community. 

Cough-cough-What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?-cough. 

Actually, as long as you keep your wits about you, it's a very beautiful documentary. But, please, please, after you're done viewing it, read something like The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to make your inner science teacher happy.

However, taking the above as an inspiration only, I would like to make a more basic point here:  just as it is the nature of all atomic and subatomic particles to be in a state of constant vibration, consider your thinking--when you "talk to yourself" in your mind's ear, do you tend to monotone your inner monologue? I do. I drone it--that's why it's usually not helpful.

In kundalini yoga and mindful meditation which follows, a gong and singing bowls (the famous instrument from Nepal) are employed to literally vibrate the bodies of the students.

It's a very pleasant feeling. I like being vibrated--and who doesn't really? What one realizes after a while of practicing this (especially with chanting) is that your thinking's perspective is altered: you actually begin to think musically... sometimes in words and sometimes in images. Vladimir Nabokov, for example, claimed to have so mastered this process that he only thought in images. 

This is one of the ways through which one can realize that thinking isn't a bad thing--it's just that we don't do it very well. Like all things monotoned, so often there is a lack of color to what we call thinking.

Recommendation: try to think when your body is moving and see if you can apply a tempo or timbre to the words forming in your mind. For musicians and music lovers, it's often a lot of fun to try to think words out in a key--say A#. It really allows one to transform familiar thoughts into strange and new ideas. And making the familiar strange is literally the definition of divergent original thinking. 

Yoga on the MTA

Maybe it's just me... do you know how it seems when you learn a new word "all of the sudden" you hear or read it quite a bit. The question of coincidence--or an explanation for coincidence--is beyond the scope of this blog. However, one thing is certain, the more one is out of the apartment doing something, the greater the chance for synesthetic happenstance.

Case in point: After yoga tonight, I left the studio, and walked to the 6 train on Canal. In the station, I bumped into an actress I had worked with previously. She told me that she was coming home from work, a nightclub gig. 

Then she told me this job was secured for her by the very same person who inspired me towards studying yoga. 

Furthermore, this actress was looking for a studio in which to study kundalini yoga. I referred her to mine (Golden Bridge) and so the triangle was complete.

But there was more: at the next stop, as we were discussing the benefits of various styles, an entire class of yoga students from another school, hugger muggers dangling, got on the subway and started a sacral chant. It was sort of in jest, but after a while the whole car (half of which was taken up by the class) was either listening or participating in the chant. 

Summer in NYC. Get out of your apartment, right?

Enlightenment through entertainment?

Every Monday, I attend Kadam Morten's class (see my May 2nd post), sponsored by the Chakrasambara Buddhist Center.

For more info see: http://www.meditationinnewyork.org/

This class concluded his series on The Compassionate Warrior: The Six Practices of a Bodhisattva. It was entitled "Concentration: Power of the Focused Mind."

If I didn't know his presentation style better, one could have mistaken Kadam Morten's countenance as stern. The focused, skilled mind is no laughing matter in Buddhist thought--well, actually everything is a laughing matter in Buddhist thought.

For example, the following joke is one which I'm told His Holiness the Dalai Lama is quite fond of:

What did the Buddhist monk say to the hotdog vendor? "Make me one with everything."

When the monk asked for his change, the vendor replied, "Change comes from within."

Buddhist humor, no less than a skilled mind, is actually an exercise in accomplishing multiple tasks with one clean and efficient gesture. The joke (and the famous "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is most certainly a form of joking) rips up language and preconception--it's a form of entertainment. Comedy is effective--especially stand up--when the practitioner is focused on disrobing cliche.

Similarly, Kadam Morten's style is light-hearted but tough-minded. However, as I noted, his approach to the topic of Concentration had a tactical urgency to it. It is his belief that the focused mind is the finest weapon wielded by the compassionate warrior, an illusion smashing nuke, as it were. 

Kadam pointed to distraction, particularly our attachment to being "plugged in," the new human condition lived "online," as the counter-measure to this weapon. 

OK, so far nothing new or groundbreaking. Admittedly, freeing the mind and focusing it is also not new... we just never seem to get it. So these poor Buddhist monks have to repeat themselves over and over until we lay-practitioners catch up. 

When I asked him if that meant unplugging as the solution--he shook his head. Buddhist approaches very rarely advise a retreat from the world. Instead, the idea is to re-contextualize the world from your mind's point-of-view. Everything is an obstacle course for your mind to train. 

Solipsistic much? Yes, very. And that's a good thing because it allows one to be genuinely compassionate and generous. 

I then asked him if unplugging isn't the way to go per se, what challenges does entertainment provide for the mind? He pointed to TV's preoccupation with death. For the average western person, distance from death is at a maximum right now. Actual death's visibility is either sanitized, or removed completely. The nature of the impermanence of all things is less keenly felt now more than ever before. As such, Kadam suggested that every time we see death on TV or in cinema, it can serve as a strong reminder to consider one of the most important precepts of wisdom: everything dies. Please consider it and do not welcome fear into your mind as you do so.

Of course, such meditation begs the important question (also too oft repeated but rarely put into practice): what would you do if today was your last? 

Live that way by choice. Because one day it really will be your last day. 

Conclusion: Focus. And make absolutely certain that you are entertained and are entertaining during that process.

Battlestar G. is my teacher

I will write more about this topic over the coming days: the rising idea of forgiveness in pop-culture... how are we seeing the need for grace in entertainment? 

My first example: Battlestar Galactica

Huh? I'm kidding, right? What's with the cheesy title for starters?

Well, for those who aren't yet in the know--trust me, it's worth your time--I recommend a recent Salon feature, titled: 

Everything you were afraid to ask about "Battlestar Galactica"

A complete primer on the smartest sci-fi TV show ... maybe ever.

By Thomas Rogers

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2008/04/02/bsg_explainer/

"...by virtue of its strong writing and naturalistic style, the series manages to be engaging and politically relevant. Its creator, Ronald Moore, uses "Battlestar's" universe as a funhouse mirror for American post-9/11 cultural anxieties. Since the miniseries' initial Cylon attack -- with its parallels to the events of Sept. 11 -- "Battlestar" has broached topical debates about torture, military occupation, abortion, genocide and war crimes. It has managed to do so while avoiding the trap of strained allegory and partisan politics..."

And how does forgiveness figure here?

To quote http://redblueamerica.com/:

"Battlestar Galactica" and America after 9/11

"'Battlestar Galactica'" is perhaps the smartest and most comprehensive artistic meditation on life in post-9/11 America that exists in all of popular culture... At the end of Season Three, in fact, Lee Adama -- the admiral's son -- gives a rousing courtroom speech. Everybody, he says, has committed awful mistakes in the course of trying to survive the end of the human race. But those sins should be forgiven, he suggests, because everybody is trying their best in the face of unspeakable evil. Left and right, we all need to give each other a little grace."

If sci-fi can change it's spots and really speak to us like the adults we are... then the sky's the limit. That's the final frontier; or put another way, consider Battlestar's thesis: survival is not enough--you have to earn it, be worthy of it. One accomplishes this by finding grace in situations where it is profoundly absent from the scene. You have to make your redemption stick. Every day. And then you have to live with your choice. Every day.

1 Week: serenity now

I am very tired so this will be short. This week has been one of the best--or at least one the most radically different--in my life.

I have been inspired--by choice. By the ability to actually choose to be happy. And I've even inspired a few people. My friends have asked me: what are you up to? You look great!

Two people even suggested that I seem "serene". 

Surely that's the goal. It's nice to know that I am seen by others in a positive light. It feels good. I think it will continue.

And finally the night of rest...

Tonight was wonderful. 

Based on the last six days of work, I finally feel happiness that is meaningful: my friends detected a change in me and responded organically with warmth. They embraced my new focus on THEM. They responded enthusiastically as they noted that I was really interested in THEIR lives.

They enjoyed our time together--and so did I. 

I meet up with my friends almost every Friday night. And for the first time in three years I was truly happy with them. 

Why? Because--FINALLY!--I was a friend.

Some wanted to know what I'd been up to that felt so realistically palpable to them--in fact, they wanted in. I recommended the practice of yoga which has been so transformative for me. But in the end of the day, in the evening, it was due to the fact that I listened. Really. The night was about them from my POV. I chose to make it so... as much as I could. And in the language of capitalist economics: the relationships returned dividends based on real investment. And in the far more generous language of socialism: the smallest divisible human unit is at least two people, not one.

My friends and I now have an economy or a collective going on, depending on your political outlook. The result is the same: we are not in a hopeful welfare situation anymore.

We exchanged.

The lesson: practice in the form of rehearsal, when done with intent, pays off in performance. As I noted in a previous posting, I am a theatre director, not an actor. My friends are all actors. They know what it means to put themselves on the front lines. Tonight, their director decided to be an actor. 

Now I know what a director must do in rehearsal = act. Do.

If this post seems grandiose as it surely will to me in the morning, I ask for this: if you've ever been happy, and realized that it came from love and you were desperate for more... know that love may be the only sustainable happiness. It can be felt again tomorrow. Choose to do it. With effort. It's a choice. 

Actors frequently talk about "choice" because those are the moments to moments which build a full performance.

Thank you, friends. I'm grateful.

And there was evening and there was morning: on 24

Day 5:

This is why I don't own a TV: I stopped by a friend's apartment earlier this evening and he was strung out on his 4th DVD of 24 which apparently he's been watching for the last 12 hours--straight.

I used to find 24 immensely entertaining until Jack Bauer (and the show in general) became certain that torture was the way to go. Now we--the audience--let Jack get away with, and righteously enjoy the torture because his hyper-moral clarity and certitude tell us its ok, necessary, inevitable.

In earlier seasons of 24, torture was not the sadistic show-stopper it has become--torture was even dismissed as an option by Jack on several occasions because "it would take too much time"... but now, it's really become sick and I've definitely watched people "getting off" on this... maybe the lack of a grey zone surrounding the torture on 24 (a FOX network show after all) makes it easier for conservatives and liberals to sleep after Abu Ghraib. I don't know...

I work in theatre. I direct plays. I'm not exactly known for directing light-hearted pieces. Like Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, when given choice of material, I'll always go over to the dark side (they have cookies) and praise shadows specifically because rolling that way demands rigor of interpretation. Why? Because, if you "fake it," if you try to to force the light from the dark in these plays, then you quickly realize that you're practicing kitsch.

And kitsch, like certainty, seems to me to be one of the worst bad-faith gestures I can think of.

So dark plays can sometimes force honesty from us. 24 isn't dark. It's gauzed up, bloody kitsch. It doesn't really confront torture--it denies its awfulness by making it safe to enjoy.

Right now, I'm rehearsing Samuel Beckett's "Endgame"--what a force against certainty, against fascist aesthetics; relentlessly questioning and without answer.

If Freud is right, or even partially right, our need for psychic payback, vengeance against perceived wrongs, and aggression in general is a drive which cannot and should not be denied. But how we express this need, as artists, or consumers of art--even when watching 24--perhaps there is a demand for more questioning, no?

Day and Night: Separated?

Day 4:

In general, for the seeker, I think it's important to look at the "return to Freud" trend which has dominated critical theory and even the social sciences over the past few years.

This is based on a refreshing reappraisal of his work. Many people (feminists included) have noted upon rereading Freud, that his approach is a great deal more subtle and "tough minded" than was popularly thought.

Particularly in works like "Civilization and its Discontents," and especially "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud repeatedly indicates how the logic of the psyche operates in "compromise formation" like a palimpsest. A palimpsest is defined by Webster as:

Main Entry:
pa·limp·sest 
Pronunciation:
\ˈpa-ləm(p)-ˌsest, pə-ˈlim(p)-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsēstos scraped again, from palin + psēn to rub, scrape; akin to Sanskritpsāti, babhasti he chews
Date:
1825
1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface 

So, when Freud talks about "the death drive" and "the life drive" (i.e., traditionally thought to be an  binary which is analogous to thanatos vs. eros, anxiety vs. rest, inertia vs. the second law of thermodynamics, death vs. sex) he is not describing two mutually independent drives.

Quite the contrary!

Freud says if the psycho-logic operates like a palimpsest, in compromise formation, then our minds are always (must always) wrestle with paradox: the paradox of self-destruction emerging from our most creative instincts and similarly creativity emerging from our most aggressive impulses. How we act out these strange bedfellows on the mind is dependent largely, according to Freud, on cultural context.

Interestingly, as a side-result of the renewed serious attention paid to Freud, Jung has completely disappeared from the academic radar screen. He is seen as little more than a new age symbolist, a deck of tarot cards. In all my undergrad and grad classes, I haven't once heard his name mentioned with anything but dismissal. 

That’s a shame. I hope Jung finds a similar renaissance. In fact, I know more than one physicist who secretly enjoys reading Jung.

Surfacing

Day 3:

Here's what I'm learning to believe:

A Mayan proverb: If you do not ask, you will be lost.

As one begins to step across the limn of a different way to live, the dissolution of unskilled thinking is key. Keep asking for more focus as you fight through illusion and step onto dry land.

Ask penetrating, insightful questions.

Ask these questions precisely.

Demonstrate to yourself that your mind may finally function as more than just a noisy reflex organ.

It may now become simply elegant.

But make no mistake: the dissolution of the cringing mind, the end of an addiction to the disease of thinking MUST NOT EVER manifest itself in anti-intellectualism.

More than anything else, unmindful anti-intellectualism is responsible for the madness of our unending state of war.

But unskilled finger pointing is also unmindful. It is also banal. So I will stop doing so.

Instead, I would emphasize that the only thing that matters is that you or I must not fall into this trap on the way to waking up.

Anti-intellectualism is a form of spiritual death.

Kitsch, sentimentality, and tautology are not acceptable or appropriate tools for the seeker.

There is such energetic rigour and specificity required in the work of skilled living.

Where you find kitsch, you will not find enlightenment.

Why?

Because kitsch is incompatible with meaningful questions.

Anti-intellectualism is incompatible with meaningful questions.

I'll close this post with an excerpt taken from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It may be very familiar to many of you, but it rewards another close reading:

"The fact that until recently the word 'shit' appeared
in print as s--- has nothing to do with moral
considerations. You can't claim shit is immoral, after
all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The
daily defecation session is daily proof of the
unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is
acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the
bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable
manner.

It follows, then, than the aesthetic ideal of the
categorical agreement with being is a world in which
shit is denied and everyone acts as if it did not
exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.

'Kitsch' is a German word born in the middle of the
sentimental 19th century, and from German it entered
all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has
obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch
is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal
and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes
everything from its purview which is essentially
unacceptable in human existence." (Kundera 248)

Firmaments

When I go looking in search of what I've lost--if I bend literary--well, that would be fun. But it wouldn't have any love in it.

Remember: in things past, blogs, talk, and text--it's all been said. Time after time.

That's OK.

Reader, that's OK.

This post is simple minded. It's been said before. In this one case, I have no problem with that.

So: on the second day of this blog, I would like to show some love. I am grateful to Kadam Morten Clausen for his lucid, lucid, lucid lecture delivered earlier tonight. It was entitled: Effort: Enjoying Life

See this link for more info: http://www.meditationinnewyork.org/Resident_Teacher.php

Kadam Morten noted that:

1) Things we do which we say "make us happy" are said to do so because they function as a "relief" from a prior state. For example, after work, we might go golfing. Perhaps the day at the office did not make us happy.

2) However, after sufficient time, happy at the links, we need relief from the golfing as well. Every golfer has to and wants to call it a day after a point. In fact, it would make them unhappy to continue.

One could imagine a version of Sisyphus' hell as a never ending golf tournament, caddying ones irons from hole to hole. Indefinitely.

3) The same could be said of any thing which provokes a "happy" state of mind.

4) For example: Pizza makes me happy. So theoretically the more pizza I eat, the happier I'll be. But after two or three slices... a fourth, let alone a fifth becomes nauseating. The effort will not repay itself.

Interim conclusion: happiness that requires effort will burn out.

Well...

Maybe not...

To "obtain" happiness as a thing, something outside to be annexed, surely that requires effort. And one only has just so much effort on reserve.

Is there another happiness? One which you couldn't give or get enough of when you were a child and--hopefully--when you are an adult? One which will never burn you or itself out, even though it requires much effort?

Yes. And you know what it is.

If you've forgotten, as I have--we'll I'm making an effort! Immediately.

Seriously, like right now.

It's sustainable. I'm told.

In the beginning was fear

In the beginning--of this--there was and is fear...

But there is no false profundity.

Beginnings, especially written beginnings, are only "hard" because I want to impress somebody.

So there will be only one commitment here: there will be no pretense. It will be avoided. Rigorously.

Instead: honesty. As best I know how. I suspect honesty actually improves with use. I wouldn't know. Yet. But I'd like to.

This blog is a journal. A journal's function is to record. I will do that. I am doing that. As simply and as honestly as I know how now.

The Goal: So that in the end I may return to this point and KNOW there was no beginning and end. There is only now.

I don't know that. Now. Maybe I will.

I'd like to.

Here. Now.

Giving testimony:

I'm here.

The rest hasn't been written yet...

I'm doing that.

Now.