so much respect for dancers

here i am trying so hard to keep up with the dance teacher's moves. this dance fitness class in the health club. i don't even recall why i would pick this class at all. but then again hwubby and i met in a singles dance in the ashram. anyway my hands and legs are like pasta twirling in boiling water, scattering in ten thousand directions. gee, it looks so much easier when i see the  teacher demonstrating the moves. now i can't even keep counts of three. i am several steps behind, struggling not to crash into others when i spot hwubby standing outside the room, laughing so hard he can't stand up straight. later he says, you look just like your idol, lucy - as in lucille ball. hearing that i realize how ridiculous and hilarious i must have looked. but check this out. i don't feel an iota of embarrassment or inadequacy. i laugh just as hard as hwubby. in fact, i say to the teacher after the class, now i have so much respect for dancers. indeed. they have to be present, in the body. there's no room for thoughts or any mental activity. there's just the flow of consciousness. by the way i am really glad i do the class. it's so much fun.

meshiach is when the world is filled with knowledge of god.

the fiftieth night from passover is phenomenally important to jews. how so? because this is when the sinai broadcast happens, when yhvh bestows upon the israelites the torah. so, this year, on this night, i tag along my jewish sis to attend an all night torah study feast. i call it a feast for two reasons. first, there's food, seriously nice food. i mean, for hundreds of people. second, there are teaching sessions from teachers of all threads of judaism. orthodox, reformed, renewal, hasidic and cabala. it's eight at night and the place is jam packed with people. the panoply of teaching sessions go on all night. being someone who goes to bed at eight i decide from the get go the most i can do are two sessions. three tops. so i look at the sessions list in ten thousand directions, trying to figure out which one i want to go. there are three or four that look kind of interesting. in the end i go to one because somehow i am drawn to the rabbi whom i spotted in the lobby earlier while i am wandering about. the first thing that catches my eye is a young hasid, in a wide hat, holding a folded wheelchair. a couple of feet from him is a cluster of people. floating on top of them is a huge fur hat. i shift myself so i can see who is under that hat. what do i see? a small old man in an immaculately cut, double breasted, black satin gaberdine. he has exquisite bones. rosy cheeks, robust, fair complexion. i am about ten feet away and i can't see wrinkles on the child-like face that is framed by a fizzy veil of bright white beard that conjures in me the image of morning mist. chinese say he has pure and clean bones. i realize i am in the presence of a bundle of dazzling divine lights. no wonder israelites can't look at moses directly after he speaks to yhvh. the lights are too bright for mortal eyes to take in. i turn to the person next to me and say, who is he? i am told, he's the samborer rebbe. and so i go to his teaching session.

he speaks softly. he sits behind a bare folding table. he barely moves. every now and then he would gesture. i can't take my eyes off his hands. they are hands of a child. i am no intellectual so i can't do justice to his scholarly prowess. but this much i know for sure. i am swimming deep in the sweet waters of torah. i am aloft in the beauty and majesty of his sound energy rather than their meaning. nonetheless a few nuggets stay with me. the essence of hashem descends on this night. men give in to tempations and the rest is history. meshiach is when the world is filled with the knowledge of god.

after the session, i position myself at the door. he is frail and at every step there are more than a few people who want to greet him, speak with him. i don't mind the wait at all. i am just reveling in his beautiful and marvelous presence. finally we are face to face. i say, it's an honor and joy to meet you, rabbi. his lively eyes sweep over me with such kindness and sweetness. in fact his whole countenance is just that. i cannot imagine avraham to be kinder than this. his rosy lips part and out come these words, wer d'yu come from? i say, hong kong. his eyes twinkle and sparkle. i can see worlds and eons pass by in a split second in his consciousness. he says, sher sher ni. it takes me a couple of moments to realize he is greeting me in my mother tongue. right then and there our connection transcends race, religion, gender and time.

i watch the young man help him into wheelchair. i am filled with gratitude. how fortunate i am to be able to meet a great presence without having to travel far and wide. truly the holy land is a state within, not a physical location.

gratitude draws grace

this is the first week that doctors allow hwubby to start doing physical exercise unsupervised. a dear, dear friend gifts us a week at a chic chic health club. so there i am finding my way around this fancy schmancy place. who knew i would end up talking more than exercising. really. just in the locker room, and wearing nothing but a towel throwing over my shoulder, three women, in rather rapid succession, look at me and say, suk wah. all are people i haven't seen a long while. so of course they naturally ask, how's ben? now, check this out. they all have the same reaction when i say, he was hit by a taxi in new york city, sustained multiple fractures. first their eyes pop out right at me, jaws drop to the floor, and say, in different wordings, in total sincerity,  i'm so sorry, what a horrible tragedy. what is my reaction to their reaction? i find myself unable to bring myself to go along and say, yeah, what a horrible tragedy.

of course i don't wish it on anybody. it's not a painless trip. i'm not saying i am at a place where i can say, tragedy, what tragedy, no tragedy. hwubby is not saying, like lance armstrong does, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. but, as he says to them, i feel so very fortunate, fortunate to be alive, fortunate i don't have brain damage, spinal injury, fortunate i don't need surgery.

his ayurvedic doctor says, upon taking the first glance at him since the taxi hit, there's so much life in your eyes. hwubby says, gratitude, i have so much gratitude. indeed, living in gratitude draws grace like iron dust to magnet.

inevitable karmic outcome. fiery grace.

someone left this comment on my post 'birthday gift in form of violence.' it says, did this really happen? or dream? let me put it this way. it happens on the physical plane. it's so fascinating to see the dream quality of it. on the same episode, hwubby has his own version. here's how it goes down. he is aware that the bus stop at a corner. quite a few people are getting off and on. something catches his eye. a man dashes out of the cluster of people. he has this insane look about him. this is what is still haunting me about this man's presence. the qualities that come to mind are disturbed, bedraggled, disheveled. hwubby sees him yanking the bike off the rack in front of the bus. on the dot he runs across the bus and yells, stop him, he's stealing my bike. hwubby almost gets him because the man loses his balance while a truck barely stops in time. as i blog this i realize the truck could have hit both the guy and hwubby. anyway before hwubby could lay his hands on this guy he already rebalances himself and slips away. on  the bike.

as hwubby recounts this to me i see this shift in my perspective of this experience. i recall what the scriptures say about karma. chinese put it this way. whatever i think, speak and act there is consequence. it may come this lifetime or some later one. which one? how? that's out of my control. there are pieces in my karma profile that cannot be changed at their core or avoided. but the power of grace can diminish their impact. how does that work in this case? call me imaginative, i don't care. it couldn't have been so much worse. this guy might have a gun, or knife...here's where i pull in resolve not to feed the negative thoughts. it is what it is. i am grateful. we are grateful. as my fellow esteemed yogis harry and helen say, you'll forget the bike but meditation and rudram will always be with you. thanks so much, harry and helen, for reminding me about what's real, what's not.

hey, now i remember a story. my great-grand-baba would sit for days without moving. one day he gets up, goes into the forest. according to the people who are with him he knows exactly where he is going. they arrive deep in the forest and sees a snake sit in a coil. swiftly my great-grand-baba goes up to the snake. the snake stays utterly still even in the moment it is struck dead. people are stunned. they say, why do you commit such a violet act, baba? he says, this soul killed me in another lifetime, that's why he is now low in the life chain, he's waiting for me to finish this karma, i receive his call in meditation, now he is free, he can move up.

aaah. may i be free of resistance, lack of understanding and the inability to surrender.

rudram. in light. no darkness.

how do you kick out negativity? the ancient yogis find this out thousand of years of go. you don't chase away darkness. you can't. actually, you can if you have that kind of spiritual strength to just drop it. but if you can't, like me, you can turn on the light, you know, like turn the switch on and darkness disappears, just like that. i have always liked this metaphor but it's kind of like a nice story. i don't own it. now i do. what happens is this. i find my attention being tossed around relentlessly in tornadoes of negativity as a result of the birthday attack. all i can hang on to with my dear life is this. don't fight it. duck into the breath. but even that proves to be difficult. i am being sucked again and again out of the breath flow. really. inner work is demanding and exhausting. anyway when i finally gather enough strength to sit down to meditate, it's a breeze to sit through an hour. i realize i am reaping the fruit borne out of years of regular practice. as i stand up from the meditation mat i feel drawn to chanting rudram. so i do. i turn up the volume. vivek, the brahmin priest's voice fills and resounds in my meditation closet. very quickly i can see something happening in my voice. i start off weak and thin and low. before i know it i hear my voice getting brighter and brighter, stronger and stronger, clearer and clearer. it just happens. i honestly am not doing anything consciously to make it the way it is going. the garland of sounds fills up all the nooks and crannies and crevices in the body and mind. really. there is not an iota of space for negativity. impossible to find darkness in a light filled space.

birthday gift in form of violence

it is my birthday and who knew what shape, color and tone a birthday gift would take and from where it strikes? a violent assault. here's the story. hwubby arranges for us to go to chinatown to have birthday dim sum. he has thought it through. he has to go to san francisco for business and he wants to spend as much birthday time with me as possible. so he decides to take along his bike while we take the bus to chinatown. everything is fine. we have a lovely and sweet conversation while waiting for the bus. it comes. hwubby sets the bike the way he always does. the way every biker always does. on the rack in front of the bus. i get on the bus first. which seat should i take? front? or back? back seats are more elevated. has a little wider, more open view. so i go to the back seat. hwubby pays. we continue our sweet exchange. i barely pay attention to when the bus stops and restarts at the familiar stops. after all this is the bus that i take to chinatown. now i don't recall whether i or hwubby catches this first. as i blog all i know is this. i realize a guy, a bearded guy, is trying to remove hwubby's bike. i am in disbelief for a moment while hwubby is already sprinting forward. i start to yell, stop him, he's stealing my husband's bike. while hwubby is jumping off the bus the guy is already on the bike. i get up and run out of the bus and run and towards this guy. out of the corner of my eyes i see several people gather at the far corner of the block. the guy is across the street going towards the far corner. i am on this side of  the street, running and screaming at the top of lungs, he's stealing my husband's bike. hwubby is running after him, losing out further and further as this guy turns the corner, passes the cluster of people at the far corner and disappears out of my view.

this all happens eleven in the morning. on my birthday. i am still rattled and unsettled. i gather all the will and strength i can pull together. i meditate. i see the rudram, the vedic hymn praising lord rudra, beside the bed. i sit down and chant it. very soon i get the inner message. do a rudram saptah. midway through i hear this message. deal with things as they are. i know what it means. the video of what happens auto-replays in the mind along with questions of what if, should have, how come those people just stand by and watch all this, if only i didn't...

i struggle out of bed, have a sip of cooling coconut water. these lines from the poem 'breakthrough' comes to mind. 'resistance, lack of understanding, and the inability to surrender created one wave after another. i was struck by each wave and washed clean.' yes, it feels like that, being struck by a towering wave. so i suppose i am in the process of being washed clean. i have no idea yet what it is being cleansed out of me. whatever it is, may the power of grace grant me the strength and resolve to go through what i need to go through.

and then there are these two lines right after the previous lines referenced above. 'each successive breakthrough came at the peak of intense tapasya. and it was also the fruit of that austerity.'

is this the peak yet? i don't know. has the fruit been borne and ripened? no idea. to be continued.

me and markandeya

it's been a two day feast of sublime vedic mantras. there's one in particular that impresses on me so much that i think to myself, i can never forget this melody. it soars and swirls everywhere in the head while massaging the heart sweetly and tenderly. then yesterday i go through a day of worldly activity. by the time i go to bed i am ready to bring up that beautiful melody of this vedic hymn. o me o my i can't recall a note. seriously. after struggling a little bit, getting frustrated a little bit i take a long sigh and let it go. somehow i have the sense that one way or another i will get it back. by the time i sit down for meditation this morning i have already forgotten about the struggle the night before. i go about my meditation ritual, calmly and happily settle into a sweet and nice state when, just like that, the melody i have been looking for arises spontaneously from within. the voice is powerful. the color is bright. the tone is crystal clear. so there i am, sitting in a comfortable and upright posture, immersed in the resounding vibration that is, as a matter of fact, soundless.

and then i remember something else. a magical story associated with this hymn. yama, the lord of death, riding on his buffalo, goes to collect a soul whose time has come to leave the body. of course this is no ordinary mortal like me. when it's time for me to go, yama sends the lowliest of his servants. so who is this guy that demands yama himself to come? look at this scene. yama can't even go inside and drag his feet the way his servant would be doing with me. yama is standing outside and says loudly, come out, markandeya. inside, this markandeya is one-pointedly doing worship to shiva lingam. what's the story with this maekandeya? he is sixteen years old. his father is a brahmin. his mother has boundless devotion. together they have done phenomenal austerities. so much so that shiva comes and asks him, what do you want. the brahmin says, i have your darshan, my lord, i don't want anything. shiva turns to his wife and asks, what do you want? his wife says, i want a child. shiva says, i can't change your destiny but since i grant you a want, you can choose between a wise child who lives to sixteen and a foolish child who lives to a hundred. the couple discusses among themselves, and says, we want a wise child. so maekandeya is born. when he is five he asks his mother, why are you crying so much since i have memory, have i done anything wrong? his mother says, again and again, no. finally maekandeya says, i will stop eating unless you tell me why are you crying so much? his mother tells him what shiva says. maekandeya says, i am five, i still have eleven years. so in the ensuing years markandeya dedicates himself to the worship of shiva. fast forward. that takes us to the moment when he is supposed to die and yama is standing outside, demanding him to go. markandeya is so immersed in the worship of shiva that he wraps himself, hand and feet, around the shiva lingam. no matter how loud and hard yama calls markandeya's mind is totally immersed in the mantra. finally yama is out of patience. he throws out a noose over markandeya's neck. but since the boy is all around the shiva lingam, the noose is all over the lord as well. at this point shiva manifests himself, with his third eyes wide open. shiva is furious. he says to yama, what are you doing? yama realizes he has done a big disrespect to his boss. what about why he is there the first place? never mind. forget it. even yama has to run for his life.

the mantra markandeya is singing with all his heart is the one that i love so much that it arises spontaneously in my meditation. me, markandeya, the beautiful melody are one.