The last day of my vacation was quite special, part of it was because of the meals I had. I woke up to breakfast prepared by a dear friend with so much care, a bowl of oatmeal with fruits, with a tea light candle and devotional picture to complete the offering. We went to a vegetarian Thai restaurant for late lunch, and I had spring rolls and tom kha soup and mango with sticky rice. And it being off-peak hours, we got to have a little chat with the chef, who turns out to be a former monk. Because Jivamukti September focus of the month is The Magic of Cooking, we asked him if he follows any rituals for cooking. He told us he chants while cooking, and chanted for us too. It was quite nice to know that the process of preparing our food was so divine. For dinner we went to a restaurant called Cafe Gratitude, where the theme of the restaurant is affirmations. You look at the menu and instead of saying you're getting a kale salad, you say: I am whole. You get to say these beautiful things in exchange for getting nourishing vegan food: I am celebrating. I am inspired. I am magical. You get the idea. The magic of cooking is that the intention can influence the outcome. And once we have tasted food that is cooked with so much love and care and attention, we cannot eat fast food and think it is actually nourishing. Not only is fast food made of violent animal products and harmful preservatives, the process of cooking is also not uplifting, to say the least. Imagine the worries that the line cooks may have while they deep-fry things that come in packages. They could be having financial worries being paid so little wages, as they shout over each other to hurry up and get the orders done. The energy as I imagine it is chaotic. Cooking food and practicing asana are similar in many ways. We have our ingredients, we mix up these ingredients, subject them to heat, and yet the end result still depends on our intention. When we take a yoga class, we do a lot of the same poses a lot of the time. We have warriors and triangles and twists and bends and inversions. And we can have an okay practice. Even when our poses come deep, it can still be just okay. But with the right intention, we can have a practice that is significantly more meaningful and less egotistic. Before you begin cooking or before you begin your asana practice, think of what it is that you are grateful for. Radhanath Swami said that to know how rich you are, count the things you have that money can't buy. Let this sense of gratitude carry you through your practice, be it in cooking or in asana. Notice that gratitude may give you a sense of lightness, as if you're floating from one movement to the other. When you begin to identify with affirmations rather than what could be knee-jerk negative reactions, you may start to ease into even seemingly difficult poses or situations. Even in virasana or hero pose where it may feel torturous to many of us, keeping our thoughts on the positive can make us realize that our perceived suffering is not all that there is, it is just a small part of the big picture, partial and completely manageable. And in poses that we are very familiar with where we may have the tendency to get bored, rooting our intentions with the essence of the pose can give us that extra spice. Warrior 1 and 2 and 3, you say, that you've done thousands of times? Ground on the intention of being a true warrior, someone who has fight in himself or herself, to do right by those who are oppressed, and find that gratitude that you qualify for the role of the warrior. Now see if those warriors start to feel very different. Now see that doing the same thing again and again does not mean that you are going through the motions. As Sharon Gannon says, through repetition magic arises. In the same way, when you cook the same dish again and again, you become so familiar with it that you no longer need the recipe or measuring cups or spoons. The knowing starts to come from the inside. Of course, it is sometimes hard to avoid thinking of our worries or problems while practicing. It can be challenging trying to feel gratitude when our bodies are in new contorted shapes we are not yet used to. When you find yourself wanting to check how much time is left for class to be over, do this instead. Count not the time but your blessings. Focus not on your impatience but on the people whom you are grateful for. Let go of the struggle of each breath by using the breath to say thank you- to the universe, to the people in the room with you, to your family, to your partner, to your friends, to life itself. Whether cooking or doing asana, keep your intentions elevated and the actions and the results will follow. What is the significance of cooking or preparing food or our relationship with food to our yoga practice? Yoga asana, the physical poses that make up the exercise component of yoga, is just one of the eight limbs of the practice. The first precept in the first limb of yoga is ahimsa, which means non-harming towards others. When we cook or prepare or eat food, it can either be a harmful action (if we use meat, dairy, eggs) or a nourishing activity (if we choose plant-based food). Therefore, if we are interested in freedom, then the logical choice is to take ahimsa seriously, and the call to action is to be conscious of our food choices. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. May all beings- with no exception- be happy and free. May the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life- including my food choices- contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.
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Why Terri Lewis is the real Stargirl: 1. She carries colored chalks with her so she can write "You're beautiful" on sidewalks and random places. 2. When stuck in traffic, she does not get mad. She blows bubbles from the driver's seat window. 3. She has the ability to transform an angry cab driver (who just gave the finger to someone) to a happy laughing person. 4. She sings Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu to strangers. 5. She took me to a store called Good Earth so we can point at all the vegan things and say: vegan, vegan, vegan. 6. She parked her car briefly so she can throw a ball back to the school playground. 7. She got out of her car during a stoplight to move a trash can to its proper place. 8. She slips in incense in your bag when you're not looking. 9. She introduces herself as a promoter of peace and tells random people about Earthlings. 10. She simply has so much love to give. Terri-ji, I love you. You are an inspiration. Thank you, my friend, my Jiva sister, my soul family, for everything that you do. You make this world a better place. I have always been interested in psychology. I like that there are names and labels and explanations to why things are so, to why I am the way I am, to why people do one thing or another, behave one way or another. You're afraid of small spaces? There's a name for that. What's your birth order? Oh, that explains why you're so responsible. You can't seem to sustain a healthy relationship? Tell me about your family history. I love that there are patterns, like a roadmap almost, that shows you where you are and where you needed to go. I find it comforting that there is a way out. But then, when I started my practice of yoga as a spiritual path, I find that some of the teachings seem to contradict what I believed I understood about psychology. Whereas psychology is saying you have to know who you are, you have to keep or strengthen your identity, spiritual teachings seem to be saying that you have to let go of who you are, surrender your identity, give it up, offer it up, don't take credit. You are not this, you are That. And so I was confused at first. Then it dawned on me that this seeming contradiction is because I have not seen the two as working with each other, and maybe in some way, in progression with each other. And as it turns out, yoga acknowledges the importance of the study of the small self (jivajñana) and the study of the big Self (atmanjñana). I like to think of it like this. If I show up at your house one day carrying this huge gift, and I say this is for you, then when you tear off the elaborate wrapping of the gift, you find that the gift is empty, you may find that I have not given you anything at all. I just offered an illusion. It was for show, but it was not very meaningful. I think if we are not emotionally healed, if we do not know our identity in this material world, then our spiritual practice might be empty. It might even be a misuse, a codependence, a selfish escape rather than a sincere offering. It is an act of desperation instead of an act of intention. If we fill this box with things that are personal and meaningful, our experiences, our struggles, our hopes, our frustrations, our courage, our sincerity, and the full range of who we are, then when we offer this gift of solid identity, it is an offering not of emptiness but of fullness. We offer something not for the sake of offering something but because we are offering something of substance. In other words, we need to have an identity before surrendering it has any meaning. Close your eyes. Think about the fullest expression of your material identity. With courage and honesty, ask yourself: Who am I? How do I see myself in relation to the world? What is my gift to the world? What do you have to offer? Give them up. Offer your stability, not because you never fell, but because you have fallen many times, and you know that is not something you need to be ashamed of. Your struggle is your humanity. Your getting up is your power. The path in between is your identity. Offer your humility, not because you think of yourself as insignificant, not at all, but because you understand you are a significant being interdependent with other significant beings. Surrender not because you feel hopeless. Surrender because your spirit is brimming with trust. Offer not your baggages, but your lightness. Offer not your impossible goal of perfection, but the weightlessness of non-attachment. Offer your forgiveness not because you have willed yourself to forget, but because you remember that pain is a trap and the only way to get out of this trap is to let go. Offer your courage in seeing things from someone else's point of view, to not be attached to who is right and who is wrong. Offer your openness in seeing that things may not be what they seem. We are born empty like a piece of white paper. Throughout our lives, as we explore the range of our identity, we draw shapes and lines and forms and pictures. If we live this life well in pursuit of our identity and purpose and self, we get to fill up this page so much that the ink overlaps, until there are no more white spaces, until the entire page is completely covered with ink. Then it looks like a blank piece of paper again, except in a different color. This filled-up paper is what we offer, a gift rich in experiences of love and faith and compassion. It may look empty because you cannot form the individual shapes, but it is empty to only those who do not know. But to those who do know, they understand this offering is rich and complete and full. It bears the weight of your identity and the lightness of your intention. |
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