Yoga Mamas and POSSLQs

Julie Rappaport has re-started Yoga classes, ongoing Thursday mornings, at 7th Heaven in Berkeley, CA. See the bottom of this post for the full announcement. Julie is the baby-mama and POSSLQ of my friend and Dharma brother Chris.

I picked up the expression POSSLQ 30 years ago, when I was with Swami Muktananda on his 3rd Tour of the US. I lived in the ashrams (meditation communities) for years, exchanging work for room and board. It's always nice to have spending money, so ashramites were often on the lookout for opportunities to earn some cash.

Funny how money can take center stage in a spiritual community, huh? We believed that it was vital to our inner advancement to remain part of the guru's staff, and that required at least a little cash-flow. If we could just find the occasional job, a temporary gig that would require only a brief break from ashram life, then we'd be set on the road to Enlightenment.

In 1980, the tour was on break for a few weeks, while Muktananda and crew moved from the temporary ashram in Miami Beach to the US headquarters in South Fallsburg, NY. I found my golden opportunity: I briefly stayed behind in Florida to work as a census-taker.

Walking around in the heat, knocking on doors of people who didn't want to be bothered, wasn't so easy. (It's nice that I had some really crappy jobs in my youth; it makes my current work as an MS Excel expert seem luxurious by comparison.) People were supposed to fill out their census forms by mail; for those who didn't, the Census Bureau paid people like me to visit and interview them to get the information.

At each house, I'd first interview the Head of the Household, filling in the form with their census statistics. Next, I had to ask each other resident how they were related to the Head, and get their info too. In the check-boxes to indicate this relationship, one of the options was the new government-issued term for unmarried partners: POSSLQs. It stood for Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.

I don't think the acronym ever caught on much. This, in spite of the fact that while I was ringing doorbells in the 100+ degree Miami heat, CBS commentator Charles Osgood was honoring the census by composing a poem with lines like: There's nothing that I wouldn't do / If you would be my POSSLQ / You live with me and I with you / And you will be my POSSLQ.

Census-taking was a stretch for me. I'm an introverted person; my current job in computer programming is more comfortable than work requiring constant human interaction. Back in my 20s, though, I had little understanding of what job or life-situation I was best suited for. It led to more boundary-challenging choices than I'd make now as a middle-aged person. What can you do?

The census job had its moments. I remember one guy who, when I asked about his race, told me with an absolutely straight face that he ran the marathon. And once I was interviewing a couple... they seemed to be POSSLQs, but I had to formally ask the woman the question, "How would you describe your relationship to the head of this household?" For a few seconds she looked over at him, then back at me... she shrugged and answered, "Not bad."

Here's Julie's announcement with details of her Yoga classes:

Greetings Yogis,

I want to help you get your yoga off to a great start this winter and spring! First, check out my new web site and blog, and please if you would link to it if you have a site. I'll link back to yours. http://www.yogabliss.com

I'm back teaching at 7th Heaven this week, after a long break from the studio setting. I'm offering a new class on Thursday Mornings from 10-11:30AM.

Please join me in a deep flowing weekly yoga class for mixed levels 1-3.

We will playfully explore the potential for yoga to transform deeply held stress into joy. I will offer different Vinyasa sequences, long holds, and ideas for healthy yoga posture alignment, as well as time for savasana, and meditation.

I'm also offering private yoga sessions, and yoga therapy by appointment, and will discount any of my regular students who want to learn in an individualized setting. Call or write to set up your appointment: 510-273-2417

Finally, please contact me for more details if you or a friend are interested in joining Yoga Mamas! Yoga Mamas is a group for mothers that offers a safe place to share the struggles, challenges and joys of motherhood from a place of embodiment, connection and community. Using yoga, movement and mindfulness as our guide, we will practice yoga, move, share experiences and discuss issues of motherhood in a safe and nurturing circle of women. All mothers of younger children (0-12 yrs.) are welcome, and no one philosophy of parenting is espoused- just a desire to be more conscious as parents. This is not a mama/baby yoga class, although pre-crawling babies may join us in the studio.

Peace for a Happy and Healthy 2010 and please send me your news!

Julie

Higher States

(Thanks to the Guruphiliac blog, where I initally found this video.)

Mind Over Matter (coming this Christmas!)

A great article at WashingtonPost.com heralds the release of new toys that run on "mind control over matter." Here's the link: Brain Wave of the Future.

Surely this is The Next Big Thing. It addresses the age-old conundrum of mental/physical duality, and by Xmas it'll be on the shelves of Toys 'R' Us (for ages 8 and up). Here's the gist: you attach an electrode to your forehead, it reads your level of concentration, and translates it to levitation of a ping-pong ball.

Think of the possibilities. The new technology is a likely cure for ADHD and senility, and will allow paralyzed people to control appliances with their minds. But why stop there?

Consider all the spiritual/religious groups that hold up super-concentrated states (meditation, contemplation, prayer, etc) as The Goal. Their Spiritual Leaders make unsubstantiated claims about achieving one-pointedness, and demand blind faith in their abilities. Now we have a technological solution, a way to actually quantify who's got the best concentration.

Think of Yoga cults, where Swamis claim superior God-realization. Why not subject them to the test, and make them surrender their seats to anyone who can levitate ping-pong balls higher? Or when a Dalai Lama dies... why make the Lamas go through that tiresome process of seeking his reincarnation? They can just hold a contest to measure mind-over-matter skills, and declare the winner as Supreme Meditator.

When Benedict XVI dies, I'd like to see the College of Cardinals all hooked up to electrodes, and the ping-pong balls will reveal how intense their prayers really are. Wouldn't that be a more efficient way to select the next Pope? Put it on pay-per-view, and maybe the Vatican can pay off some legal bills.

Yoga Piracy and The Bolinas Effect

Earlier this week, the Guruphiliac blog pointed to an article in the Times of India, decrying Yoga Piracy. Said article begins:

India is going all out to save yoga — a 2,000-year-old art of righteous living, from western pirates. Instances of self-styled yoga gurus claiming copyrights to ancient ‘asanas', especially from the West, is now becoming rampant.

You hear stuff like this frequently from Yoga enthusiasts. The teaching of Yoga is being tragically over-run by teachers with the minds of Western businessmen, turning it from the most Sacred Tradition into something akin to a McDonalds franchise.

These sentiments might sometimes be influenced by something I call The Bolinas Effect. Bolinas is a little coastal town in the San Francisco Bay Area. The wonderful natural beauty of the place was discovered by a number of people who ended up moving there about 40 years ago, establishing it as a sort of hippie haven.

Then, as the population increased, some residents began to famously steal the road signs that directed people to the town. Their idea was to save the town by preventing it from being over-run by too many of the common folk. When anonymously quoted in news articles, these vandals spoke in sanctimonious terms, that they were protecting the purity of this heavenly place, from the onslaught of the masses.

OK, OK, there is some point to the vandals' viewpoint. Crowds can ruin a place, and popularization of anything, including meditation teachings and practices, may lead to its degradation in the process of making it more accessible.

That being said, there may also be hints of a darker force behind such sentiments. Isn't it possible that some of these Yogis and Bolinasites have an attitude something like this: "I've found something I feel is really wonderful and special, and part of this feeling is dependent on the fact that so few other people have found it. As more and more people find what I've found, it'll decrease this feeling of specialness."

In case it's not obvious... I recognize this type of mind because there have been times over the course of my 30+ years of meditation practice in which it's been very tempting to think of it as having given me something special. Over time, I've come to question the utility of such thinking.

OK, OK, these ideas of specialness are sometimes useful, especially at the beginning of a meditation practice, since they inspire effort and attention. But great care must be taken from the get-go. If a meditation practice helps one discard 10,000 delusions, and in their place a single delusion grows, the belief that "I've got something special"... I'm not so sure that it's such a wonderful thing.

So here's what I wrote in the comments section of that Guruphiliac posting:

Anony wrote...
> Sure, Indian heritage needs protection.

Can anyone explain exactly what the problem is with the current situation, what it is that needs to be changed or protected?

Here's what I mean. Say I become interested in Indian heritage of philosophy and meditation and such. I read the Yoga Sutras and collected talks of Ramana Maharashi, stuff like that, and find it wonderful.

So I join together with some friends and neighbors, and we gather to support each other in stilling our minds, inquiring into the true self, doing so using teachings and techniques from the Indian heritage.

Is there any concern whatsoever that as my friends and I sit together quietly chanting OM or what have you... that lawyers will burst through the door and slap a cease and desist order on us, telling us that this mantra is owned by a corporation, or that we'll get sued if we continue to ponder "What am I"?

No, there's no chance that such a thing would happen. Whatever's going on in the realm of intellectual property, it's of absolutely no hindrance to any people or groups who choose to pursue interest in the heritage of India.

Now, it's true that if my little group decides to package these ancient practices we're doing and offer seminars and try to make big bucks from it all, then I can imagine some legal problems. But is that (making a profit from the teachings) really the core of their importance? For people who just want to explore the Heritage for the sake of understanding our true nature and helping each other, we're all absolutely free to do so.

So, honestly, where's the problem? Maharishi Mahesh Yoga (founder of the Transcendental Mediation/TM movement) packaged some Indian tradition into a big business. If lots of people chose to go that route, OK, why should it bother me? Let people do what they like. Anyone who wants to simply explore the tradition, the Indian heritage which is now more freely and widely available than ever... can do so, and doesn't need to get a license or ask anyone's permission.

Autobiography of a Boo Boo. 3: Zen Master.

This series of blogs explains how I've come to my current Zen-style meditation practice. I'm calling the series Autobiography of a Boo Boo, in homage to the Hanna Barbera cartoons of my youth, and in recognition that I've never been good enough to be called a Yogi.

My previous blog entry ended with my return, in 1984, to the USA after 5 years in Siddha Yoga ashrams, the last 2+ in India. This blog entry and maybe a couple more will take me through my first Zen retreat in early 1988.

I had gone from my family’s house to college to ashram, and now at 25, I was ready to begin the practice of being an independent adult. My grandmother had died during my ashram years, and I had a few thousand dollars she’d left me. I’d use it to start a new life in California. I’d grown up in the East Coast during the 70s, old enough to understand the hippies and the counter-culture and the Grateful Dead and all, but too young to participate. Like so many people, I felt a pull to California as a place for a fresh beginning.

I connected with a friend I’d met in India, and we hit the road. (Some adventures we had during this period are on my Strange Trips web page.) I ended up first in the Los Angeles area, then in Arcata, and finally in Berkeley (which had seemed alluring ever since my months in the Oakland ashram in ‘79). In various places, I did temp jobs to get by.

I had one year of college and no particular skills. I saw lots of office jobs available, but they required decent typing skills. I got an old typewriter and began to practice by typing out random paragraphs from the newspaper, hour after hour. It seemed impossible. How in the world was I to remember where all the letters were? But incredibly, after a few weeks of this, my fingers began to automatically know what to do. The power of practice never ceases to amaze me.

In my temp typing jobs, I was usually in front of a computer, and there was plenty of time when the workload was slow, so step-by-step I taught myself word processing, then spreadsheet design and programming. I learned how to support myself and take care of my own life, and these life lessons were as rich as those I’d gotten from philosophy and meditation. Learning how to survive and make a living didn’t feel separate or inferior to explicitly spiritual pursuits.

Life has its ups and downs, successes and failures. I had the usual succession of joy and depression and comfort and anxiety. I kept up with my formal and informal meditation practice. I’d practice attention to the moment, repeating a mantra, sitting still, watching my breath, and remembering that it’s all One. Whatever attachments or desires or entanglements appeared in my mind, I had this practice of returning to witness-consciousness, making it all OK. I didn’t know what, if anything, I should do more or different with these practices.

During this time, news filtered through to me about goings-on in the ashram world. Muktananda’s successors, a brother and sister guru team, had broken apart in a bitter sibling rivalry, filled with lies and violence. The sister (Gurumayi Chidvilasananda) sent out mud-slinging letters against her brother rival (Gurudev Nityananda), even going so far as sending goons to physically attack and threaten those who attended his programs.

The SYDA antics sounded so silly, and removed any lingering allegiance I felt to that group. While I’d always enjoy visiting and exploring different groups out of curiosity or entertainment, I saw no need to be part of a group. No guru or group held the magic or secret. I figured all that any teacher or group could do was lead me to the type of meditation practice and understanding I already had.

I was in contact with E, an old friend from my year at Yale. He was the one friend back then who’d joined me in learning to meditate and going to Siddha Yoga ashrams. We’d both been influenced at the time by reading Ram Dass and similar books. Our minds had been opened to wider possibilities by taking LSD, though that was just one low-dosage trip; my more high-powered drug trips would come later.

E had since become a monk in the Korean-style Zen school founded by Zen Master Seung Sahn (ZMSS). He’d written me while I was still in India, and seemed enthusiastic for me to try Zen teaching and practice.

I couldn’t understand why E found Zen worth exploring. I told him that Zen seemed just like Siddha Yoga. The differences were superficial: a different language to chant in, a different posture to sit in, and a different statue on the altar. The actual practice of watching and quieting the mind, of returning to the witness that saw everything as One, was the real point; why care about any particular tradition? E said to me, “It doesn’t matter if you do Yoga meditation or Zen meditation or Christian meditation or any other kind. But it’s very important to look into WHY you meditate.” Hmmmm.

E’s words caught my interest a little, but it was more powerful when I saw him demonstrate them. I went to visit him in L.A. where he was staying at a Zen Center with ZMSS. E would soon go to Korea for an extended time, and I wanted to see him before he left. Coincidentally, Gurumayi was on tour at the L.A. Siddha Yoga ashram at the same time.

The first night I was there, E said to me, “I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t we get up early tomorrow, do Zen practice first, then go to the program at the Siddha Yoga ashram.” I didn’t see any point to it. All these practices were fundamentally the same, what difference did it make if we went to one or the other or both? But, whatever, I’d go along with him.

At the ashram, as we did the Siddha Yoga chants and practices, including going up to bow to the guru, I kept watching E, waiting for him to say or do something to try to convince me that Zen had something better than Siddha Yoga. But he didn’t show any difference. At the Zen center, he just followed the Zen forms; at the Siddha Yoga ashram, he just did the practices there like everyone else. The way he just did both practices, without offering any opinions about them… it made an impression on me. His attitude of just following each situation was a teaching that couldn’t have been expressed with just words.

Even though I saw all traditions as the same, there was a particular reason that I wanted to avoid Zen. I knew that part of that tradition was being confronted with very difficult questions from the Zen Master. I’m a shy person. I didn’t want to get involved in any fierce debates. I preferred being a still and silent witness.

But there we were later in the day, driving through L.A. on some errand. E was driving, next to him in the front seat was ZMSS, and I was in the back. I really wanted to avoid any sort of interaction with this Zen Master. I figured if I just stayed quiet, he wouldn’t bother me. It wasn’t like I’d ever asked him for teaching, after all.

E was telling ZMSS that the two of us first got interested in meditation back in college when we’d taken LSD. “Yes,” ZMSS offered, “sometimes when a person takes LSD, he sees that everything is changing, changing, changing, and he understands that attachment isn’t so good.”

E continued, “And after LSD, we started doing Yoga-style meditation.” Without looking back at me, ZMSS asked, “So, how long have you been doing Yoga?”

Crap. I didn’t want to get involved with any convoluted Zen dialog. But it was a moving car; I had no escape. “I’ve been meditating for 7 years or so,” I told him.

“After doing Yoga for so long,” he asked, “have you gotten anything?”

It was a big question, and maybe a good cliffhanger. In my next blog, I’ll complete this conversation, and tell how it led to me looking into ZMSS’s teachings, and eventually to an astounding week doing a formal sitting retreat with him.

Autobiography of a Boo Boo. 2: India.

This series of blogs explains how I've come to my current Zen-style meditation practice. I'm calling the series Autobiography of a Boo Boo, in homage to the Hanna Barbera cartoons of my youth, and in recognition that I've never been good enough to be called a Yogi.

The previous blog entry describes my practice/life through my freshman year in college, 1977/78, when I encountered guru Swami Muktananda and his “Siddha Yoga” (SYDA) organization. He inspired me to give up ordinary-American style. I quit school, worked and saved for months, and started living in Siddha Yoga ashrams, joining Muktananda’s “3rd World Tour” by early 1979.

Today, as I progress into deep middle-age, it’s difficult to keep all these memories organized. In this case, though, I’m certain of the date. The first ashram I lived in was Oakland, CA, a stop on Muktananda’s Tour. After 2 months, I returned to see my parents near Philadelphia, PA. I recall my nervousness when flying back East, because the accident at Three Mile Island had just exploded. So I have a reliable time-stamp for my story at this point. We may assume that it’s pure coincidence that my years with Muktananda started with a nuclear melt-down.

Anyway: the great lesson I learned from Muktananda is that my thinking, what’s going on in my mind just now, is incredibly, amazingly powerful. Attending to how I keep my mind moment-to-moment can be a more interesting, rewarding, and efficient life direction than trying to get or control anything in the external world. In order to comprehend and experience the power of mind, it’s necessary to take a pause, slow down, and observe this inner world with care and energy. That is: this 5 year period in SYDA ashrams was when I began to do formal meditation practices.

It’s hard to break the habit of always focusing on the world of stuff, always striving to get stuff. Looking at thought-patterns is usually more difficult than distracting myself from them. Even the act of sitting still for long periods is itself physically painful. There are major hurdles to overcome in starting a meditation practice. The ashram helped me through this in a number of ways.

I had the support of the large group that lived and practiced together (human beings are herding animals more than we realize). I adopted the belief-system that Muktananda was on a higher, more spiritual level than ordinary people, so I could believe him when he told me that meditation was special and holy, that it would bring me to God, to enlightenment, and all that. I got lots of great, euphoric feelings from the practices, and from focusing on the guru. The community, the hope and desire to climb the spiritual ladder, and the good feelings inside kept me going.

And I liked the philosophy. I liked remembering that It’s All One. Just as gold can be fashioned into different types of jewelry and still be the same gold, all things in the world are in fact the same substance: God or Self or Absolute. This understanding freed me from clinging to particular things, people, or situations. If it’s all God, then wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever happens is OK. Following this understanding, after 2.5 years in American ashrams, I moved to the main ashram in India, effectively renouncing everything from my previous life.

I was there when Muktananda died; it didn’t bother me at all. By that point, I was really interested in exploring truth for myself, not so much in devotion to a guru. Sure, in the early years, it gave me energy to believe in god-like super-beings. Eventually, all that seemed cultish. I’d prefer to take my understanding and my meditation practice and run.

But on the other hand… everyone around me believed in the magical power that emanated from the guru, a power most concentrated in his physical presence, a power that’d exponentially quicken my ascent to enlightenment or whatever. What if they were right? It’d be stupid to give that up, and I didn’t want to be stupid. Muktananda had left successor gurus, so for a year after his death, I remained with them in the India ashram, uncertain about giving up my connection to the special power that was (maybe?) dependent on holy people and places.

Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to believe in myself. I preferred having a scientific mind that openly questioned everything, rather than believing in magical invisible energy, in Gods, in holy enlightened beings. I was tired of believing in things because other people did, or because some authority told me to, or because some old and popular book said so. If I could get enlightenment in a year by believing in a guru, or in 1000 lifetimes by believing in myself, I’d still prefer to believe in myself. What’s the hurry anyway?

So I left India in early 1984, figuring I’d go back the good old USA, where people are skeptical and cynical and don’t believe in any folktale that sounds nice. My kind of people! I’d find some simple life to sustain myself, continue to meditate, to train my mind to be quiet and focused, and use my remembrance of Oneness to remain as a witness. Whatever would appear in the real world, I’d watch it unfold as if a movie.

In the course of finding an ordinary life situation, I ended up in California by 1985. There I had my first encounters with Zen teaching and with major psychedelic experiences, which jolted me into a new direction and new understandings (or perhaps a lack thereof). Details to come in the next couple blog entries of my story.