{"id":10,"date":"2011-01-17T16:11:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T16:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/?p=10"},"modified":"2011-01-18T09:39:44","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T09:39:44","slug":"17-january-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/2011\/01\/17\/17-january-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"17 January, Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been thinking of you, and smiling in your general direction.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Monday evening at six, Mysore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s magic hour. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just sipped down the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last coconut\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan wizened, woody monster bigger than my head and old enough to have fermented and gone all bubbly like a good kombucha. And now a bit of quiet time. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sitting atop the roof of my house\u00e2\u20ac\u201da marble and metal 3-story whose empty top floor I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve rented\u00e2\u20ac\u201das the sun sets in oranges and blues over Kukkaranahalli Lake. The almost-full moon\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhuge and close\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhas already risen over the shala on the other side of Gokulam. And, like every night at this hour, activity everywhere has fallen in to a lull as shops call it a day, families shift in to their intimate hours together at home, and the crazy, early-rising yoga students call goodnight across the rooftops. The light is slanted and golden\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmaybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ambient dust, or maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some luck of longitude that makes evenings here so radiant. When the glow fades, just before evening traffic picks up, holy prayers from the Mosques will resonate their errie minor notes throughout the city.<\/p>\n

Six p.m. is always<\/em> sublime in Mysore. As active as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been these past two weeks, at six I always come alive in a different way. I get to a rooftop, or the Lake, or Chamundi Hill, or the Palace downtown, or wherever<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and allow my mind to slow down while all the sense perceptions welcome this phase-shift and its otherworldly light.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that south India is beautiful in an obvious sense. Sure, at times I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m undone by photogenic stuff like the size and depth of every little kid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes, or the arc of the script used to letter street signs. And I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even start, today, to describe the glorious food.<\/p>\n

And at the same time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the human, animal and environmental suffering are everything you may have heard, even as religious and spiritual life are as vibrant, deep and diverse as any I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve experienced anywhere. So from here I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to toss out the paired stereotypes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dIndia as land of suffering; India as land of transcendence. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here for salvation or to get a story\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just here to become a deeper teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u201dso there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no need to turn the place itself into some exotic, dramatic character. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll leave that to dull American advertisements and escape fantasies that engage yoga as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a cartoon genie–here to give cheap IT or transcendence and then go poof out of the way.<\/p>\n

That said, my first trip here was<\/em> undertaken as a kind of pilgrimage\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhen a beloved PhD adviser was killed on his motorcycle, I had to do something to honor him and the bond we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shared as closeted meditation practitioners in academia. After 7 or so years of ashtanga practice, Mysore\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddistant and challenging though it may be\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwas the only option because this is the seedbed of modern yoga.<\/p>\n

The second trip back here was a practice adventure \u00e2\u20ac\u201cthree long months posed as a question about the future, but also creating closure and reflection at the end of the life I loved<\/em> in LA.<\/p>\n

Those trips had a receptive, lyrical, even transformative quality. My organism, somewhat prepared by several years of daily practice and more meditation than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to say, went through two fairly big openings. The first of these had to do with blocks deep in my pelvis and chest areas, freeing up movement in my spine. The second had to do with becoming conscious of subtle, character-limiting fears and resentments toward my parents, other major figures in my life, and myself.<\/p>\n

Deepening my yoga practice is the central focus of this trip too, but what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different this time is that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also here to deepen my teaching<\/em> practice as much as possible. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m feeling a bit more practical. While my main teacher asked me to teach in 2008, this is the first year I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve taken that somewhat seriously. It’s the first year I got the long-resisted immunizations and brought a decent scooter helmet, the first year I’ve undertaken classes rather than just learning by being around.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting all serious <\/em>over here. Yoga is just some technologies for concentration, equanimity and vibrant health. Beyond that, it’s no joke that we all have the option of cultivating immanent presence and transcendent ecstasy on a dime. But that, in itself, is a cosmic kind of joke.<\/p>\n

Anyway, in addition to getting settled (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you that story later) and practicing every day while taking care of two pressing family matters back in the US, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve given myself a relatively strong course of study. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m taking classes in Sanskrit, so that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153street Sankrit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve absorbed from philosophy classes and chanting marathons will have a clarity and confidence I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been able to offer you so far. This involves lectures, chanting sessions, and\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto my horror\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhomework.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, I begin a 20-day course on massage through the lenses of the subtle and emotional bodies. This is a pretty extraordinary opportunity: an intensive, small course with a teacher I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve quietly admired for years but who has been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153discovered\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by an audience of thousands in recent months. So although the prospect of three workshop hours a day is a bit daunting, given this combines with the usual physical practice, daily sitting, the Sanskrit business and urgent need to fill my daily coconut and chai quotas; and although it’s very expensive; in the long run this course is too valuable to miss. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be happy to have this learning under my skin when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re back together.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve broken the seal on posting here, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll update this blog more regularly. With a serious personal loss and some major professional deliberations the past 6 weeks, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve accumulated email much faster than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve answered it. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wondering if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ever going to respond, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that under the circumstances I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve slow-tracked personal email so that I can take the time to focus on it and enjoy talking with you. Please pardon my lag time, especially if you’re waiting for my response to some question. In any case, I love hearing from you\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never believe the size of the cheesy grins you put on my face when I open my laptop in public places. So do drop a line anytime, either here in the comments or by email. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here and will respond presently.<\/p>\n

Meantime, new photos are posting here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the way, thanks for this website\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhose minimalism is exactly what I wanted\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgo to my brother Aaron Flint Jamison and our fictive-brother Alex Mahan. These two have kept me in webspace five years running, with design that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost-invisibly beautiful, and functionality that makes my work a breeze. Thanks, guys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been thinking of you, and smiling in your general direction. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Monday evening at six, Mysore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s magic hour. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just sipped down the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last coconut\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan wizened, woody monster bigger than my head and old enough to have fermented and gone all bubbly like a good kombucha. And now a bit of quiet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ashtangaannarbor.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}