Jiva Offerings: April 2011

Each month, I donate all my proceeds from teaching to a different charity, and throughout the classes I'll be talking a bit about the good works that organization is doing. This month's charity is:

Room to Read

Room to Read partners with local communities in the developing world to establish libraries, create local-language children's literature, construct schools, and provide education to girls.


Vision
Room to Read believes that World Change Starts with Educated Children. We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world.

Mission
Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Working in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations and governments, we develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and support girls to complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in school and beyond.

Programs
Room to Read has developed a holistic, multi-pronged approach to help children in the developing world gain the lifelong gift of education through four core programs:

• Reading Room — We establish libraries and stock them with local-language children’s books, original Room to Read titles, donated English-language books, games and furniture to create a child-friendly learning environment.
• School Room — We partner with local communities to build schools so children can learn in a safe, child-friendly environment.
• Local Language Publishing — We source new content from local writers and illustrators and publish high-quality children's books in the local language to distribute throughout our networks.
• Girls' Education — We provide long-term, holistic support enabling girls to pursue and complete their secondary education.

Crazy Sexy Life

One of the most vibrant and joyous people I've ever met was Kris Carr, who at the time had just beaten cancer by going vegan and getting serious about yoga. She had just finished filming a powerful documentary about her recovery called Crazy Sexy Cancer. I met her at opening of Jivamukti Center in Charleston, where she shared her story....

At the time she was diagnosed back in 2003, Kris was an actress and party-circuit regular living in New York City. “In New York, I ate a lot of fat-free food and followed diet fads,” she says. “I drank a lot of martinis, too.” She also had an unquenchable passion for fast food and fueled her busy days with a steady stream of coffee. “I was a mess.”

After being diagnosed with cancer, she turned to a holistic approach to recovery. With time and experimentation, Carr used food--all vegan and mostly raw--to nurse herself back to health. Carr transformed the rest of her life, too. She left New York City for a quieter, more pastoral existence in Woodstock, N.Y. There, she learned mediation and yoga (Jivamukti Yoga!!), which she describes as:
"Kick-ass, uplifting music, meditation, chanting, scripture and real-deal talks about vegetarianism, the environment, politics etc.: this is what ya get at a Jivamukti class. I loved it from day one. My mat became my church."

In addition to the film, she launched a collection of blogs, videos and other supportive resources through her Web site, CrazySexyLife.com. She’s now compiled her knowledge and experience in a third book, Crazy Sexy Diet. Her story graces the April cover of Experience Life Magazine, and she continues to inspire...

Course on Voluntary Simplicity

Voluntary Simplicity is a five-session discussion guide for the workplace, community or faith center, university or home. This course addresses the distractions of modern society that keep us from caring for ourselves, our relationships, and our environment.

Topics Covered:
1. The Meaning of Simplicity: The concept of simplicity, as a religious practice or philosophy of life, has a long history. Both inner simplicity and outer simplicity are involved. What are some common misconceptions about a simple life?

2. Living More with Less: Accumulating material possessions is part of the American Dream. For some, the dream has become a nightmare. When do material possessions add meaning to our lives and when do they detract?

3. Making a Living: A growing number of people wish to resolve the conflict between the desire to make and spend money and the desire for a simple life. Why is that so difficult in our culture?

4. Do You Have the Time?: In modern society, our minds are focused on the "busyness" of the day, our current problems, and our future challenges. Are there alternatives to the fast pace of our mainstream culture?

5. Living Simply and Sustainably: There are countless practical benefits in moving toward simplicity and sustainability. What steps can be taken to move toward a life simple in means, rich in ends?

A Special Message from Sharon Gannon

As Michael Franti sings, "Everyone addicted to the same nicotine, everyone addicted to the same gasoline...everyone addicted to a technicolor screen, everybody tryin' to get their hands on the same green..."

"The question now that each one of us should be asking ourselves is can we free ourselves of our addictions-addictions to all the stuff that has come to constitute our precious lifestyle, a way of life that poses terrible risks to the future of life on Earth. Can we live without things like shopping malls, cars, planes, nuclear power plants, oil drilling, fast food and factory farms? Do we have the courage and creativity to find a new way to live that doesn't destroy the planet and ourselves in the process? Can we be that truthful, that exposed? Can we live that naked?"

"The times we are living in now may well be the prophesized apocalypse. Apocalypse means "to uncover. " An apocalypse may be just what we need right now to help reveal to us our great potential-what is underneath all the artifice, the trappings and pretense. If we could use the recent so-called catastrophes as a way to wake up and examine our way of life and thus begin to sort through and find only what is essential and then be brave enough to let go of all of the unnecessary wants we have conditioned ourselves to identify with. Are we ready for that kind of fierce awakening to the knowledge of our true selves? Would we be able to recognize ourselves, naked without the familiar trappings of culture, without our addictions to all the stuff? Perhaps if we were willing to try to overcome our greed, we could discover our ultimate destiny."

"The eternal truth that burns inside of each soul is joy, happiness, love. It is our essential nature, it is what everyone longs for, and it is our destiny. We may have been looking for it in external things, but it can never be found in things. It has always been available to anyone who wants to look deeply inside, but to be able to do that we will have to take off our clothes and let go of whatever it is that has been covering and obscuring our true heart for so long. We will have to embrace the Apocalypse."    -Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga

Practice like your hair is on fire

So, last night I was woken up by a vague ringing sound and a weird smell. It took me a good while to determine this was not a dream (must be all the Tibetan Dream Yoga practices that are confusing me!), and when I finally got up, I realized those turned out to be the apartment fire alarm and the stench of smoke. I walked around my apartment--which was filled with dense, sulfurous smoke--in a daze, until eventually my fight-or-flight mechanism triggered, and I started packing a backpack of essential stuff before running out the door.

The hallway was filled with even more smoke, so much that it stung my eyes and made it hurt to breathe. My neighbors were exiting as well, and they helped direct me to the stairwell because I wasn't really thinking straight or moving smartly since I was still so shocked. When I finally made it outside, I looked up to the apartment that was on fire (which turned out to be directly under mine, four floors under), and saw intense, bellowing smoke pouring out of the windows. It was all so surreal.

Eventually, the firemen put the fire out and we got to go back inside. My apartment was still filled with smoke, and even now still smells rechid. But I really can't complain, I am fine and nobody got hurt. But what a wake-up call.

Mostly, the incident reminds me of the delicate fragility of life, which we often forget since our brains are programmed to believe that things will always stay the same and never change. Yet the truth is that everything is changing and each moment our entire reality can shift - as it could have with this fire, had it led to more disastrous consequences.

Of course, this only makes the time we have so much more precious. The Tibetan teacher Gelek Rinpoche emphasizes that our time is running out, and we have to make the most of this rare and fleeting opportunity to wake up - RIGHT NOW. Instead, we often don’t have a sense of urgency because we don’t realize how easily this human life can be lost.....that is why moments like my fire incident are so precious, because they put things in perspective and remind of that we have no time to lose.

"In short, our human life, with the limitless capacity of our minds, is capable of producing any result we wish. If your goal is to get rich, your human life is capable of producing it. If you want to become famous, your life is capable of doing it. If you want to be fully enlightened, if your ultimate spiritual goal is to achieve enlightenment, then this life is capable of delivering that as well. From our point of view we may fail, but it won’t be because our human life lacked the capacity for total enlightenment. It’ll be because we didn’t take advantage of it."  -Gelek Rinpoche

Practice Like Your Hair's on Fire

Buddhadharma Quarterly, Fall 2008

A tremendous amount of effort

"I have made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form - no matter how many lifetimes it takes"

One of my spiritual heroes is Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who in 1964 was the second Western woman ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She spent 12 years in a Himalayan mountain cave in intense spiritual practice, which included sleeping in a traditional wooden meditation box in a meditative posture for just three hours a night. Since coming out of the cave, she has taken on the cause of equal rights and opportunities for Buddhist nuns. Listen to her important message about spiritual practice:

Regarding her time in solitude, she says:
"One of the good things about suffering is that it pulls people up.....and gets them thinking. When everything seems to be going well, and things are rolling along, then one tends to be less motivated to deal with the fundamental issues of life."

On living in an affluent society:
"If one has any sense at all, one should eventually realize that getting more stuff does not fill that huge black hole inside of discontent, disillusionment, and frustration. Then one sees that the spiritual teachers of all ages have something important to teach us.....But everyone seems to want everything so quick, these days."

She tells the story about how an individual once asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama what was the quickest and fastest way to achieve enlightenment. His Holiness just looked at him, then put his head down.....and just started crying.

"It's not a quick and easy fix. A genuine spiritual path is not easy," she says.

"It takes a tremendous, tremendous amount of effort to become effortless. And how much people are willing to put into it.....I don't know. This is my only fear. But hopefully, there will be a change in consciousness. Because if not, the planet is finished. We don't have that much time."

Progress on the path....

So I wanted to share some thoughts about how my little "Contemplative Life Project" has been going.....

Firstly, I have gotten some reactions from people who think it sounds too intense and too radical. To answer this, I return back to my yoga teachers--and founders of Jivamukti Yoga--David Life and Sharon Gannon. I was attracted to them, and their style of yoga, because it openly admits to being radical--and that it is a GOOD thing. As I wrote in an earlier blog posting, unlike the way this word is commonly pejoratively used in today's parlance, they define the word to mean "going back to the root." In other words, being radical is adopting a no-bullshit philosophy that doesn't treat surface symptoms but delves deeply into the root causes of problems.

This resonates with me because I have never been one to settle for superficial fixes. Anything that I have taken on and become passionate about, I have often delved deeply and devotedly into. So, this time, I figured there couldn't be a better thing than spirituality, liberation, the ending of samsara, to delve deeply into. :)

That being said, I know enough about myself, and the human condition in general, to know that becoming too ascetic and extreme doesn't work. So I have taken a gradual approach to my Monastic Rules. I don't follow them all yet, but have set my vision, my view, towards that direction. It has helped me focus. And it is also a work in progress; I fully expect to change them, often, as this progresses.

So, where am I right now with regards to them? Well, I have been struggling to get my butt to the meditation cushion before bed. I don't know why, but there is some sort of blockage in my psyche that resists meditation before sleeping. I am often so tired that it is sooooo easy to justify skipping this. In the mornings, however, I love to do my hour meditation and look forward to it. But it wasn't always so.....I remember when it was a struggle to just do the 10 minutes in the morning. I wonder how much of this is just habituating the act. So, my new focus is on just sitting for 5 minutes before bed to habituate the act itself, and not worry on how long I meditate for.

Speaking of the power of habits, I am constantly amazed at what you can do by fully utilizing this secret. For example, I went to bed last night around 8pm because I was exhausted, and woke this morning at 4am. Most people would think this was a crazy schedule, but for me it is normal. I started getting into this routine (sleep by 8/9pm, wake by 4/5am) about 6 months ago and it was WEIRD back then. I kept doing it, though, and now - its so natural.

So the other habit that I am trying to inculcate is the food one. I was tremendously inspired by the practice of eating by 6pm that the amazing yogi Dharma Mittra does and advises his students to do. It makes so much sense, both as an ascetic practice, and as a dietary one. When I do this, I feel more focused, clear, and energized in the evenings. And Dharma Mittra can stand on his head without arms......so he can't be that wrong...... :)

Tibetan Dream Yoga

For centuries, Tibetan masters have taught their students how to use dreamtime and dream space to further spiritual progress by increasing awareness during the dream state, otherwise known as Tibetan dream yoga. The Yoga of the Dream State, an ancient Tibetan manual on the practice of dream yoga and lucid dreaming, teaches that we can learn five spiritually significant wisdom lessons through this path of awakening:

1. Dreams can be altered through will and attention
2. Dreams are unstable, impermanent, and unreal — much like fantasies, magical illusions, mirages, and hallucinations
3. Daily perceptions in the everyday waking state are also unreal
4. All life is here today and gone tomorrow, like a dream; there is nothing to hold on to
5. Conscious dreamwork can lead us to the realization of wholeness, perfect balance, and unity

Tibetan dream yoga practice comprises three parts:

1. Daytime practice, designed to help us recognize the dreamlike nature of all existence and thereby prepare us to experience our dreams as vividly as we do our waking activities
2. Morning wake-up practices that help us recall our dreams, and confirm our determination to recall more of them
3. Night time practice, which prepares the ground for lucid dreaming and spiritual

Daytime Practice: 

During the day, practice these four points:

• Contemplate the body as illusory and unreal
• Contemplate the mind and mental activities as similarly insubstantial
• Regard the world, phenomena, and experience as dreamlike, insubstantial, impermanent, and unreal
• Recognize the relativity and ungraspable quality such as time, space, knowledge, and awareness

Wake-up Practice:

The moments immediately after waking are the most fertile for recalling dreams. The following practices are designed to support and strengthen your recall. Upon waking in the morning, practice:

• The lion's out-breath - breathing out with the sound "ah"
• The lion-like posture for awakening and purifying - sitting up in bed with raised head and gazing and emphasizing the exhalation, repeating the "ah" out breath three times
• Raise the energy - standing up, reaching the fingertips to the sky, and repeating the lion's out-breath 
• Enter into mindful reflection on the transition between the states of sleeping, dreaming, and waking reality - coming into the present moment, recording dreams. Thus, you will enter the day recognizing that all things are like a dream, illusion, fantasy.

Nighttime Practice:

After going to bed, practice these four points in order to create the conditions for mindful, lucid dreaming.

• Chant the following prayer three times to remind you of and strengthen your resolve to awaken within the dream, for the benefit of the ultimate awakening of all beings: “May I awaken within this dream and grasp the fact that I am dreaming, so that all dreamlike beings may likewise awaken from the nightmare of illusory suffering and confusion”.
• Lie on one side with your legs together and knees slightly bent. Let your bent arm take the weight of your torso by resting your head on your open hand. This is the posture of the sleeping Buddha
• Visualize the letter "A" (symbolizing infinite space) on the surface of the moon.

“There are some who are awake even while asleep, and then there are those who, apparently awake, are deeply asleep” – Lalla

The Contemplative Life Project

For the past couple months, my focus has turned more and more towards the pursuit of a contemplative life. By this, I mean a lifestyle specifically designed to cultivate awareness, insight and compassion for oneself and others, by slowing down, simplifying, and exploring one's inner depths. It is a way of being that is fundamentally radical and transformative. Contemplative practices include meditation, in all its various forms, but also encompass a wide range of other disciplines, to include mind-body practices, art, and reflection.

In many ways, however, this is not a new thing for me, since I have always felt a unique calling towards a lifestyle of silence, solitude, and simplicity.

But recently, I have become increasingly interested in pursuing deep and rigorous spiritual growth as a layperson. So, how can I live a radically spiritual life without becoming a monastic? Well, that is my project.....

Agi's Monastic Rules
I decided to begin by coming up with some practices to follow. I wanted to be as hard-core as possible, to really explore the possibilities. Not all of these practices are a part of my life just yet, but I am working towards them... Check them out HERE.

As I continue to explore these and other practices, I will share my journey. I welcome any comments, ideas, thoughts, and advice. :)