100 years of Gratitude

Posted on December 14, 2018 by admin

I was hoping he would make it to today and beyond. Surpassing his guru/brother-in-law Krishnamacharya in time spent on our planet would have pleased him no end, but 95 plus years would have to do. Happy 100, B.K.S. Iyengar, wherever in the cosmos you may be!

I was blessed to have been able to not only study with him, but to have a deeply personal/cosmic connection that existed on a multiplicity of planes. Relationships with spiritual teachers are always simultaneously simple and complex. Simplicity is the common ‘Ground of Being’ where you meet as fellow humans in love and mutual respect. Complexity is the interaction of the personal karma you both bring to the table that is rarely clear but always educational.

B.K.S Iyengar defies categorizing. Sui generis all the way. His fiery genius has spawned a world wide following in exploring embodied spiritual wisdom. His deep insecurities, stemming I am sure from a very challenging and often abusive childhood, kept getting in the way of his finding a lasting deep inner peace. But that edge fueled his relentless desire to explore. Genius often carries that paradox. Navigating his energy field was challenging for me, and my own personal spiritual growth eventually required me to step back from the unresolved shadows of the community arising around him. But he gave me three great gifts, unsurpassable spiritual treasures, that remain with me moment to moment and nurture me.

The first gift was how to practice. Within the first few days of my meeting him in Pune in January of 1982, he came up to me while I was struggling in trikonasana. He puts his foot directly toes to toes with mine and says ” why is this skin pink and this skin white? Why is this turning in, but this out? He was asking me to feel, directly in the moment, what was arising. There was no ‘right or wrong’ action. Just, are you fully present? Of course I was trying to ‘think’ my way into the answers and was totally flummoxed, but he was amazingly patient.

The second gift was validating my own practice. This was a real gift as he told his assistants to ‘leave me alone’ during the classes in Pune. There were often a handful of Iyengar wannabes roaming the classes looking to ‘adjust’ students so they would get the ‘right’ pose, but he kept them away from me. My body is quirky and he let me explore his teachings without outside interference. That was huge for me.

The third gift was the heart to heart connection that came outside of the classroom setting. In the previous post, we looked at the Brahma Viharas, the profoundly healing and heart opening practices passed down from Vedic times, of great importance to the Buddhists and yogis as well. As an example of ‘it is always the present moment, this reminds me of one of the more extraordinary moments in our complicated relationship. In the summer of 1987, the second Iyengar National convention was to be held in Cambridge MA. As the president of the BKSIYANC, the sponsors of the 1984 convention in San Francisco, I was asked by Patricia Walden, one of the local organizers, to address the teachers gathering the evening before the official opening. I was to speak just before Iyengar who would say some words to complete the evening.

For the previous months I had been studying and working with the Brahma Viharas as I was writing an article on them for the Iyengar Yoga Institute Review, our tri-annual journal published in San Francisco. I was clear that the message of ‘citta prasadana’ , Patanjali’s description in I-33 of the result of practicing the Brahma Viharas, was of great importance to the yoga community, as some stresses and strains had appeared over the three previous years since the first convention in 1984. I had it all planned in my head, as I didn’t use notes.

When the time came to speak, I got somehow became sidetracked by something, or many things and just as I was finishing I realized that I had totally spaced out and forgot all about Patanjali and Sutra I-33. It was so disappointing, but all in my head, or so I thought.

B.K.S is next and as he comes up to the microphone, he looks right in my eyes. He then addresses the group: ” I had prepared to say some words to you tonight, but something has just come to me now so I will change.” And he then proceeds to base his whole talk on sutra I-33, explaining the Brahma Viharas and their importance. It was a serious OMG moment for me.I not mentioned my topic to anyone, but he somehow he tuned into me and the whole field and joined me in the teaching. The heart to heart, being truly ‘seen’ and validated by your teacher, on the spiritual plane, in the moment, was a gift that keeps giving.

One of the many aspects of Iyengar that I truly loved was his total lack of pretension. He did not pretend to be holy, or above the messiness of the human condition. If he was in a bad mood, everyone could feel it. He could be embarrassingly obnoxious when his anger got the better of him, and in a split second switch to being overwhelmingly generous and loving. He also had a great sense of humor. There was the time in Pune when he came up to me while we (the class) were in uttanasana. He bends down and sort of whispers to me “do you mind if I use you to make a joke?”. Caught a bit by surprise, I said of course. He stops the class and has everyone come over to watch me and my hamstrings. “Look at this man. He is a mule.” He then proceeds to adjust here, slap there, touch here. Energy moves and the pose changes. “See now? This man was a mule and now I have turned him into a racehorse.” And then he starts giggling.

I’m still a mule, but one very grateful for having been blessed by his presence. Happy Birthday B.K.S!!! See you on the cosmic planes.

Also a Happy Birthday shout out to my son, S.B.K., Sean Bishop Kilmurray, turning 22 today.

Love, Death and the Skandhas: part 3

Posted on December 6, 2018 by admin

The Four Flavors of Love

Some of the greatest advances in modern neuroscience include the expansion of our understanding of the origins and mechanisms of trauma and other modes of emotional disregulation, and the pathways toward healing these wounds. Books by Dan Siegel, Daniel Goleman, Rick Hanson, Allan Schore and others have presented these new insights in a variety ways. * (see below) But, amazingly enough, some of the most profound healing practices for this realm date back to the early Vedic times, 2500 years or so ago. Known as the Brahma Viharas or the four abodes of Brahma, these practices are expressions of the most divine of the emotions, love.

As mentioned in the previous post, practicing the Brahma Viharas is a crucial aspect of preparing the mind and emotions for dealing with death, illness and other challenges and awakening to the depths of love that abide in our natural state. Buddha made these a key aspect of his teaching and the modern Theravadin Buddhists, as exemplified by Western Buddhist teachers Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfeld and others have done an amazing job of bringing these practices to the 21st century.

For the yoga students, the ‘abodes of Brahma’, or ‘frolics in God’, as my first Sutras teacher called them, appear in the Samadhi Pada as sutra I-33. They are a direct antidote to the terror of the first skandha and thus are essential for cultivating a strong and open heart. Patanjali doesn’t offer details of ‘how’ to practice the Braahma viharas, so we will introduce those later. The following paragraphs are taken from my Sutras translation and study guide found elsewhere on this site.

I-33 Maitri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha dukha punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatash citta prasadanam.
(The mind becomes purified by) friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference (equanimity) (respectively) towards those who are successful, suffering, virtuous and unvirtuous.

“Patanjali continues the discussion of eliminating the distractions to samadhi consciousness by addressing the emotions. Because the emotions are so crucial to bringing stability to the mind, this is one of the most important sutras. This sutra also is recapitulated in sutra II-33 where pratipaksha bhavanam, cultivating the opposite mind state, is reintroduced as a means to overcoming negative emotions. These are practices of the heart and are very important in the Buddhist teachings as well.

Friendliness, or loving kindness as it is commonly called in the Buddhist world, is the easiest and most natural positive emotion to cultivate. We all know what it is like to have a friend, to feel the love, warmth and openness that comes when we are with a friend. But also, it is not uncommon to feel envious or jealous over other people’s success or good luck. Practicing maitri (metta or loving kindness) by remembering and recreating these feelings of love, when feeling jealous or disappointed, helps to keep the mind calm and the heart open. And practicing simple kindness in general, like eating good food, nourishes and strengthens the heart. Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg has been instrumental in promoting ‘metta practice’, metta being the Pali term for maitri, Pali being the language of the Buddha.

Compassion, karuna, goes right to the heart. When we see others suffering we may either turn away to avoid the depths of feeling, or perhaps take some cruel delight if it happens to be an enemy that is suffering. Choosing to remain compassionate (karuna) in the face of suffering keeps us in our hearts and grounded in being. Being compassionate towards ourselves is also an important and challenging practice. Literally meaning ‘to feel with’, compassion is a profound experience of love and support to another being.

Appreciative Joy: Joy is all around us. From the simple joy of children at play, of lovers in a gentle embrace, to the blooming of flowers and the delight of pets with their owners, life at its core exudes joy. But we do not always feel joyous ourselves so we need to build up a ‘bank account’ of joy. Others may make us feel inadequate, less than worthy, insecure in our selves, if we are prone to engage in comparison. Remembering the joy or delight (mudita) we have felt form others allows us to touch our own joy, and thus strengthen our own joyful, open-hearted self sense. Seeing joy in someone we dislike can also set up feeling of anger and resentment. At a deeper level, life at its essence is joyful. Can we feel appreciative joy at the song of a bird, a flower in bloom, of the night sky?

Equanimity: Seeing suffering and injustice can easily evoke anger and fear. The Sanskrit word upeksha literally means indifference. Here, indifference to suffering and injustice does not mean inactivity or apathy, (See Bhagavad Gita) but a state of non reactivity so that anger and fear do not disturb the mind field with a torrent of negative emotional energy. The Buddhists translate upeksha (upekka in Pali) as equanimity and I like this word much better than indifference. Again the point is to be present to suffering and injustice without falling into emotional turmoil. Then appropriate action (dharma) can be taken with a clear mind and open heart. One of the important lessons from the workshop around care-giving was to watch for ‘pathological altruism’, where our responses to someones suffering are attempts to avoid our own inner suffering and distress that are being evoked. The practice of upeksha can help with this.

Equanimity is the anchor of the four Brahma Viharas as it acknowledges reality. There is suffering. There is injustice. As much as I would love for it all to go away, life is what it is. And this is difficult to accept. Equanimity is the ultimate emotional stabilizer.

The Four Flavors of Love

Frank Ostaseski referred to the Brahma Viharas as the ‘Four Flavors of Love’, and both he and Joan Halifax pointed to Sharon Salzberg as the one who impelled them to start working with their own metta practice, which involves repeating specific phrases over and over. The metta phrases are relational, heart centered, and very effective if practiced with sincerity and diligence. Metta practice plants seeds of health and well being into the mind field and opens and strengthens the heart. It is the foundation for working with the other Brahma Viharas.

The traditional phrases have five targets, beginning with yourself. Most of us have a much easier time sending love to others than to ourselves. This is not an egoic action, but one that flows from ultimate mystery. Over time you add: a benefactor or close friend: a neutral person: someone you really dislike: and finally all beings. For the practice to work, it has to be heart-felt, not superficial or dismissive. “Sure, I’ll send love to Donald Trump” (not!) Which is why we keep it simple and easy in the beginning. The most commonly seen phrases are as follows:

May I be happy.
May I be at peace
May I live with ease.
May I be free from suffering.
May you be happy.
May you be at peace
May you live with ease.
May you be free from suffering, etc

There are many ways to modify and adapt these so that they are personally meaningful to you. In the Love and Death workshop, we began in a way that was very helpful to me, as the verses Frank taught us were:

May I (we) be safe and free from danger.
May I (we) find happiness.
May I (we) be filled with loving kindness.
May I (we) find ease in our lives.

The root of all painful emotions is fear, so right away we set the intention to be safe, to know we are safe, and to keep reminding ourselves again and again, until we really feel safe. This was the practice I used to help me get to sleep when my PTSD was acting up after the fire last winter. May I be safe! I still use this everyday, sometimes when I am clear, sometimes when I am struggling with my inner confusion and fear. This helps reconnect with our ‘basic goodness’ so we can root ourselves here. You can practice as part of your sitting practice, or anytime in the day when you can pause, relax and go through the phrases several times.

There are similar phrases that can be recited to cultivate karuna, mudita and upeksha.

Karuna:
May you be free of your pain and sorrow.
May you find peace.

Mudita:
May your happiness and good fortune not leave you.
May your good fortune continue.
May your happiness not diminish

Upeksha:
All beings are the owners of their karma; their happiness and unhappiness depends upon their actions, not on my wishes for them.
I care about you, and I’m not in control of the unfolding of events. I can’t make it all better for you.
Things are the way that they are.

An excellent and well detailed resource on working with the Brahma Viharas can be found here: https://dharmanet.org/coursesM/16/bv0.htm.

Books:

Dan Siegel: “The Developing Mind”, “The Mindful Brain”, “Mindsight, “The Mindful Therapist”, “Aware”

Daniel Goleman: “Emotional Intelligence”, “Social Intelligence”

Rick Hanson: Buddha’s Brain” (with Richard Mendius), “Just One Thing”

Allan Shore: Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self” (very technical, for nerds only, but I discovered some major insights on my shame and panic attacks in this book.)

Love, Death and the Skandhas: pt 2

Posted on December 3, 2018 by admin

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

This quote from Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan in the 1200’s, is recited at the end of the afternoon zazen practice session at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, and alludes to the first of the five invitations from Frank Ostaseski’s book mentioned in the previous post. The five invitations are useful to everyone, at all times and are at the core of spiritual practice.

1. Dont’ Wait! Begin Now, not later, not tomorrow, not when you feel better, or have more time. Do not squander your life! This breath: pause, relax, open, allow; begin again …. Practice is not just on the mat, but every moment of your life is your practice. Take heed! Awaken! You never know when Lord Yama may come knock knock knockin’ at your front door. Be ready to greet him. Learn your own skandhas and transform them through practice.

2. Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing. In a previous post I included the famous Rumi poem, the Guest House, which describes the sense of this second invitation. We tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain, at all levels of existence, but we can never heal the wounds that do not get to see the light of our own discriminating wisdom. Your soul will provide lessons that need to be learned, and they usually involve some type of pain or suffering. Trust that you will be able to face the challenges.

Now in cases of more serious trauma, we may need outside support. Somatic Experiencing, the work of trauma resolution developed by Peter Levine and others is an excellent therapeutic approach to working with embodied trauma. Other types of psychotherapy can also be helpful to hold the larger energy field and help the client modulate their own nervous system. All of the upayas, (the Sanskrit word for ‘skillful means of stabilizing the mind field and opening the heart) are helpful when practiced. We will look at working with the Brahma Viharas as an upaya in the next post.

3. Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience.

Social media has been a disaster when it comes to the third invitation as it has created a forum for people to contrive personalities out of fantasy and feeds the illusion that faults, fears, weaknesses or other unpleasant aspects of our real moment to moment self sense need to be hidden away. Not just from others, but from ourselves as well.

There is wisdom that comes from facing the ‘undesirable aspects’ of our selves. To quote Frank, ” Yet more than once I have found an ‘undesirable’ aspect of myself, one about which I had previously felt ashamed and kept tucked away, to be the very quality that allowed me to meet another person’s suffering with compassion instead of fear or pity.”

My aggressive cancer diagnosis has uncovered all sorts of hidden nooks and cranies of my ‘non’ conscious mind, where fear, shame and other unpleasantries lurk. My practice is to welcome them, and then bring them into the light, holding them lightly and compassionately, but neither ignoring nor getting lost in them. Not claiming this is fun, but necessary.

4. Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things

Last July, I had an MRI done on my prostate, and that involved being tied down inside this tubular machine for a half hour or so, with load banging noises and whirring sounds surrounding me. I was supposed to be still so as to not blur the images. This was good practice in finding a place of rest in the middle of things. Sometimes, the chaos comes from the outside, as with the medical world. Sometimes, it comes from the inside, where you own emotions and thinking are creating the chaos. Resting in the middle of things is , of course, meditation practice. Meditation means literally staying in the middle, staying centered, in spite of what is happening around you, or inside you.

This is not an easy practice so it is best to start with simple challenges. Can I sit in a quiet room for 10 minutes, without needing to ‘do’ something. The inner urges to keep busy, to ‘fix the problem’, to ‘improve’, are relentless. The demands from the outer world are equally daunting. Pause, take a deep breath, relax, open to the moment, allow it to be just as it is. Repeat, again and again. The urge to ‘do’ is habitual, but can be transformed through practice.

In the Samadhi Pada, sutras I-12 to I-16, Patanljali gives two practices right away to get the process rolling; abhyasa and vairagyam. Abhyasa is developing stability, the capacity to not be moved’ from your seat’, from your center. Vairagyam is letting go of attachments to habits, beliefs, thoughts and patterns of action that perpetuate suffering.

5. Cultivate ‘Don’t Know’ Mind.

How do we balance the need to know, with deeply recognizing that ultimate mystery is ‘unknowable’. Like all spiritual practice, paradox is at the center of things. When I was first diagnosed with the prostate cancer last July, there were a lot of ‘unknowns’. What type of cancer was it, how long had it been there, and had it spread to anywhere else, were the first of the questions. Then there is conflicting information on just how to find out. Some feel that needle biopsies are dangerous; they can lead to infections and cause the cancer cells to spread. I absorbed that and paused. I had some blood work done to find if there were any metastasized cells in the blood stream. None from the prostate. Good news.

But my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen, a marker for prostate cancer) numbers were going up. Not good. Following my intuition, I finally decided to do the needle biopsy to get the specific data on my cancer, and fortunately I did not put it off any longer, as the biopsy reports came back with gleason scores of 8 and 9, indicators of aggressive cancer growth. Not good, again, but with good data, a plan of action has been hatched.

After consulting with radiation oncologist Anthony D’Amico at the Dan Farber in Boston, I (we) have decided to undergo a combination of radiation and hormonal therapy. Prostate cancer feeds on testosterone, so I have just begun taking testosterone inhibiting hormones, and will probably be on those for several years. The word is I may begin to have hot flashes, grow breast tissue, gain weight, lose muscle mass and sex drive, and begin to binge watch chick flicks. Not sure about my voice.

The radiation will take place over an eight to nine week period, 5 days a week for 10 minutes each session. I will be doing this in Boston, probably beginning in early March, and there is a place where I can stay for free near the hospital, provided for out-of -town cancer patients. The radiation targets the prostate specifically, the hormones both the prostate and any other place where the prostate cancer cells may have landed. I have a bone scan coming up to see if there are any cancer cells growing in the bones. Because of the cancer, part of the prostate has fused with the rectum, so surgery will not be an option. No clean margins available.

Lots of new and useful information, but the big unknown remains. Dr D’Amico said there is a 70 – 80 % chance that in nine years I could be cancer free. No guarantees, but then again, life doesn’t offer guarantees; just possibilities to learn and grow. Anyone who is alive now knows how chaotic our local slice of the cosmos is right now. We are all in a big ‘don’t know’ moment, so it is a great opportunity to open to not knowing. We can still gather info, make intelligent decisions and lead lives of wisdom and compassion, but ultimately ‘don’t know mind’ can be our place of refuge.

This means the first skandha becomes in invitation to open, not run away. In 1990, during the third Iyengar Convention in San Diego, I was in deep emotional turmoil. I had just left a previous relationship to move in with Kate and repercussions were rippling through our local yoga world. I felt that I was in the middle of a minor nervous breakdown. But I somehow managed to teach my classes and had some extraordinary experiences with Mr. Iyengar, but one day, out of the blue, it seemed to me, he looked at me with those big bushy eyebrows flaring and said “you are always trying to escape’. He caught me totally by surprise and I did not know quite what to make of his comment. Those words left a deep impression and I only recently realized he was referring to that first skandha. He saw me at the abyss but choosing to not fully face it. Given his early years of serious illness, pain and emotional struggle, I’m sure he was very familiar with the first skandha.

There is no escape from the truth of impermanence and any intellectual resolution is totally inadequate. It is a deeply embodied state, where nerves and organs can say yes to their own fragile and yet vitally alive presence. If we can just learn to trust in life and rest there, then the infinite light of the timeless extending out over the cliff invites us to be the ultimate mystery. Emaho!