The Englishman in me struggles with voiceover (except for Blade Runner obviously) and Country music makes me wince a little but there's a charm to this video and I couldn't resist sharing, it made me think of home practice..... but in a shala (LINK).
First we establish a practice.... then try to work out what the bloomin' thing means.
3 comments:
Can you believe we're supposed to have flying cars and replicants in 2019, four years from now? We're living in the future man. Where's my flying car? Did you know they are making a sequel to Blade Runner? Harrison Ford is signed on for an older Decker, Ridley Scott is not directing. Not sure how I feel about that. But I've always wanted to eat noodles at a street vendor in Tokyo in the rain because of Blade Runner, who knows, maybe one day I'll come visit you Grim and we'll have coffee and noodels in a flying car. But you know, even after all these years of practice, I'm still not sure about Ashtanga as a spiritual practice. Not a popular view, I know. I do feel acutely aware of my approaching death and I see my practice as a drop-by-drop, day by day, investment in my long-term quality of life until that day arrives. It's kind of selfish, really, since it takes me away from doing things for my family/kids/the world for that hour a day. It's like Rutgar Hauer (wasn't he terrifying?) facing his own death at the end, maybe, going down fighting til the last. I bet he was an ashtangi, right? Maybe I'm just getting too old and bitter to buy into any easy feel-good answers, but I just don't get the whole ashtanga-as-salvation track. I practice, it's a pain in the ass mostly (sometimes literally, damn hamstring attachment), but it's better than the alternative, haha.
You don't have a flying car? Oh I forgot everywhere else is five years or so behind Japan. I did not know they are making a sequel not sure how I feel about that either.
Friend was over from the UK and I was showing them Osaka, this very conversation came up as we were walking past all the stand up counter noodle bars, my friend was feeling very Harrison Fordian.
I still don't know what 'spiritual' (these new fangled words, how does one keep up) what I do know is that so many meditation practices say begin with the breath and spend the first couple of years just watching the breath. Meditators start with twenty minutes, forty and hour at a time. In Ashtanga we spend 90-120 and ideally just watching the breath. I don't know many meditators Zen or otherwise who spend that long in one sitting. So the question is how much distraction do we allow by getting wrapped up in the asana or whatnot. I found this slower practice helped, can watch each inhalation and exhalation from beginning to end, coming back to that constantly makes a profound difference to my practice. More recently I've worked on shifting that focus from the breath to the focal points K mentions and his son Sribashyam draws attention to , this too quite a profound practice. Does it bring me close, to God, universal consciousness? I still have no idea what they mean but it does give a very real experience of what is so often an intellectual idea of not being all the nonsense that passes through my head, in the world but not of the world.... bit of a bugger that for a Hedeggarian.
Does all this make it a spiritual practice? I have no idea but I think breath focus and not losing track of that being what the practice is really about is either an end in itself or if a spiritual path is what somebody is looking for then a pretty impressive beginning.
And then there is the three stages for life idea, all this can be seen as preparation for that time when kids and household commitments have passed and we can retire to the metaphorical ( or actual) forest and really begin our practice.
Oh did you watch the last video above ll the way through, listen until the voice over comes in.
Well I think that Spirit is mostly what arises from the mind as a way of modelling the experience of a bunch of interacting neurons we call a brain. I'm not sure that it exists as a real thing but it's something we come to experience as real because we use it as a model to get us through the day for so long. I find that yoga practice and meditation on the breath (which are as you suggest the same thing) give me a safe opportunity to lay that model to one side for a while and experience life as it is. It's pretty cool, and it sure cuts through all the crap!
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