Parinama

  We who are seekers of the contemplative way can discern within ourselves this sense of reverential awe for such simple things as touching our feet to the floor. James Finley, The Contemplative Heart   A friend’s husband is very frail.   After a long illness, he is no longer able to walk very far, breath or speak effortlessly. He cannot be left alone for more than an hour. They live in a state of profound uncertainty holding their breath between tests. “So much surrender,” she told me recently, “More than I could ever have imagined.”   She is one of the most spiritually mature people that I know and has taken her grief and loss into her yoga practice.   She speaks about what she is learning now from the yoga sutras she has been studying for decades coming into a deeper understanding of their meaning.   She is living the truth of how prakriti, the material known world, is always changing, coming into form from formlessness and t...

Contemplative wisdom discerns our efforts in contemplative living to be effective insofar as our efforts are bringing us, without our knowing how, into the horizonless domain of serenity in the no-hope-for-recovery situation. We can discern the effectiveness of our efforts insofar as they embody our stepping across the line to join those who have come to serenity in knowing they are about to die. James Finley, The Contemplative Heart   Abhinevasa, the fear of death in sanskrit, is natural and human. That we are conscious of our own death makes us human even though this consciousness stops short comprehension of what it means to let go so much.   We experience smaller deaths or losses throughout our lives which can prepare us for the final transformation of our lives through death.   It is not possible to know how we will be when faced with the small and big losses in life.   One can only learn this by living through it.   Right after my...

  We grow up getting our bearings in the universe by internalizing the geography of a pattern formed by a certain tree outside our kitchen window, a large rock embedded in the hillside, a bend in the bay, a bit of sparse grass between two buildings.   If, as we grow older, we have to leave our home for an extended period of time, we take this internalized geography along with us. James Finley, The Contemplative Heart   When I was young, I lived in a small two-family house at 36 Charles River Road in Watertown Massachusetts.   My grandmother Phillipia and grandfather Nunzio lived upstairs with my aunt Nancy.   I lived downstairs with my mother Carmela and my father Michael.   Our apartments were connected by stairs running up the back of the house that we used as if we lived in one house.   We shared groceries and meals, tv and laundry, backyard chores and snow shoveling. Our clothes hung together on the line that ran from the u...