Parinama

    I am on pilgrimage.   Away from the day-to-day life of making a living, tending to house and family, juggling the many demands and responsibilities.   I am pilgriming in the White Mountains of New Hampshire near where we had a cabin when I was a child. According to the definition, a pilgrim wanders solo in a new place far from home with the prayer for spiritual transformation.   Some rely on the hospitality of strangers for food and shelter. While my pilgrimage is not in a new place and I am staying in an Airbnb, I am on my own and I do seek, if not spiritual transformation, spiritual deepening.   Although this northern geography of majestic mountains, cascading rivers, and pine forests are not new to me, the unfolding inner landscape I find here in solitude and silence is.   My pilgrimage is prayerful in that I allow my heart to be open to inner longings and the grief and joy that enters a tender heart.   In the strong ...

I have been thinking about the teachers in my life, how every major endeavor has been supported by one.   Some were in my life over many years while others I had only short while.   Each nurtured and supported me towards new ways for growth and discovery.   These teachers for which I am so grateful built up in me a courage and faith to persist with something I had not thought was possible.   There was the woman who led the winter hiking trip I went on in high school who inspired a lifelong love of outdoor adventure, independence, and self-reliance.   For years after, she sent me postcards written in the most beautiful handwritten script with quotes from travelers and seekers.   I had never met a woman like Joan before in my family or my community.   Someone who spent long periods of time living outdoors, living by her own wit, ingenuity, and simplicity.   In college and graduate school, I would have never had the ability to ...

  According to the yoga sutras , there are four main purposes in life; dharma or living in a right way, artha or self-reliance, kama or human enjoyment, and moksa freedom.   BKS Iyengar uses the metaphor of a river to capture the interrelationships between these four aims.     He writes, “Imagine the situation like a river flowing between two banks that control its course.   One bank is dharma , the science of religion, or as I consider it, the righteous duty that upholds, sustains, and supports our humanity.   By religious I mean the observance of universal or ethical principles, not limited by culture, time, or place.   The other bank of the river is moksa , freedom.   By moksa I do not mean some fanciful concept of future liberation but acting with detachment in all the little things of here and now-not taking the biggest slice of cake onto one’s own plate, not getting angry because one cannot control the actio...