Parinama

  “the heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking./It is necessary to go/through dark and deepr dark/and not to turn.” From “The Testing-Tree, Stanley Kunitz   The rishic seers, the mystic founders of Hinduism, also experienced continuity between the divine presence encompassing the entire cosmos and the inner depths of their own heart, the guha or cave of the heart, the deepest point of human subjectivity and freedom, a place uncorrupted by time and external actions. Wayne Teasdall, The Mystic Heart   There are times in our lives when the usual comforts no longer console.   We feel an agitation, a grief, a boredom but do not know why.   Seemingly nothing has changed except this ache in the heart blossoming from no apparent arrow.   It can take some time to even recognize this grief.   At first, we might find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, irritated, or reactionary in the midst of a perfectly ordinary day.   There...

    People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult, as is true for everything alive. Rainer Maria Rilke   It has taken me a long while to glimpse the wisdom in accepting, engaging, and even seeking out difficulty and challenge in life.   For a long while, I longed for the easy believing that this might be possible if I could work hard enough, and with just enough luck everything, would just fall into place financially, socially, physically, emotionally.   Then I might no longer be so afraid, discontent, depressed.     But around midlife if we are even only a tiny bit awake, we start to see that life does not unfold the way we hope it will no matter how good we are or hard working.   There are many losses, betrayals, illnesses, disasters that we and those we love will be asked to confront. Yoga gave me a glimpse of a way to find peace in the ...