eight limbs, one heart and the sunrise ruby

And so all things come to pass. The late storms of winter light and wind have emptied themselves across the mountains. Suddenly intimations of spring. An opening in the heart of things. Blossoms and the gentle emergence of the earth. A warm sun today. Ive found myself lying in a bath tub, floating in the calm quiet ocean at sunset, feeling deeply peaceful and connected to the Blessing force transmitted through this dreaming, through this sadhana, through this Love. Of course the wild seas and those struggles only reflect my failure to surrender. By chance I am offered a place at a three day ashtanga vinyasa retreat at Kinimbla View eco lodge, only minutes down the road. Alleluia. The planets seem aligned for the weekend and so I take the plunge into the deep end of ashtanga yoga practice. It was a very beautiful  and joyful weekend for me, with a small group of very inspiring,  joyful and committed yogis. There’s no doubting if you meet sangha who are truly practicing, in whatever form or tradition they may be theres an authenticity that rocks…. true authentic practice fills the body and soul with love and light, and the presence of beauty. Sangha, the best of the best in this world. I count myself as so deeply blessed to share in this mystery with sangha. How they shine.

So back to my travails of embodiment and the dance and expression of ashtanga….this strong practice of breath linked deeply to flow, was a revelation for me, and rocket fuel for my practice. Lit up from the inside out…. man I am one cooked pilgrim this wend.

One afternoon after a rapturous sweaty practice and alchemised svavasana, I sat by the fire and read Rumi, as you do, and became quietly wildly ecstatic reading these poems. I returned the next morning as the sun climbed over the misty valleys, before practice to scribble them into my journal. So here are a couple, offerings upon the sacred frontier…. may you become a drunkard with me, and celebrate the love and devotion of these poems.    From Barks (1995) The Essential Rumi.

The Sunrise Ruby.

In the early morning hour
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Really tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “There’s nothing left of me. I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness?
It has no resistance to sunlight.

This is how Hallaj said, I am God, and told the truth!”

The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself
Completely.
Become hearing and ear, and wear this sun ruby as an earring.

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
Will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The way of love is not a subtle argument
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
They’re given wings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of poverty
having nothing and wanting nothing.

I am a naked man standing inside a mine of rubies clothed in red silk. I absorb the shining and now I see the ocean
Billions of simultaneous motions moving in me.

A circle of lovely quiet people
becomes the ring on my finger

Then the wind and thunder
of rain on the way.
I have such a teacher.

Why practice

This morning while looking under my bed for an errant mogrel sock I found a few pages of writing from last year regarding sadhana, or spiritual practice. Mongrel socks are from Tasmania and without doubt are the woollen sock par excellance on the planet. See www.mongrelsocks.com.au/

Recently a young man in Russia presented to his doctor with pain in his chest. Investigations revealed what looked like a large tumour in his lungs. Upon surgery it was revealed that within young Artyom’s chest a 5cm fir tree was growing in his lungs. This is a beautiful metaphor for practice. That the light and energy of this seed inhaled from the dust has taken root and this great tree is taking over the organism. I don’t know where this sadhana seed got into me…It has become a focal point of my life. Why is this seed of practice stuck in my heart? Will the seed that becomes a tree destroy me? What matters is the light and the energy of practice grows, and this tree of love breaks through itself to serve the Divine.

Why practice? I practice now because my life depends upon it. It is oxygen as much as it is fire. It is Reality, it is the True Guru. It is embedded in my own awareness within a moment that dissolves into every moment. There seems no other option to be a complete human being but through the travails of practice. It has demanded much I could not now have turn away from even when I had the chance. As I have in earlier years. Conditional surrender. Another day. Flirting with the abyss of Divine immolation is a dangerous thing. Practice is inspired for me by landscape, by the dreaming, the presence of an ancient world around me that embodies the spirit so powerfully. This mystery of an overwhelming otherness that is our landscape to me reflects the dangers and beauty of authentic practice. The stillness and the storms. The tantric principle of as above so below.

Thomas Kenneally wrote about last years cataclysms of summer..” Australia with its long term droughts and violent storms and awful catastrophes, its wonderful bush inhabited by spirits utterly different from those of Europe, atmospheric as anyone could hope for. Surpassing strange. And with fire on its breath…” Practice bears witness to all this. To all our experience, inner and outer.

A friend in the mountains describes his early experiences with practice in the Zen tradition. Many years ago when he was at Engakuji, one of the oldest Zen temples in Japan, prior to a Sesshin or retreat practice starting , the teacher Adachi Roshi asked him why he wanted to do zazen or sitting meditation. Paul says, “I bit the bullet and confessed I wanted satori.” Roshi replies, “ All you foreigners are like that. If I had satori I would be dead.” I realised I have much to learn about practice, Paul said. In particular the closer one comes to real practice, the less one hears about satori or enlightenment.”

So why practice? Why submit the mind body to the relentless discipline of sitting in the fire of ones own awareness? What comes from it? Practice for me awoke out of wanting a way back into the fleeting epiphanies I experienced as a child. Then over the years exhaustion with mind grew, with the insight that Gurdjieff calls the terror of the situation. Seeing how totally mechanical my life is, and how unfree I am in everything I do. I have learnt in my unstable and adolescent attempts at practice, the beauty of practice is not in what arrives, but in what falls away… and the heart that shines out of this freedom, this release from the habitual insanity of mind and its endless delusions. The radient emptiness of a quietened mind. As Redhawk explains in his extraordinary book, “Self Observation. The awakening of conscience. A users manual” Hohm Press. 2009 … “Be still and know that I am God. Or live like a mammal and die like a dog. Something has to stop. The intellectual emotional complex will not stop. The choice is mine.”

Or this from Roshi Norman Fisher, “these are the best times to practice because motivation is so clear. Practice is not simply a lifestyle choice or a lifestyle refinement. There is no choice. It is a matter of survival.”

And once this impressed upon me, of the costs involved either way, the inevitably of a life half lived, a life driven by desire and avoidance, lived in ignorance and distraction , or the possibility of something else, something rare and true and radient. A life broken open by love and the annihilation of the self through surrender, service and sacrifice. The choice is choiceless.

I love this Rumi poem,

“The Sun appeared, and all the shadows ran. /I ran after them, but vanished as I ran. / Light ran after me and hunted me down.”

I know it in my bones when I hear true dharma. It makes my hair stand on end. It feeds my soul. Seeing my true face in the reflection of objective beauty. Every pore opens to drink from this well of the Real. I feel it has become the guiding beacon and light in my life, because choosing practice means there is no turning back to the sleeping life, in spite of myself. I am deeply blessed through connection to a traditional lineage and an authentic teacher. It has been difficult and long and an amazing labyrinthe to traverse. Resistance is strong, but Im in too deep to turn back, and now I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I loose my way regularly. As Les Murray says of this landscape, which speaks to inner and outer…”sooner or later I will have to give some blood for dancing here. “

So I seek out its reflections where I can. Through the fierce inspirations of good company, through creative arts like writing, music, yoga, through sangha, through a daily discipline of meditation and associated practices to hold in my heartmind through the day. To remind me, that I am being held by my teacher, as he was, that despite my many flaws and struggles, I am accepted and whole and my life as my imperfect offering becomes my perfect practice. To remind me that there are others that walk with me along this sometimes lonely path, that our own long suffering and longing becomes the thread that weaves us through the eye of a needle to a life of devotion and peace. So the simple act of paying attention becomes critical. The integrity I bring to how I am in the world, how I parent, how I work, how I communicate, how I use my body, how I use my time, how I use my mind, how I offer my heart, these are my tools and the discoveries of this simple devotion sustain me in a life full of wild intensity and beauty.

I read a description that the ground of refuge is gold, a gold so soft under your feet that it gives with each step and your foot leaves an imprint when it walks. Galland. C; 2007 “Longing for Darkness. Tara and the Black Madonna” To walk this sacred ground comes at a price, this I know. This realm of gold that I strive to imprint upon leaves a songline, a trail of spirit, song and ceremony.

And then there is the added depth I have discovered through the tradition I practice in of becoming food for God. Which only recently I started to begin to understand in the reflection of difficult times, of being held underwater by suffering, of being brought to my knees through the dissolution of all that was dear to me, and the certainty that in not reaching for solutions as my teacher suggested, the perfect unfoldment occurred, in spite of what I wanted or needed. So the equation for me to question has been whether the depth of my practice equals the degree of my surrender. Of allowing, even welcoming breakdown and dissolution, of befriending struggle like it is an ally….. imagine that, while I hold onto practice rather than abandoning it and trusting that this may inspire my pratice, may fuel a deeper transformation that I ever thought possible . Surrendering my illusions and sorrows for a deeper more authentic way of being in the world.

Dostoeovski writes that “suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.” In the tradition of the Bauls are considerations that real suffering produces alchemical gold. By this I understand that through our travails we finally learn to surrender, to allow, to accept, to become more transparent to the will of God. And through this practice we develop a capacity, a structure that can contain greater consciousness or light, or a work body, or conscience, or love, or a matrix upon that which is Real can grow and give light. This in turn feeds the Divine. So my way in the world, my journey including all experience then becomes fuel for God, for realising the truth.

For my practice becomes an open window to the Divine, and a light and a grace befalls me that I can never behold otherwise sleepwalking through life. Then my life becomes divinised, becomes beautiful, real, and purposeful, and whatever befalls this weary pilgrim is held within that same embrace and inspiration. Life becomes blessed, enlarged, joyful, even holy and I am so happy there is no other choice. And then that mogrel sock becomes a fair dinkum sacred artifact. This is why I practice.