Sacred Action

I don't remember the exact words he spoke, but I do remember the content.  David Life, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga, began class by reminding us that the universe is in motion.  Immediately I thought of an interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn I caught during last week's On Being.  Kabat-Zinn had explained the Buddhist theory of Impermanence.  Change is constant & outside of our control.  Our response to change is entirely within our control.  Many Buddhist practices exist to enable the student to more mindfully respond to the condition of change.

David Life furthered this idea by stating that we are co-creators of reality.  There is no neutrality.  If we behave passively or try not to respond to the conditions in our environment we still have impact.  If we respond mindfully, we can shape a healthier world.  There is no respite from the tantric web of interconnectedness.  There is no way to withdraw from the world.  As we are of it, our task is to engage with purpose.

The physical asana practice lead us through many challenges.  David Life explained that asana presents us with obstacles to allow us to retrain our response.  (Later that day, Julia Butterfly Hill said if we pray to Ganesh to remove obstacles he will put obstacles in our path.  How else do you learn?)  Instead of running from sensation, learn to be, learn to breathe.  Let this practice of being in challenge build that muscle of engaging mindfully with a world in evolution.

Talented Michael Baez took this photo of me in parivrtta utkatasana during our weekend at Stowe Mountain Yoga Retreat.  This pose is always a test in staying present in the midst of challenge.

The class was lovely.  David Life was silly & profound-- ideal qualities in a teacher.  Afterwards I stumbled into the hallway to purchase a tofu sandwich & returned to find him engaged in a Question & Answer session.  Quickly, he wrapped up to cede more time to Julia Butterfly Hill.  I knew she was a part of the Jivamukti Gathering, but I didn't know that I would be able to participate so easily in her event.  

Hill is best known for sitting in a redwood, Luna, for two years & eight days to prevent the tree's destruction.  Since that time she's been a tireless environmentalist while engaging in many social justice campaigns.  I know some fellow activists who have shared stages & campaigns with her, but this was the first time I would hear her speak.  It certainly felt like a full revolution from the class I took this past summer in Woodstock with Sharon Gannon.  Throughout that class students read poems.  I had shared a poem about prisoner advocacy by Julia Butterfly Hill.  Here I was, practicing in my Jivamukti community & learning from Hill herself.  

Hill has been offering talks titled "What is your tree" urging audiences to consider their offering to the world.  She shared that raised with little money in a small space --a trailer-- prepared her well to live on a small platform in a tree, with few resources, for a little over two years.  Using yoga, meditation, community process, or other practices we can know ourselves with more clarity & then determine what each of us has to offer.  She expanded on David Life's teachings on tantric interconnectedness.  We all have an impact.  Our decision is whether or not to be considered & an activist in our impact.  

I'm still processing this rich day.  Throughout the duration my brain was firing various connections.  This whole concept of a moving, evolving universe where every action we take has meaning & import kept reminding me of Howard Zinn's memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.  Hill & the Jivamuktis perhaps conceive & communicate these concepts distinctly, but the message is largely what I hear in my activist work.  The activist message tends to be more specific about goals & issues.  In this yogic community, my experience was equal parts readying on a personal level & then transforming that internal health towards meaningful contribution.

This banner was erected during a cultural event in Woodstock, NY on Martin Luther King Day in 2011.  Frederick Douglass spoke these words.  They certainly apply to yoga asana.  They apply most directly where Douglass aimed them-- towards our engagement in a just world.

That night I returned home to Kevin & Laz.  Kevin was really excited about a documentary he'd watched the night before called, "180 degrees south," about a rock climber deepening his reverence for the natural world and commitment to serve it.  Two of his mentors, the founders of Patagonia and North Face respectively, shared their attitudes towards activism in a clip during the film.  Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia's founder, claimed his friend, North Face founder, Doug Tompkins was the activist between them given Tompkins' work protecting wild land in Chile.  Chouinard identified as a "live and let live" Buddhist.  "Well," Tompkins answered sitting up a bit straighter, "Your Boddhisattva is to end the suffering of the world before you can achieve enlightenment."  

I feel like my own evolution within yoga is being taught to me explicitly.  I came to yoga to heal my body & mind after experiencing trauma.  I continued practicing yoga as my own suffering transformed into compassion & a commitment to activist work.  Yoga helped me keep my own strength, openness, endurance, and plasticity while engaging in the world.  I've since tried to figure out how to unify yoga with activism in the world.  At times, those felt like incompatible goals.  Hill said it well, "In my political, activist community, there are often fingers pointing out at the enemy or other.  In yoga, the finger is always pointing in.  There seemed to be a disconnect between the two."  Yes.  I worried that so much introspection could lead to its own breed of inertia.  I was concerned about the potential for yogis to be lost in their own growth, yoga pants, and restorative sessions.  Likewise, I'm so inspired by my activist colleagues, but I worry that many of them pay little attention to themselves & their own stability.  There sometimes seems to be a tendency to martyr oneself.  If we're concerned with truly healthy communities, don't we by mandate have to include our own well-being in this vision?

Kevin took this photo during an Anti-Tar Sands & Anti-Keystone Pipeline demonstration  during the fall of 2011.

This was the message I needed.  This is the eternal dance, the balance.  We are in the world & we are never neutral.  Yoga is a way to understand ourselves, understand our own assets & contributions, while practicing humility, reverence, listening.  Engaging in the world is our dharma.  If each of us is Divine then it is a sacred responsibility to act towards the health & wellness of all living beings.

The universe is constant motion.  Every force reflects this-- the rhythms of our breath, cycles of the moon, patterns of wind.  We are co-creators in this continual evolution.  Co-create with intention.