Wild Yoga Vinyasa 4: Finding Joy

Wild Yoga Experiment Vinyasa 4: 20/05/15

• 20m: Intro
  • Welcome + energy levels
    • So, then, the questions we are asking are:
      • How do we find our own practice? How do we share what we find? How do we go deeper? What are we looking to find?
    • (Namaste … we welcome your …)
    • Signs: jazz hands; tap for assist; act suggestions
  • Prayers: (join hands)
    • Spirits of place
    • With great respect and love…
  • Theme: Finding Joy
    • Where is the wellspring? How do we bubble up? What does it feel like?
• 15m: Open
  • Start timer
  • Follow and adapt PMA seated > standing
• 15m: Flow
  • Take turns to lead around the circle; no more chatter
  • Shakti Fire
  • Dance of Life (EBR6 flower)
• 15m: Wild
  • Theme repeat
  • Be inspired by your body; be inspired by others; don’t be afraid to be still
  • No pushing, no rush, no holding back
  • Be safe, be held, be free, step up
  • Come to stillness in your own time
• 15m: Bhakti
  • There is a jewel in the lotus flower, unfolding deep within my soul
    To be a jewel in the lotus flower, unfolding is the highest goal
    Om mane, Om mane padme hum x2
    Om mane, Om mane padme hum x2
  • Poems
  • Join hands, give thanks:
    • I give thanks for…
    • In this place, at this time, I discover …
    • We swear by peace and love to stand …
• 15m: Still
  • Mini YN – Finding Joy:
    • Ocean > lotus > child > heart > golden seed
• 10m: Return (Prasad)

 
The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess – Rick Fields

This I have made up:
Once the Buddha was walking along the forest path in the Oak Grove at Ojai, walking without arriving anywhere, or having any thought of arriving or not arriving

And lotuses shining with the morning dew, miraculously appeared under under each step, soft as silk under the toes of the Buddha

When suddenly, out of the turquoise sky, dancing in front of his half-shut inward-looking eyes, shimmering like a rainbow or a spider’s web, transparent as the dew on a lotus flower

–the Goddess appeared quivering like a hummingbird in the air before him

She, for she was surely a she as the Buddha could clearly see with his eye of discriminating awareness wisdom, was mostly red in color, though when the light shifted, she flashed like a rainbow

She was naked except for the usual flower ornaments Goddesses wear.
Her long hair was deep blue, her two eyes fathomless pits of space and her third eye a bloodshot ring of fire.

The Buddha folded his hands together and greeted the Goddess thus:
“O Goddess, why are you blocking my path. Before I saw you I was happily going nowhere. Now I’m not sure where I want to go.”

“You can go around me.” said the Goddess, twirling on her heels like a bird darting away, “or you can come after me. This is my forest too, you can’t pretend that I’m not here.”

With that the Buddha sat supple as a snake, solid as a rock, beneath a Bo tree that had sprang full-leaved to shade him.

“Perhaps we should have a chat,” he said.
“After years of arduous practice at the time of the morning star I penetrated reality, and now…”

“Not so fast, Buddha. I am reality.”

The Earth stood still, the oceans paused, the wind itself listened –a thousand arhats, bodhisattva, and dakinis magically appeared to hear what would happen in the conversation.

“I know I take my life in my hands,” said the Buddha. “But I am known as the Fearless One –so here goes.”
And he and the Goddess without further words exchanged glances. Light rays like sunbeams shot forth so bright that even Sariputra, the All-Seeing One, had to turn away.
And then they exchanged thoughts and the illumination was a bright as a diamond candle.
And then they changed mind
And then there was a great silence as vast as the universe that contains everything.
And then they exchanged bodies
And clothes
And the Buddha arose as the Goddess and the Goddess arose as the Buddha and so on back and forth for a hundred thousand hundred thousand kalpas.

If you meet the Buddha you meet the Goddess, the Goddess is the Buddha.
And not only that. This:
The Buddha is the Goddess, the Goddess is the Buddha.
And not only that. This:
The Buddha is emptiness
The Goddess is bliss, the Goddess is emptiness the Buddha is bliss.
And that is what and what-not you are it’s true.

So here comes the mantra of the Goddess and the Buddha, the unsurpassed non-dual mantra, just to say this mantra, just to hear this mantra once, just to hear one word of this mantra once makes everything the way it truly is: OK.

So here it is:
Earth-walker/sky-walker
Hey, silent one, Hey, great talker
Not two/not one
Not separate/Not apart
That is the heart
Bliss is emptiness
Emptiness is bliss.
Be your breath, Ah
Smile, Hey
And relax, Ho
And remember this: You can’t miss.
 

So Much Happiness – Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

 
Milkweed – James Wright

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
 

Love After Love – Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.