Lotus as narrative

Books on desk that are not quite full but no longer blank

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This morning, like many mornings before this one, our teacher speaks softly to us and calls us back from savasana. "Lightly brush your thumbs across your fingertips. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Come back to your body." Now it is time to roll up our mats and to take our practice--what we learned from it today--out into the world. Now, atha, is a very powerful word in yoga. It is, in fact, the first word of Patanjali's yoga sutras--the first bead on the thread of the sage's teachings. According to Patanjali and his fellow sages, a human being is an island of excellence. Imagine that. As such, now is always the time to begin to cultivate and perfect that excellence. Actually, now is always the time to remember because the excellence is ever present. Atha. Now. Therein lies our innate wisdom. Past, present, future. All are represented and interchangeable as now. Atha.


On Valentine's Day 1990, as Voyager 1 was about to depart for the far side of our solar system, astronomer and author Carl Sagan suggested that NASA engineers turn the space probe's camera to face Earth for its final photography assignment. At the time, Voyager was approximately 6.4 billion kilometers from Earth. It was launched in the fall of 1977 when the world was poised to be seduced by the Star Wars franchise. Voyager had two primary missions. First, to take what JPL and NASA scientists and astronomers liked to call "family" portraits of our planets and our sun; and, second, to travel out of our solar system and into interstellar space where with any luck the probe might make contact with other intelligent life. To that end, a golden album was recorded that would tell the story--in music and voices--of the diversity of life on our small blue planet. Sagan likened the idea to casting a message in a bottle into the vast ocean. In this case, that vast ocean was space. There are so many remarkable things about the Voyager mission, the most remarkable of which is that forty years later the probe continues its journey. Then again, so does the Star Wars franchise.

When Sagan shared with the world the photos Voyager 1 had taken that day of planet Earth, he did what many of us attempt to do with a photograph or an image. He attempted to honor the image of Earth seen from that remote distance in space, from a probe that would go where no man or woman could even imagine going, with his share of 1,000 words. Sagan's speech is famously known as the pale blue dot. But, it is more than a speech. Like Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the pale blue dot is a complete narrative of planet Earth. In it is our entire story. Past, present, future. Atha. Now.


The pale blue dot as written and delivered to the world by Sagan is a love letter to Earth and its Earthlings. Appropriate, I think, in light of the fact the photos were taken by Voyager on Valentine's Day. When Sagan points to that photo of Earth and says we live "there, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," he does something simple and beautiful and profound. He pauses. And, I swear, Sagan's eyes are twinkling during that pause. When Sagan tells the world that Earth is suspended in a sunbeam, he is acknowledging the Universe's hope for us. And yet it is more than hope, for the Earth is bathed in light. It is what Patanjali and the ancient rishis saw, it is a nod to human beings as islands of excellence. Here, again, is an appeal to the angels of our better nature. Many have made the appeal. Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and, if theater critics are to be believed, Sponge Bob Squarepants. Each is saying, Atha. Now. Now is the time to be an island of excellence.  

Recently, one of my teachers challenged us to think of the lotus flower as our narrative. The lotus flower grows and blossoms in some very muddy waters. As the metaphor goes, without the muddy waters the lotus would not be beautiful. So, rather than getting stuck in the mud we will from time to time inevitably find ourselves in, our teacher challenged us to use it all to continue our story.

Sagan died on the winter solstice in 1996, just two years after delivering his pale blue dot speech. He was not here, therefore, to witness the exit from our solar system of Voyager in 2012 when it entered interstellar space. I imagine Sagan had already seen that Voyager would continue its successful journey. I also imagine what it would mean for our pale blue dot--and all of us traveling the galaxy on it--if our world leaders, our president, and the men and women of the United States Congress would use as their daily prayer the text of Sagan's pale blue dot speech. Maybe they could trouble themselves with committing to heart the last few lines:

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Now, lightly brush your thumbs across your fingertips. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Come back to your body. Now rise. Atha. Begin. 

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For the text of Carl Sagan's speech, please follow the link provided.
pale blue dot