This is how most mornings begin. It is dark outside and very early, and I am already outside in the dark with the dog. It is too early even to admit to the time. I try not to think about it. Instead, I encourage my dog in soft, sharp whispers, to get to the business at hand.
Hurry go, I repeat.
It is a command I picked up in the puppy papers we were given when we first brought our young dog home almost four years ago. I convince myself that it is a useful command when our dog dispenses with matters quickly. When he is stubborn about getting the job done, I feel foolish. And annoyed.
Hurry go, hurry go, hurry go. After so many times, you have to laugh at yourself and the dog and your situation. More often, and unfortunately, I do not because I begin to feel pressed for time, which seems the more laughable notion, really, because, as I have mentioned, it is very early.
This is how most mornings begin before I leave for practice. They begin with this ritual with the dog. It is the trade-off I have tacitly arranged with my husband, so that I feel less guilty about his complete willingness to drive our daughter to school every morning while I am at practice. Before my daughter started taking command of her lunches, this predawn ritual also included the preparation of food. When it is this early, every delay to getting out the door is poised to make me want to retreat to bed, which does happen. But everything changes. Next year, my daughter will be able to drive herself to school; and the dog, I predict, will enjoy the idea of sleeping in before going out later in the morning with my husband to tend to its daily routines. This steady set of excuses will recede, and I imagine that every once in a while, I will miss the chance to use one of them. Instead, I will be forced to admit to fatigue or to the desire to lie in bed and wake to watch the sun color the sky outside the bedroom window.
In other words, the practice will keep me honest.
And, this, after all, is the real draw. As brutal and as beautiful as honesty can be, it is the only genuine game in town to commit oneself to entirely. Perhaps I recognize this because I have lived long enough; I have learned something from my many years about how to live with myself--and with myself with others--in the world. But I do believe this practice has burnished the edges; it has helped me to shine or, at the very least, to shine a light in the darker spaces I would otherwise choose to dismiss. I have come to trust my practice like a good, true friend.
"Yoga," Pattabhi Jois wrote in Yoga Mala, his handbook on the nature of the ashtanga yoga practice, "signifies the means to the realization of one's true nature." The longer I practice, the more I know the truth of this in my body, in my posture, in my breath. "In all the works of Beethoven, you will not find a single lie," writes Mary Oliver in her latest volume of poems. And it is just like Oliver's pure belief in Beethoven's work that I believe in the truth of Raja Yoga. It is the royal path to both internal and eternal kingdoms.
As a mentor to W.S. Merwin in the days before he had even begun to read, Merwin's own confession, the poet John Berryman told Merwin to forget about wondering if your writing is any good at all. Merwin records the exchange of this counsel in a poem he eventually wrote and entitled "Berryman."
"You can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write."
In time, W.S. Merwin became U.S. Poet Laureate. Today, Merwin is 88. He lives close to the earth, guardian of a paradise of trees, which he has assiduously planted on his portion of paradise on the island of Maui. Like George Harrison did elsewhere. I think of these trees and of Merwin and of Oliver's recent admission about the truth to be discovered in Beethoven, and I recognize that we are kin in having found something we know to be good. Because while we may not ever be sure of those things we are not ever meant to be sure of--like God, or the gods, who are understandably invisible, according to Oliver--holiness, my dear Oliver asserts (and thank God for that) is entirely visible.
I am witness to it every day in my practice, in my community of practitioners, in my teacher's gentle, but firm instruction to pay attention to the very finest details of the pose, beginning with the way my fingers still grip the mat. Let go. You can never be sure, but trust the holiness that is visible, entirely.
Eternally.
You will not find a single lie.
Hurry go, I repeat.
It is a command I picked up in the puppy papers we were given when we first brought our young dog home almost four years ago. I convince myself that it is a useful command when our dog dispenses with matters quickly. When he is stubborn about getting the job done, I feel foolish. And annoyed.
Hurry go, hurry go, hurry go. After so many times, you have to laugh at yourself and the dog and your situation. More often, and unfortunately, I do not because I begin to feel pressed for time, which seems the more laughable notion, really, because, as I have mentioned, it is very early.
This is how most mornings begin before I leave for practice. They begin with this ritual with the dog. It is the trade-off I have tacitly arranged with my husband, so that I feel less guilty about his complete willingness to drive our daughter to school every morning while I am at practice. Before my daughter started taking command of her lunches, this predawn ritual also included the preparation of food. When it is this early, every delay to getting out the door is poised to make me want to retreat to bed, which does happen. But everything changes. Next year, my daughter will be able to drive herself to school; and the dog, I predict, will enjoy the idea of sleeping in before going out later in the morning with my husband to tend to its daily routines. This steady set of excuses will recede, and I imagine that every once in a while, I will miss the chance to use one of them. Instead, I will be forced to admit to fatigue or to the desire to lie in bed and wake to watch the sun color the sky outside the bedroom window.
In other words, the practice will keep me honest.
And, this, after all, is the real draw. As brutal and as beautiful as honesty can be, it is the only genuine game in town to commit oneself to entirely. Perhaps I recognize this because I have lived long enough; I have learned something from my many years about how to live with myself--and with myself with others--in the world. But I do believe this practice has burnished the edges; it has helped me to shine or, at the very least, to shine a light in the darker spaces I would otherwise choose to dismiss. I have come to trust my practice like a good, true friend.
"Yoga," Pattabhi Jois wrote in Yoga Mala, his handbook on the nature of the ashtanga yoga practice, "signifies the means to the realization of one's true nature." The longer I practice, the more I know the truth of this in my body, in my posture, in my breath. "In all the works of Beethoven, you will not find a single lie," writes Mary Oliver in her latest volume of poems. And it is just like Oliver's pure belief in Beethoven's work that I believe in the truth of Raja Yoga. It is the royal path to both internal and eternal kingdoms.
As a mentor to W.S. Merwin in the days before he had even begun to read, Merwin's own confession, the poet John Berryman told Merwin to forget about wondering if your writing is any good at all. Merwin records the exchange of this counsel in a poem he eventually wrote and entitled "Berryman."
"You can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write."
In time, W.S. Merwin became U.S. Poet Laureate. Today, Merwin is 88. He lives close to the earth, guardian of a paradise of trees, which he has assiduously planted on his portion of paradise on the island of Maui. Like George Harrison did elsewhere. I think of these trees and of Merwin and of Oliver's recent admission about the truth to be discovered in Beethoven, and I recognize that we are kin in having found something we know to be good. Because while we may not ever be sure of those things we are not ever meant to be sure of--like God, or the gods, who are understandably invisible, according to Oliver--holiness, my dear Oliver asserts (and thank God for that) is entirely visible.
I am witness to it every day in my practice, in my community of practitioners, in my teacher's gentle, but firm instruction to pay attention to the very finest details of the pose, beginning with the way my fingers still grip the mat. Let go. You can never be sure, but trust the holiness that is visible, entirely.
Eternally.
You will not find a single lie.
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