The experimental life or learning to embrace my inner "Righteous Babe"

Vintage Ani, 1990

In a recent interview for Sun Magazine (May 2016), Ani DiFranco shared the following Facebook post chronicling an exchange between a mother and that mother's three-year-old daughter about the logo for Righteous Babe Records--DiFranco's independent label-- which uses the image of DiFranco at left.

"The mother had on a Righteous Babe sweathsirt, and her little girl pointed to the logo and asked, 'Is that a girl?' She said yes, and her daughter asked, 'Is she so, so, so strong?' And her mother answered, 'Yes, she is so, so, so strong.' And her daughter said, 'That makes me happy, Mommy!'




While I am devoted to my yoga practice and routinely read from the vast library of yoga texts, I also very often read books about Buddhist philosophy and meditation. I have a subscription to Tricycle magazine and have attended mindfulness seminars as well as lectures by Lama Surya Das, an American lama who started out as a Jewish boy from the Bronx. I, myself, was raised Catholic, but my true bible is Poetry, and I read some every day. For what it's worth, I believe poets have the ear of God because they spend much of their days listening to and contemplating the miraculously ordinary path of the divine in the world. I count songwriters as poets, too.

In addition to whichever current volume(s) of poetry I am reading--right now, Frank O'Hara, Mary Oliver, and Stephen Dunn--on my night stand is, perpetually, a copy of Norman Fischer's Training in Compassion, a book I will probably never finish reading and not because I haven't read every page. Fischer is an American Zen priest, Buddhist author and poet. Training in Compassion is Fischer's commentary on the teachings of the eleventh century Indian philosopher Atisha who set about establishing a practice for training the mind or, more specifically, the habits of the mind. Another spiritual alchemist, Atisha created a practice that would help transform the difficult circumstances of our lives into the path of enlightenment. These teachings were eventually organized into 59 slogans, short sentences really, that could be studied and easily recalled and used when in the midst of challenging situations. The idea is that, with practice, these slogans would begin to alter our habitual reactions to the bad stuff that inevitably comes our way.

So how do Ani DiFranco and her Righteous Babe anecdote relate to Atisha's 59 slogans for training in compassion? Allow me to explain. Under the first point of Atisha's mind training practice--Resolve to Begin--is the first of the 59 slogans Train in the preliminaries. The preliminaries include the following sobering realities of our lives:

1. The rarity and preciousness of human life.
2. The inevitability of death.
3. The awesome and indelible power of our actions.
4. The inescapability of suffering. 

When Ani DiFranco started Righteous Babe records in 1990, she thought she was on a righteous mission to uplift people. Think singer/songwriter activists like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. Her musical talents did not stop with performing and recording music. She wanted her music to change people and, by consequence, social institutions. When someone from her label shared the Facebook anecdote with DiFranco, DiFranco made the following observation. "It's amazing that even a logo can do good work in the world. You never know what part of what you're doing or saying is going to reach someone else."

In Atisha's universe, this reminds me of the awesome and indelible power of our actions. According to Fischer's commentary on this point, everything matters. There are no trivial moments in our lives. And while we might not all be Nobel Laureates or rock starts or trendy Hollywood celebrities, the moment-to-moment actions we take in our lives are equally significant in the grand scheme of things. This is a monumental teaching for me. It encourages me to think much bigger and live more boldly like the Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa Rincpoche suggested when he said, "Live your life as an experiment."

Last week, my teacher was sick. He had the flu. While he and I have discussed the possibility of me stepping up to teach one day, I took comfort in the idea of that one day being out there in the future somewhere. Then, last week, I was presented with an "If not now, when" moment when my teacher encouraged me to teach an evening led class for him due to his illness. Was I scared? Sure. Was I hesitant? Yes. Did I turn him down? No. I figured if he thought enough to encourage me, he also decided that I could handle the challenge it would pose for me.

Here is what I ultimately decided. I know this practice. I have been practicing regularly for about 10 years. I respect the tradition of the practice and am regularly awed by the dedication that both Pattabhi Jois, and now his grandson Sharath, brought to making sure that this tradition survived. It is a beautiful path (and practice), and I am ever grateful that I stumbled upon it. The worst that could happen? I would make mistakes. And I did. And I survived. And I have no idea what the students that evening really thought about the experience, but they stayed for the entire class. They listened attentively to every instruction. They gently corrected me when I erred. In the end, I learned much more about teaching a led class than I would have if someone talked to me about what it would be like to teach a led class.

My early years of religious training and the all-too-many years I spent pursuing academic excellence left me with some good skills, but they also reinforced countless negative habits of the ego. The worst of my habits is doubt, which often leads to taking myself too seriously, which, then, leads to limitation. But the universe is a very big place. If we look at ourselves in it from the perspective of science and technology, we are infinitesimal creatures. But if we look at ourselves in the context of sharing a smile with someone who could really use one or remembering to send the difficult people in our lives some good vibes or showing a fellow ashtangi what it looks like to try one's best despite the very real possibility of falling short, then every moment matters. We are righteous babes and bros and we are so, so, so strong.