Breathing fast and slow

Such is the way of the world, can never know just where to put all your faith and how will it grow Gonna rise up, burning black holes in dark memories Gonna rise up, turning mistakes into gold...                         --from Rise by Eddie Vedder The two most cherished texts of Hindu literature are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana is said to have been written between 400 and 200 BCE, and the Mahabharata between 400 and 100 BCE. Both texts were written as heroic epic poems to highlight the lives and the power of the ancient gods and thereby serve as ideals for all of us normal people to follow. Think the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, even the Bible and the Koran. The Ramayana tells the story of the life of Lord Rama whose affection for his parents and his devotion to his dharma (duty) ultimately help him to defeat the evil King Ravana. But not before...

Author photo: Elemental weathering Beginning again and again using everything a continuous present                   --Gertrude Stein I am sitting here at the computer in the room where I do my writing imagining the quiet in that big space we occupied all week at UCLA for the visit of Ashtanga Yoga's Paramaguru Sharath Jois. It was a week--for precision's sake, six days--of practice, conference and community. Ashtangis from all over California and other states and nations came together to stand at the foot of their mats awaiting Sharath's call to practice together: Ekam, inhale . In Sanskrit, ekam means one. We begin this practice with the count of one, and as one, we inhale together the intention of those who established this discipline many ages ago, and which Patanjali, the transcriber of this science and discipline, set down in his first lesson or sutra, "Now the instruction of Yoga ...