philosophy
Monk Gloats Over Yoga Championship
This will never get old to me. (originally featured on theonion.com)
LHASA, TIBET—Employing the brash style that first brought him to prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.
 |
|
 Sri Dhananjai Bikram walked away with the World Yoga Championship after averaging 1.89 breaths per minute for two straight hours. “I’m blissful! You blissful?! I’m blissful!” he screamed repeatedly to the other yogis. |
“I am the serenest!” Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. “No one is serener than Sri Dhananjai Bikram—I am the greatest monk of all time!”
Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and two-time champion Sri Salil “The Hammer” Gupta.
The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss.
“I should be able to beat that guy with one lung tied,” Gupta said. “I’m beside myself right now, and I don’t mean trans-bodily.”
Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, “I’m blissful! You blissful?! I’m blissful!” to the other yogis.
Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis. While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally considered “un-Buddhalike.”
“I don’t care what the critics say,” Bikram said. “Sri Bikram is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram’s own yoga thing.”
Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than fourth. Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike’s new line of prayer mats and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikram’s “guru.”
“My special training diet for Bikram of one super-charged, carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win,” Vasti said.
The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram’s taunting was a factor in his inability to attain TC.
“I just wasn’t myself today,” Gupta commented. “I wasn’t any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul.”
In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo Zen-Off.
“That’s my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his,” remarked Gupta. “He stole my thunder.”
Bikram denied the charge, saying, “Gupta’s been talking like that ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner.”
Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the competition’s halfway point.
But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram.
The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual arsenal, but his response to today’s riddle—”Show me the face you had before you were born”—was reportedly “extremely illuminative,” according to Commissioner Prabhupada.
While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth, insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges “highly enlightened.”
With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events to come away with the upset victory.
Moving from No to Yes
From Waking Life:
There’s just this one instant, and that’s what we’re always in.
This is the narrative of everyone’s life.
Behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story,
and that’s the story of moving from the “no” to the “yes.”
All of life is, “No, thank you. No, thank you.”
Then ultimately it’s, “Yes, I give in.”
“Yes, I accept.”
“Yes, I embrace.”
I mean, that’s the journey.
Everyone gets to the “yes” in the end.
The Case for Working With Your Hands
Props to Resynthesize for finding this…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1&em
a FANTASTIC article in the New York Times about the intrinsic (and often overlooked) value of working with your hands. Authored by Matthew B Crawford, whose new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft sounds equally impressive.
“In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?
On a related note, I recently read a piece suggesting that art students are subject to a similar style of “life-training.” For example: when you set out to draw a portrait, there are no set rules for where to begin or what style it should be rendered in. When you are moving the pencil, you are making hundreds of tiny decisions per second without any detailed instructions. Only you can decide what strokes are “right” or “wrong” or when you are “done.” In this respect, art teaches us confidence… how to make your own decisions and stand behind them… and just like in a repair shop, if you screw something up, the feedback is instantaneous, tactile and measurable. You can’t fudge numbers or lay people off at the end of the quarter to cover up the fact that your kerning sucks.
For this reason, it’s a shame that the art programs are usually the first to get cut when the budget is looking lean. But I digress… if you have time, read this article.
Zen and the Art of Datsun Maintenance
Meet the newest member of the family.
It’s been something like 4 or 5 years now since i dropped the Datsun hobby and, like they say, you never truly appreciate something until it’s gone. Recently i’ve had the bug again. I’ve even had a few dreams about driving my old 240Z again. So i’ve been telling myself that some day (when the time is right and a good deal comes along) i will get myself another Datsun to fix up. Fridy night this one fell in my lap; an unbelievable steal… surprisingly rust-free and the frame is as straight as an arrow. Driving it home was a joy. I’d forgotten how much i loved these cars. And then some interesting things started happening.
For a while now i’ve lamented the fact that i’ve been forgetting all the details of what i’d done to my previous project. People would ask me about it and i’m not so quick at rattling off a list of parts and modifications like i used to be. In fact, i was starting to forget some of the basics of engine theory… but on the 2hr drive back home, all these numbers started randomly popping into my head.
“460/282… those were the specs on your old cam. you should get another one just like it…”
Stuff like that. Part numbers. Phone number of my old datsun parts salesman. Things i haven’t thought of in years. It was like i reactivated a dormant part of my brain.
Then when i started working on it yesterday evening (a thorough under-hood cleaning and replacement of crusty wiring) i had a “moment”, if you will. After a few hours, i noticed that i felt really really GOOD. I was being active, yet meditative. Silent and content. I was lightly exericising and my blood was flowing at a slightly elevated rate, but at a noticably low pressure. Satori. I wasn’t thinking of checking my phone or smoking a cigarette. i wasn’t thinking of my work or my health.
Turning wrenches is, i now believe, sort of yoga-like in the way that you contort your body into certain shapes in order to reach hiding bolts and then hold that pose until you get it loose. You practice creative visualization when your fingers are blindly trying to fit a socket over a bolt head that is completely hidden from view. And of course, you are taking a dive and creating something… which is great for training your mind to make decisions and follow them through to completion, with nobody but yourself to decide what the end result should be. The automotive hobbiest is an artist in this respect. And all art teaches you confidence in your own decisions.
I don’t think i even noticed it last time, because i started this hobby when i was 18… long before i subjected my body and mind to the many delusions and distractions out there. But now that i have had some contrast, i realize how badly i needed this.
Kinda makes me want to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance now.
Happily Ever After
I never knew anything about the game Eve until I read this article…
http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/02/11/the-eve-upset/
…and for a while I was really confused as to what I was reading. I knew it was a game that was being talked about, but it sounded like a case of real-life espionage. Again, I find it fascinating how our video games mirror our lives…
“Lots of folks lose their livelihoods when an empire falls, and players invested in BoB are likely upset that years of work were lost. But EVE is not a game about the height of the Roman Empire. It’s a game about the sacking of Rome by barbarians, so that they can become the next short-lived top dog. BoB existed to be torn down, and anyone who dreams of permanent glory in a game like that should understand that their destiny is to be taken down by the next upstart, in a dog-eat-dog world.”
“the game, as a game, does want BoB to fall, because from a purely mechanical point of view, what is fun about EVE is the struggle, not the victory condition. The victory condition is boring.”
This is fascinating. I have often mused over how funny it is that people get so impatient with the struggle of life… people can’t seem to wait to get to “happily ever after.” But there is no such thing as happily ever after. That’s why there has never been a movie about being happy, foreverafter… the boredom would be annihilating. The fun comes from watching characters struggle to overcome obstacles… resolve conflicts… learn lessons. So the real “happily ever after” in life can only be found in the joy of watching your story unfold.
There have been several times in my life where i felt like i reached “happily ever after.” My dreams had come true… nothing could be more perfect… time to roll credits. The next day, however, i still had a job to go to. I still had traffic to contend with… office politics to overcome… unexpected drama from friends and family… The human condition is meant to be turbulent.
Maybe this is why there is always unrest in the world. Maybe if the wealth was evenly distributed, humans would lose their personal character-arcs and become depressed. Perhaps a certain level of struggle is necessary to keep this life meaningful.
Having a Purpose
Historically, I have had the hardest time justifying my life to myself at previous jobs. How can you stay aligned to your morals and spiritual values when you are part of an sick and twisted corporate machine? It’s hard to keep your head up when you are marketing for a company that expects it’s manpower to take the hit whenever their numbers need padding… or when you watch them make a conscious decision to do wrong because paying the fine is cheaper than doing what is right.
Today, i feel much better about my day-job. Many of our clients are purpose-oriented individuals or organizations who are really trying to make a positive difference in the world. Just now somebody passed around photos of Al Gore on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the latest information on climate change… and in the photos you can see him projecting our slides.
Warm fuzzies abound.
Also I am very very excited this week to have been given full creative freedom on a presentation I’m designing for a speaker at the upcoming TED conference. (www.ted.com) And lo-and-behold… the subject matter is one that i am DEEPLY committed to; restoring a sense of morals to corporations… the need for people to do what is RIGHT instead of what is profitable.
when i am personally committed to something, it ceases to be “work”
Good times. =)
Suffering is Caused by Attachment
Suffering arises because everything changes, everything is impermanent. Everything is in process, all the time. Whenever we hope to find any lasting happiness by means of something that is changing, suffering results. This means that nothing in the realm of ordinary human experience can provide lasting happiness, and trying to force things to stand still and make us happy is itself the main source of misery.
“Attachment” in Buddhism extends far beyond the sense of “greed” or “clinging” to something closer to what the Christian tradition would call “pride”–a self-centered isolation, the separate selfhood, “ego” in the worst sense.
This selfhood acts upon others and the world as if they were forever separate from oneself, generating what author Charlene Spretnak described as “the continuous chain reaction of craving, jealousy, ill will, indifference, fear, and anxiety that fills the mind.” This is a deep, pervasive, but normal kind of alienation–one seemingly built into the nature of the human nervous system.
The most pervasive form of self-centered suffering takes place as we project upon everyday experience a huge burden of extraneous interpretations, associations, fantasies, emotions, painful memories, and diversions. We act then with the Buddhist big three problems: greed, aversion, and delusion. Greed sucks things in to our purposes, violating their natures as necessary. Aversion shoves things away, denies, distorts, destroys them–again violating their natures. In the state of delusion, we float, confused, not seeing, not knowing, insulated from the pain and salvation of deep experience.
Instead of seeing each moment as it is, we react to each moment from our past pain and frustration; then we react to the pain and frustration; then we react to that reaction; and so on and on. In this way a special form of mental torment is created that consists of seemingly endless layers of pain, negative emotion, self-doubt and self-justification–known in Buddhism as “samsara,” the illusory world we think of as real. It is what, in honest moments, many people might call “normality.”
I think of it this way: Instead of experiencing life directly, we create a worldview and experience it. That worldview serves to protect us through a system of explanations; but it also makes each of us into an isolated self, separated from nature, from real experience, from spirituality, and from one another–causing all experience to be distorted and “out of joint,” and ourselves to suffer from living at one remove from life. We are nearly always, in some degree, outsiders to the world and even to our own experience.
Buddhists have given deep attention to the ways human beings are at once empowered and entrapped by the categories we create for thought and language. Racial prejudice is a straightforward example of what Buddhists mean by suffering that is created by the mind; it is based on mental categories that distort perception and project our expectations onto others. The fundamental Buddhist act is to accept responsibility for one’s projections, and to learn to know, first hand, how the mind creates illusion and amplifies suffering.
2012 – super-symmetry
Have you felt a strange quality in your day-to-day, over the past 2-3 weeks? Have you been noticing an elevated level of synchronicity lately? Have things materialized in your reality that you were just talking about the night before?
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for weeks… it started out as me wanting to write about all the crazy synchronicities of late… but then i realized that this subject, as most enlightend output tends to be, seemed connected to a lot of other aspects of my reality… from feelings of “life-out-of-balance” to recently reported black hole activity…
At some points along your journey, there are places where you can take a step back and observe how everything is connected with such breathtaking symmetry… for just a few moments everything seems to be in perfect balance… You want to tell people about what you’re seeing but you get so wrapped up in watching it all transpire that you get stuck on stupid… and you’re afraid to talk about it for fear of becoming distracted from that moment and losing sight of it altogether.
That’s what happened here. i’ve been sitting back watching this perfect universe rotate and undulate and change and evolve and crack it’s jokes and teach it’s lessons for a few weeks now… so enamored by it all that i don’t even know where to begin in documenting or sharing it.
I feel like 2012 is closer and more real and more positive than ever before… i feel like it’s beginning to rear it’s unprecendented unimaginable head and, before long, this crystalline moment of snowflake-like perfection will be upon all of us… and we will all take our hats off and look up to the sky as the change we’ve all been waiting for washes over everything…
…Or not. but I, personally, am rooting for transformation.
![](http://www.seventhswami.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/twit.png")
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
