A Rather Bumpy Start
My start on the path of practice began in high school, a time in which many of us begin to struggle with life's ebbs and flows. I, of course, was no different. Various pressures and often shifting circumstances made me feel unbalanced and angry, eventually leading me to a place of unfeeling cynicism. Luckily, yoga was a gym class offering at the specialized public high school I attended in Brooklyn, NY. Wanting something to take besides tennis, and already having a warm relationship with the teacher, I signed up for the class. And so it was that I was introduced to the practice of Yoga through Asana (postures). My teacher emphasized the breath as a means to settle your mind , even while you increased the difficulty of the posture. If you could learn to control your breath in an arm balance, for example, surely it could lead to balanced breathing under other conditions. That idea made sense to me, and so I continued to practice yoga throughout my high school years, looking for a way to stabilize an otherwise chaotic life...
The Four Noble Truths & The Greatest Poem I Have Ever Read
I have always been in love with books. As a child, I spent hours at the local public library, devouring every kind of book I could find. This love affair continued in high school, where one day I happened upon a book called "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das. In it, Lama Surya Das offered a contemporary introduction to Buddhism, discussing the basic Buddhist teachings in an accessible way and offering them as a way to understand our mind. It was there that I discovered the two things that would lead me to walk the Buddhist Path: the Four Noble Truths and The Heart Sutra.
The Four Noble Truths are the Buddha's descriptions of how our lives typically unfold and his offering of a path that can lead to a more beneficial result:
1) There is Suffering
2) There are Causes of Suffering
3) There is an End to Suffering
4) There is a Path that Leads to the End of Suffering
To learn more about The Four Noble Truths, please follow this link.
Having read a description of the Four Noble Truths, I thought that this was good sense. Clearly, life involved suffering. Clearly, the causes of suffering could be found in my own mind, my own reactions to events as they unfolded around me. No matter what anyone else did to me or for me (including anything I did for or against myself), my emotional state following any action was dependent solely on me. The responsibility was my own. Clearly, if there was a way to identify causes to suffering, there was most certainly a way to identify an end. Finally, all the spiritual traditions point us in the direction of the Self if we seek to be free of suffering. If indeed I could identify suffering, its causes, and its end, there had to be an experience-based way for me to work on it. This was good news!
Further in my reading, Lama Surya Das offered a poem that has come to represent my greatest aspiration in this life. It is a description of reality offered by a Bodhisattva (a being who has developed unconditional compassion for all sentient beings) that points its reader in the direction of Enlightenment (an unfettered view of reality, as it is). The Heart Sutra (sutra can be translated as teaching) is, to date, the most powerful expression of written language I have ever read. So much so that it was part of my wedding ceremony!
The Sutra begins:
The Bodhisattva Avalokita,
while moving in the deep course of Perfect Understanding,
shed light on the Five Skandhas (aggregates - form, sensation, perception, mental formation, and consciousness)and found them equally empty.
After this penetration, he overcame ill-being.
To read the full sutra, please follow this link.
The Four Noble Truths are the Buddha's descriptions of how our lives typically unfold and his offering of a path that can lead to a more beneficial result:
1) There is Suffering
2) There are Causes of Suffering
3) There is an End to Suffering
4) There is a Path that Leads to the End of Suffering
To learn more about The Four Noble Truths, please follow this link.
Having read a description of the Four Noble Truths, I thought that this was good sense. Clearly, life involved suffering. Clearly, the causes of suffering could be found in my own mind, my own reactions to events as they unfolded around me. No matter what anyone else did to me or for me (including anything I did for or against myself), my emotional state following any action was dependent solely on me. The responsibility was my own. Clearly, if there was a way to identify causes to suffering, there was most certainly a way to identify an end. Finally, all the spiritual traditions point us in the direction of the Self if we seek to be free of suffering. If indeed I could identify suffering, its causes, and its end, there had to be an experience-based way for me to work on it. This was good news!
Further in my reading, Lama Surya Das offered a poem that has come to represent my greatest aspiration in this life. It is a description of reality offered by a Bodhisattva (a being who has developed unconditional compassion for all sentient beings) that points its reader in the direction of Enlightenment (an unfettered view of reality, as it is). The Heart Sutra (sutra can be translated as teaching) is, to date, the most powerful expression of written language I have ever read. So much so that it was part of my wedding ceremony!
The Sutra begins:
The Bodhisattva Avalokita,
while moving in the deep course of Perfect Understanding,
shed light on the Five Skandhas (aggregates - form, sensation, perception, mental formation, and consciousness)and found them equally empty.
After this penetration, he overcame ill-being.
To read the full sutra, please follow this link.
Re-entering the Path
While these ideas remained in my life, circumstances led me to momentarily forget my commitment to understanding the nature of my mind. Upon leaving college, I moved to Philadelphia, PA, thinking it would be a nice respite before beginning an MSW program at the University of Buffalo. I decided to stay after receiving a full-time offer of employment and felt that my time in Philadelphia would be best spent rediscovering myself. I began looking for Yoga studios that I could go to and happened upon a place called Dhyana Yoga. I became a certified Vinyasa Yoga teacher a few months later and decided to take a second training to be able to teach youth. Yoga Child, Inc offered the perfect space to make that happen. The director also shared my interest in Buddhism and introduced me to a practice community that met in Center City Philadelphia, called Peaceful City Sangha. By the end of March 2007 I was teaching yoga asana to adults and youth, and was facilitating Peaceful City gatherings...and I loved it!
As my practice deepened, I wanted to be part of the "typical" world less and less. I didn't want to make a living in a way that did not involve being of service to someone else, that wasn't working to help someone else (this is called Right Livelihood in the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhist philosophy. The Noble Eightfold Path is part of the Fourth Noble Truth. To learn more about the Noble Eightfold Path, click here). I quit all of my daytime jobs in early 2009 and became a full-time yoga instructor and studio staff member. It was here that I realized, while I might look at the practices of Yoga and Meditation as a way of life (and further, one and the same practice) a way to end separation amongst and between people, many simply see it as just a business. My relationship with Dhyana Yoga became severely strained, due to my own misperception of what was happening behind the scenes. Eventually, we parted ways. It shook my faith in the everything: yoga practice, the student-teacher relationship, the choices I'd made...I wasn't even sure that practice was something I wanted to do ever again.
As my practice deepened, I wanted to be part of the "typical" world less and less. I didn't want to make a living in a way that did not involve being of service to someone else, that wasn't working to help someone else (this is called Right Livelihood in the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhist philosophy. The Noble Eightfold Path is part of the Fourth Noble Truth. To learn more about the Noble Eightfold Path, click here). I quit all of my daytime jobs in early 2009 and became a full-time yoga instructor and studio staff member. It was here that I realized, while I might look at the practices of Yoga and Meditation as a way of life (and further, one and the same practice) a way to end separation amongst and between people, many simply see it as just a business. My relationship with Dhyana Yoga became severely strained, due to my own misperception of what was happening behind the scenes. Eventually, we parted ways. It shook my faith in the everything: yoga practice, the student-teacher relationship, the choices I'd made...I wasn't even sure that practice was something I wanted to do ever again.
Solidifying My Commitments
During my last year at DY I began to practice with world-renowned Iyengar Yoga teacher Joan White (please see the Resources page for a link to her website). She showed me exactly how much I did NOT know..about anything! The vast amounts of knowledge I thought my 12 months (total) of Yoga teacher certification taught me was absolutely nothing compared to her 38 years (and counting) of training at the hands of B.K.S. Iyengar. Joan's class allowed me to develop what Zen Buddhists call "beginner's mind". Shunryu Suzuki described it like this: " In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." It is the capacity to approach a situation with no preconceptions, expectations...no ideas about anything. You have the great freedom to just show up and experience everything as it is. Walking into Joan's class, you have no alternative but to drop everything at the door and get into your body. I practiced with Joan for three years, and while I've moved around the country since this time, I continue to view her as my teacher: I still use her sequences for my home practice and have tried to make her workshops whenever I can . I'm hoping to get back to her classes soon, now that I am closer to her geographically.
My mindfulness practice has also continued to solidify. I practiced with Peaceful City in Philadelphia from the first day I walked in to their practice space in 2008 until I moved to Seattle to pursue my PhD in 2011. I became an Aspirant to the Order of Interbeing, a microcosm of the larger sangha body comprised of the monastic and lay communities. You can read more about the Order here. While in Seattle, I practiced with the Mindfulness Community of Puget Sound and helped found Wake Up Seattle, a community of lay practitioners who are between the ages of 18-35. Now back on the East Coast, I have begun using the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique I learned while in Seattle, while I remain open to finding my next mindfulness community.
The mindfulness community has been a place to shine light on myself, my perceptions, and has served as my laboratory for developing compassion; when you are practicing in a community, you have confidence in your capacity to practice well. By well, I am not talking about right or wrong, but rather diligence. The task is to show up, each and every time, no matter what. The importance of the sangha is something Thay (Thich Nhat Hahn) talks about often:
"There is a story in the sutras about King Presenajit of Shravasti, who met the Buddha for the last time when they were both eighty years old. The king said something like, “dear Buddha, every time I see the sangha, I see you more clearly.” It is very meaningful that the Buddha can be seen through the sangha. The sangha is the work, the masterpiece of the Buddha. The Buddha is an artist and the sangha is his artwork. So what the king said is very meaningful: “dear Buddha, dear teacher, every time I get in touch with your sangha, I see you more clearly and I appreciate you more and more.” The Buddha is still alive today in the sangha. When you see the monks and the lay people practicing, you see the presence of the Buddha."
My mindfulness practice has also continued to solidify. I practiced with Peaceful City in Philadelphia from the first day I walked in to their practice space in 2008 until I moved to Seattle to pursue my PhD in 2011. I became an Aspirant to the Order of Interbeing, a microcosm of the larger sangha body comprised of the monastic and lay communities. You can read more about the Order here. While in Seattle, I practiced with the Mindfulness Community of Puget Sound and helped found Wake Up Seattle, a community of lay practitioners who are between the ages of 18-35. Now back on the East Coast, I have begun using the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique I learned while in Seattle, while I remain open to finding my next mindfulness community.
The mindfulness community has been a place to shine light on myself, my perceptions, and has served as my laboratory for developing compassion; when you are practicing in a community, you have confidence in your capacity to practice well. By well, I am not talking about right or wrong, but rather diligence. The task is to show up, each and every time, no matter what. The importance of the sangha is something Thay (Thich Nhat Hahn) talks about often:
"There is a story in the sutras about King Presenajit of Shravasti, who met the Buddha for the last time when they were both eighty years old. The king said something like, “dear Buddha, every time I see the sangha, I see you more clearly.” It is very meaningful that the Buddha can be seen through the sangha. The sangha is the work, the masterpiece of the Buddha. The Buddha is an artist and the sangha is his artwork. So what the king said is very meaningful: “dear Buddha, dear teacher, every time I get in touch with your sangha, I see you more clearly and I appreciate you more and more.” The Buddha is still alive today in the sangha. When you see the monks and the lay people practicing, you see the presence of the Buddha."
The Way is Still Bumpy....
Regardless of how much time I spend practicing, how many books I read, how many retreats I go on, how many advanced yoga postures I learn, life continues to ebb and flow. Some days are easy: my mindfulness is fully activated and my breath is smooth. I sail through the day as a feather on the wind: effortlessly. Other days I can barely keep my balance: my breathing is shallow, my mind spins, my body fails to feel itself. Regardless of where I may be on the continuum, my goal remains the same: Show up.
It is my hope that this website will offer all who come to it insight into their own practice, whatever it may be and however it happens to manifest. My greatest aspiration is to offer my experience for the benefit of all beings - human, animal, plant, mineral, seen or unseen. I offer any merit that may come from this, and all of my endeavors, to the cessation of suffering for all beings. May all beings awaken from confusion. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.
It is my hope that this website will offer all who come to it insight into their own practice, whatever it may be and however it happens to manifest. My greatest aspiration is to offer my experience for the benefit of all beings - human, animal, plant, mineral, seen or unseen. I offer any merit that may come from this, and all of my endeavors, to the cessation of suffering for all beings. May all beings awaken from confusion. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.