The Beauty of Connection

Once upon a time there was an exquisitely beautiful woman named Sita, whose looks and graciousness inspired passion in every creature who encountered her. Sita, however, was madly in love with her partner, a powerful and righteous king named Rama, who was equally crazy about her. One day, as they played and picnicked with their attendants in the flower-dotted fields near where they lived, Sita wandered into the nearby forest to find a little shade. From the treetops, a demon by the name of Ravena, who was obsessively in love with Sita watched… waited…and then leapt down, scooping up Sita and whisking her away to the island of Lanka where he hid her deep inside his walled-in kingdom.

Finding a few of Sita’s glittering jewels on the forest floor, the devastated Rama and his devoted servant Hanuman knew right away that the demon had stolen Sita. Hanuman told Rama that he would leap over the ocean to Lanka to find her, that nothing could deter him from reuniting the couple. Now Hanuman was a sort of demi-god: half monkey and half man, who had magical powers, such as shape-shifting and flying through the air. So Hanuman gathered up his powers and leapt all the way to Lanka, then made himself tiny so that he could scamper unnoticed through the treetops inside of Ravana’s gardens. There he found Sita, weeping under a tree. He gave her Rama’s ring to prove that he was sent by him and then leapt back to tell Rama, so that the king could lead his army to Lanka and recover his stolen love.

So here’s where it gets interesting. Place the story inside of you. You are the landscape – the verdant fields and the shadowy forest, the ocean and the walled-in kingdom. You are the strong king who wants to do the right thing and the exquisite beauty who longs for what she loves. But you are also Ravana, that demon who causes you to feel alone or disconnected, who tears you away from your self. And finally, you are Hanuman, the one who restores unity, who, in fact, is so utterly devoted to creating connection, that he will create alignment again and again and again, because Hanuman is the ultimate yogi, alignment and connectivity are a constant process, and this is one of many stories…

Observe within yourself how the story plays out in every moment in your day. Your mind flickers over a particular thought or desire and waves of excitement, curiosity, self-doubt, and longing rise and subside. When do you feel separate? What makes you doubt yourself or become excessively self-critical? Remind yourself that those alienating sensations are only one character in the story, that just as they attempt to pull you out of alignment, there are other characters in your story that elevate and exalt you. Call on that part of you that is deeply devoted to your own alignment and connectivity. Call on that part of you that is Hanuman.

The Flavors of Love

The Rasas

Rasa is the Sanskrit term for the flavor or texture of an experience. The nine Rasas include Comic, Compassionate, Furious, Heroic, Fearsome, Gruesome, Wondrous, Peaceful, and Erotic. Every moment of life touches upon one or several of them, as they tumble into each other and overlap. The Rasas are referenced when talking about art or aesthetic theory because of the power of a great work or composition to evoke them: a Goya etching may tap into the gruesome yet leave you in a state of wonder. The Mary J. Blige song that makes you cry may help you end up in a place of peace. Anyway, I've been thinking about the connection between the Rasas and the different flavors of love...

There is a love that feels like peacefulness, a love that feels like yearning, a love of bubbling-over joy, and a love that evokes eroticism. Love can feel clearly directed and specific, or it can be as vast and expansive as the cosmos. My love of cake is not the same as my love for my beloved, which is not the same as the love I have for my parents, or for my best friend, or for the ocean. Yet I feel passionately about all of those things. And within each of those forms and variations of love there are infinite nuances of experience.

Love resides not in the object but in the subject. It is not something to pursue or look for anywhere outside of yourself. This is not to say that you can’t find love with someone or something else. But it is the word with that makes all of the difference. You have to connect to the experience of love within to receive love from anything in the external world. And then maybe you don’t receive it in the way or form that you wanted, which feels surprising, interesting, or lousy, but it doesn’t change the fact that love is still there, because the love resides in you. The feeling of love, the ability to love is always present, while the object of your love and the texture of your love shift, change and diversify.

Love offers us an intensity of experience that dives deeply into the Rasas, showing us how vast and diverse our capacity for love really is. If that flavor of love were not a part of you, you wouldn’t even be able to recognize it. So something from the outside evoked the love that was already present within you. And regardless of what happens on the outside, that flavor of love is always there.

Try this: Take a moment to think of what you really love and whom you really love. Observe the flavors or textures of each of those particular loves. Then recognize how each one of them is an aspect of your self.

The Goddess Who Pauses to Speak

Bagalamukhi

Pause for a split second. Now say what you wanted to say – clearly, concisely, and artfully. Within that tiny suspended moment, your breath shifts, your thoughts coalesce, your mind hovers between this and that, now and then, and finally chooses its self-expression. That moment contains a particular power. Its name is Bagalamukhi.

Bagalamukhi is the goddess who hovers just an inch above an nectar-filled ocean dotted with yellow lotuses, wrapped in a turmeric-colored sari and bathed in her own golden light. She is also called the crane-faced one, the length of her long neck showing that extended moment when the heart’s intention rises to the mouth and is spoken. In her right hand she holds a club and in her left, the tongue of a demon, reducing it to silence. For this reason she is sometimes called the paralyzer, freezing the demons of the mind and of speech. Her own silence accumulates power, so when she speaks, she says exactly what she means. She is that pause before your utterance that makes your words meaningful.

This is a practice of course – one that is not always easy and won’t always function every time you open your mouth, but as you cultivate the link between your mind and your speech, what you say begins to carry more weight and feels more authentic. Your articulations resonate more profoundly with the people around you and begin to create internal change as well, deepening your sense of who you are, where you stand in the world, and how you want to present yourself. When we run ourselves down or criticize others, our articulations are destructive. The more we speak destructively, the more we emanate negativity. Who wants to be around that?

Bagalamukhi is about pausing to cultivate your inner alignment so that what you put out into the world represents your best self. Words shape our thinking and ways of being in the world. As your lips are about to verbalize a thought or an opinion, call on that part of you that is Bagalamukhi, and in that hovering suspended moment, your intention coalesces into the gems of speech that adorn the ocean of your thoughts.

Making the Pilgrimage

Pilgrims lighting camphor beads, Palani Temple, Dec 2010

It was Christmas and I was zip-zagging across the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu in a bus filled with about 25 other people. Led by my teacher, renowned Tantric scholar Dr. Douglas Brooks, we were on pilgrimage to the six primary temples of Shiva’s son Subrahmanya, a fierce warrior known for his multifaceted and diverse self, thus the many temples. Although I missed my family, I had made the choice for the second time in three years to have what we now referred to as “Susanna’s Hindu Christmas.”

A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place to connect and pay homage. The outer journey will ideally run parallel to an inner journey that may shuffle and shift our every way of looking at the world. Each Subrahmanya temple we visited engaged us through its own distinctive personality, eliciting those same qualities within us. Tiruchendur seduced us into a dark crowded interior, churned us through its dense corridors, and then released us ecstatically onto the beach to wade in the ocean. Palani beckoned to us to climb its 650-some steps to the top of a mountain, where it offered an expansive clear healing sensation that one can only find on a mountaintop. Swamimalai sweetly invited us in and coaxed us gently into conversation. And so on…

What each temple offered us was a particular experience of ourselves – a no joke face-to-face with our own consciousness – stuff we love and stuff we don’t like to see at all. Pilgrimage is about walking the path within oneself. As we moved from temple to temple, we moved from place to place inside our bodies, minds, and hearts. How does pilgrimage do this? It invites us to step into the mix, to engage in an outer journey to create an inner conversation. The process is both startling and exquisite.

Toward the end of the trip, as our bus wound its way through the lush rice fields and palm trees of Tamil Nadu, it became clear to me that every aspect of the pilgrimage was nothing less than a mirror reflecting my many selves. The sweet smell of jasmine, the muck from the cows, the press of the crowds with its sense of urgency and joy. The mounds of garbage and detritus, the drip and perfume of the ghee candles, the crack and gush of coconuts being split and drained of their water. The burning beads of camphor mingling with the fragrance of sandalwood. The white smears of ash(vibhuti) and vermillion dots of kumkum staining my forehead. The deliriously cacophonous temple music mixed with the cries of babies, marketplace conversations, and the shouted prayers of pilgrims. And I thought: there is actually nothing here that is not deeply familiar- the complexities and the messiness, the tragedies and the ecstasies. As my teacher Douglas often says, “That is nothing like me. That is something like me. That is nothing but me.”

I extend to you this invitation:

Make a pilgrimage within yourself. Treat this year like a journey. Visit every place you can find that resides within you. And then honor your experience, regardless of what you find along the way. As you wind through your own consciousness, remember that you will find contradictions and surprises, because you are multifaceted. You are your own world. And whatever you encounter on your pilgrimage is you.

Making the Pilgrimage

Making the Pilgrimage

The Beauty of Habit and Ritual

At the Thiruvalamchuzhi Ganesh Temple, Tamil Nadu, Dec 28, 2010

This morning I made my tea, as I do most mornings, and sat down with it to think about what new habits and rituals I want to establish in the New Year. Our lives are filled with both rituals and habits, and it’s interesting to discern between the two. A habit is a recurring pattern of behavior, conscious or unconscious. A ritual is a symbolic action or behavior that marks an occasion or confers significance. The line delineating one from the other can be fairly blurry, but ritual can or should make meaning in your life. Preparing my tea and sitting to think is a habit that gives me pleasure, but it doesn’t necessarily have meaning beyond that satisfying moment. In contrast, here is an example of a ritual…

When I finish teaching a yoga class, I release my palms from prayer pose (Anjali Mudra), touch my left hand to my heart and my right fingertips to the ground. Release. Lift my head and take in the room. I’m not sure if I adopted this small ritual from another teacher some years ago or if I made it up, but the symbolism is clear to me – I am affirming the connection of my heart to the hearts around me, and honoring what we have just co-created in the space. It is a gesture that takes approximately 5 seconds, but it seals the experience for me, and fills me with gratitude for having yoga in my life and for being part of an amazing community. This ritual feels good, and after some years of doing it, necessary.

Think of the rituals we embrace: lighting candles, making toasts, creating new year’s resolutions, sharing birthday cakes, sending cards and emails, and more. Celebration, remembrance, reverence, and transition are all moments that call for ritual. Rituals can become rote, and turn into empty habits, but with a little attention, we can re-infuse them with meaning or simply decide that they no longer serve us. If we create the habit of a daily yoga or meditation practice, that habit can become a ritual, rich with meaning and substance.

In this New Year, I invite you to join me in examining old habits, forming new ones, and creating meaningful ritual that enriches our daily lives.

The Beauty of Ferocity

She is burningly fierce and infinitely gentle. Her ferocity knows no limits, but she knows where to direct it and when to apply it. Her beauty is unparalleled, her face reddened from the heat of her own passion and rage. You are either with her or against her. She is so powerful that there are twelve forms of her, each form displaying a specific aspect of her personality and power. She has a closet full of outfits but favors dressing in vivid red from head to toe. In her four hands she holds prayer beads, a book, and makes the gestures of fearlessness and of graceful offering. Draped around her neck and shoulders is a garland of severed heads, her chest and face smeared with their blood. From the midst of the gore, her three luminous eyes shaped like lotus blossoms shine like the rising sun…

The Goddess Bhairavi represents that intelligent ferocity that resides within us. When we stand up for something we care about, when we leap to defend someone we love, when we plunge wholeheartedly into our own passions and beliefs, or eliminate something detrimental to our lives, we are Bhairavi. Undeterred. Without doubt. Taking no prisoners. Fiery. Infinite. Bhairavi is always within us – she is a part of who we are. What is interesting is when she appears – what it is inside and outside of us that calls her to the surface.

To receive beauty and grace in your life, you sometimes need to be ferocious. First you need to cultivate a clear analytical intelligence that enables you to discern what benefits you and what is self-destructive. Once you have determined this, unleash Bhairavi. Sever what isn’t serving you. Do so with precision, clarity and deep self-awareness. Own your choices. Don’t be subject to her. Be her. Be terrible in your raging beauty, standing up for what you believe in, whom you love, and who you are in the world. Be passionately ferocious and fiercely graceful. Like Bhairavi, you become as luminous as 1000 suns.