Beatitudes, Heart Sutra...and Pru

Matthew 5: 1-12 [The Beatitudes]

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

 

The Heart Sutras

The Bodhisattva [a person on the path to Buddhahood] of Compassion,
When he meditated deeply,
Saw the emptiness of all five skandhas [five aggregates: form, feelings, thoughts, choice, and consciousness]
And sundered the bonds that caused him suffering.
Here then, Form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form.
Form is only emptiness,
Emptiness only form.
Feeling, thought, and choice, consciousness itself,
Are the same as this.
All things are by nature void
They are not born or destroyed
Nor are they stained or pure
Nor do they wax or wane So, in emptiness, no form,
No feeling, thought, or choice,
Nor is there consciousness.
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch,
Or what the mind takes hold of,
Nor even act of sensing.
No ignorance or end of it,
Nor all that comes of ignorance;
No withering, no death,
No end of them.
Nor is there pain, or cause of pain,
Or cease in pain, or noble path
To lead from pain;
Not even wisdom to attain!
Attainment too is emptiness.
So know that the Bodhisattva [enlightened being]
Holding to nothing whatever,
But dwelling in Prajna [best knowledge] wisdom,
Is freed of delusive hindrance,
Rid of the fear bred by it,
And reaches clearest Nirvana [liberation].
All Buddhas of past and present,
Buddhas of future time,
Using this Prajna wisdom,
Come to full and perfect vision.
Hear then the great dharani [intelligible phrases],
The radiant peerless mantra,
The Prajnaparamita [the Perfection of (Transcendent) Wisdom]
Whose words allay all pain;
Hear and believe its truth!
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha
[Gone Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Ultimately Beyond, Alleluia!]

My puppy of thirteen years died this week. Pru was a quandary of opposites.  She could be wild of spirit, yet obedient to a fault. Ill of body yet an active hiking companion to the end. Gentle as a mom with her favorite toys yet rip to shreds all the others. In the end she was the best puppy, okay dog, anyone could every hope to have.  

We all are a quandary of opposites.  Sometimes we feel happy, other times sad.  Sometimes our stomach can be anxious out of fear and other times out of happy excitement, sometimes both at the same time. This week I find myself both remembering Pru’s happy times and the not so happy.  The truth is if I try to put aside the sad it doesn’t really go away.  It just gets buried deep only to come out later and in an unexpected way.  For our own health it is best to recognize the good and the bad; feel all the feels.  Perhaps even name the sensations in our body so that when we experience them again later, we are better able to steady ourselves.  So often we push negative emotions aside and when they come up, we don’t recognize their origin. 

I think Jesus and the Bodhisattva recognized this healthy need to recognize the opposites.  Both passages above share this in common. Although different they both dwell in the good and the bad existing at the same time. They both speak to the experience after worldly death, although different in message both speak of the afterlife with joy.  So, take care of yourself, welcome pain, greet it with love.  My pain mantra, borrowed from Thich Nhat Hanh is “Hello little pain, how can I help you?” My meditation practice of iRest incorporates these ideas of opposites and bodily sensations. My life is forever changed by this week’s events, but through greeting the pain with love, holding on to the good and the bad, I will move through.

 

Bhakti Namaste Om – Devoted to God I Bow to You Amen

Matthew 22: 34-46

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” ’? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear before I begin today, I am a Christian. My interpretation of love is much like the reading above, and as stated in 1Corinthians 13 “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” There is a sense of interconnectedness between the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor.  This sense of community is necessary for our very survival.  Babies in fact can die from “failure to thrive” if they are not given the care and love they need.  “These Two Commandments” must be taken as a whole. I find a Sanskrit version of my Christian philosophy in the combining of three Sanskrit words into a mantra of my own making Bhakti (Devoted to God) Namaste (I Bow to You)  Om (the Ultimate Amen).

What I find in the Hindu writings about Bhakti in the Bhakti Sutras of Narada * does not resonate with my Christian Beliefs. There is complete devotion only to God only and no attachment to community. Now granted this is for the attainment of Samadhi (union with the object of meditation) and is a goal.  But it does direct the way in which one would comport themselves in the world.  This is not how I choose to be.  I choose to allow love of other to be part of my life. As stated in Matthew, in my interpretation Love of God and Neighbor are not to be separated.  Perhaps I never attain Samadhi, although I have had moments where I feel that I have.  But these moments do not bring me into a detachment from neighbor but rather into deeper attachment to neighbor, world, life, and greater acceptance of all to come after (not that I’m ready to move on yet, I’m not). I choose to love God and Neighbor.

Does that mean I am out of alignment with my practice of yoga?  Of course not! My Bhakti Yoga is my Christianity. My philosophy for my life may be different from yours, my Christianity as an Episcopalian may be different from yours.  But we can all still meet on the mat to practice yoga and deepen (or not), as much as we each individually choose to, our own spiritual practices.

 

Pictures from https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/40-common-sanskrit-words-for-yogis

* https://www.sivanandaonline.org/public_html/?cmd=displaysection&section_id=1122

 

Separation and Intention

 

Matthew 22:15-22

The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Every time I hear this Gospel my first thought is “separation of church and state.” Jesus could have been a founding father. It took more than a thousand years from the time this statement was made for this to become even partially true.  Three hundred years after Jesus’ death Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and declaration that Rome was a Christian empire cemented Christianity’s place as one of the great world religions.  Certainly, this cannot be considered a separation of church and state.  Queen Elizabeth II is considered the Head of the Church of England.  We all still struggle with separating our religion from our countries, as Jesus intended us to do.

If I am to be a Christian and follow Jesus, how does my practice of yoga fit in? Is it separate? Is it a violation of Christianity to practice yoga? Is yoga church or state? In a word yoga means yoke or to join together. Thus, my short answer to these questions has always been “No” it is not separate but informs my Christianity and, more importantly, my ethics. The study of Eastern Religions deepens my Christianity. Yoga is church and state, depending on your personal intention.

The follow up question is normally, “Is Yoga Religious?” the answer is not so simple.  For me it is not, but it is spiritual, for others it is completely secular OR completely religious. The teachings of yoga as applied in the West are mainly secular.  What you experience in a health club is not religion or even philosophy but more health oriented. What you experience at an ashram in India may not be the reduction of physical pain but more spiritual or religious.  Yoga is vast. And as stated by Gary Kraftsow [founder of viniyoga] in the discussion Yoga As A Religion*, “If you have a deeper initiation into the broader tradition of yoga, then you recognize that what's relevant for one individual or group isn't the same as another. If you see what is going to be appropriate for the individual or the group you're working with, you can adapt and give them what's going to serve them. You don't want to shove mantra and prayer [at] someone who's not interested in it. The role of a teacher is to be able to assess appropriately the context that they're teaching [in] and adapt the tools appropriately so that it serves the people that you're working with. So it's not like there's one thing and that we're doing some kind of fragmentation. I think the deeper initiation and understanding you have of yoga, your responsibility as a teacher is to make it available and accessible to the individuals that are coming to you for help at whatever level they're coming. That's the emphasis of Krishnamacharya's [father of western yoga] teaching—that yoga is for the individual. It's not about the teacher; it's about the practitioner. And our job is to provide for them what's going to be useful for them where they are when they're coming to us.”

If yoga is so vast how do we discern its usefulness in our own lives? Brooke Boon of Holy Yoga states in the same discussion*, “I believe that we were created in the image of God, for the glory of God, for the worship of God. And all of the things that we're talking about in terms of Western yoga that we practice in gyms and in studios-the pranayama[breath], the meditation, and the asana [poses]—all three of those things are addressed in the Bible. I believe that yoga is a spiritual discipline that draws you closer to God. And so, if that is true, then the intention of my heart trumps the posture of my body. I think if some of these people [who] are fearful about yoga looked to the word of God in terms of the modalities of yoga, I think it would ease the apprehension.” As I stated earlier, my study of Eastern Religion informs and deepens my Christianity.  My intention is to draw closer to God.

 

*Yoga As A Religion?  https://www.yogajournal.com/.amp/yoga-101/beyond-belief

Photo from https://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/06/render-unto-ceasar-was-jesus-secularist.html