Chop Wood, Carry Water Read online

  Chop wood,

  Carry water

  Table of Contents

  Section One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Section Two

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Section One

  Live Long & Prosper

  1

  Once a week I peel off all my skin and climb on top of the Naples Daily News building. I then proceed to shout at the top of my lungs about topics that are never ensured a warm welcome. Yoga, philosophy, theology—things we are currently dissuaded from speaking about in polite company. Yep. That’s me up there, the lunatic fringe, bucking social convention with a bullhorn.

  To my never ending surprise and delight, people respond. For the most part positively. That simple support keeps my courage strong as I put those rebel thoughts out there into the world. But sometimes, people respond negatively. I take equal pleasure in the dissenting opinion for it is those who abjectly disagree that keep me thinking about what I say and why I say it. It is those few who keep me absolutely genuine.

  I was recently assaulted (verbally) by someone who took extreme objection to my willingness to believe something that could not be proven. In a nutshell, my intelligence was questioned—and my integrity—because I asked others to believe the same.

  We live in an era of science. A time when everything has its place and its explanation. Nothing is real until our scientists to prove it valid. And then we accept it wholesale, rarely questioning the result. Until it bites us in the butt. And then we usually shrug it off, confident that another batch of scientists will right the wrong.

  Heaven forfend we take anything on faith. And I don’t mean the kind of faith that comes in a tent. I mean that deep, abiding faith in the unseen world. The world of ideas and grace. The world that generates love and peace. This unseen world is intangible. You cannot ever prove it exists—although quantum physics may be getting close. And still, those who study quantum often say that they find themselves heeling faith.

  To try and bring this other world strictly into the confines of our physical realm is impossible. It will always exist only within our minds and our spirits. It cannot ever be separated out. This unseen world is the very foundation on which we build our humanity. So, while it may be a scientific, genetically proven fact that we are just upright apes, it is this unseen world of faith, grace and love that makes us ever so much more.

  Why on earth would anyone dream of proving grace? Does it fit into a Petri dish? Can it be saved to a hard drive? If we all waited for the scientific authority to validate grace, we would be left waiting in a very cold world. To minimize the value of grace because it cannot be proven is to debunk Jesus and other figures like him. It is to crush the archetypal standards with which we navigate our way through the dark tunnels of human need. We need grace, proven or not.

  What about love? It can’t be charted. Love just is. It is completely ethereal and yet find me one person on the face of this green earth who is waiting for science to prove that love exists. Maybe science will determine the chemical that makes love—but who wants to see love reduced to a neurotransmitter? Love is as necessary to our lives as water; we don’t need it proven to us.

  Ideas, memory, dreams, spirit, soul—our very essence—these are all things that belong in our unseen world. Nobody, nobody needs scientific study to prove that they are real. Quite simply, proof is not the point. Proof can be wrong. Proof can be fixed. The things that matter, that which makes us remarkable, will never, ever, be scientific provenance.

  Maybe I am a fool for believing. But I would far rather be a faithful fool than a blind one.

  2

  I just read an interesting parable that had to do with the process of enlightenment. It was about a master and a student, eating rice from a bowl. The student asks the master what else he should be doing to move along his path to enlightenment. The master asks him if he has finished his rice. The student replies in the affirmative. The master then tells him to wash out his bowl.

  That’s it. That was his answer to the question. “Wash out your bowl.” Brilliant.

  This sort of irreverent description of the enlightenment quest is brilliant simply because it is so useable. So accessible. I have no idea how it became this way, but our current, common image of ‘enlightenment’ is a strangely limited one. Just the very word conjures up old men on mountaintops, or monks in caves, loincloths, robes, and above all else—quixotic solitude interrupted by only the most disciplined of seekers. It seems that renunciation, withdrawal and enlightenment must go hand in hand. And let us not forget all that communing with God that goes on up there in the clouds and produces only deep, thoughtful riddles that can be deciphered only with careful meditation and intense concentration. Am I right?

  Jeez. As it is currently perceived, enlightenment seems like darned serious work. Too serious for me, I must say. My life is messy and full; I don’t have time for riddles or mounta
in hiking. Lucky for me (and you) that the image of enlightenment is so very far from the reality of it and truth can be found quite easily. Right now.

  This small parable makes it quite clear that growing enlightenment finds success in simply doing what comes next. You are here. It is now. Finding enlightenment means not turning the quest for it into a production, but being with it as it unfolds. If you act in this manner all the time, you move your awareness into present time. You begin to see moment to moment. And any moment, when examined or endured on its own without the chain of friends that usually accompany it, is as light as air. All on its own, any moment is filled with it’s own enlightened grace.

  All of life is but a series of these moments, strung together like sacred mala beads. Your fingers brush them for as long as it takes to breathe a prayer and then you have moved on. That breath has passed, everything that that breath may have represented has passed as well. That moment, that thought, that experience—no matter how good or bad—is gone. And then you encounter another bead, a different breath, a new prayer.

  Every moment is a fresh opportunity to unfold into enlightened thinking. Sometimes we do it with grace; sometimes we do it with curses. But if we can let go of what was, forsake the expectation of what might be, and be present with the moment at hand we just might find that moment filled with true bliss. An instant of eternal insight. Enlightenment is nothing more than finding each instant ripe with God’s peace. Enlightenment lives in dirty dishes as well as on mountaintops, in instants as well as eternity.

  Those wonderful moments are just waiting to emerge when our hands are full of everyday things. Peace is riding shotgun every moment of every day. Enlightenment has been in your pocket for years. But if you relegate it to a role separate from the mundane, you’ll never find it. No matter how far up the mountain you climb, or how many sages you ask.

  There, now, grasshopper. Go clean out your bowl.

  3

  It is very easy to talk about yoga as simply a physical practice. It is only somewhat easy to speak of how those physical aspects translate into mental and emotional realization. It is downright hard to communicate the deeper principles of yoga, especially when they fly in the face of our cultural norms. The very valuable lesson of Attachment is one example of this difficult juxtaposition.

  As Americans, we are encouraged to succeed. We are told in a hundred subtle ways that, should we strive for success, we will find happiness. Even worse, our personal worth is determined by how well we manage this type of success. Just over there, just a little bit further, just a little more work, just a few more moments away and we shall be blissfully worthy. We hinge so much of ourselves on a possibility that lives off in the distant future because that is how our culture functions. We are, at heart, a civilization of gamblers always banking on future earnings.

  As yogis, we are encouraged to release ourselves from this method of thinking and being. A bedrock philosophy of the practice, non-attachment to things, people, ideas, and egos is how we are taught to find happiness. In other words, one cannot know what will happen at any other time than right now, so it is asking for upset to become attached to possibility. Once utilized, this method of being is quite liberating. But getting there is a hell of a trick.

  To let go of an expected outcome is tough. That is because this is where our dreams live—off in the land of maybe, possibly, hopefully. We have all been taught to follow our dreams. We have all been taught to live in the possibility of tomorrow, oftentimes at the expense of today. Like a rusty safety pin, or a drunken gambler, we are stuck in the hope of a big happiness payoff and can’t get free of it. This hope is so bright that it can easily obscure reality and leave us in the lurch.

  Attaching ideas of personal success or failure, worth or significance—and all of the emotions that accompany them—to something that has no real substance is a really bad idea. When you do this, you are playing roulette with your peace of mind. Real problems may be neglected as your eyes are turned to possible rewards. How can happiness ever come out of that?

  We can’t know absolutely what the results of our actions will be. Any decision, even a wise one, has the potential to take off on a wild hair and go in a direction completely unexpected. It isn’t smart to invest in what you think might possibly be what could happen. This is, as my grandmother says, “borrowing trouble.”

  We can only trust in what happens right now. From that all clarity flows.

  No one is suggesting that you don’t follow your dreams. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t dream. But one must always be aware of the present situation so that we can sense when that dream is failing us. Just because you have always dreamed of being a dancer does not mean that you will dance in Carnegie Hall. If you have pinned your very identity to that dream, what happens to you when it doesn’t come? What if it was never meant to be? What joy could you have missed along the way by attaching the value of success to a task you love?

  Sometimes possibilities are poisons that keep us from truly finding ourselves. Disattach from them and be content with who you are and where you are. Take joy in the doing and leave it at that.

  Because castles made of air tend to blow away.

  4

  I made a friend in college who was the undisputed King of Theories. Quite independent of his formal studies, this man thought about and pondered everything under the sun. Looking back, I can see it was a blessing that I met and knew him and that I was afforded the opportunity to bandy about a few ‘theories’ of my own at an age when ideas about life and living take firm root.

  This man was the first philosopher-poet I had ever met. I hope somewhere along the course of your experience that you have known one, too. They are invaluable guides.

  One of his more practical theories had to do with the use of the body’s energy supply. Long before I knew what yoga was or what it could do, this friend introduced me to the idea that the body was more than just a physical vehicle and it was more than just food that made it run. He believed that the body had a finite energy supply (“joules”, he called them) and that you were only allotted so much energy every day. Now, according to this theory, you could borrow against future days, but you would eventually go into ‘energy debt’. This created fatigue, irritability, and sickness. If you follow this theory to the end, one could say that going into extreme energy debt would shorten your life.

  Now, whether you think this is hooey or not, just follow me for a moment. We all know that Stress is the new Satan and the stressful way we live our lives—busy in body, busy in mind, absent in spirit—is the root of our problems. But what is stress, really, but the body’s engines running in the red all day long? Stress is this energy debt and we are maxing out our energy charge cards every day that we live so thoughtlessly. If we only have so much energy to spend, and we spend it foolishly by trying to ‘do it all’, what are we giving up? How much of our lives are we wasting by spinning around, never maximizing where we are?

  I can’t tell you how to spend your energy just as I can’t tell you how to spend your money (…organic foods, free-trade products, eco-friendly goods…). But I can try to demonstrate how you are perhaps wasting your valuable resources.

  I find, of course, that yoga class is a great example of this. It is, truly, life in microcosm. Some students come in and find their one-pointed focus, practicing with an economy of motion that refreshes and revitalizes. These people spend very little of their energy supply—even in a vigorous practice. Others come in and fidget. Their eyes dart about. They pick at their toes, rub their legs, bounce their knees. They wriggle about into the postures, never quite finding the stillpoint. These people are throwing their energy pennies down the well, wishing for peace.

  We behave this way every day, either performing our tasks with focus and intention, or with scattered effort. When we do what needs to be done without any drama, one task at a time, we do not deplete ourselves. No matter how much we do. No matter what we do. But when we whirl about, trying to do
seventeen things at once without presence, we waste ourselves and begin to borrow from tomorrow.

  You must focus as you act. Be aware of your tasks and how you manage them. Sort out the important from the mere busy. Know, without a doubt, how much of your action—physical, mental, spiritual—is necessary. And how much is, in the words of another philosopher-poet, “Sound and fury… signifying nothing.”

  In this way, we can all live long and prosper.

  5

  Ah, yes.

  The Wheel has turned and once again we find ourselves with an opportunity to re-align ourselves with the way of nature. The 21st/ 22nd of March is the Vernal Equinox, one of two points in the year when the Earth comes to balance. Here we come to a state in which the day and the night are equally as long.

  This Equinox, the Spring Equinox, is a time to enjoy growing warmth, increasing light, and the time of beginnings. In olden times, this date was the marker for spring planting; it was time to put seeds in the ground. For our own modern times, it is a chance to find our own state of balance, internal and external. It is an opportunity to take a breath, set things on the right course and them let them go with complete faith that they will find their way to fruition.

  Now, that’s a tricky one. We do like to drive the events of our lives here in America. The act of trusting our fates to the, well, Fates is not something that we do well.

  But look back, if you will, at all of the times you tinkered with something, hoping to make it better and ending up with a mess. Remember a time when your actions actually hindered the process whereas, had you left well enough alone, it might have flourished. We do this with such ease. It is part of our nature. Life is like a tree, a slow grower sensitive to equilibrium. An incessant re-working of life can throw it out of tune, just like too much kneading will ruin the rise of the dough.

  You have to keep yourself in balance. Know when to act and when to leave well enough alone. This is the lesson of nature. This is the opportunity to be found in the Equinox.

  It is an issue of trust and faith. The ancients trusted that if they put seeds in the ground at this time and treated them according to the rules of nature, they would grow. They had faith that there would be crops as long as certain observances were maintained. These were simple ideas. Action and restraint created the results they desired. Do the right thing at the right time and then wait.