Over the years, I’ve explored and greatly benefitted from a variety of body-cultivation traditions—the majority of which have their roots in India or China. Iyengar Yoga The first was Iyengar yoga, which I was drawn to for its therapeutic applications. I was in my early 20’s and still recovering from a serious ankle injury, which had been creating all kinds of problems, also, in my hips and …
Reviews
Only By Courtesy: Sankara’s Definition of Real
As of late, I’ve been enjoying a pair of books, toggling back-and-forth between them in a way that feels quite interesting and enriching. One of them—Insight into Emptiness by Khensur Jampa Tegchok—harkens from the Buddhist Madhamakaya tradition. The other—The Seven Great Untenables by John Grimes—expresses the view of Advaita Vedanta. So, I read a bit from one, then a bit from the other—as …
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Blissfully Unencumbered
This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. Understanding a bit about how human vision works provides a fascinating window onto the deeply conditioned nature of all perceptual processes: hearing, tasting, …
Quarantine Favorites
Strangely enough, my daily rhythms during our quarantine time—from “stay at home” to the more recent “safer at home”—have not been dramatically different from what they had been, before this all began. For quite some time, my yoga/qigong practice has been a “home practice.” And, likewise, the majority of the freelance writing that I’ve recently been engaged with takes place in my home office … …
Inner Peace, Contentment, Satisfaction
An excerpt from my new book ... Everyone has had some experience, however fleeting, of deep inner peace, contentment, and satisfaction—a moment of feeling utterly complete. Perhaps such moments have come while listening to beautiful music, or being embraced by your beloved, or feeling awestruck by a million stars in the night sky, or even in the context of an emergency when some kind of quiet …
Practice Notes: Hasty Generalization, Parasite & The Australian Open
Parasite Recently saw Parasite—a brilliantly whacky and over-the-top satire on class relations. If you haven’t already, I’d say it’s worth checking out. The title of the film points to its primary theme and central ambiguity, expressed nicely here in one review: Who are the real parasites? The poor who attach themselves to the rich or the rich who suck the marrow of the poor? Or is the system …
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