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Hard time getting up this morning. I looked on the calendar for the Moon Day. Surely that’s why I feel so tired and uninspired? Yup, there’s one coming up on Saturday. I am already planning a criminal led class, so it’s a moot point.

My concession to tiredness was a soft practice. Work has been hella stressful lately, and though it makes me think it’s my body that’s tired, in the end, I think it’s mostly about my mind. And a little practice can only help resolve that, right?

Enough rationalization. I got on the mat.

And instead of pushing pushing pushing as faaaaarrrrr as possible into every single pose, I decided to be light and airy and just stretch into each until it felt good. You know, that nice stretchy feeling. The one I usually shoot right past as I go for the deeeeep stretchy, oooh, I wonder if my muscle’s gonna snap stretchiness.

Nice to remind myself every so often that I needn’t be driven.

So practice was light and relaxed and very pleasant. I really should do that a little more often. Such a bizarre habit I have, always having to keep pushing myself.

***

Delightful conversation last night with the monk who married me and The Cop. We were talking about documentaries, and I mentioned the Leonard Cohen “I’m Your Man” documentary. Sure enough, Sokai appeared in it for a moment, during one of the scenes at Roshi’s zendo.

I also told him about the Tibetan Book of the Dead documentary. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we saw in that film: a lama chanting and speaking to a dead body, as he tried to guide the dead person through the bardo.

The lama kept telling the released consciousness that it had to realize that its body was dead and the things that it was experiencing were the manifestations of mind. And that if it could fully realize that all of its experiences (both when alive and now when dead) were the manifestation of mind, then it could escape rebirth.

In one of the bardos, the consciousness was circling the globe, moving relentlessly, which stirs up a deep desire to be reincarnated, to settle, to stop moving, to re-manifest. The lama tries to tell the consciousness that it can escape this fate if it recognizes itself as free, but in the end, the consciousness is drawn again into an earthly manifestation.

I guess there is a part of me that is fascinated at the idea of freedom being so close, and yet so hard to see, so hard to realize. It’s like how Soen Sa Nim would say, “So easy, and so difficult. So difficult, and so easy.”

Just like yoga. Just like life.