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I’ve been so pleased at how little kapotasana has been hurting, even as I get the double assist on it. I do the pose, I get the adjustment, it is intense but not painful, and life is good. Yeah, until later in the evening. How does this work? I do the pose at around 6:45 AM, and my lower back starts protesting at around 8 PM? I don’t feel injured, but man do I feel like I’ve been working on the sacrum. I did a little surfing to discover if this is common (of course it is, but I need proof positive!) and now I’d like to hear from other practitioners who’ve gone through the kapotasana-cranked back phase of Ashtanga yoga. I was telling Sanskrit Scholar that it reminds me of when my collarbones were screaming continuously for a month as I was learning supta kurmasana. The only difference is that I knew I couldn’t really hurt my collarbones, but I am more scared about my back.

So what’s the deal? Is it continuous pain for a month or two and then it resolves? Anyone with ideas about minimizing the pain — whether by particular poses, counterposes, or pharmaceuticals?

There’s so much info about primary — DVDs, books galore, online resources. Not so much with intermediate. I need a Gregor Maehle book on second series. Something to keep my poor mind busy as my body goes off on this unfathomable journey.

***

Led class this morning was great. Nice and warm, and I practiced between Returning Guy and The British Director. At the head of our mats, The Frenchwoman and The Foot Grabber. I felt nicely surrounded. The Cat was present, too, as was her dad, Renaissance Man. They’ve been away from Mysore practice, because he’s been teaching in the mornings. Apparently they’ll be back in a week or so.

Volleyball Guy did his usual mosey around the room, giving adjustments to each person in turn. I was in line for Marichy A, but he skipped past me and adjusted someone else. Same thing with Marichy B and C. Then he came back to me for Marichy D. I love that adjustment, though I also always feel a little greedy for being so eager to get it: it’s clearly a tough adjustment for the teacher — very “Exorcist,” very physically demanding. Lately I’ve been tucking my wrapping fingers into my thigh crease in Marichy C and D. But with the adjustment on D, I can grab the shin of the lotus leg, which makes the whole pose pull together nice and tight. Like pulling a knot tight.

***

Now I’m at home, reading. Made a banana bread, which is currently baking. Yesterday was The Cop’s birthday. I didn’t make him a cake (though I did get him a book on jiu jitsu). I’m a slacker cook, no question about it. Plus if I get up at 4:30, practice, go to work, then go to get my hair colored, the last freaking thing I’m gonna do when I finally get home is make a cake. The Cop isn’t big on sweets either, so it was an easy decision. Today, though, when I spotted the bananas on the kitchen counter, it occurred to me that a baked good, something useful like a banana bread, would be a bit celebratory. With “real” cakes (which The Cop requests once or twice a year), we cut a couple of pieces out of the middle, then watch the rest of the cake deteriorate in the refrigerator until someone finally gets sick of looking at it and throws it out. The Dog, let me tell you, is shocked and appalled when we throw away cake. And I feel bad doing it, too, because it is clear she would really like to have it.

Oh, and the reading for today is the research on positive and negative perfectionism. Folks with positive perfectionism score high on Personal Standards, but low on Concern over Mistakes and Doubts about Actions (and yes, that’s how they capitalize the terms of the study). People with negative perfectionism score high on Personal Standards, but also high on Concern over Mistakes and Doubts about Actions.

A couple random, interesting points:

One thing that is fascinating in all of this is reading the way researchers try to quantify characteristics like Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness. All of this is taken out of context and just a jumble of my lazy reading, but I’m not in it to challenge the methodology of the study. I’m just looking to try to understand perfectionism a little more. This particular study is looking at triathletes. I haven’t gotten to the final findings yet — they’re still setting up the context. Already I’m wondering, though, if there might be findings that apply to Ashtangis. I mean, just think of the traditional guru system: it seems to offer great potential for perceptions of Parental Criticism. On the other hand, if your teacher tells you what to do, you probably won’t suffer from Doubts about Actions (since someone else is deciding what your actions are).

Anyhow, just some random thoughts on Saturday afternoon. Hoping to hear back from some folks on their experiences with kapotasana…

So let’s see: I get stuck in particular mental states because I identify with them: I’m happy; I’m sad; I’m angry; whatever. Even just whatever indistinct mood I am in at any given moment. But practice offers an opportunity to let go with every breath/movement. With every vinyasa. Basically, practice kicks my sorry ego/ass and says, “Move along!”

Practice is so effective at keeping me in moment-to-moment reality that it won’t even let me hang out and revel in practice itself: inhale is linked to movement, exhale is linked to movement, I get five breaths to feel where I am, then on to the next. “Move along!”

I try bringing that to real life when someone says something I think is lame or insulting, or something I just don’t agree with. All of the feelings come up, but practice has taught me to have them for an inhale or an exhale, and then put them all down and just go to the next moment. Take another breath. Remember that all those feelings I get: “Yay! I did the pose,” “I suck, ’cause I could do this yesterday but not today,” “The marketing department is driving me mad!” are perfectly fine but nothing I’m stuck with. And ultimately, they’re all interchangeable.

Desire is about wanting something: to feel good, to keep feeling good, to avoid feeling bad (“Oops, forgot to keep my arms straight in dropbacks!). We all go through our days getting tangled up in one thing or another. And we want to get tangled up: next time you feel angry and aggressive, take a moment to see if the energy feels kind of… well, energetic. Kind of seductive. Entertaining. Same deal with joy. It feels strong and appealing. All of this is fine. Just as long as you remember you’re never really stuck with/in these feeling states.

Okay, so that’s the kind of stuff I was thinking about on the way to practice this morning. I did actually have a rather distracted start: I kept launching these little trains of thought and kept having to put them down. By the time I got to the end of primary, though, I was settled in pretty good. So good, in fact, that I felt very grounded through the intermediate poses. Usually I get all discombobulated, in terms of breath and effort.

Volleyball Guy and Sanskrit Scholar helped me out at kapotasana. I am starting to understand the backbend, and the strength of the quads, which seem to be driving this whole thing much more than the upper body/shoulders. I think I should have known this, but I didn’t until now. Anyhow, I was very surprised, after pushing up into my legs hard, to be digging so deep into the sacrum. You know how Richard Freeman talks about the “cave of the sacrum”? Yeah, well, I want to say something about the “core of the sacrum”: Yikes!

It didn’t really hurt, but it rather shocked me, the sensation. Never felt anything like that before. Then I became aware of my shoulders, because Sanskrit Scholar was pushing my elbows together. Hard. All of a sudden I kind of came to and found myself crawling my fingers toward my toes. Crawling, crawling, crawling… desperately. How freaking hilarious! What better analogy for my own desires? I must get my toes! LOL! I snapped to and started paying attention to what my shoulders felt like as my elbows were being pushed together and forget my stupid toes. They’re always there, and they already are doing just fine in the pose. ITSS. (It’s the shoulders, stupid.) But I am a crow, and my toes are the shiny, shiny object.

Caw!

Hmmmm. The whole “people often stop blogging when they get a ways into intermediate series” — where did I read that? I can’t remember, but imagine it must have been either on ezBoard or on someone’s blog…

rew left me a funny comment yesterday, and suggested crazy dreams might be related to backbends:

you had a cameo in my dreams last night. well, technically, it was you, the cop, and your parents (?!). and you all had this crazy fetish for flash frozen shrimp…the gurlfriend and i were NOT to stand in your way of the shrimp display at the make-believe restaurant we were all eating at.

Clairvoyant, rew! I’ve been really into shrimp lately. Perhaps wanting more protein because of all the backbends? I know I’ve read about second series disturbing people’s sleep. That’s not happening to me, though: I’ve been sleeping like a log. And waking up sore. This morning it was shoulders, lats, and triceps like crazy. Plus, I’ve been more emotional than usual. Not that it really shows that much. I’m pretty reserved. My boss picks up on it, though. I get a little more wound up and perhaps make more pointed comments.

I had something I wanted to talk to her about and asked if we could talk after a meeting we both attended. I don’t ask for this very often, as I generally go about my own business. After we talked about the issue I had on my mind, she said, “You scared me! I thought you were going to tell me you were leaving to go open a yoga studio!” I laughed and told her no, but that I’d appreciate it if she’d keep that little vision going.

So yeah, work has been crazy. Lots of practice for me: letting things go, putting things down, being judicious, being patient. I don’t get particularly contentious, but I do get kind of grrr about all of the corporate stuff.

I did realize, though, that I might be a little overdosed on a maybe-too-broad variety of reading: research/futurist predictions about global economies, technology, labor markets (for work); intro to advaita; how to care for curly hair (yes, a whole freaking book!); a research study on the positive and negative effects of perfectionism on sports performance (also for work). Gah! My head is full, and all I really want to do is backbend. How has this happened?

The work stuff was all pretty well resolved by close of business today. As I was walking past her office, my boss said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I said.

“I need you here,” she said. “No yoga studio. Not yet. Maybe in 20 years.”

I’m telecommuting today. Well, except for two meetings that I swung by the office to attend. It rocks to live within 4 miles of work. Anyhow, The Cop just took possession of a UPS delivery and announced he’d gotten me a present. He rifled through a box with some fighting gear he ordered and came out with a new tee shirt for me. A UFC tee shirt. A Rich Franklin UFC tee shirt. With pink writing. The perfect thing for girls who bully trolls on the internet by talking about UFC instead of reincarnation.

My new favorite tee shirt. May it preside over many victories for Rich Franklin.

Can we even talk about yoga? That seems to be a question that’s going around. I wonder about it often. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.

Yes.

But. Maybe some of what we cannot speak actually resides in the cracks of what yogis write, interstitial, oblique. Kind of like catching a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror. Like when you go here, or here, or here.

Sure, we can talk about the pure mechanics, which is certainly potentially helpful to other practitioners, but what about the ineffable? Cody wrote a cool entry about presentations of the self via blogging yesterday, and Carl made a comment I keep thinking about:

Sometimes it’s better to consider blogging as the same sort of expression as a baby’s screams. A baby screams because its world suddenly halts upon something its mind can’t wholly process. To go on, it has to find a way to regurgitate it all so someone else can see what’s going on. Adults are usually mature enough to not scream but there is still a need to plop everything on the table so others can see what’s there.

I think his observation is hilarious and embarrassing and probably right on. Does blogging help or hinder practice? Hard to say. Maybe it doesn’t affect it at all. I recall reading that people often ditch their blogs once they are well into second series, but I don’t know if that has to do with the Ashtanga practice or if most bloggers knock off around year 2 or 3.

***

Re: speaking up or lurking on ezBoard

Some interesting discussion about this topic as well. There was a big cranky thread that ran for a while, probably started by a troll, and it got the board going pretty good. Now that it’s winding down, there are questions about why people spoke up, why people didn’t speak up, etc.

I had rather a lot to say on the thread, because I got sucked into it. I don’t feel bad one way or another. Some threads get me going and I respond, and some get me going and I don’t. It does feed into a project I’ve been practicing at work, though, which I think of as “judicious not-speaking.”

I work at an organization that has millions of meetings and is very democratic, so everyone is always voicing their opinion. On the one hand, that makes for a nice environment, on the other, it can be tedious. I think we’re in a habit of everyone feeling compelled to speak up, as if speaking up is the only possible mode of participation. So I’ve been sitting back and figuring out what I can not say in meetings. And counting that as a contribution. Generally speaking, we tend to generate too many discussions about details and what-ifs, and then there’s discussion about solutions for things that might never happen, etc. And everyone wants to say something to prove they’re valuable. I think it may be time to start subtracting discussion points. Not sure how this experiment will turn out, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s exhausting to always be trying to think up something to say. And probably not even remotely productive.

***

Practice was hard today. Actually, scratch that. It was fine. I’m getting deeper into everything and that makes for a more intense physical experience.

As ever, the drama starts at ustrasana. Stomach ache? Check. Fear? Ready. Volleyball Guy came over at laghu vajrasana and said, “Good,” when I finished it. And then he added, “Do it two more times.” Whaaa! I used to work at bookstores in Boston and I remember one of my coworkers commenting on the fact that customers would ask for a book that was displayed right in front of them. She said she thought customers went blind when they came in, because their senses were overwhelmed with the volume of books before them. I was totally blind in the laghu vajrasana/kapotasana portion of practice. Definitely did not have my wits about me. At which point, I realized that that is why Volleyball Guy is my teacher: so he can guide me across the street and keep me from getting hit by a car. All I was thinking about was my barfiness level and the fact that I couldn’t get my breathing calmed down.

After each pose, he waits. Like an umpire brushing off the plate to be polite to the catcher. A gesture, but really just enough time to brush off the plate. Then it’s time to move along. I realized that my barfiness was not going to subside, and my breathing was not going to really get much better, so off I launched into the next pose. Same thing with the next. And off we went into dropbacks. I had to abandon any hope of doing the poses with my wits gathered and stomach settled, so I just threw myself into it. What’s the greeting at the gates of Dante’s Inferno? Abandon all hope, you who enter here? Yeah, that’s it. Need such a gate at the start of ustrasana/laghu v/kapotasana.

Urdhva dhanurasana felt quite nice, and Volleyball Guy did the assist where he stands at my head and uses a strap to pull up tight under my shoulders to straighten my arms. I feel where the issue is: left shoulder, and right chest. It is a breakthrough for me to be able to pinpoint where the tightness is. And then I kind of realized that when I give in more to being taught, I can let Volleyball Guy be the superego of the pose, and I can just feel around blindly to try to fathom what’s going on in me.

I think I’ve known this before in glimpses, but I saw it again today.

Can we even talk about yoga? That seems to be a question that’s going around. I wonder about it often. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.

Yes.

But. Maybe some of what we cannot speak actually resides in the cracks of what yogis write, interstitial, oblique. Kind of like catching a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror. Like when you go here, or here, or here.

Sure, we can talk about the pure mechanics, which is certainly potentially helpful to other practitioners, but what about the ineffable? Cody wrote a cool entry about presentations of the self via blogging yesterday, and Carl made a comment I keep thinking about:

Sometimes it’s better to consider blogging as the same sort of expression as a baby’s screams. A baby screams because its world suddenly halts upon something its mind can’t wholly process. To go on, it has to find a way to regurgitate it all so someone else can see what’s going on. Adults are usually mature enough to not scream but there is still a need to plop everything on the table so others can see what’s there.

I think his observation is hilarious and embarrassing and probably right on. Does blogging help or hinder practice? Hard to say. Maybe it doesn’t affect it at all. I recall reading that people often ditch their blogs once they are well into second series, but I don’t know if that has to do with the Ashtanga practice or if most bloggers knock off around year 2 or 3.

***

Re: speaking up or lurking on ezBoard

Some interesting discussion about this topic as well. There was a big cranky thread that ran for a while, probably started by a troll, and it got the board going pretty good. Now that it’s winding down, there are questions about why people spoke up, why people didn’t speak up, etc.

I had rather a lot to say on the thread, because I got sucked into it. I don’t feel bad one way or another. Some threads get me going and I respond, and some get me going and I don’t. It does feed into a project I’ve been practicing at work, though, which I think of as “judicious not-speaking.”

I work at an organization that has millions of meetings and is very democratic, so everyone is always voicing their opinion. On the one hand, that makes for a nice environment, on the other, it can be tedious. I think we’re in a habit of everyone feeling compelled to speak up, as if speaking up is the only possible mode of participation. So I’ve been sitting back and figuring out what I can not say in meetings. And counting that as a contribution. Generally speaking, we tend to generate too many discussions about details and what-ifs, and then there’s discussion about solutions for things that might never happen, etc. And everyone wants to say something to prove they’re valuable. I think it may be time to start subtracting discussion points. Not sure how this experiment will turn out, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s exhausting to always be trying to think up something to say. And probably not even remotely productive.

***

Practice was hard today. Actually, scratch that. It was fine. I’m getting deeper into everything and that makes for a more intense physical experience.

As ever, the drama starts at ustrasana. Stomach ache? Check. Fear? Ready. Volleyball Guy came over at laghu vajrasana and said, “Good,” when I finished it. And then he added, “Do it two more times.” Whaaa! I used to work at bookstores in Boston and I remember one of my coworkers commenting on the fact that customers would ask for a book that was displayed right in front of them. She said she thought customers went blind when they came in, because their senses were overwhelmed with the volume of books before them. I was totally blind in the laghu vajrasana/kapotasana portion of practice. Definitely did not have my wits about me. At which point, I realized that that is why Volleyball Guy is my teacher: so he can guide me across the street and keep me from getting hit by a car. All I was thinking about was my barfiness level and the fact that I couldn’t get my breathing calmed down.

After each pose, he waits. Like an umpire brushing off the plate to be polite to the catcher. A gesture, but really just enough time to brush off the plate. Then it’s time to move along. I realized that my barfiness was not going to subside, and my breathing was not going to really get much better, so off I launched into the next pose. Same thing with the next. And off we went into dropbacks. I had to abandon any hope of doing the poses with my wits gathered and stomach settled, so I just threw myself into it. What’s the greeting at the gates of Dante’s Inferno? Abandon all hope, you who enter here? Yeah, that’s it. Need such a gate at the start of ustrasana/laghu v/kapotasana.

Urdhva dhanurasana felt quite nice, and Volleyball Guy did the assist where he stands at my head and uses a strap to pull up tight under my shoulders to straighten my arms. I feel where the issue is: left shoulder, and right chest. It is a breakthrough for me to be able to pinpoint where the tightness is. And then I kind of realized that when I give in more to being taught, I can let Volleyball Guy be the superego of the pose, and I can just feel around blindly to try to fathom what’s going on in me.

I think I’ve known this before in glimpses, but I saw it again today.

Home practice this morning. I fell asleep early last night (8:30 PM… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz), so felt great when I got up. First thing to do is respond to the impatient urgings of the cat. He gets babyfood these days, because he has stomach issues. Gak! Chicken babyfood smells hideous. Definitely doesn’t seem like something you should spoon into a tender new human.

Then I grab my coffee and happily sit myself on the couch. But first, I casually twist my knee a bit before I gaily plunk myself down. Ow!

“Seriously?” I think, “After all this yoga, I’m going to be injured by sitting on the couch?” LOL! There’s a certain delightful irony: imagine telling friends and family that I’ve injured myself sitting on the couch! They’ve all been waiting for me to die in a climbing accident, or from heat exhaustion from running around in the desert sun, or perhaps from an inversion gone wrong. “Nah,” I’ll say proudly, pointing at my destroyed leg, “It was a couch incident.”

I’m fine, though. I practiced as per usual. My legs have been feeling a little sketchy around the lower quad inserts, because of ustrasana, laghu vajrasana and kapotasana, I believe. Note, I didn’t mention “knees.” I don’t think this is a joint issue. Kind of like when I had all the collarbone pain when I was learning supta kurmasana: it wasn’t really the collarbones, but the surrounding musculature.

It’s not my knees. And no, I’m not defensive.

So anyhow, a good practice was had by all. The cat did flawless effortless contortions and breathed his awful chicken babyfood breath on me as I toiled. I celebrated home practice with the Shuffle and some new Deva Premal chanting. Including a beautiful “Asatoma.”

Speaking of which, I’ve got my Asatoma all written out for a tattoo artist, and now I just have to get it done. A bit unclear as to whether it will fit on my neck. I told The Cop that I was fine with putting it on my shoulder if it’s too big for my neck. The only hold up is that I don’t want to compromise practice. How long will it take for a tattoo to heal enough for me to roll around on it? I spent some time thinking about whether there was any part of my body that is unaffected by practice (so I can get the tattoo and not miss any practice and not miss any poses and not disturb the tattoo while it is healing). The Cop thinks not-missing-any-practice is not a good criterion for determining the location of a tattoo, but I find it kind of perfectly appropriate. I don’t really care as much about the aesthetics as about functionality and having those words inscribed on my… oh, I was going to say “being,” but really, we’re just talking about flesh.

Which brings me to my current reading: The Book of One. I don’t really know if this fellow is a prominent Advaita scholar or what, but he has a very dry sense of humor, which I find simultaneously perplexing and hilarious in a printed medium. He seems to take a lot for granted, in terms of what someone else’s belief system might be (i.e., the same as his), but I imagine I’m sensitive to this simply because I take a lot for granted about what someone else’s belief system might be (i.e., the same as mine), and as it turns out, our belief systems aren’t the same.

Still, we’re both on board with the Asatoma.

Om Asatoma Satgamaya
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityorma Amritam Gamaya

Home practice this morning. I fell asleep early last night (8:30 PM… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz), so felt great when I got up. First thing to do is respond to the impatient urgings of the cat. He gets babyfood these days, because he has stomach issues. Gak! Chicken babyfood smells hideous. Definitely doesn’t seem like something you should spoon into a tender new human.

Then I grab my coffee and happily sit myself on the couch. But first, I casually twist my knee a bit before I gaily plunk myself down. Ow!

“Seriously?” I think, “After all this yoga, I’m going to be injured by sitting on the couch?” LOL! There’s a certain delightful irony: imagine telling friends and family that I’ve injured myself sitting on the couch! They’ve all been waiting for me to die in a climbing accident, or from heat exhaustion from running around in the desert sun, or perhaps from an inversion gone wrong. “Nah,” I’ll say proudly, pointing at my destroyed leg, “It was a couch incident.”

I’m fine, though. I practiced as per usual. My legs have been feeling a little sketchy around the lower quad inserts, because of ustrasana, laghu vajrasana and kapotasana, I believe. Note, I didn’t mention “knees.” I don’t think this is a joint issue. Kind of like when I had all the collarbone pain when I was learning supta kurmasana: it wasn’t really the collarbones, but the surrounding musculature.

It’s not my knees. And no, I’m not defensive.

So anyhow, a good practice was had by all. The cat did flawless effortless contortions and breathed his awful chicken babyfood breath on me as I toiled. I celebrated home practice with the Shuffle and some new Deva Premal chanting. Including a beautiful “Asatoma.”

Speaking of which, I’ve got my Asatoma all written out for a tattoo artist, and now I just have to get it done. A bit unclear as to whether it will fit on my neck. I told The Cop that I was fine with putting it on my shoulder if it’s too big for my neck. The only hold up is that I don’t want to compromise practice. How long will it take for a tattoo to heal enough for me to roll around on it? I spent some time thinking about whether there was any part of my body that is unaffected by practice (so I can get the tattoo and not miss any practice and not miss any poses and not disturb the tattoo while it is healing). The Cop thinks not-missing-any-practice is not a good criterion for determining the location of a tattoo, but I find it kind of perfectly appropriate. I don’t really care as much about the aesthetics as about functionality and having those words inscribed on my… oh, I was going to say “being,” but really, we’re just talking about flesh.

Which brings me to my current reading: The Book of One. I don’t really know if this fellow is a prominent Advaita scholar or what, but he has a very dry sense of humor, which I find simultaneously perplexing and hilarious in a printed medium. He seems to take a lot for granted, in terms of what someone else’s belief system might be (i.e., the same as his), but I imagine I’m sensitive to this simply because I take a lot for granted about what someone else’s belief system might be (i.e., the same as mine), and as it turns out, our belief systems aren’t the same.

Still, we’re both on board with the Asatoma.

Om Asatoma Satgamaya
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityorma Amritam Gamaya

On the way to Mysore practice this morning, I was thinking about work. Sigh. This is my least favorite thing to think about on my way to practice. But so be it. I also thought about Ursula’s post this morning, where she wrote:

Focus of the day: to live one moment after the other. No reason to worry about anything.

This is always good advice. I wish I didn’t need to be reminded so frequently, but therein lies the practice.

Got to the shala and set to work. I’ve been doing three surya As and three Bs lately, because I am impatient, and because I’m lazy. LOL! My practice is long these days, and I guess I’m conserving energy — both physical and psychic. Plus, the 3 x 3 seems plenty enough to get me ready for standing poses.

Standing poses were fine — still a bit distracted and perhaps a bit too swift, but I don’t mind much: I know I slow down and fall into proper concentration when I hit the seated poses. And so it was. Nothing is more soothing and grounding than the seated poses. Duh, I just realized how obvious that is. Ah well.

I am still delighted with the intermediate poses. Seem to be building up enough endurance that I can put some oomph into them, which is nice. For a while there, I thought it was always going to be about limping to the end and then flopping my way through the intermediate poses. Interestingly, my coffee and single ibuprofen do not bother me the tinest bit until I set up for ustrasana. Then I have a brief moment of regret, which I put in perspective by realizing that the yucky stomach is much better than it used to be, and so probably will disappear entirely if I just am patient.

Okay, but the real fun today was at kapotasana. I grabbed my toes. I am actually, even after three hours of meetings at work, still absolutely giddy about this. I was assisted by Volleyball Guy and Sanskrit Scholar (so don’t imagine I did this by myself!), and it was all just… um… delightful. Yes, delightful! Once before, I brushed my toes, but today I had my fingers in the little space between the soles of my feet and the pads of my toes. My thought? I need to get a pedicure if I’m going to be trying to grab my heels. LOL! Jumping ahead a bit, no doubt, but I guess that’s part of the high.

I am, in the midst of this high, deeply grateful to the people who help me keep at this practice, and who are invested in my success. And I’m not just talking physical success. I’m very, very lucky.

Koans help you understand your relationship to what is. I’ve been working koans for a good while, since the schools I’ve practiced with have been Rinzai schools. Koans involve very internal work: you can’t crack them with your mind/intellect. What you need to do is put them in the back of your mind while you meditate, instead of trying to think them through. Yup, just percolating in the back of the mind. But don’t forget it! The koan is important, but can’t be solved by thinking. So what’s your other option? Just do it.

And damned if it doesn’t work. All of a sudden, in “real life,” you go: “Ohhh! So that’s it!” I’ve “gotten” some koans after sitting on retreats, but the ones that really came clear happened in real life situations.

Koans remind me of asana. Volleyball Guy has said that “no ego” will help asana practice. I think when he says that, people think of ego as whatever it is that drives overt egoism, and then that’s followed up with the idea that the point is to push the ego away, to get rid of the “I.” But I think it’s actually more a case of letting the “I” be, of being compassionate about the “I,” but also understanding that it can’t crack the asana. And its ideas about itself (my ideas about myself, your ideas about yourself), will most likely hinder progress. Well, or maybe the ideas are just entirely irrelevant. Not sure about that part.

Anyhow, here’s an example: If I have no thoughts in utthita hasta padangusthasana, I balance; if I have thoughts, I waver and fall out. “Don’t think! Don’t think!” counts as a thought. “I’m not thinking,” counts as a thought. “That person across from me is teetering,” is the worst thought of all. So how to let go of the thoughts? Practice. Are the thoughts bad? No. And to think they are is an even thornier thought.

I’ve been working a particular koan for years. It’s from the Mumonkan (also called The Gateless Gate), which was compiled by Mumon:

CASE 38. GOSO’S BUFFALO

Goso asked, “A water buffalo goes out of his ‘enclosure.’ The head, the horns, and the four legs go through, but why doesn’t the tail, too?”

Mumon’s Comments:
If you can open your one eye (to the question) and say an awakening word, you will be able to repay the Four Obligations and help the Three Bhava being saved. If you still have not gotten it, take a close look on the tail and awaken yourself.

If the buffalo goes through, he will fall into the abyss,
If he retreats into the enclosure, he will be butchered.
This little bit of a tail,
that is a strange thing indeed!

***

I’ve been at this koan for what seems like forever. Suddenly, though, I’m seeing tails all over the place. Will they go away soon? That was never the point. Will they pass through? LOL! More practice is in order.