CHANDLER 10:00 – 11:25 AM        Level 1-2      Marie Siegfried 10:00 – 11:25 AM        Power         Josh Rothman TEMPE 10:00 – 11:15 AM       Heated  Flow        Aaron 10:00 – 11:40 AM       Yin/Relax        Michele Dante

Friday  December 25th

CHANDLER ONLY 10:00 – 11:25 AM        All Levels         Josh Rothman 10:00 – 11:40 AM        Yin                  Michele Dante

Thursday    December 31, 2009

CHANDLER 10:00 – 11:25 [...]]]> Thursday December 24th

 CHANDLER
10:00 – 11:25 AM        Level 1-2      Marie Siegfried
10:00 – 11:25 AM        Power         Josh Rothman
TEMPE
10:00 – 11:15 AM       Heated  Flow        Aaron
10:00 – 11:40 AM       Yin/Relax        Michele Dante

Friday  December 25th

CHANDLER ONLY
10:00 – 11:25 AM        All Levels         Josh Rothman
10:00 – 11:40 AM        Yin                  Michele Dante

Thursday    December 31, 2009

CHANDLER
10:00 – 11:25 AM      Level 1-2      Marie Siegfried
10:00 – 11:25 AM       Power         Josh Rothman
TEMPE
10:00 – 11:15 AM       Heated  Flow        Aaron
10:00 – 11:40 AM       Yin/Relax        Michele Dante

Friday     January 1, 2010 

CHANDLER
10:00 – 11:25 AM       Power     Jeff   
10:00 – 11:25 AM       Heated        Reba
 TEMPE
10:00 – 11:25 AM        Level 1-2     Maredith
10:00 – 11:25 AM        Yin/Relax    Betsy Andrade

***all other classes will be cancelled

What do Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther king Jr. have to do with your daily workout routine?  These and countless other peaceful warriors have helped to reshape the planet and create lasting change throughout world history by utilizing a yoga principle known as ahimsa.  By learning from their experience it [...]]]> by Jeff Martens

Ahimsa and Exercise

What do Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther king Jr. have to do with your daily workout routine?  These and countless other peaceful warriors have helped to reshape the planet and create lasting change throughout world history by utilizing a yoga principle known as ahimsa.  By learning from their experience it is possible to create a more fulfilling way to exercise.  As an added benefit, you just might create more peace in your daily life.

Yoga (which means to yoke or unify) is more than just a workout; it is a state of being.  Practiced consciously, yoga opens the possibility to fully inhabit our own existence.  One of the fundamental principles of yoga called ahimsa or non-violence can help us to work out more effectively no matter what your chosen form of exercise.  Practiced with awareness, non-violence has the power to not only improve our workouts but to change the path of an entire world.

What does it mean to be non-violent?  Think of what the term warrior means today.  Too often the concept of non-violence conjures up aspects of weakness or even cowardice.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The true practice of ahimsa requires all of our will and discipline to remain in a peaceful state — to prefer peace — when all around us might seem to be in chaos.

To be non-violent does not mean that we become passive, ignoring injustice or things that we think are wrong in our lives.  Ahimsa requires us to address these issues with love from a place of non-attachment instead of detachment or withdrawal.  Using love in this way allows us to remain peaceful in the midst of the most far-reaching turmoil.  The process of staying present with love is like covering our hands with cooking oil before working with raw bread dough.  The oil allows us to work the dough, yet the dough doesnt have to stick to our fingers.  In practical terms this might mean not becoming emotionally attached to the driver that just cut us off on the freeway; it can mean that when we get the flu we look at what our bodies are trying to tell us; it can mean seeing our bills not as a curse but as an acknowledgement of our ability to pay.

Practicing non-violence in our workouts means that when we exercise, we work with the body and not against it.  The habit of criticism and judgement are dropped in favor of experiencing and observing.  This leads to self-acceptance where life is pure possibility.  Change then becomes a natural result of awareness.  To remain in habitual habit of negativity, comparing or criticism is to fragment yourself and make everything seem impossible.   By practicing yoga or exercising consciously, we begin to unify rather than fragment, and peace becomes our natural state of being.

Vritti svarupyam itaratra…  Yoga Sutra 1.4 When we are not in a state of yoga, our form becomes our mental disturbances.

Light is a form of energy.  It reflects off of surfaces as waves which [...]]]> By Jeff Martens

Tada drastuhu svarupe avastanam…   Yoga Sutra 1.3
When we are in a state of yoga our form is one of pure awareness.

Vritti svarupyam itaratra…  Yoga Sutra 1.4
When we are not in a state of yoga, our form becomes our mental disturbances.

Light is a form of energy.  It reflects off of surfaces as waves which our consciousness freezes into particles to create the mystical experience of observation.  This is the process known by spiritual masters and scientists alike as that point where the perceiver creates the perceived.  Since observation is the exercise of fixing energy in place for that millisecond necessary to process information as our very own, we literally have the power to create the world we live in through our perceptions.

Today quantum physicists have reached a level of observation where particles are so impossibly minute that they teeter on the realm of pure potential energy where just the expectation of observation is enough to allow new properties to be discovered.  It’s as if the very act of expectation creates the space for what we are seeking to bloom into existence.

The ancient science of yoga or unity helps us to clean the mirror of our perception by training us to let go of expectations on a cellular level.  In the Yoga Sutras Patanjali speaks of devotion to a clear discernment so that we may discriminate between the influences of our past conditioning and future expectations to see the world as it actually is.  When we freeze a tight spine in place with our powers of observation for example, it is not the actual spine we are observing, it is our own projection of a spine created by years of memory and expectation though it sure feels real enough!

In order to let go of that inflexible spine, we first have to create the possibility of change by letting go of past history and releasing all future expectations.  In other words, we have to let go of identifying with the mind and it’s constant judgement and limitations. This surrender creates the physical, mental and emotional potential for our spine to change by creating the possibility for a spine that is different from how it was in the past.  Yoga teaches us that, until we reach this point, the glorious mirror of the world can only reflect back to us that energy and expectations which we place before it.  We begin to see things as they are instead of seeing our own problems and limitations everywhere we look.

Many religious and spiritual traditions state that as your faith is, so you become.  By the same token, when we expect our bodies to be a certain way, we leave little room for alternative paths and exclude ourselves from perceiving people, guidance and techniques that could help our awareness value and then transcend the role of illness or injury we may be experiencing.  As a result our natural soul  “form” (svarupam)  becomes limited and we suffer because we are not living in Truth.

The practice of Yoga allows us to see the world as it really is by training our bodies and minds to stay in the present moment – that only point where the world actually exists.   Everything else is just projection of an imagined future or memory of the past.  It is up to us to make sure that our perceptions emerge from a fearless place of love and acceptance.  This is the key to living in the eternal present where all things are possible and the world can bloom anew.

Jeff Martens is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  All suggestions are voluntary.  Consult a qualified teacher or your physician before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.

Visible only in certain stretches at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, this rock is blacker than black, so [...]]]> How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Karma, Freedom and the Emptiness of Time

Visible only in certain stretches at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, this rock is blacker than black, so black that it shines blue as midnight in the midday sun.  I honest-to-God love this rock.  Every time I see it I want to touch and feel its polished armor.   An impossibly hard surface time-scoured to a glossy silk, this is Vishnu Schist.  Incomprehensibly ancient, this granite seems to glow with an oily life as if a pulse were trembling just beneath its soap-smooth surface.  Here 4700 feet beneath the canyon’s unseen upper rim and at an age of over 1,600,000,000 (1.6 BILLION) years, it feels like I am looking at the living black skin of God.  Caressing this rock fills me to overflowing with gratitude for the events that have brought me to the bottom of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.  And as much as I had enjoyed the river trip with Vishnu so far, this black granite was about to touch me in a way I could never have imagined, a way that would take me a full month to understand.  It happened near river mile 120 in a place called Blacktail Canyon.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”  Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, #70

Summer was beginning to wind down, though the temperatures were actually climbing again.  Whenever I would catch a news sound-bite or hear talk about the weather, inevitably the topic would move toward how this was becoming the hottest year on record.  Phoenix is a good place to be from in the summertime.

It was time for a vacation.

But where to go?  Really, I could go anywhere that I wanted, but where did I really want to go?  When I considered allowing myself to go any place, to take any trip on the planet, rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon suggested itself.  It was a familiar refrain in my life for as long as I could remember: “I’ve always wanted to raft the Colorado River.”   Instead though, for whatever reason (comfort? habit? fear?) my thoughts turned towards possibly driving up the coast of California again and seeing my sister and her family, maybe staying with some friends along the way.  I had taken this exact trip one year earlier to really face my life and any fears or regrets that I had about the prospect of living alone after being married for five years.  Last year’s drive up the Pacific Coast Highway had turned into a lone celebration, another journey of a lifetime revealing the terrible inner beauty that remains after everything that’s familiar in life seems to be untangling at the seams.

But as my chosen date of departure moved closer my chosen trip felt more and more uninspired.  All in all, there was this nagging feeling that I was… how shall I put this?  Wimping out.  When I thought of taking this same trip again I barely registered a pulse, even though the year before it had been absolutely imperative on every level that I face myself and go.  My current feeling of non-intrigue was so powerful that I became quiet and still enough to listen.  Once again, I asked myself where on earth I really wanted to go.

“I’ve always wanted to raft the Colorado River.”

The answer was an opera baritone in a sea of static.  This voice was not to be denied.  Not to say that my mind didn’t try.  You’ll never get on-board, these trips are reserved years in advance.  Where will you park your car?  It costs way too much – how will you afford it?  What will you eat?  You won’t know anybody, you’ll be going alone with a bunch of strangers…

The more yoga I practice, the more I firmly come to understand that two things are imperative for my spiritual “evolution”: 1) to become ever more deeply human, and 2) to overcome the small petty doubting self and all of its negative crap in order to live the life that I want.  With so much resistance I knew that I was on the right track.  I started investigating websites and felt drawn to a particular company.  From a place of deep feeling, tears came to my eyes as everything fell into place.  Three days later I am stepping into a dory at the bottom of the Grand canyon far, far away from the details of my daily life, surrounded by the mighty Colorado River of my dreams.

Divorce is a funny thing.  Not funny ‘ha ha’, though it can be that.  (When it came time to decide who would become the “complainant” and “respondent” we flipped a coin.  “Best two out of three,” we said, still able to share a smile.)  But divorce is more of a funny thing along the lines of “My stomach feels funny.”  Or: “There’s something funny about that dark alley I’m moving toward.”  And divorce is funniest of all because you don’t ever think it will happen to you.  By the time it does though and you fully realize it, everything is already over with a finality that’s strangely silent.  It’s like an avalanche sliding to rest at the foot of a steep mountain.  Or a sheer silk wrap slipping from naked shoulders to the floor.  I don’t know what divorce is truly like for people who can’t stand each other.  As for us, well we still deeply cared about each other in many ways.  I’m not sure if this made an impossible situation any easier… For even though we both knew that this was the right path for us, at times it felt like I was losing part of my soul.

 

Floating down the Colorado in a wooden dory, I was delighted to find that John Wesly Powel’s 19th century explorers decided to name the most beautiful rock I had ever seen Vishnu Schist.  Vishnu is an auspicious name in my study of yoga.  Perhaps He is best known to me as Krishna, but it is said that he also incarnated as Rama or Jesus or Buddha.  As Krishna his shining moment is with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, India’s ‘Bible’.  But when the war of the Mahabharata is all but over, the sublime pages of the Bhagavad Gita have long since been turned to get down to the messy business of killing.  Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu (the divine force that balances and preserves all existence in the Hindu Trinity) has fulfilled his promise to take on a body and appear in creation when evil appears to have gotten the upper hand.  As the Supreme Preserver, Vishnu can be seen as both creator and destroyer, utilizing whatever means necessary in order to win the good fight of preserving the wheel of life.  And in the war of the virtuous Pandavas vs the evil Kurus, Krishna does whatever is necessary to assure that the right side – the side of dharma, of that which upholds all of creation – will win.  I think about Krishna a lot as we anchor and get ready to enter Blacktail, a slot canyon guarded by Vishnu Schist pillars gleaming brightly over the water.

The staggered rock walls of Blacktail undulate like the winding inner ribs of some giant snake, shading us from the high August sun.  Though most slot canyons at the bottom of the Grand Canyon inspire a sense of awe, there was something different about this one named Blacktail.  The air felt heavier and yet somehow charged with a sacred, vibrant lightness as gravel and sand crunched beneath the rubber soles of my water sandals.  We stop as a group and take in a canyon wall rising up from the sandy floor.  At first I don’t see it.  None of us really do.  Clouds drift overhead against a clear blue sky.  Shelves of red and blond rock called Tapeats Sandstone jut in terraced stacks rising hundreds of feet tall, wrapping us in a 500 million year-old eroded womb.

When I do see it, the reason we stopped, I am almost ashamed to say that I didn’t notice its true impact right away.  When I bring my hand to touch it, at first my attention doesn’t really linger.  The feel of it is largely absent as a result, as if my hand were slightly numb.  Already I am looking for the spring water that is supposed to fall in a soft curtain a little further up Blacktail Canyon, and as my eyes look to the future and my mind starts moving forward I almost miss truly seeing one of the most amazing things that I will ever experience.

te pratiprasava-heyh skshmh   Yoga Sutra 2.10
The causes of all suffering (kleshas) are vaporized by resolving them back to their source.

When I was five years old I started first grade at Villa Montessori.  For the next decade, through three different schools private, catholic and into public, I was made fun of.  It seems that some kids thought my nose was a bit too large for my body and these fine kids being the public servants that they were, made it their personal responsibility to remind me of this fact.  Several times a week.  The first time it happened, the first time I was made fun of, I was so shocked that it didn’t fully register.  It was an experience so alien to me that it took several repetitions over the course of many days for the birth of a very muddy idea to start to sink in.  This was my dawning of delusion, the false idea that something could be “wrong” with me.  (A wonderful little idea cemented in place three grades later with the catholic school song and dance on “original sin”.  Even now, the idea that something can be “wrong” with you or with me or with anyone feels like an error on a certain level, a mutant trojan horse that was snuck in with some innocent childhood developmental code.

This of course is my “growing up story”.  I am not special, we all have a childhood story in one form or another.  But what continues to be a source of amazement to me is how I can be thrown back into the survival reflexes I learned in childhood, no matter how much I have raged against and accepted and forgiven and made peace to the point of boredom with the whole experience.  Somehow my mind has bookmarked certain stimuli and external situations in association with these childhood events and sometimes, not often, but sometimes if the wind and the moon is just right, I can still feel the tug of being a five year-old ostracized child even though I am now very much an adult.  (Most of the time anyway.  Voluntarily becoming a child again is a whole different joy-filled matter.)

As a child I developed a survival reflex that included an uncanny ability to read other people’s demeanor.  I became very adept at figuring out if some other kid was meaning to do me harm and would then choose from the mind’s limited menu of solutions: fight, run or numb.  The thing about habitual responses is that what we think of as the source or the cause of the issue in our current life, well that’s usually just the iceberg’s tip of the iceberg.  Even more unsettling in a “my stomach feel funny” sort of way is that we actually cling to our habits and fight to hold on to them because these habits and the pain they create are oh so familiar and become close as family.  Few people realize this on a cellular level.  Love becomes a bartering tool.  To feel ‘broken’ becomes an addiction, the glue that holds this family together.  And just like the mafia, without drastic measures you are destined to be in this “family” forever.

It is in this family that we seek out and climb mountainous relationships that actually support our familiar and comfortable pain.  Instead of moving closer to love we climb hard to get away from it.  Relationships become things of protection or manipulation, pulling closer and then running away.  We change a meaning here, put words in people’s mouths there, and read things into a gesture or body language that supports our negative habit and broken view of ourselves in the world.   And in this way we end up looking for love or intimacy from someone who’s inability to provide such qualities to us specifically are matched only by our incapacity to receive from them in particular.  Finally, guided by the mind’s runaway habitual responses, we keep racing up the mountain of blame alone until we break a leg at 20,000 feet and use up the last of our oxygen.  Here, in the rarified air of self-imposed isolation our hearts run the risk of freezing solid and becoming one with the summit of our own false beliefs.

Roger our guide and trip leader tells us that we are looking at something called the Great Unconformity.  It is a rare place in the canyon that doesn’t follow the usual pattern of time layered rock piled one massive formation upon the other in the progressive upward march of time.  No, here at the bottom of a world grounded in Zoroaster Granite, and Schists named after Brahma, Rama and of course Vishnu, something quite different happened.  When  what I am looking at is first explained I have that feeling of utter shock and bewilderment not unlike the first time I was made fun of but in reverse.  If I was a cartoon there would have been those little dazed bubbles of surprise popping off around my head.

I could hear Roger’s words describing what I was seeing, but they seemed far away like I was at the bottom of a well.  I looked at the Great Unconformity with uncomprehending eyes and felt a strong realization start to surface.  The veil had been lifted.  Somehow even without the words now I knew that I was looking at a great timeless secret carved in the most ancient stone.  I hadn’t recognized it before but there in Blacktail Canyon under a layer of dust masking its deep blue grandeur was the skin of Vishnu Schist, 1.6 billion years old, sitting directly under a mountainous stack of 500 million year-old Tapeats Sandstone.  And like waves of current rushing into the shore, all that kept coming into my consciousness over and over again was:  Here.  is.  the.  absence.  of.  karma.

sopakramam nirupakramam ca karma tat-samyamd aparnta-jnnam aristebhyo v    Yoga Sutra 3.23
By studying with full awareness the resistance of past habitual actions and their corresponding fruits,  we find deep insight into the death of all things (how things truly end).

Stuck there with no oxygen and a broken leg on top of that cold mountain of habit and blame we may take stock of our life.  This is a dangerous time.  Things can get so familiar on that summit that we could start feeling right at home.  After a while though, if we’re lucky, we break down completely on that mountaintop.  The pain of living so far removed from everything without the oxygen of authentic love becomes more than we can bear.  So we start by giving ourselves what we need and pull the ability to love ourselves out of some forgotten corner of our being.  Our leg heals, maybe crooked, but its just enough to limp down off the mountain in order to seek out the mind (which left as soon as your leg cracked) for some well-deserved answers.  As you descend you realize you’ve been down this way before.

Following the trail of nonstop churning thought, you finally discover the mind digging through a dumpster in a dark alley.  It’s wearing a blue pinstripe suit and when you clear your throat to get its attention, it actually snarls at you.  It takes its sweet time climbing out of the dumpster, buttoning its overcoat and brushing garbage off its sleeves.  Pardon me, you say, I didn’t mean to disturb your ruminations there but this really isn’t working out for me.  I don’t wish to keep going through life facing certain situations with the false assumptions and reflexive actions of a five-year-old boy.

“So what do you want from me?” the mind says, snarling once again while lighting a cigarette.  Ha!  You always suspected the mind smoked.  You step back so the smoke doesn’t get in your lungs.  The mind should know that you do yoga, after all.

“What I want,” you say, “is a way to be my true self, a way to stop believing the lie that something is wrong with me.  A way to recognize my own Grace and let others recognize it as well.”

“Yeah, well, forget about it,” the mind says.  “You’re part of the family now and we love ya.”  A smoke heart emerges from the mind’s lips and even though you can’t stand the habit you have to admire the magician’s sheer skill.

The mind turns back to its dumpster (the words “concepts and beliefs” are tagged on the side in black spray paint) and for a moment you feel relieved. Just let it go, you say to yourself.  But instead of turning away to go back up the mountain, you surprise yourself and speak out in an even louder voice, a tone that scares the hell out of you.  And this time is different.  Not like the other times.  Just who IS this speaking from your lips?

“I’m not finished talking,” you exclaim.

The mind turns back, snarl bigger than ever.  But underneath that snarl there’s something that looks a lot like fear.

“Oh, you’re finished,” the mind says.  “Because the only way out of this family is the traditional way.  And you don’t have the guts to follow through with that.  So do yourself a favor and leave us alone.”

But you don’t leave and the mind doesn’t turn back to its garbage.  You are exercising focus and attention now, and the mind has nowhere else to go.

“Listen,” you say, moving closer.  Close enough to see that the shininess has worn off of the mind’s pinstripes a long time ago.  Close enough to smell the cigarette smoke.  Close enough to look inside the dumpster and gaze upon the heaped-up piles of sacred books and religious icons and plastic trophies and those blown-up high definition digital pictures of you at your very very VERY worst.  “Listen,” you say again.  “I want you to tell me now.  Just who do I have to murder to get out of this so-called family?”

The mind’s sneer turns into a cunning smile.  Without a word, it sucks a deep drag from its cigarette, a sort of mental pranayama, and then blows a perfectly-formed smoke dagger (how does it do that, anyway?) straight into your heart.

klesha-mlah karmshayah drstadrsta-janma-vedanyah    Yoga Sutra 2.12
Root causes of suffering (klesha) are the motivating force for all action, depositing layered impressions seen and unseen until pain is no longer experienced as life’s motivation.

One Billion six-hundred million years ago there wassn’t so much free oxygen on this planet.  Life as we know it now did not really exist.  In this early cauldron of poisonous gasses and molten seismic activity known as the proterozoic era, a vast inland lake had formed in the region of Blacktail Canyon.  For tens or hundreds of millions of years the waters rose and silt piled up to be compressed into slate and shale.  But then a great event – a cataclysmic shifting of tectonic plates, a volcanic eruption, an upheaval of mountainous terrain — and the lake was obliterated.  Torrential rains came.  A massive flood churned at the base of new mountains even as tall peaks were melted into sand.  After a hundred million more years the land parted to reveal granite, the bedrock schists that would be named after Eastern gods in some impossibly distant future.  The land was low enough now to once again accumulate water and a great inland lake was formed.  Life blossomed on its shores as free oxygen began to permeate the atmosphere.  Untold millions of years passed as the waters began rising once again.  Perhaps the first flower bloomed its colors beneath a shallow burning sun.  And then a dam formation would break or a deep fissure would gape open and the lake would be slowly drained.  Soil accumulated over a hundred million more years pressing down into massive slab formations of sandstone and silt that would soon be swept away or churned to dust by a massive volcanic event vaporizing new rock in a torrential flow of lava.  New barriers to drainage cooled and once again water began to accumulate until the inexorable pressure of its immense volume burst through even the strongest restraints, draining land and rock once again down to bedrock.  Only to start the whole long process yet another time.

It is impossible to know how many times this dance of eruption and erosion took place in the span of over a billion years.  We do know that the rest of the canyon kept accumulating layer after layer of rock: Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, Muav Limestone, supergroups and Supai Groups and Coconino sandstone, all of it climbing and rising almost a mile over those deepest foundations of divinely anointed granite.

But here at Blacktail there were no layers.  No accumulations of sediment, no compressed silt or lime.  The water and land had engaged in some mysterious and secret agreement leaving not a trace of time.  And now here I was touching Vishnu Schist.  Here, looking like arteries of light, Marbled veins of quartz that had melted in some impossible pressurized cauldron had seeped perfectly into any cracks in the solidly immune black granite.  The end result of the lack of deposits was this:  There sitting on top of the Vishnu Schist, the black-oiled skin of God that was 1.6 billion years old, rested an impertinent towering layer of fleshy Tapeats Sandstone that was ‘only’ 550 million years old.  And if you placed your hand just right, you could bridge the gap between them with your fingers.  A billion years of perpetual activity without accumulation spanned between thumb and little finger.  Here in this place it was as if time had never happened.  Not a trace of all that action remained, a breaking of all rules of geographic depositing and the relentless accumulation of time.

klesha-karma-vipksayair aparmristah purusha-visesha shvarah    Yoga Sutra 1.24
God in you is free of Karma, untouched by painful motivations, resulting actions or its fruits.

The experiences that we accumulate in this body and life build up layer upon layer.  Strong thoughts linked to feeling solidify into concepts.  Concepts lived become experience.  Experience becomes another layer hardening into the cells and tissues of our body.  Repeated thoughts become hard as bone and just as solid.  The years that we call aging mark the passage of time and we point to these layers, saying that they are ‘mine’.

At rare moments, when the pain gets to be too much, we may think we are ready to let go of everything.  A huge flood sweeps our legs out from under us, turning everything in life upside down.  We cling to our layers and scream for deliverance, never realizing that the secret lies in letting go of even more.  When we do surrender it is rarely deep enough.  Just down to the tapeats sandstone.  Very rarely do we ever go back far enough to find the granite origin of our suffering.  Rarely do we go back to the bedrock of our affliction and use whatever means necessary to get to the root of our false identification that keeps us perpetually recreating habitual form.

At the end of the war that surrounds the Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata, the evil Kuru leader Duryodhana, representing the anger that rises from unfulfilled desire, lies dying on the battlefield.  He accuses Lord Krishna of helping the righteous Pandavas by counseling them to tell lies, commit treachery and act with dishonor.  And Duryodhana is correct!  The evil leader has his facts right.  Krishna indeed advises the Pandavas (sometimes to their own horror) to break just and honored codes and customs practiced through time immemorial so that the massively outnumbered Pandavas could triumph over the marauding Kuru forces.  The dying Duryodhana rails on, exclaiming that he has fought honorably and marshaled his forces in the best traditions of war only to be met with deceit and lies.

Duryodhana’s accusations to Krishna’s face seem to be powerful words, but Krishna’s response to Duryodhana’s judgment is even more profound…
“All that you shout,” Krishna says, “Is untrue…  No righteous man is entirely good.  No evil man is entirely bad.  I do not find pleasure in your suffering here today, but know that your defeat is a great joy.”

Here is a pointer to the freedom revealed by the Bhagavad Gita, revealed in the yoga sutra and displayed for all to see in the Great Unconformity resting on a bed of Vishnu granite so neatly  tucked away in Blacktail Canyon.

And there is one additional thing that Krishna says to Duryodhana.  It is a great clue, a hidden key to unlocking the mystery of time without a trace: As Duryodhana laments his mortal injuries and the trickery that was its cause, Krishna replies “Your only assassin is yourself.”

What did Krishna mean when he said Duryodhana’s accusations held no truth?
His answer is reflected within the Great Unconformity which ultimately holds no time.  For in Krishna, who is Vishnu, who is God Immortal, there is no one acting and no fruits to accumulate…

I have no work to do in all the worlds… for these worlds are already mine.  I have nothing to obtain, because I have all.  And yet I work… Bhagavad Gita, 3.22

That one possesses a righteous spirit who discerns that there is no karma in action.  The wise call that one a sage whose works are pure from unfulfilled desire and whose attachments have been burned off by the insight of this truth: if one engages in an act while forgetting about its fruit, being already fully satisfied and in need of nothing, that one has become as I am and does not incur any karma at all.   BG 4.18-22

Is Krishna lying when he tells Duryodhana his facts are not true?  No, he is telling the truth.  For he, Krishna in his physical form as a King in ancient India may have taken these actions, but the Spirit in him is not Krishna the King.  He is that Spirit beyond all actions, beyond opposites and beyond doing, untouched by the wheel of time and all creation…

All this visible universe comes from my invisible Being.  All beings have their rest in me, but I have not my rest in them.  And in truth they rest not in me: consider my sacred mystery.  I am the source of all beings.  I support them all but I rest not in them…
Thus through my nature I bring forth all creation, and this rolls around in the circles of time.  But I am not bound by this vast work of creation.  I am and I watch the drama of all works.    BG 9.4-9.5, 9.8-9.9.

The smoke dagger evaporates into the air.  The mind takes a final drag on its cigarette and throws it into the dumpster.  I watch the mind closely and notice its features are starting to change, subtly at first and then more prominently.  The face becoming younger and less shifty until I am taking in the expression of a five-year-old.  The boy stands utterly dazed before me, his head spinning at the prospect that there is something wrong with the way he looks.  The pinstripe suit hangs from his child’s frame in sagging torrents. Already the dumpster contents are smoldering, the first tongues of flame beginning to rise.   I don’t have the stomach for this, I say.  As if in answer, the child holds out his arms for me and I pick him up.  His skin feels like smooth black granite warmed by a midday sun.  His eyes so clear, as yet uncorrupted by the certainty that he is flawed, address me with such open questioning that I have to turn away.

His nose is perfect.  His face is divine.

I hold him to my heart and rock him from side to side as the flames burn brighter and higher.  I have held him like this before, squeezing so hard I was afraid I’d crush his bones.  Holding on so tightly that it became impossible to let him go.

I move with him toward the dumpster. 

Dark smoke billows from the light of a thousand hungry flames.  Book-jackets crackle and sacred bindings singe as the rising inferno chars dumpster walls. Sheet metal pops and expands as I hold him up in the light.  He nods.  I kiss him one last time before I lay him in the fire.  The flames claim him at once.  There is a long and restful sigh.  A palpable wave of a death co,es over me.  Standing there beside the flames I have come to see the end of all things.  And I pray to know Krishna’s lie.

dhyna-heys tad-vrttayaha   Yoga Sutra 2.11
The outward influence of all suffering (kleshas) is resolved through meditative experience.

The moment is over.  The skin of God is just stone now.  But oh do I love this rock.

I move away from the Great Unconformity having really touched it now.  A knot of untruth seems to be unravelling within my lungs.  I am no longer that child, of course, but I am also no longer the adult clinging to accumulated pain.  Yes, sometimes it can seem hard to sacrifice pain for we’ve used it to know who we are… I know this but now I also know something else.  I know that I can bridge the gap between the present moment  and the time before I felt flawless in the span of a single breath.  I know there may be tremors still that echo up through time but I also know that their root is no longer viable.

We stay in Blacktail Canyon for another half hour.  I go to the water curtain trickling further up the slot and find a quiet place to sit.  Sandstone cliffs tower all around me framing a liquid sky far overhead, a calm mirror reflecting river’s flow.  White clouds adrift in a smooth blue current of time.

I close my eyes and let my breathing deepen.  It is very quiet here.  I enjoy the quiet alone.

Want to see more pictures of Jeff’s Grand Canyon River trip?  Click here.
Jeff Martens is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  This story is inspired by an ancient parable.  All suggestions are voluntary.  Consult a qualified teacher, your heart  or your physician before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.
For more inspiring yoga essays click here…

by Jeff Martens

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy New Year and Welcome to the Main Event!  This is the moment you have all been waiting for, the time and place where YOUR life actually IS.  Join us now for the bungle in the jungle, the stage in the cage, the fling in the ring, the soup in [...]]]>

by Jeff Martens

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy New Year and Welcome to the Main Event!  This is the moment you have all been waiting for, the time and place where YOUR life actually IS.  Join us now for the bungle in the jungle, the stage in the cage, the fling in the ring, the soup in your crackpot and the pea in your ipod!”

You wink at the referee, feeling confident you can end this whole matter quickly.  After all, you have some all-time greats in your corner crew, two of the very best in the business: SilentObserver and LifeItself!

“In this corner, wearing clear trunks and jade pasties, weighing in at 3.141592653589793 breaths: YourEverlastingSoul!  YourEverlastingSoul is sponsored by EverLasting and EverLasting Light, a subsidiary of NeverBorn.  No beginning, world without end, this Amen is for you!”

As YourEverlastingSoul, you confidently raise both arms to thunderous applause echoing back to you from distant rafters.  Your ears ring as the hidden announcer’s voice booms anew…

“In the other corner, weighing in at 8 megapixels and wearing 33 external hard drives for the ever-increasing storage capacity: YourStory!  YourStory is brought to you by the “U” in ‘I’m F@%ked.’”

YourStory raises upright.  Pandemonium erupts.  Old insults fly.  You study your opponent out of the corner of your eye.  As your EverLasting (or EverLasting Light) Soul, you’ve long figured that when it came right down to the actual fight, YourStory would drop in the first five seconds under the weight of its own overloaded databanks stuffed full to bursting with fabricated memories and false perceptions.

“This Bombastic Bout is being broadcast by Turiya throughout the fourth state of consciousness and is refereed by your sleeping frontal lobe, which desperately hopes the fight will end early because a favorite TV show is on in 15 minutes.”

A high squeal from the audience breaks through your reverie of a premature victory…  Your First Kiss from the second grade waves at you from ringside, sitting next to the Visigoth warrior you killed in the Fifth Century.  Everywhere you look, there are familiar faces.  Your friends and enemies from the past 26,000 centuries have gathered for the big bout and are busily doing the wave all the way up to the rafters and back down to the center ring while chanting ‘Hey Hey-Aay, Goodbye!’.  You blow them all a kiss and catch sight of your holiday waistline.  A bout of self-regret erupts, filled with wishings that you hadn’t eaten so much peanut brittle.  You ask your frontal lobe if you look fat in your invisible boxing trunks but the referee just yawns and looks bored.

The crowd hisses and boos as YourStory stands to its full height, raising both middle fingers high in the air in response to the crowd’s jeering.  The referee calls the two of you to the center of the ring and as you walk YourStory looms larger with every thunderous step.  YourStory must be well over nine feet tall and has filled out a full Terabyte just standing there in the last three seconds.  Suddenly it’s awfully warm in the ring.  Flop sweat begins pouring down the valley of your sternum in a river that soaks the waistband of your invisible trunks.  You remember the fines for broadcast nudity and worry how your pasties will ever stay in place.

The referee, Your Frontal Lobe, synapses out instructions: “Please now if it’s your will, let’s step together to the center of the ring.  We want a dirty fight here, no holds barred battling.  Biting is mandatory, as is crotch pinching, toe crunching and elbow shivving.  Not only is all fair in this lovely war, the only way to lose is by following the rules.  Let He who is without pain throw the first punch!  Now touch gloves, go back to your corners and come out a-swinging!”

YourStory raises gloved paws high in pre-fight glee.  The air smells like ozone.  Hard drives jangle.  Kilobytes sprinkle their radioactive dandelion fuzz all around you as the gloves slam mercilessly down into your offered palms.  Your head spins wildly with the force of the initial blow.  You had thought this was gonna be a cake walk in the park when the duality agents from Leela Inc. were promoting the contest in all your past lifetimes.  But herenow, your story looks pretty darn big from where you stand.  A titanic titanium mountain of memories and mutating expectations ready to avalanche you into obliviousness.

Somehow you stumble back to your corner where your crew snaps to action.  QuietObserver massages your shoulders as LifeItself hands you a smelling salt to sharpen your senses.  You crack the capsule, pour out the salt and breathe in the crack.  Your heart beats like a kettle drum in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.  A baby steps through the ropes and walks around the ring smoking a cigar while wearing a diaper, a top hat and a sash emblazoned with the current year, all the while carrying an overhead sign that reads “ROUND ONE”.  For the first time you can actually hear REAL trouble coming, like the sound of an approaching train’s warning blast entering the far end of a long and winding tunnel.  At this point you try to bolt out of the ring and go back where you came from but LifeItself pops your mouth-guard in place and slaps you on the back hard enough to force all the air out of your lungs, conveniently depositing you smack-dab in the center of the ring.

The train horn wail inside your head ripens into the “BONG!” of the opening round bell and it is surely the sound of DOOM, the thunderous belly-laugh of Nostradamus having tea with ancient Mayan Priests, everyone chewing cacao leaves while pointing to the start of the third millennium.  It is the monstrous ringing of Hell’s Bells, a spiraling a direct current up the down-turned triangle at the base of your Susumna.

Oh yes.  It’s On.

But first a word from your sponsor, your observer, your Sanjaya, your witness who needs no protection program.  Let’s listen in, shall we?

Insert your theme song here.  Remember various things you have thought, said, considered and done last year that you tell nobody about.  Add in all your ego repair work.  Introduce yourself to the New Year like you are on a first date and show ‘em your good side.  Dredge up the past, throw it at the wall of the future and see if anything sticks.  Point to it and say, “That’s me?”  Then ask yourself the following questions out loud:

How do I worship fear?    What do I really want?    How am I not myself?

As we now rejoin your scheduled PROGRAMMING already in progress, YourStory is raining wicked combinations of justification and judgment below the belt, causing Your EverLastingSoul unending distraction.  A knee of arrogance strikes your ribs followed by a darting jab of self pity.  Here comes that choke-hold of an alibi for not meditating followed by a one-two combination of excuses for working too much and not going to bed early, all of it landing so easily that you are nearly convinced that YourStory’s sound and fury are actually Truth itself.  The heel of craving real turkey flesh and gravy this past Thanksgiving strikes your gastronomical vegetarian gut with unerring accuracy, causing you to double over in a hypocritical oath.

Remembering that you are Lighter than a firefly, you decide to float away.  YourStory Grabs your ankle and slams you back to the ground.  You choose to defend yourself by becoming a floor-chameleon and hiding in plain sight.  But YourStory will have none of it, it’s a new year and its show-time, and with a ballet-like spin of Gigabytes and flashing lights it lands a vicious hook that rattles your teeth and skids you into the ropes with the KO realization that you aren’t living up to your full potential at the start of this (Happy happy Happy!) New Year.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  The ringside instant replay screen shows you as a silent film star crying your eyes out in black and white, dabbing softly at your lids so as not to smudge the carefully applied makeup.  You pull yourself up and the ropes burn into your back as YourStory lands a final jaw-morphing blow and now you no longer know where you end and the fist of YourStory begins.  The light flickers inside your head as if announcing last call at a biker bar and suddenly you discover that your latest fighting strategy is to curl into a fetal position and rock yourself on the floor of self pity as YourStory raises its arms and dances in victorious glee.

ONE, TWO, THREE… Your frontal lobe counts with enthusiasm, already picking up the TV remote control.

And then time slows like molasses syrup pouring from a jar left out overnight at the top of Mount Everest where it’s not the ascent, but the descent that is actually more fatal.  And here you have descended big time.  Here you are lying in a womb-like coma, your lips moving in petite-mal tremors while YourStory dances on top of your fast-approaching grave.  “I’m running the show this year!” YourStory shouts at you, “So Stay the %#@* Down!” 

(You.  Are….)  A voice from so far away it’s within you, whipsers inside your ear.

Your witness, the Still Quiet Observer, is shouting something to you but you can’t hear through the deafening ring of silence.  Instead of shouting out “Speak Up”, you start singing Auld Lang Syne softer than the sound of the blood pulsing in your temples.  How many resolutions, your witness asks?  How many lifetimes?  How many pasties have been lost while fighting with this fundamental Lie?

FOOUUUUR… FFFFIIIIIIVVVVVE… SSSSSSSIXXXXX…

(You.  Are.  Not…)  Not what?  Not real?  Not a vegetarian?  Not conscious?  Not alive?

(YOU.  ARE.  NOT.  YOUR..)

Pure awareness rips through the tunnel of your ears and slams you into a wall of sound face-first.  Vocal chords are morphing into bullhorns in your ear telling you to get up, Get Up!  You can smell the crowd noise in your left maxillary sinus: a stew of perfume, sweat and animal skins mixed with dead turkey flesh (yum yum!)  The light comes back on behind your eyes and is that a quadriceps below your shorts or are you just happy to see yourself?  Slowly you attempt to stand and catch a glimpse of the flat screen at ringside while pulling yourself up rope by rope.  After an advertisement for an airline which you desperately wish you were patronizing at the moment, your own pummeling is being shown in reverse as an instant replay with such clarity that TimeItself stands to watch from the judges’ box at ringside.

SSSeeVVVVVVENNNNNN…

Incredibly, the screen shows no opponent in the ring.

There is no YourStory with a Right and Left of wicked punch fabrications, just a frontal lobe referee counting you out as the crowd does one more wave.  And there you are bouncing up off the floor in reverse and dancing around punching and kicking yourself in the ass like a clown on smack.  Across the bottom of the screen in a text scroll appear the words of Buddha from the Dhammapada: “The greatest victory is victory over ones’ self.”

Somehow you don’t think that kicking your own ass is quite what Buddha had in mind.

EEIGHHHHHT…NNNIIIINNNNNE…

The replay stops and you realize that you are back in the present and NOT FULLY STANDING yet.  You straighten your knees and lift an arm, bellowing “Yo, Adrian” to your spouse from the Civil War eight incarnations ago sitting in the cheap seats.  The referee raises your arm and the groundswell of cheers erupts like the bone-melting crack of an atomic bomb.

Speech!  Speech!  Speech!  the crowd chants in a growing roar and then the voice of YourEverlastingSoul booms from the inside out through the PA in exact synchronicity to your own lips as you bellow out a message to everyone truly present:

“YOU!  ARE!  NOT!  YOUR!  STORY!”

Eardrums pop.  Hearts burst.  Eyeballs shatter.  A lightning burst of insight singes the mat where YourStory had been towering only an instant before, leaving a fast vanishing hail of ones and zeroes.  The crowd erupts (quite literally) in a cacophony of cheers and visceral organs.  Your Frontal Lobe drops the remote control and raises both of your arms in victory.  Reporters scurry into the ring shouting all kinds of questions while flailing their voice recorders, video cameras and Playstation Wii controllers in your general direction.  “What’s your secret?”  “Where did you get them pasties, Champ?”  “How many pounds of peanut brittle did you eat?”  “Can you share your training regimen killer?”

The flashbulbs strobe glittering jade starbursts from your pectorals.  Microphones drift your way as you gesture to the now mostly empty, dripping seats and take a deep breath to answer:

“What did I really want back then?  What do I really want in this life?  This day?  This breath?

And then you, the EverlastingSoul who has trouble pronouncing the #2 entree at the neighborhood Thai restaurant, somehow continue to speak in a thunderously spontaneous impersonation of Krishna addressing Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, pronouncing ancient Sanskrit with unerring aplomb:

sreyan svadharmo vigunah paradharmat svanusthitan/ svadharmo nidhanam sreyaha paradharmodayad api//

As the words emerge from your lips you feel yourself in the deepest presence of truth.  Even though you don’t intellectually know what the Sanskrit means, you can feel an absolute undeniable power vibrate its thunder into your bones.  As the words echo into stillness and a perfect quiet fills the ring, you look to the translation that appears in silent scrolling text beneath your face on the ringside monitor:

“And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another’s, even if theirs seems great.  To do one’s duty is life itself; to live in another’s is death.”  Bhagavad Gita 3:35.

Happy New Year to all EverLasting Souls.  May we evolve by embracing the desire to find out what we truly want in this life!  And may this knowledge lead us all to do our unique work with passion, joy, an irrational rationality and a respectful lack of consideration for our stories!

Jeff Martens is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  All suggestions are voluntary and slightly irrational.  Consult Your EternalSoul before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.

A:  How much meditation is too much?

There was once a young woman who was searching the world over for a true master to [...]]]> How Much Meditation is Too Much?

Q: I have seen many chakra medtations and read of many more.  My question is, how often can someone meditate on the chakras daily?  What is too much?

A:  How much meditation is too much?

There was once a young woman who was searching the world over for a true master to give her the secrets of life.  She felt that she could not see things clearly and was worried about making wrong decisions and mistakes based on her own uncertainty.  She wanted to find out how to live in society without all this uncertainty and fear.  Finally she came to a Master who was said to live in a cave in the Himalayas that was perfectly at peace.
“How can I live with other people and maintain my own clarity and make decisions from a place of Love?  How can I live peacefully with others in my heart?” she asked the Master.
“How should I know,” the Master replied.  “I came here to get away from other people.”
Disillusioned, she came back down into the city and saw a man dancing and smiling as he worked his way through the marketplace, a look of serenity on his face, contentment radiating from his very being.  On an impulse she felt to ask this man her question:
“How can I live with other people and maintain my own clarity and make decisions from a place of Love?  How can I live peacefully with others in my heart?”
“Why by being perfect!” the man replied, looking at her with great compassion.
The woman’s spirits fell even further.  “How can I ever become perfect?” the woman asked.
The man laughed gently.  “By making many, many mistakes.”

Our instinct or intuition is something that is very valuable.  It comes form our experience, our victories and “mistakes”, and our connection to our vibrational or soul-self.  Once we fully separate our intuition from our habits, it is an invaluable guide for matters both sacred and earthly, ultimately showingthe bridge between the two.
Meditation is one such bridge. (Some others are love, true knowledge and conscious action.)

“Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening.  After you pray, sit still and listen.”
–Paramahansa Yogananda

Listening is a beautiful and rare commodity in modern life and your interest in meditation is to be commended.  Shorter periods of more intense meditation or increased time in daily meditation can be okay, like doing a dietary fast.  However, the more basic intention of any meditation is to know your true Self and bring a harmonious integration into your life.  If you find yourself meditating to escape daily life or responsibilities or meditating so much that it impedes your ability to function and contribute to your daily obligations, then integration will be an elusive experience.  So the answer to this question would depend upon how well you know yourself, what your true intention is with meditation, and if you are keeping a balance in your life with your relationships, job, responsibilities and health.

Generally it is fine to meditate on whatever topic you choose that inspires joy or love or insight starting with as little as 7 minutes a day and increasing this over time to 1/2 hour or an hour or even more, as long as there is balance.

The most imprtant thing is regularity and consistency, but do not beat yourself up if you stumble in your discipline.  Meditaion needs to have a voluntary element to it, otherwise it becomes an activity like all other ordinary activities in life meant to get us ’somewhere else’.  And true meditation invokes a spontaneous presence in the ‘now’ and is not in conflict with or demonizing any aspect of existence.  Start with a meditation that feels ‘right’ and inspires felings of love or gratitude or wonder and learn to trust your intuition more and more.  The Chakras are a wonderful way to experience directly the different vibrations of energy while living your dharma as an integrated being.  All meditations end, however, and when they do you are left with what always is.  The awareness that is You.

Jeff  is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  All suggestions are voluntary.  Consult a qualified teacher or your physician before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.

by Jeff Martens

sarvahrthataikahgratayoho kshayodayau cittasya samahdhi-parinahmaha

Inner wholeness dawns when the mind’s many wanderings collapse into one-pointed focus. Yoga Sutra 3.11

The Zen Master Rinzai was known far and wide throughout the land as the greatest living archer.  Bowmen of all levels would come from great distances to be near him and perchance, to see him practice [...]]]>

The Target

by Jeff Martens

sarvahrthataikahgratayoho kshayodayau cittasya samahdhi-parinahmaha

Inner wholeness dawns when the mind’s many wanderings collapse into one-pointed focus.
Yoga Sutra 3.11

The Zen Master Rinzai was known far and wide throughout the land as the greatest living archer.  Bowmen of all levels would come from great distances to be near him and perchance, to see him practice his art.  But a great puzzlement came to those who actually witnessed Rinzai releasing his arrows.  Often they would leave scratching their heads, muttering how did this man come to have such a Master reputation?  For Rinzai never pierced the bull’s eye when he let his arrow fly, and many times he failed completely to hit the target at all!

In spite of this troubling detail there was another respected archer known for his extreme accuracy and technical merit who very much desired to study under Rinzai.  “What?!” his friends exclaimed.  “You hit the exact center every time.  How can you be learning from a man who cannot even hit the target?  That is outrageous!”  Still the young archer felt the need to go.  “This man holds a secret.  He has something to teach me beyond my mechanical skill.”   But his friends all laughed behind his back as he set off in search of the Master.

It took much convincing, but finally Rinzai agreed to teach the student what he knew.  Every day the two would go out and aim at targets together.  And it was quite true what his friends had warned him about — many times the Master missed the mark completely.  Yet there was such a beauty, a mystery and presence to the way Rinzai drew his bow that the student could not help but wonder if he wasn’t missing something about the Master’s technique.  Watching secretly from the bushes at times, everything seemed to slow down when Rinzai breathed and raised his arrow.  Desperately wanting the Masters approval of his own great skill, without fail the student would strike the center of his own target.  But no matter how often a bullseye was scored, Rinzai would only watch quietly, obvious disapproval creasing his features into a huge frown.

After a month of practice, Rinzai seemed to grow impatient with the student.  The Master developed the very distracting and then highly annoying practice of soundlessly sneaking nearer when the student’s eyes were on the target in order to tap the student’s arrow just on the verge of release.  One month turned to two and two turned into a whole season.  Still Master and student would come out for their daily practice, the teacher’s unexpected and unpredictable tapping of the strung arrow hindering the student’s view of the target at the most inopportune of moments.  Soon the student began to feel anxious whenever the Master was near.  Yet in spite of all this distraction the student continued to hit the bullseye.  If anything though Rinzai’s frown grew even deeper as the seasons turned into one full year.

Then on a cold Fall morning when even the grace of the Master drawing his bow was beginning to falter as a motivation for staying in the student’s eyes, Rinzai and student drew their arrows side by side.   If he taps my arrow one more time, the student thought, his breath misting the space between him and the bullseye, maybe I’ll just shoot him!  The student’s eyes locked in on the target far beyond the tip of his arrow.  Just as he was about to release, the master tapped the arrow in the usual way near the locked and drawn thumb.  Instantly the student felt the hot rush of anger at having his concentration on the target broken yet again, and in this moment the master tapped an unheard of second time even harder.  A triple-tap that drew the student’s focus away from the distant target and right to the arrow in front of his eyes.

And then the student realized that Rinzai wasn’t tapping, he was pointing.  Pointing to the arrow.  Suddenly the student’s frustration vanished.  He saw the guide-feathers and all the faint pits and notches on the arrow’s smooth straight shaft.  He saw his own markings trailing into the arrowhead drawn still, the bow string arcing away from his eye, the slightest tremble of reserve strength quivering a deep and steady draw.  He could feel the pull down into the souls of his feet and smelled the gut and wood and stone and hide of his weapon and he could hear the steady strain of cord stretching taut against bowed wood.  How could I have missed this, something so obvious, the student thought, feeling more alive then he had ever felt before.  Everything seemed frozen and yet somehow vibrantly fluid and alive.  Involuntary laughter welled up around his ears.  The sensations of life were so deep and profoundly direct that when the student released his arrow he could not bring himself to focus on its path, his entire being utterly mesmerized by the echoing thrum and the surrendered feeling of release.  The spent bow collapsed into stillness.  Vibration pulsed up his arm.

Only after his joy bubbled into outright laughter did the student look up and see that his arrow had pierced dead center.  Rinzai’s arrow, as usual, stuck up from a clot of earth at a sharp angle off to the side of both targets.  “What happened?  How did I do that?” asked the student, wanting to repeat the whole mesmerizing event over and over again.

“The bull’s eye is here,” Rinzai said, pointing to the student’s bow, “anywhere else and you have already missed.”

The student expressed his endless gratitude towards the Master and offered a deepest bow.

“You are finished here,” Rinzai said, turning to walk away.

“Tell me Master,” the student called after his teacher, not wanting the moment to end.  “Can you really hit the target if you want to?”

Rinzai smiled.  “Where is your arrow?” he asked the student.

“Why, it’s right there,” the student answered, indicating the bullseye.”

“You go and look a little closer,” Rinzai encouraged, chuckling now as he continued on his way.

The student walked up to the target, his laughter returning.  Pulling the arrow out of the bull’s eye he saw not his own markings but the markings of Rinzai.  Laughing deeper now, the student wondered if he would ever care about hitting a target again.

Jeff Martens is a teacher, writer and co-owner of Inner Vision Yoga.  This story is inspired by an ancient parable.  All suggestions are voluntary.  Consult a qualified teacher, your heart  or your physician before you embark on any practice in which you are unfamiliar.