yoga, meditation, the west, and rowing a boat tied to a dock

in an episode of on being that i listened to recently (sharon salzberg and robert thurman – meeting our enemies and our suffering), an indian buddhist teacher named manindra was quoted as having said the following:

“Sometimes people in the West remind me of people sitting in a rowboat, and with great sincerity and earnestness, they’re rowing and rowing and rowing, but they refuse to untie the boat from the dock. Sometimes I think people are mostly interested in these great transcendent experiences and altered states of consciousness, but they’re not all that interested in how they speak to their neighbor or how they are with their children.”

​this resonates a ton with things i’ve been noticing as well as a thought my friend ambroise shared with me a few weeks ago. the basic thought is this: if individuals (and society by extension) aren’t actually desiring change, practicing yoga and meditation in these shallow ways are just hobbies. i think about all the yoga studios i’ve been to where people are clearly there to get exercise and not much else. or all the people i know who talk about meditating as a way to reduce stress… and yet they never seem to recognize the sources of stress in their lives.

these practices are, at their sources, situated in larger/broader spiritual practices with goals nothing short of life transformation. but, like many things extracted from their sources, without the overarching framework these practices originated in, the practices themselves are little more than pastimes.

ambroise was telling me he’s already experienced a similar type of disillusionment with yoga in its modern incarnation. i can’t remember if we talked about this or i read his writing about it [insert link someday maybe], but either way, it’s happened. and for him it’s gotten so bad that he’s actually decided to step away from it because the results that it can deliver are gained by so few people.

in light of manidra’s words, it’s likely that the people practicing don’t actually want to disconnect from the dock.

book notes: the velvet rage: overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world

i just finished the velvet rage: overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world. it has brought a lot of light to my understanding of gay men in my life. it has some pretty serious limitations in its lessons and audience (i.e. the lessons are clearly drawn from the experiences of and directed towards gay men who are mostly white and wealthy), but it’s still pretty good overall. 

here are some major points that i want to be able to remember in the future:

the three stages of dealing with shame for gay men

1. [being] overwhelmed by shame
2. compensating for shame
3. cultivating authenticity

note: rage is the result of unacknowledged and process shame.

the three things that make up contentment:

• passion
• the repeated experience of joy in doing something 
• love
• (definition by downs was weak, imo, so i’ll still with bell hooks’ thinking on love)
• integrity
• the state of being undivided; able to connect all parts of oneself

what mom didn’t know & dad couldn’t accept – lessons on being an authentic gay man

1. don’t let your sexual tastes be the filter for allowing people into your life
2. adopt a nonjudgmental stance as often as possible
3. when you have a problem with someone, speak with him/her about it first (instead of everyone else)
4. it’s never a bad idea to be completely honest about the facts.
5. others are often put off by perfection
6. don’t act on every emotion you feel
7. put off having sex until you feel comfortable that you really know him
8. actively practice accepting your body as it is right now
9. intentionally validate those you love, but never validate the invalid
10. whenever you encourage a relationship problem, first assess your own responsibility before blaming someone else

ps - huge shoutout to will for not only saying i should read this, but giving me his copy to make it happen. +1.

seneca and alan watts on dying and living

there is some tension between these three quotes below, but they’re related for me. the first two are from seneca’s letter to lucilius titled ‘on taking one’s own life.’. the last is a quote from a popular talk by alan watts on the acceptance of death and the meaning of life.

“An ordinary journey will be incomplete if you come to a stop in the middle of it, but life is never incomplete if it is an honourable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is a whole.” –– seneca, letter LXXVII

“Every life without exception is a short one… As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending.” –– seneca, letter LXXVII

“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.” –– alan w. watts

as i sort of stew (in the best way) in my thinking about death this week, i keep coming back to an idea about living and dying. what keeps sticking is that we must be (culturally) afraid of dying because we haven’t figured out how to live.

seneca’s line about life being complete as long as it’s honorable definitely reminds me of how i think about living each day. the 2nd and 3rd quotes are, to me, similarly about the important of knowing how to live well.

there is a strange, but coherent irony in our fear of death as it manifests in our continued avoidance of the one question that would end that fear. how should one live?

writing data

writing 9:22

spell-check, link-finding, & formatting 14:30

my personal retreat

a few people have asked what this is so i figured it was time to write it out. i’ve found that one of the highest values of writing out my thoughts is being able to direct people to them.

so. my personal retreat.

what is it?

it’s where i take some time at the beginning of the (gregorian) calendar year to focus on me.

where/when did it start?

in january 2015, my roommate, annemarie and i just went to a coffeeshop (RIP darwin’s ltd on mass ave. in cambridge, ma). i don’t totally remember why we did it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

what do you do?

if you want to see the long, detailed explanation of what i do, it’s over here. below is the agenda/checklist version:

day 1 (1 jan 2017): review 2016

• review and finalize my infinite growth vision statement
• review and reflect on how i spent time in 2016 (details on this in the long version)
• review annual budget

• guiding question: did my time spent align w/ my values?

day 2 (2 jan 2017): plan for 2017

• reconfigure calendar and time protocols
• plan budget
• organize files

day 3 (3 jan 2017): project launches

• review 2016 writing for book theme(s)
• figure out tech infrastructure for my weekly email newsletter (probably http://tinyletter.com)
• start running list of book reviews (inspiration)
• figure out infrastructure for writing group (probably http://groups.io)
• start things i read timelines on github (hopefully based on willob’s custom timeline tool on this page)
• figure out infrastructure for emoji faces book project
• write out vision and initial framework for secret project with annemarie

writing data

writing 15:34
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting ??:??

my personal retreat (long version)

a few people have asked what this is so i figured it was time to write it out. 

what is it?

it’s where i take some time at the beginning of the (gregorian) calendar year to focus on me.*

where/when did it start?

in january 2015, my roommate, annemarie and i just went to a coffeeshop (RIP simon's too on mass ave. in cambridge, ma). i don’t totally remember why we did it, but reflection probably just seemed like a good idea at the time.

what do you do?

if you want to see the short version, it’s over here. below is the long, detailed version:

generally, what i do is spend some time reflecting on the past year and then making some plans for the next year. it’s gotten more detailed each year, but the point is to look back and then look forward.

that first year i was using a tool that holstee sent out via email. i think i ignored the first page but pages two and three really made me think differently about my time and life. i can still trace elements from that exercise to how i think about these things now:

• make a list of your guiding values
  
• look back at your previous year and see how your spent your time
  
• compare how you spent your time with your values
  
• if they match up, make no changes. if they don’t, adjust your personal system (in the form of what an ideal week looks like) as necessary
  

that might be a little vague so here’s what i do specifically:

part 1: review and reflect

1. review my calendar

i use my calendar rigorously. i even go back and make sure that i delete things that didn’t happen. this type of usage makes it a very helpful tool for reviewing how i spend my time. and, of course, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. [quote?] so i go through and write down the highlights of how i spent my time, week-by-week. it looks like this:

## week 7 (feb 9-15)



    
      Read more...