Awakened?/Enlightened?
I don’t
trust the meditators.
It’s not their spacy
expressions
It’s their “me” centered
vocabulary.
It’s not their spacy
expressions
It’s their “me” centered
vocabulary.
Deep breathing and
yoga
asanas
Are good for you, I learned
that,
Long ago; and I know how to
asanas
Are good for you, I learned
that,
Long ago; and I know how to
concentrate but I
don’t
call that
meditate, not the currently fashion-
able kind taught far and wide.
meditate, not the currently fashion-
able kind taught far and wide.
The “golden age”
“dreamland”?
We had it a hundred thousand years
ago.
Then our brains grew
complex.
“dreamland”?
We had it a hundred thousand years
ago.
Then our brains grew
complex.
Zen seems to say
wordlessness
Is enlightenment? Are all infants
wordlessness
Is enlightenment? Are all infants
And animals
enlightened? Do
you
you
Try to kill off
your
chattering
Monkeys to get to that thoughtless
chattering
Monkeys to get to that thoughtless
Space? My monkeys
nap and
relax
relax
While I breathe and
do tai chi;
But they wake me at midnight
With insights, maybe a
poem.
But they wake me at midnight
With insights, maybe a
poem.
Full of thoughts, I
go about my
Chores, doing what
I need to do,
Enjoying the world
and others
As worthy of
attention as I am,
Often smarter and
more fun,
Most are not self-satisfied, self-
Conscious
mediators. We have lives
To live. We fill our days with little
Joys and various kinds of worries.
To live. We fill our days with little
Joys and various kinds of worries.
-- Jacob Burmood
Ustrasana | Camel -- Jan Hyde
An asana is both the place where a yogi or yogini sits and the posture in which he or she sits. Shiva prescribed 84 asana, but in 1959, Swami Vishnu-devananda published a compilation of 66 basic postures and 136 variations, and in 1975, Sri Dharma Mittra suggested that "there are an infinite number" of them, eventually listing 1300 variations derived from contemporary gurus, yogis, and ancient and contemporary texts. The word (Sanskriit for "sitting down'" or "to sit down") appears in many contexts is the third of the eight limbs of classical practice (called "Raja Yoga" since the 19th-century, but the term originally meant samadhi [a state of meditative consciousness], the goal of yoga): yamas (codes of social conduct), niyamas (self-observances), asanas (postures), pranayama (breath work), pratyahara (sense withdrawal or non-attachment), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (realization of the true Self [Atman] and unity with Brahman [the Hindu concept of ultimate reality]). Although yoga evolved into many competing schools and approaches, the basics were contained in the "Yoga Sutras" of Patañjali , a compilation of 196 aphorisms that is sometimes dated to as early as several centuries BCE or to as late as the 5th century, but probably came into being in the 1st or 2nd century. This was the most translated ancient Indian text in the medieval era, appearing 40 Indian languages as well as Arabic and Javanese, but then fell out of favor between the 12th to 19th centuries, when Swami Vivekananda revived interest in it and the Theosophical Society gave it prominence. Before the 20th century, yoga doctrines were dominated by the "Bhagavad Gita;" the "Yoga Vasistha" attributed to Valmiki, the author of the "Ramayana" (beween the 5th and 1st centuries BCE), though probably compiled between the 6th and 14th centuries; and various texts attributed to Yajnavalkya (8th or 7th century BCE) and to Hiranyagarbha ( the "golden womb" or "golden egg"), an avatar of Vishnu who created the uniververse and devised yoga, though in that desgnation "Hiranyagarbha" probably referred to Kapila, the 7th or 6th century BCE founder of the dualistic Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy most closely associated with yoga.
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