C'est tout...

...ce que je voulais dire.
C'est que...
j'adore écrire...
j'aime traduire,
et peut-être qu'il faut que le fasse un peu plus,
et pour quelque chose de vrai.

Where did all the good hippies go? Raising consciousness.

"I want more. 

This isn't it. 

This isn't it.

Fame is not the goal. 

Money [is not the goal.] 

It's not the answer." 

Where did all the really good hippies go when they all dropped out?

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about stilling the mind and how to do that. Who doesn't want to stop the wheels from going round and round from time to time? This concept is the first of the sutras that Pantanjali writes:

The answer is tried and true, especially when you hear an authority on this type of thing: Stilling the mind can happen thanks to mantra. The notion of mantra that I have, from various simple sources, is this: it gives the mind words to resonate in the mouth... ear.... heart.... and mind. And though it can feel like one is doing nothing at times... that is kind of the point too. There is silence and sound in the mantra.

"Transcendental is beyond the senses, beyond the intellect," as George Harrison says. "Everybody is so limited and so really useless when you think of it about the limitations on yourself and the whole thing is to change, try to make everything better and better;  that's what the physical world is about is change, but the change that happens through meditation is a gradual sort of thing but the more you realize with anything, with just growing old, the more you realize: it helps you in some way. With meditation you are able to understand that there is this unity lying beneath everything; there's something there within every atom that holds it all together and the actual fact that it really is one, but on the intellectual level to say, "We are one," then I mean, again, you missed the point. It's an experience. You have to really have that perception that it is one."

If one adds a devotional aspect to one's mantra, for example with the maha mantra, then the heart can be more engaged in the practice of japa.

And, following Rumi, if one thinks of the moment 

as the now, or consciousness, 

or the awareness of reality that the seer within sees and hears... 

and goodness, kindness, creation, love, and greater wisdom to its source,

then there can be sweet nectar.

I like what George Harrison says:

"How to get peace of mind and how to be happy? That's really what we are supposed to be here and the difficult thing is we all go through our lives and our days and we don't experience bliss. It's a very subtle thing to experience that, to be able to know how to do that is something you don't just stumble across. You gotta search for it."

VHI interviewer: "Did you experience bliss on stage or in the studio? In a way did performing put you in touch with that bliss?"

"We had happiness at times but not the kind of bliss that I mean where, like, every atom of your body is just buzzing, you know, because again, it's beyond the mind. It's when there's no thought involved. It's a pretty tricky thing to try to get to that stage because it means controlling the mind and being able to transcend the relative states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming, which is all we really know. But there is another state that goes beyond all that and that state is where the bliss and the knowledge are available."

Also teaching people to be healthy, rather than focusing on disease. Teaching consciousness.

There is a generation of kids now open to consciousness and vegetarianism. So, can we be positive about today's society? "It is getting better *and* worse because that's the nature of relativity: good and bad, good and bad, but if the individual gets on that consciousness, you can retain the balance between the good and the bad. Because really, good and bad are the same thing."

Personally speaking, I don't get how good and bad are part of the same thing; how can they be the sap from the same tree? [Especially] when one is acknowledging real evil in the world--Lord, protect the innocence of children--how can awful cruelty and selfishness be any bit related to the good we have in mind through devotional practice--how is such darkness the same as the goodness we have seen in the world?

***

Harrison: "Put your own house in order. Until I'm straight, then I'm in no position to criticize others."

Like Harrison's teacher said: For a forest to be green, every tree has to be green.

Let us be green, then, and silent.

Antarctic Beech, Northwestern US 

Reading Geeta Iyengar

Aimer savoir est humain. 

Savoir aimer est divin. 

~Joseph Roux

To love to know is human. 

To know how to love is divine.

"To be on the proper disciplined path is important 

because it is through that process that compassion can bring softness.” 

~Geeta Iyengar, in an interview with Los Angeles times

Patanjali, modern art rendering in Patanjali Yogpeeth

I am delighted to read Yoga: A Gem for Woman, by Geeta S. Iyengar. Amongst several passages I would like to keep in mind, I was very grateful for this section of the following book, which is quite clear about a key concept of devoting oneself to one's bhakti yoga practice.

Yoga: A Gem for Woman, 

by Geeta S. Iyengar

"Sadhana has three stages, namely Sravana (listening), Manana (thinking), and Nididhyasana (putting into practice and experiencing). Patanjali explains these three aspects using a different terminology, namely Japa (repetition), Artha (understanding), and Bhavana (realisation).

In Yoga-sadhana all the three processes have to be followed for one's practice to bear fruit. For example, asana has to be repeated again and again, day after day, year after year; this is Sravana or Japa. It is Karma Marga.

This repetition leads one to the mental process of thinking, where one penetrates deeper and deeper from Annamaya Kosa to Anandamaya Kosa. This is called Manana, which gives meaning and understanding of the action which is being performed by the sadhaka. This is Jnana Marga in sadhana.

This repeated (Japa) and well-thought-over (artha) action gives a new experience to the sadhaka. It is a form of worship in which one offers every asana as a flower to God. The sadhaka becomes one with the action and remains absorbed in it (Bhavana). This enlightened state of Self-realisation is Bhakti Marga. Then Karma, Jnana, and Bhakti all merge into One. This is Nididhyasana.

This type of sadhana alone brings completion to the practice."

Thank you, Geeta Iyengar, for living as a wonderful yogi, writer, and teacher!

And though I may be "young" to some, I can really appreciate and relate to what Iyengar is saying when she says the following (in the same interview with LA Times as linked above):

[She] finds that her daily yoga practice has become a gift for old age. “Yoga is an inner journey that helps to keep oneself healthy, not just on a physical level, but it gives inner mental peace and maturity.” While she sees yoga as a valuable tool to for coping with daily living, she rejects popular trends to use it as a quick fix-solution for various ailments and aches. Instead, she says, “I feel there are so many things to learn from yoga that can help old age become pleasant.” She’s quick to add that she is “not talking in terms of Western ideas about beauty that demands one to remain and look young, even in old age.” Rather, she is prepared “to accept a mature mind that has experienced many things, and from that yogic experience I can find a better way.”

And so, wishing the world peace as we all age here together, frightened by silly world politics and policies and senseless shootings. Here's to getting old! Some people don't get that chance. Let us embrace all the time we have to inch our way towards Krishna consciousness, Krishna-bhakti-rasa-bhavita, or whatever guiding light and truth we may have discovered.

Om shanti Om

A Beatle and his song, "Here Comes the Sun"

I recently learned something really quite lovely about a popular Beatles song, thanks to Vrindavan Diaries, a beautiful entity to follow on instagram as they post nuggets of wisdom regarding Krishna consciousness, mostly stemming from the teachings of Srila Prabhupada. Many of us have heard the Beatles' song, "Here Comes the Sun" (from the Abbey Road album, 1969), but I was literally - well, quite almost - electrified in learning that George Harrison wrote it about Krishna coming into his life - but, as he wrote to Srila Prabhupada, he felt the need to disguise the inspiration of his Isvara somewhat. One might ask: Disguise or universalize? At any rate, he sent it to Prabhupada, asking the spiritual master and saint from whom he had learned so much about humility and wisdom, his thoughts. Prabhupada was delighted. I myself feel delighted to have a new song to think about God in such a global and fitting way. And what a fitting time of year.

Speaking on Prabhupada, George Harrison said: "Even though he was at the time seventy-nine years old, working practically all through the night, day after day, with very little sleep, he still didn't come through to me as though he was a very highly educated intellectual being, because he had a sort of childlike simplicity. Which is great, fantastic. Even though he was the greatest Sanskrit scholar and a saint, I appreciated the fact that he never made me feel uncomfortable. In fact, he always went out of his way to make me feel comfortable. I always thought of him as sort of a lovely friend, really, and now he's still a lovely friend."

"That was the thing about Prabhupada, you see. He didn't just talk about loving Krishna and getting out of this place, but he was the perfect example. He talked about always chanting, and he was always chanting. I think that in itself was perhaps the most encouraging thing for me. It was enough to make me try harder, to be just a little bit better."

Srila Prabhupada to George Harrison: "You are George Harrison, in a famous band, you are famous throughout all the world, but how long will you be George Harrison? So, as long as you are George Harrison, you should talk about Krishna consciousness."

I also love the story of the lila -- the big bright-eyed kiss on the cheek -- unfolding before all the serious sannyasis' eyes as George Harrison greeted Yamuna Devi.

And last, but certainly not least, here is a supremely lovely, less disguised song of George Harrison, chanting the names of God. What a beautiful voice for the topic.

Wishing you cuteness

The simplicity of cuteness

Reincarnation

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Another Story

When people in the East hear young children speaking of past lives, this is not usual. In other societies where reincarnation is an expectation, it is quite different--and this certainly changes the case. The story at the end of Mary is particularly touching.

The story of the Dalai Lama and Elijah/Tenzin is interesting. Again, the story of Mary/Jenny is terrifying/touching:

Feelin' Foxy

How beautiful are foxes!

I wonder if THIS is my spirit animal?!

The fox is a lovely animal to hold in one's mind, due to its fascinating qualities.

The Fennec Fox is tiny and lives in the Sahara desert

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Frida Kahlo, 1944

I walked out of the Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum today thinking Frida Kahlo was beyond what I could conceive of as an amazing woman. I was not the only one who was blown away. Everyone seemed immersed in the life that the artifacts, photographs, and clothing seemed to resurrect before us. Everyone seemed moved and enthralled at this very personal exhibit of Frida Kahlo. People in the crowds were visibly focused on perceiving her life and expression, a task rendered easier thanks to the multimedia exhibit. There were posts reminding the viewer throughout the exhibit that Frida fashioned herself in many ways: for example, through the colors and woven fabrics inspired by the indigenous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who were greatly revered by artists like Diego and Frida, as well as the deep responsibility the artist felt towards the spirit of revolution in her country. This was due to a fierce passion for what Communism represented, at the time, and to Mexico especially.

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit. 

Being in Brooklyn close to the Statue de la Liberté (as the French who gifted it to the US would say), I found it poignant to see her drawing of the statue, where, in place of the torch are an atomic bomb and money bag, labeled as such in Spanish by Frida’s hand. Nearby, a list of names like Hitler and the Pope, people who she alluded to with the rising fascist use of power by the US following WWII. Education and views on politics united her and Diego and even introduced them.

The most important part of the body is the brain. 

Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes. 

The exhibit also highlighted how she constructed her identity along the gender blur, something quite significant in her time, via the ever-present cigarette (as a liberated woman), her facial hair and face that she said are those of a man, and clothes at times. Her strength, which I heard female spectators around me commenting on, was everywhere demonstrated: in her writing, her education, her painting, her passion, her colors, and her disability. One section of the exhibit was called “Disability and Creativity” and you could see how her boots were altered to accommodate her slightly shorter leg: fashionable, practical, colorful and survivalist. The last room was called “Art and Dress,” featuring her amazing ensembles that she bought from indigenous Mexican vendors. (She never bartered, one vendor said.) For an amazing virtual peek at this exhibit visit this special site on Frida Khalo's work.

Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. 

The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence. 

Frida with Granzino, 1939
Photo by Nickolas Muray

Born Magdalena Frida Carmen Kahlo y Calderón in the "Casa Azul" just south of Mexico City, Frida (1907-1954) chose to use the name given to her by her German immigrant father, though she identifies through clothing and in other ways with her mother’s indigenous people (her mother was half-Spanish and half-indigenous Mexican). There were some outstanding qualities to these clothes, one of which was the fact that they hid Frida’s leg that had deteriorated from the polio she contracted as a child, as well as the medical corsets she would wear to help support her deteriorating spine. The femininity seems to exude from her conscious and considered self-fashioning, and she was highly aware when she came to Gringolandia, as she nicknamed the US, that the gringos were dropping their jaws at her Tehuana dress and wanting to paint her. 

The first city she came to in the US was San Francisco and she found its Chinatown particularly vibrant. She also loved New York city, especially Harlem. Detroit not so much, but the exhibit mentions that following her time in Detroit, where her husband was painting the industrial panels (there is a beautiful video of her sketching to herself and then by him as he paints the mural), her artistic expression grew remarkably. Later in the exhibit, we see a beautiful drawing of a woman whose fetus is there outside her body…. It represents her miscarriage as tears visibly go all down one of her legs at the same time that a third arm comes out of the tear-stricken Frida--and it is holding a painter’s palette. A mention is made that she suffered a complicated miscarriage in Detroit, and this reinforces the notion of her delving deeper into self-expression through art to help with her suffering---especially when you take a good look at the drawing below. Because her body had been pierced in the bus accident when she was age 19 (and one of the very few girls in the school; she was studying to be a doctor) from one side to the other, which left much shattered. Forever crippled in this way, she suffered through miscarriages—and expressed her grief in a rare way (rather than letting silence engulf it all).

I paint flowers so they will not die. 

She was held in traction in bed often, her head in straps, the doctors thinking taking the weight of the head off the spine may help with her pain. She painted from her bed where she had to pass much of her time. She endured more than thirty surgeries and many treatments that did not work. There is no painting of the accident that nearly killed her and left her disabled, but there is a drawing, a photo of which was at the exhibit.

My painting carries with it the message of pain. 

In a stroke of beautiful symbolism, a man was traveling alongside Frida on the nearly fatal bus ride carrying gold leaf foil to bring to a cathedral, if I recall, and when the accident occurred gold flakes went all over Frida.

Frida's prosthetic leg,
following her amputation
later in her life (mid-1950s)

I love you more than my own skin. 

No matter that he was a womanizer and known as such; I cannot believe that Diego her husband had an affair with her sister, Cristina. They divorced over that but remarried a year later. She seemed so very in love and affectionate with him. She said in her last years that she had the ignorance to think he needed her, as he had told her so and she believed him, but she says that she is suffering so.

Nothing is absolute.
Everything changes,
everything moves, 

everything revolves,
everything flies and goes away. 

Of the shawls, amazing green necklaces and colorful skirts and shirts, I am particularly struck by the medical corsets for her body. They were casts, and apparently for one body cast she was hung by her head alone for a couple hours and then stood on tiptoes for over an hour to make it. I try to imagine this but cannot. On one she has painted the Communist hammer and sickle across the chest and a beautiful fetus in the stomach area. In the next corset however, there is the symbolic hammer and sickle but there is a four to five-inch hole cut in the belly area, perhaps practical in nature, and perhaps also signifying the loss of her child(ren). 

Frida painting her medical corset

These were two of the corsets she wore, and thus the utter feel, intimacy, and significance of this exhibit are at a maximum. In fact, her husband Diego would order that her belongings be locked up in her Blue House for decades beyond her death. According to this article, there were 22.105 documentos, 5.387 fotografías, 168 trajes, 11 corsés, 212 dibujos de Diego, 102 de Frida, 3.874 revistas y publicaciones, y 2.170 libros in the room.

This is the first time the exhibit has been shown in the US (it was unearthed in 2004), and it is a sold-out exhibit.

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. 

I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. 

Staring at photographs and videos of her face, I am willingly taken by her, marveling at how beautiful and serious and thoughtful she was. Seeing the videos of the Tehuana girls wearing the resplandor headdresses, I was taken by the special aspect of making the young women’s faces like flowers. I enjoyed seeing the couple that Diego and she were as they worked quietly side by side at the industrial panel and their affection in other media clips.

Here is a modern clip on Tehuana women and their dress--made for a tourism outlet (not in the exhibit) and thus not nearly as interesting as the black-and-white video from the exhibit, but still an interesting glimpse of the resplandor:

"Self-Portrait as a Tehuana" (1943)

As for her clothing, I couldn’t help but visualize her alive and beautiful in them, having her being in her world in such uniqueness through dress, while also being extremely practical for her disabled and uncomfortable physical condition. This exhibit revealed the Frida we know of as a Frida to know even further. She seemed to come alive through her personal objects, family photos, and journal writing. She was bored in bed, disabled, and learned to paint, her parents finding her a special easel so she could paint from bed following her accident. She would say Diego got along okay as a boy painting but that she was the big artist. Her life is inexhaustible.

You deserve the best, the very best, 

because you are one of the few people in this lousy world 

who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts. 

The intimacy of the photos taken by her lover, someone who had profound influence on Frida, Nickolas Muray, are really remarkable and are worth reading about in the article, "The Intimate and Iconic Photos Nickolas Muray took of Frida Kahlo." 

Living one’s life is so important, as I have learned during my trip to the city (and the words a chemo patient said to me in the waiting room at MSK). And also I see the deep, inner value in letting oneself be shaped by suffering—and letting the flowers come up out of the mud… this is all something Frida did so marvelously that, years after her death, some of her magic is still trickling down powerfully to those who lack the color and strength and passion she had. 

I was a child who went about in a world of colors… 

My friends, my companions, became women slowly; I became old in instants. 

"Appearances Can Be Deceiving"
Drawing by Frida Kahlo

This drawing, uncovered in the locked room in 2004, reveals how the Tehuana dress allows her to choose whether to reveal her disabilities or not. From the outside one cannot see her leg or medical corsets. "Las Apariencias Engañan."

Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive. 

I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to return. 

I am deeply inspired by Frida's words (some quoted in color throughout the post) and her massive strength, talent, and perseverance. It may very well be life-changing to come in proximity to her belongings and drawings as the aura speaks volumes about strength and resolve. I am in awe of nearly every aspect of her passion & life as the true woman and true artist she was. What she did while suffering is unforgettable. Here, I am not simply speaking of how prolific she was.

Many thanks to Brooklyn Museum for this amazing exhibit.

Notre Dame de Paris

Il est venu le temps des cathédrales

Gringoire:

C'est une histoire qui a pour lieu

Paris la belle en l'an de Dieu

Mil quatre cent quatre vingt deux

Histoire d'amour et de désir

Nous les artistes anonymes

De la sculpture ou de la rime

Tenterons de vous la transcrire

Pour les siècles à venir

Refrain:

Il est venu le temps des cathédrales

Le monde est entré

Dans un nouveau millénaire

L'homme a voulu monter vers les étoiles

Écrire son histoire

Dans le verre ou dans la pierre

Pierre après pierre, jour après jour

De siècle en siècle avec amour

Il a vu s'élever les tours

Qu'il avait bâties de ses mains

Les poètes et les troubadours

Ont chanté des chansons d'amour

Qui promettaient au genre humain

De meilleurs lendemains

Refrain (x2)

Il est foutu le temps des cathédrales

La foule des barbares

Est aux portes de la ville

Laissez entrer ces païens, ces vandales

La fin de ce monde

Est prévue pour l'an deux mille

Est prévue pour l'an deux mille

English version:

The Age of Cathedrals

Gringoire:

This is a story that takes place

In fair Paris in the year of our Lord

Fourteen hundred eighty two

A story of love and of desire

We, the anonymous artists

Of sculpture and verse,

Will attempt to transcribe it for you

And for the centuries to come

Refrain:

The age of cathedrals has come

The world has entered

A new millennium

Man wanted to reach the stars

To write his story

In glass and in stone

Stone after stone, day after day

From century to century with love

He saw the towers rise

That he had built with his hands

The poets and the troubadours

Sang songs of love

That promised the human race

Better days to come

Refrain x 2

The age of cathedrals has gone

The hoard of barbarians

Storms the city gates

Let them in, these pagans, these vandals

The end of this world

Is predicted for the year 2000

Is predicted for the year 2000

La fin de ce monde est prévu pour l'an 2000... 

The end of this world is foreseen in the year 2000....

Our hearts are in Paris.