Harshita Yoga

This is an adapted version of an email I sent my Mum today:

Glad to know you’re getting better.

Sitting here in a cafe while it pours on a Monday afternoon…frequent thundershowers last for about half an hour and then dissolve.  Life is good here.  I really like Melaka, Malaysia.  I like living alone and feeling the heartbeat of the world and life and time pass by.  I like my students and the yoga community at the studio, I like being the only teacher and teaching 3 times a day and feeling my body getting stronger physically and opening mentally.  I think about my life and the ripples I’ve inaugurated up to this exact instant…and in my future I see communal projects…an orphanage…green living…permaculture and shared hands manning a farm…adopted children and yoga and smiles…and life goes on.

I wonder at the people that come and go — looking outside to the street at the bizarre heavy traffic…w are all so habituated to self-absorbed preservation and often little concern leaks outside of our own box-like lives; our circles of work and children, friends, family and comfort.  Instant gratification prized above all else…if the weather, and subsequently one’s body is too hot one must rectify it right away, if the stomach too empty, one must fill it.  Typical conversation revolves around physical comfort…we are all addicted like users to perfect temperature regulation, a comfortable seat, nice things to eat, and pleasant company.  Addiction to pleasure and avoidance of pain.  Often thoughts and feelings during the day don’t go much beyond these basic needs and the feeling of “I’ll do all the stuff I really want to do later.”  But that “later” never comes unless you grab life by the balls and manifest your own projection here and now.
Remarkable really that so few seem to do this.  I live in carpe diem and sure it screws me sometimes, when thinking long-term, or when I try to correlate my life with the status quo, the standard system that everyone begs to give in to, simply because it’s easy.  I’m amazed how many people tell me I live an enviable life, my yoga students constantly in awe of my ability to survive via teaching.  And the fact that I don’t need “stuff” to be happy.  I deem my astonishment at this simply an anger at the majority of people’s failure to recognize their own potential, and really live it, to take the reins back into their hands as it were and purge all leaching fear out of their system.  And naturally I’m aware of my own egotistical self-satisfaction at being in a position where my lifestyle is coveted by others…and honestly seek to reduce this attachment to notoriety daily!  And yet this other nagging voice of “you’re never good enough”…”just push a little harder and everyone will love you”…”just make it to that unreachable pillar and all the world is yours and you will be content”  is still present…I am in constant awareness of its’ existence and observing how it’s much more challenging for me to quench this false whisper than the other….in effect living spontaneously and in the moment comes easily to me, while squelching the demon of perfectionism is much harder.  I wonder…I know you have been known to label yourself a “perfectionist” and I’m curious as to whether you feel the same…and where you think this comes from.  An underlying thirst for approval and a promise of allotted designated happiness?  I rather feel that’s what it’s like for me.

Ah yoga.  I love teaching.  I love my own garbage pile that arises rapidly.  I love being unaffected by the oscillations, just observing
the continual tides.  Like the tides of the planet that we’re destroying blindly at an enormous rate…everyone being too caught up
in their previously mentioned personal worldly bubbles…to really consider the Earth where we, human creatures actually live, and
ultimately on which we depend.  Yes climate change and global warming and rain forest deforestation and soil erosion and factory farming vs. sustainability are all hot topics on the forefront of collective thought…but yet we continually manage to push them conveniently away to the back burner, in order to consume our days with day to day activities…because we’re slaves to our senses…because instant gratification has become our axiom and temporary satisfaction our overriding precept.  ie. “Yes I’m going to buy that bottled drink because it’s SO hot and i need something cool and I know that the bottle may or may not be really recycled, but when it’s out of sight, out of mind right, so I can just throw it in the trashcan and those garbage people will deal with it.”  EVERYDAY.  EVERY PERSON.  Will we ever learn?  I feel quite unconvinced.

Or living for approval…the approval of parents and family, of colleagues and friends, of other people who are looked up to in
society.    If you live like this, you’ll never be happy.  And you can never please everybody.  There’s always someone who will object to what you’re doing.  Not that you can/shouldn’t do nice things for people, on the contrary, anything done with a good intention is so precious.  I say it over and over again to myself and to others to ingrain it deep into my being –> I think we should strive to improve ourselves as much as possible and then turn to others and work towards helping them.  Understanding that everyone is going through the same experience of life, the same rise and fall of emotions, the same personal tragedies and self deprivation, automatically breeds compassion.  And acting from compassion results in exquisite camaraderie.

This life is so extraordinary.  I feel fortunate to be experiencing this human adventure in the exact present moment.  Self-awareness is remarkable.  Clinging to the self is even more so.  Have you seen “The Cove”?  A movie about dolphin slaughter in Japan and the export of dolphin meat to all corners of the globe.  Utterly searing and worth watching.  The protagonist talks about how dolphins are self-aware, how they are like us.  Buddhists seek to eradicate self-clinging and yogis strive to merge the personal self with the universal self.  Sensational how much harm self-absorption creates really!

I love you.
I love all life.
I love what’s beyond.
I’m done with clinging.  You can’t bring back the past.  And you can’t pretend you’ll be happy in the future.  The only happiness is now, right here, in your own hands.  Focusing on past and future only eventuate in sadness.

Agni the firefly

I appreciate everything…and the divinity in you that communicates with the divinity in me.  Parent-child relationships definitely mean something.  I don’t believe anything is arbitrary.  I think we choose our parents because we have both something to teach them, and something to learn from them.  Hallelujah, yeah.

Hello fragrant flowers,

I aspire to write diligently in this blog not only to entertain via sharing stories, but ultimately in order to inspire and spur persons towards mindfulness and self-reflection; ideally a deeper understanding of their relationship to the outer perceptible world including other sentient beings that surround them, and also to the inner world, the true nature of mind.

I find that it’s often very easy to complain about life, to compare one’s situation to other’s who one believes are better/higher and then generate self-pity. We humans are always wanting more, extremely picky with what we do have (I want my tea without sugar, my meal with brown rice, my fruit smoothie without apple…!), and basically in a constant state of yearning for what we don’t have and desire. Essentially our minds are always grasping after new objects of desire. As soon as we acquire one, we may be temporarily happy for a while but in no time at all we’re searching again. We may be hungry and seek to fill that hunger, after which we may be too full, but it won’t be long before we’re hungry again and seek to fill the hunger by some new different taste! We may crave to be in a relationship but as soon as we get a companion we may want the opposite: more space and time to do our own thing. Generally we’re so ruled by the ever-flowing stream of desires that we end up getting caught and chase them to our own detriment, for truly they don’t make us any happier, all pleasure derived from such fleeting whims is sure to be temporary.

I was just in Varanasi this December for a couple months, and came across a copy of the Dalai Lama’s book, “The Art of Happiness”, a text I have often seen and heard about but never personally read. In a coffee shop I sat down and read his introduction and the first half or so of the book. He speaks of surveying two groups of people, the first group fill in the blank to the question, “I wish I was/had….”, while the second group answer a question about gratitude: “I’m grateful for/I’m glad I have…..” The “happiness levels” of all persons were tested afterwards, and there was a noticeable increase in the first groups feeling of depression, feeling like they didn’t have enough, sadness and lethargy. In comparison, the second group felt marvelously happy. The point here is that happiness = being content with what you do have, as opposed to wanting more. Focusing on what you’re already blessed with, seeing and appreciating it instead of looking, seeking, striving outward for something more…thinking it’s never enough.

No secret, so simple, and very beneficial teaching. I have to say that when I really think about all the things I’m grateful for, it makes me realize how much I have, how lucky I am and how honestly I have nothing to complain about. Compared to most of the world I’m rich in friends, and I can eat three meals a day, I’m able to travel and for example live the life of an average Nepali, whereas most locals here don’t have the chance to say, go to Canada. I’m blessed to have had amazing yoga teachers and to attend Dharma talks/meditations that have honestly turned my life 360 degrees around. I feel really grateful for an accident I had two years ago where I injured my sacrum and was bed-ridden for three weeks. Learning to walk again/being able to walk outside and breathe the fresh air/feel the sun on my face was such a miracle, and something I had entirely taken for granted previously. I cried so sweetly the first time I was able to walk around the block on two legs. To know practically that something so instinctive, like your ability to walk, can be taken away from you at any time is intensely valuable. I feel so lucky to have a body with all it’s faculties intact and to be living here in Nepal studying Tibetan language and Buddha Dharma. Every single day the scriptures we are studying present an opportunity for reflection and growth. Try it, right now! Write down a list of everything you’re grateful for. It feels so good.

Namaste,
Agni Georgina Ng