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ramblings about god ~ May 26, 2002 - 10:21 p.m. we had a yajna ritual tonight for the full moon. it's hard to describe. it's very nearly pagan in a lot of ways, with attention paid to the elements and the planets. offerings are made, prayers are sung. a fire is built and offerings are thrown into it. the ritual is basically about purification, asking for our negativities to be burned away so that we may be closer to the divine. and this is a thing I've been thinking about lately. because I'm buddhist. and I live in a yoga community. buddhism doesn't really talk about god. enlightened beings, yes. yoga talks about god. in many forms, in many ways. and I do believe in some kind of divine energy. I've experienced god many times, in many ways. but I'm not sure if my conception of god meshes with yoga's conception of god. and I'm not sure that it doesn't. it's hard to put in to words what all is wrapped up in what I'm thinking about. partly it's about what my role is in this community. partly it's about what this community's role is in my life. partly it's the idea of having "a path", and trying to fit more than one discipline into that idea. it's not knowing how deep or far I want to go with yoga. it's the way I embrace yogic practices but encounter resistance to studying yogic texts. because it feels like the teachings that really speak to me are contained in the dharma of buddhism. which speaks not of god, but of the mind, and the heart. and many of yoga's teachings are the same-- buddha was a yogi, after all-- but I guess I just don't want to lose my focus. because it feels like yoga is a really positive presence in my life, and my time here is a gift, but I don't believe that yoga is, in and of itself, my path. so. I'm thinking about these things. especially during this retreat, where a lot of the practices we've been doing are very devotional in nature. which I am not opposed to-- I do, after all, believe in god. and in this community it's entirely acceptable to conceive of god in your own way. or not to conceive of god at all. it's very open. I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this. just that I do have powerful experiences with some of the devotional aspects of yoga, but I'm just not sure how it fits into my path as a whole. I guess I'm still finding my way as a spiritual being. exploring. as long as I follow my heart, I'll find my way. but the yajna was beautiful. and I had an intense experience at one point... we were chanting a mantra 108 times and the offerers in white circled around the fire were tossing in seeds with each mantra. the purpose was to ask god to remove our negative samskaras, remove obstacles to our liberation. and somewhere in the middle of it, an excruciating pain began in my knee. I've been having problems with my knees, I keep stressing them in asana practice, but this was more intense than anything I've felt lately, a pain that just consumed me, and I felt dizzy and strange, like a thousand toxins were rushing through my system. I couldn't wrap my tongue around the mantra anymore, I just fell silent and bowed, silently asking for release. I grounded myself, I straightened up, I breathed deeply a few times. and I started to chant again. and it felt like something had just moved through me. something heavy and hard had been removed. I felt lighter, stronger. the pain in my body was gone. I can't tell you what it means. just that I had an experience. of a devotional nature. certainly not the first or last. and after two hours of ritual, the sun gone down and the fire burning bright, we ended with joyful sanskrit songs and sweets passed around and suddenly it felt like a party. energized and bright. and it was a good night for it. yajna always happens on the full moon, but this one was auspicious because it's also saka dawa-- the buddha's birthday, liberation day, and death day. it's a big holiday in buddhism, one of those super-double-bonus-point karma days, when anything you do, good or bad, is multiplied by hundreds of thousands. you try to be really, really good on those days. and today I tried to be really focused on my spiritual practice. on my relationship with the divine. I even got some work done on my writing assignment. not all of it, of course. that's probably what I should get to work on... enough rambling about god for the moment.
(((rings))) |