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A Bite of Cake
Balancing the intentional with the unplanned
Mark Schultz
I lived for some years near Boston, on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The state of Massachusetts, where Boston is located, has a long history of study, with many periods where the philosophies of the East were in close proximity to those of the West. Some of the regional authors were inspired (from inspiration, “to breath in”) by insight practices, and brought them to their writing and their lives. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman were some of those writers. Many spiritual communities were created around that time. They aspired to create more mindful, intentional lives with others who shared their ideals. Again in the 1960s and 1970s, the seeds of mindfulness and concentration sprouted into numerous community projects.
I was happy to live in this region of the country. I was able to visit and be part of some of the communities, whose roots were deep and so varied.
At the end of the last century, teachers from South and Southeast Asia came to the United States as a physical bridge between philosophies and cultures. Paramahansa Yogananda, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Swami Kripalu. Our teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh came to the United States in 1966, and touched the deep suffering in the American people with his words. Ours was a suffering which had spilled over into Thầy’s home country and into many other places around the world.
When Swami Kripalu came to North America, he founded a residential ashram for the study of the Eight Limbs of Yoga of Patañjali1. I was fortunate to be so close to the center of teaching of Kripalu Yoga. With such a strong heart-based lineage nearby, many other lineages of study flourished, including the Ashtanga school, with its careful attention to physical and psychological alignment, and the more recent Anusara (“Heart Opening”) school, which was intentionally a marriage of the heart and the science of the body.
In a happy and nourishing time of my life, I contributed my experience building intentional community to a project with two close friends, when they opened an Anusara Center in my little seaside town. They invited teachers with wonderful knowledge of body and yoga therapeutics. We gained much awareness of the “body in the body” through their teaching. I taught meditation on movement and the philosophy of mindfulness, in part inspired by Thích Nhất Hạnh’s writings. If the participants were happy and filled with our meetings, I must admit that the nourishment received by the facilitator was even greater: there is nothing more enriching than the study and writing required when looking for the most skillful words and most tangible metaphors for a notion of the Yoga Sutras or the Buddhist Dharma. The act (or the art) of reaching for meaning invites every passage into the body and the mind. Wonderful. I highly recommend facilitation, to awaken the Buddha in you.
Reaching and practice requires careful effort, and effort requires rest. One weekend I traveled to Kripalu Center for their “rest and relaxation” retreat. It included seva or community service. I have always enjoyed working with food, on the farm or in the kitchen, and I chose to be close to those preparing meals for the retreatants. Here were people dedicated to preparing the most delicious vegetarian meals, healthy main dishes and tasty accompaniments. Everything was prepared to nourish the body and to avoid distracting the mind. There were no refined sugars. There were few sugars of any kind, in fact.
I remember overhearing a conversation in the doorway on a Saturday. Saturdays were the yogis’ equivalent of the Plum Village “Lazy Day”, where the restrictions placed on diet and activities were slightly eased. Two residents of the Center were talking about going to town for an outing. “… and a piece of chocolate!”, one said. “Real chocolate! These healthy desserts are fine… most of the time!”
Careful practice is the seed; the fruit of understanding is what we harvest. Healthy food nourishes the body; a clear mind, strength and agility, and good sleep is the harvest. And sometimes, a bite of cake is nice.
I was thinking about the smiles and waves we share around the margins of our Zoom meetings. Those gestures are different in nature to the deep speaking and listening of our Dharma Sharing circles. They are nobly, happily silent after our Morning and Evening Chants. What we don’t have (yet) in our Sangha activities is that nibble of cake! Some of us are in and out of lock-down. Others may be living alone, with the graces and the isolation that suggests. Maybe we can serve a little sweetness for the heart, along with our nutritious diet of Dharma.
I was wondering if we would enjoy sharing an open-microphone tea with other Sangha members? Without such deep listening, and such careful speech, we might share simple stories, and hear more about other’s lives than might otherwise be part of our intentional practice. I suppose we could go for a walk, as well, if people brought their Zoom-a-phones with ear buds. Other groups gather for music nights… We could create one or more open meeting times, where early folks and later folks could drop in to say “Hello!”
There’s the seed of an idea, planted in a meandering story about the history of philosophy, and a long buildup to a simple invitation, don’t you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to nourish and grow our community, even as we live at such physical distances from one another.
1 Scholars believe that Patañjali lived around the second century BCE. One imagines he was exposed to the teachings of Gautama the Buddha and the Noble Eightfold Path. Three of the Eight Limbs of Yoga attend to the spirit: dhyana (Meditation), dharana (Concentration) and samadhi (Absorption); other elements give focus to physical practices that support this spiritual path: asana (Postures), pranayama (Breath Control), pratyahara (Withdrawal of the Senses); and the final two limbs are the consequences of one’s practice in action: similar to precepts, these are the yama (Abstinences) and the niyama (Observances).