I renounce Judaism, renounce my Israeli title, Renounce great material things and renounce poverty.
I am not anti Judaism, nor anti Israel. I am not, pro Israel, nor am I pro Palestine.
I am, not because I think, not because I work, see or smell. I am.
Choosing a side is choosing violence. Seeing whole and allowing freedom, understanding the conditioning of all, the projections and the fear, being whole with one self, one becomes free and freedom expands from there on.
Knowing this and yet understanding that in daily life actions are happening, arms are fired, weapons are used. There are immediate reactions, anger arises, and especially when close family is danger or even hurt. What to do?
There is conflict. “Conflict arises from self-centered concern” (J. Krishnamurti. The fragmentation, the dividing of you and me, of them and us, create fragmented unions of groups, societies, and nations.
Creating outer changes, trying to look for solutions from the outside, may come from a place of not being capable of change within. The outer change, at times guided by teachers, parents, society, priests or any other authority, is mostly a change based on belief. Instead of believing, lets try to experience. We can listen to guidance, try it out on ourselves and see what holds true for us. Once experiencing is there, we no longer try, just be. There is an understanding, a manifestation of what is.
A message from my insurance company gives tips on how to deal with the anxiety and stress coming from the situation around the globe. Life is changing every moment. One day we have more and another less, one day our neighbors are nice to me and another I perceive them as hostile. Can I accept these changes? Notice if they arise from within my mind, am I adding value to events that are passing by, It is not about putting a band-aid, instead lets find the root cause, understand who am I?
My Dad used to say “Better be smart than right ”. True, he was talking about driving. I remember when I just got my license, and as I was driving our white Audi 80, coming into our street, another car, a red small one, tried to sneak in from the side and go ahead of us.
Knowing that I had the right, and the car needed to wait as it had a yield sign, I downshifted gear and stormed ahead. It was close but I won. 20 years later, I understand what my dad meant. What would I rather, be right and get into a possible accident or let the car go, stay calm and smile with compassion.
This is not a political statement. This is just an observation, just what comes to me now as I head to bed.
Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Cadavers, Meditation, Anatomy and the Body
Sitting still, following the breath, the grass grows by itself. The stream outside flows softly, fish swimming with no direction. Art ideas flow to my mind, scrolls, bodies, and life stories, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Buddha, my breath.
In and out it goes, softening the mind, softening the gaze, eyes open looking at nothing, gravity below, my sense of perception fades away, no eye or ear, no cushion no back no knee. Some time later the bell rings, and people get up to walk. I am back to my senses, filled with energy, clear, I find myself still sitting, another hour goes by timelessly, another bell rings, instructions for another type of meditation, I can’t hear, just watch softly, like a quiet, slow silent movie, I drop again, feeling myself dissolve, where do I go?
Last weekend was an intensive meditation weekend at Marpa house, a beautiful residential Shambala center. This followed some meditation classes we had at the huge and well-kept Shambala center in Boulder.
Is there a soul to this body? Are we just flesh and bones?
As we arrived to studio 50 in a commercial area outside Boulder, the smell of formaldehyde was in the air. The room, or big warehouse space rather, was very clean, high ceilings, and some black boards. In the far end I could spot two large metal tables with a top that looked like a shiny silver coffin.
Tod, the anatomy specialist gives us a long intro in preparation for the experience. We then put on white coats and gloves, almost like we were a bunch of doctors about to enter the surgery room.
We roll over the metal tables and some other tables that have blue or yellow plastic bags to the center of the room. These could easily be identified as containing bodies.
We start with Frank, then we look at William, the bodies have names, after death names. The bodies are real, but lying lifeless, somewhat dissected, there is something less human about them. The “life”, the energy is missing. Someone said the soul is missing. This body, 80 years old when it stopped functioning on its own, before it donated itself to science, was alive, moving, digesting, seeing, thinking, where is the thinker now? What happened to the memories? Are they stored in the non-functioning hard drive called brain? Were the feelings a matter of the sense organs only? What was the force that kept it going, and where is that force now?
Muscles, tendons, and bones, each cadaver is dissected to different layers. Digestive system comes out, I hold the pancreas, stretch the small (but long) intestine, hold a brain split in two, move the jaw as I look at the gold sitting on the teeth, touch the ribs and observe the pelvis.
The first moment at the cadaver lab, reminds me of identifying my dad at the morgue in the hospital in Be’er Sheva Israel, but there he was still in one piece. Back then I still had memories to tag to the freshly dead body. Sounds and touch I could still feel through my mind.
Then I let this memory go. The bodies in front of me, with all their history, are now just bodies. History behind they can almost seem like animal parts that I recognized at a hustling kitchen or a whole foods store.
Richard Freeman, our Yoga Guru (teacher) bends the bones of the leg to place them in Padmasana, the lotus sitting position, and a crack sounds, the meniscus was torn. Ouch, good thing there is no one to feel the pain anymore.
It’s another reminder that this body is not really ours. I remember walking into the super sanitized room where Eran, my dear friend was laying, Cancer swimming in his blood, tubes in his veins, and a look in his eyes so different than a few months earlier when we were traveling in the north east of the US.
Eran’s body was so different, was it still him? A week later Eran’s body stopped functioning. Where did Eran go? Did he stop functioning? Was there an essence, a “Purusha”, an ever-prevailing energy that slipped out of the tired body and kept going, formless. This body of ours, changes so easily all the time. So many of its functions happen without consulting with us. The breath flows in and out, the heart beats and we don’t need to think of it. At times our body weakens, and we feel sick. If this is our body, how can it be doing things we don’t want it to?
If we loose an organ or an arm, is it still our body? We can take another organ away, and another, at what point does it cease to be our body? We sure are the caretakers of this body, this functioning machine that hosts our sense organs, our brain and all the tools to function in this material world, but is this all we are?
Looking at my fingers as they type away, I smile with gratitude.
In and out it goes, softening the mind, softening the gaze, eyes open looking at nothing, gravity below, my sense of perception fades away, no eye or ear, no cushion no back no knee. Some time later the bell rings, and people get up to walk. I am back to my senses, filled with energy, clear, I find myself still sitting, another hour goes by timelessly, another bell rings, instructions for another type of meditation, I can’t hear, just watch softly, like a quiet, slow silent movie, I drop again, feeling myself dissolve, where do I go?
Last weekend was an intensive meditation weekend at Marpa house, a beautiful residential Shambala center. This followed some meditation classes we had at the huge and well-kept Shambala center in Boulder.
Is there a soul to this body? Are we just flesh and bones?
As we arrived to studio 50 in a commercial area outside Boulder, the smell of formaldehyde was in the air. The room, or big warehouse space rather, was very clean, high ceilings, and some black boards. In the far end I could spot two large metal tables with a top that looked like a shiny silver coffin.
Tod, the anatomy specialist gives us a long intro in preparation for the experience. We then put on white coats and gloves, almost like we were a bunch of doctors about to enter the surgery room.
We roll over the metal tables and some other tables that have blue or yellow plastic bags to the center of the room. These could easily be identified as containing bodies.
We start with Frank, then we look at William, the bodies have names, after death names. The bodies are real, but lying lifeless, somewhat dissected, there is something less human about them. The “life”, the energy is missing. Someone said the soul is missing. This body, 80 years old when it stopped functioning on its own, before it donated itself to science, was alive, moving, digesting, seeing, thinking, where is the thinker now? What happened to the memories? Are they stored in the non-functioning hard drive called brain? Were the feelings a matter of the sense organs only? What was the force that kept it going, and where is that force now?
Muscles, tendons, and bones, each cadaver is dissected to different layers. Digestive system comes out, I hold the pancreas, stretch the small (but long) intestine, hold a brain split in two, move the jaw as I look at the gold sitting on the teeth, touch the ribs and observe the pelvis.
The first moment at the cadaver lab, reminds me of identifying my dad at the morgue in the hospital in Be’er Sheva Israel, but there he was still in one piece. Back then I still had memories to tag to the freshly dead body. Sounds and touch I could still feel through my mind.
Then I let this memory go. The bodies in front of me, with all their history, are now just bodies. History behind they can almost seem like animal parts that I recognized at a hustling kitchen or a whole foods store.
Richard Freeman, our Yoga Guru (teacher) bends the bones of the leg to place them in Padmasana, the lotus sitting position, and a crack sounds, the meniscus was torn. Ouch, good thing there is no one to feel the pain anymore.
It’s another reminder that this body is not really ours. I remember walking into the super sanitized room where Eran, my dear friend was laying, Cancer swimming in his blood, tubes in his veins, and a look in his eyes so different than a few months earlier when we were traveling in the north east of the US.
Eran’s body was so different, was it still him? A week later Eran’s body stopped functioning. Where did Eran go? Did he stop functioning? Was there an essence, a “Purusha”, an ever-prevailing energy that slipped out of the tired body and kept going, formless. This body of ours, changes so easily all the time. So many of its functions happen without consulting with us. The breath flows in and out, the heart beats and we don’t need to think of it. At times our body weakens, and we feel sick. If this is our body, how can it be doing things we don’t want it to?
If we loose an organ or an arm, is it still our body? We can take another organ away, and another, at what point does it cease to be our body? We sure are the caretakers of this body, this functioning machine that hosts our sense organs, our brain and all the tools to function in this material world, but is this all we are?
Looking at my fingers as they type away, I smile with gratitude.
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