Release
There are times when the weight of things gone by tends to drag us down. There is a great zen story of two monks walking in dense woods under an oath of silence when they happen upon a woman who has tried to climb a fence and got stuck in the barb wire. One of the monks goes to help her, and untangles her dress from the fence and soothes her with calming words as he helps her across the fence. Then the monks keep walking and after they have passed the threshold of where their silence ends the other monk turns to him and says, “You broke your vow.” And the monk looks at him and says, “I left that girl on the other side of the fence, so should you.”
This morning I walked the dogs around the bayou up by Desaix and they went swimming and I saw a friend who lives down there. He said he was tired of hearing about the anniversary of Katrina this and that and wanted everyone to just move passed this in their lives. Passed Katrina, passed the BP oil spill, passed all of these things that don’t serve us anymore.
Today’s yoga musing was about Rudra who fiercely disavows you of any tired thoughts you have and makes you think in an enlightened way – sort of very direct – but in yoga we talked about losing the tired, world weary ideas that weigh us down and opening ourselves up to new. Rudra is usually depicted with music and surrounded by fire and much like we have here in New Orleans it’s about destruction and resurrection and about the music that guides us through these transitions whether they be about sorrow or about joy.
Sunday marks five years since New Orleans was under water – yes we are moving on, but maybe it’s the Jew in me that also feels like we should never forget – so we’re going to release some of our inner demons by burning wisps of papers with all the things that we harbor that no longer serve us written on them and then we will cast a piece of bread into the bayou for each of those things we welcome into our lives now. We’ll be channeling a little Rudra.