On Interconnectedness, and Dhara

A couple weeks ago, I joined perhaps the most eclectic yoga class ever. Well, this needs clarification. It isn't a yoga class. It isn't qi gong. It isn't meditation. It isn't a discussion group. It isn't a lecture. It isn't a wellness seminar. It isn't a group of people hanging out and eating fruit together in the late afternoon deep in the heart of Flatbush. It's all of those things. I stumbled upon a flier while trying out Third Root's free Wednesday morning meditation session (this is a place I spoke about with excitement in a past entry, and it certainly lived up to my own self-created hype), for a Young Adults Wellness Program. I am, just barely, within the age range, and, though I was worried I'd come face to face with a group of frenzied 14 year olds, I decided to drop my judgements and just be open to trying it. Turns out, most of the group is also composed of early twenties college age students, still making me a rare bird, a college graduate, but all the same, this is probably one the best experiences I've had so far in the city, and I'm sure I'll talk about it from many angles again in the future. The teacher, Jenna, has just returned from basically living alone in a cave in the middle of China for at least a year, and she is immediately engaging herself in non-profit endeavors (Her organization is called Dhara, and her website offers an introduction to one of the breathing techniques she uses. It's nice.) to put her learnings to work. In addition to a young adults program, she works with mentally ill students in a program called Six Weeks To Wellness (This program was featured in Time Magazine). She is such a calming presence, fully aware of how quirky and out of place she seems in this furiously active city, doing Tai Chi in Central Park, coming to class bearing Carribean fruits one week to celebrate the culture of Flatbush and apples and honey the next, explaining that in the Jewish tradition they eat this to symbolize the wish that "the fruits of your year be sweet." She's got a beautiful, magnetic soul, and her students follow her with total adoration. It's really bewildering; this young American woman with all the spirit of an old Chinese sage. Kind of turns your perceptions of culture and social standards on its head.

What is coming to mind at the moment about her class is that yesterday we practiced tree pose, first on our own, and then by standing in a circle together and touching palms. The pose was much easier to do with this subtle touch, and we all could feel the sway and struggle of everyone else in the group. Rather than creating a domino effect, it led to a gradual decrease in swaying, and near-total stillness. As one student put it in discussion afterwards, we felt both the strength of the person next to us and the responsibility of helping them stay stable by remaining stable ourselves. Jenna replied, "We're in our natural state in this way. Oneness. Interconnectedness. We just need to learn to feel like this all the time, out there in the world, because in reality, we effect each other just as much out there as we do right here."

What a concept. I won't even explain it, or attempt to explain it. Needless to say, there is, absolutely, a universal law of interconnectedness. Down to the atoms. I mean, really, what is keeping us apart? There is no break in the line of molecules leading from you to me. But you don't even have to go that deep. They say a butterfly flapping its wings causes a tsunami half way around the world. Could a peaceful stance, a loving attitude, somehow effect the day of all the someones inevitably connected to us in our urban everyday life, and bring peace to their family, to their work place, to their relatives and friends and organizations, bring perspective and balance and energy to their outlook, to their output, to the effect they have on this world?

Food for thought. Vital food for thought.

As for me, I kind of get caught in the awe of it, of that total interconnectedness, and maybe that's a good place to get stuck. In perfect, complete awe of this terrifyingly alive, terrificly interwoven city.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver