Namaste friends,

I'd like to invite you to write a haiku.  This is a great practice that I've followed myself over the years, and you might like it to.

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry with rather formal rules.  We take some small liberties when we translate these into English, but I think we preserve the felling of reading and writing a very small snapshot of life.

Specifically, in English we write Haiku with 17 syllables written in three lines.  The first line should contain five syllables, the second seven, the third five.  If you'd like to stay even closer to the Japanese form, mention nature or the season.

And that's it:  very simple rules, very few words.  I recommend that you stick pretty closely to the guidelines.  Writing in this way practically demands that you focus on nouns and verbs.  There's little room for adjectives.  This has a parallel in our yoga practice, and that's one reason I'm so interested in Haiku.  Don't try for it though, it will happen on its own.  Just enjoy picking a subject and distilling your feelings about it.

When you have one you like email it to me; I'd like to post them here.  Some Haiku benefit from a little bit of explanation, some are perfect without it.  Include a sentence or two of its origins if you'd like.  Please include your name.  my email address is d t mackenzie at comcast dot net.

Be well and Shanti,

David

Hello friends,

It's this time of year that we speak about our gratitude, and it's good that we do so.

One of the things that enriches my life is our broader (yes, our western) yoga community.  To celebrate it, I thought I'd take time to note some of the great asana teachers who have passed through Yoga Now over the years and who are now gone.  This is not a complete list, it's a personal list.  Many teachers are missing from it; maybe some day we can get Meta to put up a complete "Alumni list."

Anyway, here are some of the great teachers I remember from recent years:

Erica DiCaro:

I moved to Albuquerque only a month after having received my own teaching certificate and at the time, Erica was teaching our 3-hour advanced class on Sunday nights.  She would commonly teach 5-minute headstands, and for some reason in that environment I could do them.  Erica almost always taught while carrying around a cup of tea.

Julie Clover:

Julie was one of many teachers I've had who studied with Pattabi Jois in Mysore, India.  Like many of them, Julie seemed to have had compassion for her students pounded into her bones.  She described herself as "one of those gym girls."  I teach a core set almost every Tuesday night which is lifted mostly from Julie's classes.

Keith Croslin:

Keith absolutely exudes calmness and concentration.  If he and Genvieve have had children by now, they have the kind of father every child could want.  You never talked to Keith about asana without covering other parts of this path, especially diet and fasting.

Omkara Solare:

Omkara gave a great deal of physical adjustments in class; she really seemed to enjoy doing it.  Sometimes you could hear her martial-arts-trained feet sprinting across the floor to set someone's shoulders in down dog.  Like me, she loves Bhajans, and you could often hear her singing along with the CDs while she taught.  She liked to play her harmonium during Savasana.

Lisa Riser:

There are some teachers who are very shy when they start, but you just know that they have to teach.  Lisa was one.  She could get out more words between inhales than anyone else I've ever known.  She once told her young son, Emerson, about reincarnation; he promptly elected to come back as a butterfly.

Thanks for being there, friends.  Maybe we can all be butterflies.

David

Hi all and shanti.

We're having some technical difficulties at the website here and can't currently accept any of your comments, so my previous post is not so useful and I've retired it.

While we get it fixed, however, I wanted to take the time to recommend a book I liked alot which some of you might find useful as well.

It's called "Instructions for the Cook" by Roshi Bernie Glassman.  (http://www.amazon.com/Instructions-Cook-Masters-Lessons-Matters/dp/0517888297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258547605&sr=1-1).  It's a quick read: one sitting, probably, or maybe two; and it's a pretty remarkable story.

Bernie Glassman was an aerospace engineer in the seventies and eighties before deciding to make his Zen practice full time.  He acquired some space in an impoverished section of New York (Brooklyn as I remember), and began a homeless home (shelter is definitively the wrong word).  He also started a business to support it (and for it to support).

He describes in detail their process of applying the buddhist precept of "right livelihood" to the decision about which kind of business to start.  Also, they needed a trade which his formerly-homeless colleagues (I think he'd like the word colleagues) could learn quickly and teach each other.  They chose to start a bakery, and I'm not giving away much of the story to tell you that they eventually became chocolatiers to some of Manhattans highest-end addresses, as well as Ben and Jerry's.

Also of interest to me was when he described starting their food pantry.  He served food to the homeless with table cloths and a flower on each table.  He was told that soup kitchens don't look that way.  But he said that places where people eat do and should look that way.

Anyway, if you can get it, I think you'd enjoy it.  I have one copy I'd be happy to lend out.  email me at dtmackenzie at comcast dot net if your're interested.

Be well, and as Roshi Glassman would probably remind us: cook, eat and serve mindfully.

Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu,

David