The Rooted Body of Awakening

The opening lines of the central early Buddhist Sati Patthana Sutta read

The intent one goes to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, sits down, folding their legs crosswise, holding their body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore.

We hear that, at the beginning, the seeker seeks out a tree. And then, at the end, the Buddha finds awakening at the foot of the same tree.

In the image and prescription, we see a rooted body and awakening rising together.

In the Buddha’s case, we also have the story of a person who knew the world well. His awakening, though, seems to have involved rerooting in the natural world. A long lineage of forest monks have followed this path to this day.

Shiva, the ‘Lord of Yoga’ and prime symbol of Reality and awakening for many devotees, is also deeply rooted in the natural world. One of his other names is Pashupati, Lord of the Animals. Some interpretations might say it is an image of his state above the animals. A different perspective emphasizes his integrated relationship with his animal/earthling self and his animal kin in nature.

Jesus is also imaged spending significant time in the desert, referred to by some from that region as ‘God’s garden.’ Jesus is transformed through his experiences there. St Francis is one of the most beloved Christian saints, known for his love of animals and the natural world.

Philosopher and activist Henry Thoreau, Poet Walt Whitman, Naturalist and protector of pristine wilderness John Muir, and groundbreaking anthropologist and animal rights activist Jane Goodall are modern champions and guides into a devoted and transformative relationship with nature. Modern poets like Mary Oliver and entire poetic traditions like haiku center their revelations in the natural world and its many relationships, moments, seasons, and shades.

Native American-born, Mayan Shaman, Martin Prechtel tells us, “the more you consciously remember your indigenous soul, the more you physically remember it.” (The Sun Magazine, “Saving the Indigenous Soul,” April 2001)

Prechtel announces the bridge of body and soul via our original connection to the earth and, as Prechtel calls it, ‘the other wold.’ Prechtel explains, unlike notions of a far away transcendent spiritual world, “If this world is a tree, then the other world would be the roots- the part of the plant we can’t see, but that puts the sap into the tree’s veins…The other world is what makes this world work. And the way we help the other world continue is by feeding it with our beauty.”

Is this what the Buddha was doing? What Shiva does or Jesus does? Creating beauty to feed the worlds? Undoubtedly Thoreau, Whitman, and Muir, and Goodall are all praised for the beauty they created and invoked and protected. Muir shared that, after becoming blinded in an industrial accident, he prayed to be able to see the beauty of the natural world again. After six uncertain weeks. his sight returned and Muir became devoted to seeing and protecting the beauty of the natural world. The Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, also known for his love of the natural, encourages us. “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

Sitting, kneeling, kissing, living in, retreating to, writing poems about, and devoting one’s life to the protection of the natural sound like some of the hundred or thousand ways to awaken our indigenous connection.

Whitman tells us to loafe and contemplate a simple blade of grass. To not be surprised if soon we will find ourselves in communion with all those past and all those to be born. To be ready to understand that ‘to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.’

Mary Oliver writes, “for me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” She adds, “I dont 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.” And, “My work is loving the world…which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”

The astonished one is the blessed one, the awakened one. The astonished one sees and feels and hears and smells and tastes and intuits the unity of the fruits and the roots, natural and human, personal and collective, mortal and immortal, this world and the other. The astonished one cannot simply allow it all to be ground up to make tennis rackets, fast fashion, or vacation homes. The astonished, mindful, bodyful, heartful, courageous, artful, devoted one loves and their love is beauty that feeds this world…and the next.

To work with Dave 1:1 you can find out more here: https://www.davesmithdharma.com/mentoring/

Today I speak with Pilates and yoga teacher, and community organizer, Marisa Fuglestad. Originally from The Twin Cities area, Marisa shares about their struggles and insights making a way in a world of great need as well as great heart and beauty and depths. We touch on connecting with ethnic roots and ancestral traditions as well the call to care and to help create a revolution of greater justice and peace. Marisa is a former resident at The Mount Madonna Center and currently teaches Pilates in the Watsonville area.

Celtic Spring (February 1st) Dear Body

Dear Body

Nature's inhale begins to deepen this time of year.

A time of year that many cultures have celebrated as the beginning of spring.

For the Celtic tradition, the name of the holiday refers to the lambs giving birth.

On a physiological level, we can see this moment as the first half of the inhale.

The belly begins to show with this inhale.

At midwinter, what we call the beginning of winter in the United States, the winter solstice, we praised the exhausted Earth.

We praise the depths and darkness of a deep well.

We image an orchard without leaves, snow on the ground, at night.

At Celtic spring, early blossoms emerge.

If we listen-

We hear soft stirrings among the low rumble of the hibernators breathing in their winter shelters.

They stir, catching the faint scent of the early blossoms as some part of their intelligence registers that a new year of growth and outwardness is quietly beginning to call.

Dear Body

This is still the first half of our inhale.

This is still a season of collecting ourselves.

Collecting and connecting internally and externally- as we look towards the projects of growth and cultivation.

These projects rest on the wisdom and substance of our past efforts.

We are sustained by fruits from prior years, and this is what we have to share during the season.

In order to add to those fruits, we need to honor that this is the time of giving to ourselves and preparing ourselves.

The wisdom of the seasons helps us track the time we have for collecting and cultivating, and growing.

And to track when it will be time to harvest and give and share and remember and release again.

Celtic fall begins August 1st. We turn towards harvesting then.

Maybe we've been distracted by practices and culture that do not remind us of the hour and time of the season.

Maybe we didn't start thinking about harvest and fall until November.

For the Celts, this was already the time to begin honoring and surrendering to Winter.

Surrendering to Winter on November 1st, we may be ready to quietly and gently begin to open our hearts and minds to a New Year of new fruits, wisdom, and care.

We may be ready on February 1st.

Dear Body

It is okay.

You do not need to be in permanent bloom or permanent fruiting.

Rest in the work you've done in the past and all the wisdom and work that others have done.

Rest in the relationships you have already cultivated, honored, and articulated.

Let them be a nest from which to honor this moment of quietly waking up.

Let them be a nest from which to harvest the fruits of our winter sleep, our dreams, and begin consulting our trusted practices and guides regarding what needs to be cultivated this year.

Dear Body

Let this be the morning of the year.

A mindful morning.

Move slowly.

Set a sustainable pace

Take care to remember and recollect all our relations and wisdom, all our gratitude and love.

Let the great projects and wonderful harvests begin with a song

A song sung to the belly-

To the babies in the bellies.

Invite the still sleeping babes into a world that honors their cycles and spirals.

A world that knows rest and quiet as much as action and symphony.

Savor the still, long, dark, and cool early spring mornings.

That will soon enough give way to longer, brighter, warmer days.

Dear Body

This moment has come soon enough.

The year will come soon enough.

The bright revelations will come soon enough.

The harvest moons and winter silence of sharing and letting go and surrendering again will come soon enough.

Derik Eselius is the co-founder of the Denver Yoga Underground The DYU's stated mission: to create a safe haven for dedicated yoga students and teachers to study traditional yoga methods and philosophy, foster good in themselves, and serve communities in need with yoga practice. We do this through allied partnerships, community-based classes, PWYC workshops, and yoga teacher training.

In our conversation the body is contextualized as an honest and connected companion. A humble and grounded part of the intelligence that underlies all the forms of life and our capacity for wisdom and goodness.

A celebration and invocation of poet Walt Whitman- a true champion of the love and beauty and wisdom of the body and earth. The text for the reflection that is presented in this episode of The Bodcast is below. Works referenced and quoted are listed beneath the transcript.

Whitman’s Body Miraculous

Let us be humbled, as Walt Whitman sang, by ‘the limitless and delicious wonder.’ Humbled by the earth and all the earthlings. Whitman’s love was awe mixed with joy. He tells us in no uncertain terms to trust the body, all the bodies, all the natural wonders, big and small. He opens his arms wide, his heart wide, and his tongue and nose and ears and eyes and skin and imagination wide. He dilates his entire being so that the body and soul, poet and reader, earth and sky, commingle and interpenetrate inside a moment and a poem. This is the secret- to look no further for God or gods or the soul, but to respond, to open, to go with the armies of Life and Love. Resistance is futile. Charge it all with soul and be prepared to know the limitless and delicious. The Wonderful.

Humility matters here. This is not the diversions of a hedonist. This is not just intoxication. This is Gibran’s true lover, ready ‘to know the pain of too much tenderness.’ Ready to be not just the feaster but also the sacred bread for Love’s feast. To be guided to the bedsides of the wounded and dying. To be guided to enter the heated dialogues and debates and battles of society and the world with the song of the exquisite body and miraculous earth to share. Whitman may have had a strong conviction. It came from baptising himself in wonder each day.

Big and small. High and low. Drunken and sober. Black and white. Female and male. Country and city. Natural and human-made. Body and soul- ‘nothing else but miracles.’

‘To die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.’

‘Argue not concerning God-’ just open to It.

Yes, he knew many privileges. Yes, these privileges nourished and underpinned his audacity and courage. Yes, his poem is not enough. Yes, it is just a finger pointing. It points to a ‘democratic vista’ where the body in all its forms, human and more than human, sings electrically for the deliverance of all back into the mother’s lap- the Deliverance of all to the open country of summer grass, the soulful, the brave and free.

Whitman points to a place birthed by a song of celebration where we may meet, in this body or another, even amid the confused and corrupted, violent and smutty. Where we may find a quiet place to sit holding hands, speaking little, maybe not at all, and feel happy to be together.

Whitman works referred to here:

• The poem ‘Miracles’
• The poem ‘A Child Said, What is the Grass?’
• Phrases from his notebooks
• Preface of Leaves of Grass
• The poem ‘I Sing the Body Electric’
• Title of the poetry collection Democratic Vistas
• The poem ‘A Glance’
• The poem ‘I Celebrate Myself’

In this episode Randall and I talk about the beautiful, funny, plugged-in, and mysterious relationship with the body. Ultimately the body, as a master of flow, delivers a message of safety and ease.

Randall Potter is a tradesman and an integral part of The Home of Truth in Alameda, California.

The Home of Truth was founded 125 years ago in Alameda as a beacon of the New Thought movement and has always been a place for open-minded and hearted people seeking to realize and make good on the blessing of being alive.