I had the good fortune last night to go and hear Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band from New Orleans play for the grand opening celebration of East Side Yoga in Austin. The band performs kirtan mantra chants with a bit of NOLA funk thrown in, and though I lived in New Orleans for a time I had never heard them play. What fun! A great, big spiritual sing along, and so healing. We sat shoulder to shoulder, swinging and swaying to the lush rhythms while Sean, Gwendolyn, and Alvin ushered us into another dimension. Would that more spiritual practice was so drenched in music and love!
When asked, Sean spoke about the Superbowl and what it meant to New Orleanians for the Saints to have won--people spontaneously running out into the streets, embracing strangers, high-fiving between cars, and dancing in the streets of the Quarter all night long. And all of this in the midst of carnival season. What a triumph for the city, five years after Katrina, when so many had left her for dead. I've been thinking a lot about NOLA lately, the city I had to leave but who always resides in my heart...
Themes of union and separation ~ both are important in the spiritual path ~ Shiva Nataraj, dancing the world into existence, unburned by the ring of flames that surrounds him because he is one with it. In union there is no distinction, but only from a place of separation can we see and feel and touch. As the Tao says: "Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations" (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1). And yet it is an endless dance, for as the Buddhist Heart Sutra teaches us "Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form." We swirl back and forth between unity and bittersweet separation, because that's where learning and growth occur. Learning how to become more and more gentle in the face of fear and injustice and sorrow...
Learning how to love, learning the power of love ~ this was the major message from Shambhala Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on the occasion of the Tibetan New Year (Year of the Iron Tiger, 2010), which fell on Valentine's Day this year. How can we express kindness and gentleness when provoked, rather than anger and aggression? Love is the path...
Shiva Nataraj image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
