Tag: desire

Wanting Mind

May 16, 2013
Posted by Sharon
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Love Letter Thursday 5.16.13
Pittsburgh, PA

On this Thursday, I send you some ideas on the wanting mind.  Rooted in desire, the wanting mind is constantly evaluating what we like, don’t like, wish for and don’t wish for.  Although the world keeps changing right underneath our feet, we grasp with the wanting mind and hope (expect?) that somehow we can set the circumstances in place that will allow things to be “just so” and for as long as possible.  This is, exactly, the idea behind the love note itself.  Or is it?

In Phillip Moffitt’s book, Emotional Chaos to Clarity (which, by the way, I can’t recommend highly enough), he explores the difference between expectation and possibility.  And, I argue that, based on his explanation of the difference between the two, a love note is exciting because it is filled with possibility rather than expectation.  Sure, you don’t expect to open my little note on Thursday and find something mean spirited, but the reason why you look forward to these notes is because anything is possible—will it be a poem, a song, a video, a picture, a……….well, anything is possible really and there lies the joy.  But, if you found yourself really liking the love letters with videos and you opened this and didn’t find a video, well then, you might not be able to truly enjoy this love note for what it is.  In essence, your expectation that your wanting mind’s preference for videos in my love notes, when not met, will cause you to have a bad experience of this note even though it is entirely pleasant.

And, according to Phillip Moffitt, we pretty much do this to ourselves all the time.  We allow our wanting mind to determine what we like and when we don’t get it, regardless of how pleasant the reality might be, it is near impossible to let go of the disappointment and appreciate what is possible.

Wow!

Expectations narrow options, limit imagination and create pressure because you can only have a sense of well being if your wanting mind’s expectations are met.  Possibilities, on the other hand, are a request rather than a demand.  Possibilities are based on what is actually happening in the present moment.  Possibilities allow you to consider that there might be something even greater than what you think you want.

TAKE ACTION

What kinds of expectations has your wanting mind brought to your attention today?  Is there anything you expect that you might be able to release and turn into a possibility?  For example, all day long you look forward to your yoga class because you love your teacher.  Just the sound of her voice makes you feel calm and collected.  But, when you show up for class, you find out that your teacher had to fly back to San Francisco to visit with her sick Auntie and there is a substitute instructor.  Can you resist your urge to pack up your mat and head back out, disgruntled?  Can you turn this expectation into a possibility?  Can you give the present enough time to reveal potential?  Can you, just for a few moments, entertain the idea that you might even like the substitute teacher better than your regular teacher?  Or, maybe you will learn something new?  Or, maybe your experience will simply reinforce your gratitude for having found your regular teacher?

In honor of love letter Thursday, I ask you to challenge yourself to turn one expectation into a possibility and share your experience with the community below.

This Love Letter is brought to you from Sharon Rudyk, a Pittsburgh based yoga and meditation instructor, yoga therapist and doula.  Do you want my newsletter brought right to your inbox every Thursday?  Of course you do!  Well, then sign up here.

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Do You Know Your Heart?

September 27, 2011
Posted by Sharon
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This weekend, Plamen Karagyozov will be facilitating a three-hour workshop featuring the heart salutations at Yoga Matrika, an intimate space for yoga, meditation and healing in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.  Acquaint Your Heart will be held from 1:00 to 4:00pm on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at Yoga Matrika.

If you were asked to describe your heart’s desire, most likely, you would immediately formulate a cerebral response that would be conditioned by culture, religion, traditions, expectations and other aspects of your unique human experience.  In reality, the heart is the very first organ of intelligence that you formed in your embryonic state.  We can learn how to consult the heart, listen to the heart and act on the heart through yoga and movement practices that draw upon our embodied intelligence to gain access to this important source of information.

The Heart Salutations that Plamen will offer in the workshop are a twelve step sequence flow (vinyasa) of energetic seals of the whole body(mudras) and asana that are accompanied by the breath (pranayama). At first, the body is warmed up and prepared for comfortable and effortless movement. Then the sequence is taught in sections with highlights on important details and gradually the entire salutation is practiced, featuring the various aspects of the heart and the circulatory system.Once the Heart Salutation is learned, with each pass through it, we layer in additional material, like Om, Yin-Yang and Tantra, transforming them from an intellectual concept to very palpable and practical aid in practice.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that, in 2006, 631,636 people in the United States died of heart disease.  This represents over 26% of deaths that year. In 2010, they predicted that heart disease would cost the United States $316.4 billion. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity.  There is most definitely a cost of life, quality of life and time with those we love when we ignore the intelligence of the heart.

In the Tantric view, we can use our bodies as a tool for liberation in this lifetime.  Invest in learning the heart salutations and practice them.  Learn how to relieve your cerebral perspective and listen to your heart.  Feel your heart’s desire and include this important form of intelligence in how you move through the world.

This post was written by Sharon Rudyk, Owner and Director of Programs at Yoga Matrika and Matrika Prenatal.  She hopes you will visit her soon and often at The Mat, an intimate space for yoga, meditation and healing in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, 15217. 

The McRib is Back

November 3, 2010
Posted by Sharon
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Nestled in between some of the most idiotic political advertisements I have ever seen was a clean and simple advertising campaign from the Mc family of restaurants announcing the “great news” that the McRib was back.  Seriously?  Did anyone miss the McRib?  Obviously, someone did.

For me, the idiotic campaigns of both politicians and this questionably edible treat are both a clear sign that it is time for everyone to do more yoga.  Doing yoga provides us with a clear connection to our deepest intelligence and relieves us of fear and anxiety about the future.  Over time, grounding ourselves in the present moment, with a deep connection to what is most true for ourselves and to our universal nature through breath and mindful movement prevents us from attachment to the forms of suffering that are implicated in these advertisements.

These advertisements indicate to me that these politicians and corporations are appealing to an un-centered population, one that is filled with desires, angers and fears that they can not even name.  Or, perhaps, even more dangerous, they have placed a false name on these deep emotions.  If you can point the finger at a “baby-killer” it releases you from being forced to see the “baby-killer” in yourself.  Of course, I do not mean this literally, but figuratively, placing blame of any kind on someone else or something else is a form of denial of the ways that each and every one of us suffer at the hands of our own desires, judgments and violence. 

Yoga does not have to mean putting on a pair of stretch pants and sitting on a plastic mat in some peaceful room.  It’s a great place to start, but maybe your starting point needs to be somewhere different.   Patanjali’s yoga sutras define yoga as the calming of the mental movements of the mind (1.2 yogas citta-vrtti-nirodhah).  No special clothing or props are mentioned.  What do you do that calms the mental movements of your mind?  Is it your work, spending time with your children, your volunteer work, through creativity, playing music, swimming/running/hiking, your prayer, your community work?  Whatever it is that brings you to a place that is in this moment is your yoga.  You probably already do a lot of yoga and just don’t know it!

Yoga brings you in touch with the present moment.  This moment is real.  Fear, blame, anxiety, desire and everything else implied by these advertising campaigns are all about some different moment—-either a moment from the past that you can’t get back or a moment in the future that is just conjecture.  The more you can be present in the reality of this very moment, the less you are at the mercy of campaigns that appeal to the worst, most suffering and fearful place in yourself.

If yoga isn’t for you, I still have some advice that may be of great import now that the McRib is back: Stay away from processed meat in the shape of bones.  In the words of Hans and Frans, listen to me now and hear me later, there just has to be something better to eat.  Really.

This entry was written by Sharon Rudyk, Owner and Director of Yoga Matrika in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  www.yogamatrika.com

Zen Sitting Group of Pittsburgh

May 24, 2010
Posted by Sharon
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Hogen Green has recently posted the new sitting schedule for the ZSGP.  Everyone is invited to sit with this group that meets by donation at Yoga Matrika in the Peace Room on some Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings.  The Zen Sitting Group of Pittsburgh has been very generous to Yoga Matrika and it is their beautiful Buddha that creates a sanctuary out of the Peace Room.  If you are interested in Zen, I encourage you to contact Hogen directly.  He provides orientations for those in the community who are new to Zen if you let him know ahead of the meeting that you are coming and require this introduction.

Here is the focus for the next group of sittings as communicated by Hogen in his most recent e-mail to the group:

The Bodhisattva is the model of practice in Mahayana Buddhism, and our model of how to live a life in the midst of the turmoil and challenges we face both in personal relationships, the life and death of those we know intimately as well our own death, and the catastrophes we see and feel in the larger perspective of this world.
At then end of each sitting together, we take the Four Bodhisattva Vows:

Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them

Desires are inexhaustable, I vow to put an end to them.

The Dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them,

The buddha way is unattainable, I vow to attain it.

We chant these vows 3 times.

This is not a casual chant we do. Taking a vow, these vows, sitting after sitting is transformative. Can be transformative if we begin to make a connection between how we live in response to the challenge of our life, and what these vows are poinying at. Transformation is the point of Zen practice. But transforming what, from what to what? And how does this happen? How does our life actually change in a way that helps our self and others?

Over the next several months, I’ll be giving a series of monthly talks on the path of the Bodhisattva. We will look at that path from the perspective of Vow, from that of the Prajna Paramita Sutra- the Heart Sutra as well as from the perspectives of what the great teachers of our tradition have offered. I invite you to make a special effort to attend both the scheduled talks and the sittings so that the  words of the talks and the experience of investigating the Bodhisattva path can be given life: your life. I would encourage you to deeply question what is said in these talks and if it is helpful, to bring these questions up for exploration.

Here is our schedule for the next weeks:

Tuesday evening May 25th 6:30  zazen

Sunday morning May 30th 9:30 AM, zazen, liturgy and senior’s talk

Tuesday evening June 8th, 6:30PM zazen

Sunday morning June 13th, 9:30 AM zazen liturgy

Tuesday evening June 22d 6:30PM zazen, liturgy

Sunday morning June 27th 9:30 AM, zazen, liturgy and senior’s talk

I hope to see you in the zendo and sit with you in sharing the Dharma.

Sunday Spring Schedule (9:30 to 11:30 am):

May 30
June 13
June 27

Tuesday Evening Schedule (6:30 pm):

May 25th
June 8
June 22
You can read more about the Zen Sitting Group of Pittsburgh and obtain contact information for the group’s leader, Hogen Green, on the Yoga Matrika website:

https://www.yogamatrika.com//contact-us/zen-sitting-group/

Posted by Sharon Fennimore Rudyk, Owner and Director of Yoga Matrika.  Yoga Matrika is located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh.

Hello There

Desire & Deserve

October 17, 2009
Posted by Sharon
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I was recently supervising my preschooler in the tub and, while he engaged in an imaginary battle between a Thomas the Tank Engine bath squirter and a Fisher Price fisherman, decided to pick up my shampoo bottle and read the text.  This text informed me that, by using this particular product, I would obtain results that would give me the hair that I both desired and deserved.

The desired part, I could identify with.  Of course, I desire healthy, shiny, full, fresh smelling and bouncy hair with appropriate fullness.  I certainly desire to protect my hair from anything that might cause damage.  This may be a whole lot of hope to place in dead skin cells, but I could not deny as I read the back of that bottle that, yes, I desired these things.  Admittedly, I also made my purchase with some hope that using this particular product would, in fact, help me obtain a head of hair that had just this list of delicious qualities.  For those of you who know me, I currently have a head of hair to rival Elvira—-it’s super long, grey at the temples and generally swept up in a casual way with a clip.  So, if I have desires for my hair, it’s both a whole lot of desire and a whole lot of hair to desire it with.

The deserved part, well, this seems problematic (at best!).  Exactly what kind of hair do I deserve and what have I done to deserve hair with these qualities?  I was immediately brought back to a Bill Crosby sketch where he made fun of folks who got drunk to the point of being physically ill at happy hours on Fridays because they had worked so hard that week that they deserved to get drunk. [Curious?  Need a good laugh? Check it out here:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYsko_tc3a0 ] After an immediate chuckle at this remembering, I started to think about the relationship between our yoga practice and what we desire and deserve.

In general, although we may not be honest with ourselves about the nature of our desire, we start taking yoga classes or start any specific class or practice with a certain goal or want or need that we would like to have satisfied.  We want to relieve stress, feel better, have more energy, look younger, be more fit, lose weight, make friends, be able to say that we too do yoga and fit in, lower our chances of heart disease, get pregnant or find some kind of blissful state.  These desires can be helpful in our practice when we acknowledge them with honesty (satya) and a certain level of willingness to release the desire long enough to focus on our breath and the practice at hand.  Perhaps our practice will show us that we have passions and desires that we were not aware of or not able to name.  In this sense, our practice can help illuminate certain truths about ourselves that may have been hidden.  This type of self-awareness is priceless and our practice, as it evolves, will reveal a revolving set of desires as well.

Thinking about the concept of deserve is at once very non-yogic and what yoga is all about.  It’s at the heart of so many philosophical debates about why bad things happen to good people.  Exactly what does anyone deserve and what role do we play in facilitating our own receipt of that just reward or just punishment.  In some ways, this is part of our exploration of satya (honesty) and ahimsa (non-violence).  When we are honest during our practices and create a flow of movement and breath that is steady and rhythmic that, in turn, steadies the mind, then we are also honoring our limits.  We are, one might say, getting the practice we deserve.  What happens when we fail to honor our limits?  The breath is short and our muscles are shaky and our footing is un-centered.  We feel weak, overwhelmed and our minds jump from one instruction to the next, one pose to the next, one shaky and aching shoulder/neck/thigh to the next.  In this case, one might also say that we are getting the practice we deserve.  On the other hand, we may just be re-enforcing the beliefs that we have about what we deserve that we carry with us on and off the mat.

I would like to suggest that you deserve a calm breath, ease through body and mind and a relationship with spirit that is both an inspiration and guide to act according to your highest ideals.  I desire this for you.  While you may desire a toned and lighter body, less stress, greater sex appeal or a sweaty romp through a familiar and anonymous flow—-you might get what you don’t deserve!  Injury, headaches, a racing heart, exhaustion, shallow breath and negative thoughts racing through your mind about how you would have been able to keep up if you were just a little younger, thinner, or more fabulous.  Desire is an intention that we can guide to a variety of opportunities and possibilities.  This week, in your practice, notice what you desire and see if you get what you deserve.

If all seems a great failure, I assure you that, apparently, bliss is available from an easily obtained bottle of shampoo straight off the shelf at Rite Aid—-for less than $4.00.  So, with a guarantee so close by and so economically obtained, what do you have to lose if you expand these concepts and take them onto your mat with you this week?  Before coming into a pose, honestly ask what it is that you desire from it.  When you come out of the pose, experience what it is that you deserve. Exhale.  You are beautiful!

 

Posted by Sharon Fennimore Rudyk
Owner and Director of Yoga Matrika in Pittsburgh, PA
https://www.yogamatrika.com/
http://www.sharonrudykyoga.info
http://www.prenatalyogapittsburgh.com