In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, I'll be doing a special ecologically-themed yoga class this Sunday @ the Sutra Shack. We'll discuss how spiritual practices such as yoga or meditation can lead us to a deeper and more harmonious connection to the natural world, followed by a vigorous asana practice. This will be a perfect class for the green-minded yogis out there.
The Sutra Shack is a neighborhood yoga studio, tucked in a corner of Riverland Terrace off Maybank Highway, where they teach yoga, art, and organic gardening. For more information on the Sutra Shack and the other classes they offer, check out their Facebook page.
If you have any questions about the class, feel free to contact me at oneworlddharma@gmail.com or 803.361.3842.
I've been a huge Pearl Jam fan since the age of 16. In my high school days, ten years after grunge music was the big fad, I was walking in flannel shirts and Doc Marten boots in honor of Eddie Vedder and the other Seattle rock heroes. Much of my musical taste of those days, thankfully, has fallen by the wayside over the years... but Pearl Jam has really stuck with me. In my mind, they always had deeper message and a more engaged conscience than some of their more narcissistic 90's rock peers. Their later albums, including their newest one Backspacer, have showcased a group of maturing and conscientious musicians concerned with the state of our world and the state of our souls. I particularly love one song off of Backspacer, entitled "Just Breathe." It speaks of appreciating what we have, of the importance of love and connection to others in the face of our earthly mortality. And, of course, as a practitioner of yoga and meditation, I like Eddie's advice to "just breathe". Hope you enjoy.
Yes, I understand
That every life must end, uh huh
As we sit alone
I know someday we must go, on home
I'm a lucky man,
To count on both hands
The ones I love
Some folks they have one,
Others, they've got none, uh huh
Stay with me
Let's just breathe
Practiced are my sins
never gonna let me win, uh huh
Under everything,
Just another human being, uh huh
I don't wanna hurt
There's so much in this world
To make me bleed
Stay with me
You're all I see
Did I say that I need you?
Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see,..
No one knows this more than me.
As I come clean.
I wonder everyday
as I look upon your face, uh huh
Everything you gave
And nothing you would take, uh huh
Nothing you would take
Everything you gave
Did I say that I need you?
Oh, did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see
No one knows this more than me.
As I come clean, uh huh
Nothing you would take
Everything you gave
Hold me till I die
Meet you on the other side
I’ve always had a very complicated relationship with music.
Since I first started to fall in love with music around the age of 16, my life has been powerfully shaped by music. It is, after all, the soundtrack to our lives. Almost every era of my life - from the grumpy, bad-hair days of high school, to the fiery political action of college, to the maturing (I hope) young man of his middle twenties - has been heavily defined by the music I was listening to.
Music is a big deal in my life. I own a record player because I believe vinyl sounds better. For a semester, I hosted an alternative hip hop radio show at the College of Charleston. I have a particular friend, a good buddy of mine named Anwar, that I can spend literally hours talking to about obscure jazz bands from the late 60’s and early 70’s. There’s a chance I could be described by some people as a music geek.
And yet, up until very recently, I couldn’t play a single instrument. In fact, I got down right terrified any time someone handed me a guitar, a drum, even a tambourine and asked me to join in making music. I was terrified of singing in public (with the obviously exception of my car, windows rolled up, volume turn to 11). And believe me, it took a fair amount of alcohol and quite a few hip hop house parties to finally teach this awkward white boy how to dance.
What a predicament. I loved music, but I was terrified of playing it, or singing it, or stomping it. Scared shitless of dancing to it, moving to it, grooving to it.
Why? Well, I had plenty of reasons why. My parents never encouraged me to pick up an instrument. I never listened to anything but pappy Christian music until the age of 13 (no offense to Jesus, but some people sure make some corny music in His name). I never did band or orchestra in school. I had plenty of reasons why I can’t, why I couldn’t, why I shouldn’t.
Somewhere down the line, I had gotten convinced that music was a complicated arrangement of notes on a page. It was years of training and countless hours with a tutor. It was being up on stage, totally cool and confident, getting all the girls. I had all these ideas in my head about what music is and why I could love it, but not make it.
All of my ideas of music, however, lacked one, interesting thing: the actual sound of music.
Something utterly mysterious happened when I heard a saying of Ali Akbar Khan, the famous Indian sarod player, quoted by Alan Watts, a teacher of Eastern philosophy: “All music is in the understanding of one note.”
One note?
That’s it?
Just one little note?
Thankfully, when I heard this quote, I was conveniently in a room with a guitar – one I had owned for years and attempted many times to learn to play, not so successfully. I grabbed it, placed it on my lap, and…. hit one note. And listened. I hit another note. And listened. I tried this several more times, until it dawned on me that in all my years of listening to music, I had never stopped to listen to just one sound. I had heard songs and albums, all of which seemed far too complex for me to ever participate it, poor me of little talent. But in the sound of one note, that story I had been telling myself for so long just melted away.
I started playing the guitar in my free time. My girlfriend got me a wooden flute from Nepal for Christmas, and I bought myself a didgeridoo from a local store. I started to play music. I have no idea whether it was any “good” – I really wasn’t thinking about that much. I just tried to enjoy the sound I was making. There is almost a stupid simplicity in this, but some of the most beautiful things in life are staggeringly simple.
There is something magic about music in the way that it has been present in almost every single human culture on this planet. It is an almost universal way of expression. Even the birds, the whales, and the oceans are singing. Making music is an act where we lose ourselves a little and fill that opening with a connection to the cosmos, to the heavens, to the soul.
This is why Hindus chant Om, why Buddhist chant the sutras, and why Christians sing Hallelujah. The message isn’t so much in words, but in the sound. There is something sacred to sound, for it represents the primordial vibration at the core of life. When our connection to the heart of life is active and joyous, some beautiful things can happen.
Like making music.
I don’t know if I’ll ever perform music in public and I’m still fairly confident that I’ll never land on the cover of Rolling Stone in this lifetime, but I like to consider myself now both an admirer and a maker of music. Whether you are playing Beethoven on a violin or plucking just one string on a guitar, you are making music. Whether you are playing syncopated rhythms on a drum or humming in the shower, you are participating in beauty.
Greatness can appear in things that are small. The profound can be discovered in the simple. Joy can be found in finally hearing one note.
I wanted to share two poems I've written in the last year, one last December while staying in North Carolina and the other while traveling in the Pacific Northwest this past week. These two poems came out of the incredible natural beauty of these areas, particularly the mountain ranges. I've always drawn such spiritual sustenance from being in the mountains and these two poems are attempts to capture that feeling. Hope you enjoy, Matt.
Blue Ridge Mountains
The misty blue mountains sing their mystic blues songs
As I sit by the flowing creek, wailing on my wooden flute, playing what I see:
The dance of water over rocks, the white rush of its fall.
The cat and I watch the sun Coming up over the ridge line.
My heart, my mind, my spirit – All f the same flow as the water, the wind, and the whistle in the trees.
My soul feels so loose, I may take off and join the clouds above the blue mystical mountains.
Mt. Rainier
I felt your hand take mine and lead me down the worn forest trail our fingers like the branches above, intertwined, not knowing where one tree began and another ended. I ran my hands up the lengths of their ancient trunks and the dampness of this green world seeped into my pores.
I heard the rhythm the world played going thub thub on its heart drum: living and dying, laughing and crying, the pleasure and pain, the sunshine and rain giving and receiving, knowing and believing and upon this rhythm we danced our dance of freedom.
I listened to the symphony of bird calls, the love songs echoing among the leaves. You whispered in my ear, and I was helpless to do a thing but surrender to the sweet vibration. I followed the trails of a luminous Om and fell into the silence of a blissful blue sky.
I saw the mist above the tree line and my eyes lost the edge between heaven and earth, earth and heaven. I said “Let’s disappear into the fading fog. We won’t know if we’re riding the wind, or if the wind is riding us.” The rain clouds were rolling in, heavy and dark, yet the sun was rising in our hearts.
I smelled the musk of fallen bark merging with the soil of old, life returning and returning again back into itself, nothing wasted, nothing lost. The perfume of the earth brought me back to the beauty of your eyes and I knew there was nowhere to be but home.
I am at a very exciting crossroads of my life right now. In exactly two months, I will be leaving my job of the last two years with the College of Charleston Upward Bound program. I will also be leaving the city I’ve called home for the past seven years – the place where I’ve established so many great friendships and created so many memories. Over the next year, I will be delightfully rootless – travelling with my sweetheart Jaime first to Yellowstone National Park, where we will spend the summer months, then taking off in October for Thailand, where we will teach English for a semester. Then… well, we’ll just have to wait and see. We’ve talked about living on the West Coast, in the San Francisco Bay Area, or in some progressive place like Boulder, Colorado or Asheville, North Carolina. Above all, we want to be in a place more supportive of our views and lifestyles than what South Carolina has had to offer us.
I’ve grown so much over the past two years and I just honestly feel that South Carolina is no longer a place I can live. I’ve always felt that way to a certain extent. I’ve always been a person who marched to the beat of his own drum, and whether it be my views on politics, religion, love, equality, or just about anything you can think of – I’ve never really fit in here. But after all the inner change I’ve been through in the past year or two, I particularly feel now like new wine in an old wineskin.
I’ve worn out my welcome here and I need some new intentions, some new paths. I’m looking for some soil that is ready for the seeds I want to plant. South Carolina, despite all the things I do in fact love about the place, is simply not the soil I’m looking for. There are just too many dreams I’ve had to hold back in this place for fear that they would never be accepted in such a politically and spiritually conservative place. I’m ready to set some new intentions in life, particularly in the realm of my professional life.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about where I want to go next and what I really want to do with my life over the next few years. I wanted to share some of the key areas I want to focus on.
1. I want to keep developing as a teacher of yoga & meditation. The ability to take part in Blue Turtle’s Yoga Teacher Training program last fall was on of the most incredible blessings I’ve experienced over the past year or so, and I will be eternally grateful to Kelly and my fellow students for such an awesome experience. Every chance I get to lead an asana class is such a rich opportunity to express myself, to connect with other people, to share my true heart. It is something that simply makes my soul sing – and there is nothing in life sweeter than that. Wherever I end up over the next year, I plan on teaching yoga class and connecting with local yoga communities.
2. I want to deepen my connection with nature and find employment that involves being outside more often. One of the most stifling things about my current job is the fact that I sit behind a desk 8 hours a day, staring at a computer, in a room with no windows. I know this is becoming more and more standard for American workers, but I think it is slow soul suicide. No joke. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about work in the fields of outdoor education and nature therapy. I am fascinated by the idea of using natural surroundings to help people find healing and reconnect to their true selves. If I could also connect this work with my yoga teaching, I think I would be in heaven.
3. I also want to sharpen my skills as a teacher and mentor for young people. I’m really looking forward to teaching English in Thailand and for the opportunity to get back in the classroom. I really hesitated about teaching in the public schools here in South Carolina for fear that I wouldn’t have the freedom to teach the way I wanted to. If I were living in a more open-minded place, I could definitely see myself getting involved with classroom teaching again.
So, I’m really setting some intentions to cultivate opportunities in these three fields over the next year so I can find something that really makes me happy. If I can find a way to somehow combine all three interests, that would be even better.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is… does anybody know of a job teaching yoga to young people in a outdoor setting, preferably in a part of the country supportive of vegetarians, progressives, and the spiritually open-minded? If so, please give me a call ASAP!
As you've probably noticed from most of my recent music posts, I've been on a big Classical Indian music kick... particularly the work of sitar master Ravi Shankar. It reminds me of when I first discovered jazz, around the age of 16 and 17. Jazz was such an unfamiliar world of music, with an incredible depth of variety, diversity, and style... I barely knew where to begin. But I just kept listening and listening and listening... until I finally began to understand and be greatly moved by an incredible form of music. I'm on a similar journey right now with Indian music. I'm still quite an amateur listener, but I'm quickly falling under the spell of this peaceful yet ecstatic music.
The clip below is of Ravi Shankar playing "Raag Bihag" back in 1971. One of the Youtube comments (so take this with a grain of salt) notes that "Raag Bihag is a night raag that inspires the mood of shringar raas (loving affairs between Lord Krishna and Shri Radha). So, this is a good one to play with some lit candles and incense, some delicious wine or tea, and someone special to hold close.
"When you become deeply engrossed in something, all of a sudden you will hear a sort of music ringing within you. This is the music of peace. At times when you are listening to good music this absorption can happen. You forget yourself for a moment; for a moment the past and future disappear and you are drowned in the sweet sound of music. Live in the present and you will experience that moment of peace all around you: at times such a moment comes in love, at times in the beauty of nature. These are the moments you experience peace." ~ Osho
First of all, much gratitude to my friend Joe Orr who created the “One World Dharma” logo for me that now sits at the top of the page. The logo is of the Earth surrounded by an enso: a Japanese Zen symbol for freedom and enlightenment. The Wikipedia entry notes: “In Zen Buddhist painting, ensÅ symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body/spirit create.” I think the new logo sums up the various threads that run through this blog: spirituality, concern for our globe, creativity, having an open-mind, etc. So, lots of thanks to Joe for the awesome artwork.
This time in my life has been filled with many personal highs and there is so much I feel grateful for. This past Sunday was the start of a 10-week yoga teaching gig at a local, grassroots yoga studio called the Sutra Shack. The Shack is the brainchild of Doug, a local yogi, who created an awesome yoga space in his backyard. All the classes are donation-based and the teachers get 100% of the profits. On top of that, he’s also got a vibrant organic garden happening in the backyard. I’m really excited about being part of a yoga community that is about making classes more affordable to the average person and giving brand-new teachers like myself a place to get their feet wet.
The class went really well! There were only two students – but they were fantastic students, believe me. All a new yoga teacher could ask for. One of the students was Emily, an awesome woman who does massage and bodywork, who had been coming to my friend’s Aaron free class at the same time. My other wonderful student was my intrepid girlfriend Jaime, who had also come out to a class with me at the Shack on Saturday.
This has also been a lovely time for Jaime and I. Right now we are both busy getting our applications done for our next two jobs in life: working at Yellowstone National Park this summer, then teaching English as a Second Language in Thailand come October. Needless to say, it is both exciting and scary to make such big moves… but mostly exciting! I’m excited about traveling the world with my sweetheart, as well as being in places of such natural beauty. In the case of Thailand, I’m also particularly thrilled about being in a place with such rich Buddhist roots. I think that, among other things, will create a very healthy culture shock in comparison with living in South Carolina.
But there a few more important things to experience and accomplish before leaving Charleston for good. I’m looking forward to joining forces with the awesome ladies of Charleston Karma Yoga to create another benefit yoga class for a worthy cause. Right now we’re thinking about doing a class for Thornhill Farms, an organic farm that offers therapeutic gardening experiences for students will special needs. Jaime has actually been there with her students (she teaches students with emotional disabilities) and had a great time planting seeds and working in the earth.
Above all, I’m looking forward to connecting with all my friends and loved ones here in Charleston over the next few months before we take off. There are a lot of people very close to me that I haven't seen much over the last year and I definitely want to amend that before leaving.
Well, that’s all for now. My next yoga class will be Sunday at 1 PM at the Sutra Shack. It’s free to all and will be a great time, I promise. The focus will be on twists and keeping our body/mind/spirit clear and open so that life can more easily flow through us. Hope to see some of you there!
Continuing with the theme of Indian music, I bring you the sitar sounds of the beautiful and talented Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar. Along with being an incredible musician, she is also active as a campaigner for human and animal rights. This song is entitled "Naked" from her album Rise. For more information on this amazing woman and her music, check out her website.
The artist Shep Fairey, well-known for his Obama "Hope" poster and the Obey Giant street-art campaign, has released a new portrait of the Dalai Lama entitled "Compassion." The work is in honor of Tibetan Independence Day (March 10th) as well as the Dalai Lama's upcoming 75th birthday.
Shepard has this to say about His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “I’ve always had great admiration for His Holiness and his non-violent approach to the plight of the Tibetan people. When I was approached with the opportunity to work with this beautiful image as a sanctioned source and create a work that evokes the Dalai Lama’s presence as I feel it, I was thrilled. I hope His Holiness remains a presence of compassion in the world for many birthdays to come!”
Please give a few moments of your time today to send loving thoughts to the people of Tibet and to the peaceful solution of the Tibetan-Chinese conflict. If you want to get further involved, Students for a Free Tibet is an excellent place to start.
