All my life, a ripening…. --Anonymous
Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things. --Rumi
Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things. --Rumi
Two Lessons: Polishing the Mirror and Returning Into Thin Air
Our wise yoga guru often reads from the works of the great Persian poet, storyteller, and Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi at the close of our Ashtanga practice. While his participating yogis lie in Savasana, our teacher recounts one of the tales from this dervish-inspired master, and my mind is at once engaged and detached, whirl, whirl, whirling into the void, into the thinnest of air, and, then, all at once, I am back on the mat looking out from that big small place inside my chest, feeling a little like the tin man after he’s been to see the wizard.
a polished mirror cannot help reflecting….
Rumi’s words are beautifully rendered by our guru’s readings. In fact, I enjoy the mystic’s words all the more because of our guru’s accented English, which gives certain words a particular stress or adjustment—caresses all—signaling one native tongue surrendering to another. And vice versa. A male Scheherazade, our teacher. And I am each time transported across sand dunes and into an ancient world where I sit at the feet of our storyteller as though his tale has just been set down, and I have been invited to hear it, first, along with everyone else. And all of us are so thirsty, again, for another episode of reality.
a polished mirror cannot help reflecting....
On a recent Tuesday, our teacher reads to us Rumi’s tale entitled Polishing the Mirror, and I recognize in it the image of our larger Self within our smaller self—our “jeweled inner life” that longs to be reflected. The story helps explain to me how my yoga practice, this path of least resistance, exposes all of my resistance, all my harbored years of restraint, all that I have fought against and how little I have surrendered. It explains why I often feel broken open, and just why, after practice, I have wanted to cry as often as I have wanted to sing. Of the art of writing, Annie Dillard wrote that the blank page will teach us how to write. The blank page. In other words, practice…but ever so gently. Or by siege if must be. You will learn either way. It is the same thing with the mat. We come to the mat to practice. And there I am try, try, trying…to shine, to show, to be the jewel reflected. And each time I laugh or cry because I discover that I have hidden it again. According to Dillard, I am still aiming at the wood and not the chopping block.
a polished mirror cannot help reflecting….
On the same recent Tuesday, I watch a documentary that revisits the tragedy on Mount Everest in May 1996. Three climbing teams had pushed to summit Mount Everest, and eight climbers died. I hesitate to say, as the filmmaker does, that these deaths, tragedies all, were the result of a fierce and fast-moving storm. The storm certainly added to the tragedy, but after listening carefully to the stories of the survivors, I am surprised, as only another feeble human could be, at how strong is the voice of our smaller self.
a polished mirror cannot help reflecting….
While Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mount Everest, along with his Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was quoted as saying on his descent that (of Everest) “We beat the bastard,” Hillary also admits that he was never certain that he and Norgay would reach the top. In other words, the potential for retreat was just as possible as the potential for a summit. As someone experienced in the ways of the mountains, and especially the mountains of high altitude, Hillary both respected and accepted this lack of certainty as part of the attempt. Hillary may have climbed Everest because it was there, but he also had enough experience (or practice) to understand that you do not go into the mountains thinking “winner takes all,” i.e., summit or die, because you might have to accept the consequences of such terms. In an interview for the Guardian in 2003, another skilled and successful high-altitude mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who was the first to summit Everest without the aid of oxygen, believes that failing is more important than having success. “I think we go up so we can come back down again. This coming down is a very strong experience.”
a polished mirror cannot help reflecting….
What I heard in the documentary in these survivors’ tales was a willingness to barter safety for success. According to Messner, high-altitude climbing is about being afraid. Maybe there were too many people on the mountain that afternoon, and the place did not feel so lonely and cold and dangerous. It was no place to be afraid. Until it was. And it was too late. These climbers had forgotten to stay on their edge. As our yoga teacher is quick to remind us: “If you’re not on your edge, you’re taking up too much room.” It is a knife’s blade sometimes, that edge, this path, our particular mountain. It is good to test the tipping point, but not to build a house upon it.
