The Bird at the Window

The other night, I kept waking to a strange sound, and assumed it was abranch repeatedly hitting the window in the loft, from the ash treebehind the house. When I continued to hear it the following day, myhusband climbed up for a look and found a robin hurling itself, over andover again, against the glass. Seeing its own reflection, we assumehe/she thought they saw a rival, and was simply defending territory,possibly a nest in the branches. We draped a towel  over the window tomute the reflection, and the banging stopped, but the image (and thesound) have stayed with me. 

When I'm compelled to protect myself or what I see as "my territory" Idon't bang my head against a window, but there are definitely momentswhen what I think I am seeing is clouded by my own hindrances,or obstacles...sometimes doubt, sometimes anxiety, sometimes aversion.In the early Buddhist Theravadan tradition the hindrances to growth onthe yogic path are listed as 5 stumbling blocks that thwart progress. When the hindrances get mixed into the soma, the embodied self, they candistort everything. They become a veil, obscuring the underlying lifeforce. By derailing concentration, these obstacles or veils arepreventing the direct experience of Samadhi—the ultimate experience ofoneness, and the "goal" (if there is one) of meditation and byextension, all yogic practice.

The best way to work with the hindrances is not by theorizing or intellectual reasoning, but through feelingthe hindrance as it arises, and then feeling too, somatically, in thebody, the antidote to the hindrance. This can happen within thepractices of asana, pranayama and meditation.

A robin is not going to stop and feel and notice what is arising andcome to understand that he is attacking his own reflection (and he hasgood reason to defend his territory, even if it's a case of mistakenidentity). For the rest of us humans, the practices of yoga, ofmeditation, of pranayama can be an effective place to feel into and workwith the 5 primary hindrances (craving, aversion, torpor, anxiety, anddoubt) and also their antidotes (non clinging, loving kindness, energy,calm and trust). Way more effective than banging our beaks against ourown proverbial reflections.

This is the time of year when life regenerates, though slow tohappen here in New England. I feel poised (like our somewhat reluctantSpring!) to break through into growth, and renewal, and to throw offsluggishness and torpor. there is tremendous ebb and flow, expansion and contraction, as the world breathes itself awake.  Mayour practices together continue to help us break through our own obstacles, physical, emotional, spiritual, to better see the clear windowpane of "Shamatha", of grounded awareness. Through rebooting our yogaand meditation work we can renew a commitment to life, to the creativehum of the world and to the life force that sustains us.

See you on the mat!

Love,
Leslie