Monthly Archives: March 2009

And I thought still spring mornings in Santa Monica defined jasmine. Here it is stephanotis—madascar jasmine. I sneak out the front door at 4:00 or 5:30, and within five steps the invisible wall of new blooms hits me. Almost the same jasmine I know—sharp and even a little bitter at the inside tip of the […]

More fragments from Narasimhan. They come in like traces of dream, which makes sense since I’m in a bit of a trance sitting there in the Anantha library. And speaking of dreaming, he reminds me that there is this whole business in Patanjali about the import of the dreamstate and the pursuit of dreamless sleep […]

So… some strong resonance coming in with this guy, MA Narasimhan. He opens up his office each day from 10-12, plucks in on bare feet in threadbare white cottons and a Brahmin string, and speaks expansively in response to whatever bumbling questions are offered. It makes no sense to morselize the experience because it’s about […]

Strangest sight in town: 3:30 in the morning, pitch dark and cool, rounding the neighborhood corner occupied by the KPJAYI. In the street are 30 foreigners sitting like ivory chess pawns in four perfect rows facing out from the gate. Dead silent and still, just sitting, so serious, looking down at the ground. They are […]

I’d have to be a poet to say anything suitable about this moment. It is evening. The air is skin temperature and the light is dimming shades of perfect. I’m in a quiet garden sheltered between quiet buildings, though I suppose there is the life in the street making sound down the hill. The tropical […]

Two practices later. Plus: two trips to office hours, five coconuts, two trips to the textile store, five intense conversations over a meal that cost pennies and tasted divine, one car fire and traffic jam, eight rickshaw rides, one rolfing session for a freaky knee, one long afternoon at the Southern Star, one wild goose […]

Night without qualities, every aspect so suave it feels empty. It is that good, a thick futon in a clean sanctuary of a 2nd floor room, tiny warm breeze, bugless except for the fearful slow mantis daring me not to brush her from the sheets, pitch dark night after I blew out the Monte Cristo […]

Or: Keanu Trifecta In addition to sort of fulfilling my plans to read classics on the first plane and treat the second as a floating meditation retreat (air travel as an ideal samsara, make it your bodhi tree and keep boarding flight after flight until you’re realized?), I also managed to execute a  Keanu trifecta […]