Rajanaka Newsletter January 2, 2023

 Monday, January 2, 2023

 

Aho’Rajanaka,

 

I hope this finds you well.  We were lucky to have a few days with our children visiting during the holidays---so I took a moment to lay low, hope you did too with friends and family, and this newsletter (like a lot of other things) is (a bit) late.

We also had an at-home celebration of Susan’s birthday and that was Sumthin’ Wonderful.  Suz loves prezzies.  And she gave me some really swell dog treats for Christmas (not even kidding) and also insisted I share them with Sadie.  I promised I would dole out them (to both us) little by little, again and again---you know, śanaih śanaih, purnar punah, as we like to say in Sanskrit.  (Sadie helps with the Sanskrit too, btw.)

So all of us got some wondrous love, the kind that reminds us why sometimes there really is never too much, just more.  We also got the (usual) (necessary) sober reminder that it can be a very good idea to take our treats one at a time.  Yoga never fails to beguile, charm, and land the plane, you know?

 

It may defy credulity but the calendar says that we’ve turned the corner, that the gods are making their way, post-solstice, on the uttaranāyana, that is, the Northern Course of the sun.  (Well it’s almost or close enough for rock n’ roll but we will allow the pundits to argue like frogs, as the Veda puts it.)  This peculiar marking of the solstice is an ancient matter in India, long connected to the ways memory and light move with the passages of time.

 

You see, if you make your final passage during uttaranāyana as the days lengthen, the Vedic world thought your pyre smoke would slip through the crack at the apex of the cosmic egg in the sky-vault (khah) and, voilà, like the veritable l’accent grave, you’d be pitch perfect to return as right as rain after a wondrous stint with the gods.  Should your passage happen coincide with the daksināyana then you would spend more time with ancestral memory, in conversation with the pitrs in their loka before moving on.  Not only does solstice notice effect the living, it’s a matter of concern (apparently) also for the dead.  But why?

You would be surprised how much time is spent in Sanskrit texts working out this metaphysic of light and memory, gods and ancestors, smoke and rain---telling the story of the delicate, vulnerable mortal coil twisting its way through Time, Kāla/Kālī.

 

Appa used to say that these after-death matters trouble only fussy funeral directors and astrologers (n.b., notoriously fussy) but that for the rest of us it is to remind us how thought and feeling, body and soul, like time itself are serpentine affairs, turning and moving in ways that become meaningful when we learn to notice what happens when we do and without our consent, not wholly under our control.  These matters of light and dark affect the living in tangible ways, whether or not we are taking notice.  And they refer to the dead because they comprise the memory’s soulful collective that resides in each of us.  We hold each other in memory and in light---so that the darkness need not be only dark.  We are not victims of such twists and turns, he said, so much as passengers, pilgrims, journey-makers who need to learn how to decide what to do with our time and receive the rest as Time decides.  Time is ourselves and what we call “the divines and ancestors, and that’s why making time for yoga makes all the difference.

 

 

It might not (yet) really look like it but the days are getting longer.  Sometimes what we don’t see is bringing good news (hard to believe, but true).  Cultivating attention is yet another definition of yoga. And as we know, attention-making may not be easy but it is the point.  I may have long lost your attention in these musings but such are the perils of yoga, the holiday cheer hangover, and a typical Rajanaka newsletter.  You still with me?

 

Are you ready for some yoga?  Not the onthematty kind, this kind.  There are going to be Sessions starting very soon.  What you can’t make live will always be available in the Archive, links endlessly repeated to make it easy access. Registration is by attendance for all Sessions.  Just come!

 

·      *Let’s begin the conversation of 2023 with a Special Free Saturday Session.  January 7^th, 5pm Eastern with “The Tale of the Milky Ocean.” This story may be familiar to you but I’m going to tell it with all the scrumptious details and take us through more than one version.  It’s such an important story I can think of at least four different versions, each providing it’s own nectarous sapidity. All Saturday Sessions use the same Zoom link: Saturday Zoom: https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268    

 

·      *MidWinter Thursdays: Pancamukha Anjaneya, The Five-Face Hanuman of the Tantra

Time: Six Sessions on Thursday Evenings, 7pm Eastern

Dates: January 12 we begin!  Jan 12/19/26, then February 9/16/23
ZOOM link for all Thursdays:  https://rochester.zoom.us/j/98183733328

Description: No form of Hanuman is more important or less understood and studied than the great Pancamukha.  Here Hanuman bears the visage of Varaha the Boar, Garuda the Raptor, Hanuman the Monkey, Narasimha the Lion Man, and Hayagriva the Horse.  We will bring this character to life in mythos, mantra, and mudra, in theory and practice, and there will be new stories and work that extends far beyond what we have done before with the Tantric Hanuman.  Everyone is welcome.  We start at the beginning and we go deep.

Tuition for Six Sessions is $150, payable over time if you need, use PayPal (svcourses@gmail.com or nallapaampu@gmail.com) or Venmo (douglas-brooks-8 or svcourses@gmail.com) If you can’t afford full tuition, talk to me.  Your access is guaranteed.  Tuition further promises unlimited access to the Recorded Dropbox Archive that will allow you to listen whenever you like.  Registration for all is by attendance and tuition is on the honor system.

·      *MidWinter Saturday CORE: Rasa in Theory and Practice.

Time: Six Sessions on Saturday Evenings, 5pm Eastern

Dates: January 14 we begin!  Jan 14/21/28 then February 11/18/25

ZOOM link for all Saturdays: https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268

Description: Rasa means essence, taste, liquidity, flavor, sentiment, elemental feeling and emotion.  At the heart of the study of poetry, Rasa Theory is a remarkable, rich, and complex method of analysis and appreciation of artistry and aesthetics.  But rasa is also a roadmap, a process and practice, a method for understanding and exploring our most elemental feelings.  Rajanaka has among the most developed and useful rasa traditions of yoga.  At the center of every yoga is engagement with feeling and the development of “taste”: rasa is the core of our being and here we learn the way through that labyrinth of essence.

Tuition for Six Sessions is $150, payable over time if you need, use PayPal (svcourses@gmail.com or nallapaampu@gmail.com) or Venmo (douglas-brooks-8 or svcourses@gmail.com) If you can’t afford full tuition, talk to me.  Your access is guaranteed.  Tuition further promises unlimited access to the Recorded Dropbox Archive that will allow you to listen whenever you like.  Registration for all is by attendance and tuition is on the honor system.

 

·      SUNDAY MAHABHARATA.  

EVERY Sunday is a new story, every bit of it makes sense no matter when you choose to attend!

Time: Sessions on Sundays at 5pm Eastern.
Dates: Begins Sunday, January 8^th. Schedule will take us through the winter: Jan 8/15/22/29, Feb 12/19, March 5

ZOOM link is the same for all Sundays: 

 https://rochester.zoom.us/j/314987250

Tuition: $20 per Session or $15 if you buy a lot of them. Your call. Complete Archive INCLUDING a free Audio book is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bfqt15y3n0uglir/AAAB_89LiCOob0hJI1w8BK7_a?dl=0  

 

·      SPECIAL EVENT with François Raoult and Open Sky Yoga 

Please pre-register on-line at www.openskyyoga.com

TRIMURTI: The Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva

Time: February 26^th, 9am-1pm EST, $108

Description: The three Hindu gods known as the Trimurti are often cited as providing a model for organization of the universe. Brahma Creates, Vishnu Sustains, and Shiva Destroys. But this very elementary beginning is only the bare outline of a much richer understanding that leads us to a more refined and elaborate vision of the worlds in which we live and the practices of yoga through which we might engage our lives. There are further extensions of the mythic structure that provide relationships with sublime feminine in the form of corresponding goddesses and more far-reaching connections. Within this essential structure is a wealth of symbols, strategies, and concepts that mean to guide us to deeper appreciation and practices that inform a life of yoga. Our seminar will engage the Trimurti imagery to create a foundation for understanding the power of myth and its useful application in our study and practice of yoga. No previous understanding or exposure is required, just an open mind and a willing heart.

 

Phew.  Please come.  Join the conversation.  If you need help with tuition or time or access, let me know.  There is always room.  You are always welcome.  You’re never late or too far behind.  This is a lifetime of study in a living conversation. We’re here for you and I promise to show up body, mind, and soul and pour it out like the soma.

 

I’m going to spare you the usual endless below the line Archive because this has already been long and we all have attention fatigue from all that covid and stuff.  I’ll put all of those other opportunities back in the newsletter next week.  I hope you read at least the fun parts and that you really consider making a new year’s vrata.  It’ll do ya’ a world of good to resume the conversation---your soul craves and your community welcomes you.  Yoga is always an invitation, never an obligation.  How I love thee.  More soon then.

 

Saprema,

Douglas