Practice. Or, Why that photo for your website?
So, why a picture of a worn, but beautiful, building in the midst of a Block Island landscape as my website header? Besides the gorgeous sky, the picture also reminds me that, although I am physically located in beloved Brooklyn, New York, my true home is a little more spacious.
I learned this wisdom from another New Yorker, the wonderful Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg, in a talk she gave on the four Brahma Viharas. She translated this Pali term as “Best Home,” and explained that these qualities, when cultivated and manifested in our lives, allow us to feel most at home. The four qualities are: loving-kindness (unconditional friendliness), compassion, sympathetic joy (joy in the good fortune of others), and equanimity.
For me this teaching has been the seed in understanding that our sense of being at home comes not from simple geography, but from those moments when we return to our true nature, which is peaceful and free. This has become my guiding concern both in my own practice and in teaching.
The classic eight-limbed path of yoga is simply one map to guide us toward our own best home. The root of the path in non-harming does not mean (as the Bhagavad Gita warns us) that there are not battles to be fought, even within ourselves. It does not mean that the journey will always be easy, clear or fun.
Whatever your spiritual practice, if it moves you toward feeling more at home in your own body and your own mind, then you are undoubtedly on the right path. In this sense, it is my intention to guide students toward themselves, toward finding presence and acceptance within their own unique, gorgeous, incarnation.
Wishing you a peaceful practice,
Susan
PS: The problem is whether we are determined to go in the direction of compassion or not. If we are, then can we reduce the suffering to a minimum? If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
PPS: Five years later and I changed that original website photo. This is what it used to look like: