BYC Newsletter #26

Dear Yoga students and those interested in Yoga,

To the Potter of my Incense Bowl

As I lit some incense in what is now my incense bowl this morning, a few dots seemed to connect. Two weeks ago when the swamis from Yogaville were preparing for the Puma to bless our Yoga center, one of the swamis asked me to find a bowl that would hold all the incense sticks she was going to light, something with some sand or rocks, she suggested. I went through a number of possibilities, but none worked, until the picture of your bowl rose in my mind. It had been a nut bowl, but now it was empty. But sand, she said, no sand, anywhere. Kitty litter?…no, not that…Brown rice! That was it. We had a jar of that.

And so your bowl became part of the Puja and remains part of the Puja (act of worship), where each morning I make my offering to the universe and affirm in my surrender that all obstacles have been removed from our path. What I ask for in prayer is that I be able to experience what already has always existed. God can’t help but give us what we already have because He has already given it.

Your bowl becomes in the Puja the bowl that holds the content of our minds. Puja is the simple truth that we are already perfect and whole and full of joy; it is just that we don’t experience it. But we want to feel it so we can know it as being real. We can think something, but until we must feel it for it to be real; the thought are just shavings of clay, not the whole pot.

The Puja bowl holds our offering, which is the content of the bowl. Our mind is a bowl that holds the content of thought and feelings. We have the mistaken perception that we are the content, while in reality we are the bowl, or the Potter consciousness that holds the content. Even our sense of ego-I is content. The bowl is pure awareness or I AM. We are the masters of the bowl.

All we have to do is offer the content of the bowl (which is our self) to the fire of awareness, to God, and the bowl will make the shape it is supposed to be. Every potter knows that it is the space that makes the bowl. The act of making a bowl is Puja. One gets rid of the content, the obstacles of clay that keep the bowl from taking its natural shape.

In this way, every action is Puja, because every action is already perfect. The Puja is the becoming aware of that perfection. In worship, there is no thinking; there is only the Puja.

We must become the potter, and let our bodies do all our actions. Thoughts…just be aware of them, as we are aware of the content of our bowl, no matter how negative or painful the feelings are, just say, "Oh, how interesting," and let them go like whisps of incense.

That is the sacrifice and the offering. By being aware of the content of our mind (which is meditation), we are cleansing the mind and stilling the mind…and that is yoga, and Puja is the practice.

Thank you,
Ed
Om Peace
2/5/07
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