Balancing our daily routines

[Guest guest]

When one has to work with the hands on or near the ground, the best

posture, indeed, is squatting -- chest open; shoulders relaxed and away

from the ears; shoulderblades looking for each other in the back. Bending

forward for an extended period -- planting cabbage or whatever -- may cause

shallow breathing, stiffness in neck and back, mental depression.

For a balanced body and mind, both forward bends and back bends are needed.

 

Let's put our self-awareness to work for our projects

 

If you have being bending forward for a while and you notice your breathing

is getting shallow, your back and your neck are getting stiff, your mind

borders the blues maybe it's time for you to take a 5 min. break to stretch

out in all directions, do gentle back bends, breath deeply, thank Krsna for

the gift of self-awareness (among many other gifts).

 

Let's be personal

 

Remind yourself that every plant, animal, human being, demigod is a spirit

soul, whom you are helping develop their life. Your plants and your

animals, like your children, like to be touched and talked to. You give

them Krsna consciousness through your hands. You tell them what your plans

are and how you need their help. They will get happy. They will grow strong

and bear wonderful fruits.

(The relationships between humans and plants have been studied by many people.)

Water your plants as needed. Drink yourself some water every hour. Talk to

the water (and Candra) to help your project.

Rub some oil on your head if you are to stay under heavy sun for many

hours. Talk to the sun (and Surya) to help you, not hurt you.

 

Let's be part of the network

 

I read in a book on money and finances from a Buddhist perspective (George

Kinder, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, 1999) that only childish people

or thieves expect to get some profit without contributing to the society

they are part of with their fair, honest input. If people want to get their

needs fulfilled, they have to be ready to somehow satisfy the needs of

others. Society is a give-and-take network; participation in this network,

if honest and appropriate, is beneficial for all involved.

One may extend this reasoning and apply it also to animals and plants and

gods. You give them and they give you.

 

(Trying to pass on a few things I learned from others.)

 

your servant,

Kunti-Devi dasi

[Guest guest]

>

>

> I read in a book on money and finances from a Buddhist perspective (George

> Kinder, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, 1999)

 

I went to boarding school with George, we lived in the same dorm and were

actually

 

friends in high school. I remember that in our dorm, the sort of cliche

expression of adolescent angst, was the oft murmured, oft shouted at loud

volume

 

"What is reality?" I eventually found my answers from Srila Prabhupada.

 

I just saw him last winter at a multi - class renunion. He co - lead a

seminar on

 

Alternative Spirituality that I went to. He mentioned he had finished writing

that

 

book and it was ready for publication.

 

He told a story about a spiritual aspirant who performed a great austerity to

climb

 

some mountain to ask the guru at the top what was the meaning of life, and the

guru answered very Zen like, "Mu". Which is to say, in a buddhist sort of

way,

there is no formula answer. I had great fun the rest of the reunion,

mentioning

to him as I did that since Krsna was a cowherd boy, that "Moo" had a whole

different connotation to me.

 

At a formal dinner at the end, I was wearing a Southwestern motif shirt under

my

coat and tie (and I hadn't worn a tie in the 30 years since I left school) that

had

 

the skull of a longhorn cow laying in the desert on it. I was going around

from

table to table, taking pictures with a digital camera for posting on a website

for

 

the reunion, and my running joke was I would point at the cow skull and say in

a

low stage whisper "Moo".

 

He was saying that one reason Buddhism is so successful (much more successful

in

the US than Hare Krsna, to cite an example close to home) is that it is based

more

 

on spiritual principles than culture. That is why it appears so differently in

different countries. He was talking about how Tibet was a kingdom of

magicians,

so the first great Buddhist teacher who went there, first traveled around

India

and learned mytic powers so that when he went to Tibet, he was able to

interact

with them on their level.

 

Hence his observation that in America, the whole culture is bound up with

money -

how to get it, how to spend it, venerable of people who have it, etc. So to

introduce spirituality to Americans, his theory is to discuss it interms

Americans can relate to, i.e. money.

 

He was telling how when he went to and after Harvard, everyday he would go to

a

certain field in the countryside, and silently meditate for hours, regardless

of

weather conditions. How if it was snowing, he would sit and let the snow

build up

 

on him. He did that for years, until one day he went out shopping with his

wife,

and found that he was unable to enter a store, he had moved to a place where

he

couldn't interact with consumer society, and it caused him to considered what

his

 

relationship was with society.

 

He got into financial management on the advice of his mother. She told him

that if

 

he wanted to meditate all the time, he should get into doing taxes, so he

would

only have to work a few months a year. Doing taxes for people led to doing

financial planning etc.

 

He has a loose knit community of like minded folks in both Cambridge, MA, and

in

Hawaii. They live individually , but come together a few times a week for

mutually beneficial interactions.

 

Sorry for the digression, but you have spun me down memory lane.