We Left the Walled City of Barga
In Northern Italy, we decided to leave the walled city of Barga and head out for a hiking adventure. Way, way up in a far mountain top we saw a small settlement.
The tiny town was called Sommocolonia. It has quite the history. On Christmas day of 1944, this little town was held by the allied forces, specifically a black regiment led by a man by the name of John Fox. He was 29 years old.
The “Buffalo soldiers” were poorly treated, as you can imagine, and reinforcements were not coming, despite a massive attack from German and Austrian forces.
John Fox called in airstrikes, knowing they would kill him and what was left of his crew.
In 1982, after much agitation, he was finally awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
The hike took us through Chestnut forests, vineyards and occasionally provided great overviews.
Hours of hiking later, we could see back to the walled city of Barga and north toward the Alps.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Twenty Minute Guided Meditation
Special AUDIO:
In this 20 minute meditation you'll begin with a few rounds of conscious breathing, move into a brief body scan, then select an anchor that feels right for you. You'll end with a brief reflection on gratitude and the felt sense of the here and now.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Happy Happy, Empty Empty
Jack Kornfield tells the story of a monk from Asia visiting the United States who spoke only two words of English.
Everywhere he went throughout the United States he’d bow, smile and say, “Empty Empty Happy Happy.”
I remembered those words when I was on the Cape recently. There’s nothing quite like heading way, way out on my board until the coastline is barely visible, stopping dead still and feeling the vastness of it all.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
A Drone at Home
Two great friends showed up today … with a quadcopter!
I’d never seen one up close. Amazing, kind of scary technology. You monitor the camera from an iPad, direct it where you want and shoot both stills and video.
I couldn’t resist and edited the footage(which is captured in 1080p, by the way). You’ll see the Potomac River and for just a few moments, about three miles down to Great Falls where the Potomac River drops eighty feet in a quarter mile.
Thanks, Peter!
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Super Moon
Perfect Haze
Because I am often down by the river each morning to welcome the sun, I am treated to quite a few mundane sunrises - as well as a few spectacular ones.
This morning the perfect amount of haze formed to create a perfect neutral density filter to allow me to capture the rising sun and not overwhelm the camera's sensor.
Geek facts:
Canon 60D
Canon EF 70-200 L with 1.4x adapter
ISO 200 f5 1/400
on tripod
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
A Short Weekend Retreat
It’s only fitting I would lead a short weekend meditation retreat with, well, two short people.
Tara, Ruth King and I led a three-day retreat at Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reiserstown, MD last weekend.
Traditionally we offer a weekend as part of a seven day retreat. That was always problematic as we’d have a disruption on Sunday before the rest of the participants would settle in for the long haul. With so many folks battling to get into the week longs, we’ve now separated them out. (We’re actually going to a lottery system soon.)
This brings up a question I’m asked from time to time: Is a weekend meditation retreat worth it or is it better to hold out for a longer retreat?
It’s quite common, when you settle in for a meditation retreat, to come in contact with fatigue and exhaustion. The first day and often the second and third can be filled with sloth, torpor, sleepiness and lethargy. Some people find they are just beginning to feel some clarity when it’s time to pack up and head home.
I assure folks who are struggling with sleepiness on a retreat that if they slept the whole time, their life would feel very different afterward. We are an over-stimulated, exhausted and depleted culture and no doubt, as yoga says, “the more dynamic your rest, the more dynamic your activity.” If you can afford the time and fortune to do a longer retreat, by all means, lock one in. It can reshape your life. You’ll feel more energized and alive.
If you can’t do a longer one, do consider a weekend retreat. You may not ‘break on through to the other side,’ as Jim Morrison would say, but you’ll start to reset and recalibrate your body/mind in a way that is both direct and sometimes quite dramatic.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
The Awakened Heart and Mind
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores what happens when the forces of greed, hatred and delusion fall away.
You'll learn how present-moment awareness can help you identify and let go of what is between you and feeling free and how the characteristics of 'bodhichitta' - a heart and mind awake - emerge and can transform your life.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Inquiry as a Path to Awakening
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores how the questions you ask yourself can not only help you make better decisions, but can also reveal who and what you really are.
You're learn about the power of thoughts and beliefs, how questions can cultivate greater intimacy with life, how questions can sometimes dramatically turn around problematic situations and how inquiry is used to take your awareness beyond the linear, rational mind.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Lone Egret this Morning
20 Second Meditation with Cormorants
Protein on the Potomac
Here We Go Round in Circles
Late Monday afternoon I was preparing to head out to lead the Monday Night class at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington.
I usually take the ’96 VW Cabrio I ‘inherited’ from my mother-in-law, but I had a ‘ weird feeling’ that instead I should take my Honda Element. For local driving, I much prefer the VW. I can’t really explain why I took the bigger vehicle.
Old Dominion Drive was once the train track that transported residents from DC to Great Falls Park. It’s the main thoroughfare now from DC to McLean and out to Great Falls and beyond. Morning and late afternoon the elevated two-lane road is filled with busy commuters. It is narrow and has no shoulder. Smaller residential roads come in at odd angles. I always set my cruise control because the speed limit is 45 and it’s easy for the speed to creep up.
Just as I passed a side road I noticed a white car pulling up that looked too close. That observation was instantly followed by a loud “BANG” and suddenly my world was spinning. For a moment I thought the Element was going to flip, but it came to a stop facing in the same direction, heading south. It had executed a perfect 360 spin and came to rest by the side of the road.
I jumped out and ran back to check on the other driver. She was fine, but a bit mortified. We both expressed relief nothing worse had happened.
The next hour or so was filled with calling and waiting for police and AAA, calling insurance companies, exchanging information, unloading my car before it got hauled off.
Only later, when I settled into a second car to head to my class, did I feel the ache in my neck, my swollen lip where I’d inadvertently bitten myself and register the shock. Driving to class I was jumpy and hyper-vigilant. During the guided meditation I felt sick and thought of canceling the rest of the class, but felt more stable by the end.
Curiously enough, the topic of the evening was “Waking the Still, Small Voice Within,” exploring the nexus of mindfulness practice and intuition. (I’m doing the same talk Wednesday night at Tara’s class in Bethesda and it’ll be posted soon in both audio and video.)
A few things come to mind:
1. Practicing mindfulness of the body The talk I’d prepared was about how in this form of meditation, the sense are the primary ‘anchor’ for attention. As we pay attention to the body we can cultivate both a heightened sense of the ‘here and now’ and as a byproduct, a sense of kinesthetic intuition - the ‘gut feel’ that can be a reliable tool. What was that ‘weird feeling’ that I should take the bigger, heavier vehicle? The Cabrio is a tiny little thing. If I’d been hit in that car, it may have had a very different outcome. Who knows?
2. Practicing presence A great meditation teacher said one thing to remember in meditation practice (and life) is that ‘anything and everything can happen in an instant.’ Mindfulness is about the capacity to respond, rather than react to any given stimulus. What a great reminder.
3. Practicing compassion Another teacher of mine talks often of ‘looking for the good’ in any situation. As soon as I knew I was OK and the fellow driver was OK, I found myself feeling a lot of empathy for her. She is a kind, delightful person and I wish her well. Compassion means wishing ourselves and all being happiness, peace and freedom. I would add one thing: Only a moderate increase in insurance rates.
It’s remarkable how unscathed the body panel is given the impact that put the car into a 360 spin. The entire axle and strut assembly, though, is snapped off and I have yet to find out if the frame got knocked out of alignment.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
The Keys to Lasting Happiness
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores how you can cultivate lasting happiness.
You'll learn how to avoid the biggest trap in seeking happiness and how you can cultivate happiness both externally - through wise and skillful action - as well as internally - by how you pay attention.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Morning Cormorants
Living by a large, breathing river like the Potomac just above Great Falls means each day is different. The water levels are constantly shifting, the sun rises and sets in different locations and populations of birds and animals fluctuate dramatically.
In all my years here I'd never seen more than five or six cormorants. This morning I saw more than I'd ever seen in one place - ever. They settled only for a few minutes. I tried to capture the amazing sound of these creatures taking off as they headed down river.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
A Touch of Grace CD
In 1996, Mike McAvoy, Tod Norian, Carol Wahler and I hunkered down in Mike's sound studio in his basement and shut off the furnace so we had some quiet. We then launched into four fifteen minute cuts which you'll find on my CD, "A Touch of Grace."
I've often joked that I gave this the wrong title. It should be called, "Music to Drool By." What really works is that it offers just enough tonal shifts that it stays interesting and engaging without being over-bearing. It's perfect for meditation, yoga, massage and relaxing.
I'm immensely grateful to my co-creators and that this has been so helpful for so many. To purchase please email Jonathan Click here
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Further Evidence I’m Not Dead Yet.
I do one Facebook post a year, entitled, “Further Evidence I’m Not Dead Yet.” It’s a way to thanks folks for their birthday wishes and take a photo to chronicle my vitality.
I’m immensely grateful to be this healthy.
My mother was a health food nut and worked hard to feed us well. She was a disciple of Linus Pauling and I remember being in kindergarten taking my 500mg of vitamin C every morning at breakfast. They were huge robins egg blue and I was proud I could choke it down without complaint. We got our eggs from Harry and Edna Dietrich, who lived over the hill and unpasteurized milk, before it got picked up by the dairy, from another neighbor up the road. Our food came from the garden or the local farmer’s market and the meat we raised on the farm or bought from neighbors.
Living in the ashram, I was fascinated with the relationship between diet and consciousness.
I became macrobiotic, inspired by George Ohsawa and Michio Kushi. I joke that as I became more grim I became macro-neurotic and finally, for a period of time, a fully blown macro-psychotic. I led group fasting retreats for years at Kripalu Center, did a six month immersion into the living foods diet at the Ann Wigmore Institute in Puerto Rico - nothing heated above 112 degrees. In my studies I’ve done high colonics, panchakarma retreats, had my tongue read, my nails interpreted and taught people how to analyze their poop.
Part of my good health is genetic. I take after one side of my family in particular. They are tall, skinny folk who, as my dad used to say, ‘Have to be nailed in their coffins.’
Part of my good health is lifestyle. I try to listen to my body and what gives me energy.
I’m a lot more relaxed about what I eat, though, than ever before.
A turning point for me was a time in the ashram when I was particularly grim and fanatic about diet. I was frustrated how the kitchen was falling short in providing us the purest foods possible.
I laid out my case with one of the directors, complaining they needed to seriously up-level their offerings.
“Let me ask you just one question,” he said. “What do happy people eat?”
I paused and after a few moments said, “OK. I get it. I’m done.”
When studies revealed the French were healthier than Americans even though they ate more fat, alcohol and sugar, no one could figure out why. Maybe it was the wine! They isolated resveratrol, a chemical in red wine and started marketing that as a supplement.
No one thought to measure happiness while eating and the fact that French meals were eaten over a long period of time in a relaxed setting. As my friend and fellow ashram-mate Marc David, founder of The Institute for the Psychology of Eating says, “Food is best consumed in a state of celebration.”
That seems to be the key.
Happiness leads to relaxation. Relaxation leads to moving out of the linear confines of the mind. Moving out of the linear mind opens us to new possibilities and to what is actually happening.
From that place, we respond rather than react.
A votre santé.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
Stalking the White Egret
These days it’s getting up into the 90s, so I hop on my paddle board in the early morning and head upriver before I start broiling in the haze-filled heat.
White egrets are rare around here. It’s usually only when there is a drought in the Midwest that they come east.
For some reason, we have one local resident. I spent the morning in pursuit, shielding myself from it using small islands and rocks.
This image is as close as I got.
Tomorrow the hunt continues…
iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.
