2. The Big Dump I
2. The Big Dump I
Aparigraha Slaps me in My Face in Real-Fake Life in the Time of Covid
Continued from 1. Northward Ho! The Journey Begins: Yoga and pure newslessness as covid prophylactic
Back Track
Did you really think that our big trek to Yukon was so fun and easy? I thought it would be, of course. And so I’ll back-trip a little bit and share my real introduction to the yogic principle of aperigraha. You know book-words have become real when your body feels like it is being asphyxiated to death during a meditation.
Part I: Apari-what-the-heck?
Yes, aparigraha, the 5th Yama, or 5th yogic moral/restraint from a key bible of yoga, The Yoga Sutras by Patajnali. Aparigraha is one of the psychological/ethical practices of yoga that has been lost under Lulu Lemon yoga clothes and the persona of yoga as competitive posturing, sweat and tight abs. Aparigraha is the practice of non-hoarding and non-coveting. In other words, it is the practice of releasing, not keeping, the things of mind and body that no longer serve us and to stop wanting or craving the things that do not serve us. Simple? Yes. Difficult? Yes!
Apari? What the Heck Does That Have To Do With a New Job and Covid Injections?
Great question! At the time we were packing our lives into boxes to travel north I would have said smugly, ‘Absolutely nothing’, (and sing War What is Good For?) even if I had actually taken the time to think about it. I didn’t take the time to think about it because I didn’t have time to think about it because I had so much stuff to pack. And I had exacerbated the time squeeze because I had procrastinated, as I often do, resting lazily in delusional optimism and a tendency to deny the reality of the time it takes to do real things. In a nut shell, despite the grounding practices of daily yoga, I was still seriously disconnected from earthly reality and had too much to do in too few hours.
So, instead of respecting Mari Kondo and practicing the yoga of reducing the weight of ‘my’ stuff, which would have been aparigraha, I was happily packing 1200 or so books into 15 large boxes, exactly as I had done a few years earlier when I had left my previous long term relationship. These boxes now were supplemented with new kitchen stuff, bedding, new furniture, etc., that being stable and newly single in our society engenders.
To get an idea of the burden of those books, perhaps think of it this way: if I read a book a week from my library and no other books, it would take me 23 years to read them. That would include about 30% re-reads. The reality of my life at that time was that I was lucky to read a book every two months, with many coming from outside of my library. If I read six books a year it would take me 200 years to read my library. Of course I could rationalise my library as a great resource, which often–err, correction, sometimes–it was because I had been careful in my book acquisitions. And yet… was I really happy being a library to myself?
Yoga? Aperigraha 101: To Live In A Dream and Have Disconnected Reality Really Start to Kick Ass
The new employer was to pay $10k towards our relocation. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! And I jumped immediately into ungrounded premature elation with big plans for a nice drive up via Vancouver Island and the ferry to Alaska while a moving company moved the incredible heaviness of being stuffed. Wow, is moving to Yukon expensive! The island plans smashed, elation became deflation and disappointment. And so we began our move north, after a large emotional swing, with an unnecessarily large U-Haul truck and a trailer for the car.
As I write this I am now aware that that was the yoga of aparigraha introducing itself into my changing life, as if to accelerate the spiritual baby step changes that had been significantly begun with my first yoga and breath classes in 2014. And I know intimately that there are none so blind as those who do not see, ie me. And it provided me, with hindsight, a slap-in-the-face taste of a future three years of being awakened to my own blindness within an induced societal hysterical blindness.
The Truck was Packed and Off We Went
Here I publicly thank the people who helped pack that truck. Thank you!
The truck. It was big and noisy and I put on my best happy face to make the best of it, to un-imagine how uncomfortable we were going to be for the next week. We had left late, later than planned and it was dark. The Vancouver winter rain had begun to fall and the roads very hard to see.
Yoshiko had gone quiet. Very quiet.
💞
I'm back to binge reading you are amazing posts! 😃 greatful that you and they are here.
Alas. I, too, am a biblomaniac. Probably will be until I die, or am too senile to pick up a book. Yet, I am happy; I am in my place. My wife has tolerated it for 47 years. Now that's a good woman.
I, too, have driven the biggest U Haul truck made. But that was ages ago. The U Haul experience must be something every male must endure at least once. The younger of our two sons has had to do it twice. He does the Pod thing now.
Looking forward to catching up on the rest of your adventure; but it is 2:20 AM DST and I must get to bed.