Hello, Everyone, 

 

We hope this email finds you doing as well as can be during these trying times. 

 

Please find enclosed our additional classes for this week, and a few, small thoughts I’ve been having about the aims of life. 

 

Wednesday, March 25th, 1pm-1:45 EST

Five Days of Loving Kindness with Jocelyne (Zoom)

Please join Jocelyne for five-days of a traditional, progressive Loving-Kindness practice. The class will include a ten to fifteen minute introduction, followed by a thirty-minute guided meditation. You do not need to attend each class, but if you can do all five in a row, it has quite a nice effect.

 

Monday, March 30th, 1pm EST

Questions and Discussions from Italy (Zoom)

This past week a student named Wioletta Kowalska, who lives in Italy, reached out to me and asked if I would consider answering some of the questions that were coming up for her and some other Italian students and teachers about the purpose of practice in the face of tragedy. I said I would be happy to do my best. So, on Monday, March 30th, we will do a community Zoom call at 1pm EST, and I’ll take questions that Wioletta has collected, and if you wish to send any in to me, you are welcome to. This call will be a pre-curser to a Yoga Sutra study group that we will start later next week, one that began in Oxford in January, but will migrate to online. 

 

Thoughts on Livelihood

Right now as much of the world is sheltering at home, many of us are thinking and worrying about our work situations and livelihoods. Everything has changed in the span of just a few, short weeks. The routines we have taken for granted are now gone, along with many of our jobs. Yoga schools along with almost every other type of business have shuttered their doors, and many, including me, have gone online to continue to connect. This of course is not new, yoga classes have been taught online for many years now. The difference is that our communities that were used to gathering together in person are now gathering online, with gratifyingly positive results in many instances. Is this the new normal? 

 

I’ve spent time thinking about one of the four stages of human life in Hinduism over the past few months. The four collectively are called the purusharthas, the four aims of life: dharma, artha, kama and moksha. They appear in different orders, sometimes with artha first, and kama second. As well, the meanings of the words vary greatly, too. But one thing that is agreed upon is that these four somehow intertwine to make up a comprehensive philosophy of living, and that when these four are in balance we can live joyous, fulfilled lives under any external condition, and when not in balance with each other, we cannot find joy even if we live in the most privileged or opportune conditions. 

 

Very loosely, these are the meanings:

 

Dharma: The inherent quality of any thing; the duties that must be performed, our purpose.

Artha: Aim, purpose, utility, motive, use, the gaining and maintaining of wealth

Kama: Desire, pleasure in alignment with dharma, fulfillment 

Moksha: Liberation

 

It is artha that I’ve been thinking most about. In the Bhagavat Purana, there are two stories about the birth of artha. One tells the story of Artha as the son of Dharma and Buddhi (inherent intelligence). Another tells the story of a golden lotus flower that grows out from the forehead of Lord Vishnu, from which Sri, the Goddess of wealth and abundance is born. From the Goddess Sri, both Dharma and Artha come into being. In either story, it’s clear that Dharma and Artha are related. As with all families, if they can get along with each other, things will go more smooth. Artha, as either the younger brother or son of Dharma must always be in support of his brother (or father), for harmony. 

 

Artha is commonly translated as money or wealth, but it means much more than money. The thought I have had about artha—and I may be completely mistaken on this—is that artha can also indicate the skillful means that we need to acquire in order to earn money, earnings that should ideally be in alignment with dharma, or our life’s purpose.* Skillful means are built upon our inherent skills, or even skills that perhaps are not inherent to us, but that through a little discipline and determination we can gain. When contemplating artha we can ask ourselves the following questions:

 

What are my innate skills? 

What do I think I am good at? 

What skillful means do I need to use to accomplish my goals? 

Am I in touch with my purpose in life? 

 

Artha is the skillful means we acquire in order to succeed in accomplishing or fulfilling our purpose. It is our means of accomplishment. 

 

So, while I am sitting here at home, on day seven of the fourteen day self-isolation I promised to do when I entered America back from India, I have been wondering, what skillful means do I need to develop as we move into a new way of living in the world? We don’t know what the world will be be like after the lock-down’s cease, or even know when they will cease. Perhaps life will be different when and if this settles down, or perhaps it will go back to business as usual, and the coronavirus will be another enemy that the modern world defeated so greed can happily speed forward to create more, terrible diseases. We have no way of knowing. But what I do wonder is if during this time of hunkering down, we can gain some new skillful means that we can apply to whatever the world is like when this is all over. If the world is the same, then we’ll have some new tools. If the world is different. hopefully they’ll be the appropriate tools that we need to have. 

 

What tools do you think you need, or want, to develop, as the world collectively goes through this very strange and stressful time? What skills do you need to develop to accomplish your goals in a new world? (By the way, it's always a new world...)

 

With love,

Eddie and Jocelyne 

 

*If artha is money, then our money should be earned for the sake of supporting dharma in order for us to find joy and fulfillment in our lives. If it is earned for nefarious means or for the sake of maintaining power of others, it won’t bring joy, it will just bring money and the suffering that can accompany having too much money (“Mo’ money, mo’ problems, “ said The Notorious BIG). So earning money is not a bad thing, it’s the intention behind the earning that determines the outcome. Indeed, in the Bible (Timothy 6:10) it does not say that money is the root of all evil, but that “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”