Chapa, The Archer

[Lisa Walford]

On the eve of our "holiday that celebrates our freedom", I am feeling rather deflated. I hear that my colleagues are anxious for their children's future, many are angry, many feel defeated in the face of the rapidly changing landscape of our politics and social structures. So, I ask myself. What is right action, what is wise action, and where do I start? 

In Prashant Iyengar's book on pranayama, he suggests: " The mystery and travesty is that we are, in fact, regulated by our vasanas (impulses) and karmas (results of our actions). But when prana regulates us, the vasanas and karmas are temporarily DETHRONED (caps are Prashants') and prana is given a CORONATION.      

Wow, strong language. Dethrone our reactivity and crown a noble presence, or perhaps I might say "in harmony with our noble tendencies". And prana? What is prana? Potential energy, the potency of energy itself? When Prashant mentions "when prana regulates us, the "vasanas" (impulses) are temporarily dethroned..." When our ground of being is fresh and innocent (but not naïve) rather then disturbed by preferences and prejudices, then we have the possibility of being much more.. Read this poem and imagine, are we the waves on the ocean, the current in the ocean, or water itself..

 

Chapa, the Archer, by Matty Weingast   

My sisters.

The thing that breaks

And leaves sharp edges

that cut you from the inside -

that’s not the heart.

That’s the house you built

out of all the pretty things

other people told you,

and the strange promise

that what is felt today

will be felt tomorrow.

But such houses are build to fall apart.

And when they do.

the heart must take to the open road

and leave the past behind.

…

Look me in the eye, my sister.

You are more than your laughter

and your sighs.

You are more than your rage

and your tears.

You are much more..  

Matty Weingast lived in a nuns’ monastery in northern California for many years to study the Therigatha. This ancient text is an especially sacred collection of awakening verses, because the poems are said to be authored by the very first community of Buddhist nuns, led by the Buddha’s stepmother. Weingast, living with and through these verses, wrote his own experience of the teachings embedded within them. The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. These poems were spoken, not written, and include works of young and old, princesses and courtesans