strategy

Marathon Sculling Log 2

Lahiri ‘M’ Mayasaya’ Tate graphite pencil tracing-paper sketch by Nick Ward (with my face behind), photo by Kirsten Lavers on November 18th, 2011, in the Flack (‘more than a magazine’) HQ, Sturton Street, Cambridge.

Added 9th May 2011:

9th May 2011

From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:

Dear Kirsten,

I take your point and withdraw the provisional submission which I am now in the process of editing on line. Thank you for the feedback – it was not my intention to cause offence, simply to write about that which I sense to be most critical in the worlds of politics and military stategy in the context of ‘yoga-friendly’. ‘The Koran is a terrific book, composed of terrific poetic force’ is close to my position.

With warm regards,

Nick

Original submission: ‘The Koran is a terrible book, composed of terrible poetic force’.

Currently enjoying the Summer breezes as I cruise around on my bike making best use of Toby’s microcube.Draft message for Caroline Luicas:

You have a winning smile, Caroline – a beautiful smile. The other day I was rewarding myself for the revival of interest in my existing plays and my inclination to do more with a glass of red at my local, The Milton Arms, and you came on the sports screens doing your gig with the stand-ups – even with no sound I got the message and found you captivating in that context.

If only there was a Green Bank – how much more relaxed would many of us feel?

29th April

nickwardscenarios on
Resurrecting Kali  April 29th, 2011 at 12:26 pm

to seek out the lonliest state is helpful for meditation. Do you believe it? The key to me – and this is wonderfully expressed by Yogananda – is that the imagination must come into play in pranayama practice – kriya yoga – that’s as hard for scientific types as it is easy for mystical-poetic (visualising) types. As the breath is expelled the prana flows in – and, likewise, on the in-breath, the prana is expelled. It is the ‘negative breath’. The mind, aided by the imagination, follows the prana which can cure all bodily ills and regenerate cells faster than the natural processes of aging – but to do a Babaji you’d have to be something pretty special. Do you want it? Eternal life = 0

Resurrecting Kali
April 30th, 2011 at 2:48 pm

Ive only tried pranayama twice on my own (hilariously & interestingly because of an app I downloaded for my android phone that leads you through it). I did not know all this about it. This is so illuminating, thank you! Does it help to have a teacher or can you do it on your own?

Reply

• nickwardscenarios
  May 2nd, 2011 at 12:36 pm

  you can do it on your own – useful way to keep warm on a cold night… that was a great discovery for me having read about Tibetan yogis sleeping out in the snow, naked, and not quite believing it!… yes, it really works – allow the prana to warm your extremities and have a clear picture of the ‘subtle’ body(chakras are the gateways to the physical) – and if it helps hear a guiding voice saying ‘you can do it!’

• 

• Marathon Sculling Log 2

31st August 2010

Very pleased to see that Marathon Sculling Log 2 has made it into the Nick Ward Scenarios Top Seven this week as the 6th most visited blog.

Shyama Charan Lahiri (Bengali: Shêmā Chôron Lahiṛi), (September 30, 1828 – September 26, 1895)

This is the only photograph of Lahiri Mayasaya. If you look very carefully you can find the great yogi (hidden away) on Peter Blake’s famous cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

search term: beatles sgt. pepper’s lonely hearts club

Lahiri Mayasaya’s chief devotee, Swami Sri Yuteswar  is also on the album cover and much easier to spot (top left).

Sri Yukteshwar Giri (also spelled Sriyukteshwar Giri and Sriyukteshvar Giri)

10 May 1855 – 9 March 1936

1967

John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to Beatles song A Day In The Life sold for $1.2m (£810,000) at auction in 2010, well above the price expected.

Impossible to over-estimate the impact of the Beatles.

‘mirror, mirror on the wall’ 2010 incomplete painting by Nick Ward (water-colour on A4 paper)

At number 7 this blog on Richard 111 in a production by Love and Madness, directed by Ben Kidd.

‘It made me think that to some extent all of these plays are portraits of that greatly haunted and fragmented High Priestess of known and unknown worlds, Elizabeth 1. Look – all the actors in the Love and Madness ensemble are wonderful to behold – so apologies for only drawing attention to four of them’.

King Richard 111, a national tragedy, directed by Ben Kidd

notes on New Labour Iraq invasion apologists

saturday evening: E miliband on radio 5 live…editor of Independent on Sunday d miliband’s amnesia re ed’s claims to have been vocal on Iraq which d milband continues to justify – e miliband unable to accept war was illegal. Is it true that d miliband was instrumental wth release of Guantanimo Bay inmates ? – impossible, surely, so close to Blair? Ask Reprieve how helpful David Milliband was. What exactly is the point of d miliband saying ‘America did some bad things’ – this is about br secret services compliticy in torture and rendition.

Only to find I was missing Ronnie’s radio show on Absolute (a somethin’ else production) – jimmy hendrix – loopy – ronnnie goes electric – jessie an times they are a changin’

He feels like a dad more than an uncle. He’s old enough.

Search term: dylan tarry spy

Posted by: nickwardscenarios | September 1, 2010

Blair Watch and why I like the Prince of Wales (updated)

Tigris River suffering massive environmental damage Added September 1 2010 Predictably BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme headlined not on Obama’s admission that the 1 Trillion Dollars (much of it borrowed) spent on the illegal invasion of Iraq might have been better spent but on Tony Blair’s description of Gordon Brown as ‘maddening’. Iraq is the reason the New Labour experiment was exposed as brutally implicated in the ongoing Blair-Bush plan to attack Iran… Read More

Lahiri Mayasaya’s story (work in progress):

Lahiri Mayasaya: My spiritual quest reached its peak when I was transferred as an employee of the British Empire Railway project (sub-accountant) to the Himalayas in 1862.

It was there, in Ranikhet, that I met my deathless guru, Babaji Maharaj.

Materializing a magnificent golden palace studded with countless dazzling jewels and gems of all varieties, Babaji Maharaj initiated me into all the sacred and secret techniques of Kriya Yoga. I was highly gratified to attain such an inconceivable stage of self-realization. As instructed by Babaji Maharaj, I returned home to perform the worldly duties of a householder.

As a  perfectly realized yogi, I was able to show the path of liberation to householders, brahmacharis, and yogis alike. Word of my spiritual attainment spread, drawing devotees and seekers from all walks of life.

The following quote is written by British author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham and appears in his published work A Writer’s Notebook:

“In India a Yogi wanted to go somewhere by train, but having no money, asked the station-master if he could go for nothing; the station-master refused, so the Yogi sat down on the platform. When it was time for the train to go it would not start. It was supposed that something was wrong with the engine, so mechanics were sent for and they did all they knew, but still the train could not go. At last the station-master told the officials of the Yogi. He was asked to get in the train and it immediately started.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (Bengali: Pôromohôngsho Joganondo, Sanskrit: परमहंस योगानंद)

search term: yogananda

Terror met by Art is your natural instinct, I believe: judging by the quality of your autobiographical writing and your spirit which inspires the artists and spiritual peace-loving men and women of the world regardless of race or creed.

Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda – Crystal Clarity …

The complete text of this book by Paramhansa Yogananda is available on-line.
www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/

Autobiography of a Yogi is worth reading – it took me to another world, yet one I recognised, when I first came across it in Ray’s mental health-financed bedsit in Fremantle, West Australia, in 2003. Ray was born in South Africa just in time to become Yogananda’s reincarnation, or so he thought – and I believed him. Good old Ray – the gentlest soul – it was the only book he had in there and I would sit there half the night absorbed by these amazing, amazingly scientific, come to that, tales and memories. This is the great yogi whose body was held in a state of non-decomposition for many days after his heart had stopped beating – how did he do it? With his ‘mind?’ – through some power of consciousness? - and why? That’s why I love… Wikipedia!

‘As reported in Time Magazine on August 4, 1952, Harry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, where Yogananda’s body was embalmed,^[28] wrote in a notarized letter^[29] sent to Self-Realization Fellowship:^[30]

The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience…. No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death…. No indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible drying up took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one…. No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time….’

‘egg-yantra’ (2010), painting by Nick Ward – water-colour and acrylic on 4x A4 card. Top Posts (the past week) As the Clown picks a tune, his style troubadour, and when he has finished we beg him for More

‘Yoganada 2010′, painting by Nick Ward (miniature on a sheet of Rizla cigarette paper) – a gift to Sylvie Renault

On Prana (and pranayama) – 24th Jan 2011

There are several recurring faith-words in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, words like ‘love’, ‘master’, ‘God’ – problematic words to non-believers (or to philosophical as opposed to religious Buddhists, like myself) yet the book remains universal in its appeal for world peace. There are also deep tensions at work in Autobiography of a Yogi – inevitable in a work which extends back in time to the young Yoganada’s struggles to give himself over to the guru-yoga required of him on his journey to enlightenment by his fiercly loving master, Sri Yuteswar – including his battle to ‘overcome’ his natural homosexuality (and write about it, after a fashion) and to accommodate (later) the prevalent herd-instinct Christianity of what would become his American support base – a congregation divided and totally unprepared for the wilder aspects of the Hindu-Vedic ritual practice which are a vital part of Yoganada’s (largely concealed) Indo-European spiritual heritage.

Buddhism and Christianity have in common the banning of the killing (sacrifice)  enshrined in their respective ancient texts and rituals. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a very recent commandment in the great course of the countless cycles of creation, preservation and dissolution which the earth and its various forms of sentient life and human consciousness have undergone – quite clearly – we have the evidence in the ruins and in what remains of the ‘art’, trans-continentally. With these time scales in mind, the concept of land ownership by lines drawn on maps is very recent indeed – and can, in most case, I suspect, be brought down to squabbles between brothers, and less often, sisters, it seems.

Prana (and its yoga-application, Pranayama) is the word which captivated me more than any other when I first read Yogananda’s Autobiography. Here is the B.K.S. Iyengar’s commentary to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 11.49 (Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Thorsons-HarperCollins, 2002, p 169).

Iyengar translates Patanjali: Pranayama is the regulation of the incoming and outgoing flow of breath with retention. It is to be practiced only after perfection in asana is attained.

Sutras II. 49-53 describe pranayama and its effects.

Pranayama, the fourth constituent of yoga, is what the heart is to the human body.

It is interesting to note that Patanjali expressly advises the sadhaka to do pranayama only after attaining perfection in asana. For the first time, he shows a distinct step in the ascent of the ladder of yoga, whereas he has not stipulated progession for other aspects.

Normally the flow of breath is unrestrained and irregular. Observing these variations, and conditioning the mind to control the inflow, outflow and retention of the breath in a regular, rhythmic pattern, is pranayama.

Prana is an auto-energizing force which creates a magnetic field in the form of the Universe and plays with it, both to maintain, and to destroy for further creation.’

As regular Nick Ward Scenarios visitors will know I have, for exteneded periods of time, devoted myself to asana-perfection in a single sculling boat over marathon distances – fast-track mantra-yoga (a medieval Japanese monk provided the ‘japa’ that became  my four-stroke cycle ‘rowing mantra’).  As a somewhat lapsed moving-mantra (non-bookish) yogi I remind myself that however lapsed my practice might be or feel (for whatever confounded reasons), all of the accumulated practice is stored in the body-mind mechanism and cannot be forgotten.

Ivengar:’(Prana) permeates each individual as well as the Universe at all levels. It acts as physical energy; as mental energy, where the mind gathers information; and as intellectual energy with a discriminatory faculty, where information is examined and filtered. This same prana acts as sexual energy, spiritual and cosmic energy. All that vibrates in the Universe is prana: heat, light, gravity, magnetism, vigour, power, vitality, electricity, life and spirit are all forms of prana. It is the cosmic personality, potent in all beings and non-beings. It is the prime mover of all activity. It is the wealth of life’.

Thinking of my neglected sculling-mantra practice I am reminded of my chief North-West Australian (Goonyandi) aboriginal teacher telling me (perhaps as a reassuring confessional) of how he lost faith in his law, aboriginal law (or lore, if you prefer), in his forties, as he found ways of accommodating – of compromising with – his-the world as it had become. The white man came late to parts of the Kimberley in Australia’s North West. Australia, as a whole, was declared Terra Nullius (empty land) by the British colonisers whose justification for the slaughter of indigenous peoples and their enslavement (abolished by the ‘Award Wages’ Act 1969) was that these ‘savages’ were no more deserving of human consideration than ‘flaura and forna’ – a species of which they were thus classified, these sub-Calibans; these filthy pre-Jezebels, who were quite incapable of an honest days work consisting of, for instance, uprooting ancient ancestral trees to make way for, say, cattle and sheep stations, unless whipped, massacred or served with poisoned flour. Aboriginal people are incapable of being driven away from their land or bought out, they simply get too homesick for their sacred places. When they are not on the country they were born to protect they go crazy with grief and longing – and will go to ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ lengths to return.

The Zionist principle of land acquisition – (which can be traced back through Herzl to Rhodes and before him to Disraeli) of ‘simulaneous purchase’ of Palestinian land (from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) followed by forced dispossession of local Arab inhabitants by military means was unnecessary in Australia as it was not until the 1970s that traditional ownership had any legal recogition. Who can tell that story without disappearing into unreadable legalese? Not I, even if I had a mind to. I just don’t believe in fixed borders imposed by human beings – I believe in rivers and mountains and trade routes and peaceful interependence – these are things I love: natural pathways, natural boundaries – signifying and celebrating difference and the magnificent variety of ‘religious experience’, so called by American philosopher William James. Lennon-Ono’s one world. Imagine.

There is enough food in the world for everyone without guns.

Ivengar:’ The self-energizing force is the principle of life and of conciousness. It is the creation of all beings in the Universe. All beings are born through it and live by it. When they die, their individual breath dissolves into the cosmic breath. Prana is not only the hub of the wheel of life, but also of yoga.’

Ramakrishna – one for the bankers!

Ramakrishna – Vivekananda and Hare Krishna – Experiences of India.

In this living room Sri Ramakrishna’s disciple Vivekananda hid a coin under the bed to test if his guru really could not touch money. Throughout his later life Ramakrishna refused to handle money saying it was impossible for him to hold money or metal (which also symbolised coins) as he would feel pain and his hand would be forced aside.

22 Nov 2008 … Malaysia’s top Islamic body has banned Muslims from practising yoga, saying it contains corrupting elements of Hinduism.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7743312.stm – Cached – Similar

In 2008  Extremist Islamist leaders declared an under-reported fatwa on Yoga (absurd as that must sound to those who think yoga is an evening class of ungaily stretching paid for with money) - in other words the killing of a yoga practitioner will enable a good Muslim access to many virgin brides in Mohumedan Heaven. At times I find Islam difficult to accommodate! Thank God for Kabir and the Sufi mystics, is about all I can say. The Koran is a terrific book composed with terrific poetic force. Islam obliterated Buddhism in India during the Islamic incursions to India in the 11^th century AD. Do Isamic law-makers consider themselves the enemy of Buddhism (and yoga-friendly pre-shoots and off-shoots)? The British-ordained partition of India put the lid on sites considered very sacred indeed by many historically-minded Buddhists. It was an act of short-sighted division: what is it about Britain-USA and division, currently on a joint killing spree in the Swat Valley? (ammended 9th May 2011 from top of this para to here. The remainder of this paragraph is unchanged since the withdrawn  Flack submission referred to at the top of this blog, Are we going round in circles or banging our heads against brick walls? Neither!!!)

Original para continues:

Why exactly? Because a Saudi Arabian called Bin Laden flew planes into the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001 which resulted in the mass and indiscriminate destruction of these priceless Buddhist cave-temples? Illogical. Read Chomsky and watch The Battle of Algiers to understand why top-down presidential power-structures do not apply to Islamist terror operations. The number is 3 x 3 x 3 ad infinitum. Cells of 3. If one of the 3 is taken out another comes in. Unbeatable.

Wikipedia: The region that is today known as Pakistan once had a large Buddhist population, with the majority of people in Gandhara (present day North Western Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan) being Buddhist. Gandhara was largely Mahayana Buddhist, and was also a stronghold of Vajrayana Buddhism. The Swat Valley, known in antiquity as Uddiyana, was a kingdom tributary to Gandhara. There are many archaeological sites from the Buddhist era in Swat.

search term: warrent officer class 1 phil applegarth swat valley

Ivengar: ‘Everything is established in it (prana). It permeates life, creating the sun, the moon, the clouds, the wind, the rain, the earth and all forms of matter. It is both being (sat).

Nick: Subject.

Ivengar: and non-being (asat).

Nick: Object.

Ivengar: ‘Each and every thing, or being, including man, takes shelter under it. Prana is the fundamental energy and the source of all knowledge’.

I understand by ‘asana’ the attaining of a physical body capable of maximizing the supernatural and magnetic forces which the practice of  Patanjali’s prananyama imply. Sitting in a half or full-lotus beneath a bodhi tree or in a Himalyan cave is not a serious option for a Westerner (those ashram-trained Indians have bodies adapted to sitting that way from infancy – it’s the way they sit. Westerners brought up to sit on chairs can take comfort from depictions of Maitraya (the ‘Buddha of the future’) traditionally pictured sitting with one leg dangling down. In a chair!) Besides, I’ve done the Bodhi tree and Himalyan cave in previous lives! You too? Playing the digeridoo might have been an equally effective path for me (and might be yet unless I get a sculling boat sorted out) involving as it does the constant flow of circular breathing. Single sculling and digeridoo and playing music and writing and painting and chanting — could be spreading myself a bit thin what with advising world leaders on the vast amounts of money to made from ‘green solutions’ as substitute for investments in fossil fuels and war. Overwhelmed? Not at all! However I find the idea of breath ‘retention’ difficult to recommend, for it implies cessation of breathing – and that’s a tough call – unless you feel like looking over the edge of life without oxygen before your natural time.

We all have to die. Or do we? Yogananda’s Babaji has cheated death for countless centuries according to Autobiography of a Yogi. Do you believe it?  The key to me – and this is wonderfully expressed by Yogananda – is that the imagination must come into play in pranayama practice – kriya yoga – that’s as hard for scientific types as it is easy for mystical-poetic (visualising) types. As the breath is expelled the prana flows in – and, likewise, on the in-breath, the prana is expelled. It is the ‘negative breath’. The mind, aided by the imagination, follows the prana which can cure all bodily ills and regenerate cells faster than the natural processes of aging – but to do a Babaji you’d have to be something pretty special. Do you want it? Eternal life = 0

Nick Ward Plays 1