Welcome to my new Blog!
I went to a talk by Lama Tashi, a Tibetan monk, here at the Music Room in Orange, Virginia. This is a small town, maybe 5000 population, and we don’t see Tibetan monks much here. It’s nice, though, to be in a room with a Buddhist; especially one who is experienced at promoting his worldview. They’re like spiritual air purifiers: they suck all the negative energy out of the room, and make you want to go home and meditate.
Lama Tashi was talking for a while about Tibetan yoga, which I didn’t know was a thing. It’s the physical exercises they teach monks in Tibetan monasteries. He was distinguishing it from the smooth, undulating movements of Indian yoga, because it’s more vigorous and rough (he said it was, anyway), but I could see or feel that some of the movements and their purposes seemed to resemble yoga. He mentioned “clearing” or “opening up” chakras more than once.
I was also thinking about fasting, although I didn’t bring it up during the talk. I’ve been experimenting with intermittent fasting for a few months, and while Lama Tashi was talking about breathing exercises and meditation, I suddenly realized that fasting was like meditation for the body: thoughts and feelings are like food. Thoughts and feelings disturb the mind and pull it in all directions, and meditation trains you to acknowledge them and let them go, dissociating your self from them, so that you can perceive that there is a quiet and abiding place undisturbed by all the noise. Frequent eating, which is the norm in modern society, disturbs the serenity of the body, causing insulin levels to be constantly elevated and excessive calories fill up your fat stores until there’s no room left. We forget the fact that our bodies evolved to endure periods without food frequently, which is why fat is used to store energy. Fasting allows the body a meditative serenity, with low insulin, and you also feel less hunger when you make a habit of it, just like you’re less easily distracted when you make a habit of meditation.
Time for another Negroni.
