New Melleray Abbey
IN 1970, in researching
freedom in community, I accompanied my graduate professor George A. Hillery Jr.
to New Melleray Abbey. Upon
arrival, a monk who greeted us noted that they should have invited Dr. Hillery
up last week for a celebration. A
brother had died.
Life can be everyday, which
is really to say, routine. And
yet, life occurs in a vast, very concrete, yet magical context.
To enter this world within
the everyday world, the life of the monastery creates a life of disciplined
freedom. We typically think of
freedom as a “freedom of alternatives”—the opportunity to do anything that we
want whenever we want. Dr. Hillery
was exploring the presence of “freedom” within discipline.
Body-mind practices that
occur in everyday life are often the outcomes of the heritages of monasteries,
ashrams, hermitages and martial academies. Such practices carry forward a life of disciplined freedom
into everyday life.
However, body-mind practices
can morph into more popularized ”watered-down” activities that continue to have
more of the taste of the everyday than something profound. The original intent is lost and even
distorted. Intensity of workout
might become synonymous with sacred.
Body-mind practices such as
yoga are more than postural workouts.
They are designed to access being-ness more than personality, and to be
integrative and connective rather than exclusive. They aspire to dis-identify
with egoic self, and to expand identity beyond ego.
Body-mind is not just fitness
or even health. Such a transformation can optimize health, but its main
objective is to integrate body and mind to touch spirit. For B.K.S. Iyengar, yoga is celebrant
and asanas are approached as
prayer.
As celebrant, body-mind
practice is
·
A praise of life,
·
Connection with the
sacred,
·
Assertion of
oneness/inclusion,
·
Witness to wonder,
·
Recognition of the
enduring and transcending qualities of living such as compassion and harmony,
·
The carrying forward of
heritage more than rote mimicry of tradition,
·
Deep balance, and
·
Surrender.
When this occurs, life is
celebrant and this can outspread into everyday life.
