MyLifeYoga

One day, a countryman knocked hard on a monastery door. When the monk tending the gates opened up, he was given a magnificent bunch of grapes.

“Brother, these are the finest my vineyard has produced. I’ve come to bear them as a gift.”

“Thank you! I will take them to the Abbot immediately, he’ll be delighted with this offering.”

“No! I brought them for you.”

“For me?” The monk blushed, for he didn’t think he deserved such a fine gift of nature.

“Yes!” insisted the man. “For whenever I knock on the door, it is you opens it. When I needed help because the crop was destroyed by drought, you gave me a piece of bread and a cup of wine every day. I hope this bunch of grapes will bring you a little of the sun’s love, the rain’s beauty and the miracle of God, for it is He who made it grow so fine.”

The monk held the grapes and spent the entire morning admiring its beauty. But rather than eating the grapes, he decided to deliver the gift to the Abbot, who had always encouraged him with words of wisdom. Continue reading →

The ego loves having the upper hand. It wants to be superior. It wants to be the giver not the asker. Most of us hate asking for help, and in doing so we fortify our aloofness and separateness and we strengthen our ego. When we miss the opportunity to ask we also miss the opportunity for connection. Asking forces us into humility. It forces us to make connections and share a bond. It allows us to dissolve our ego and submit to the force of universal love. If viewed from this light, we then begin to see asking as a form of yoga. Thus the practice in the East of monks and yogis being required to beg for food makes lot of sense.

For artists and creative people if we accept that humility and connection is the key to the creative process, then this talk by Amanda Palmer is of great importance. It shows that one possible future for the creative process may be with freeing art up to be open source. This may require the artist to pass the hat around and ask for donations. The creative process would then truly become a deeper yogic journey.

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There was once a man who was ship-wrecked and stranded on an island. Every day he prayed asking God to send someone to rescue him, but to his disappointment, no one ever came.

The captain responded, “We were voyaging across the ocean when we noticed on the horizon a column of smoke going up. We decided to go check it out and when we did, that’s when we found you!”

Too often we are quick to judge and we label things and events as “good” or “bad”. But do we really know how things are going to eventually turn out? When we reflect back on our lives we may see certain events that at the time they were occuring we viewed them unfavourably. But now we may be crediting these same events as something that were key to bring to where we find ourselves today. So let us resolve not to expend our energy in judging and labeling events. Rather let us learn to view them dispassionately and with an open and accepting attitude.

Related: Is It Good Or Bad?

Credits: We found this story here.