Words and Hands
"Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon's location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?" (from Urban Zen-ist)
I love words and writing. I love pictures, but I don’t like to take pictures or take the time to have pictures taken of me. So I have been wondering why I also struggle with resistance to taking yoga photos for this Yoga Mama newsletter and correspondingly, for my instagram, urbanyogamama. I can admire the thousands of lovely pictures of instagram yogis showing their accomplishments; I admire their dedication to capturing the moment as much as I admire the beautiful shape of their pose.
But as I reflect on what I want to share here with fellow Yoga Mamas, I think about how a picture of me doing an impressive pose would often run counter to what I’m trying to convey. And as I thought of why that is, I remembered the quote above, which I had heard so many times from so many sources. It’s a quote that, for a long time, has inspired me because I have always been intrigued by words and language. So I am the finger; not I, but my body. Each pose I do is a finger pointing towards something, and that something is what I want to share. Unfortunately, a lot of people like to stare at the finger and stop there.
Sometimes I think that the best yoga photo (or a drawing) is the one that shows something that shows principles of yoga, but isn’t a yoga pose. An image that is either so unusual or unexpected that it compels the viewer to get quiet and connect to a deeper, wordless truth. The truth of things that goes beyond name and form.
Swami Satchidananda talks about how name and form change constantly, but they contain the absolute, which is unchanging. He says, “When a piece of wood changes form, you might call it pulp. The pulp is processed, and you call it paper. When that paper is cut into pieces and stitched together, it becomes a notebook. If you print something on it, it becomes a book. When it gets torn, it becomes waste paper. When you burn it, it becomes ash. So what is it that is lost here? The name and form keep on changing.”
Here’s an early morning sketch I did as I waited for my daughter to wake up, an image that simply came to me in the process of drawing as I thought of Satchidananda’s words on name and form. What does it mean to you and your yoga practice? How does it make you feel? What does it remind you of?