I remember seeing the trailer of this film in San Francisco. I missed the screening of this film and it was not available on dvd then. I happened to pick it up from my library.

It is a cooking class with Zen priest and chef. This is a film about Zen chef Edward Espe Brown who has penned many Tassajara cookbooks. It is quite a fun film that talks about food as a way of life. There is a bit of zen advice too. He talks about how long it took him to finally understand the Buddhist ritual of offering food to Buddha, when you know for sure it is not going to be consumed. You make your effort and then you offer it. You say this is my offering and then you leave.

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Christmas used to be one my favorite festivals. How I loved the homemade plum cake and homemade sweet wine that my friends offered me in India. The plum cake made in India is uniquely Indian, I have not tasted anything like it in the west. The carol singing and the cheap costumed Santa dancing to the Indian drums in a tropical place, going house to house looking for donations. Christmas was so much fun, until I moved to the west.

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Faith is the source of authentic action. From the core of man comes faith, and from that, meaningful existence. I found this article in Hinduism Today, which quotes from the Vedas.

This film starts with Chris Rock wondering what is good hair. His tiny little daughter is unhappy with nappy hair and questions him why she does not have good hair. He sets off on a mission to figure out what this is all about. His questions take him all the way to India, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Although the movie is very funny, thanks to Chris Rock, it deals with difficult issues of conformance and the superficiality of looks.

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This is obscene. Not because they ask you to expose. Asking to expose yourself to yoga is quite clever. Obscene are the prices inside the store. The yoga mats and the spandex clothing are unbelievable. I am so used to seeing the “Ohm” symbol on the asses of my fellow yogis in SF.  I knew they were for cool people.  While I was always content doing my yoga in Old Navy yoga clothes, I thought the name lululemon sounded kuku.

Lulu and lemon sounded silly and quite ridiculous to me.  I did not know these are clothes I cannot afford in this lifetime, or don’t want to as I have no need for them. I spent less than one minute in this store and made for the exit. This is a shop specific to yoga clothing and was started in Vancouver. It definitely has a huge following everywhere I go.  Just when I am studying and going deeper in yoga and realize that you don’t need much at all to be in the Yoga path, here is one store that will sell you so much to look the part. Amazing, how many people fall for it.

Thanksgiving in Canada comes way earlier than in the US of A.  It is a better time to give thanks. The trees are putting on a beautiful display of colors.  Food prepared to give thanks, looks similar to the country south below. It is definitely more mellow than the thanksgiving in the US, a lot of shops are open.  According to this article, thanks giving is mainly a celebration of survival through difficult times.

I have a choice to figure out if I need to get a cell phone or a land line.  Although mobile phones are better, I prefer a land line. There seems to be a definite break from work or home instead of the blurred line between the two. And, I really dislike it when people are speaking over the phones at a restaurant, coffee shop or just talking while walking on the streets into their headsets like zombies.  What is the need to be connected constantly? I know I definitely sound backward when it comes to technology. The whole of the last year I did not have a cell phone for most part and I must say I enjoyed it a lot. I am not sure if I can replicate the lifestyle of  a bum now that I have to start working full time living in a real city. But I do want to keep the peace with me that I had accumulated over the last year. Peace++

I read today that Hugh Jackman stopped the broadway play asking the person in the audience to stop the phone ringing. He is awesome! But, for some reason I do not get so annoyed when the phone rings non stop in a yoga class, even during the savasana. I know yogis should know better and remember to turn it off, but still I sort of forgive people when they forget to do that.

Can a yoga teacher be fat? I could not help thinking about this, when a fat teacher, sort of obese, taught a class at a yoga ashram in India. He was supposedly the guru and the face of the ashram. The class was okay, but I was not used to this style. He was mostly seated on a chair and he walked around once or twice. Before he taught this class, I was told many times that this guru was going to teach on this particular day and the energy of the class was going to explode. We were primed up to this class. I felt no explosion of any sorts.

I wouldn’t ask for my money back for the class, that’s just about how much I liked the class. I like my teachers lean and inspiring. That way, I know they are practicing their yoga, they are grounded and in touch with yoga and are not just talk. Isn’t the body a telltale of one’s yoga practice? (more…)

It is a common enough saying – a picture is worth a thousand words – and unlike certain other oft-repeated proverbs, this is one that we know instinctively to be true. Human beings like pictures. A graph is easier to understand than a list of numbers, a picture is easier to grasp than a long-winded description. Some yoga posture are well nigh impossible to describe in words, yet a simple stick figure can show you exactly how to fold and twist your arms, legs and other appendages to achieve it, should you choose to do so. For that matter, the use of an Indian toilet is so much easier to understand when drawn in a picture. Easier drawn than used, of course, but that’s a different story altogether.

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