Wholistic Fitness

“Those who have not practiced spiritual discipline in their youth,
pine away like old cranes in a lake without fish.
Like worn-out bows they live in old age,
sighing over the past.”
– Dhammapada, 155/156

Jemez Reservoir…
now dry…like so much of my Beloved Southwest.
precious, precious snowmelt used to fill this gorgeous basalt valley
providing deep riparian abundance within this arid land…
now,
the precious water is used to support car washes and golf courses…
nowhere is the drought and insanity of comfort addicted human ignorance more evident
than within the spiritual birthplace of Wholistic Fitness; the “Four Corners” region of the American Southwest.

***
just a few short years ago,
i would come to this very overlook and practice Being
…and breathing…
this place, on the Santa Ana Indian Reservation is just a few miles from where i wrote my fourth book, The Winter Athlete.
often, i would ride my bike here and rejuvenate my lungs and legs with pinyon air and turquoise sky
peppered sparingly by lithe clouds…
my family still live along the banks of the Rio Grande bosque near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

where you see only scorched, brown earth today in this photo above…
just a few moon cycles ago,
there was the miracle of water…tons and tons of beautiful sky blue water lapping luxuriously at coyote tracked banks.

i would come here
do Ai Imawa…
yoga…
and breathe with the festive flight of dozens of cliff swallows plying the air…
like mystical flowers that danced a heart lifting Swallow Dance…
from my lofty perch poised above the rare and seemingly bejweled water,
i would recharge my spiritual veins with the abundance of pranic blood made manifest from red orange hues of
unspeakable sunset blues and then…moon.

this place saved my soul when i lived in Los Angeles,
attempting to be brave and bring this Mountain and High Desert chi
to those of the City Tribe…

yet, now,
having been faithful to my Big City Mission…
now
having returned to my Beloved Southwest…

i look out over the sage where once a sea had winked at me…
sage as dry as the parchment it is becoming…
as
old and withered
as i feel at times,
times like today
when i see this place where once water flowed,
now only
heat and wind and miniscule life…

“A man who does not learn from life,
grows old like an ox: his body grows
but not his wisdom.”
– Dhammapada, 152

now i come to this sacred place
and perform Bardo Meditations…
in the heat and wind
in the heat and wind
the Southwest has fueled my zest for living in utterly unquenchable ways,
today, however,
the Southwest and the madness of people rushing here and sucking her fragile nipples dry
is teaching me yet another layer of Letting Go…
and Ishvara Pranidhana…
i hear Shiva laughing in the the dry quacks of thunder rolling over El Cabazon…
i hear Shiva
i see Shiva smiling up at me from the cracks of the yawning Mother Earth…
that which Lives cries for Life,
that which embraces Death laughs at the clinging…

now i come to this sacred place
and perform Bardo Meditations…
i come here to train for Death…
in the heat and wind
in the heat and wind

and wonder
how gracefully i, like the Purple Sage,
twisted and forlorn
can elegantly wither
and
assume my Death Entry.