Wholistic Fitness

“Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.”
Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement.”
– Sogyal Rinpoche

willows, flowing stream (5)
Nature’s sultry tongue speaks verse (7)
Squat! and hear the theme! (5)

– coach ilg, 9/17/06
this spontaneous Haiku came to me while i was yogi squatting in Bright Angel Creek, surrounded by the 1.7 billion year old “Vishnu Schist”, bottom of the Grand Canyon.

as a child, growing up with my wolf, Apache, in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado, sun splashed alpine creeks – not at all unlike Bright Angel Creek – were among my most potent Spiritual Teachers at that formative time in my young life. Today, the rocks and myself are a bit older, yet the Dharma Lessons carried by such unsullied creeks ring as clear and sharp and youthful to my ever evolving Soul (Atman) as ever…even moreso as age seems to round off my rough egoic edges like the river stones themselves.

Having incarnated into and trained in the great Lineage of Avalokiteshvara, who was one of Shakyamuni Buddha’s foremost and highly skilled students, the quality of Compassion has and allWays remains the driving force behind my SvaDharma (Ones Sacred Duty to be performed in this lifetime). It was the passive meditation of squatting in such beautiful mountain streams that, ironically, became my own “Stream Entry” into realizing my spiritual Lineage. Literally immersed each wild day in Prakriti** taught me that Great Beauty happens unexpectedly yet must arise from an endless Practice of attention* and humility.

Like Truth, beauty is allWays a surprise when she visits our personal Lodge. She is cultivated from tilling the fields of our mind, body, and spirit through daily Conscious Practice and staying on this side of Peace throughout all the challenging circumstances of our daily life. Sacred Happiness arises when you finally choose to join Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Moon in their laughing upon your family’s grave and in the plaintive smile which grows across our own faces as we remember playing with the creeks and animal companions of our childhood when we were still close to our True Source.

Because of my Lineage and formal Training, i have only Compassion for those who either ignore their innate fitness or keep their fitness enslaved to things like Stairmasters and Barbells and yoga sticky mats. My Heart opens toward those who do not do what it is required to unchain their Noble Fitness Efforts to play within the Grand Canyons and High Mountains of our precious lands…who know not their own limit of hiking upon blistered feet and laughing through sun cracked lips. For, to me, when i backpack into the wildness, all my Pain becomes purified through a reMembering of my Divine Intent. during such recollections, i know in my Heart of Hearts that somewhere back in High Colorado,
a Glacier Lilly opens silently
without fanfare
and
wingbeat by wingbeat
Raven glides an updraft
knowing
yet
not knowing.

get out and do the Do…
life is short
your Wholistic Fitness is your Freedom

om so ti

coach ilg

photos:
#1) flower garden arises from a former desert; my parents home in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. by coach
#2) willow patch; Bright Angel Creek. by coach
#3) my little brother Craig, dancing his own limits as he rounds yet another of the dozens of switchbacks up the Bright Angel Trail out of the bottom of the Grand Canyon last week. by coach.
#4) after my ‘favorite’ September Sweat; Inline Skiing. by Ananda.

* = thus the 4 Noble WF Lifestyle Principles
** = Shakti Consciousness manifested as Nature in the form of the three Gunas (see prior DL Dharma Teachings); sattva, rajas, and tamas