XIII. Fear, Discipline and Learning

I went to the beach this morning and did my hatha yoga asanas in the sand. Over the five weeks that I have been in India I have maintained a discipline in this that literally grounds me in the place. In turn, I find that this practice makes me more focused in attending to both the work and play that I am called to do. Indeed, I think that it either creates the call or gives me the peace to hear it.

As a condition of this sabbatical and the Fulbright Scholarship I have promised much to myself and others. So, I must produce a lot in these few months that I am here in India. I was brought up thinking that instilling fear was the way to get good results; therefore, the idea would be to use fear to scare myself and others into performing. Over the years I have learned from my many teachers that the opposite generally tends to be true, and now do a much better, though still imperfect, job of avoiding the use of fear and the emotion into which it often evolves, anger, as a means for motivating myself and others. Still, it is deep in my being. So the hatha yoga and other forms of disciplining my body and mind are a way for me to maintain focus so that I am not hooked by the fear and devolve into a being that I cannot admire and do not wish to be.

Among other things, my best teachers have caused me to see my own fear by changing my life circumstances in some way. If the truth be known, I am a bit of a thrill-seeker; so, I am a natural for learning to see fear, using it constructively, and transforming it into peace and joy. One cannot enjoy the thrill without living near the edge of fear.

My daughter, Christine, is a great gift in many ways – not the least of which is that she has this same tendency. I recall her flying through the air with great joy in the swing that I put in our tall maple tree in Massachusetts (higher and faster than any of her playmates would dare to go), doing [very] high dives and jumps into a wide assortment of bodies of water, and riding the roller coaster together at the South Carolina State Fair (when she was still young enough to ride with me). My memories of all this are about joy. It is interesting though, that many of her memories of India (at least as told to me by Jane) are about overcoming fear….. on the path to joy?

While looking at the sea this morning I was briefly reminded of the beach at Edisto Island in South Carolina –long, sandy and also facing East. I have nearly drowned in these waters on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal, so I have some intimate understanding that it is much rougher here than back home. The current is considerably faster and stronger and the waves pound hard on the sandy shore. The British and French were drawn to this coast (Pondicherry is only a short trip down the coast), just as they were to my ancestral home in Eastern Canada, to the Southern US where I now live, and to Africa, where I also have worked and played. These places are connected by much more than the waters that bathe their coastlines or my limited experience of each. These next several postings will present my experience of places, people and events (my teachers) that link seemingly disparate events to a grand story that is still being played out in the lives of people all over the world. Of course, I am writing this from my own perspective – but this is conditioned to a very large extent by the experience of my teachers and students, who, in the truest sense, are also my teachers.