particularly as i observe my mind experiencing boundless’s imminent move, which may or may not be to 14th and T, i was struck this morning when reading a commentary by swami satchidananda, who writes a potent and clear translation of the yoga sutras:

How are we to know whether our thoughts are selfless or not? We have watch carefully the moment a thought-form arises in the mind. We become analysts. This itself is the Yoga practice–watching our own thoughts and analyzing them.

Can you run a business successfully and be selfless, I wonder? This is the question I visit and revisit often.

the great bill moyers was interviewed on Npr’s fresh air today, and he recalled a conversation he’d had with joseph campbell, the popular scholar of mythology, said this:

if you want to change the world, you change the metaphor.

So I was talking to a friend and yoga student the other day, and he mentioned yoga journal’s latest issue, which of course includes many pages of earnest yogis doing great poses. my friend mentioned a few particular pages that dismayed him because the poses were not part of a normal editorial section. these poses were paid for by chrysler.

this car-sponsored spread of yoga poses teaches us something about poses, to be sure, but to my friend’s point in a letter he wrote to the editors of this fast-changing magazine, it may teach us more about the necessity of something else: a dialog between the people who consider themselves students (surely we’re more than “enthusiasts?”) of this deeply internal practice, and the western media channeling millions of dollars to advertise its benefits.

what do you think? go buy a yoga journal and give aimmedia.com, its owner, more money and attention, so that we can talk sincerely about whether it’s ok for yoga journal to take money from a huge car company when it didn’t need to. to be sure, wholefoods and vegetarian times are two great entities benefiting from yoga journal’s rise, so a rising tide lifts all ships? or all cars?

january 22

Dear [yoga journal] Editors,

I just bought the February 2008 issue of Yoga Journal — my first in a while. I was really looking forward to reading it. But picking up the magazine and opening it was like bumping into a friend one hasn’t seen in a long time and having your breath taken away by how far along their cancer is — your magazine is simply being overrun, inch by inch, with ever more inappropriate advertising.

I’m sure you get lots of letters like mine, and have many answers to my objection — where do you draw the line; it’s all in the name of getting the good word out about yoga; and so on. I’m sure it’s very easy to dismiss letters like mine, and very hard to turn down Chrysler.

But please, somewhere in the back of your minds, at least register that one reader has given up on you. I know we’re all caught up in the ugly contradictions of capitalism; I know none of our hands is clean. Still, even so, when I see that your editorial staff has decided to produce an “article” in the YJ house style that is actually an ad for automobiles — automobiles! — I’m unable to read the rest of the magazine. I hope your hard-working writers will
accept my apologies.

Yours,

“CAM,” or Complementary and Alternative Modalities, is a healthcare movement trying to get your attention. Lobbyists and other interested parties are right now encouraging the submission of comments to the FDA regarding a “guidance” that the FDA will use, effectively, to make herbs, vitamins, and minerals “medicine.” from what i can tell on first glance, this means that our access to these earth-based (as in, naturally occurring) materials will be significantly restricted (and drive the price higher). a full copy of the proposal from the FDA is here.

i don’t understand the issue completely, but several of the emails i’ve received in the last 24 hours point to this site as an important read if you are interested in whether or not pharmaceutical companies exert a strong level of control over the FDA.

there’s also a lot on this site, including the option to send your signature on a petition to stop the FDA. to comment to the FDA directly, go here.

if you know anything more about this issue and care to explain it on this site, i am very interested. i will do more reading and post the same.

so we’re going to restart the boundless book club with the bloody chamber, a book of fairy tales rewritten by brit angela carter. we’ll meet the first monday of december. email me directly to get more information and address.