Sun Salute Project For US Soldiers of Iraq War
Sun Salute Project For Iraqi War Dead
A week ago around Memorial Weekend this idea came to me to do a sun salutation for each US soldier killed in Iraq. It was a crazy idea. Three thousand five hundred and some men and women have been killed. (That’s just in Iraq. It would be more with Afghanistan.) My idea is to do them all in one day. I want to speak each name and the hometown of the man or woman. So instead of doing my usual yoga practice, I did 108 sun salutations. This a sacred number that both yogis and Buddhists use in devotional rituals to honor deities and teachers. And this is not easy, as I’ve experienced in classes and in Buddhist sanghas in which I have practiced. Nevertheless, I did 108 and then a few days I did 150. It felt invigorating and empowering. But 3500? It became clearer to me that I couldn’t do this alone and of course it should be an ceremony open to anyone. I thought of inviting my friends, students, colleagues, yoga teachers, neighbors, family, people walking by, anyone and everyone could do 1 or 5 or 10 or 50 bows or salutations for the soldiers whose name I would read off. I would do some and others would do the rest and then I would do some more. Much more practical. Yet I still harbor, selfishly perhaps, the idea of doing them all myself.
I’ve gone back and forth, debating with myself as to whether to do this, considering the physically risks of training to do 11 hours of sun salutations, wondering if emotionally I could really organize this and carry it out, thinking how doing something like this would affect my already chaotic professional life as a writer, professor, and yoga teacher. I mean 3500 sun salutations! This is like doing a marathon, an iron man. This would be impossible, foolish, vain., embarrassing. In my fear-obsessed mind, I could see a hand full of my loyal friends stopping by for a while, doing a few sun salutations and then looking around at each other and trying to convince me that I’d better let this go before I hurt myself or made a fool out of myself. I don’t need to explain to anyone who knows me—really knows me—that I’ve struggled with a kind of imbalanced emotional life. My friends and family have watched with concern over the last several years as I’ve risked my sanity, my career, my financial life to travel, research, write and now promote the cause of my book: to seek a spiritual foundation and strength to counter HIV and AIDS and the fears associated with it.
I’ve practiced a few times. I’m still a little nervous about telling people and asking them to join me. Each time I practice, though, I realize this must be done. It must be done because the act—is both a devotional ritual for healing and remembrance for those who have lost their lives and it is a ceremony, an act of creating a space and time in which to expand oneself out of the daily patterns of the mind and body to consider how we actively experience the suffering or our world and the grace and unfolding energy of the universe. It’s almost as if these fallen soldiers are asking us to live more completely, more truthfully with more awareness of all the suffering that we live with in this world.
But, one of the remarkable things I learned while writing researching and writing my book was that once I began to tell people I was going to do something, I gained a kind of strength from them. Telling people what you believe and what you want to do is often the first step in taking some action. You have to walk your talk, as they say. And this has been the case with this sun salutation project or idea. As I have told my friends and colleagues, I’ve not received rolled eyes, on the contrary I’ve received enthusiastic support: “I’ll be there. I’ll help. I’ll do some sun salutations with you. I’ll tell people.”
This is what is so remarkable about activism; it’s not a solitary act. It’s a communal act. By telling people my idea, it becomes their idea. It becomes a project with a future that isn’t dependent on me, but on all those I ask to join with me. And after all, this is the point: to ask everyone to consider why this war goes on and on killing young people from these little towns and neighborhoods of our cities as well as the scores of Iraqis. Why are we letting this go on? Why are we waiting for the 2008 election, if that is what many of us are doing? Why are we not demanding an urgent change in diplomacy and troop reductions? Why? Well I have begun to try to train and to organize for this event. Stay tuned.
A week ago around Memorial Weekend this idea came to me to do a sun salutation for each US soldier killed in Iraq. It was a crazy idea. Three thousand five hundred and some men and women have been killed. (That’s just in Iraq. It would be more with Afghanistan.) My idea is to do them all in one day. I want to speak each name and the hometown of the man or woman. So instead of doing my usual yoga practice, I did 108 sun salutations. This a sacred number that both yogis and Buddhists use in devotional rituals to honor deities and teachers. And this is not easy, as I’ve experienced in classes and in Buddhist sanghas in which I have practiced. Nevertheless, I did 108 and then a few days I did 150. It felt invigorating and empowering. But 3500? It became clearer to me that I couldn’t do this alone and of course it should be an ceremony open to anyone. I thought of inviting my friends, students, colleagues, yoga teachers, neighbors, family, people walking by, anyone and everyone could do 1 or 5 or 10 or 50 bows or salutations for the soldiers whose name I would read off. I would do some and others would do the rest and then I would do some more. Much more practical. Yet I still harbor, selfishly perhaps, the idea of doing them all myself.
I’ve gone back and forth, debating with myself as to whether to do this, considering the physically risks of training to do 11 hours of sun salutations, wondering if emotionally I could really organize this and carry it out, thinking how doing something like this would affect my already chaotic professional life as a writer, professor, and yoga teacher. I mean 3500 sun salutations! This is like doing a marathon, an iron man. This would be impossible, foolish, vain., embarrassing. In my fear-obsessed mind, I could see a hand full of my loyal friends stopping by for a while, doing a few sun salutations and then looking around at each other and trying to convince me that I’d better let this go before I hurt myself or made a fool out of myself. I don’t need to explain to anyone who knows me—really knows me—that I’ve struggled with a kind of imbalanced emotional life. My friends and family have watched with concern over the last several years as I’ve risked my sanity, my career, my financial life to travel, research, write and now promote the cause of my book: to seek a spiritual foundation and strength to counter HIV and AIDS and the fears associated with it.
I’ve practiced a few times. I’m still a little nervous about telling people and asking them to join me. Each time I practice, though, I realize this must be done. It must be done because the act—is both a devotional ritual for healing and remembrance for those who have lost their lives and it is a ceremony, an act of creating a space and time in which to expand oneself out of the daily patterns of the mind and body to consider how we actively experience the suffering or our world and the grace and unfolding energy of the universe. It’s almost as if these fallen soldiers are asking us to live more completely, more truthfully with more awareness of all the suffering that we live with in this world.
But, one of the remarkable things I learned while writing researching and writing my book was that once I began to tell people I was going to do something, I gained a kind of strength from them. Telling people what you believe and what you want to do is often the first step in taking some action. You have to walk your talk, as they say. And this has been the case with this sun salutation project or idea. As I have told my friends and colleagues, I’ve not received rolled eyes, on the contrary I’ve received enthusiastic support: “I’ll be there. I’ll help. I’ll do some sun salutations with you. I’ll tell people.”
This is what is so remarkable about activism; it’s not a solitary act. It’s a communal act. By telling people my idea, it becomes their idea. It becomes a project with a future that isn’t dependent on me, but on all those I ask to join with me. And after all, this is the point: to ask everyone to consider why this war goes on and on killing young people from these little towns and neighborhoods of our cities as well as the scores of Iraqis. Why are we letting this go on? Why are we waiting for the 2008 election, if that is what many of us are doing? Why are we not demanding an urgent change in diplomacy and troop reductions? Why? Well I have begun to try to train and to organize for this event. Stay tuned.
posted by Unknown at 3:52 PM
