New Year’s Day

onthemat • April 27, 2016

Thingyan, Myanmar’s New Year’s Celebration, includes Water Festival followed by the more sacred New Year’s Day. I thought I would be participating in Water Festival, but the raucous water dousing, water gun brigades, and general frolic in the streets occurred while we were in the monastery, so we did not see that. At the end […]

Thingyan, Myanmar’s New Year’s Celebration, includes Water Festival followed by the more sacred New Year’s Day. I thought I would be participating in Water Festival, but the raucous water dousing, water gun brigades, and general frolic in the streets occurred while we were in the monastery, so we did not see that. At the end of Water Festival, though, is New Year’s Day, of which we were a part.

New Year’s Day, our last day, included a different teaching schedule to accommodate the preparations. Early in the day we prepared the Pagoda by sweeping, washing and cleaning it first with water and then with shampoo. Similar to Water Festival, which symbolizes the washing away of the bad aspects of the previous year, we were doing the same with cleaning the sacred place.

Later that night we went with a procession to honor Buddha, offering flowers, lighting candles and saying the devotional prayers. Each person sat behind their zodiac sign which is based on the day of the week they were born. We poured water on the Buddha in front of our sign at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon at the beginning of this journey, and we offered the flowers and lit the candles in the same manner at the Pagoda at the monastery for the New Year.

We chanted the prayers from a prayer book, or at least the Burmese chanted, we Americans listened with eyes open, in the scene, or with eyes closed in a meditative state, or we alternated between the two. The prayers lasted for 2 hours, and I have to admit I got pretty wiggly at some points. No blocks or meditation cushions can make sitting that long a bit of a challenge, but it was a magical night, as you’ll see in the pictures. We’d cried our tears with the girls earlier that day, after the final yoga classes, so this was the sacred celebration of not only a new year, but our time together with the beautiful nuns and others who supported our teaching. We set intentions for the New Year, and let go of the former.

On The Mat Yoga Blog

Heart~ Day #7 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • May 3, 2020
“There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home—one that can only be seen with closed eyes; We can feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are. When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Hear is unveiled, we feel increasingly grateful for no reason—grateful to simply be.” —John J. Prendergast, PHD, The Deep Heart

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By Linda Malcomb • May 2, 2020
Seems like it’s been rainy, windy, dreary for eons. Which may have helped us shelter inside a bit more. I remember reading years and years ago in a Seth book that weather can be influenced, and even created by mass human emotion. Why not? We are far more powerful than we currently acknowledge, and science is beginning to validate many phenomena that had seemed inconceivable before. Those seemingly endless days of “bad” weather seemed congruent with the emotional tone of covid her in New England. And now SUN! Glorious, warming, invigorating, hope-filled Sun! Today I will be outside basking and gardening and thanking. And I’m sure the whole neighborhood, and most of New England will go outside, stand with our faces to the sun and breathe a huge healing breath of joy. And maybe the collective energy of that will resonate out across the word as a promise of brighter days to come.
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