Things I love Thursdays: Aung San Suu Kyi

True leaders are hard to come by. But every generation has their shining stars, and Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the truly inspiring figures of our time. Without going into a history lesson, I hope you know that Aung San Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy activist from Myanmar (more commonly known as Burma).  In 1990, her party won a landslide election against the military regime in that country - but the Generals refused to hand over power. Between 1989 and 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi spent more than 15 of those 21 years under house arrest, including a few terms in prison - but she never stopped campaigning for democracy in Burma.

It's really not possible for me to put into words how much I admire, respect and am inspired by this incredible woman, but here are just a few reasons why I love Aung San Suu Kyi:

• She is a peaceful activist who has always taught - and lived - a path of non-violence (ahimsa) and compassion.
• She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 - although she was only able to travel to Norway to accept it last week.
• She used her Nobel Prize money - 1.3 million USD - to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.
• She didn't choose to be a leader - she originally returned to Burma to care for her ailing mother - but her belief in democracy led her to take part in a wide popular uprising in 1988, and when asked to lead, she accepted the responsibility with awe-inspiring grace, despite the sacrifices it has entailed for her personally.
• She was given an easy way out (to return to the UK, where her family was) - but she refused to take it, choosing instead to stay and stand for what she believed in. [Many have looked upon her harshly (who are they to judge?) for leaving her British husband and her two teenage sons to grow up without her - but it is almost certain that if she had gone back to the UK to be a wife and mother, she would never have been allowed back into Burma. Between 1988 and 1999 she saw her husband only 5 times - and was not even able to be with him when he died of cancer in 1999.  I can't imagine the emotional weight of this type of sacrifice, but I respect that she stood by her principles and didn't take the easy road out.]
• On 1 April 2012, she finally won a seat in Parliament, from where she continues to push for reform in Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi may be free, but Burma's jails are still full of political prisoners, jailed on trumped up charges after unfair trials

If you are inspired, be a Karma Yogi and consider a few things you can do:

• Read Aung San Suu Kyi's book "Freedom from Fear";
• Talk about Aung San Suu Kyi in your yoga class or with your community, or teach an Aung San Suu Kyi-inspired class on standing up for what you believe in;
• Give your children a history lesson on Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi;
• Learn more about human rights and support one of the many local and international campaigns to bring rights and dignity to millions of people around the world.

Cover photo: Amnesty Australia

Forget your perfect offering

I was going to write a post today, but instead I offer you a link to a beautiful post by the lovely Michelle Myhre, about the hindu goddess Akhilandeshvara (Ah-KEEL-An-Desh-Vara), also known as "She Who Is Never Not Broken".

As I said in my comment on Michelle's post, this is a beautiful metaphor and a reminder that to be alive is to be able to feel, and to be able to feel is the greatest gift of the human heart.

Every time my heart breaks (which is pretty much every other day - especially living in a place like East Timor where I am constantly reminded of how hard life is for most of the people in this world) I also feel gratitude that I am able to feel love and compassion. In Western society so many of our emotions are sanitised - we don't have a cultural, familial or personal space to deal with pain, grief, compassion, or sorrow, and we are constantly told to shut  up, shut it out or "get over" it.

This speaks to me of embracing the heart's ability to suffer, because it is that ability which also allows us to love.  In my line of work (development & humanitarian aid), but also in every day life, that vulnerability is critical, because it is what keeps us human in the face of the injustice of the world.

I have also borrowed the photo from Michelle's post - isn't it incredible?  It reminds me of that famous Leonard Cohen line: "forget your perfect offering / there is a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in".

World Humanitarian Day - Today

Who are we?

We are sisters.  We are brothers.
We are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
We are leaders.  We are servants. 

We are witnesses, we are warriors,
relief-bearing, compassion clad.


We are die-hard optimists,
survival-mode cynics.
We are on a plane in moments,
flying in where people flee.

We attempt the impossible,
try to ease the pain.
We desire to restore dignity
we crave only the same
opportunities for everyone,
to live and love,
to peace and change.

We are at war with suffering,
armed with medicines and food,
we fight mankind and nature equally,
we fight apathy too,

From our homes, from our desks,
from our clinics, from our tents,
We do everything we can
when the world calls out in need.

We are human.
Humanitarian.

Are you?

The Virtual Community Won't Stock Your Fridge...

First of all, thank you thank you blogger for finally updating your template designer with so many lovely, customize-able blog templates.  Yippee!  Nothing more pleases the esthetic geek in me.  Love love love it.


Secondly, I'm about to head off to the infinitely beautiful island of Bali for a short break.  My favourite luxury of living in this part of the world is my proximity to Bali, and the wonderful community in Ubud that is a haven for yoga, healing and relaxation.  And, not to be outdone, imported CHEESE!!!


While I'm away, I may blog, or not.  But I will be indulging in the delights of a few things I don't have access to at home, including:

• Yoga classes in a yoga studio! With wooden floors! Where I'm not teaching! Whee!!
• Vegetarian restaurants... oh my mouth waters
• Shopping
• A vibrant arts community
• Did I mention, about the cheese???

I am also going to see an old friend and meet his 6-month old son, and to top it all off, I'm ending the trip at a wedding with a bunch of people dear to my heart.  Which leads me to my post for today...

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I am feeling like the luckiest person on Earth right now, in great part thanks to the amazing community that I have been a part of in the 6 years I've lived here.  We are a tight-knit bunch: all thousands of miles from home, we become like family.  This community and I have shared many good times, and when the bad times roll around they are right there propping you up, the way it should be.  Supporting you, cooking for you, dropping things off at your house without even needing you to acknowledge the individual bearer of the gift.

As part of #315800, Bindu Wiles blogged yesterday about the online community that the event is generating.  She publishes some lovely thoughts on community which are heartfelt and true.  But it got me thinking of the changing nature of community in our modern world.  More and more we are creating these virtual networks, like my own beloved blog community that if you are reading this, you are a part of!

In so many ways this is a lovely thing, and I cannot sing its praises enough.  Closing the gaps of space and time, allowing us to connect with those who are like-minded no matter where in the world they may be, allowing us to pool our thoughts and create spaces where so many people of similar ideas can engage with each other.

But the virtual community is as two dimensional as this computer screen.  Sometimes, that's a good thing - if someone rubs you the wrong way, you don't have to engage with them.  There are blogs that I visit and don't go back to for whatever reason, or comments in forums like ElephantJournal that I would choose not to engage with.  The converse of that is, of course, that it sometimes seems that the virtual interface brings out the worst in people.  People might feel free to say things online that (I hope) they might not say in a face-to-face dialogue.  Because the online world requires an interface, it leaves us free to create a persona that may not be a complete picture of who we are.  We focus on some elements of our personality and not others.  We interact with words instead of faces and bodies and voices.  Or, people might deliberately mis-represent themselves.  Masquerading as someone more successful, more together, younger, taller etc. etc.  In it's worst incarnation, this two-dimensional nature of the online community ends in three-dimensional tragedy in the form of internet stalkers and child predators.

In a virtual community, we are removed from the physical interface that, for me, is the foundation of a connection between two human beings. That physical, instinctual, energetic connection makes up the building block of our real-world relationships.  It's the good-day-bad-day flux of our beings.  It's the good-year-bad-year tide of how we relate to one another.  And that is what I love about a physical community, is that it is diverse, complex, and challenging - it is not always a comfort zone, not always a place where everything is easy and where you can just hang out with people from the same side of the fence as you are.  Because, it's real.  (Now obviously there are some rocking online debate forums and those are real too, but you know what I'm talking about.  That body-to-body, face-to-face kind of real.)

Your physical community are your family, your friends, your work mates, your neighbours.  They are the people you interact with at the shops, the drivers stuck next to you in the traffic, the people you cross paths with without even knowing it, like in those movies where everyone has a different story but they're all connected in some way.  And as we all know, it is often easier to like or love people who agree with us than those who don't.  The real challenge is extending that compassion to everyone around you.

There are many people in my community who I don't necessarily even like.  And there are others who I love beyond words.  But towards all of them, in this moment I feel compassion.  We didn't choose each other - life put us here, in the same place at the same time.  And that's the thing.  I might not have picked them out of a hat - but they are here, and I am here, and somehow, that makes us something together. 

And for that, I feel blessed.  Because more and more I feel like people are living the reality that Gwen Bell expressed when Bindu Wiles (and I can't find the link...anyone?) interviewed her, saying "I don't know my neighbours' names, but I know the handles of thousands of people on Twitter".  Woah.  [Now, this is not personal - I'm sure that Gwen has a fabulous personal community.  It's just the sentiment, expressed so easily like that, kind of triggers me.]  For me, that is not something to be celebrated.  I mean, we are so ready to connect with random strangers online, but we just seem to accept that the people living mere metres away with us are anonymous faces in our landscape? 

Because when it comes down to it and life falls apart, it's your physical community who sit in your living room and cry with you.  Who make tea, keep your fridge stocked and magically produce ready-made meals.  Rescue you from the bathroom of a manky bar and drive you home even when you don't know where you live ( ;) sorry for telling that one honey!).   Lend you money when you can't find your wallet, offer you a lift when you're walking home in the dark, watch your pets, compliment your cooking, fawn over your children/pets/new shoes.

Who, as Melinda so movingly recounts in this post, might one day just save your life.

So here's our homework, kids: find one person in your physical community today and introduce ourselves. Or, find one person you already know and let them know how special they really are.  Cause that's where life is.

Who are your three-dimensional community and what do they do for you?

Om Tara Mantra

I love mantras. Being a generally musical being, they move me deeply. When I get a mantra in my head, listen to a chant, or join in one, I feel it resonating to every fiber of my being.

I'm not religious (not to be confused with "I am an athiest" - because I'm not!), and when I first encountered mantras I felt extremely uncomfortable, almost afraid of them. They seemed "cult-y" and foreign to me, and I disliked that they named deities I was unfamiliar with or didn't believe in. A while later down the yoga path, now I love the joining of voices that mantras and kirtan give us. It is such a blessing to sit in a room full of people and all sing along - no more culty to me than a campfire or a kindergarten round of "row row row your boat"!

One mantra in particular I love: the Om Tara mantra. It is a mantra dedicated to the female incarnation of the Bodhisattva (one who follows the path of compassion), Tara. Tara's name means "star" or "she who ferries across", and she symbolizes Compassion in Action. Her mantra goes like this:

Om Tara Tuttare Ture Svaha

Meaning
Essentially the Om Tara mantra represents a progression towards spiritual liberation through compassionate action. Om Tara invokes the essence of compassion in our being. Tuttare represents liberation from delusions that cause suffering. Ture symbolizes liberation from the perception of duality; i.e. to truly be compassionate one must link the suffering of others with one's own suffering, and therefore devote yourself to ending all suffering, not just your own personal suffering. Finally, Svaha is a closing syllable that asks for the meaning of the mantra to take hold in your own mind. [For a more detailed explanation, check out this site.]

Do you like mantras, or dislike them? Does the idea of chanting together with others make you joyful or uncomfortable? What are your favourite mantras?