The Palace of Illusions

I finally finished reading The Palace of Illusions.  In this beautiful rewriting of an ancient and important tale, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni liberates Panchaali and opens the Mahabharat to the female human heart. The prose/poetry shines as intricately as the "patina of magic" from which The Palace of Illusions is described. The book is full of deep human love - complex and secret, unfounded then found; full of loyalty and loss, vengeful and ultimately, forgiving. Drenched with vignettes of boons and curses and magic, the story is indeed the author's forte but it is unlike her other novels for the story is not fully her own, yet it is marvelously lent and in return, so richly rendered. The lessons from the sacred text are laced in the heady, gripping tale already foretold. The Palace of Illusions is dazzling and I am spinning back to the first page to once again relish the tale.

P.S. The Bhagavad Gita starts in Chapter 31 (Preparation).

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From the back of the book...
http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/books/palace_of_illusions

Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to the time of the Indian epic The Mahabharat—a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical. Through her narrator Panchaali, the wife of the legendary five Pandavas brothers, Divakaruni gives us a rare feminist interpretation of an epic story.
 The novel traces Panchaali’s life, beginning with her magical birth in fire as the daughter of a king before following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at the brothers’ sides through years of exile and a terrible civil war. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her stratagems to take over control of her household from her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husband’s most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female voice in a world of warriors, gods, and ever-manipulating hands of fate.

Clayton Horton Saturday

Good fun practice. :)

After Practice (and Birthday) Lunch @ People's Palace

Happy Birthday to me and Tesa (who happened to be wearing matching outfits that day!)

more photos

G is for Govinda, G is for Ganesha...

I took my birthday leave yesterday. Govinda is in town. Surprisingly, he spoke of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, as the obstacle. Ganesha whose name is called in each new beginning or amidst obstacles. In this life, there are many, many seemingly painful obstacles.

The obstacle is as much part of the process as success. It has as much value as the fruit. It is when we are uncomfortable that we learn more deeply about life and ourselves
The mind ascribes value to a situation which is neutral.
There are two distinct parts of life: the pure and perfect and the impure, painful and troublesome. We are constantly healing, accumulating, learning and we are constantly dying, breaking down and coming apart.
We must accept these in every moment.
We must be able to be in a big rush and not be rushed at all. Both at the same time.
Nothing is ever just lost - anything given to you is a gift - more profound than you give it credit for.
Celebrate the obstacle.

Gam Ganapataye Namo Namah
Ganesha Nama Om...Ganesha Nama Om...Ganesha Nama Om
Jai Jai Ganesha

For you dear Govinda, new beginnings...

An Inner Choice: Peace

How wonderful to have this Daily Om message on my birthday... Om shanti...

March 17, 2010

An Inner Choice
Peace

There cannot be peace in the world until we have it in our own hearts and minds, our own families and neighborhoods.

Often we look at the outside world and find it in a state of seeming chaos or disorder. We feel compelled to transform the situation from one of turmoil into one of peace, yet we are often disappointed in our best attempts to do so. One reason for this is that we cannot bring to the world what we do not have to offer. Peace starts in our own minds and hearts, not outside of ourselves, and until its roots are firmly entrenched in our own selves, we cannot manifest it externally. Once we have found it within, we can share it with our family, our community, and the whole wide world. Some of us may already be doing just that, but for most of us, the first step is looking within and honestly evaluating the state of our own relationship to peacefulness.
Interestingly, people who manifest peace internally are not different from us; they have chattering thoughts and troubled emotions like we all do. The difference is that they do not lend their energy to them, so those thoughts and feelings can simply rise and fall like the waves of the ocean without disturbing the deeper waters of peacefulness within. We all have this ability to choose how we distribute our energy, and practice enables us to grow increasingly more serene as we choose the vibration of peace over the vibration of conflict. We begin to see our thoughts and feelings as tiny objects on the surface of our being that pose no threat to the deep interior stillness that is the source of peacefulness.

When we find that we are able to locate ourselves more and more in the deeper waters and less on the tumultuous surface of our being, we have discovered a lasting relationship with peace that will enable us to inspire peace beyond ourselves. Until then, we help the world most by practicing the art of choosing peace within.

http://www.dailyom.com/

One day before I...

turn another year older. Last year, my gift to myself was to go back to yoga after years of watching my life break, breaking it myself and finally rebuilding. It has been a beautiful year and it started with a beautiful gift. This year, I will re-wrap this precious gift and give it to myself again.

I practiced my last practice before my 32nd birthday.

FoodMatters

I found this draft entry from my YT days. It was for the night we watched a documentary on FoodMatters. Funny, 2 days ago I started taking sodium ascorbate (instead of ascorbic acid). The seeds have been planted well.

* * *
Film showing.

Go vegetarian and meditate.

You cannot heal selectively. When the body heals, it heals everything.

Boost health.

Take Vitamin C.

"Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food" - Hippocrates

http://www.foodmatters.tv/_webapp/View%20Film%20Online