melbourne-first impressions

the weather
In keeping with my english conditioning i´ll start with the weather ;-) . when we arrived it was a grey, cool morning which suited us fine after the sticky, hot air in  singapore. the next day was a very pleasant 26 degrees, light wind low humidity. we were told that the real hot weather comes in jan.+feb. however yesterday turned out to be 35°. the house we´re staying in is like a cardboard box, meaning no insulation whatsoever, so last night was very hot!. i think one solution is to just get up at the crack of dawn and enjoy the cool early morning before the heat sets in. we did that this morning and joined the 6.30 meditaiton at the men´s community which is literally one minute away and a very inviting, beautiful place. the shrine room is in the garden, so it felt a bit like home from home. today is forcast storm +rain! that would be a pity for all the outdoor new year´s eve celebrations which are planned in the city centre. but who knows...

3.01.2010
and it did rain, poured it down! a real pity for all the performances and outdoor events. it seems it´s the case everywhere, the weather is just out of control. in malaysia the rainy season hardly had any rain, and now here in melbourne the temperatures dropped from 38 to 18 in 2 days.. consequently i´m nursing my first cold and alternating between freezing and sweaty feverish outbreaks. luckily i can spend a lot of time in bed doing my reading prep for the yoga course i´ll be attending in new zealand as from 8th jan. as long as i can get onto the mat for a couple of hours inbetween times, i´m happy.
it also rained-lots!! i don´t think i´ve ever been so happy to see the rain. the gardens and vegetation really need it. 3a water restrictions are in force, which means only watering the garden 2x weekly between 6-8 am, keeping a bucket in the shower while shopwering (this is a measure taken by the people whose house we´re using, and  it really is amazing how much water goes down the drain that way), never washing your hands under running water and generally being very water-conscious.

living with awareness
i just have to mention the amazing material i´m reading by donna fahri (most well-known for the "Breath Book"-which i think was one of the inspirations for Breathworks). She´s teaching the intensive yoga course in new zealand. i´m so inspired and excited because a lot of what she writes and her whole approach to yoga so much resonates with an approach that i´ve quite intuitively developed over the years and which i have come to trust and value. a core value/quality being awareness. it´s a key to her whole approach. i´m very excited to  be discovering so many parallels and such resonance  with the mindfulness practices i´ve been focusing on through the satipatthana sutta and the long retreat at ims. she spells out a deeper level of connection to life and sees the purpose of yoga "to reconnect to the original vastness and silence of the mind." she also includes the brahma viharas and metta, kindly-open awareness as a fundamental attitude to yoga practice and life itself.
one of the books we need to read is centred on exploring the teacher-student relationship. she stresses the importance of ethics as the foundation of this relationship -"respect for life and for others lies at the heart of ethics" and she  is doing a lot of work to bring ethical professional behaviour more into the yoga community. there´s much more i could say about this, but for now i´ll leave it with another quote that i liked:
"all teachers-math teachers, english teachers, or yoga teachers-have an ineffable power to bring forth or to destroy the nascent and fragile abilities of an individual. therefore the role of the teacher is vested with huge responsibilities and equally satsifying rewards."
a good thing to bear in mind whenever we take up any kind of "teaching role".

workshop with Dhammarati
just hours after landing in melbourne we were sitting in the melbourne buddhist centre taking part in a workshop for order members with dhammarati. this too is worth a whole report in itself, but for now i just wanted to include it as yet another  source of inspiration and encouragement that resonated with the focus of opening up and connecting to one´s experience, which is the basis of mindfulness practice. he stressed tuning into "a single experience of awareness, which enables us to look at the world with openenss and attention." and that "awareness is a natural quality of well-being". my heart lept to hear this kind of approach from a fellow order member. one of his main aims in the workshop was to bring out "the potential for depth in  a very simple practice". he did this by expanding  on the mindfulness of breathing through the anapanasati practice ( many parallels here too to satipatthana vipassana practice) and then spelling out the potential depths of metta bhavana through a detailed bodhicitta practice.so taking two practices that make elements of the more simpler practices we have in the fwbo more explicit and opening up channels for personal enquiry and exploration . very interesting food for thought!

so, here i am learning more deeply about things that matter to me and enjoying the warmth and friendliness, with which some of the melbourne sangha have welcomed us here.

time to get back to the mat!

                 Happy New Year to you all and thank you so much to those who´ve written to us-it is good to feel connected.

p.s just imagine this: müsli with fresh apricots and figs picked from the garden! not only that, it´s mango season, which means they´re one of the cheapest fruit on the market right now. we just have to eat our way through the different kinds of mangos, which i never knew existed.
a tiny downside (but bearable): throughout the whole time in asia, we had  hardly any insect bites. now in the first few days here, i´ve harvested 14 bites on one leg and 15 on the other. there are different mozzies it seems-some like legs, some like arms....