Monday, May 14, 2001


my greatest discovery at the vinegar factory is actually outside the realm of this site -- cheese.

i do love cheese, but the site can't be about everything. however, i do want to tell you about the creamy, rich taste of an artisanal cheese i discovered at the vinegar factory. it's a goat cheese from provence called banon. i highly recommend it.

it matched perfectly with the pain de campagne i made this weekend and would be great with cassis, iced ratafia de champagne, brandy, or maybe even scotch! because it picks up a slight nutty/grassy flavor from the chestnut leaves and has a lovely aroma of eau-de-vie, i think it's an excellent dessert cheese to serve with very ripe pears, cherries, or apricots. order it online or look for it at a cheesemonger near you. . .

let's take a moment to get back on topic. yoga contains an emphasis not only on asana, or postures, but also on mediation. many people lately have been combining vipassana or "insight" mediation, a buddhist tradition, with yoga. while i am far from expert in this area, let me say that i have enjoyed a practice known as loving-kindness meditation.

living in new york, the need for the four qualities of this practice are obvious: friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. presently i am going to start with the appreciative joy. this ties into some "homework" recommended by erich schiffmann. recently he commented:

"Wow: The homework was/is to look at things, one specific thing at a time, like a flower, and say "Wow. That flower is the specific and unique Self-expression of the Infinite. It is the Infinite being Itself as a flower." Then change your focus and keeping your eyes on the new thing, say the sentence again. It's fun. It slows you down. It helps you see the One in the Many."

of course when i bake and eat my bread, my coffee, my chocolate and cheese, it's a fine time to cultivate appreciative joy for the artisans, including myself, that make these simple and beautiful things possible for us to enjoy. to say, these things are an expression of the people who made them, not only to support themselves, but also as an artistic craft, as a way of expressing themselves and the infinite in them to the rest of us.

a friend of mine once reminded me of the zen saying that the most difficult things to do are: to eat when you're hungry, drink when you're thirsty, and sleep when you're tired. i think a lack of appreciative joy is one of the components that make daily life seem so hard and depressing, and which is the source of so much self-hatred and anomie. at first it seems like a silly practice, and i must admit that i feel self-conscious and kinda dumb doing it. which make me ask myself: why do i resist? what is the fear of it? what could i possibly be trying to "protect" from it? so i'm trying to incorporate this meditation into my yoga practice every other day during shavasana.

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