Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving: A few neither-here-nor-there musings

So today is Thanksgiving (if you live in the U.S. of A, that is; if you live anywhere else, it's just another day). As much as I think this is not a bad country to live in (after all, I'm still here, after all these years), I've never really bought into the whole Thanksgiving myth, that whole story about the pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower and all that; for one, whoever came up with this story seems to have conveniently forgotten that Spaniards had already been in this country at least a couple of centuries earlier. Or maybe the point wasn't to celebrate who came first, but something else? Shows how much I know the history of this country, doesn't it?

In any case, this is no place or time to engage in any kind of academic head-banging about the origins and meaning of Thanksgiving. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving! If not, well, celebrate anyway and be happy! Moreover, from the point of view of an Ashtangi, the timing couldn't be better: Tomorrow's the new moon. Which means you can eat all you want (maybe get drunk too, if that's your, uh, glass of wine), and sleep in tomorrow! No point practicing: If the Ashtangic lore is to be believed, your body will be sluggish and all tomorrow, it being a new moon. So you may as well go with the flow, weigh your body down with lots of fuel, and let it be as sluggish as it wants to be!

So go forth, my friends. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If this is a bit morbid for your taste... well, there's more truth in it than we might want to believe. After all, seen from the perspective of an entire life, we do eat, drink, and be merry (hopefully, more often than not). And then we die. So why not have all the merriness we can, while we can? What we don't use, we lose, no?

5 comments:

  1. Hi Nobel,
    Here in Encinitas both the Jois shala and Tim Miller's closed today for the the moon day.
    The app on my phone says the new moon will happen within 3 hours here in California. So, as it has happened before, I'm confused :-/, haha.

    I believe Jois uses the following as a source for moon days:
    http://www.mypanchang.com/vcalendarmini.php?cityname=SanDiego-CA&yr=2011&mn=11&monthtype=0


    Viviane

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  2. Hello Viviane,
    Yes, I hear you. There is always some disagreement about when exactly the moon day is, depending on where in the world one is, or how one calculates. Interesting.

    Anyway, happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the moon day anyhow :-)

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  3. Happy Thanksgiving to you too!

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  4. Happy Post-Thanksgiving MoonDay:) I did just that minus the drink, food coma, moon days, so grateful:) Be well:)

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  5. Happy to hear you had a great Thanksgiving, JayaKrishna. Be well too :-)

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