Aparigraha - Letting Go

Om Tryambakam YajamaheSugandhim PushtivardhanamUrvarukamiva BandhananMrityor Mukshiya Maamritat

We Meditate on the Three-eyed realityWhich permeates and nourishes all like a fragrance.May we be liberated from death for the sake of immortality,Even as the cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper.

I just got back from Mexico to enjoy a few weeks of this beautiful Seattle weather, to visit friends and family, to check in on The Samarya Center and to prepare for Samarya Yoga Teacher Training.As I was driving to the Central District from Vashon Island the other day, I passed a big handwritten sign that said: Fresh Peaches! Heirloom Tomatoes! Oh yes, I thought. I haven't had either of those things yet this summer, both delicious fruits that I wait all year to eat. While I wasn't able to stop right there and then for the bounty, it did make me think about the fruits of the season, and the season itself.I remember being a kid and, with a June birthday, always requesting Breyer's Peach Ice-Cream for my celebration - it was a seasonal item that only showed up on the store shelves in June and was gone by September. That peach ice-cream represented everything about the beginning of summer - swimming, playing with friends, staying out late, fireworks, corn on the cob, barbeques and lots of sunshine.But I also remember, even as a kid, toward the end of summer feeling ready to go back to school - to meet my new teachers, reconnect with school friends, wearing some new outfit that I had been planning for weeks. The summer would be gone, but the fall would be here, bringing it with its own special gifts, not the least of which was paving the way for winter and the holidays. The peaches and tomatoes would be gone, but pumpkins and then even, eventually,  hot chocolate would be on its way.It's kind of the same now. When I was in Mexico I had so many mangoes dropping from my tree, I had to eat a couple a day just to stay on top of what I couldn't give away. As my time there progressed, the mangoes became more sparse and I mourned their waning abundance. But then, one morning, I found an avocado on the ground. As mango season ended, it made the way for avocado season. And avocado season means moving away from the stifling heat of the height of summer, and into the electric beauty of tropical thunder and lightning.One season gives way to the next.I remember many years ago sitting in my office on Yesler Way with Stephanie Sisson and Laura Humpf (who are offering an up-coming silent retreat together!) and talking about the day that The Samarya Center would eventually close. I remember telling them that, when I opened it in 2001 as a sole proprietor business, I always assumed that I would just close it when I was done. But then, as the seasons of the center progressed, I came to realize that it wasn't mine to close - that in fact, The Samarya Center belonged to a community and it would be up to the community to decide how to transform it once I was ready to move on. That was another season.

Now, almost fifteen years later, the season has changed again. And what I have learned through the process of the last several years is that the center is indeed mine to close. While it belongs to and benefits a community, it does not have the available leadership to continue. So many people have come through, stepped up, given so much to try to steward its continuation, but at the end of the day, the season has shifted. It is time. So someone has to be the one to say it. To change the page on the calendar. To acknowledge how letting this season go will only yield a new season, with new opportunities and new fruits.This makes me think of the stunningly beautiful maha mrityunjaya mantra- or the great death conquering (sometimes called the great fear conquering) mantra - one of the most precious Vedic mantras. In this short chant, the devotee invokes Shiva and especially his powers of transformation. The chant includes a reference to a cucumber - asking to be freed from the bondage of the vine once it has reached its peak. In learning this from my teachers over the years, I have always learned the great significance of the creeper vegetable in the chant. Fruits that grow on trees fall to the ground when ripe - they become their maximum selves and then they drop at that point of full maturity - much like the mangoes and avocados in my backyard. But creeper vegetables - cucumbers, squash, melon - will stay on the vine, rotting into the ground if they are not picked or severed. They will pass their prime and simply decompose, never having been liberated in fullness.The idea of the maha mrityunjaya is that we are like these creeper vegetables, and that we in fact pray to be released at that very point of fullness, not languishing in torpor.  We want to realize our own fullness and in that state of brilliance, move on to the next phase of our cycle.The Samarya Center has reached its full potential and maturity as it exists right now. It is time for this season to end and for us to open ourselves up to what's next - focusing on trainings, on spreading the work of the last decade and a half to an even greater community, for me to move to my home in Mexico, for the beginning of the Loma Indra Ashram that we are building in the mountains there.Like the maha mrtynujaya, this is a time of celebration and exaltation, not fear and not mourning. The fruit has ripened, the season has turned and the new cycle is under way. Let us join together in joyful anticipation of the bounty yet to come.Let us welcome the new season, together.With love and light,mollyClick here to view the full August 2015 newsletter of the Samarya Center for Humankind(ness)