Good Enough

you do not have to be strong enough
nor limber enough
nor smart enough
you do not have to have the perfect balance of firmness and flexibility

you do not have to have the answer to every problem
you do not have to know it all by heart

there is no such thing as beautiful enough
there is only the fact of your face
and the truth it carries
the hurt and the joy and the uncertainty
there are only the laugh lines growing deeper
than the worry lines

there is no such thing as brilliant enough
there is only the presence of your mind
at any given moment
the fluctuations and the fullness

you do not have to be virtuous all the time
you do not have to be enlightened today
there is always the next lifetime
there is always another chance to be just a little bit kinder
a little bit wiser

take it in small doses like a homeopathic remedy
take a pellet of tapas
a tablet of svadhyaya
a tincture of ishvara pranidhani

your earnest effort is enough for today
for the path is long, spiraling, and circuitous
that’s enough for the moment
for you are good enough
good enough already

 

August 2014

More Poems for Palestine

OORI AGAH 우리 아가

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe;
and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this
may be incapable of morality.”
~ James Baldwin

even before the roosters crow
    they come searching
        the lost palestinian children
they cross oceans and countless time zones
    crying for their mothers
        reaching out for their fathers
they find the grandmothers
    awake already
        sitting up in bed
here, we say
    i have made
        a space for you        
take this pillow
    drink this water
        i have been waiting for you
suddenly i can understand arabic
    i dust the rubble off their clothes
        run my fingers through their ashy hair
i say yes
         yes
        you are safe now
exhausted from their long journey
    one child tucks under my arm
        another nestles at my back
soon we are three and four deep
    one after another
        in my crowded narrow bed
even my own mother
    and grandmother
        join me in our soft expansive nest
they chant
    자장 자장 우리 아가 jajang jajang oori agah
        제도 잔다 우리 아가 jeh do jandda oori agah*           
over and over again
    until we all fall  
            asleep


* Korean folk lullaby: 자장 자장 우리 아기/ 꼬꼬 닭아 우지마라/ 우리 아기 잠을 깰라/ 멍멍 개야 짖지마라/ 자장 자장 잘도 잔다.

Christmas Letter 2024: Mourn the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living

Beloved community, 

We exist and persist through an alchemy of joy and grief. In this past year, I have gone deeper into grief than I would have ever thought possible. And yet, there's joy, peeking its head, then blooming like dark purple lilikoi blossoms, waiting to be pollinated. Every occasion of grief opens my soma and psyche ever larger, so that I become more receptive to joy, such that each gaping wound invites cleansing and healing. Each year, more healing becomes possible, through the sibling practices of grief and joy.

Every single day this year, I have awoken to the wails of my expanded `Ohana around the world, crying out for justice, freedom, safety, food, water, and shelter. Every single night I pray for all who are living under occupation. I breathe my way through the unbearable, washing the path with my tears. 

Meanwhile, I sing, dance, write, moan, hike, swim, run, jump, and flip upside down with my grandkids. We make up songs and dances and games and laugh like crazy. We are here to nurture future generations, to care for the land and sea, to drink the life-giving juice of every moment. All the while, we carry the grief like a swaddled infant. 

We refuse to ignore war crimes. We cannot avert our eyes from atrocity. We cannot turn our backs on genocide, especially when it's committed by our own government officials. Friends, keep fighting for Palestinian freedom! Otherwise the moral injury of inaction will wear us down, make us ill, cause irreparable harm on every level, from the intensely personal to the global.

Grieve with me. Hold my hand and walk with me. Come to the stream, the ocean, the mountains, with me. Help me spread the ashes of our suffering. Let's break our hearts open, over and over again. Let us compost all we have lost, and bask in the solstice, refresh to enter the New Year, and embody the power of Umoja, true unity, on this first night of Kwanzaa.

Free Palestine, Free Hawai`i, Free Korea. Stop genocide everywhere. May all people be free.

Ever fighting for your freedom and mine,

Peggy Gwi-Seok Hong 

Back on Familiar Soil

When I arrived back in the land of the Peoria, Kickapoo, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations of Turtle Island (aka the Midwestern USA), the trees and flowers waved to me. This is the place I lived for decades of my young and middle adulthood. The Brown-Eyed Susans nod their welcome. The maples swing their branches hello. Along the train tracks and highways the Queen Anne’s Lace bob and sway. I feel waves of love and affection as I reunite with the plant life here. I am filled with somatic memories of the middle third of my life, the joys, the lessons, and the sorrows.

Gone are the succulents and bromeliads of the monsoon rainforest of Chittaranjan Vatika, siblings of the plants of my subtropical Waimānalo home. Now I am among the drought-hardy, deciduous plants of Illinois.

The people have also turned over. Gone are the airports populated with Muslim families and Arab voices. No more Marathi and Hindi filling the air. Most of the shades of Brown and Black skin are gone. For the first time in what feels like years, I am among majority white folks, a situation rarely occurring in the occupied Hawaiian nation. I’m no longer used to the rounded r’s, pale white calves, blue eyes.

When I left my marriage in 2010, 95% of my friends stopped contacting me. It’s not like they broke up with me or rejected me, they just quietly stopped reaching out to me. I was deeply established in my white community, as a poet, dancer, mother, and Iyengar Yoga teacher. I had “achieved” a certain level of status and respect in the city of Milwaukee. Frankly, I was valued as a safe POC. Not too radical, not scary, but middle class, educated, and assimilated. But when I left my marriage, after some years of becoming more visibly and vocally radical, the community—mainstream, white—seemed to know that my decision to divorce my husband signified something much larger than a personal relationship. It represented a decision to leave behind the dominant culture. Not just the stability of my marriage, but my foothold in capitalism, the status earned in white culture and the arts, plus the trappings of neoliberalism.

I told one of the few friends who stuck by me, a Black woman, that I felt abandoned and alone in the absence of my marriage, and all it represented. I told her I felt like I was on a boat, all alone, in the middle of an immense ocean. She said, “But the rest of us are on another island, waving to you, saying, come on over, you can do it, keep paddling!”

I have devoted myself to that island, a place of resistance, a place of revolution. We have rejected many of the teachings we were indoctrinated into. We embrace interdependence rather than individuality, radical abundance rather than competitive scarcity, solidarity rather than charity. Currently, I live on a farm in solidarity with the Southeast Asian community. In truth, it’s messy and imperfect, but it provides a framework to live more intimately with the `āina, surrounded by mountains, forests, ocean, and the Kanaka maoli community.

So to be back in Potawatomi nation feels….awkward, like coming back to a past relationship. Yes, it’s beautiful, I love it and appreciate it. But neither do I feel completely at home.

Besides the land, the people represent a different matter. Can I re-adapt to white culture? What does that look like and what does that mean? I feel reluctant and cautious. Can I relate to white culture differently than I did when I was younger? Can I overcome the internalized pressure to assimilate, and instead be fully myself, without fetishizing or exoticizing or capitulating? This is the first time I’m back in Urbana since March 2020, right before the global shutdown. So much has happened since then.

We have all grown much more intimate with death. The COVID pandemic has not truly ended, and may never completely wane. We all have friends and loved ones we have lost to the virus. We are all that much closer to our own mortality. Additionally we survived the election of 2020 in the USA, which brought an end to the Trump rampage, but revealed a failed democracy, resulting in an evermore split and polarized society, an extremist Supreme Court, and responsibility for the current war crimes of the worst genocide in ages, sending USA bombs to Israel. Yesterday alone, 66 Palestinians were killed, including 36 at a field hospital full of refugees.

However, denial and individualism persist as the trademark of the dominant white culture. Urbana remains an idyllic university enclave. I rode my friend’s bike through the loveliest of neighborhoods, filled with 100-year-old houses, mature trees, even cobblestones. But on some level my body experiences it as violence.

My most superficial outer body feels at ease, surrounded by beauty, calmness, and spaciousness, especially in comparison to the bustling crowds of Pune, India. But the somatic layer below that feels suspicious: why is it so quiet and seemingly peaceful here when so much of the planet is being devastated? What imbalance do I need to discern and address?

The deepest layer of somatic experience recognizes our unity as living beings, the graciousness and regenerative power of the `āina, and the inner infinite, puruśa. But I cannot deny that middle layer of consciousness which perceives the extreme imbalance and unease among the people.

This week of Lois Steinberg’s Iyengar Yoga intensive will be a study of these layers for me. I vow to never forget or disregard my siblings and cousins in other parts of the world, who are suffering. I vow to direct whatever healing power I can muster, not just to my own healing, but also to the greater cause of solidarity. I strive to recognize more and more ways I can direct my energy to the alleviating of suffering globally. We each have more power than we recognize or utilize. Collectively we can achieve anything, if only we could prioritize our greater communities over individual comforts. May it be so.

Giving my hands to struggle

Tomorrow I leave India. This month has been an absolute privilege. I've been able to devote myself to rest, healing, nourished with joy and insight, friendships old and new, and deep immersion in sadhana and sangha. Yesterday I started packing, to make sure I had adequate luggage space, and to mentally begin the transition to the States.

As sad as I am to be leaving, my seventh pilgrimage to India and RIMYI, I am also feeling ready. Just as my body yearned for my children when I had to leave them to come and study when they were young, my body is starving for the embrace of my grandchildren. I miss Solomon's drool and runny nose, and his ear-piercing shouts. I miss Silas's stories and playing Hotwheels with him. I miss my conversations with Coco and our cartwheels and imaginary games.

I also miss my people. I need to feel my feet on the ground in active resistance to the devastation and oppression happening in this moment. The official death toll in Gaza nears 40,000. Sonya Massey has been murdered in cold blood by the state--SAY HER NAME. MF Netanyahu addresses Congress and is met with standing ovations. 

These are the times I know I will never be a pure yogi. I am not temperamentally suited to retreat fully into abhyasa and vairagya, practice and renunciation. My body longs for my drum to bang on at protests and rallies. It kills me to be missing so many events in occupied Hawai`i, resisting the military wargames of RIMPAC, and demanding citizen's arrest of Netanyahu at the State Capitol. My vocal chords cannot be fully satisfied only chanting the invocation to Patañjali. I cannot fully channel my tapas into yogic devotion. I need my feet to be pounding the pavement in solidarity with the people. I am ready to re-enter the fray.

I need my yoga practice to daily purify myself for warriorship. I need to daily metabolize and process the unspeakable shit that is thrown at us, and make myself robust enough to withstand it, speak out, and act decisively.

The spiritual path leads too easily to bypassing. Yes, we are all one, and Trump, Biden, and Netanyahu are all projections of myself. Yes, the `āina belongs to no one, and we are all indigenous to some place. Yes, we can save no one and it's not our responsibility to do someone else's spiritual work.

But, DAMN.....

I cannot stand by and be silent in the face of state violence. I cannot witness the mauling of children and do nothing. I cannot claim ignorance when I live in 2024 and see with my very eyes what unfolds before us. I cannot deny what my body perceives and conveys. It starts with the daily oppressions of caste and class, the demands of capitalism, the abuse of the natural world. It grows into political clashes and ongoing theft of land and resources. It heightens into genocide.

I remain eternally grateful for the profound practice of Iyengar Yoga, and my illustrious teachers, the best in the world, let's face it. And I am now poised to relaunch into the prakrtic mess which is this world. Send me. Use me. May I devote all my power to the healing of the people, the restoration of community, to confront wrongdoing, and do the needful. May I be imbued with wisdom and courage to be staunch on the path of right action.

 

SAMSKARA

 will i remember you in my next life?

when i enter samadhi
bound for the infinite beyond

when my body is a shell returned to the earth
to be consumed by creatures and microbes

when i forsake my name
my caste
my race
my creed
and fade deep into
the innermost zero

will my soul maintain the imprint
of my guru?

when i have learned the lessons in the spiritual realm
and prepare to return to the crush
of earthly life

the mud and monsoons
and packs of stray dogs
and honks of rickshaws

when i come back
as male or female or anyone beyond a binary
rich or poor
black or brown

will i somehow make my way back to this place?
will my body remember the stone steps?
will my feet curve around the staircase going up to the hall?
will i touch the feet of my guru as i enter the hall?

will my heart skip a beat when i hear the voice of my guru?
will my samskara cling to the memory of my teachers?
will my soul willingly come back into a flawed and painful embodiment
such that i seek you out
subject myself to the austerity of the teachings
lay myself down on a cool slate floor
or drape my spine across the familiar arc
of a backbender

when my fingertips graze the photographs of my guru
will my eyes recall your face?
will my stomach gurgle in response to a memory deep in my gut?
will my guru make himself known to me?

whatever grace has led me to this embodiment in this place and time
whatever grace has opened me to these teachings
brought me to the feet of my guru
brought me to my knees in utter humiity

will i regain that grace in my next life?
will my feet once again walk on these stone steps?
will i hear the call of my guru?
will i answer the call?

Cultivating Sattva

 I was born pitta, pitta, pitta. I came out kicking and screaming, and continued for decades. My parents shook their heads as they talked about the calmness of their two boys being disrupted when I was born. I had temper tantrums until age 7 or so. About what? In retrospect, I discern that my early childhood self sensed that something was really off in the world, but had no vocabulary, understanding, or context for that dissatisfaction. Some part of me just knew shit was fucked up and I had to speak out and do something about it!

But in the past few years, that pitta energy has shifted to more vata, as I've learned is typical in post-menopause. Gradually my body has become less dense and muscular, I can no longer claim to be the hungriest person in the room as my metabolism drastically slows, and I am learning, finally, bit by bit, to cultivate sattva in my mind and body.

I no longer thrive on intense, ongoing action. I seek places and periods of calmness. Instead of FOMO, I celebrate JOMO--joy of missing out. At age 60, I increasingly seek opportunities to bring along the younger generations, and pass everything I've gathered and learned onto them. I don't crave fame, attention, and stardom, and I don't feel the need to be in charge.

I started to notice these new tendencies this week, approaching classes at RIMYI. In past visits, I strove to extract every possible drop of learning from my brief time. I took copious notes, observed classes, assisted in the medical classes, spent time studying in the library, and everything else I could muster. This time, however, I had to come to terms with myself, and make the decision to step back, just a little.

My nervous system felt overwhelmed and rattled by the medical classes, which in past years, I would have jumped into with all four limbs. I found myself wanting to tuck into a corner like a tortoise. Not only was there, as Guruji described it, the "fish market" energy and chaos of so many students with so many different medical conditions, but also the straining of the visiting younger teachers to see, learn, and assist as much as possible. 

At first I berated myself for not putting myself out there and lending a hand. Why should I hold back? But that evening, I spent some time in self-reflection. On one hand, I owe it to my communities in Hawai`i, Detroit, and Korea, to assert myself, and extract as much learning as possible. Conceivably I even had some experience and insights that might be useful to the students here.

On the other hand, my body, especially my nervous system, was communicating to me to take it easy. The past nine months have been exhausting and incredibly stressful, given global conditions, especially in Palestine. I've been involved in the Palestinian rights struggle for years, and intensified my involvement since October 2023. This work can be incredibly frustrating and infuriating, and the heartbreak unrelenting. However, the struggle can also be uplifting and inspiring. I've met some incredible souls and powerful organizers, especially in the Hawaiian sovereignty and anti-militarism movements.

Devoting a month of study in India offered a necessary respite from this intensity. Not that I've totally backed off--I still start off each day with updates from Al Jazeera and Democracy Now, and finish each day with Palestinian films, interviews, and webinars. But for just a few weeks I've stepped back from the daily intensity of organizing campaigns and events, attending public hearings, sending emails, and making phone calls.

My body gave me permission to rest, instead of assist in the medical classes: It's ok, you don't have to save everyone. You're not indispensable. You don't have to do everything. I realized this is an opportunity to cultivate sattva--clarity, lightness, translucence--instead of continually building rajas as I've done in the past. Today on the way home from practice, I sat on a park bench, peeled a tangerine, and snacked on dhokla. I'm building aloha `āina with the trees here. I watch them and they watch me. I go home, eat a simple lunch, and take a nap. It's enough. In fact, it's plenty. I feel a quiet sense of santosha and deep, deep joy and gratitude, simply for this embodiment in this place and time. I feel tremendous love for my teachers and the profundity of the practice. May I regain fortitude, build patience and endurance, and continually expand my capacity for compassion. May I cultivate sattva, so I can be fully present with my people, with a soft heart and open mind.