Hens, bees and paths of wisdom
Hens and Bees in urban settings
Citizens of Gatineau who wish to raise hens for eggs and keep honey bees can now apply for a permit to do just that! The City has changed their by-laws in regards to the custody, control and care of animals within the City of Gatineau. An application must be submitted by completing an online form available on the city’s web site: gatineau.ca (keywords: agriculture urbaine). Note that without the license, citizens will not be allowed to keep hens or install hives in urban areas.
For hens, the City will retain 50 projects, including 10 community-based and 40 residential projects. Anyone interested in applying for a permit has until March 15 to submit their application for a license to keep hens in an urban environment. For bees, the deadline was February 20.
More information (in French) here
In tune with Wise Masters
The Centre Yoga will be posting videos of master teachers from various traditions. In doing so, it wishes to provide open avenues of reflection rather than promote one vision or philosophical school over another. These offerings are meant to enrich your understanding of yoga, should you wish to do so.
This first video, in English with French subtitles, features Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Sadguru means true or good teacher.
The Book of Joy
The Book of Joy
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World By Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams
Recently, a few Centre Yoga friends have recommended this book to us, which they seem to have thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe you want to give it a try. Here is the publisher's summary:
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet.
In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness’s eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question: How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering?
They traded intimate stories, teased each other continually, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy.
This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience their astonishing and unprecendented week together, from the first embrace to the final good-bye.
We get to listen as they explore the Nature of True Joy and confront each of the Obstacles of Joy—from fear, stress, and anger to grief, illness, and death. They then offer us the Eight Pillars of Joy, which provide the foundation for lasting happiness. Throughout, they include stories, wisdom, and science. Finally, they share their daily Joy Practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives.
The Archbishop has never claimed sainthood, and the Dalai Lama considers himself a simple monk. In this unique collaboration, they offer us the reflection of real lives filled with pain and turmoil in the midst of which they have been able to discover a level of peace, of courage, and of joy to which we can all aspire in our own lives.
More information, click here
Hṛdaya: journey to the heart of ancient wisdom with Eliot
Most of Centre Yoga Aylmer's students may be well aware of the series of Sunday afternoons Eliot has been offering for the study of relevant yoga scriptures in a friendly and relaxed group setting. These study groups make it possible to explore these texts, their meaning and how they can illumine our lives. On this blog, Eliot will provide snippets of the Sunday afternoon contemplations.
Amongst the many themes we touched on this past Sunday, we talked about time.
To assert the existence of present, requires that we assert the past and the future, too, for they are forms of the present. If we grieve death, then may we grieve every single tiniest moment of our existence, for we are continuously changing. We are dying and birthing. The seed and the tree cannot exist simultaneously. The bud and the open blossom cannot exist simultaneously. Water and ice cannot exist simultaneously. Winter and spring cannot exist simultaneously. And here I quote Douglas Brooks, from his great guide book Poised for Grace, “We are all capable of sustaining this empowering insight and living from the seat of eternity: it is always a matter of choice and never obstructed except by our immediate choice.”
For more details about the next afternoon of the series, please click here