I'm once again in Encinitas. Why keep returning to the Ashtanga Yoga Center? It seemed fitting to unearth this quote:
"It is said ... that a man once came from a great distance to study under Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of the Lubavitcher Hasidim ...
To this distinguished tzaddik ... came the distant visitor. On learning of his quest, the villagers of Ladi all asked with pride if he wanted first to hear their great rabbi read Talmud or to hear him pray.
Neither, he said. He wanted only to watch him cut bread or tie his shoes.
The villagers were stunned as the visitor simply observed the rabbi sitting absently in thought in thc light of the afternoon sun, and then went away edified."
—"The Ordinary as Mask of the Holy," Belden C. Lane, Christian Century October 3, 1984, p. 898
Lane goes on to add: "One begins to suspect that the contemplation of any ordinary thing, made extraordinary by attention and love, can become an occasion for glimpsing the profound."
Ashtanga Yoga Center: shoe-tying, bread-cutting. That is all.
