In April of 1987 I went to Ladakh. As I flew into Leh, I was the only foreigner in sight. The pass from Srinigar in Kashmir to Leh was still closed for the winter.A man named Tashi led me to a place to stay and we became fast friends. He loved that I was Canadian.…
Tibet 1986
Of all the travels that I have been blessed to experience in my life, the traveling I did in Tibet in the 80’s was the most utterly magical and life altering experience I have had. I suppose the story of my travels to Tibet began in May 1984, as that is the summer I moved…
Pilgrimage to Kham 2017
For over 30 years I have wanted to go to Western Tibet to walk around a holy mountain called Mount Kailash. It is a mountain sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Bonpo, and is the headwaters of the four major rivers of the Asian Continent.Photo by Gary McCue At the beginning of May this year,…
Searching for Saraswati
I have long been fascinated by the lute playing goddess, Saraswati. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of learning, music, arts, and wisdom and for all these reasons strikes a chord in my being. And so, when I was in India and I read that there was a temple at the Ellora Caves with an important carving of…
A Month in India 2015
I had the good fortune to spend the month of January 2015 in Pune, India at the Iyengar Institute known as RIMYI -the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute. Before going I had the notion that I would have so much time and would spend my days reading, trying to fill the hours of the day, and…
Opening to the Vastness
“The goal of the spiritual path is to be flexible, courageous and exploratory in the face of life’s joys and paradoxes, while never parting from a connection to its deepest meaning.” -Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche- This past summer I was blessed with a journey that connected me with the vastness of our country, and gave me…
Learning how to Listen
I write this post as a testimonial to piano technichian, Mark Figotin. Yesterday, Mark spent 8 hours “voicing” my piano. The day was a journey of deep listening, of fine tuning my ear to hear the vast array of nuances and subtleties of sound. He opened my ears to hear the way a note sustains,…
Chopin and Savasana
Every day while I practice I am reminded of how intertwined the practice of yoga and creating music is. Lately, I have been gradually learning a piece by Chopin, or “Freddie” as one of my teachers calls him. It is one of his most beautiful and sensuous pieces called the “Barcarolle”, and it is a…
Iyengar and Menuhin
“I have always intuited that the only real ‘spirituality’ lies in our direct and personal relationship with Nature, with the Universe, and have long since backed away from asking others, including books, how I should live my life, how I should relate to Nature and the Universe… To learn from Nature, to let the body…
Beethoven and Buddha
How could Beethoven and Buddha have anything in common? I hadn’t thought about it until one day I was reading a book, “Buddhism Without Beliefs”. As the author Stephen Bachelor discusses the Four Noble Truths, he explains how important it is to approach Buddha’s discovery of the truth experientially. Rather than the Noble Truths being…
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