Passing of dharma & yoga teacher Michael Stone
At twenty, after the death of a beloved uncle, he spent a year in the woods learning to meditate and reading Carl Jung. Later while studying psychology at the University of Toronto, he started studying Zen Buddhism, vipassana meditation, and yoga. Since that time he started teaching, became an activist, founded a community, became a father, and wrote, edited or contributed to five books.
On July 13th of this year at 42 years old, the psychotherapist, yoga and dharma teacher, Michael Stone, left home for a run to town and never returned. His wife received a call late in the day that he had been found, was in a coma, and no one knew what happened to him. Surrounded by family, he was released from life support on July 16th.
Saddened, it reminds me of the preciousness of our teachers, community and the world, as well as the fleetingness of our own lives. Here are two quotes from Michael's book, The Inner Tradition of Yoga.
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The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner
by Michael Stone (1974 to July 16, 2017)
Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts & London, England © 2008 234 pp.1. Yidya: Seeing Things as They Are
"Yoga begins in the present moment, and the present moment begins in silence. For that silence, words are born. In the Yoga-Sutra attributed to Patanjali (third century B.C.E.), considered to be one of the core texts of yoga psychology, we begin with a simple sentence: 'Atha yoganusasanam.' This is translated as 'in the present moment is the teaching of yoga.'
The Yoga-Sutra is not a speculative text on philosophy or metaphysics, nor does it offer us a theology of creation or a final comment on what's in store for us after death. Creation and death coexist in sequence with the arising and passing away of each moment. Every inhalation is a birth and the end of every exhalation is a small death. In each consecutive movement, over and over again, the universe arises and passes away on the thread of a breath cycle." (p. 7)
2. Yoga, Death, and Dying: What is Most Astounding?
"In the epic Indian story called the Mahabharata, the sage Yuddhisthira is asked, 'Of all things in life, what is the most astounding?' Yuddhisthira responds, 'That a person, seeing others die all around him, never thinks that he will die.'
One of the deepest pains of being human is the realization that every aspect of life is undergoing constant change and that everything once born is then subject to decay and death . . . To be accepting of aging and dying brings us face-to-face with our ongoing and unconscious repression of the awareness of death and dying." (p. 189)
-- submitted by Jennifer Knight