Practicing Peace, Controlling Hate

Infinite altruism is the basis of peace and happiness. If you want altruism, you must control hate and you must practice patience. The main teachers of patience are our enemies. --HH the Dalai Lama (Apparently from a HHDL calendar, posted by someone on buddhists today.)

This morning as I was going to my yoga class, two of the other class participants had a shouting match as I was getting out of my car. They had a traffic disagreement apparently. One woman accused the other of 'trying to kill her,' and the other said something about staying in one's own lane. I entered, wondering if I ought to warn our instructor.

Class went off without much hitch as it turned out, but C (one of the women involved) mentioned it after class to Sondra (the instructor), so a discussion of vritis /vree-tees/ (often translated as 'agitations'), dealing with difficult people, and what constituted evil ensued. I was a little put off by Sondra aligning herself with her longtime student C (by calling the other woman, or her actions, it was unclear which, 'evil'), and I tried to insert the idea of anger and agitation instead of actual evil as the cause of the difficulties. The other woman had left already, and was therefore unable to explain or defend herself.

I have a job. A teeny tiny job.

Well I have a part time job. Unfortunately it's REALLY part time. Two hours per week, teaching Baby Signs level II at First Steps Ann Arbor. I will teach toddlers and their parents/caregivers how to sign the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, numbers up to 30, animals, colors, and other miscellaneous concepts starting in January. I am excited about it, actually. And I will get to sub for the level I teacher as needed, or perhaps take that over at some future point. Who knows?

I'm also looking for more ways to teach or otherwise work with kids, perhaps after school extracurriculars at S's school. The after school program coordinator wants me to tackle Magic: The Gathering. I don't want to do that, as I nearly had two students come to blows when I taught it at summer camp. We'll see if she goes for my other ideas, such as RoboRally (a summer camp success) or a trick card games class (Euchre & Hearts; maybe Wizard or Pinochle or Spades if I need to keep introducing new games).