Sauca the first Niyama

So have been going pretty well with my wind down.  Not making myself too busy, just working, foccusing on my practice,cleaning,sorting my house, thinking...

Practice has been good untill today's very stiff primary, not sure what happened, but felt heavy, stiff and had to drag myself through it.

Simplicty, space, light, these words have been flying around my head a lot since March after the Vipassana, and then received further reinforcement after reading Ghandi's autobiography, I am striving for simplicity, lightness, clarity in all aspects of my life.

Further inspriration has come from the Yoga Sutras, thinking about Purusha, the divine in me, which deserves a nice light clean body fit for a god to reside in, which in turn needs a suitable material dwelling. 

I liked what I read somewhere about Monks keeping the temple spotlessly clean, so I shall do my best in my house, the picture is a spotlessly clean corrider from the Zen Head Temple in Fukui, the perfect place to focus on meditation. Calm, and seeped in years of practice.  

The cliches "Your body is a temple" and "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" resonate on a different level these days.   I guess one's dwelling reflects one's consciouness, and the opposite is true.  So my natural tendecies to messiness and disarray are a product of my monkey mind, so tidying, sorting, organising should help my mind right?  And through the years of yoga I do feel my mind beoming calmer and my environment becoming clearer, and not being able to live in the kind of mess I was once quite happy in, as much as the proverbial pig.