I interviewed for a position as a docent at LACMA yesterday. I have this vision that I’ll spend the next year studying Art History, learning to intelligently share my newfound knowledge with groups of school children, helping them feel at home in the museum, all the while, finding heartfelt inspiration in works of art that connect our love of of art to our practice of yoga. We have done it together before, taken a theme from a painting or a sculpture, used that theme to deepen our practice, to find the common thread between art, life and the practice of yoga.
This time however, there is a position on the line. Will I get it? Does it matter? Yoga teaches us to to disconnect from the outcome. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna:
You have the right to work only, but not for the results of work. Do not let your motivation for action be influenced by reward, and do not become attached to inaction. 2:47
Perform work in this world Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is evenness of mind. 2:48
So if I don’t get the position, we will still strive to understand works of art. We’ll still look for the links between art and nature, and how those links inspire us.
In the meantime…. cross your fingers that a little bit of Sister Wendy will rub off on me.
