The Mirror of Yoga Page 2
Another approach to yoga, one which helps to free us from being too esoteric and exclusive is karma yoga, the yoga of work or action. Since the nature of the body and mind, except in the deepest of trance of samādhi, is movement, we find that by sanctifying that movement—our actions and our work—the mind can be freed from attachment to the outcome or the fruit of our action. This is a potent way of eliminating the ego from daily and necessary work. Karma yoga allows all types of people to practice, even those who might not have the luxury of time or the opportunity to study the contemplative paths. It allows us to concentrate on our work, transforming it into an art and a source of satisfaction in and of itself. Perhaps the most important aspect of karma yoga is that when work is practiced as an offering to other beings or to God, awareness of others is enhanced, which in turn decreases narcissistic tendencies, making all approaches to yoga easier.
Around 600 B.C.E. Gautama (Sakyamuni) Buddha gave birth to a brilliant vision of yoga now known as Buddhism. Gautama Buddha taught the practices and philosophies of traditional yoga but rejected the authority of the then-dominant Vedic religion within the existing schools. He turned the philosophical and religious language used to talk about yoga on its head by teaching that there is no permanent self or ātman. He also stated that a belief in a separate self leads to egotism, craving, and suffering. Meditation or deep yoga practice gives a direct experience of this truth. One of the main terms for truth and consciousness within the traditional yoga language is ātman, and the declaration of the apparent opposite created quite a philosophical and political stir. This has led to centuries of debate among practitioners and philosophers as to what they really mean by the terms ātman and no-ātman. Buddhist and other yoga schools have been beneficial mirrors for each other, stimulating mutual growth by pointing out each other’s blind spots and prodding each other into practicing rather than resting on doctrine. The Buddha’s approach also helped to open the practice of yoga to all people, many of whom had been disqualified by the strict caste structure of Indian society.
There are numerous subsets of these primary schools of yoga. It is important to remember that all of the classic schools and their subsets are interrelated; they use each other’s methodologies in varying proportions because no one school can accurately describe the immediate and overall process that is yoga. Explaining the whole truth, the metaphysical ground of being, nature, or God is always beset with difficulty and paradox. It is like the eye trying to see itself. Any point of view or system sees and explains things well, but all have blind spots. Others outside the system are needed to fill in the blind spots. As yoga students and teachers, we tend to become attached to and prejudiced about our own school and methodology. It is natural under most circumstances to identify with the club we belong to because there is a certain kind of security and satisfaction in that; there is also an inherent tendency of mind to want to feel that our own system is better than others—even for those who study and practice yoga. Consequently, it is not uncommon to simply rest on the superficial levels of the school we consider to be our own. In so doing, we fool ourselves into a state of pseudo-satisfaction, hiding in a simplistic understanding of the teachings and conveniently avoiding practice, which is needed in order to understand deeply. It is safe and comfortable on the surface because going deeply requires that we question the structure of everything, including the structure of the very school to which we belong.
The specific differences between traditional schools of yoga are less important than the fact that most are intended to eventually lead to a direct experience of reality. Whether they are successful depends on the intelligence, devotion, and ability of the individual students and teachers to correctly adapt and interpret teachings and practices. The most powerful traditional schools—those with long lineages that have been tossed around and refined for many generations—represent the epitome of human inquiry into reality. These schools are deeply rooted in the ancient cultures of India, dating back well over five thousand years, and each has evolved over time, some coming from still older traditions that have flowed together and merged, and others developing as traditions splintered apart. The actual history of each is complex and distinctive, and for many schools we will never really know who the formers, reformers, and innovators were. What we do know, however, is that for any school to stay alive and applicable within today’s environment, it must continue to evolve. But we must beware, because an excellent, profound, living tradition of yoga can still be worn by an idiot as a decoration for his or her ego, while a sincere, open-minded, inquisitive student of a fractured lineage can breathe new life and insight into that tradition for everyone’s benefit.
The Vedas are the ancient hymns with which many of the religions, customs, and myths of India are intertwined. These beautiful and lengthy hymns have been memorized and passed down in the families of Vedic Brāhmaṇa priests for at least five millennia and, until recently, remained strictly an oral tradition. Over time the Vedas evolved in a rich crossroad of ancient cultures, mysticism, shamanism, and religion. Mysterious, complex, brilliant, and somewhat inscrutable in their poetry, they are believed to be a timeless revelation of truth and are sometimes used by their followers as an ultimate authority. Some schools of yoga claim that their own interpretations are direct revelations of the Vedas and are therefore the only true teachings. The arcane nature of the hymns, however, always leaves their meaning open to interpretation, and this has been helpful in the evolution of yoga practice and philosophy. Many of the early strands of yoga practice contributed to and were influenced by the formation of the Vedas, and yet other schools claimed that yoga evolved as a way to move beyond the Vedas’ limited and ultimately materialist orthodox world.
Following the Vedas historically, around 800 B.C.E., there appeared the early Upaniṣads and other scriptures, which began a new age of direct philosophical inquiry and systematic, deliberate investigation into yogic practice and experience. Then over time came epic poems, such as the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, the Purānas or histories, the sūtras of the different schools, the tantras, the haṭha yoga texts, the ongoing creation of new Upaniṣads, the Buddhist canon are just a few of the thousands of scriptures that followed the Vedas and relate directly or indirectly to yoga in some form. All major schools of yoga have classical texts or scriptures associated with them; many traditions share some of the same texts. These texts are generally written in Sanskrit or one of its derivatives, such as Pālī. Occasionally texts were written in a local dialect, making them more accessible to contemporary students who lived within the area.
The Sanskrit language, in which many but not all of the classic texts were written, has developed a special status. The word Sanskrit means “perfect,” “polished,” or “constructed,” and as a language it has been refined in this manner since its first use in the early Vedic hymns. It has been crafted to reveal the refined sound and resonance that easily form mantras; the method of joining one word to the next allows a continuation of a base meditative resonance into which the attention is magnetically drawn. In fact, the experience of chanting itself is considered to be an experience of a yogic state. As was true with the teachings from many ancient cultures, Sanskrit hymns were often composed in verse or in a meter with rhyme so that they were easily memorized and could be chanted as a means of passing teachings from generation to generation. To this day the memorization and chanting of traditional Sanskrit texts is considered a sacred practice in India, and it continues to enrich a cultural connection to ancient yogic philosophy because the contemplation of a text as it is chanted naturally sows seeds of insight, which result in application of the message of the text. Classical yogic traditions are the result of hundreds of thousands of people over many generations reflecting on the way their minds work as they investigate their own immediate experience of reality. A wonderful aspect of teachings from an ancient tradition is the natural enrichment of ideas that occurs in this process. With so much practice, experimentation
, reflection, and communication, individuals and entire schools evolve. Over time real communication and translation between the practitioners of different schools happens naturally, which refines everyone’s technique, language, and breadth of understanding. The universal or common patterns of a practice and its supporting teachings are exposed, renewed, and clarified by the often-uncomfortable exposure to others outside the group.
The purpose of this book is not to make you a premature eclectic. It is not to confuse you with the great variety of yoga philosophies, traditions, and practices you may encounter, nor is it to make you into an armchair enlightened being. Instead it is to allow all of us to slow down a bit so that we can delve deeply into the subject rather than skidding along on the surface side to side, from one school back to another. We are aiming at the core of the teachings. By sticking with it and going deeply we find that the jewel at the heart of every valid school is that we are eventually invited to face ourselves just as we face reality. There is a wonderful story about a man digging a well. He would begin digging down and after five or six feet of digging, which is very hard work, he would find no water, and so he would climb out of the little hole he had made, move twenty feet over, and dig another hole for his well. But after digging about six feet down, he would give up again, move twenty feet in another direction and start digging again. This went on, and on, and on, and he never found water. So it is with the restless ego pursuing yoga, seeking ornaments for an improved self-image and new ways of feeling better, but avoiding the true facts of life. When the school or practice becomes difficult—which is precisely the entry point into reality—it is at this crisis point that you really have to drop your pretenses and keep digging deeper into the experience. However, all too often it is right at this juncture that we tend to give up the practice. We move on to a “better” teacher or a “more interesting” school, rather than sticking with it and investigating the inner work that is the purpose of the school and the teachings in the first place. Of course if the teacher (or school) has not done his or her work of sticking with the practice at the point of difficulty, then it could be time to find a different teacher, and this discriminative awareness—knowing when to stick with it and when to move on—is part of what a good yoga practice teaches.
Most traditions of yoga are designed to inspire us to dig a deep well from precisely where we are within our own unique circumstances. By digging deeply we come across a direct experience of what is happening right here, right now. In that begins an awakening into the actual nature of pure consciousness and the function of mind. There is a taste of complete liberation and release. Letting go of the urge to compulsively search for freedom, we become unshackled from identification with the impermanent forms of the world. We no longer associate ourselves with the body and the self-image, and this enables us to appreciate ourselves and the whole natural world in a completely fresh way. Whatever tradition captures our mind, whatever ancient, medieval, or hybrid form of yoga we find that works for us so that we may dig deeply into the nature of the direct experience, that is the starting point. If it allows real work and authentic inquiry within our own unique circumstances, it is the tradition to follow enthusiastically. At the same time, be aware of how the ego function of the mind might turn any practice, tradition, or great starting point into an escape, a distraction, or even a political agenda. A sincere yoga practice can save us from this.
It is useful to examine the meta-pattern that occurs around any of these traditions when we finally get down to it and start digging a well. A meta-pattern is what links a form or pattern into its context and then links that context onto another layer of context. It is the universal nature of patterns that there is no absolute or final pattern. In our normal process of perception, everything we are aware of—specific objects, feelings, sensations, or thoughts—is actually a pattern, not a solid and permanent thing. Our beloved dog, the pang of sadness we feel at the loss of a friend, our definition of who we are as a teacher or a parent, or even the physical pain we feel in our neck—these are all forms that are part of our own patterns of perception. With close scrutiny we see that whatever form we perceive has underneath it other forms that do not appear. That which we identify as a complete form, one that we understand or know, is actually an expression of the complex layers that make up the whole beneath it. Our dog is an evolved domesticated animal, a specific breed or a mix of breeds, a friend, a miraculous being, and a protector, to name just a few of the layers that merge together to form the pattern in our mind of “my dog.” No matter what it is we are experiencing, the form itself often conceals its background and appears as an object separate from everything else. But through continued observation and prolonged contemplation of any perceived form, we can eventually see through the form itself and recognize the context within which the form rests. Sooner or later we see that the specific form is a unique composite of the patterns that make up its background.
For instance, when we watch the water swelling in the ocean we can identify this pattern as a wave. We know the wave is not actually separate from the ocean, but until we broaden our perspective, the ocean and the wave remain two distinct forms that we identify in our mind as being separate. If we allow the mind to release so that our arbitrary boundaries of definition that separate wave from ocean may dissolve, we can easily see the union of what at first appeared to be two separate forms. Spontaneously we experience, right through the core of our being, a deep flash of insight the instant we recognize the union of those two “separate” forms. In this transformation of specific forms, the underlying nest in which every internal and external aspect of the universe rests is seen, and we experience the interconnected weave of everything. Specific superficial forms (that is, the wave) are the patterns the mind creates as a means of quickly and efficiently understanding its perceptions. But when we let our contingent forms go and experience the interconnecting meta-pattern that envelopes and penetrates those forms, our theories and formulations (even about the underlying pattern itself) are suspended and dissolve into alert, open intelligence. Connecting in this way to the present moment, the very nature of our being is revealed.
When we practice yoga, we explore this notion of the meta-pattern that envelopes and penetrates all that we perceive. Many philosophical traditions have contemplated this notion of the interconnectedness of life, and studying classic texts from most traditions gives insight into the idea. The physical nature of many traditional yoga practices gives an unusual visceral understanding of the interpenetration of all aspects of life, which can be uniquely clear and profound because it is a direct experience of the interpenetration of form and idea within our own body. As it turns out the human body, your body, is the ideal ground for understanding and experiencing this notion of a meta-pattern, what we might call an interlinking matrix or a yoga matrix.
In normal, everyday life our attention is projected out into the world so that we can make sense of what we perceive, allowing us to navigate quickly and easily through our experience. Typically when we look at the body we see it through those same filters and theories. We may see it as a bag of skin filled with bones and blood, or as a continuum of suffocating, painful frustration used to validate all of the miserable opinions we have of others and of ourselves. Our focus might be on just one part of the body—the image of our face, or the belly, the thighs, the nervous system, the musculature—to the exclusion of all other aspects. Through a consistent yoga practice, all the different notions we may concoct about what the body is and who we are eventually arise as objects for our meditation. When we stay with our observation, digging our well deeper and deeper, we begin to see all the way through the forms of perception we have created. Seeing through our theories about the body we are led into an actual experience of the core of our own body itself. We are able to look through the deep emotions and patterns that make up our subjective awareness, and we also see through those parts of ourselves that we have objectified and have identified as the body itself. W
e see that the ideas of skin, bones, organs, and all that we know to be the physical body are actually just the culturally agreed-upon forms that we have identified in order to comprehend the arising of the particular pattern of manifestation we call “humans.” Through this practice we discover that the human body is far more than any of the theories about it. In meditation the body is experienced as an open matrix of awareness through which theories, thoughts, and sensations come and go.
This is perhaps the most refined and wonderful aspect of the yoga tradition—that through our own body we learn to understand the universe. We do this by slowing everything down, as if saying, “Wait a minute, we are going to look with fresh eyes and listen with opened ears and a renewed awareness in all of our senses at this mystery of life that is presenting itself through, within, and as the body.” In this way we can temporarily suspend all judgments and conclusions about the body. Again and again, with fresh eyes, we closely examine all of our theories and patterns of experiencing what we know as the body. In this suspension we are supported by the mystery of the underlying and ultimately unknowable matrix of open intelligence. Our feelings, thoughts, sensations, and emotions reveal the interconnectedness of immediate experience with the whole world of underlying patterns. This process of realization happens spontaneously when we allow ourselves to fully perceive whatever we are experiencing in the moment, without becoming attached to the perception and, at the same time, without rejecting it. As we become more skillful in our yoga practice, we learn to perceive deeply without creating a “story” that we (and others) must believe to be true or false, good or bad, safe or unsafe. Eventually we do not buy into our story lines, nor do we become attached to their outcome—we do not hold on to them or reject them. We learn to become aware of our deep perceptions as both vital and real, but more important, we recognize that our own forms of perceptions are the gateway into the matrix that intimately connects us to everything else.