Jnana Mudra and Nadis

Yoga teaches that our bodies are filled with (composed of?) energy pathways that yogis call "nadis."

I mentioned in the prior post on pranayama that during parts of the session with Darren Main, I could feel energy moving through my arms and hands. Since that experience, I've used part of my meditation periods to focus more intently on the breath. This morning, at the peak of several inhalations, I again perceive a branching nadi in my right wrist, hand, and fingers. As I continued the practice, I had a lesser, but still perceptible, experience of the same in my left wrist, hand, and fingers. Interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I began teaching yoga in my home to a group of women from my congregation who have banded together to form a "Healthy Habits" group. They asked me to teach, and I agreed. Most of them are true beginners, without any prior practice. At the end of the session, I took a few minutes to show them a basic sitting pose, and then walked them through a basic breath cycle. Once they settled in, I joined them in meditation for a few minutes. My meditation posture usually includes the jnana mudra, and I moved into it that evening, as well. After the class, one of the participants asked me what the mudra was for. I gave the "standard" answer: it's a way of bringing mindfulness to my hands, giving them something to do, and that some people believe that the mudra connects energy pathways in the thumb and index finger.

I suppose I can answer the question a little more definitely in the future.

Off the Mat -- Aparigraha

Aparigraha – Non-grasping

The fifth and last of the yamas that Patanjali lists as ethical disciplines for interacting with others is aparigraha – non-grasping. Written in positive terms, aparigraha is “letting go.” It’s not always easy for me to consider letting go as a way of interacting with others. To be sure, it’s central to much of yoga, asana practice, and 12-step programs everywhere, but in those contexts, it’s easier to think of as a way of steering ourselves away from self-destructive behaviors rather than a way of interacting with others.

So how can letting go affect interactions with others?

One teacher I practice with regularly likes to repeat the phrase “everything you need is already inside of you.” That belief, I think, is at the center of aparigraha, precisely because grasping and clinging – aka “covetousness” – are fed by a deep sense of lacking. If you watch commercial television for fifteen minutes this evening, you’ll see at least a dozen displays intended to convince you that what you need for happiness is, in fact, not inside you, but can be readily found inside a car dealership, a fat retirement account, a can of beer, a promotion, a lipstick tube, whiter teeth, a Quarter Pounder, or, possibly, a weekend in Las Vegas. Aparigraha teaches us otherwise.

When it comes to material possessions, letting go is the beginning of generosity, and the beginning of the end of the “I don’t have enough to…” or the “all I need is…” thought processes. When I experience those desires, whether they’re conjured by advertising or whether they come from my own desires for something external to change me internally, I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, I tend to contract around the perceived need/want/desire. My attention narrows, my awareness of broader experience dims, and I start to focus, instead, on all the reasons I’m not complete without whatever it is. In short: I start, and then continue, suffering. But the experience doesn’t usually stop there. Next, I start devising ways to solve my problem, whatever it may be. Sometimes the fix is as easy (and dangerous) as heading down to the fridge late at night, or running up a tab on my credit card, or popping a pill to get to sleep. Sometimes it’s as complicated as lying to get someone to think something good about me falsely. At other times, it’s as life-consuming as devoting my life to accumulating a particular amount of money. But whatever the specific application, every one of those cases defines me by what I lack and focuses me on getting something to make myself more complete.

And all of it focuses my attention – and, for that matter, my life, my very being – on “I,” “me,” and “mine.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote this:

The Buddha once said that the core message of all his teachings – he taught continually for 45 years – could be summed up in one sentence. On the off chance that that might be the case, it might not be a bad idea to commit that sentence to memory. You never know when it might come in handy, when it might make sense to you even though in the moment before, it really didn’t. That sentence is:

“Nothing is to be clung to as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine.’”

In other words, no attachments. Especially to fixed ideas of yourself and who you are.

It is a hard message to swallow at first blush because it brings into question everything that we think we are, which for the most part seems to come from what we identify with, our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our values, our work, our expectations of what is “supposed” to happen and how things are “supposed” to work out for me in order for me to be happy, our stories of where we came from and where we are going and of who we are.

But let’s not react quite so quickly, even though at first blush the Buddha’s counsel may feel more than a little scary or even stupid or irrelevant. For the operative word here is “clinging.”

p. 53, Coming to our Senses, Kabat-Zinn

For a long time, I really resisted this teaching myself. It sounded to me too much like some kind of self-destructive notion, the sort of thing someone with no self-respect or self-worth might accept. But, like a few other teachings I’ve received in my life, this was one that has grown on me with time. In part, because of what Kabat-Zinn points out – the operative instruction is “don’t cling,” not “reject yourself.” Realizing that opened the door a tiny crack, and let in some light.

A dear yoga teacher frequently reminded me during practice, “let go of what you don’t need right now.” And every so often, maybe one time out of fifty that she gave that instruction, I realized that, in fact, I was clinging to something that I really didn’t need at that moment. And when I relaxed that grip, the yoga practice improved. Realizing that nudged the door a bit further, widening the crack. And a little more light came in.

Then I read a book by a sensible author who pointed out that the instruction to not grasp or cling could easily be mistaken for an instruction to reject, to stand apart, to avoid engaging with the world. In fact, he described such an attitude as the “near enemy” of non-grasping – something that looks more than a little bit like the practice, but in fact embodies the exact opposite of it. That idea took me a bit to digest. How was avoiding entanglement with something the opposite of non-grasping? It sure seemed similar.

I think it works like this: grasping/clinging is really rooted in exactly the same internal state as aversion and avoidance. Aversion is simply the way that internal mind state manifests when we experience the opposite of what we cling to. If I cling to the pleasure of a full feeling in my belly, I avoid being hungry and feel an aversion to the experience of hunger. If I cling to a belief that I’m more important than others, I may avoid letting myself perceive ways that other people are important. And I may feel aversion toward the people who threaten my notions of my own importance. If I cling to a belief that no longer serves me, I may feel aversion toward the situations or persons who show me how the belief is incorrect. Each of those situations, and the gazillion more that we could probably come up with if we started listing all of those we’ve experienced ourselves – we’re just clinging to something, whether a feeling, a view of one’s Self, or even something as abstract as a belief. And the clinging manifests as aversion.

When I read that author and realized that aversion and clinging are the same thing, a lot of light suddenly made it through the door. In response, I formulated this as a way to try to live aparigraha in many, many settings:

First Receive.
Then Embrace.
Then Honor.
Then Release.

And the “it” can be almost anything -- whether a feeling, a yoga pose, a headache, a beloved friend, a belief, a thought about myself, a threat to my safety, a work opportunity, a dollar bill.

Refusing to receive something present before me is simply aversion. Allow it in, no matter what it is – good, bad, pleasant, uncomfortable, quiet, loud, delicious, disgusting. And then take it a step further: embrace it, seek to fully engage with it, whatever it may be. Once you have experienced it, honor it: acknowledge its being, exactly as it is. Then, no matter how wonderful it may be, release it. Allow it to be exactly what it may be. Allow it to change in whatever manner it changes. And then apply the same practice to yourself, after you have released whatever “it” might have been.

Aparigraha – non-grasping – absolutely does not mean never to embrace. Rather, it reminds us that we should embrace, and then release. This doesn’t mean that we should bounce from one relationship to another, unstable and flitting. That, itself, can be a kind of grasping/aversion. Applying aparigraha to a long term relationship can be very salutary. Are there ways that we are clutching to a prior version of our companion, one that really isn’t there any more? Fear works against this kind of practice. What might happen if we release the first embrace? Will s/he still care for me? If I cling tightly enough, can’t I prevent that risk from ever arising? Yoga challenges us to live with both our eyes and our arms open. Sometimes, we’ll have the opportunity to embrace a new version of the old person, one that has changed and developed, grown into something more amazing than s/he was before. But sometimes there won’t be such an opportunity. Can we risk it? If I cling tightly enough to what I want so desperately, can I keep it from changing?

* * *

Practicing yoga allows us to perceive the energy that flows through us. The asana and breath practices enable that energy to move more smoothly and freely. That much of the experience of yoga is available to anyone who is willing to practice consistently and with a mind open enough to feel what we feel when we practice. Aparigraha reminds us that if we are willing to open our minds and hearts, to release the various clutches we hold, there are many, many more ways that we can allow energy to move through us as we interact with others.

There is more – so much more – to say about ways to apply the yama of non-grasping in our lives, on and off the yoga mat. But it’s probably best to end here:

I like to think of rivers.

You never see a river clutching the water that flows through it.

Perhaps the river knows that it is the flowing water.

The Zennist Gets This Right

It helps, I suppose, that I re-watched one of the Matrix movies last night. And it also helps that I've been been well challenged this week by a clear thinker to articulate the non-dual nature of the glimpses of samadhi that I catch every now and again. He tends to consider them to be moments of nihilism. And it also helps that last weekend provided a view down more than one rabbit hole.

So when I pulled up my blog reader this morning and found this from the Zennist, I was more than ready to find a description of exactly why I practice.

Pranayama

Ok, so this isn’t a well-developed thought, but more of a journal entry.

Saturday afternoon, I attended a pranayama workshop led by Darren Main. What that is and why it matters requires a couple of backtracks.

First, pranayama is one of the eight limbs of the practice of yoga. It means “control of energy.” In most yoga classes in the US, it gets translated as “breath,” and it becomes teachers’ way to keep track of the students’ mindfulness: if the student has lost track of the ujjayi breath pattern (make a Darth Vader-type breath sound, in and out, and you’ll have the basic idea), then the student has also likely lost the mindfulness element of the practice, and the teacher needs to dial back the intensity and re-establish the breath pattern.

But pranayama is more than simply mindful breathing – it’s the practice of using the breath to explore the subtle energy pathways of the body, and it’s learning to harness that energy as desired in life. Second, I recently found a couple of books by Richard Rosen on pranayama, and I was been curious enough to want to explore the practice a bit more deeply. As I read through his first book, I came to realize that developing and exploring a pranayama practice was as demanding and time-consuming as developing and exploring a meditation practice had proven. I was skeptical that I had enough time to devote to it. But I kept reading, anyway, to see what I might glean, whether information or inspiration. I found bits and pieces of what he wrote to be interesting elaborations of my own experiences. Rosen’s writings provided a structure and framework to help make sense of my own experience.

I’d gone so far as to begin to amass the props (sandbag weights, long narrow cushion to support the spine, that sort of thing) that Rosen recommends for beginning the practice, the first box of ordered props arriving, as fate would have it, Saturday. The box arrived while I was at Darren Main’s workshop.

Before the workshop, I’d read a number of yoga and Buddhist authors who write of various meditation practices, and the unusual mind/body experiences that can result. The authors frequently insist that the experiences, as peculiar as they may be, just are, and those who experience them should avoid becoming attached to them. Saturday, I got a glimpse of what they were talking about.

The workshop was presented a studio where I practice periodically – a large heatable room, maybe 50 or so class members. A comfortable number for the room – not jammed mat-to-mat, but close enough to create a sense of togetherness. Darren spent about a half hour talking to us about what to expect of the experience. He described the process (that I’ll describe below), described some of the more unusual aspects of the experience, cautioned us about some of the ways that we might respond to the experiences, and then sent us to our mats and guided us.

He started us in Savasana – Corpse pose. He instructed us on the particular in-and-out breathing pattern he wanted us to follow, and then he coached us through it for five to ten minutes. As he’d previously predicted, the first few minutes, the practice seemed as pointless and foolish as it probably sounds to anyone reading this, compounded, perhaps, by the regret that I’d actually paid for the workshop. Consistent with his forewarning and instruction, I noticed that thought and continued the practice.

After about 15 minutes, I began to experience the increase of tension and energies in my hands and forearms. The best analogy I can provide is that they felt like capacitors charging up. I began to feel energies in them twitching and flexing the muscles. And as I continued to breathe, the energies in them grew. I had a feeling of deep wellness, while at the same time, I felt quite high. Following Darren's instructions, I worked the breath and postures he suggested. Coming out of a pose was accompanied by a sensational release of energy. My spine arched me into Matsyasana -- Fish pose, and I considered momentarily moving into several other poses.

As we resumed the same breath technique, I again felt the generation and localization of energy in my forearms, this time to a greater degree. Again, Darren coached the room on breathing and posture. Again, I moved into the pose he called for, holding the exhalation, this time holding the pose even longer, feeling the energy coursing through my body. When I couldn’t hold the pose any longer, I lowered to the floor, but my back then re-arched, drawing me in to an unsupported Fish pose.

Again, we resumed the technique. As I inhaled the story of Hiranyaksha occurred to me, as I was washed over by waves of joy of physical being. At the top of the inhale, I began laughing, which continued for a time, then subsided. Others in the room were also laughing, and our laughter tended to feed back to one another, and I felt a connection to the others, most of whom were laughing, one or two who were crying.

Again, Darren coached us through breathing, and called for another pose. But as I performed this one, I experienced what felt from the inside like an explosion of unimaginable energy – back arching, limbs trembling violently, and an incredible and otherwise indescribable coursing of energy through my limbs, torso and head. It was not pleasant, but wild and uncontrolled. At that point, my mind was in a mode or condition that was not rational, nor strongly in control of my body. I arched into an unsupported Fish pose, arms extended, the backs of my hands pressed into the floor, like feet are pressed into the floor in Upward Facing Dog pose. Darren must have seen my response, and he came over and placed a hand on my heart, a second on my forehead. Usually, the touch of a teacher has an immediate and profound calming effect on me, energy expressions relax, draining into the teacher’s touch like electricity into a grounded cable. But this time, Darren’s touch, though welcome, felt distant. It took several breath cycles for me to ground myself in his touch and relax the deep, body-contorting spasms.

Again, returning to the breath technique, I lapsed into laughter of a joy that is hard to express. Darren repeated the cycle one more, this time my experience being calmer, but still highly, highly energized, with abundant laughter.

I left the workshop lingering on the question of what it was, exactly, that I’d experienced? Just a result of high levels of oxygenation of the bloodstream? Exploitation or exploration of feedback loops in the wiring of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems? A cheap and lawful acid-style trip based on oxygen? Maybe a bit of each.

As I’ve pondered that question, several realizations have come to me in the last three days.

First was a confirmation of the teaching that I’d discovered in less dramatic ways previously: that it is useful and accurate to talk of energy channels that run through the body and that affect the ways that we live, move, and breathe, that those energy pathways are not perfectly open, but rather can be obstructed – hence the capacitor-style accumulation of energy before the release; and that opening those energy channels affects the mind/body.

Second, the experience validates the reality of more subtle experiences with the breath – such as the general sense of well-being associated with a yoga asana practice that is not fully present with other exercise regimes.

Third, it was a validation of the statements in a number of works that advanced pranayama techniques should not be practiced without the presence, facilitation, and protection of a teacher who can serve as ground and guide. The power and extremity of my experience was safe and, despite its wildness, unthreatening, as I knew that Darren was there to aid me in controlling what I could not control myself. I suspect that without that level of protection, the experience could be mentally or emotionally harmful to some.

Fourth, community – practicing in the presence of others – makes a significant difference. At various stages of the practice, I felt strongly the presence of others, and their experiences fed into mine.

Fifth, the energy release I experienced during the third kundalini lock was akin to orgasm in its intensity, but many, many times more powerful and much more wild and unformed.

Sixth, the practice if repeated will, I think, help clear the energy pathways, like flushing water from the bottom of a dam can clear out sandbars that build up in tailwaters. I found myself on several occasions in the days following the experience more aware of clearer, brighter sense perceptions than I’d experienced prior to the workshop. It would be interesting to experiment with that.

Seventh, and finally, as various authors have noted, in the end, interesting energy experiences tend not to be life-transforming, but rather only interesting. The effort to develop and refine ourselves remains after the experience subsides. They can provide inspiration and sometimes can act as useful tools for specific purposes, but they are just experiences.

Off the Mat -- Brahmacharya

Hey – doesn’t “brahmacharya” mean celibacy?!?!?!?

Relax. It’s just another path to explore. ;-)

Brahmacharya (as wikipedia will tell you), is a Sanskrit word/phrase that translates to “approaching ultimate reality.”

In some forms of usage, it refers to the stage of life when one foregoes specifically sexual conduct while drawing near to a teacher or to God. In monastic traditions, it has meant celibacy. In other areas of life, it has meant things like being faithful to one’s spouse, or avoiding sexual misconduct.

But whatever the history, what’s the connection to yoga?

Yoga entails the perception, development, and control of energy. Utkatasana (Chair pose) is impossible without using energy, and the deeper you move into that pose, the more energy must be found, drawn in, and controlled. Sexual expression – or even more commonly, the pursuit of and desire for sexual opportunities – just ties us up into knots. It seems that sexuality can capture our grasping egos and attention like nothing other than physical survival itself. So yoga reminds us to notice those that.

Mindless pursuit of desire in any of its forms – attachment, obsession, or infatuation – reinforces our conceptual senses of “me” and “mine,” and diminishes our ability to see, really see, another being. Sexuality can entail all of that. Sometimes, the attachment itself is so strong that the rest of my mind seems to go dormant when its running its course. It’s only after the feeling begins to recede – after I no longer clutch it so tightly – that I can see it for what it is: a deeply ingrained mind-pattern. Mind you, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s a pretty important deeply ingrained mind-pattern. Without it, it’s easy to imagine that the species wouldn’t have arrived here today. But whatever its origin, in our context, it’s just another opportunity to practice mindfulness. (You knew I was headed to that conclusion, didn’t you?)

In my life, the very strongest lessons about mindfulness have not been those encountered quietly during introspective moments on a meditation cushion, but rather those that occur in the brief flash of mindfulness that can happen when my entire body and emotion are fully engaged or otherwise out of control – when I am most angry, or ambitious, or fearful, or resentful. Or filled with sexual desire. Those are the occasions when energy moves most in me.

But whatever channel it moves through, I’m increasingly convinced that energy is, in the end, just energy.

In writing about interpersonal relationships, the Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn observed that there is a kind of “suchness” about others and our relationships to them that we can notice. He compares the nature of those relationships to electricity or natural gas that we bring into our homes for power or heat. Either one can be dangerous when not managed attentively, or when used unskillfully. But with a well grounded recognition of the “suchness” of gas or electricity – and the accompanying measures we use to avoid harm – they can be great blessings in life. (Peace Is Every Step, pp. 68-69)

While he wasn’t talking specifically about sexuality, I think the point is largely the same: there is a suchness about sexuality. It has certain characteristics and effects that can be perceived and understood. It channels and consumes much of the energy of our lives. If we pursue it or use it unskillfully, we can cause trouble to ourselves and to others. Conversely, when brought into the realm of mindfulness, it can be a blessing.

But if my experience is any indicator, sexual desire is amazingly adept at avoiding the bright, full light of mindfulness. Who hasn’t had the experience of listening to a friend talk about the friend’s sexual feelings or actions toward another person, without thinking or saying out loud at some point, “Have you lost your mind!?” Sexuality, with its tunnel-vision focus on self and desire and power and energy, is second only to violence in its ability to track us into unconscious and unmindful patterns. Advice columns in newspapers are filled with stories of people who have lost their minds over sex. Television has made an industry of depicting doing exactly that. Curiously, when we are parked in front of the television watching others who have lost their minds, we can easily lose our own, as well.

Sadly, given its profound power, the widespread lack of recognition of the “suchness” of sexuality often leads to more harm than good. When in its pursuit, we dissipate energy, rather than controlling it. We limit our own perceptions. We harm others, even those whom we care about and with whom we are intimate, as we mistake attachment and desire for love and compassion. And when we allow our energy – our thoughts and our actions – to settle into the deeply ingrained ruts of sexual stimulus/response, we only deepen them, making even basic awareness of the ruts themselves more difficult.

So there are lots of good yogic reasons to be interested in how sexuality affects our minds and bodies and spirits. But if you’re interested in practicing brahmacharya, how do you go about it? Some thoughts about explorations:

Notice the next time you feel sexually attracted to another person. Bring all your mindfulness to the experience. Notice what you actually feel, and where in your body you feel it. Notice when those feelings are strongest, and then watch them. See how long they sustain themselves, and watch them subside. They always do.

Then, also, notice the effect of the attraction on your compassion toward the other person. Are you more or less aware of or attentive to the other person’s best interests? In some regards, sexual attraction can enable a kind of intense awareness and concentration on the other. But also, notice the feeling’s effect on those outside of the field of attraction. Are you able to think and act compassionately toward those persons or do they fade from your perceptions? What energies are entailed? How are they expressed?

Are your thoughts and actions consistent with the deepest wisdom of your heart and mind?

It can be profoundly instructive to watch our own experience of the entire process of sexual attraction from the time it first arises, through its full development and manifestation, and then through its subsidence and transformation. But that kind of mindful observation is much harder (perhaps impossible?) to accomplish if we are simultaneously trying to observe the process and trying to fulfill our desires.

In that light, perhaps, it is easier to understand why some people choose to pursue a path of celibacy. Mind you, though, celibacy can come in lots of different shapes and sizes.

It can exist for a day or a week or a month, as we just experience the attraction itself, neither shunning contact with the person, nor indulging our desires. Celibacy can exist in a different form by committing to intimacy with a single person, as many promise with marriage. For most, sexual attraction does not limit itself to a single person forever, so there can be opportunity to practice and experience celibacy by abstaining from sexual expression outside of the committed relationship. Celibacy can also exist during stages of a lifetime, or even for an entire lifetime, as well, for those who seek what it can provide.

One further point: if you do choose to practice brahmacharya in any of its shapes or sizes, try laying aside the judgmental part of your mind. We live in a society that is a peculiar amalgam of sexual indulgence and condemnation. It’s useful to be conscious of our environment, and its influence on our selves. For some, sexuality is difficult to de-link from the internal judging mind. But that mind, like the “oughts” we discussed last week, can easily get in the way of clear seeing. If you choose to practice this yama, consider doing so without judgment, only with clear eyes and a heart of compassion, even for yourself.

So how does any of that comprise “approaching ultimate reality” that the Sanskrit term brahmacharya translates to?

Just like our work on the yoga mat – whenever we engage in life without judgment, but completely mindful and completely aware, we pop our minds out of their well-worn ruts, and –sometimes quite suddenly –we can see in ways we couldn’t from the inside of the rut.

The Yoga-Sutra describes it this way:

As the patterning of consciousness subsides, a transparent way of seeing …
saturates consciousness; like a jewel, it reflects equally whatever lies before
it – whether subject, object, or act of perceiving.

1:41

Labels

I've recently begun to consider that perhaps self-labelling even with ostensibly "good" characteristics may lead me away from clear seeing.

Recently, this issue arose as I reflected on a brief discussion I'd had with one of my yoga students at the end of a class just before Memorial Day. She'd asked if I had plans for the Memorial Day weekend, and I responded that we'd probably put together a barbecue of some kind. She asked what we'd be barbecuing, and I responded "I'm a vegetarian, so green stuff, plus some bratwursts for my kids."

So what was the issue? It's the effect of applying that label, "vegetarian," even though I tend to think of it as either neutral or slightly a good thing. I'm sure that my yoga student just chalked it up to one more way that her yoga teacher is weird, so it isn't the inter-personal effect of the label that I was considering at lunch. It is the effect that applying the label to myself has.

I've begun to think that telling myself that "I'm Christ" produces as strong a tendency toward delusion as telling myself that "I'm Satan" -- not because either characterization is inaccurate when applied to actions, but because those actions (and their respective labels) definitionally apply to something past, rather than something present.

I am not a good person because I did something good yesterday. I am not a bad person because I did something bad yesterday. I am simply a person who has had the experience (and who therefore has been shaped by the experience) of doing something good or bad yesterday.

So back to lunch: is being a "vegetarian" something good? I suppose it can be; but self-notions of "I'm a vegetarian" tend to reinforce the idea that what I have done yesterday and last month and last year should somehow be accounted as good in this instant, when what matters in this instant is whether I choose to eat meat today at lunch -- not what I did yesterday, nor what I may do tomorrow.

(Of course, it's thought-processes like this that explain why I find myself eating lunch alone a fair amount )

Off the Mat -- Oughts

As I’ve been thinking the past several weeks about the Yoga-Sutra’s recitation of the yamas – the ethical principles for interacting with others – I find myself remembering a statement by a psychiatrist I was almost acquainted with: “I don’t do oughts.”

When my family first moved to our neighborhood, we began attending a church there. Shortly before we arrived, a member of the congregation had died, a psychiatrist I wish I’d had a chance to meet. But his influence was far from gone. Mormons – like members of other faiths – tend to get bound up in ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, righteousness and wickedness. That tendency sometimes manifests as lots and lots of “oughts”: We “ought” to love our neighbors. We “ought” to pray. We “ought” to support charities. We “ought” to…

Once you get started with such a list, stopping is nearly impossible.

So one day at church, I found myself in a discussion with another member of the congregation about various responsibilities we had, and he reported that Gary (the recently deceased psychiatrist) had responded to such situations by announcing that “I don’t do ‘oughts.’” Though I can’t for the life of me remember what specific responsibilities we were discussing, I remember very clearly that statement. It was an approach that contrasted sharply with the culture I thought I’d been raised in, and with my own mindset at the time.

While my views on many things have changed over the past fifteen years or so, Gary’s statement, “I don’t do ‘oughts,’” has stayed with me and continued to grow in significance.

As we think about the yamas, it is very easy – for me, at any rate – to fall back into the usual ought way of thinking: “I ought to tell the truth,” “I ought to avoid causing harm to other sentient beings,” “I ought to avoid taking things not offered to me.”

You get the picture.

But all of those thoughts depend pretty heavily on notions of self and judgment and – here’s the interesting part – I think they also depend a little bit on harming. Not flashy and dramatic violence of the Quentin Tarantino sort, but harming, nonetheless – forcing something to fit a pattern that it might not yet fit. Spiritually, that can be as painful as trying to force myself to fit into Lotus Pose before I’m ready to fit into Lotus Pose.

So with that in mind, I’m beginning to think of the yamas more like maps, than like “oughts.” An “ought” is the imposition of judgment with all the elements of disapproval and aspiration and striving and failure implied in that process. A map, on the other hand, just shows the way to a particular place. The Yoga-Sutra’s yamas are just maps to particular experiences. They show paths we can walk to make the journey easier, if we’re interested in traveling. They show us the obstacles between ourselves and those other places. They don't tell us whether we should go down the path, but they show the way if we decide to do so.

For me, at any rate, that’s a profoundly different way of thinking than “I ought to move further down the path of non-harming.” The pure seeing that yoga fosters is nearly the opposite of imposing judgment. The two practices don’t mesh very well at all.

Mary Oliver, an amazing poet, wrote the following, which expresses the idea better than I can:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source

Finally, this morning, I listened to a podcast of a dharma talk by a favorite Zen teacher. He talked of setting aside ideals of what we should or “ought” to be, and thinking of various ethical or behavioral instructions as practices that remove obstacles that otherwise would inhibit or distort our natural growth.

So long as obstacles to growth are removed, acorns grow into oak trees, all without oughts.

In thinking about the yamas we’ve already discussed, as well as those we’ll discuss in the future, it might be useful to think of them less as “oughts” and more as practices, maps around obstacles to our growth.

Your thoughts?

Off the Mat -- Asteya

Asteya -- non-stealing

(Another installment in my series of dharma talks with my yoga students)

At its most basic level, recognizing that we should avoid stealing isn’t headline-grabbing news.

Yoga, though, asks us to look a little more deeply into the subject: how does our relationships with things, both those we “own” and those “owned” by others affect our mind-body-spirits?

Just for a minute, remember the last time that someone took something from you that you hadn’t offered to the person, whether it was someone breaking into your apartment and taking your valuable, someone grabbing a Hershey’s Kiss out of the bowl on your desk, a co-worker taking credit for an idea you came up with, or an acquaintance calling you on the phone and launching into a long story without asking if you had time to talk. Remember, specifically, how you felt when that happened. If you’re like me, you actually felt something pretty distinctive – like you’d been disrespected. That’s when things start to get interesting. There are few experiences in my life that engender a more clear a sense of myself as a concrete “ME” than having something I think of as mine taken from me.

If you’ve had that or a similar experience before, then the following may make some sense to you. If you haven’t, or you’re not sure of what you felt the last time something like that happened, feel free to read on, but if you can, please let me know what your experience has been. I’m interested in such things, and I suspect that they aren’t uniform for all people.

Why should yoga tangle with ideas like that? Because yoga looks at what happens in our minds when we take what is not offered to us, and what happens in our minds when we have things taken from us that we have not offered to others. What are those mind-events? Feelings of separation, alienation, anger, violence. All of those feelings reinforce our mental images of our Selves. Weirdly, being deprived of something makes our concept of our Self stronger. Similarly, taking something that is not offered to us manifests two different weirdnesses – the first kind is “this isn’t mine, but I’m taking it anyway” – a kind of assertion of one person’s importance over others’. The second kind is the lack-of-boundaries sort of thinking that makes a muddle of things: “I don’t think clearly enough to recognize that cutting flowers from my neighbor’s garden might relate to my own subconscious notions of right/wrong/mine/yours, nor to consider the impact of those actions from another’s perspective. … And isn’t that just beautiful?”

As I was considering what to tell you about non-stealing, a friend came into my office and told me about how unhappy he was to find a neighbor with her dog in his backyard at 6:30 one morning, letting her dog “play” with his. He went out, a little disturbed at the intrusion, but quite angered by his neighbor’s presumption and oblivion to his feelings. He spoke sharply to his dog, which was barking, and took the dog inside, leaving his neighbor behind. He came to the office and told me of the experience and his frustration at not responding well, but also concerned that he didn’t want to alienate his neighbor entirely.

The next morning, he came back into my office to report the perfect solution. Very early that morning, just like the prior one, his neighbor came into his backyard so her dog could play with his. As he was getting enough clothes on to go down and confront his neighbor, his four-year-old daughter opened the back door, and both dogs ran into the house. The four-year-old helped the neighbor catch her dog, and, once the dogs were sorted out and the neighbor was out of the house and on her way, the four-year-old came upstairs and told my friend, “I got her dog for her and I told her that it wasn’t polite to come into our yard early in the morning.”

As I’m a word-person, I did a little investigation: “polite” comes from the same Latin root as “political” – polis – the word relating to culture or people. The neighbor was taking something – access to my colleague’s backyard and dog and privacy – that wasn’t offered. He saw the affront to himself and got mad. His daughter perceived all the same things and saw a lack of knowledge – a kind of ignorance on the part of the neighbor – and educated her about what was and wasn’t polite. A remarkable lesson in how ego gets wrapped around the axel when things get taken without permission.

So how to practice asteya? Like every other yoga practice, just notice it. A couple of easy-to-find opportunities:

1. Notice what happens in your own mind when someone cuts in front of you on the freeway. Notice where in your body you feel the sensations of anger and indignation. Notice how long those feelings last. Notice them subside.

2. Notice when you take something that isn’t offered to you – whether it’s candy out of someone’s dish at the office, a space in traffic, or credit for an idea. (These situations are harder to notice because our minds often start from the assumption that we’re entitled to things, but see what you can come up with, anyway.) If you’re lucky enough to be able to see such a situation occur, notice your feelings about the action before or as it occurs, then notice your feelings and (re)actions after it has occurred.

3. Obviously, not taking what is not offered is a simple way of preserving a basic level of respect among people and keeping a basic level of peace and trust among them. But it’s always interesting to ask why it works that way. For me, I tend to think of the human responses as built upon and into ideas and feelings of ego.

4. I’ll be interested in your thoughts.

Meditation Anywhere

Monica's recent post at Buddhist in Nebraska crystallized this:


Sitting in church today, beside my family, an in-breath snagged my attention.

I followed it in, watched the exhale.

With the lights back on, I could see my hunched-over posture, and straightened. Heard the complex sounds of the speakers’ words.

Saw the next inhale begin.

What a curious thing to be aware in the midst of life!

A cushion in a quiet room? Yes. Of course. One thing at a time.

But outside, everywhere, all the time?

Buddha?

Off the Mat -- Satya

(Another "installment" in my continuing series of dharma talks with my yoga students)

Last week I noted that ahimsa is easy to practice on our mats with respect to ourselves, but harder off the mat. This week’s yama, satya or “truth,” may be the other way around. We’re all pretty well-versed in what it means to tell the truth when we interact with others. Most of us are generally aware of when we lie to others.

But from the perspective of the yoga mat, it can be harder to see how truthfulness works.

Years ago – in fact eight years ago, at the same conference where I was first introduced to the practice of yoga – one of the conference coordinators and I were talking separately after one of the conference sessions. The conference session had raised the question of whether in all the various roles each of us fulfilled, we were living “authentically.” I remarked to the coordinator that I hadn’t any idea what she meant by that term. I related to her that I played roles, variously, of husband, lawyer, brother, leader, friend, subordinate, executive, son, and father, but that I didn’t have any sense that any of those roles was the “real” me. When I was a lawyer, I was a lawyer. When I was a son, I was a son. When I was an executive, I was an executive. Two days later, as the conference was concluding, the coordinator re-raised the same question as a topic of exploration for the conferees, in a slightly different format. We penned our thoughts in response to the question of “under what circumstances do you feel most complete and honest?” At the time, I had made a couple of canoe trips down the Green River, which runs through the desolate and desert canyonlands of eastern Utah. The overriding experience of those trips had been solitude and quiet – my companion and I had gone days without seeing other people. And so I wrote in my conference materials, “I am more at one with the river than I am in any other setting in life.”

As sometimes happens, that one statement resonated long after the conference was concluded. As I reflected on it and on the earlier conversation with the coordinator, I realized that the two questions were exploring different facets of the same issue. Even though I didn’t understand the term “authenticity” as applied to myself, and even though I didn’t have any sense of which, if any, of the roles I played was the real “me,” in fact, a part of me knew, because it understood that it had been most present and aligned in the desolation of the wilderness, facing an empty river.

There is something inside each of us that knows truth.

As to communications and interactions with others, that sense inside knows not only when I speak to someone else and convey a false impression – whether I speak actual falsehoods, or whether I simply contrive my statements so that, although truthful, they convey a misleading impression. Awareness to that situation is a practice of satya.

But that which knows truth inside of us knows truth not only in our interactions with others – it knows the truth of ourselves, as well. It perceives when we live falsely, suppressing our understanding of truth in preference for a falsehood, whether it is a falsehood that allows us to harm others, or whether it is a falsehood that allows us to cling to something we crave or avoid something we fear. Some falsehoods arise originally from our own ignorance, and re-aligning ourselves to truth is simply a matter of consciously seeing our mistakes and stepping out of the well worn rut that we developed when we didn’t know any better. Whatever the origin of the falsehood, be it ignorance, ego or the things that ego creates – pride, fear, clinging, aversion, greed – once we build it into our foundations, it takes real effort just to see it clearly, let alone to change from falsehood to truth.

Still, there is real meaning to the term “true self,” and yoga asks us to seek it.

When you move into a pose on the mat this week, notice whether you perceive some value to the question of whether you are doing so truthfully. Is the pose a structure for exploring your experience or is it a way of presenting or maintaining a front, whether to yourself or to those around you?

When you work off the mat this week, notice when and how your communications are truthful. Notice when and how they are not.

And with either of those practices, when you find a situation in which you feel you have not been fully truthful, notice the experience of that non-truth – notice what gave rise to it, notice how it feels, and to the extent you can, notice how it affects the world around you. Does it draw you closer to reality, to those around you, to your true self? Or does it create or maintain a distance from those things?

A note to my yoga class

All,

I've received some good feedback regarding our yoga class. I spoke about it last Friday, but I'd like to share it with those of you who weren't able to attend that day, as I think it's an important reminder for all of us.

As many of you have heard me say on one occasion or another, what sets yoga apart from just good exercise is the connection between the mind and the body. One way to keep the mind engaged is to work at the edge of our abilities. Some poses challenge our ability for balance, others challenge our strength, flexibility, or coordination. But whatever the particular "edge" may be for each of us in a particular pose, one thing is almost certain: the "edge" will be in a different place for every person.

For some of us, Downward facing Dog presents a huge challenge to our shoulder strength; for others, it's a real test of hamstring flexibility; and for yet others, the real challenge of the pose is the coordination of keeping the spine long while still moving the heels toward the floor. The more we practice a pose, particularly working at our "edges," the more we will wear away those "edges." Shoulders will get stronger. Hamstrings will lengthen. Greater awareness will increase our coordination.

On one level, those developments seem entirely like a good thing. We all want to be stronger, more flexible, and more coordinated. But on the level of Yoga -- the connection between the body and the mind -- those developments are decidedly mixed blessings.

Why? Because as we increase our strength, flexibility and coordination, the Downward facing Dog pose that previously presented lots of different mental and physical "edges" becomes too easy for us. When that happens, the pose loses some of its value as an "edge," and our minds get free to drift. We lose the mind-body connection of Yoga. Fortunately, there is no such thing as "the final" Downward facing Dog pose. So when one pose starts to lose its "edge" qualities, we can always modify the pose to re-find those working edges.

Sometimes in the past, I've coached classes to try a more difficult version of a familiar pose, or to try a more difficult pose. On reflection and particularly with the benefit of recent feedback, I've concluded that I haven't emphasized enough that such modifications are only useful if you've gotten so comfortable in the pose without modifications that it's hard to find and work those "edges." I want to emphasize here that Yoga isn't really an exercise in stupid human tricks, though on occasion I've referred to various more exotic poses that way. What I'd most like to avoid is any situation that could lead to injury, which can happen when we attempt poses that our bodies or our minds aren't ready to try.

In the future, I expect that I'll continue to suggest modifications to basic poses, both to enable you to develop beyond a pose that has gotten too comfortable for you, as well as to keep you mindful of the amazing down-the-road capacities of each of you. But I can only do that responsibly if I'm certain that you understand that those complex-i-fying modifications are only useful if they help you to re-find your edge in the basic pose that you might have lost because you've gotten too strong, flexible, coordinated, or balanced. Sounds funny to say it that way, but it's really true.

And, as I try to emphasize every week, even if you've lost your edge in a particular pose, if I suggest a modification to a pose that you believe wouldn't be good for your body or yourself on a given day, please, please don't try it out. If it bugs you to not try out a modification even if you don't think it might be good for you, rather than trying the modification, just notice your mind and whatever it is that bugs you about not trying the modification. That is, in itself, a kind of "edge" you can explore. Your continued well being is more important than any particular pose modification.

In the end, it may be worth keeping in mind that there is no odd Sanksrit word for The Final Yoga Pose. There is only the body and the mind and the connections we create and perceive between them. Any yoga pose, no matter which, is only useful if it enables us to see those two elements and their relationship more clearly. When we engage in poses that do not meet our current needs and abilities, we inflict harm on ourselves, whether mental or physical. And I can attest that that leads away from the body-mind connection we're working for, not towards it.

Off the Mat -- Ahimsa

(Another "installment" in my continuing series of dharma talks with my yoga students)

The first of the yamas (or self-restraints/self-disciplines) to discuss is ahimsa—non-harming. My students have heard me say lots and lots of times, “If I ask you to try something on your mat that hurts or that you know won’t work for your body, then don’t do it.” Following that instruction is applying ahimsa to ourselves. But as useful as it may be when applied to ourselves, ahimsa is mostly a practice that addresses our relationships with other beings. It poses the basic challenge: can we interact with others without causing harm?

Every person – surely including each of us – has lots and lots of stories about the ways that other people have harmed us, hurt us, offended us, caused us in one manner or another to suffer. Most of us could probably come up with a quite a list of those offenses. Some of us have become extraordinarily good at cataloging such events in our lives, cross-indexing each item, running statistical models and probability studies about future events, etc. We are minutely aware of the harms others do to us. That can be a good thing, so long as we don’t freeze the awareness at that stage. Ahimsa challenges us to become aware not only of how we are harmed, but how we harm others. Then, it goes one step further, and asks us to see what the nature of harm is, and how it affects the way we interact with the world.

So during the past couple of weeks, I’ve tried to be, literally, “non-harming” in my relationships with others, so I could properly tell you something about the practice from my own recent experience. As you probably noticed from my last post, it proved harder than I expected.

I think I’ve figured out why.

Despite my efforts, so far as I can tell, I did not do appreciably less harm to others during the times that I was actively trying to practice non-harming than I did before. I might have withheld a snide reply or two that came to my tongue in response to a son who was acting badly, but that’s about all I can point to in terms of changes to my conduct.

And I had such noble ideas about it! But as things turned out, I got frustrated. I got annoyed. I sat in meditation, noticing only my mind churning, my muscles aching, and I got more annoyed.

But a couple of nights ago, it occurred to me that even though my actions didn’t show much, there was at least one real difference that resulted from actively focusing on and practicing ahimsa: I noticed the times when I caused harm a lot more than I’d noticed them before. I usually didn’t notice them until after the actions were all done and over, but I noticed nonetheless.

Seeing a more clearly the harm I was doing to others made me uncomfortable – especially given how miserable I proved to be at actually changing my actions. Maybe so uncomfortable that my mind tries to find ways not to notice or see those things in ordinary life.

And that thought plopped me right back on my mat. My mat has already taught me what to do when my brain wants to avoid thinking about something – pay really close attention. The most interesting things I can observe about my mind occur when it starts to get weirdly evasive. When I paid attention, I saw two different, but related patterns: they would both start with something happening that didn’t fit what I wanted. Then, I would either react immediately out of unhappiness, and say or do something that – at least in a little way – retaliated against the person I perceived to be causing the situation, or I would let the situation settle in, putting me in a contracted, constricted kind of mood. In the cases where I reacted immediately, I often found that my reaction was both unjustified and ill-designed. Unjustified, because in many of the situations, I was simply taking offense where none was intended – I’d just misunderstood the other’s actions or statements. Those situations made my knee-jerk reactions look pretty bad. Ill-designed, because often the reaction just made the situation worse – it not only didn’t solve the first problem, but it also created a second one that needed to be solved. In the cases where I didn’t react immediately, but let the situation put me in a bad mood, that mind condition then led to me inflicting my bad mood on others who were totally unrelated to the situation.

Grimmer and grimmer. So is there an upside?

Perhaps this: what I found while trying to practice ahimsa was that prior to trying, I was largely oblivious of situations in which I was causing harm. I won’t say totally oblivious because always tugging at the very edges of my heart-consciousness was the suspicion that my actions were causing harm, even when I didn’t allow my mind to acknowledge it directly. And those heart-consciousness perceptions are exactly the sorts of things that yoga makes easier to perceive, as we open and connect our hearts and minds. There is a kind of emotional and intuitive intelligence that is available to us when our hearts and minds are open and connected. I’ve come to think that maintaining a separation between those two – by avoiding letting my mind know what my heart was telling me – made me a bit more emotionally ignorant, a bit less intuitively intelligent.

And this: the first step to change is perceiving the need for change. “…[O]ne must first know one is in prison in order to work intelligently to escape.” Even if all I can do today is notice my own reactions to my own reactions, it’s still a place to start.

Failures are often our best teachers on the mat. I don’t learn much from standing comfortably in tadasana/Mountain pose, but I learn something every time I fall out of the balance pose I’m currently working on. I know many, many ways not to do it successfully. So starting from the fall out of the pose, I bring my attention to what was going on immediately before I fell, to see if I can change something there. And the next time I go into the pose, I try to focus on that stage, and I work my way back until I find something that needs fixing, something that if I change it just a little, lets me balance where before I’d fall.

What I’ve found in working the ahimsa “pose” is this: I fall out of it a lot. The few occasions when I’ve managed to stay in it, I’ve found my heart and my mind more open to one another, and that connection has changed quite markedly the way that I interact with others in life. Those experiences have given me confidence to keep working on the parts of the “pose” that I’m still not particularly good at.

The Yoga-Sutra includes this statement: Yoga ends the patterning of consciousness. In this context, for me, the “patterning of consciousness” includes the automatic knee-jerk responses I make to situations that “get” to me. My yoga, today, is to see those patterns a little more clearly, even if I can only see them, today, after the harm is already done. Tomorrow, I’ll work to see the patterning of consciousness a little bit earlier in the pattern, perhaps seeing it at a point when I can actively choose to follow or to change the pattern.

Mindfulness, one step at a time.

* * *

Questions for discussion or further thought:

1. Are there things that you intentionally avoid knowing? Does avoiding knowing something affect different parts of your life?
2. How does harming someone affect you? How does it affect your relationship to the other person?
3. Do you think it is really possible to live without harming some sentient being?

Remarkable Dharma Talk

Very much worth a click.

Off the Mat (under construction)

(Another "installment" in my continuing series of dharma talks with my yoga students)

I haven't forgotten the idea of a weekly topic for further exploration -- I'm just stuck right now. I'm supposed to be talking to you about ahimsa -- or "non-harming." But I find myself instead, thinking about a famous story about Gandhi:

In India at the time of the story, Gandhi had become a famous and prominent person, but one who still remained very accessible to others. One day a woman visited him with her young son. She told Gandhi that her son was constantly eating candies, and that the candies were harming his teeth. She said that her son respected Gandhi, and she wanted Gandhi to tell her son to stop eating candies.

Gandhi told the woman to bring her son back in a week. The woman looked perplexed at him, but agreed.

A week later she returned, and Gandhi told her son, "You should stop eating candies."

The woman thanked Gandhi, and then asked why she had to return after a week to have him tell her son something Gandhi could have said the first time.

Gandhi replied, "A week ago, I was still eating candies myself."

Every time I try to write something useful about ahimsa, I realize how deficient my own practice of it is, and I wind up writing things that lack authenticity and strike me as hollow when I read them back to myself.

So I'll borrow Gandhi's instruction: "check back in a week." ;-)

Dying to see what's next...

I’ve started to look forward to meditation in ways that are confusing.

For some time, I’ve been relatively equanimous about life and death. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not self-destructive by any means, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But in recent years, when contemplating death, I’ve not been particularly alarmed by it.

But that hasn’t been my situation forever. Most of my life, I feared death and tried not only to avoid it, but to avoid even thinking about it. When my younger sister died a number of years ago, avoidance became impossible, and I began a multi-year relationship with death – both her actual death, as well as my own views of my inevitable end at some point.

While I was in the throes of that process, I remember talking with a yoga teacher one day after practice, and in our discussion she remarked that she was pretty comfortable with the idea of dying at any time. Her remark was one of those crystallizing moments in my life. Not only had I never felt that way, I’d never even imagined that anyone would feel that way without the “it’s-worse-to-continue” situations of those in horrible cancer treatments or suicidal moments. The teacher, though, remarked it without any tone of pride or ego or concern. And it stuck with me.

So, like with most disturbing things in life, I found ways to practice it on the mat. The easiest: Savasana/Corpse Pose. As I breathed in, I allowed myself to experience the breath as the last one I’d take. And as I breathed out, I released it as the last breath I’d ever release. Sometimes, I alternated that practice with experiencing in-breaths as the first breath of a new-born life. With that practice, not only did I find that I paid a lot more attention to the breath than I had before, but I found that distress associated with releasing my last breath dissipated, as well. It is, after all, just a breath of air. A practice in letting go. Over time, that little breath practice changed a lot. I learned to relax my grip on things a little. I found myself more comfortable with the idea, off the mat, that the breath I’m currently drawing or releasing could be my last one.

In short, I suppose I found the balance of equanimity. In this particular dimension (heaven knows not all others) I became poised – not leaning backward toward the past, nor forward toward the future…

…which is why this morning’s realization caught my attention. I seem to be lean forward again. Or, perhaps, I’ve always been leaning forward, but I’d managed to delude myself that I was equanimous. The Yoga-Sutra teaches that “misapprehension is that comprehension which is taken to be correct until more favorable conditions reveal the actual nature of the object.” (1.8) Not sure whether I’ve simply regressed, or whether I’m just seeing a little more clearly what I’ve been doing all along. Either way, it feels a bit like standing before an open door. Just seeing the doorway open seems to create (or maybe just reveal) a kind gravity in my desire.

So this morning, thinking about my meditation, I realized that I’ve become attached to where I think/hope/wonder the process will lead. Partly, that attachment has been fed by my second read-through of Cope’s book, The Wisdom of Yoga, where he describes in both vignettes and analytic narrative the process of deepening meditation outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga-Sutra. As I’ve re-read the book, I’ve focused more on the events of my own practice that he accurately describes, as well as the events and developments that I’ve not experienced.

Yet.

See? It’s that desire for more that so easily morphs into attachment.

Seeing it there uncloaked may be all I can manage. Perhaps it’s one of those things, like vampires and political corruption, that tends to weaken when seen in the light of day.

Not sure.

But worth watching.

Off the Mat -- Why Restrain Anything?

(This is drawn from the next in a series of emails I provide my yoga students interested in exploring how yoga works in their lives off the mat.)

After an initial period of getting our balance, most of us are pretty comfortable with the idea that a yoga posture practice affects not only our bodies, but also our minds. We start to perceive, if roughly, the relationship between unfocused and scattered minds and physical inability to hold a challenging balance pose, such as Ardha Chandrasana/Half-Moon or Natarajasana/Dancer’s Pose. Those experiences begin to persuade us that bodies and minds are linked together, and as we settle our minds, we find that our physical balance improves.

That perception, as simple and readily available as it is, can be a starting place for exploring and gaining understanding into other aspects of life, as well. If our bodies and minds are connected in ways that prevent our bodies from working well when our minds are disturbed, is the reverse also true – that our minds can’t work as effectively when our bodies are scattered and disturbed?

A second perception: again, after an initial period of getting accustomed to yoga, most of us get pretty comfortable with the idea that our yoga practices on the mat affect not only our abilities to perform the postures on the mat, but the practice also affects our practices (our lives, for instance) off the mat. The physical strength, flexibility, and stamina developed on the mat enables us, off the mat, to work and play with less stiffness and pain, more strength and vitality. The mind-settling aspects of on-the-mat practice also spill over into life off the mat, and we (many of us, anyway) find that we gain a little more patience and compassion for others, a little more awareness of our own minds and feelings off the mat.

The Yoga Sutra teaches that in addition to the physical yoga postures, there are other practices that enable us to refine and strengthen those mind-body conditions. One branch of those practices comprises forms of self-discipline – “yamas” in Sanskrit. And yoga practitioners are hardly the only ones to have discovered these things. The yamas are basic to many communities: don’t cause harm to others, don’t steal others’ belongings, commit yourself to the truth, avoid grasping/coveting, exercise self-control in personal relationships.

But why doesn’t Yoga just mind its own business and stick to postures, mindfulness, and breathing?

The short answer is that for most people who practice yoga in the US, it does stick to those three things. And, at least in my opinion, it’s pretty valuable even when it focuses on nothing more than that. But those three practices don’t occur in the abstract – each person who practices yoga does so in the context of a particular and unique life.

Just as yoga affects that life, so, too, does the life affect the yoga. For those who are interested in pursuing their yoga experience more deeply, yoga suggests ways to change other aspects of life to move the process along because it opens us up, allows us to perceive our own experience a little more closely, and teaches us how to engage mindfully.

But here’s what can happen to mindfulness and perception and openness. Remember the first time you unrolled your yoga mat after you bought it? It stayed curled up. Once we practice on them for a bit, they flattened out. But then, after that practice, we roll up the mat again, put it in the closet, and only take it out in time for next week’s class. But when we take the mat back out, it’s almost as curled up as it was the first time we unrolled it. So, too, are we, if we only allow mindfulness, openness, and perception to affect us while we’re on the mat. The ethical teachings of yoga encourage us not to roll up the experience of mindfulness, perception, and openness when we roll up our mats.

One of the real dilemmas associated with practicing yoga occurs when one discovers that the mindfulness of yoga practice has opened one’s perceptions to aspects of life that were previously outside our awareness. A still mind allows us to see more clearly the harm we cause to others. We understand more particularly the effect of taking what doesn’t belong to us, in all the ways that we do so. We begin to feel the contraction and limitations that occur when we speak untruthfully. We recognize how our conduct affects those we’re close to. The basic heart/mind opening of yoga, then, has the potential to change the way we live. Similarly, though, the way we live, changes our yoga practice.

As we strip away the actions that we see do harm to others, we find that we are able to explore our own minds more minutely, to perceive our feelings more clearly, to understand the effects of our actions more comprehensively. And that, unexpectedly, affects our experience of on-the-mat yoga, as well. We find greater mind-steadiness, greater sources of mental stamina and energy, finer perceptions of bones and muscles and tendons and nerves, better balance.

In that context, it makes good sense that yoga might have something to say about ethics and self-discipline.

In the next several discussions, we’ll explore aspects of the various behaviors off-the-mat that yoga encourages. I’ll ask your indulgence in this regard: just as you do on the mat, withhold your judgment about whether the particular practice is a good one or a bad one, and consider, instead, whether its something that you could implement more fully than you already do. If it is, then consider trying it out, like you try out Bakasana/Crow Pose. Yes, it seems a bit silly at first, maybe a bit precarious, too. But the penalty for failing is only a short tumble to the floor, and it might be interesting to see what life looks like from the perspective of truthfulness or non-harming, just as it’s interesting to see what the world looks like when you’re balanced on just your hands.

Rumi knew everything

From a marvelous podcast interview of Coleman Barks, a gifted translator of poetry by Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-73):

...not until faithfulness turns to betrayal
and betrayal into trust
can any human being
become part of the Truth.

-Rumi

Coleman Barks: "Until betrayal, love offered is conditional; and only when betrayed and love is extended even so, do you leave the Garden of Eden..."

Off the mat -- What's this Yoga Business About?

**Note: I've begun to work with a subset of my yoga students to explore Yoga beyond the posture practice. The following is the first of a series of discussion-starters that I thought might be useful to post here, as well.**

To begin the “off the mat” series of weekly discussions (and I hope that they become discussions, rather than just my ramblings), I’d planned to jump in directly to ahimsa (not harming), but it occurs to me that it might be more helpful to start a little more deliberately. With that in mind, I’ll punt ahimsa til next week, and use this week to provide some context that might provide a framework for thinking about the different practices we’ll discuss. We can get more elaborate later on.

First, what is there to Yoga besides physical poses? Yoga – poses included – is a set of practices that have been done for millennia. Those practices are intended to help draw together (think of the word “yoke” – it’s from the same root as “yoga”) one horse – the body – to another horse –the mind –that otherwise tend to go their separate ways, leaving us pretty disconnected, distracted, and stressed.

In your practice of yoga, you’ve probably already discovered at least briefly some of what happens when those two horses are brought into alignment and coordination – into yoga. It’s the unexpected feeling of profound peace, mind-quieting, and things working right. How on earth does such a physical practice lead to that experience? I don’t know. Yoga’s pretty devoid of theoretical analysis on questions like that. But the practice of Yoga does work. The poses are an important part of it.

But they’re not the only part.

Much of the teachings of yoga come from a work called the Yoga Sutra, and tradition says it was written by a person named Patanjali. Whether it was written by one person or by several, Patanjali or Davy Crockett, in 300 AD or 300 BC isn’t really very important. Here’s why: what the Yoga Sutra teaches is not that you should believe anything in particular. Yoga is not in the slightest a set of beliefs. Instead, it teaches a path composed of eight aspects that, Patanjali tells us, if followed will enable us to see both the world and our relationship to it more clearly. It is a practice that produces the experiences you may have perceived some of already in your own practice.

So what is the path? The path Patanjali outlines is a series of practices: (1) ethical guidelines for interacting with others, (2) guidelines for self-discipline, (3) postures, (4) breath patterns, (5) withdrawal of the senses (an inward meditation practice), (6) concentration (more of a meditation experience than a practice, but once experienced, it can become a practice, as well), (7) meditative absorption (a second kind of meditation experience that can be practiced), and (8) oneness or Yoga – the experience of union of body and mind and environment.

To my ear, some of those things sound pretty much like common sense. Some of them sound well beyond my experience. I can’t tell you everything about the path of Yoga, as I’ve not explored all of it. But I have practiced some of it, and I’m much the better for it.

If nothing else, I can do something I never could do before: I can touch my toes. For a person who started as inflexible as I did, that seems pretty dang remarkable.

In yoga practice today and Friday, think about (and comment back by email, if you'd like) whether and how your yoga practice has affected your life off the mat. Maybe not at all? Maybe a little?

I look forward to discussing and exploring more of Yoga with you all.

greenfrog

**Discussion for next week: the first of the ethical guidelines for interacting with others (both on and off your mat): ahimsa or “not harming.” How can that (not doing something) be meaningful? It’s a part of the instruction to all medical doctors in their initial medical training: “First, do no harm.” It is a guideline that will make our yoga practice safer on the mat. Off the mat, it’s a way to avoid the actions that tend to drive wedges between our bodies (or our feelings) from minds (or our intellect).

Gratitude

So I've spent the weekend engaged in yoga of various forms, and I'm brimming over with gratitude.

Yesterday, I practiced under the instruction of a favorite teacher. This morning, I sat in meditation after a solitary practice in my basement. This evening, I've surfed iTunes to pick up a couple of songs that I've wanted to use in a new mix for a yoga class CD. Last night I began typing up my reading notes from Stephen Cope's remarkable book The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living. I'll probably compose a post or two about the book later. Suffice it for now to remark that it is, itself, extraordinary. In typing up notes, I re-experience much of the text -- all the parts that I underlined during the first read through, the pages I dog-ear, the bits and pieces that I flag for further thought.

Then, a few moments ago, reading some light fiction that entails everything working (highly improbably) together for the protagonist's good, I experienced for just a moment the sensation of great happiness of being on a path, what felt the right path. I tend to think, in my rational moments, that we usually create meaning, rather than stumble across it. So I tend to reject the stories of improbable coincidence as fictions, and I tend to view improbable coincidence in my own life as the probable result of many, many, unfulfilled improbabilities.

But eight years ago, an interesting person invited me to join him early in the morning before the business sessions of a professional conference for a yoga practice. I did, though at the time, I didn't have any idea of what yoga might be. I just knew that he was an interesting person, and I liked getting up early in the morning in the mountain retreat where we were staying.

Through a series of what from my prior world view would have been wildly improbable experiences, but what from my current world view are quite typical experiences, I find myself mixing songs and assembling ideas for conveying teachings of ahimsa, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha, and satya to my yoga students during the coming weeks. And I find myself feeling profound gratitude to my first teacher for his generosity and the gift I've received from him.

Road to Shambhala

Thinking about yesterday's post, I'm starting to look forward to spending time with a meditation instructor of whom I can ask some of the questions that seem to pile up in my head about meditation experiences. In DC earlier this week, I stopped by a really big bookstore and found a current copy of Shambhala Sun. The cover story "Yoga Body, Buddha Mind" is an article by Cyndi Lee and David Nichtern, assembling ideas that they've put together and used in a retreat/seminar context. The article caught my eye, as I'm slated to join them at the Shambhala Mountain Center for that very retreat program in July. I've not done such a thing before. Something new to think about.

Add to the list of things I still haven't figured out is the relationship between planning for the future and living in the present.