Blog Articles

Śavāsana - sleeping in peace and the Art of Living and Dying

3/5/2021

How can I bring the same peace I feel when I relax in śavāsana at the end of my āsana practice into the rest of my day?

In the early years of my yoga explorations, living in Thailand, I had the good fortune to attend āsana classes with Adrian Cox at the original Yoga Elements Studio, Bangkok. I remember in one of my first classes, I think it was 2001, an especially bliss-soaked śavāsana. Adrian had guided us very skilfully through an ashtanga-vinyasa practice, keeping us attuned to rich, fulsome breath at the same time as expertly instructing healthful alignment and appropriate variations. For more than an hour and a half I had been nowhere but there, focused and absorbed in following the cues, orienting and balancing in space through unfamiliar postures and sequences, and savouring the breath. This had recruited my mental focus, the active participation of all my sense powers, and a clear emotional orientation which I might describe as an effort to cultivate harmony and rich presence. After ‘flowing’ like this as a relatively ‘joined up’, ‘integrated’ ‘whole’ being for 90+ minutes, the śavāsana was blissfully peaceful and serene. After such concerted, whole system engagement, it was easy to relax; all the senses had been gratified and nourished, and I was able to rest in peace.
Yoga is sometimes described as the Art of Living. What this really means is the Art of Living and Dying, because we cannot have the one without the other. Yoga is about living skilfully, wholly, soulfully. One view of the crowning achievement of a human life is to be able to die in peace: to meet death feeling calm, ready, fulfilled, complete, free from fear. How might we do this? By practising and preparing sleeping in peace at the end of every day. How to do this? The aṣṭāṅga of Mahāṛṣi Patañjali offers us a practical means to calibrate to conscience. Yoga offers us many ways to connect more substantially to conscience, to train ourselves, as it were, in the ways of śavāsana, of being able to inhabit the space of our awareness with greater ease and serenity, of being able to sleep in peace more easily at the end of each day. I especially appreciate the advice Dr Robert Svoboda passes on from his mentor Vimalananda:
I paraphrase:
Every morning, three things to remind myself:
1. ‘I am going to die. It may be today. It may not be today. But I am going to die. I had better be ready, because it is coming. Let me be prepared.’ This echoes something my first teacher said paraphrasing Śaṅkarācarya, ‘have your bags packed’, be prepared for it happening today.
2. ‘I am thankful, I am grateful, that I am alive. I am thankful to providence. I am thankful to life. I am thankful to God, Nature, Cosciousness, Source, Existence - whatever you want to call it. Thank you to consciousness, thank you to the Supreme Reality. Thank you to all the beings that have given of their life that I might be. I am thankful. I am thankful to my family, to my friends, to all those who have helped and help support me. I am grateful for my home this planet, for the Earth and Sun which support and enable all my experience here. I am thankful to be alive. Let me honour this great gift of life.
3. ‘I pray that I will not cheat my conscience’.
Let conscience be my guide.
Remember, the voice of conscience may sometimes be a small voice, while the voice of the things I am pulled, drawn, attracted, influenced, cowed by can be very loud. Let me listen carefully, for sometimes the voice of conscience may be quiet relative to the booming howls of the conscience-veiling/shrouding/interfering impact of my conditionings.
And at night, three questions:
1. Have I lived?
Have I taken advantage of the gift of life. Have I honoured my life this day? Have I avoided ‘killing time’, remembering that time is relentlessly killing me. Let me honour the 1440 minutes of each day. As best as I can let me be present through them all , let me cherish and fulfil each moment of life.
2. Have I loved?
Have I honoured/recognised/felt the love of the Supreme Reality flowing/coursing through me? And have I done what I can to allow others to feel that?
3. Have I laughed?
Have I laughed at my own stupidity and foibles? Have I met the day with good humour?
If I can answer yes to all three, that’s a good day. If not, I can commit to doing a better job the next day.
Yoga practice is about doing whatever we are doing with all of ourself, so we leave no room for regret.
May we find the depth of loving presence to live each moment as if it could be our last.
May we savour each experience with the presence of a first time.
May we weave more of the experience of wholeness into the tapestry of our days.

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The Bhagavad Gītā: Reconciling paradox and making the whole field sing

2/22/2021

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Weaving harmony into the fabric of life and making the whole field sing
A few brief introductory notes to the Bhagavad Gītā

A few notes following last Friday’s two hour talk on the Gītā

1. What’s in a name?

Yoga - unity, integration, balance, harmony, at-one-ment
Sūtra - stitch, thread; clear, distilled, condensed linguistic formula which shines its meaningful light out in all directions.

As my teacher Larry said so beautifully and memorably: ’The Yoga Sūtra-s are the stitches that weave together the fabric of unity.’
A sūtra is defined in Sanskṛt as being clear, concise, yet ‘viśvatomukham’ - facing in every direction: shining its light all around.
The Yoga Sūtra-s are like lighthouses, they can illumine our path, help guide our way and inform our progress wherever we are on our journey in the ocean of existence.
Just as with the Yoga Sūtra, the very name of the Bhagavad Gītā is instructive.

Bhagavat (which becomes Bhagavad when preceding Gītā) - glorious, venerable, totality, the Supreme Reality
Gītā - song

The Bhagavad Gītā is the song of totality. It teaches us, in a relatable, memorable, nourishing form, how to come to wholeness. It has been set down in beautiful, magisterial poetry, full of vivid images and memorable verses. Its teachings describe how we can harmonise the whole field of our experience, ‘make the whole field sing’, bring ourselves into attunement, rhythm, at-one-ment, here in the grounded reality of life.

2. The setting is right here
The grounded reality of life: aka, the battlefield.
Mmm, yes, this battlefield business, what’s going on here?
Why is this most treasured text of the yoga tradition set between these two huge armies on a battlefield? Isn’t yoga all about peace?
Sure, it is, and that’s why I’m practising, because I’m not yet established in that deep, robust, unshakeable peace. The battlefield setting of the Gītā is richly symbolic in many ways. One way is how it locates the discourse in the reality of the field of our own psyches. The leaders of the warring parties are cousins. For a significant part of their lives, they grew up together, just like different parts of ourselves. And, just like different parts of ourselves, these sets of cousins occupy and vie for authority in the same field. Which field? The Gītā tells us explicitly. This ‘battlefield’ right here that is the arena of our own life, consciousness and experience.
On the one side of this field we have the Pāṇḍava-s, symbolising our purer, higher instincts and the qualities that would urge us towards harmony and wholeness. On the other, we have the Kaurava-s, representing our limiting conditionings: our tendencies driven by fear, and based on previous actions and experiences, our protect-the-known-comfort-zone blinkered habits, our short-termist, ultimately self-sabotaging empatternings. When we look at the field of our own experience, perhaps we may recognise such forces, and such a split, within ourselves.
Have you ever done anything that was not in your highest interest? I can only answer ‘yes’. Has their ever been a day gone by when I have not done something that was not in my highest interest? Here, I struggle to answer other than ‘no’! Though I also recognise that sometimes I do act in accord with my conscience, and this brings its own reward. In other words, the battlefield is right here, my own body-borne field of awareness and experience.

3. Practice: it’s a no-brainer

So, this field of splintering factions is not unknown to me. Which of the warring programs do I want to run? Do I want to make the whole field sing? Or am I content to subsist in a clanging cacophany of unnecessary self-sabotage?
Aiie! It’s a no brainer isn’t it? Yes, and yoga is a no-brainer. It cannot be experienced by the mind alone, but by the whole system working as a collective. By all the parts being acknowledged and included so they can participate and play together such that we become a true individual. An individual in the sense of one who is no longer susceptible to being divided or split, but who is attuned to the ways of working as a cohesive, integrated whole. Yes, Yoga is about fostering peace, but in order to come to integrated wholeness and lasting peace, we will most likely have to face our self-sabotaging habits, our shadow sides and schismatic tendencies. So the setting of the Gītā on the battlefield, which may seem at first glance paradoxical, is actually very realistic.

4. Yoga and the reconciliation of paradox

When we start studying and practising yoga, we don’t usually have to go far before we encounter paradox. And yoga is about reconciling paradox.
The Gītā guides us from the ongoing conflict of self-sabotage towards the ‘peace that passeth understanding’. It invites us out of the lose-lose situation of denying our conscience for the illusion of short-term gain or comfort. As one of my Indian teachers says, when we ignore or betray our conscience, we are damned. Not in the sense of being sentenced to eternal hellfire, but in the sense that when we go against our conscience, we will burn for it, sooner or later. Instead, the Gītā invites us into the win-win situation. When we heed our conscience, when we make a sincere effort, nothing is lost. If we get what we were aiming for, we enjoy it with a clear conscience. If we ‘fail’, we still rest easy, knowing we did our best.
To win in yoga, on the battlefield of life, does not mean to conquer, vanquish, destroy or subdue our enemies in the sense that these words may immediately connote. If we go around trying to kill our enemies, what happens? We just create more emnity. Yoga is about cultivating a lasting peace. The campaign of yoga is to transform the battlefield into a dancefloor, in which the seemingly opposed forces can meet and draw out each others’ complementary potential.
As we have mentioned, the different factions, Pāṇḍava-s and Kaurava-s, grew up in the same field, the same body. Our very body is the battlefield of the Gītā, the setting for this play of yoga. If we go around trying to vanquish or destroy parts of ourself, it is highly likely that we will perpetuate self-sabotage. Instead, yoga asks: can we steadily, patiently, courageously face our own demons, confront our own dark side, acknowledge our own woundings and partialities and invite a robust and well-rooted integration?

5. A warrior’s courage to venture beyond the known

The teacher in the Gītā is Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Literally, Kṛṣṇa means ‘dark’ or black. He symbolises the wisdom that is always with us, though it may be concealed deep inside the cave of our hearts. In order to access this innate wisdom, we may need to muster courage and slow down, so we can climb out of the grooves of our automated patterns. We may need to probe and fathom the darklands of our psyches, the neglected hinterlands of our kingdom. This is required if we are to become a responsible sovereign for this field of our own life.
Kṛṣṇa gives the teaching to his student and friend in need Arjuna, in a chariot. In yoga, just like the battlefield, the chariot is another image that is used to represent the individual conscious human being. As he teaches, Kṛṣṇa seems at times to give paradoxical guidance. He tells us, for example, that we have to claim responsibility for our actions and experience, that we are the sovereigns of our lives. Right from the beginnning Kṛṣṇa is very clear, we had better get up, stand up and claim this sovereignty. And when something is inevitable, don’t waste time or energy dwelling on lamenting it, rather channel your resources to meet it skilfully. However, Kṛṣṇa also makes very clear that the best solution is to surrender, to offer everything to Him, in the sense of the ultimate reality… So sovereignty and responsibility on the one hand, and surrender and consecration on the other. Taking full responsibility for our actions, but giving up expectation over their fruits or outcomes. It can seem like a paradox, but practice resolves it. If we are going to offer our thoughts, words and actions, then we have first to ‘own’ them, in the sense of taking responsibility for them. In order to make the chariot of our bodily vehicle our means of offering, we cannot be asleep at the wheel, (or the reins if we are thinking of an older-school chariot), rather we have to take responsibility for how we direct its capacities. In order to surrender, to offer everything to that which we consider the highest, in order to consecrate our actions, we have to be present, vigilant, constant.

Practice is all the time

Another thing the battlefield setting reminds us is that there is no situation that is a barrier to yoga. Indeed, the Gītā highlights how challenging situations can actually bring great opportunities to unveil our deeper capacities. Further, the setting also makes clear, we do not have to wait until the conditions are just right. They are right here right now. Working to keep in tune and stay in rhythm requires a constant presence. Yoga is a lifelong practice. It is everything we do. In this field of sound and vibration, the song is always playing. The time-tested, practical and robust teachings of the Gītā invite us to steadily tune in more and more subtly to our innate yogic capacities: for steadiness, harmony and contributing to making the whole field sing.

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A few words on: 'Why start a yoga practice session with a mantra?

2/18/2021

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A few words on: ‘Why recite a mantra at the start of practice?’

There are many great reasons to work with a mantra at the start of a period of yoga practice or study. For a start, working with a mantra can help set the space of our body-borne field of awareness. Yoga practice seeks to harmonise this field. The yogic masters recognised millennia ago that this field we inhabit is one of pulsation, cycles and vibration. Sound then, is pervasive, and mantra is able to reach the parts that other techniques are not always able to reach so easily. Quickly, readily, mantra can help tune our system. Mantra is thus a great way to initiate a practice session, because in yoga we always do our best to start as we mean to go on. Yoga is practical, and recognises that there is no means to an end. Rather, the means is the end. We get good at what we practice. So let us practice how we want to feel. We are only practising yoga in the first place because we are not yet established in yoga: in that state of balance and equipoise, of steady, integrated awareness that is the foundation for skilfulness and efficiency in all we do. So when we practice, we want to encourage evenness, wholeness, harmony and integration.
Mantra can be instrumental in inviting this integration. For example, if we sing a mantra to invoke Gaṇeśa, we are invoking the state of yoga and the skilful means to keep cultivating that state. Gaṇa means group, íśa - the Lord. Gaṇeśa is the energy that unifies and brings together the group, the energy of yoga. When we sing Oṃ gaṃ gaṇapataye namaḥ, the action is namaḥ - a bow, a prostration, gaṇapataye - to gaṇapati, to gaṇeśa, Oṃ - with all of myself. As I work with the mantra: with the sound, with my powers of expression, with my mental focus and my emotional intent; I orient towards my true aim.
Mantra, an instrumental power tool of sound and awareness, is a great way to help us orient like this. Working with a mantra invites us to unify our thought, our vocal expression - whether internal or voiced - and our emotional orientation. We can then use this instrument of mantra to invite deepening harmony in the field of our awareness.
Further, when considering why we might mark the start of practice with mantra, it can alert us to the bigger question of ‘why am I doing whatever I am doing?’ ‘Where am I acting from?’ Sometimes, the line between disciplined practice and autopilot routine can become blurred. Mantra is a great tool: distilled, concentrated, powerful; that can help us tune in and remember. Remember what we are practising for and how we can do that skilfully. Mantra can help bring all the members of the gang of our being into the here and now, so all parts of ourselves can participate in the practice, be nourished by it and experience the richness and fulfilment that we invite when we bring all parts of ourselves into congruent presence.

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Holding out for a hero Why the Purāṇa-s matter - an introduction

1/8/2021

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Holding out for a hero
Why the Purāṇa-s matter - an introduction
Is the perennial more relevant than the single-issue, monoculture tendencies of a contemporary lens might suggest?

A few years ago I was speaking with a man that some might call an elder, at the Ojai Foundation, a place where the practice of council has been taught, shared and explored now for a few decades. This man had some interesting things to say. As he was sharing, I was mainly listening, keen to hear the perspectives of someone who has lived, in many ways, a life very different from mine. There was one thing he said though that I wish we had had more time to discuss further.
He said that we need new myths, new stories, that the time for the hero’s journey, and the struggle of the individual, is over. ‘We don’t need any more hero’s journeys’ he said…
Well, I can relate to the idea that during this time of such tremendous change, it might feel like we need ‘new’ myths and stories; however, I have a lot of faith in Purāṇa, the perennial truths encoded and carried in mythological stories that have been passed down and already survived and remained relevant through many changes and revolutions. One of the reasons they have survived is because their teachings translate across scales, dimensions, and levels of awareness. Purāṇa is ancient and always new, set in the ever new now, beyond particularities of time and space. The Indian tradition has for millennia recognised the idea of microcosm and macrocosm, of the interconnectedness of all. In the Indian Purāṇa-s, many of the stories are set in different aeons, sometimes in different galaxies or planes of existence. They are imbued with truths that are relevant to the journey of consciousness that are not just intrinsic within the human experience, but more broadly than that. They were recognised by ṛṣi-s, research scientists who observed Life, and the teachings map onto all life paramāṇuparamamahattvāntosya from the smallest of the smallest to the greatest of the greatest.
Of course, I may be veiled by my own prejudices, fears and limitations here, but feel not so much that we need new myths, rather that we need to imbue our understanding and relation to the time-proven ones with fresh perspectives. That we need to restore our connection to living tradition. That we can invite an expansion and renovation of our perspectives and ways of inquiring. That we can, and should, reclaim and remember the ‘babies’ that got thrown out with the bathwater. The ‘babies’ - overflowing with ever new life - of the underlying timeless Truths and practical myths that were discarded with the dirty bathwater of the failed institutionalised religions that became associated with some of them.
A tradition that lasts is one that is adaptable, vital, that pulsates with and serves life, that can withstand the assaults of those who would exploit and dumb it down for temporal purposes and political aims. I would say that the Spirit never dies and the real teaching will always stay aflame, even if sometimes it looks like mere embers. Yoga is that type of living tradition, and its myths also include a hero’s journey motif. My sense is not that the motif of the hero’s journey is obsolete, rather that we need to live it more fully, more honestly and more holistically. The elder said that we need to work as a collective. Certainly we do. But it is not one or the other, not individualism versus collectivism. No! Let us make all isms wasms. Let us go beyond our over-reactive tendencies. Let us tread the yogic path of balance and integration, that marries the seeming pairs of opposites and draws out their complementary potential.
The Indian tradition is very clear. We start where we have agency. We fortify ourselves, we do our own work. A traditional Tantric marriage (which also maps the internal yoga at the individual level) then weds two souls, so their differencies and polarities can be harnessed to accelerate each person’s spiritual growth and integration. Strong individuals and strong couples united in soul-deep trust and common purpose then make the watertight, well-earthed foundation for solid, harmonious families and robust, harmonious communities that can then contribute to a vibrant, healthy collective.
I remain convinced that a strong, ethical, and sustainable collective can only be brought about by strong, virtuous, heroic individuals. Heroic in the sense that they own responsibility for the nuance and challenge of life, that they have not outsourced their sense of self or reality, and that they are well-estalished in the honest practice of wrestling with all it means to be a sovereign human being. I am interested in a collective that is being driven by conscience rather than human vanity or short term interests that I feel can usually be traced back to fear.
Further, I would suggest that learning to serve the greater whole is actually one of the main points of the hero’s journey. The Sanskṛt word vīra denotes hero and human being. I would say that the hero’s journey is about learning to become our whole, authentic self. In becoming a true individual - in the sense of an integrated person who is no longer subject to division - the hero becomes established, properly, rigourously, in the virtuous qualities that are required to truly serve the greater collective.
I do not know how one can become a true individual, without going through the heroic adventure of wrestling with all it means to be human, going into the darklands of the unknown depths of ourselves, facing our demons, reclaiming our inner treasure and recalibrating the field of our understanding. No one else can do that for us. Yet when each of us does it, we help lift each other up. Through the heroic work of making ourselves whole, we learn compassion, we learn service and so are then empowered to do the sometimes, often, trying work of serving the whole.
Undoubtedly, we need to work as a collective, work for our mutual benefit, work respectfully for life and each other. But surely this takes sacrifice, courage, breadth of vision: this requires virtue. As such, a real collective effort is the work of heroes and heroines.
I do not see how a collective effort can advance unless the individuals constituting that collective are fierce, formidable, fearless yogic warriors, strong in the self-trust and faith of śraddhā, indomitable in the courage and valour of vīrya, knowing, and having remembered (smṛti) through the depth of their integrity (samādhi), the deathless spirit that is their essence.
So I would say that it’s not that we need to abandon our myths or our old stories, nor that we should fashion new ones out of the latest trends, but that rather we would do well to recover the old myths, to connect to the perennial living truths they still carry. If we can admit them, be with them openly, humbly, honestly, courageously, perhaps they will vivify our understandings of the trying times we face and help us imbue this moment now with the grace of the living spirit that never dies.

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Jesus Christmas 2020

12/25/2020

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Jesus Christmas 2020
In preparing for a recent satsang class on Jesus, I came out of meditation the morning of 12th December 2020 and wrote Jesus at the top of the page, this is what followed, you can listen to a recording on Soundcloud here:
https://soundcloud.com/james-boag-517265519/jesus-christmas-day-2020-edit

Jesus
Prince of Peace
Jesus Lord of Lords
King of Kings
And He shall reign for ever and ever and ever and ever
Jesus, the Lamb of God
Jesus, the Lion of Judah
The Vine, the Cup, the Chalice, the Vessel

Jesus
Christ
Christ the Saviour
Christ the Redeemer
The carpenter’s son
The original
The immaculately conceived
The original imprinting on the virgin leaf of our soul
The original,
before the original sin, which doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with us,
which doesn’t mean that there is anything intrinsic to be guilty about,
but which points to the original congealing of our essential self into this fleshly vehicle,
of our consciousness into the embodied form in which we can walk this path of rememering who we really are, and what we are really made of;
which points rather to what is known in Sanskṛt as avidyā, the partiality that comes as we begin the ways of veiling limitation, as we start to identify with the nature of our ever-changing bodily vehicle and the ever-changing manifest world we experience through it.

Jñānam bandhaḥ as the Śiva Sūtra reminds us.
Knowledge is bondage.
Knowledge limits us. Knowledge sets us free.

The battle
The battle of yoga
between truth and falsehood
between the light and the dark
between focus and dispersion
between attunement and distortion
between conscience and habit,
between conscience and habit;
Or we might say, between knowledge and knowledge,
Yes, between knowledge and knowledge
Between the knowledge that is clearsight, insight, revelation, and the knowledge that is only clinging partiality.

Jesus, the original, the origin, the original imprint of dharma in us.
The original imprint of dharma is in us.
Dharma, the action that supports the wellbeing of the whole,
that connects us to the essence of things,
that aligns and attunes us to conscience, and to cosmic rhythm and harmony.

Dharma is in us
Under the conditionings
Before the conditionings
Beneath the veilings

Where are we from?
Satya - ṛta - bṛhat - from the pulsating vastness of eternity we come
From unity, from pure, immaculate consciousness
From the pure, total merging of Śiva and Śakti,
of consciousness and its power
of God the Father and Goddess the Mother,
of God the Father and Mother the Goddess,
known by the Son, through the Son, with the Son
Known in the sun, the sun of centred consciousness, of centred awareness,
Knowable, here, in this embodied opportunity.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Light, So Jah Seh

The Path, the Way:
Overthrow the merchants’ tables
Cast out the evil spirits
Anneal yourself in the desert - if you want to be quick about it - anneal yourself in the desert
Then Christ yourself

Walk the way, the way of dharma
Take up your cross, the way of action that brings your unique gifts forth into this world, that truely, authentically embodies and manifests the particular gifts of spirit that you, you are the channel for,
the way that illumines reality more and more, yours and that of the whole of this planet.

Overthrow the merchants’ tables:
De-colonise your thinking, refine your culture,
Make it one of beauty, of honour, of nobility, of kindness.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Walk your way, your truth, your light, led by the pilot of your conscience.

Your conscience sovereign human being.
Remember, you, sovereign human being, you are the sovereign of your life.
Your light is your responsibility,
your light is your responsibility,
your life is your responsibility.
Your eye of the needle resides in the centre of your cross,
where shines the star of the light of your birth, your life, your spirit.
Be inspired now, take up, keep on this great adventure.

Cast out the evil spirits:
Make the lame walk, make the blind see, bring the seemingly dead back to life.
That is, id est, in other words:
Revive the original dharmic blueprint
Cast out those ‘evil’ spirits, in other words, cast out the blocking, asuric veiling, rākṣasic clinging to familiar habitual, limiting ways influences!
Cast out all of that, and make walk, set in stronger motion,
give greater traction to and build the inertia of the dharmic ways.
Heed the whispers of conscience.
Tune in to them, so they remain no more a whisper, but become a clear song.
Heed the whispers of conscience!

Make the blind see:
Make the blind see. Open your eyes and look within,
Invite the vision, the recognition,
Of the world in a grain of sand,
Of infinity in the palm of your hand
Of eternity in this hour, and of heaven in the wild, blooming flower of this your life
Of the spark pulsating in the very sap of this your incarnate life.

Open your eyes, and open all the miracuolous powers of your collective intelligence
and recognise more of who you are.
Again and again, keep looking in ways that reach beyond your habitual ways of looking.
Again and again, keep looking in ways that reach beyond your habitual ways of looking. Again and again.

And bring the dead back to life:
Bring the dead back to life,
the spark, the divinity is in you.
It always was. It always is.
Your origin and continuance.
Remember it. That power: that got laughed at, smacked at, beaten down, smothered, attempted to be diluted, ridiculed, bashed about, carelessly tossed aside, ground into the dirt, buried, left for dead.
And yet the ember never dies.
You cannot kill the spirit. The ember never dies. You cannot kill the spirit.
So cast away your fear, leave aside your doubt.
The miracle of spirit is an eternal Lazarus!
So rise. Rise! Like the beloved child of God you are, like the spirit that never dies.

Anneal yourself in the desert:
As I open my eyes and look inside, what do I find?
Beauty, majesty, power, magnificence, a light,
An undeniable light.
What else? What else does this light reveal?
Darkness, distortion.
Monsters, vicious monsters lurk in the neglected shadows and the concealed caves of my being,
in those secret recesses where are interred my woundings and their consequent empatternings.
Wounds that weep, that gape wide,
chinks in the armour of my chalice of spirit,
weak spots, susceptibilities, compromises in the integrity of the power of my field,

Leaks that perpetuate distortion, partiality and the clinging to the fearful ways that only exacerbate my ignorance, my suffering and my bondage.

This is the wilderness that cries out for invigoration with the spirit wind, fire, water of Life.
These are the darklands that need to be illumined and redeemed.
These are the unknown territories waiting to be transmuted.
For the monsters in these caves have sequestered, and harbour great treasure:
Gold, frankincense, myrhh;
As we commit to, as we patiently undertake the rehailitation project, we reclaim access to the glorious treasure that lies within.
And we regain fuller access to the eternal balm of spirit, to that which brings us into the lived knowing of the Peace that passeth understanding.

The peace that passeth understanding, in which we can stand, stable,
Aligned with the great star of conscience
Fearless in the face of the inevitable decay and demise of our bodily vehicle
and the inevitable sufferings that are part and parcel of this worldly way home.

The sufferings, the dark times that can prompt us back to the recognition of our deathless essence, of the Christ consciousness within.

From a stable, a stable foundation, around which the whole flock gathers with joyful wonder at the glory that is in our very midst, that always animates our heart of hearts, that pulsates in the core of our being, that knows how to channel and transmute the gifts of worldly, animate life so we can truly drink the cup,
savour the recognition of the spirit that never dies.

So, may we find the courage to Christ ourselves,
building our foundation on the stable ground of dharma,
of our deepest, most honest, most heartful way,
the way that truly honours the spark,
the embers, and tends the fire with loving, present care.

May we find the courage, the clarity, the commitment, to sing our own song, and bring ourselves home to the wholeness of the spirit we really are.

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December 15th, 2020

12/15/2020

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Caritas and Amor
Yoga means gathering together, harmonising the whole field of our being. There are many reasons I so love the sound based practices that are cherished in the Indian tradition. One is because of the way they can so readily reach the parts that other techniques aren’t always able to. When we sing kīrtan, for example, songs that remind us of the kīrti, the glory, of what it means to be a sentient human being endowed with conscience, we very readily invite all parts of ourself into the practice. At once, it’s a physical and energetic practice, singing can invite prāṇāyāma, our mind is engaged on the words and the tune, the sense of the songs, and we can do it with a clear emotional intent. Very readily, we can invite a whole system experience of coming together in yoga. While Sanskṛt has many particular magnificences, we can invite the whole system into a tonifying, clarifying, harmonising sound bath with songs of spirit in any language. One Latin song I enjoy practising with is:

Ubi caritas et amor ubi caritas deus ibi est

Where there is ‘caritas’ and ‘amor’, there is the divine. This could certainly be accurately rendered as ‘where there is charity and love there is god’. However, caritas and amor have connotations in the Latin that are worth noting. Caritas carries the sense of ‘that which is dear’. The Latin amor has a strong connotation of ‘the love that includes, that does not leave anything out’. ‘Ubi caritas et amor deus ibi est’ I think of then as ‘where there is that attitude: that sees everything as dear, that meets the world with reverence, that greets and blesses life with gratitude, that honours and values the gift of each moment, there is the divine. When we practice, patiently, steadily, the āsana - the attitude - of reverent grace, of wonder, of respectfulness, when we invite deepening presence that expands to include all parts of ourselves, then we invite a deepening recognition of the divinity we all carry.

As we practice these attitudes, as we learn to ‘love ourselves’, in the sense of including all of ourselves, bringing even those long neglected parts of ourself into the light of centred awareness, we will experience deepening peace. And at the same time, as the field of our being settles into greater peacefulness, we will more readily understand the deeper lying tendencies that would impede our continued experience of peace and fulfilment. As we still the waters of the lake of our psyche, we see more deeply. We may see through to the beauty of our source, we may be fortified and cleansed by that light. But as the surface of the lake stills, our consciousness will also more readily apprehend the next layer of veiling, limiting tendencies asking to be harmonised. Once we start the cleaning process, we stir up more dirt. As we invite more clarity, we see the detritus we were previously ignorant of. And so the process continues. A lifelong process that can be trying and frustrating. So what is the call? Caritas and amor. Again and again, patiently, inclusively, we invite all of ourself, as best as we can, into balance and cohesion. And step by patient, loving step, we recalibrate our homeostasis so we become more and more attuned to our innate capacity for wholeness, to recognise our innate fitness to embody caritas et amor. This is the path of yoga.

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Why Yoga Matters - Buddhiyuktaḥ - Part One

4/26/2020

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Why Yoga Matters - Buddhiyuktaḥ - Part One
Evenness, balance, integration: the platform for greater skilfulness. This is yoga. To cultivate it, we practise the medi-state.

Buddhiyuktaḥ -Yoga, the medi-state and why it matters

The basic practice of yoga is meditation, the cultivation of a state of integration which is the platform for skilful, spacious, appropriate response. One useful way this state is described in the yoga tradition by Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā is as being buddhiyuktaḥ - at once: integrated through all the constituent powers of our awareness, and connected to ‘buddhi’, the most refined part of our awareness.
Why does yoga matter? Why is it worth making the effort to cultivate yoga, the medi-state of balance, integration and connection to the most refined part of our awareness? Life is better, richer, fuller when we can meet it buddhiyuktaḥ. We can meet it more skilfully. So what does it mean to be buddhiyuktaḥ? Why is it so helpful? Here, we will look at two complementary descriptions of this ‘joined up’, integrated state of yoga. We’ll look at the ‘map’ of the reality of our being from the Indian school of Sāṅhkya philosophy that Yoga also uses and assumes a familiarity with, and which Kṛṣṇa is referring to when he talks about being buddhiyuktaḥ. We’ll also look at the brilliant ‘hand model of the brain’ that contemporary neuroscientist Dr Dan Siegel uses to help illustrate what it means to be integrated.

Living a ‘joined up’, congruent life

Yoga is joining, or the state of being integrated and ‘joined up’.

When we are ‘joined up’ and congruent, how do we feel? Pretty good, great even. When our thought, word and deed are all aligned with our conscience, does it not feel wonderful? When we live as an expression of the true longings of our heart and soul, we feel great.
But when we are incongruent, when our thought, speech and action are not aligned, when we ignore or strategise against our conscience, we suffer.
Is this not true?
This is a foundational premise in yoga. Yoga means to connect. Life is better when we are connected to our conscience: when we are congruent, attuned, in harmony, when we are living as the true expression of our soul. When however we are disconnected, out of whack, we suffer. Disintegrated, energy and information does not circulate so freely through the circuits of our being, we become imbalanced, parts of ourselves get neglected, undernourished, confined to the shadows. We are not able to respond as skilfully to the inevitable challenges and change of life.
We humans sometimes resist change. We seem to like to cling to ‘certainties’, but most of them are false.
Some exceptions:
We are all going to die. We exist in nature: the realm of life, of birth and death, of expansion and contraction, pulsation and cycles. Between the two great changes of birth and death, what can we be certain of apart from change?
Yoga asks us to remember that as human beings with two eyes there will always be more that we cannot see than we can. Like other great systems of practical philosophy, yoga asks that we cultivate our capacity to be steady amidst uncertainty, and our capacity to admit and allow differing views.
We are much better able to do these things when we are ‘joined up’, connected, integrated, or what Kṛṣṇa, the teacher in the Bhagavad Gītā, calls buddhiyuktaḥ.
Recently, I have been encouraged to see some contemporary neuroscientists teaching some of the same yogic truths that the great research scientists of the ancient Indian tradition laid out millennia ago. Contemporary scientists like Dr Dan Siegel and Dr Bruce Lipton agree that when we are integrated, connected, joined up, we can live ‘better’: more healthily, more skilfully, more enjoyably. We can live more how we’d really like to. And further, when we are integrated, or buddhiyuktaḥ, we can deal much more skilfully with life: with the unexpected and with things that might challenge or shake us.
This is powerfully illustrated by Kṛṣṇa’s description of being buddhiyuktaḥ and by Dr Dan Siegel’s brilliant ‘hand model of the brain’. Before we consider these beautifully complementary explanations, I’d first like to set out the foundational map of awareness that the great ṛṣi-s (research scientists/seers) of the Indian tradition laid out.

The Ganglands of our Being - Tattva-s and Gaṇa-s

The Ganglands of our Being - Tattva-s and Gaṇa-s

The ṛṣi-s, the great seers and research scientists of the Indian tradition, recognised that when we are conscious beings, puruṣa-s, when we come into embodied existence in prakṛti, the realm of nature, our embodied consciousness experiences through different constituent parts. The ṛṣi-s recognised that there are different members of the group of our being. These are referred to in Sanskṛt as gaṇa-s, ‘members of the gang’ that make up the collective of who we are. They are also known at tattva-s. Literally ‘thatnesses’. Tat means ‘that’ in the sense of that which is, which exists. The suffix ‘tva’ is a bit like ‘ness’ in English, ‘having the quality of’. The tattva-s/gaṇa-s all have the quality of existing in the collective of our being. Yoga is about bringing all these members of the gang of our being into dynamic equilibrium, so they can support us to meet life as skilfully as possible: enjoying, learning and growing as life unfolds.
With the model of the tattva-s, the ṛṣi-s of the Indian tradition bequeathed us a very practical ‘map’ of the ‘ganglands’ of our being. The ṛṣi-s recognised that we each contain the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space. And so we also have and experience five associated qualities of fragrance, taste, form, tactility and sound/vibration. As sentient beings we are also endowed with amazing powers of action, which we can also describe in a group of five. One: our powers of speech, expression, communication - which for us humans includes our linguistic capacities. Two: our manual dexterity and capabilities, the ability to grasp, pick up and put down. Three, our diverse movement and locomotive capacities. Four, our powers of digestion, assimilation, excretion and elimination; and five: our creative, recreative and procreative capacities. Then we also have our five sense powers of smell, taste, vision, touch and hearing.
So far then, working from gross to subtle, we have seen twenty tattva-s, twenty gaṇa-s. Continuing in this map of our reality, we come to what is referred to in Sanskṛt as the antaḥ karaṇa - the ‘internal instrument’, which has three constituent parts. We have manas, sometimes rendered in English as ‘mind’, though this can be misleading. The manas is that part of inner or more subtle (relative to the sense and action powers) awareness that also looks out, and which links the input and experience of our sense and action powers to our inner realm. We also have ahaṁkāra. Aham means ‘I’, ‘me’. Kāra means ‘maker/doer’. Ahaṁkāra is that part of our awareness that gives us a sense of I, me, mine, of individuality. It is essential to help us safely cross the busy road, to not step into the void when walking along a cliff. Sometimes people use the word ‘ego’ to represent ahaṁkāra, but this can also be misleading. Ahaṁkāra is not an exact equivalent of the Jungian ego. There is some overlap, but it is more than that. Ahaṁkāra is also the intelligence that holds us together as an individual unit.
Here we are, as human beings, made of earth, water, fire, air and space. These elements don’t sit together so easily. If we pour water that contains earthy matter into a glass, before long they separate. If we add fire to that mixture of earth and water, likely the water may boil and evaporate, or the fire will be doused. Yet we humans cohere as this miraculous being with mutually co-existing earthy and watery and fiery parts. In our body that is predominantly water, our internal combustion engine and digestive fire generally functions very well. We are miraculous beings.
The intelligence of our ahaṁkāra is mind-blowing. It functions in ways that certainly go well beyond what we are able to compute with our minds. It also demonstrates that we have, innate within us, a great capacity for yoga, for togetherness, for reconciling that which might at first glance seem impossible to reconcile.

Buddhi - Home of discernment, key for integration
The third part of our antaḥ karaṇa - the internal instrument of our conscious awareness, is known in Sanskṛt as buddhi. This is the subtler part of our intelligence. It is this subtle power of buddhi that discerns, that makes decisions. Buddhi is the realm of discriminating, judicious awareness, the seat of our subtler capacities that help us relate to others, that enables us to hold differing points of view, to empathise, to reflect and contemplate. Buddhi is from the same Sanskṛt root ‘bodh’ that gives us the word Buddha - the awakened one. Sometimes referred to as the enlightened one.
When the light of awareness is circulating smoothly and harmoniously through the circuit of our being, through all our gaṇa-s - all the members of the gang of our whole self - we can see and experience more clearly. When the light of intelligence and awareness courses freely through the network of our tattva-s, through the whole of our neural network, we can act and respond more intelligently. When our circuit is earthed, when we are steady, easeful, spacious, balanced, integrated, we can act more skilfully, respond to unexpected and even intimidating situations with more clarity and discernment.
Yoga practice is about training this capacity to respond skilfully.

Ancient and ever fresh - perennial yogic wisdom
The other day I was talking with a friend who is a psychologist and psychotherapist about the challenges of responding skilfully in our world of uncertainty. She shared with me one of the brilliant ways contemporary neuroscientist Dr Dan Siegel describes the brain, using the forearm and hand to illustrate what he refers to as ‘the hand model of the (head) brain’. I was struck by how Dr Siegel’s perspective and work echoes the findings and teachings of the ancient research scientists of the Indian tradition. Indeed, the modern neuroscientific descriptions of the brain map well onto the model of the tattva-s, and can help us understand some of the broader meaning of ahaṁkāra and buddhi that reach beyond the English words that are sometimes used to represent them.

The hand model of the brain
(I have linked to three talks of Dr Dan Siegel explaining this at the foot of the article - below is my paraphrasing him and linking it to the yogic model of the antaḥ karaṇa)
Taking our forearm and hand, and looking at them perpendicular to the ground: from the elbow to the wrist is like our spinal column, the central information highway through which our ‘brain’ and intelligences are spread through the whole of our body, animating our sense and action capacities. The base of the palm is then like the brain stem, continuous with the spinal chord and responsible for breathing and other autonomic fuctions. This is the oldest part of our brain, (around 300million years say contemporary neuroscientists) sometimes called the reptilian brain, and it’s also the seat of the flight, fight, freeze and feint responses. If we then fold in our thumb across our palm, the area of the mid-palm enclosed by the thumb can give us a representation that also includes the next part of our brain, the limbic system, also referred to as the mammalian brain (about 200million years old). This is the seat of our basic motivational drives and the part that allows us to feel attachment to our mother and close associates.
If we then fold down our four fingers, the fingers represent the more recent part of the brain, the cortex. This part of the brain is what allows our higher linguistic capacities and our capacities, for example, to empathise and to hold, honour, acknowledge and even reconcile different perspectives and points of view.
We have these capacities, but we do not always stay attuned to them. Dr Siegel represents this by the memorable image of lifting up the previously folded down fingers. To quote him, this is like we have ‘flipped our lid’, which can happen easily when for example we become fearful, anxious, angry or dejected. The integrating, connective part of the brain in the pre-frontal cortex which when integrated connects the powers of the cortex, the limbic system, brainstem and body gets ‘disconnected’. Dr Siegel explains how we then become either ‘chaotic’, with outbursts of irrationality or reactivity for example; or ‘rigid’, shut down and withdrawn. In other words, we lose our connection to our ‘higher’/subtler capacities. We lose our connection to buddhi. In this disintegrated state, in most situations, we can no longer act optimally - running for our lives being an exception.

We flip our lid, we lose integration, we lose balance - and we disconnect from our capacity for a skilful response.

As my friend related Dr Siegel’s ‘handy’, ever-ready model of the head brain, and how the disintegration of the subtler parts of our awareness can happen so easily when we feel dominated by fear, anger or more primitive urges, I was struck by how it echoes what Kṛṣṇa, the teacher, lays out so memorably in the Bhagavad Gītā.

The story of human suffering - in 64 syllables
In 64 syllables, Kṛṣṇa distils the whole history of human suffering:
Dhyāyato viṣayān puṁsaḥ saṅgasteṣūpajāyate
Saṅgāt sañjāyate kāmaḥ kāmāt krodho’bhijāyate
Krodhāt bhavati sammohaḥ sammohāt smṛtivibhramaḥ
Smṛti bhramśād buddhināśaḥ buddhināśātpraṇaśyati BGII.62-63

When we humans dwell and focus on things, we become attached to them.
But this attachment does not emerge without its confederates/associates/the fellows of its litter.
From attachment is also born desire, from desire anger - in the broadest sense of perturbation/anxiety/frustration as well as rage - and from anger comes confusion. From confusion, we forget the lessons we have already learnt, our accrued wisdom and discernment is as lost. We lose our ‘connection’ to our buddhi - to the subtlest capacities of our intelligence. When we fall into this cyclic trap of our perturbation/disturbance at our expectations not being met, when our judgment is clouded by anger, envy, anxiety, panic, fear, when we lose connection to our higher capacities, we are lost.

When we lose our connection to buddhi, when we are no longer buddhiyuktaḥ, or integrated: when the light of awareness is no longer illuminating all parts of ourself, we are lost! Running for our lives scenarios aside, if we regress to the level of a frightened mammal, or a cold blooded reptile, we abdicate our true capacities, we lose our humanity, we act ‘beneath’ our true selves. Perhaps you have experienced this a few times in your life, in your own behaviour or in that of others around you. For example, I do not have to make too much effort to recall situations where I acted in ways that did not serve me, or others, and that engendered needless suffering, because I acted not from integration and clear, balanced, integrated intelligence and awareness, but from a fearful, wounded or more primitive place.

To return to Dan Siegel’s memorable phrase to describe our losing our integration and connectedness to our higher, subtler, more complete intelligence: when we ‘flip our lid’, we are no longer as integrated a human being as we already can be, and we are no longer able to draw on the true range of our already activated human capacities. As Kṛṣṇa says, when we lose our connection to buddhi we are lost. When our awareness is clouded and shrouded by anger, anxiety, fear or dejection, we lose connection with our accrued wisdom. We forget the lessons we thought we had already learnt! When this happens it’s a bit like we are bungling and stumbling along back in some prehistoric dark age before we developed a cortex, before we became fully human. But to stay fully human requires effort, and presence. It requires integration. Now perhaps more than ever.
I understand that a century or so ago Rudolf Steiner and Nikola Tesla both spoke about how it was becoming increasingly difficult to be fully human because of the ever-increasing pollution through the elements of existence. Steiner suggested that in order to be human, one would need to redouble the efforts of spiritual practice: of practices that help ‘join us up’ and connect the circuits of our being. One of my Indian teachers more recently said a similar thing:
‘These days the traditional techniques don’t work as they used to, because of the increased pollution in all the elements, so we need to include in our practices regular work to keep cleansing and harmonising the elements of our being. Natural frequencies that previously used to prevail easily once established are now under assault not just from the pollutants in the earth, water, and air, but since the industrial revolution in the element of fire and the realm of kinetic energy, and in the very space we inhabit in the form of all the microwaves and radiation that some of our modern technologies are bombarding our ecosphere with.’
…
So what to do? We cultivate the medi-state. With patience and with kindness, with loving presence, we invite all parts of ourselves into the present moment. We practice reinforcing our connectivity, deepening our attunement to our capacity for integration.
As soon as we notice we have become less integrated, or we are not fostering the depth of integration we could, we are empowered. Once we notice, we can do something about it: invite ourselves back into a more gathered, integrated, connected state.
While some external factors may have changed over the centuries, the basic practice of cultivating the medistate, practising gathering ourselves into congruence, tuning the instruments of our being and inviting a state of at-one-ment is perennially valid and helpful. When we are centred, balanced, integrated, we can meet the challenges of life more skilfully.
Further, as the yoga teachings remind us, challenges are really opportunities, and we will never have to encounter anything we are not really ready for. Unexpected challenges are what we have really been preparing for, opportunities to uncover more of who we really are, and recover more of our true capacities. In the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa tells his student Arjuna that the ‘great challenge’ he faces, the situation that renders obsolete the codes and rules he has previously lived by is his ‘lucky day’! What he has been waiting for and preparing for his whole life. Yoga practice is about looking in ways that reach beyond our habitual ways of looking. It’s about thinking in ways vaster than we might previously have dared dream. Challenges that shake our status quo make it harder for us to ignore the whisperings that ‘there may be more to this life’ than I have previously granted space in my attention for. When we consistently cultivate steadiness, we fortify ourselves to be able to navigate the predictably unpredictable reality of life that little bit more effectively. When we consistently practice inviting all of ourself into the present moment, we become more attuned to the medistate of integration and wholeness. More attuned to this space of balance, we notice more readily when, how and in what type of situations we allow ourselves to become disconnected. Once we notice, we are empowered to do something about it. As one of my Indian teachers says: ‘Remember, your problem is smaller than you are! It exists in your awareness.’ When we notice, we are empowered. And we notice more, and more easily when we are connected. So let us maintain awareness of our ‘lid’! Let us embody sovereign responsibility for the congruence of all the miraculous constituent elements of our being. Let us work to foster a more robust, resilient and responsive buddhiyuktaḥ state: attuned to conscience and connected to the true depth and breadth of our human resources.
...
Dr Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain: Three video links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-m2YcdMdFw

Compassion in education TEDx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-BJpvdBBp4

Mindfulness and neural education TEDx talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiyaSr5aeho

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Bhagavad Gītā Chapter Three at MCY April 2020 Session Notes One

4/4/2020

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This season, my live teaching engagements are cancelled/suspended for the time being. I'm feeling very grateful for the chance to continue sharing some programs online. This month a course on Chapter Three of the Bhagavad Gītā at MCY, Glasgow. I thought it could be nice to share my session notes here.

March 3rd - Session One (March 2nd) Summary

Tellingly, the third chapter begins with a question. Kṛṣṇa has given the distillation of the whole teaching in chapter two. As the elaboration and expansion of that teaching begins, it does so from a question, reminding us that yoga is about inquiry. It is not incidental or accidental that the Gītā is a conversation. It is in conversation with life, in dialogue with the constant change and unfolding wonder of existence that we make ourselves available to learn and grow, and to take/claim/allow our place in the greater unfolding and evolution of life.

Yoga does not give us ‘the answer’ in the sense of a one-size fits all/catch-all solution. Based on the observation of nature, it is far too wise, realistic and practical for that. Instead, it encourages us to stay open, alert and present. Yoga gives us a robust frame and structure to support ongoing inquiry, to help us keep engaging in conversation with life so we can ask skilful, helpful questions, so we can make ourselves available for the ‘hints’/guidance/answers that life and nature are constantly offering.
In the first two verses, the manner of Arjuna’s question also reminds us of the purity of his intent. In the Gītā, Arjuna represents the human being who is a sincere seeker. He addresses Kṛṣṇa by two significant epithets: Janārdana - exciter/stimulator/agitator/protector of humans; and Keśava - the one who holds/sustains/supports existence/creation.
‘Why Kṛṣṇa - you who know what it means to support the whole of life, you who stimulate/animate human beings, you’ve spoken about how I need to become oceanic: full, content, whole like the ocean (2.70), you’ve said that if I can move freely through the things of the world without being pulled hither and thither, then I’ll be established in yoga, you’ve said that if I can just get a taste of totality, I can access the desireless state of oneness/wholeness. If this state of clear awareness, of clear wisdom and insight that can see beyond and through all the comings and goings of life is so great - if wisdom and clear awareness is where it’s really at, why are you urging me to this terrible action?
‘As you emphasise the imperative of action and engagement, and the primacy of clear, discerning awareness and peaceful wisdom, it’s as if your words point in different directions, urge me in different ways. It’s too much for my intellect! It makes me feel confused, consternated! Please Kṛṣṇa, tell me that one, clear way by which I can do what is truly śreyaḥ - what is for the good of all. Make it clear for me, unambiguous, so I can obtain/come to śreyaḥ - the highest good!’

Arjuna’s question points to many ‘answers’. Here again is encoded and emphasised a key idea that we find throughout the Gītā. If our attitude is one of openness, of gratitude, and of inquiry, teachings and insights will come to us. The Guru of Nature is ever active. Our task is to make ourselves receptive. When Arjuna calls Kṛṣṇa Janārdana (stimulator) and Keśava (holder) the verse reminds us that in order to maintain and support the evolution of life, we have to be active. We have to engage and participate. Arjuna also acknowledges that ‘the way’ Kṛṣṇa has set forth so far is too much for his intellect. And it is! We cannot come to yoga by merely reading or hearing about it! That can usher us towards it, can invite us towards deeper recognitions. However, in the practical tradition of yoga, practice and study are never separate, but are two wings of one bird. Yoga - integration of the whole field of ourselves - is too much for our mere intellect to grasp. It is only when we practice it, experientially, allying the discerning power of our intellect to the harnessed energy and intelligence of our bodies, senses, minds and emotions that we will be able to come to a true understanding - will be able to stand in that recognition/have that awareness under our feet, supporting how we walk through the mystery and wonder of life.

Arjuna’s question also reminds us how in yoga we will encounter paradox. We will encounter seeming pairs of opposites. Yoga is an all-inclusive game. If we want unity, we cannot leave anything out. In other words, yoga is about the resolution of paradox, about reconciling that which seems impossible to reconcile, about coming to the embodied, experiential lived recognition and understanding that things which seem opposed can actually be mutually enhancing and complementary, and can be included and brought together into a state of dymanic balance and harmony.
Arjuna’s question also reverberates with ‘humanness’. He, like us so often, wants an easy way, a clear, unequivocal answer. On the one hand, we want it to be easy - at least we say we do - yet our appetite for drama and our capacity for complexity suggests that really we may be better equipped for this resolution of paradox than we may sometimes give ourselves credit for, or remember/recognise.

Kṛṣṇa responds by addressing Arjuna as Anagha - one free from blame. Beautifully then he reassures us that such doubting, such confusion, is no cause for us to be weighed down, or to castigate ourselves. And he says:
‘In this world - of duality, but which is not binary, but a realm of nuance and infinite perspectives and permutations - from the beginning/from time immemorial/always/perennially I have taught/proclaimed this teaching (of Sāṅkhya-Yoga) from two positions: with the yoga of knowledge for those of more intellectual/reflective/theoretical persuasion; and with the yoga of action for those of more practical/active/social persuasion.’
Notably though, the way of karmayoga and jñānayoga are both yoga! From either position/orientation, it is still yogena - by yoga - that one practices/proceeds.
We also mentioned that though Kṛṣṇa is saying that the teaching is always given/can always be taken from two positions, he is not saying there are two teachings or two paths. Rather, the one path of yoga, which by its very nature is inclusive, can be approached from different perspectives. Yoga is practical, so we approach in a way that works for us. Ultimately though, and even immediately, our own unique ‘stream’ in the great river of practice will have to flow along in a way that includes all parts of ourself. Otherwise, we will keep getting stuck in the same old eddies, or going around in circles in an oxbow lake, even when so much of ourself is ready to stream on towards the broader, wider - more inclusive - flowing river that leads to the ocean of totality.

We mentioned that while the path of yoga is really one vast, inclusive path, there are many approaches. Sometimes people speak of five yoga-s, corresponding to the five elements:
Everything grows from the roots. As Kṛṣṇa begins to lay out the vast, inclusive way of yoga, he starts at the foundation, with karma yoga, the yoga of action, action that we never stand separate from.
Earth - pṛthvī - karma yoga
Water - jala - bhakti yoga
Fire - agni/tejas - haṭha yoga
Wind/Air - Vāyu - jñāna yoga
Space/Ether - rāja yoga

All the elements are in us. If we are to come to yoga, to a state of togetherness/all-one-ness, then we cannot leave anything out.
The yoga practitioner is always taught to work from gross to subtle. Whichever aspect of yoga we begin with, as we explore from gross to subtle, it brings us into the other aspects. For example, if we are practising the royal (rāja) yoga of meditation (as encoded in Patañjali’s yoga sūtra and in the Gītā), as we explore the medi-state, we see how the ways we act (karma), the ways we relate to and approach (bhakti) existence, the tenor of our emotional life, the way we relate to and honour the gifts of our pulsating bodily vehicle that is a sacred microcosmic manifestation of the universe (haṭha), and the way we honour the gifts of our discernment, intelligences and self-reflexive awareness (jñāna) are all totally and intrinsically entwined with our meditation practice. As has sometimes been said, how we do one thing is how we do everything. If we are practising meditation/yoga, we cannot leave anything out. Of course, some may take greater recourse to emotional or bodily practices, some may orient more through study and the intellect, but yoga requires us to honour, nourish, include all parts of ourself, all the elements of our being.

In the fourth verse, Kṛṣṇa makes it clear that:
‘It is not by not entering into action that a person becomes free from (the binding influence of) action/karma. Sitting on the sidelines of life is not an option. That is not the way to become free. That is not the way to be free to enjoy and experience the moment without being weighed down by its residual impressions. Nor is renunciation the mere external/surface renunciation or giving up of/desisting from action.’

To illustrate, we considered the story of the two ‘renunciate’ monks whose vows included celibacy and avoiding physical contact with others. On their way back to their monastery through the forest they come to a river, with the water quite high, the current strong. At the river bank is a gorgeous young woman. The younger monk shrinks back, keeping his distance, summoning the inner demoniacal tyrant of his suppressive willpower to avert his eyes from the perturbingly enchanting flame of her vivid beauty… The older monk walks up to her, straight, polite. It’s obvious she needs to cross the water, and is afraid for her safety. Without hesitation, with a warm smile grounded in kindness and compassion, the older monk picks up the young maiden in his arms and wades skilfully across the river. His younger brother monk follows in their wake, at a ‘safe distance’.
Crossed the river, the older monk lowers the woman’s feet to the Earth and gives her his blessing for a safe journey onwards back to her village. He then continues on, not speaking, for these monks also observe a vow of silence in the morning hours. It is peaceful in the forest, and there is a rich, gentle music of birdsong. From his years of assiduous practice, the older monk’s internal awareness is a realm of deep, spacious quiet. He is able to enjoy the sounds of the forest, yet he is also able to discern something of the noisy torment haranguing the mind of his young companion.
Later in the afternoon, the two monks reach the forest hermitage of their master, and go to see him to report on their excursion. The master asks them if there was any incident of note on their return journey.
‘No’, says the senior monk.
The younger monk’s eyes bulge and he glances askance at his senior.
‘You disagree?’ inquires the master.
‘Well, I do, yes, I would say that breaking our vows of silence and celibacy is something of incident!’
The older monk smiles:
‘Brother, I carried the young woman across the river. Once we had crossed over and she felt safe to continue her way home. I set her down… You have been carrying her in your mind ever since.’
And the master and the older monk smile kindly at the younger one.

This story illustrates powerfully what Kṛṣṇa emphasises here, that it is not by mere external renunciation that one renounces, that it is not by not entering into action that one becomes free of the binding influence of action.

The contrast of the two monks also serves powerfully to illustrate ‘the way’ of yoga. As they walk through the forest, beauty is all around, then comes a type of beauty that the younger one has ‘ideas’ around, ‘that it is dangerous or forbidden’, and his ideas get in the way of his humanity, stop him from helping another human being. He, young and hale, denies the gift of his youthful strength, denies his conscience that would urge him to be of help, and shrinks back, looking on in disapproval as his older companion uses his strength to carry the young woman across the torrent. The young monk is paralysed by his belief system. The ‘code’ that he lives by, and which ordinarily, in the monastery, may serve him fine, is not adaptable or robust enough for the extraordinary reality of the wild forest of Life! His reaction shows how attachment to ideas and prejudices can bind and blind us, ensnare us, imprison us.

Beautifully, the example of his more mature companion demonstrates the nuanced, adaptable, robust and inclusive way of yoga. More seasoned, he knows that rules sometimes have to be broken, sometimes must be broken, to respect the deeper principles they are designed to enshrine. He does not hesitate or shrink back from life. In the quiet spaciousness of his awareness, he has room to respond, rather than react from a conditioned, fearful place. And so he is free to heed his conscience, to bring forth the gift of his empathic humanity. Simply, generously, honouring the gift of his strength and awareness, he picks the woman up and carries her across the water.

In symbolic teaching stories, or archetypal stories like this, I often find it helpful to consider the different characters as aspects of ourself, or of a single psyche.
The gentle smiles of the older monk and the master in response to the younger monk’s consternation also demonstrate ‘the way’ of yoga, and how we can gradually free ourselves of the burden of the binding influence of action. They smile. Gently, warmly, they invite the younger one - less seasoned, less spacious, more reactive - to his own recognition. When he ‘spits out’ his disapproval, he is able to see it, and then see that it perhaps has a deeper source: his own perturbation at feeling blocked in relation to the light of his own conscience, his own anger at himself for being a slave to rules and fear, when something deeper in him knows all the while he can walk gracefully, like his older brother has shown him… He is invited to come to his own, deeper, owned recognition that it is not really so much about what he does, but what is the quality of his motivation; not so much about what he does but more about how he does it, how he meets the extraordinary and the unexpected gifts/opportunities that one may encounter along the forest path of life.

In the fifth verse, Kṛṣṇa further emphasises the inevitability of action;
‘No one - no one, no exceptions! - stands outside of action even for a moment! No one is ever, even for a moment able to stand as a ‘non-doer of action’. Everyone, all of us, each one of us, is always and constantly forced/obliged to act by the guṇa-s born of Prakṛti/Nature. This is beyond our will or control!’
Everything in existence, in prakṛti, the realm of nature, is active. Nature is the realm of birth, death and change. Manifest existence is woven with the three threads of the guṇa-s:
Sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Sattva - the pure, essential existence of a thing
Rajas - its dynamism, its being subject to change
Tamas - its inertia, and its eventual decay

We are creatures of Nature. We are nature. Born, we will die, and between those two great changes, we will be subject to constant change. Activity will be a constant. Action is inevitable. Kṛṣṇa has already made it clear. Yoga is a practical way. If something is inevitable, then do it the best you can. Your nature is to act, so act well! Harness the gifts of your integrated awareness so you can make your actions worship. Bring the harmonised powers of your body, senses, mind and emotions together, so you can live life as a beautiful movement, so you can honour and celebrate the gifts of life. Work with the reality of your own nature to realise your deeper essence.

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YOGA and SPORT part two

2/11/2020

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Yoga and Sport part two - The sport of yoga

Recreation, sport, competition and competence

Competition, as it is often understood these days, could be seen to go against yoga.
By definition, yoga is all inclusive. It leaves nothing out. Yoga cannot leave anything out, because it is about connecting and integrating all the parts. It is about unity in the middle of our world of so many dualities. And unity can be real and sustainable only if it is genuinely inclusive.

In recent times, as I write, one has not needed to look far to see the ugly face of competition in the sporting arena: a win at all costs attitude, sports ‘cultures’ full of abuse and corruption. Yet still, one can also see examples of the sense of companionship and respect that can come from competition/competitive endeavour, and the way that honest, respectful competitiveness between well-matched rivals can help everyone grow. When competitors play fairly, they can spur each other on and drive each other to growth: the competitive arena can become a place where everyone is edified.

When competitive sport is such, everyone is a winner. Each participant is complicit in the growth and ‘going beyond’ of the others. When we compete, seek and strive together honestly and openly, our competence grows, and our understanding of ourself grows.

And really, this is what competition means. Etymologically:
Verb - Compete, from com – together and petere – to seek together
Noun – competition, strife of rivals towards a common goal

And: Competence – the ability to work towards a goal

Considering the root meaning of the word then, we could say that competition means to work together towards an aspiration, towards something all parties working together yearn for. And competence is our ability to do this.

This sounds a lot like using a technique, or a support (an ālambana in the Sanskṛt yogic terminology), as the means to invite all our constituent powers into the experience of working together so that we can feel a real satisfaction.
Yoga practice is about developing, remembering, and reclaiming this innate competence.
As such, we might say that yoga is a ‘competitive sport’: not in the sense of a game with winners and losers, but as a re-creational game, in which every participant can be a ‘winner’. It is the play, or the game, of inviting all our constituent powers to work together so they may access and reveal their deeper longing.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do
Of course, there are those who say: No, no, no, no! There is nothing to do, there is nowhere to go, you are already it! And they may be right, but most times when I hear this, I feel ‘the lady doth protest too much’, and I am not convinced.

It may well be true that I am already all that I seek. However, if my current habits, patterns and ways of thinking, seeing and holding myself continually remind me that I am not quite satisfied, that I’m not quite playing the game of life as skilfully as I might, that I am not drinking from life’s rich cup as deeply as I might, then by Thunder I’d better do something about it!

If I do nothing, then I know what happens: I drop into depressed apathy, or I notice I have all this angst, this pain, this grief and desire that propels me to do. Or, more basically, I need to defecate, I need to feed myself, because as Kṛṣṇa reminds us so beautifully and powerfully in the Gītā: doing nothing is just not an option for a human being. The ‘choice’ to do nothing is itself an action, a ‘karma’, and it will have consequences. As a human, we are a living, breathing, moving agent: action is our nature, and we cannot avoid it. The mere sustenance of our life demands action. Yoga, the practical school of Indian Philosophy, holds no truck with the armchair intellectualiser theorising about his true nature, but exhorts us to be all we really are and demonstrate it in the way we conduct our lives.

Action is inevitable, the question then is how? How do I do it, this thing called life? How do I make it? How do I play it?

Make it a sport, make it a game, make it a play, make it a recreation.
Take it easily, but seriously.
Get in the game, be here, now! But know, remember, it is a game.
Not inhibited by concern about the result, just allow myself to enjoy the experience.
Freeing ourselves from the weight of past impressions and the anxieties over future outcomes by engaging fully with this moment, the ‘actionless action’, the ‘effortless effort’, the skilful means, the karma yoga, the action that is its own reward becomes our reality.

This yoga is a game worth playing.

Playing like this, I am no longer concerned by winning or losing. Inhabiting the moment like this, so fully, so whole-system nourishingly, is its own victory, its own triumph, its own reward.

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On the history of yoga āsana

2/10/2020

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An image of Śiva, Yogīśvara, who traditionally is recognised as the source of yoga āsana and haṭha yoga methodologies. I am not sure whose artwork this is, if anyone knows please tell me so I can credit it. This picture was sent to me by a friend in an email one time

On the History of Āsana

A few years ago was published a book advancing a very narrow and very particular thesis on the ‘origins’ of physical yoga practice and modern āsana. In this book, the author suggests that the postures and practices of what is sometimes referred to as modern yogāsana are just adaptations of British gymnastics and an outgrowth of the desire in late 19th/early 20th century India to reaffirm a culture of physical strength after the centuries of oppression under foreign invaders. Certainly, these factors may of course have had some significant influence on the spread and development of modern, body-based yoga practices. However, I find the idea that they are main sources for physical yoga unconvincing and disrespectful. One of the principal ways the author who advanced this thesis likes to supposedly ‘justify’ or ‘substantiate’ his ideas is by inserting the name of some other published academic in brackets, as if their work is undeniable, thoroughly substantiated ‘Gospel truth’, which it often isn’t. As well as most pages being peppered with other academics’ names in parentheses, another outstanding feature of the book is what it leaves completely absent. The author completely avoids/ignores/discounts the traditional view of the origin of yogāsana and other related physical practices in the Indian tradition.

With the complete dismissal of any Indian physical culture before the 19th century, it’s almost as if the author thinks that nobody had ever moved, or danced, in India before they got sick to the back teeth with the British. And further, as if in ancient India: a civilisation of great learning, of depth, beauty and thorough consideration of the whole human being; there was no culture of physical artfulness, no methods of dance, movement or martial arts to help people inhabit the gift of a body more easily.

Such an idea just does not make sense.

However, not only is it nonsensical, I would say it also smacks of an astounding arrogance that can be seen on the part of some ‘Western’ commentators on the Indian tradition: “Oh the Indians, these brown people, couldn’t possibly have developed such a refined and well thought out system of physical health, could they?” Couldn’t they? Again, this view makes no sense. What it does do though is perpetuate the distorting legacy and blinkered perspective that seems to have infected the Western academy going back to the days of the 19th century. At that time, Europeans had started to ‘discover’ some of the treasures of the Indian tradition. This included Sanskṛt, with its oceans of extant literature in so many fields of human knowledge, with a grammar far more sophisticated and a literature much more extensive than the Greek and the Latin. The Sanskṛt linguistics went way beyond anything any European scholar had even dreamed of at the time. But the 19th century Europeans just couldn’t swallow, accept, or admit - or perhaps they were so blinkered by their conditioning that they just weren’t able to see - that these brown people had developed a culture in some ways so much richer than theirs. That while their European ancestors had been stuck in the Dark Ages, these Indians had been pushing the frontiers of human understanding for millennia and enjoying a civilisation far more advanced than had ever been glimpsed in the Europe of the time. The 19th century ‘scholars’ did notice however, so many cognates in the Sanskṛt, Greek and Latin. So, in order to explain how Greek, Latin and Sanskṛt had so much in common, the European ‘discoverers’ made an invention. Rather than honestly consider the vastly abundant evidence in front of them, in the form of a truly amazing Sanskṛt and proto-Sanskṛt Vedic literature, the Europeans concocted the idea of an ‘Indo-European root language’, a language for which there was no material evidence. But no matter, that suited their arrogant, blinkered, falsely superior perspective much better than allowing for the possibility that Sanskṛt, a language developed by the peoples of this ‘primitive’ land that they had colonised and pillaged for its vast riches, was perhaps actually the source language. To the chagrin of many contemporary Sanskritists in India, this concocted theory of an ‘Indo-European root language’ is still prevalent and widely accepted today, even though there is still no evidence of such a language that is not Sanskṛt or its earlier Vedic forms.
There is however, plentiful textual evidence to suggest that the civilization in India in the 1500 years both before and after Christ was, in many ways, significantly more advanced than in Europe. There is also plentiful evidence that some Western commentators are not aware how veiled by their cultural conditionings their ‘readings’ of Indian culture are.

Any of my Sanskṛt teachers who were aware of this book were quite horrified and disgusted by it. In particular, by the way it seems to discount the Indian reality of yoga, that Yoga is a central, intrinsic part of the Indian tradition: Vedic, Tantric, Orthodox, Hetorodox, Yoga is there. I would say too that yoga is also part of a global tradition, with many of its core principles evidenced in wisdom traditions from around the world. Still, Yoga is Indian, Yoga is a Sansḳrt word, and a system of classical Indian Philosophy. Yoga as it has come to us in the 21st century has been most thoroughly developed in the traditions of India: a holistic, practical philosophical tradition that deals with the broad spectrum reality of human existence, including our physicality and physical health.

Here is an alternative view on the history of yoga āsana.

The Lord of Yoga is Śiva. Śiva is represented in many ways. As Yogīśvara, he is usually sitting in a radiant example of a steady, easy classic yogāsana such as siddhāsana or padmāsana. His spine is tall, spacious, erect. His aspect serene as he sits on a tiger skin atop a Himālayan peak. The seat on the tiger’s skin demonstrates his mastery over the tremendous powers of incarnation, of his physicality and sensuality, to the degree that he is steadily established in the ‘abode of snow’: the place of clear, pure, pristine, impartial awareness. His clothing is mere ash, reminding us that having fully harnessed the gifts of life consciousness, he is attuned to the essence - to the remainder which abides and which underlies all the material that comes and goes. His adornment is the king cobra, showing us that in the clarity, impartiality and purity of his awareness, the beguiling beauty of nature is his enjoyment, his companion, his friend; it is no danger, poison or snare for him.

In his jaṭa, his locks dreaded by the fusion of the hemispheres of his brain - the joining in yoga of his analytical and intuitive capacities, he holds Gaṅgā, the vivifying river of concious potential, so she can flow smoothly, gently, easily, to nourish the whole field of consciousness, the whole body of life.

In this form, Śiva Yogīśvara can be seen to represent dynamism in stillness. Another way Śiva is represented is as Nāṭarāja, stillness in dynamism. Nāṭarāja is the Lord of the Dance, the five act dance-drama of Creation: the expansion of consciousness, the sowing of life, sṛṣṭi in Sanskṛt; of sthithi, the sustenance of existence, holding the galaxies in their dance; of samāhāra, the drawing back in to its source of the universe; of tirodhana bhāva, of the concealing or veiling of the real deeper nature of existence and consciousness; and of anugraha, grace, or the revelation and remembering of who we really are.

As Nāṭarāja, Śiva is shown as a slender-waisted, androgynously beautiful and graceful dancer. He is four-armed. In one hand he holds the damaru, the twin-headed drum that symbolises the beat, the rhythm, the pulsation of life, the sound of the creation of existence: sṛṣṭi. Another hand is in abhaya mudra, the gesture signifying ‘have no fear’ - sustenance/sthiti. The third hand wields fire, the circle of flames, symbolising the ever-turning, ever-changing wheel of existence, the circle of life, in which he is constantly dancing. The fourth arm makes the shape of an elephant’s trunk. This symbolises the unifying power of yoga as incarnated by Śiva’s elephant-headed son Gaṇeśa. The fourth hand is pointing to the junction point of Nāṭarāja’s lifted, bent knee. This reminds us that it is through yoga, through gathering and harmonising all the members of the group of our being that we can re-member our true selves. Nāṭarāja’s standing foot is on top of a dwarf called Apasmara - forgetfulness. When we reconcile all of who we really are, when we incarnate the integrated Gaṇeśa energy that is our innate potential, we can remember ourselves. We too can come into rhythm, so we can stay steady and balanced, attuned to our constant, conscious essence, amidst the whirling wonder of life.

Śiva Nāṭarāja is also depicted with the locks of his jaṭa flying out horizontally: for the worlds whirl so quickly, he dances so quickly, yet he is serene, graceful, poised and in rhythm.

Sometimes at temples dedicated to Śiva Nāṭarāja, there are sculptures or depictions of the 108 kāraṇa-s of Śiva as the great dancer, the 108 ‘instrumental positions’ that can be deployed to invite a deepening of yoga in our systems.

These postures are graceful, often curved. They include spinal extension and flexion (backward and forward bends), rotations, side bends and various combinations thereof. They move the limbs and orient the physical structure in space so as to activate the innate haṭha technology of our pulsating bodies. Ha is the sun, the solar channel, heating and contracting; ṭha is the moon, the lunar channel, cooling and relaxing. Life is pulsation, a breath cycle, a heart beat. But these are not the only ways in which our miraculous bodies pulsate. For example, if while standing we lift our right leg upwards in front of us, the front of the leg contracts, ha, while the back lengthens and relaxes, ṭha. Just by the way we move and orient ourselves in space we can influence profoundly the way energy and information pulsates and flows in and through our systems.

Traditionally, within the Yoga Tradition, Śiva himself, Yogīśvara, the Lord or Master of yogi-s, Nāṭarāja, the greatest dancer, is said to have bequeathed yogāsana to human beings. Śiva of course also means the kind, benevolent one. And Śiva means consciousness, the container in which all the śakti - the power of consciousness to become manifest as nature for example - exists.

The yogāsana, like all yoga techniques and teachings, are all based on the observation of nature. It is a fruit of the application of consciousness in focused inquiry. This, as far as I can see, is the real origin of yogāsana.

It was not the British colonisers or the American branders who recognised that the way we move our body can have profound impacts on our overall experience and awareness. This is something people have known since the beginning of time.

The 108 kāraṇa-s of Śiva Nāṭarāja, the plentiful evidence in ancient texts of dance and martial arts that harness the innate haṭha capacities of the body are to my mind adequate evidence that India, just like China, has an ancient system of health that includes movement technologies. Indeed, the 108 kāraṇa-s of Nāṭarāja are very akin to many postures in Chinese martial arts and dance. Humans have been harnessing this in-built haṭha technology for millennia. Call it dance, call it haṭha yoga, call it tai chi, chi gung, subtle or internal martial arts, the aim is the same: to harmonise the bodily vehicle and optimise its capacities so that energy can flow in a cohesive, efficient way, so we can more easily stay in rhythm through the ups, downs and tempo changes of life, and we are more empowered to access the subtler dimensions of our conscious potential.

Āsana and haṭha yoga, ‘somatic yoga practice’ is nothing new. The absence of texts with pictures or descriptions of people performing āsana-s, or the dearth on Youtube of footage of people’s ‘morning practice’ from before the Common Era is not evidence that people had no ‘physical’ or body-based practices. After all, these practices are things one does, they are best learned by doing, they are known by the cells and channels of one’s body, not by their descriptions in a book. Physical practices are part of our human heritage. We have a body, it can move in so many ways. It is a storehouse and circuit of energy. The way we move can affect our physical, mental, sensory capacities. The ancients knew this. I feel pretty sure that people have been harnessing and developing the technologies (tantra-s) of haṭha yoga in posture and movement for millennia.

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YOGA and SPORT part two

On the history of yoga āsana

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