Yoga – The Gathering

The human soul longs for the ‘real’ sensuous experience that we can only have in the gathering of live, shared interaction.

In our contemporary culture, we are repeatedly encouraged to live ‘boxed’ within a protective shield that numbs us to our deeper longings.

It is one of the sadnesses I feel around ‘modern yoga’ that ‘doing yoga’ has become another way of ‘fitting in’, something one can do in order to be accepted according to some artificial, externally dictated standard. I find this so sad because really, yoga is about accepting ourselves as the unique individual we really are. Accepting ourselves so wholly that we can meet and relate to the other openly and honestly, in a way that allows for mutually nourishing exchange, stimulation and growth.

I also find it sad that in the contemporary ‘yoga business’, it seems so much about the business and not so much about the yoga. Many studios seem to operate on a very ‘play it safe and sexy and fill the classes’ model, many ‘teachers’ seem hell-bent on ratcheting up the number of likes, hits and followers in the netherworlds of facebook and Instagram, when the real business of yoga is about connection, not through text messages or social media, but real meeting: with the parts of ourselves we might have held down or back, or have preferred to keep in the shadows; and having begun the work of reconciliation and recovery, which yoga practice is, then going out into the complex world of real time, real world interaction and relationship with greater compassion and humanity.

Our current human culture is in many ways diseased. Consumerism just eats everything up and on its current trajectory will lead to our auto-destruction. However, the sages of the wisdom traditions from every part of the world are also part of our common human heritage.

The problems of consumerism and the legacies of successive revolutions (agricultural, industrial, technological) which have severed us from so much of the support structure of tribal gathering and collective, practical wisdom are not problems of individual nation states or politicised economic groupings, but of us all.

When we practice yoga, real yoga, when we practice reconciliation with reality as it is, when we practice connecting with more of who we really are so we may connect more wholly in any encounter, this impacts all our relationships and can bring us to a place where the harmonising influence of our presence reaches much deeper and further than we may even dream.

But first, we must gather: ourselves and together. Because for the vast majority of human beings, the work of gathering one’s soul needs the support of the other, the catalysing, tempering and reflective agency of group support. In the collective wisdom of many traditional societies it is said that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. Given the way we are plundering our environment, squandering so many of our resources and blithely ploughing a furrow of self-sabotage, we might equate humanity to a spoilt and unschooled infant. But the infant has great gifts and great potential. We just need the counsel and the wisdom of the elders, and we all carry some of this. So let us gather.
 
 

General Election
In May 2015, in the UK where I am a citizen, there was a ‘general election’, when the populace may vote for the national government. In the weeks leading up to the vote, the subject of the pending election dominated the mainstream media. The traditional ‘main parties’ and their very narrow perspectives dominate the debate. The protest parties and the so-called ‘minor parties’ also join the debate but are less dominant.

But in all this hullaballo, is the voice of the people really represented?

Many contend that it is not.

At election time, are we really ‘choosing’ or ‘electing’ anything more than a maintenance of the unsatisfactory and widely failing status quo? What type of ‘representative system’ is it when a leader of a party voted for by only a small minority of the population gets to form a ‘majority’ government and then ‘represent’ the country? At this last election in the UK, the government were voted for by less than a quarter of the electorate. The Conservative party received 36.9% of votes with turnout only 66.1% - the low turnout strongly suggesting many felt no party represented their views or that their vote for a non-major party would count for nothing. So despite the fact that 63% of those who did vote chose to vote for another party, and despite the fact that more than a third of the electorate chose not to vote, bafflingly, almost unbelievably, the Conservative party gets to form a ‘majority government’.

Clearly, this is not good enough, and I think we can do a lot better, but considering it, is this type of situation not also paralleled in what sometimes happens in our own internal realms: in the ‘country’ of our inner being?
When we make what we think of as choices, are we really choosing what we deeply want? Do our decisions represent the unified voice of our whole collective self? Or are our decisions dominated by the ‘main parties’ of, for instance, our social and family conditioning? Or of our fear-founded strategic mind and our short-term, self-serving interests? And all while our deeper longing and long-term interests go unheeded.
This type of situation is not only unrepresentative, it is almost tragicomically inefficient.

At the societal level, many times the ‘democratic’ system is characterised by the main parties squandering vast amounts of money, resources and energy in trying to get elected and put down the other, its opponent. Further, when a party is elected, it knows it has just five years ‘on the throne’, and so to a significant degree, its strategies are fear-based, determined by short-termism and anxiety about being re-elected/holding on to power.
The inefficiencies of this woebegone system are further compounded by the way that when there is a change of government and policy changes are brought in, there is often quite a significant amount of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’, in the sense that in trying to demonstrate its difference from and superiority over the previous main party, the new party of government sometimes nips in the bud the more positive fruits of policy that the previous government began.

Again though, is this not seen within our own selves? When stuck in a rut, how much energy can we waste blaming ourselves and others? How much do we deplete the energetic resources that could help us move into a new space of more mature harmony by scattering away energy complaining and criticizing? We may expend our resources thoroughly analysing how the old ways haven’t really served us, yet simultaneously deepen our entrenchment in the old ways of black and white thinking, so restricting ourselves to previously known ways of being: ways that we already know are not broad, robust or inclusive enough to really serve us.

The ‘system’ has clearly failed. In the UK, and the situation is similar in many other ‘democratic’ countries, the ‘main parties’, those who, under the current system are the only ones with a chance of forming a government, occupy a lot of very similar and very narrow ground. They do not offer much real choice to the electorate, just mild tweaks to the existing status quo. Many members of the electorate are frustrated that though millions of their fellows also voted for the same ‘minor parties’ as they did, their vote has next to no representation in the parliament. Many others feel that none of the parties ‘on offer’ are good enough: that they are all as bad/corrupt/deceitful as each other.

Many are calling for a change to the electoral system. I hope that positive, more inclusive change will come, change that allows the government to actually represent the long-term interests of the land and people it is supposed to safeguard and represent. I would favour a system of collaborative, consensual government with a house of representatives structured to represent both local concerns from different parts of the country, and the different views of the national population: a genuine proportional representation. Of course, such a system would mean that some things take a lot longer to get done, but it would also usher us away from the tragically adversarial, us and them, points-scoring parliament and towards real opportunities for the a more representative governing body to start serving the long-term interests of the whole population more efficiently.

This may sound like a faraway fantasy, but we can start powerfully with ourselves and consider how we make choices in our immediate lives.

We may notice that in challenging situations or when making decisions, our conditioning often blinkers us to ridiculously narrow appraisal of the situation: weighing up ‘both sides’ of the issue, as if an issue has just two sides! When there are always hundreds of ways to see a question. This closed-mind masquerading as ‘open’ because it has considered an alternative, and perhaps when we look more closely, only as a means to strengthen through refutation of a counter-position its pre-existing stance, is ridiculously limited.

Yoga teaches us that if we are to access and deepen harmony, we have to have the courage and resolve to take down the walls of our mind’s conditioning, not just open a little door so we can admit and then gnash to pieces a conventional counter argument. We have to learn a new language: one that is more inclusive than yes and no, us and them, right and left.

One way yoga could be described is as the place of the true centre, that connects all the parts, that leaves nothing out. This is why there is no denial and no exclusivity in yoga. If we want to feel oneness, the only way to sustainable wellbeing, we have to face, accept and work with all of our parts.

When we start to do this, it does start to change the collective. The external system may be rubbish, but from the yogic point of view, that is no reason not to do our own work, it’s just greater motivation to channel our energy where we really can make a difference: close in, nearby, in the reality of our own perceptions and behavioural patterns.

And so, when making choices, when electing what to do with the forces of our being, we may take inspiration from Lao Tzu, Taoist master, and as such one who has transcended all systems:
‘If you want to heal the world, then heal yourself. If you want peace in the world, then bring light [awareness] to all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.’

The ‘Battle’ (?) of Yoga?

If yoga’s all about peace, why is the Bhagavad Gītā set on a battlefield? And come to think of it, why are we doing all these ‘warrior’ poses? Questions like this are not unusual when we first encounter the Gītā. The dramatic setting is full of purpose though. It seizes our attention and prompts us into an inquiring attitude, both key foundations for yoga practice and exploration. Further, the intense, battlefield scenario works to remind us that no situation need be a barrier to yoga, and actually, the more challenging a situation is, the greater the opportunity for yoga it provides.

The ‘battle’ of the Bhagavad Gītā is not an external one. The two sets of armies are just different sets of tendencies within ourselves. The field, or setting, of kurukṣetra is the field of our actions and experiences. After all, if there wasn’t a battle going on inside ourselves, how would we do things that self-sabotage and go against our deeper longings and higher interests?

The two sets of armies, Pāṇḍava-s and Kaurava-s, are related. They are cousins who have the same grandfather, but different parents. The five Pāṇḍava-s are the sons of Pāṇḍu, which means ‘pure’. Arjuna, the student in the Gītā, is the middle of these five, and his name also means ‘pure’. The Kaurava-s, on the other hand, are named not after their blind father Dhṛtaraṣṭra, but their more distant ancestor Kuru, who gave his name to the very land they are fighting in and over, and who is also of course an ancestor of the Pāṇḍava-s.

So why are the Kaurava-s so called? ‘Kaurava’ means ‘relating to or coming from Kuru’, and ‘kuru’ comes from the verbal root kṛ - to do/to make/to act. Kṛ is the same verb root that gives us the noun ‘karma’, - meaning ‘action’, and the Gītā is really about how to make all our actions yoga.

So one way we can understand it is that the ‘land of the Kuru-s’, where the battle takes place, is really the ‘land’ of our experience, the ‘territory’ of all our experience leading up to now. The Kaurava-s represent those parts of ourselves that are bound by the fruits of our actions. Their name suggests that they are limited by the past, just as we are when, for example, we allow ourselves to be tyrannised by the rational mind and our limited sense of egoic self: ‘I am (only) this, not that’, ‘I have to do this, I cannot do that’, for example.

The Pāṇḍava-s on the other hand, are the sons of gods. As such, they represent the divine potential within us all that can be accessed when we allow ourselves to act beyond the limits of our conditioning and draw on the gifts of our intuitive wisdom and the deep intelligence of our bodies, senses, and hearts, in co-operation with our minds.

The five Pāṇḍava-s’ names are also very telling.

Yudhiṣṭhira is the eldest brother. His name means ‘steady in battle or conflict’. He is the son of the god of ‘Dharma’, Dharma being the way of action that sustains and supports the smooth rotation of the wheel of natural Law. Yudhiṣṭhira can be seen to represent the power of conscience, our inner compass that operates through our various intelligences, and, when we pay close attention to it, can help us stay ‘on course’ and oriented in ways that do represent our deeper longing. The second brother is mighty Bhīma, son of the Wind, of tremendous strength. As son of the Wind, he represents our life force, prāṇa, and the tremendous power inherent in the amazing gifts of our bodily and sensory intelligences. Arjuna, the middle brother, ‘the pure one’, is the son of Indra, the King of Heaven and god of revitalising rain. He can be seen to symbolise the power of wholehearted sincerity.

The last two are twins, Nakula and Sahadeva. Born together, they are the sons of the celestial physicians, the Aśvin twins. Nakula means ‘mongoose’ – enemy of mice and of snakes, whose venom the mongoose protects itself from with the sap of the nakuli plant. Nakula then, symbolises our innate power to protect ourselves, stay safe, and gravitate towards nourishment and expansion. He was born along with Sahadeva, which literally means ‘with the gods’. In the yoga system, our very bodily and sensory powers and intelligences are considered ‘devatāḥ’: divine and god-like. So these twins can be seen to represent our innate capacity to heal and protect ourselves when we work with the subtler gifts of our bodies, senses and minds.

The Pāṇḍava-s remind us that we do have the resources we need to find ‘victory’: lasting peace and integration, even in the thick and tumult of life. However, as yoga is practical, it recognises that most often, this requires steadfast effort; because the Kaurava-s, our tendencies to be limited by our past actions and experiences, are not always easy to overcome. Our conditioning may be deeply entrenched. Fittingly, the eldest among the ninety-nine Kaurava brothers (the much larger number representing the seemingly endless ways we can cheat and delude ourselves) is Duryodhana, meaning ‘one who is difficult to overcome in battle’. He is also known by another similar name, Suyodhana, meaning ‘the one who is very strong in battle’!

And is it not true that our conditioning and our old habits can be hard to overcome? When we zero in on them and recognise that we’d like to leave them behind, do these long-term residents of the structure of our sense of self glide away in graceful retreat? Well, maybe it is possible, but more commonly, they fight for their lives! And they are ready to fight dirty and with tenacity.

Sometimes, as we keep seeking truth, exploring what it really means to be ourselves and live in the sweet space of the centre, we have to face the fact that we have wilfully, and of our own choosing, been perpetuating our own suffering. And who wants to admit that? Such realisations can be very hard to accept. Only one of great courage, of broad, far-sighted vision, of positive principles can do this. In other words, only a great warrior can do this.

If we think of vīrabhadrāsana (the posture of the warrior) these are the qualities it incarnates and vivifies within us.

Picture vīrabhadrāsana one with an ‘honest stance’, in which the distance between the front and back feet is only so great that the practitioner could instantly step back to samasthiti (bringing the feet together to stand up tall) at the back foot as easily as forwards to the front foot. We may consider such a foundation a pre-requisite for a genuine warrior posture because a warrior would never take a stance that leaves a large part of himself indefensible, which we would if we overstepped and lost the stability of the back leg. In such a balanced vīrabhadrāsana one, with the four corners of both feet engaged with the earth, the posture is in many ways like the posture of ‘stepping’ along the journey of a courageous life. The back foot supports us to move forwards. It is rooted and supplying vibrant, stable energy to the pelvic centre, heart and spine. This stable connection to the space at our rear can be seen as the yogic warrior-practitioner honestly acknowledging and accepting his or her past, whatever has come before, as it is, so it can support him/her now. The front foot steps forwards, extending into the unknown of the future, yet still connecting back just as vibrantly, just as supportively, to the centre. With front and back legs working harmoniously, even though asymmetrically, the centre is truly centred. And the heart of the warrior-practitioner? Buoyant, yet rooted, open on all sides, vulnerable and receptive, yet also protected by the 360degree global awareness that is really the emblem of the yogic warrior and the foundation for a sustaining, evolving yoga practice.

The first teaching in the Gītā? Arguably, it’s the first imperative verb in the second verse: ‘paśya!’ – ‘Look!’ Be aware, be attentive. That is the practice. And that is what the Gītā and the vīrabhadrāsana postures, dramatic though the setting and symbolism may be, are all about: working attentively with the reality of our life to foster integration even as constant change and sometimes apparent conflict may whirl around us.