small change

Sutra Readings - 7

This post is part of a series I am writing as I read the The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutras 30-32):

My readings of "The Yoga Sutras of  Patanjali" have been on a hiatus these days,  and so making the point that one of the obstacles along the path of yoga is the "fatigue" that is linked with the various "attachments" I maintain  in my "delusions" about the  world....  I suppose that is one explanation. The other would be that I am too much in the "now" to want to miss it by writing about it as it has passed. Had I been in in front of the computer yesterday morning, I would have missed  this quail looking into our kitchen window, with her mate hovering further in the background, in full sunshine, as if to draw attention to himself in order to protect her while she ate and bathed.

Had I been writing about yoga, I would have also missed the two most arduous yoga classes I have ever taken in my life and not learned that by using my breath I not only had the stamina to last through both classes, but also had no aching muscles the days following the classes.

So I have no commentary on the next three sutras, other than what I already said:

30. [The obstacles that stand int he way of progress on the yoga path] are

illness
fatigue
doubt
carelessness
laziness
attachment
delusion
the failure to achieve samādhi
and the failure to maintain samādhi

They are distractions from the path of yoga.

31. Such distractions make the body restless, the breathing coarse, the mind agitated. They result in suffering.

32. But they can be eliminated if the mind is repeatedly brought to focus.

And yet, here is what I take away, as commentary, from these sutras: the yoga path is not one for the ascetic, the one who thinks that dealing with distractions is about self-denial. The path of yoga is about relieving suffering, with each step you take on it. It is about awareness of the world and the roots of suffering which sprout and grow the bramble of obstacles through which  we hack our way, with the sharp blade of attention and the power of our presence.

Works Cited

Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

~ to be continued

Sutra Readings - 6

This post is part of a series I am writing as I read the The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutras 24-29):

The next set of sutras describes some of the qualities of the “almighty Lord,” who is beyond action and time, and therefore tainted by the limits and corruptions of neither. He, for that is how this translation refers to the almighty, is the seed of all knowledge and is “the” teacher of teachers.

24. The lord is a unique being who exists beyond all suffering. Unblemished by action, He is free from both the cause and its effects.

25. In Him lies the finest seed of all knowledge.

26. Being beyond time, He is the Teacher of even the most ancient tradition of teachers.

(Patanjali, 1982)

In many traditions the name of the almighty may not be uttered either because the almighty cannot be contained or captured in words, or it is presumptuous for us, bound as we are by form and tainted as we are by time and action, to utter the almighty’s name.

Patanjali’s sutra 27 circumvents the whole naming business with “sound” advice:

27. He is expressed through the sound of the sacred syllable OM.

28. It should be repeated and its essence realized.

29. Then the mind will turn inward and the obstacles that stand in the way of progress will disappear.

(Patanjali, 1982)

By repeating the sound, it is not so much that we put ourselves in a trance – though that may also happen, even if that is not the desired effect of this action. No what we actually do when we repeat the sound is that we regulate our breathing. With each exhalation we let go more of the body, and with each inhalation, we take in more of that spirit that is animated through the sound that is made through our “form,” or our bodies. It seems that the divine might need us, after all, if for nothing else, only to hear himself sing. Or, as the fertile ground in which the “seed of knowledge” can root and flourish.

The mind, meanwhile, as we keep riding the waves of breath, turns inward, which I take means that it lets go of the objects it has created to distract itself with and which keep it busy endlessly.

And yet and yet… it sounds so simple in words, doesn’t it? To let go (and as I typed this, thinking that I wrote “to let go,” only to discover that what appeared on my screen was “to let give”) is the trickiest part of it all, because it requires that your awareness remain, even as you try to empty it of the forms that give it sustenance on the daily level. And yet and yet … the slip of my fingers from “let go” to “let give,” is intriguing. Where is the “giving”? Is it as “something’s gotta give” to let go, or is it that I am missing the gift of sound as I get busy with the gathering of words here.

What am I saying? I am not sure, because the words keep tripping me up. Earlier today I had a sense of all this – of the breath as the sound of the divine – while I was washing the windows in my house, all the while taking in the heady scent of the climbing roses gone wild on the fence. Left unpruned for the last two years, the roses have extended their reach, subsuming and strangling most other vines and plants along the fence. They have even threatened to take down the fence itself a couple of weeks ago in a spell of strong wind.

I am saying nothing … and also missing the likeness of the way those roses keep leaning on the fence and the way my reading of each sutra here relies so much on a couple of posts staked out by my “untrained” mind. The prose, like the buds of those roses, opens here and there, with the old scent of my poetry days, but other than that, the vines keep reaching – and reaching….

Works Cited

Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

~ to be continued

Sutra Readings - 5

This post is part of a series I am writing on my readings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutras 18-23):

Sutra 17 left us learning that in one form of the settled mind we experience samprajnāta samādhi, a state in which mental activity accompanies us along the path toward “I-AM-ness.” The next sutras , address the other form of samādhi  and the ways we can come nearer to it in experience:

19. After the repeated experience of the settling and ceasing of mental activity comes another samādhi. In this only the latent impressions of past experience remain.
This is the nature of existence for beings without gross physical bodies and for those who are absorbed in the womb of all life awaiting rebirth.

I suppose there are no words for describing the “content” of this settled mind. To say that is content, or empty of thought and desire, is to say nothing.

Burdened as we are by our bodies and rubbed raw by the ties our minds knot as they hook the past into the present incessantly and weave the worries of the future into a constricting net, who among us can claim a mind capable of settling beyond itself and give up fishing?

Spiritual topics are big draws lately in the media, and just off the cuff I am thinking of Oprah’s embracing of Eckhart Tolle’s “New Earth” phenomenon, that book which to me seems to be regurgitated, or rather, mass processed Buddhist notions made appetizing through the corn syrup of the promise of self-liberation (even if this might not have been Tolle’s original intention … still, including a bibliography in the book would have helped to acknowledge the path trodden by those who came before him….)

I am thinking, from having watched a few of the Oprah-Tolle Web classes, how easy it is for so many of us to delude ourselves that we  have found the Answer, the light, the relief, the release from addictions, all by reading a book.

No wonder Patanjali makes samādhi the nature of existence, and not just the state of mind, for those “without gross physical bodies,” pointing out its in-dependence from who we are in our bodies, or who we think we are. But I am not sure who are the ones “absorbed in the womb of all life who we think we are rebirth?” But, if this is the state consciousness strives for, why await rebirth? Perhaps this state is just half the story – that is, it needs a body to experience itself, or know the act of consciousness.  Think of the wind moving through trees, the branches swaying this way and that, expressing the shape of that which has no shape, only the power to shape….

So what does samādhi mean to those of us who have “physical gross” bodies? Patanjali indicates that it is within our reach, provided that we understand how to move towards it:

20. For others this samādhi is preceded by trust, perseverance, recollection, tranquility, and wisdom.

21. It is near for those who ardently desire it.

22. Yet even among them there are degrees – mild, moderate, and intense.

23. It can also come from complete surrender to the almighty Lord.

The road to samādhi is no clear path, if we read these sutras with attention. Some of us can get there by uniting body and mind, through the actions of intelligence, or wisdom. That is, I suppose at the very heart of discernment, which is not the result of book-learning. The practice of yoga poses falls into this category for me, and is the one which brings the core ideas of the yoga sutras into focus for me.

Some of us pursue samādhi through an ardent desire to experience it. It’s odd that Patanjali should say samādhi is near for those who desire it. It goes against the idea of detachment and the action of discernment, as far as I understand this. And yet, think of the Catholic saints, who surely came to their surrender not through learning tenets but a passion to act.

While some of us seek samādhi through wisdom, others through passion, some of us find it through surrender. It’s hardly a secret that this surrender lies at the heart of most 12-step programs. But I am thinking beyond that, all the way to the confessions of Mother Theresa that she had lost her faith. And yet she continued to carry on her work, surrendering both her faith and her doubt. Because, no doubt, she came to know the divine not as a projection of the ego or of desires, but something utterly empty of all that is the object of human striving, not to mention strife.

I find Simone Weil’s “Catholicism” deeply rooted in this type of yogic understanding, too. Take this passage on the nature of the void, which is so “uncatholic,” yet so necessary for surrender:

“Always, beyond the particular object whatever it may be, we have to fix our will on the void – to will the void. For the good which we can neither picture nor define is a void for us. But this void is fuller than all fullness.

If we get as far as this we shall come through all right, for God fills the void. It has nothing to do with an intellectual process in the present-day sense. The intelligence has nothing to discover, it has only to clear the ground. It is only good for servile tasks.

The good seems to us as nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. Compared with it, everything in existence is unreal. "

(Weil, 1986)

Works Cited

Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

Weil, S. (1986). Simone Weil: An Anthology. (S. Miles, Trans.) New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

~ to be contined

Sutra Readings - 4

This post is part of a series I am writing on my readings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutra 17):

The seventeenth sutra names the settled mind and gives an instance of what it means to be in a settled state – or rather, what mental activities help move one through the levels of this state in which it is possible to settle the mind.

17. The settled mind is known as samādhi. In samprajnāta samādhi, the settled state is accompanied by mental activity:

First on the gross level,
then on the subtle level,
then a feeling of bliss,
and finally the sense of pure “I-AM-ness.”

(Patanjali, 1982)

What I get from reading this sutra now that I have a regular practice of yoga on the “gross level,” is an understanding that the settling of the mind is not the same thing as tuning out or thinking of nothing. The settling of the mind is no quiet affair. On the contrary, to move through these levels -- the first two of body and intellect perhaps obvious enough, but the last two barely so -- requires a great deal of effort both in commitment and in concentration.

In samprajnāta samādhi, which is one state of samādhi, we first inhabit the body (the gross level). That is, we recognize our relationship with the body. Of course, this sounds fine in the abstract, so let’s get a little more “physical” to see the ways in which the body can help settle the mind.

The practice of yoga poses is a hinge that can open the body’s door so that the mind may start its journey toward settling. It took me too many wasted years to realize that exercise was not about making my body the object of my will (and so, later the “subject” of so much pain). Indeed, it was only in this last year of practicing yoga that I finally realized that when I “did” a pose, it wasn’t about doing “the” pose, but rather, it was about moving the body into an alignment in which nothing was “posed,” not any part of the body and certainly not any aspect of my ego.

When I finally gave up the striving I had for doing a handstand, if not soon, certainly down the line, I was free to move my shoulders and arms in the direction from which one is rooted in the ground through ones’ hands. I may never stand on my hands, but my shoulders no longer bear the burden of my expectations and they slide, however slightly, in the right position, where I can forget about them, as well as about the effort I am making on their behalf. This is but a crumb of an example of the ways in which I understand the “settling of the mind” on “the gross level.”

However insignificant this example may be, for me, the actual experience was a significant taste of freedom – freedom from the incessant demands of the (my) mind to have something to show for time spent. It also offered me a glimpse of what it means to settle the mind on the “subtle level,” or that of mental/intellectual body. It takes intelligence, or rather, a form of diligence, to get the expecting mind (that preoccupied ego), out of the way of the limbs so that through their actions one can come to sense – to sense the world.

Which brings me to another aspect of mental activity on the gross level: looking at the world, not with an intention of however loving kindness with eye shut in mediation, but with eyes wide open, and a focused attention that is powered by all four “engines” of mental activity when it comes to seeing. Meditation as mediation is how I like to think of it.

“If closing the eyes and remaining silent is meditation, then all of us are meditating every day eight or ten hours in our sleep. Why do we not call that meditation? It is silence, is it not? In sleep, the mind is stilled, yet we do not say that sleep is meditation…. At the very beginning of his Yoga Sutras, Patanjali says that stillness of mind is yoga. Later, he says that when a person is trying to still the mind, there is an opposition which occurs as new thoughts or new ideas arise in the mind. There is a tug-of-war between restraint and the rising thoughts as they come together. When there is restraint of thought, after a little while some new thoughts are born in the gap. How many of us have caught that gap between restrained thought and the rising thought? The space between the restrained thought and the rising thought is a moment of passivity. In that moment there is a state of tranquility, and a person who can increase that pause, that space between the restrained thought and the rising thought, is transformed towards the state of experience known as samādhi."

(Iyengar, 1988)

(Emphasis mine)

While my “gross level” at this point in my practice is bound by my skin, let me cite a practiced practitioner of meditation who has made a flourishing (not to mention nourishing) garden of that pause between restraint thought and rising thought to show what the inhabiting of that “pause” can bring about not just for the one who lives there, but also to the world at large. I am speaking of Wendy Johnson, who is one of the founders of the organic Farm and Garden program at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin, California, and whose book, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, took some 25 years to write:

“How does a gardener go about learning the raw truth of a place? Every spot has a voice, a particular taste, a breath of wind unique to itself, a shadow, a presence. The best gardeners I know slow way down in order to receive the tidings of the land they are bound to work. We notice where the prevailing winds comes from and how strong it is, learning from the sculptured listing of bent trees. We notice when the sunlight comes up in the morning in every season of the year and where and when it fades red west at night. We track rainfall, the first and last frost dates, snowfall and sleet, and how long it takes the land to dry out after winter ends. We pay minute attention to the grit of our living mantle of soil. We taste the waters of home with discernment and unearned pride.”

(Johnson, 2008)

We don’t need a garden to learn the “raw truth” of place. It’s just that it is harder to discriminate presence, “raw” presence, in places that we have made in order to house those rising thoughts. It’s not as if these places aren’t real, but maybe our sense of them stops short of sensing their true nature – that is, as creations to which we are related and towards which we have obligations – to which we are bound in strange ways.

Seems to me that this discussion is stuck in the “gross” level -- with my mind flitting to and fro, like horses unused to the bridle of attention. I cannot address the “feelings of bliss,” nor can I say anything about that “sense of I-AM-ness,” short of noting them. In fact, if I ever hope to know more about them, I think, I better put them out of mind!

Works Cited

Iyengar, B. (1988). The Tree of Yoga. Boston: Shambala.

Johnson, W. (2008). Gardening at the Dargon's gate. New York: Bantam.

Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

~ to be continued

Sutra Readings - 3

This post is part of a series I am writing on my readings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

 

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutras 13- 16):

The heart at the practice of yoga and the meaning of freedom are the subjects of the next four sutras. Patanjali lists these as follows:

13. The practice of yoga is the commitment to become established in the state of freedom.
14. The practice of yoga will be firmly rooted when it is maintained consistently and with dedication over a long period of time.
15. Freedom is that triumphant state of consciousness that is beyond the influence of desire. The mind ceases to thirst for anything it has seen or heard; even if what is promised in the scriptures.
16. And supreme freedom is that complete liberation from the world of change that comes from knowing the unbounded Self.

(Patanjali, 1982)

These four sutras are, I believe, the roots from which the other sutras spring as vehicles for carrying the life blood of yoga to the many forms and extremities in which it moves us. It is unfortunate that I do not know Sanskrit, because this translation seems to rely heavily on abstraction, as well as a contradiction in terms form the way I understand the aims of yoga. Particularly, to say that “freedom is the triumphant state of consciousness,” seems to me to belie the essential nature of consciousness in freedom as unmoved by will and desire, not to mention somewhat bellicose in suggesting that there is a triumph to be had…. But these are just my quibbles with the translator.

So let’s see what these fundamental sutras say to me, in my understanding and as reflected in my own vocabulary.

Sutras I.13 & I.14: The practice of yoga for me has never been about establishment of any kind. So far, it has been about exploration, or going beyond the known, or taken for granted, especially as far as my vision and sense of my body is concerned. I suppose that is a form of striving for freedom, but I never did see it that way. Freedom from a “learned ignorance” imposed by assumptions, much like Plato’s urging us to move toward the light from the shadows that obscure the true forms.

Sutra I.15: Freedom, I take it, in yoga is not about being unfettered of obligations or discipline. On the contrary, it is the rigorous and disciplined commitment to mind the fetters and obligations, that is, to recognize their true nature in order for us to recognize our true nature. What may be the “triumph” of this freedom is the ability to discriminate between the influence of ignorance and desire and consciousness of these and our relations to them. That Patanjali includes the promises in scriptures as binds to consciousness, is not ironic, but cautionary, lest we mistake learning for knowing!

Sutra I.16: Freedom is liberation from the world of change – and it can only come through knowing the “unbounded Self,” or our true nature. Does this mean that we have to retreat to a mountaintop and gaze at our navels, chanting until our own voices will seem to our ears like the songs of distant and disinterested angels?

Not at all, if you have been reading Patanjali closely so far. What this sutra says that freedom comes from the liberation of the “effects” or “interpretations” we have of the world of changes. It is the nature of the world to change. It is not the aim of yoga to stop the world, or to have us get off the merry-go-round. We are actors and factors in change, but through the commitment and practice of yoga, we can come to know both the nature of the world of change and our true nature.

Yoga, then, is not so much about a freedom “from” as it is about the power to integrate “knowing” and “sensing,” mind and body, self and other – to realize the full nature of soul. Then again, this has been much better phrased by B.K.S. Iyengar:

“Yoga means union. The union of the individual soul with the Universal Spirit is yoga. But this is too abstract a notion to be easily understood, so for our level of understanding I say that yoga is the union of body with mind and of the mind with the soul.”

(Iyengar, 1988)

 

Works Cited

Iyengar, B. (1988). The Tree of Yoga. Boston: Shambala.

Patajali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

~ to be continued

Sutra Readings - 2

This post is part of a series I am writing on my readings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1 (sutras 5 - 12):

The next eight sutras delineate the types of mental activity that may, or may not be the cause of suffering in the world. Though the opening four sutras of chapter 1 made the case that yoga is about settling the mind into silence,  by linking mental activity to an emotional state in this sutra, we get to glimpse another aspect of yoga: to break the bonds of suffering.

5. There are five types of mental activity. They may or may not cause suffering.

6. The five are:
understanding
misunderstanding
imagination
sleep
and memory.

The next six sutras define each of these mental activities in turn:

7. Understanding is correct knowledge based on direct perception, inference, or the reliable testimony of others.

Although understanding is manifest in knowledge, its foundation, according to the sutra, is in “direct perception.” (Clearly, Hume would approve of this sutra, so far) This, to me, means unmediated learning, which is a pretty tall order. Can there be such a thing as “direct” perception?

Maybe not, but an awareness of how forms of mediation skew perception fosters a sense of space between knowing and understanding so that we have some wiggle room and move away from the weight of too much taken-for-granted knowledge that is ossified in culture or the heat of too much “personal” perception attributed to nature.

Much of poetry, or rather, the power of poetry, springs from the sheltered nooks and crannies of this space between “common” knowledge and “uncommon,” or individualized perception. Does this mean that poets are further along the yogic path towards the meadows of a still mind and the hut where freedom from suffering welcomes them home? Some may well have found a way there, while others -- well, we know how much of their art springs from suffering and for whom that space between knowing and feeling has been an experience of exile.

The eighth sutra addresses the problem of misunderstanding as a delusion, once again stressing the link between knowledge and perception:

8. Misunderstanding is the delusion that stems from a false impression of reality.

In other words, it is not enough to know that you were wrong about something – you must also give up your perceptions that helped you assert that kind of knowledge. Then again, without “misunderstanding,” we would have no theatre, no drama (only dharma?).

The ninth sutra addresses imagination as a mental activity:

9. Imagination is thought based on an image conjured up by words, and is without substance.

By depriving imagination of “substance,” the sutra removes the deadening weight this type of mental activity can have on the emotions. There is no judgment implied here about the nature of the imagination itself. There is only a fact that’s being stated about the nature and origin of imagination, of fiction. Writers of fiction, politicians, newscasters, advertisers and the ilk all know how imagination works. Where they go wrong often is that they mistake the contents of these conjured images, of the imagination, for substance. It goes without saying that in many cases, this misunderstanding on the conjurers’ part is a burden suffered by innocent bystanders.

The tenth sutra puzzles me, since it addresses sleep as a mental activity:

10. Sleep is the mental activity that has as its content the sense of nothingness.

I suppose the sutra implies (if I am making the correct inference here) that while in imagination mental activity is in full charge, in sleep sense rules, but is devoid of the contents of mental activity. I never thought of sleep this way before, always looking forward to the entertaining array of dreams that fill my sleeping world. Given the sutra’s emphasis on sleep as a mental activity in which content is the sense of nothingness, I am realizing that sleep extends to our waking moments too and includes those moments for which we strive  when we drink to excess, exercise to excess, work to excess, blog to excess – well, you get the picture.

The eleventh sutra turns to memory as the locus of past experience:

11. And memory is the returning to the mind of past experience.

I love the way this sutra is phrased – and maybe that is because the skill of the translator with words. What strikes me in this sutra is that memory is a form of mental activity stuck in a time-bound now. The sutra is not talking about the content of memory as such, for we know that our memories abut situations and people in the past, shift from moment to moment (something that gives the likes of David Lynch’s movies their substance and power). No, the sutra is reminding us to unmoor the mind from the berth of past experience.

Intellectually, what this sutra says has always been clear to me. A no-brainer, if ever there was one. And yet, I didn’t “perceive” it fully until I started practicing yoga. In the past, my practice did not include the Headstand. I had it in my head that this pose was dangerous and certainly not for me. Two years ago, I decided that perhaps I ought to give it a try. (To be truthful, I was also pressured by my teacher – and rightly so.)

Months went by with my “trying.” Every time I tried, the muscles in my body tensed up, and I was thinking about how this is not a good idea, and oh, why can’t I just be done with it. I was everywhere, but right there on the mat where I was trying. Then, one day, out of sheer exhaustion, ready to give up, no longer thinking about this or that – and mostly with the help of my teacher – I got ready to go up one more time, this time resigned, rather than resisting. Before I knew it, I was in the pose, albeit at the wall, where I still prefer to practice the pose, even as I am inching away from it.

Letting go of my fear was also letting go of my way of returning to the mind of past experience.

The twelfth sutra of this section of the first chapter tells us what the core of yoga is, as well as the goal of its practice:

12. These types of mental activity are settled through the practice of yoga and the freedom it bestows.

Yoga is the stilling of the mind, which is achieved through settling mental activity, in order to free the practitioner from the bonds of suffering so that he/she may come to know our essential humanness in unbounded consciousness.

Well then, yoga is not an athletic exercise, though it is about strength and discipline. Nor is it about dropping out from society and living in one’s head, for yoga means to bring us to our senses in the here and now of our humanness, which means seeing the world as is.

 

Works Cited

Patajali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.

~to be continued

Sutra Readings - 1

I was first introduced to yoga by my father, who, having battled tuberculosis since his early twenties, took up the practice of pranayama and thought to share some its forms with me as I was growing up. For my father, yoga was medicine. All this was extraordinary, not to mention revolutionary, in a post-war and newly re-divided   Eastern Europe, where I grew up. So when I next encountered yoga, in the 1970s in Canada, I was not new to it, the athletic forms of its practice there were new to me. And so in my efforts to keep up with the forms into which we so eagerly forced our bodies -- and yet still fail at headstand, on account of fear -- I forgot what both yoga and practice meant.

My next encounter with yoga and its practice came decades after the Canadian “athletic” experience and on the heels of mounting medical problems. About two years ago, I wandered into a beginner class taught by a substitute teacher, whose youth and energy immediately put me off. As I stood there, contemplating a quite way to exit, she spoke of alignment, and her words became like hands that moved something in my spine in such a way that I felt a slight space opening up, an inkling of freedom from pain, but most of all, from a sense of being stuck where I was… Naturally, I was hooked, and those of you who read this blog know that I write about yoga now and then.

In the last two years, my yoga practice has evolved, though it still needs to deepen. Whenever I found myself on the road, the first thing I have done is to check the availability of Iyengar studios and classes. I have done Downward Dog and Headstand in studios in Budapest, Madison (Wisconsin), Boston, New York, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and Cologne (Germany). Being a reluctant traveler, practicing yoga in these diverse places that unsettled my mind has helped ground me wherever I was. I suppose it did this, because it helped me bring my mind that was still back at home somewhere, back home into my body in that “here and now.”

Well, after these last two years of bringing body and mind together, to help create space and freedom for the body, it is time to help create some space for the mind through yoga, too. Which is another way of saying that that, along with the practice of postures, it is time to “practice” exploring the “mental” side of yoga, its psychology and philosophy. And what better way to start than at the beginning, with The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

(Patanjali, 1982)

I am going to use Alistair Shearer’s translation for a text, a book that is three-quarter commentary by Shearer to the one-quarter of the actual sutras. I am also going straight to the text, so that I will read it with my own eyes and intelligence – which reside in the “root” of the tree of yoga.

(Iyengar, 1988)

The Settled Mind – Chapter 1:

Or, as I would like to characterize it, “knowledge as the obstacle to knowing”:

1. . And now the teaching of yoga begins.
2.  Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
3.  When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.
4.  Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.

That first statement asserting that “now the teaching of yoga begins” may seem superfluous at best and a tautology in the bargain, but apart from being an invocation, it puts stress on the idea that learning (or teaching) yoga has its origins, as well as its core, in the now. That is, a student or practitioner of yoga, I am always at the beginning, because all there is is the now.

By starting in the now, every time I practice, I can leave my expectations, my worries, my anticipations, my to-do list for after the practice, and what have you, outside this moment in this space. Which brings us to the next sutra, the stilling of the mind into silence. Because the mind lives on thought that flickers constantly, the stilling of this vigorous oscillation is a herculean task – and that is why one has to come back to the beginning, to the now.

The third sutra tells us that when the mind settles, our essential nature has a chance to come through the silence. Our essential nature, according to the sutra, is “unbounded consciousness.” Unbounded, as I see it, doesn’t mean that it is vast as the universe. I don’t take it to have that spatial reference. Instead, I read this to mean that that our essential nature, or what makes us human, is consciousness. Not of our identity, or history, or results on personality tests, or the school report, or the therapist’s evaluation. No, our “unbounded” consciousness is, in a way, a sense organ we all possess in common – and which we can all access.

When you think about it – and since this part of my practice is about thinking –this idea, presented thousands of years ago, contains a radical notion of equality, doesn’t it? 

The fourth sutra draws attention the activity of the mind and the ways in which it casts large shadows to keep consciousness, or our “essential nature” in the dark. And that is why there is the need, again, to always start in the now, so that we can move into the light, away from the taunting shadows those wild glimmers of the mind leave in their sparks.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we have to deny or even forget the “boundaries” that define us in our everyday world. The sutra is not inciting a riot or getting you to drop out, or even to indulge by acting on your feelings right now. It calls you to be in the now, free of prejudice, or the shapes your thoughts impose on the world unconsciously.

So what are you to do then? How will you find your way through the maze of thoughts into the light of consciousness?

With intelligence, I presume.

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Not that I can still my mind, mind you, but lately, I did have an experience that might be considered as a “candidate” for working with these four sutras. For years now, my younger son and I have been on an emotional collision course, with each of us spinning our wheels out of control every time we tried to get closer. One day, out of sheer exhaustion (and desperation), I decided I had enough of being his mother. I was done with the worrying, with the wanting, and the expectations. As far as I was concerned, he was on his own…. No sooner had I done this, give up on being his mother, he came into focus for me as a being unlike the son to the mother I was to him. Two weeks later we had a conversation (on the phone) that lasted 30 minutes, and amazing feat from a teenage boy, even in the best of circumstances.

~ to be continued

 

Works Cited

Iyengar, B. (1988). The Tree of Yoga. Boston: Shambala.

Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.