24 November 2010
Cleaning up our Karma
I first remember thinking about the possibility of reincarnation when I was in elementary school and began listening to the Indigo Girls’ song “Galileo” incessantly. The lyrics to this song are very fruitful for beginning to think about reincarnation, especially when one is young, impressionable and unsure about most things in this life and beyond. I was always comfortable with the idea of having had past lives and the possibility of living different lives in the future; it seemed too limiting and fatalistic of a thought-system to pin yourself down to this single episode in history. More and more, I have come to be more certain of this idea. As I continue to learn more about yogic philosophy, from more literary and spiritual sources, I have found so much hope by placing my belief in this system of cause and effect, action and reaction, or karma, if you want to be more definitive.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda explains karmic law:
Death and indeed sleep, “the little death,” are a mortal necessity, freeing the unenlightened human being temporarily from sense trammels. As man’s essential nature is Spirit, he receives in sleep and in death certain revivifying reminders of his incorporeity.
The equilibrating law of karma, as expounded in the Hindu scriptures, is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself. […] An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from resentment against God and man.[1]
The equilibrating law of karma, as expounded in the Hindu scriptures, is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself. […] An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from resentment against God and man.[1]
Karmic law works much like the law of conservation of energy. Energy can be transformed into varying mediums; however, there is a finite amount of energy in the world. It is how the energy is harnessed and for what purposes it is used that creates new and seemingly different actions or materials. In the same way, our souls – our true Selves – are part of a finite and all-encompassing system in which our actions and reactions determine the bodily forms and experiences we each have in each of our incarnations. The notion that we are each in control of our actions in this birth is very reassuring. While there may be past actions from previous bodily incarnations for which we are facing the effects in this life, we have the agency to clean up our karma so each subsequent incarnation is less affected by the previous one. If you choose to accept this and to live presently and to be very self-aware with a meditation on a higher life force, you have the opportunity to advance each of your future Selves to a more blissful state, enlightening your spirit. We are all interconnected and a part of the vastness that is the universe. Krishna illuminates this idea to Arjuna:
Because you trust me, Arjuna,
I will tell you what wisdom is,
The secret of life: know it
And be free of suffering, forever.
This is the supreme wisdom,
The knowing beyond all knowing,
Experienced directly, in a flash,
Eternal, and a joy to practice.
Those who are without faith
In my teaching, cannot attain me;
They endlessly return to this world,
Shuttling from death to death.
I permeate all the universe
In my unmanifest form.
All beings exist within me,
Yet I am so inconceivably
Vast, so beyond existence,
That though they are brought forth
And sustained by my limitless power,
I am not confined within them.
Just as the all-moving wind,
Wherever it goes, always
Remains in the vastness of space,
All beings remain within me.
They are gathered back into my womb
At the end of the cosmic cycle –
A hundred fifty thousand
Billion of your earthly years –
And as a new cycle begins
I send them forth once again,
Pouring from my abundance
The myriad forms of life.
These actions do not bind me, Arjuna.
I stand apart from them all,
Indifferent to their outcome,
Unattached, serene.
Under my guidance, Nature
Brings forth all beings, all things
Animate or inanimate,
And sets the whole universe in motion.[2]
In “Galileo,” Emily Saliers asks: “How long ‘til my soul gets it right? Can any human being reach that kind of light?” These are questions that many of us might often ask ourselves, especially after endeavoring upon a yogic way of living. While these questions are a valid means of critically examining a thought-system, they should not be dwelt upon too much. That energy is better put to use by living well now and not letting questions of the past or the future weigh us down so that we are unable to live presently. If we do as Krishna advises Arjuna to “dive deep into [ourselves],/fearless, one-pointed, know[ing] [Him]/ as the inexhaustible source,”[3] we can have faith in the karmic laws and live by right actions knowing that we are living well and evolving our soul so future incarnations will have less karma born unto each of them. In this way, of sure and steady practice, the hope is there of someday achieving that light of which Emily sings. When we eliminate all of our karma and all of the obstacles we face, we reach the ultimate bliss that is self-realization[4]. For this to occur, we have to act without expectation of results and without attaching meaning to each action. In this way, each of our actions will cease to necessitate a reaction and our subsequent incarnations will be less and less filled with karma with which to be dealt.
We are each on separate paths and no two paths are alike. Thus, we must each take responsibility for our own Selves and make the appropriate life choices that we require at this episode in our spiritual journey through this universe. This is encouraging news because we are offered many births to “get it right”[5] and live better for ourselves and for each other. Rather than thinking that we are each “let[ting] the next life off the hook,”[6] let us each become more aware of who we really are as we journey toward self-realization.
[1] Paramahansa Yogananda. Autobiography of a Yogi, p.289 n. Los Angeles, California: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1998.
[2] Bhagavad Gita. Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 9.1 – 9.10. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.
[3] Ibid., 9.13.
[4] Sutra 4.30 reads: “From that Samadhi all afflictions and karmas cease;” Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.
[5] Lyric from “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls, 1992.
[6] Ibid.
09 November 2010
Meeting our Fears.
Fear is an interesting thing. Most of us at some time or another is fearful of something, someone, some place. Perhaps there was a scary basement stairwell you encountered as a child, an intimidating boss, or a move to a new country you can recall that still irks you. A fear that I have been working through for quite some time now is the fear of inverting.
As a child, I would happily walk on my hands along the sandy beaches of Florida making handprints in the soggy sand as the light waves came and went. Not that long ago, I was able to do headstands in the middle of the room with my eyes closed while I was practicing yoga at the Sivananda center in Paris while studying abroad. Now, that fearlessness has mysteriously vanished. While learning the standard triad of headstand, handstand and forearm-stand as I became more and more interested in my asana practice, I clutched willingly and openly to any wall that was available and if none was, then I modified my practice and only did preparatory poses. This crutch at first was both physical and mental. I was not sure how to come up safely in these poses and did not at first have the upper body and core strength necessary to keep me up. However, over time and with precise instruction from wonderful teachers, I was able to come up on my own without the wall in all three of these postures. And yet, I still clutch to the wall. I am scared. I know I am strong enough. I know this because I can come up just far enough from the wall that I will not touch it, but mentally I know it is there and, if I want to, I can touch a toe or two to the hard plaster that reassures me that something other than me will be there if I fall besides the floor, which is always there waiting. As I grow my practice by teaching yoga to others, I am trying very hard to overcome this fear of mine that is now very much all in my head.
I think of this often: every day even. It is a big obstacle, or klesah, around which I must work in order to progress my yoga practice. Sutra 2.3 tells us that the five obstacles, or klesahs, are “ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred, and clinging to bodily life.”[1] My fear involves all of these obstacles: my ignorance at my own physical strength, my egoism to not allow myself to fall in front of others, my literal attachment to the wall and to my way of inverting in proximity to a hard surface perpendicular to the floor, my hatred (for what a strong word it is) of my reluctance to trust in myself, and my very plain clinging to my bodily life as I imagine an array of spinal injuries and concussions that will occur if I attempt inverting without my life crutch – the wall. It is interesting for me, thus, to observe the moment in classes when it is time to invert. Many teachers have the students come to the wall no matter what – I like those classes too much. Others don’t make the inversions a very big deal and then neither do I as I practice dolphin instead of going up to prophetically fall on the person teetering next to me. And then there was the teacher recently who had us come up in the middle, but only if we knew we could practice safely in the middle – I counted myself out of that group immediately to take the opportunity to work on my form with everyone else – and otherwise to stay with her instructions as she brought us through some preparatory work that would lead to a shorter stay in headstand far away from the wall. Good.
As I happily and determinedly went through the preparatory steps to gain the confidence I needed to bypass the first klesah, the man next to me threw himself into headstand so fast that the teacher came rushing to him to get him out of his unsafe posture. This gave me pause to reflect on our different approaches to inversions: my fear and his hurried excitement. While clinging to bodily life was not exhibited in the least in my neighbor’s practice as he attempted to balance his unbalanced weight on his cervical vertebrae, he was also working with his own obstacles in his own practice and in his own way. While I am not one to pass judgment on how people deal with their own fears, there was something to his eagerness to “just do it” that I so envied, until I thought about how change is really made in each of us.
It is how we deal with our fear that allows us to progress and make changes, hopefully positive ones, on our path toward enlightenment and better living. When we are brought up against our fear – be it social anxiety, a new job, or the seasonal flu – we are given a chance to acknowledge our humanity while accessing our strength, both physical and mental, to minimize the obstacles in our lives. When we meet our fear head-on with intelligence and courage, we can evolve. It is very helpful as you go through this process to seek the help of a mentor or a teacher. More important is the ability to truly trust in your Self and your own abilities and limits. When we step outside of our comfort zones, we come up against a lot of “stuff” for lack of a better term at what we might encounter there. Focusing on the Self that resides deep within this body and this mind is a very good way to meet your fears and start to overcome your obstacles, changing yourself for the better along the way.
After the headstand incident with the cervical-spine-stand neighbor, I had a dream that was a very accurate visualization of this fear issue for me. The dream, convoluted and partially forgotten by me, had to do with me swinging from a rope (similar in nature to a yoga strap, actually) hung high in a tree in a field with few surrounding trees. Holding the rope lightly with my hands, I swung back and forth with glee gaining speed as one does when swinging on a swing-set. I was free and moving in the elements. There was no harness and yet I trusted myself to hold on to the only implement keeping me from the ground far beneath my body in motion. As with most dreams, I was outside of myself watching this scene, which would normally inspire terror and fear in me and yet, it was a pleasant dream. I was comfortable in my knowledge that I could hold on and be free in the same moment of motion. It is with this attitude and awareness that we should come to those practices that bring us up against our fear.
A little fear is a healthy thing, but too much can keep us from progress and change, which keeps us from life: life is change. As I continue to work on my practice and come up against my fears, it is always helpful to keep in mind the first two sutras in the Sadhana Pada, the Portion on Practice:
(1) Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and the surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice. (2) They help us minimize obstacles and attain Samadhi.[2]
These instructions for how to develop a yoga practice are fairly simple to keep in mind, if ever more challenging to work out in our day-to-day lives. If we keep with this idea of practice and change as a means to achieving a better us, it is very valuable to come back again and again to these instructions on practice. When meeting our fears, we have an opportunity to grow. We can accept any pain that is caused as a means to purification. We can read spiritual texts or go to a respected mentor for guidance. Finally, and most importantly, we can surrender unto that inner Self, the Om that is inside each of us and constitutes all of us. Meeting our fears head-on in this manner, gives us great opportunity for evolution towards Samadhi. So, tempt yourself and play outside of your comfort zone to test your fears and see which ones are really mental manifestations that clutter the mind to keep you from knowing your true Self.
28 October 2010
Letting Go.
A yoga teacher I enjoy taking from, Julie Marx, instructs her students frequently to “undo” in her classes. This instruction always makes me smile and feel more at ease during the practice of asana and I appreciate the permission to surrender to the inner self in a moment of reflection at what can be undone in the posture. Many times, this is to release tension in the face or the neck or perhaps to do less of one action to benefit more deeply from the aggregate of actions that make-up a single pose. When I first heard Julie instruct this way, it gave me pause to reflect on what could be undone in my specific posture and then on what I could be doing less of in my day-to-day practice of yoga off of the mat. Letting-go or non-attachment is fundamental to the practice of yoga.
Sutra 1.12 of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras reads: “These mental modifications [chitta vritti] are restrained by practice and non-attachment.”[1] Remembering that according to Sutra 1.2, “the restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga,”[2] we can understand yoga to be practice and non-attachment, abhyasa and vairagyabhyam, to contain and diminish the mental chatter that we all have. The remaining of Patanjali’s sutras goes into more detail as to how this can be achieved. The Bhagavad Gita also lays out means of achieving the “undoing” that is yoga:
You have a right to your actions,
But never to your actions’ fruits.
Act for the actions’ sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.
But never to your actions’ fruits.
Act for the actions’ sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.
Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure.
This equanimity is yoga.
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure.
This equanimity is yoga.
Action is far inferior
to the yoga of insight, Arjuna.
Pitiful are those who, acting,
are attached to their actions’ fruits.[3]
to the yoga of insight, Arjuna.
Pitiful are those who, acting,
are attached to their actions’ fruits.[3]
In this passage, Krishna instructs Arjuna to live without seeking specific goals. Living for the sake of each moment, each action, is the goal. I find these words very beautiful and instructive for how one can live a yogic life. Letting go, undoing, renunciation are each and all means of practicing yoga. Just as it is important when practicing asana or instructing asana to remind oneself or one’s students to let go a little bit in each posture, it is important for each of us to undo a little bit in our lives so that we find ourselves doing less, contemplating more.
This practice of letting go may be uncomfortable for many of us as we are so used to tying ourselves to goals and expectations. We stick to tight deadlines and challenge ourselves to always be doing. The more time we have, the more we do. I am very guilty of this. I feel the need to constantly fill in the blanks in my schedule, even if filling in that blank is setting aside time to sit and read for an hour: the block of time must not go to waste!
As I attempt to step outside of my comfort zone and undo some of my expectations for my actions, I challenge you to as well. Step away from yourself for a moment and consider what can be undone. Try to let go of one thing and be OK with whatever outcome may thus arise. We are so used to attaching ourselves to people, things, institutions, situations, self-descriptors, that it is very unsettling to step away from those attachments and be true to the true inner self that each of us actually is. We are not these bodies and these jobs, we are so much more and yet less than that. An attempt to live in this way is a giant leap forward to quieting the mind, which is yoga.
Let go of who you know yourself to be.
Namaste.
21 October 2010
Escaping Inwards.
We are always so focused on the external. Our sensory perceptions take us captive as we walk with our eyes downward gazing ever always to read an email, watch a video, or flip through our vast collections of short songs on our mobile devices. Living in New York City, this hazard of being pulled outwards at every moment by a sound, a sight, a smell or perhaps even by a pull or a push has fascinated me of late as it increasingly takes me away from introspection. Sutra 35 from the Samadhi Pada reads: “Or the concentration on subtle sense perceptions can cause steadiness of mind.[1]” This sutra is perhaps best suited for those of us living in such sensory dominant worlds. We must always be efforting to stay inward focused as we are pulled in various directions by the world we inhabit.
One of the early challenges I faced when beginning to practice yoga in New York City years ago was that there was never really a quiet moment in the studio. My first favorite place to practice, on the upper Upper West Side above a bakery, offered many enticing distractions as I challenged myself into an asana practice. The smells from downstairs prompted me often to ponder as to what I would next taste to sate the hunger that was sensate and not sustenant. I would get distracted by lights from police cars, fire trucks and ambulances that would shimmer into the windows, especially in the evenings as dusk was setting. The sirens from those vehicles posed a similar and amplified response by me. Even within the classroom, I was able to direct my attention outwards to the student who came in late or left early or to that negligent yoga sinner who left their cell-phone turned on. I thought myself superior in a way to those noises. Could the world just not quiet down as I was attempting to do?
As I advanced in my practice, my strength and flexibility improved tremendously so that my asana practice now resembles nothing close to what it was when I smelled those fresh baguettes. However, I have achieved something even more valuable for myself: the ability to turn inwards. I now smile at the buzzing cell-phone and regard all of those smells, noises and sights that tempt me during practice – on and off of the mat – as indicators of a lively world of which I am a part. But, I also have the self-awareness and the steadiness of mind to stay inward focused and escape into myself to find a moment of peace on a crowded subway or a moment of quiet when a neighbor turns up the bass a little more than I might have.
I am more guilty than many at keeping my attention downwards as I walk along sidewalks and climb up and down subway stairs; however, I effort for a level of concentration on those sensory perceptions that I choose to find important at any one moment in order to live an enriched practice of yoga. Now, as I go along in rush-hour on crowded trains listening to my music, I do it less to drown out all that is going on around me than to illuminate that outside world as a place very separate from my inward escape as I choose to take part in the mad rush to get somewhere I like to be, most often a yoga class.
[1] Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.
14 October 2010
Why Yoga?
The ancient yoga system is made up of 8 limbs: yama (abstinence), niyama (observance), asana (posture), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (contemplation, absorption or super-conscious state)[1]. No one limb should take precedence over another in the practice of yoga for those who attempt to live yoga. However, what many think of when they think “yoga” is not this complex approach to achieving inner peace.
I recently began assist teaching yoga to New York City public school children. On the first day of class, the lead teacher asked the first group of 1st graders what they thought yoga was. The responses varied from energetic little bodies performing certain asana with names like “turtle” and “rocking horse” to assertions that yoga was stretching. Some of these hyper-mobile youth also answered that yoga was about relaxing. The second group of students was slightly older: 2nd and 3rd graders. While certain of them still resorted to demonstrating the poses they had previously been taught, “saddle” being a favorite, more in the group responded with answers such as “begin calm,” “meditation,” and “relaxation.” The lead teacher then went on to instruct that yoga was a mixture of most of their answers and was about connecting the body and mind through breath control. I bring up this experience because it is indicative of the constant question I am asked when I say that I teach yoga: “why yoga?”
Ultimately, I like to think that people ask this question to learn more about what yoga means to me and why I choose now to dedicate my days to teaching yoga to others, practicing yoga for myself and finding new opportunities to share yoga with my community. Still, I know behind each of these questions lies a more cynical mind that wants to analyze what type of “yoga” you teach: “Do you use incense?” “Do you chant?” “Are you a vegetarian?” While none of these questions bothers me, there is that constant sense behind each inquiry as to why one would choose the path of yoga. Thus, each inquiry makes me reflect on my own choice.
Quite simply, yoga brings a sense of purpose and happiness to my life that I have not experienced without the constant practice of asana, the attention to my breath and the inspirational words of many great teachers that I attempt to take class from daily. While I am honest enough to admit that I have not perfected any of the limbs nor do I live each of them with equal attentiveness and practice, I am trying to live yoga as I am able. This question of “why yoga?” also ventures as to what type of teacher of yoga I am and will be. We teach what we know and we teach what we practice. So, I am able to measure where I am in my own living of yoga by what I am comfortable sharing with others now.
So, why yoga and not stretching? Apart from the fact that the practice of yoga asana builds considerable strength and stamina, yoga provides a rubric upon which a practitioner can make changes to his or her every day living patterns. While I happily answer that “yes, I can teach 30 minutes of stretching” in interviews for yoga teaching jobs, I also will willingly bring in the wise words written by yogis past and present when teaching those who seek muscular flexibility and then chant “Om” when closing a class. Because, once we start opening up our body anew, our minds and spirits awaken to the possibilities of change.
Namaste.
[1] The translation for each limb was taken from Sri Swami Satchidananda’s translation of Sutra 2.29 (Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008).
07 October 2010
Starting Down That Yogic Path
The first limb of Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga is yama, translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda as abstinence. Patanjali elaborates upon this limb in Sutra 2.30 and Sri Swami Satchidananda translates it as such: “Yama consists of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and non-greed.” [1] These precepts are external in nature and direct the practitioner embarking upon the yogic path to begin with cleaning up his or her karma by observing ascetic guidelines that determine actions and relationships.
Interpretations of these guidelines can vary dramatically and can steer practitioners down a myriad of paths, each one led by the same purpose of living yoga. As with any observation of rules, it is less how the rules are simply observed than with what intention those observations are made. In a recent article by Evan Osnos on the Dalai Lama[2], I read that the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian. Having not known of this before, I was slightly shocked and also comforted. You see, while I am attempting to practice living yoga in my day-to-day existence, I eat meat regularly. I have given up eating meat on occasion. Only one of those times being for more moral reasons, the others for concern over my cholesterol. However, I came to realize that my giving up eating meat was not a genuine act of non-violence. I was not observing the second yama of truthfulness. I enjoy eating meat and I crave meat when I have not eaten it at length. While the practice of not eating meat is one followed by many who observe the practice of non-violence, the Dalai Lama has said that having been a vegetarian, he realized that his health had suffered and thus he was harming himself in order to not do harm to animals. So, he lives more in the spirit of the observation of non-violence by eating a diet inclusive of meat so as to maintain his health. It is with this attitude and intention that each yama should be observed.
Not equating myself in any way with the Dalai Lama, I respect his decision about observing the precept of non-violence and am able to better understand more so why I was not comfortable with giving up certain practices. I did not feel honest in my attempt to give up certain habits and things. If you begin any practice with a dishonest intention, then you are acting from a place of selfishness, dishonesty and greed. The self-righteous ascetic who wastes away in a desert does little for his or herself. By taking the extreme measures of abstinence offered in Sutra 2.30, one may live a sincere and purposeful life. But, if one is not at a place where the intention is pure and the expectation is none, then the result will likely bear a resentful creature whose attempt at super-evolution devolves its being karmically.
Each of our souls is at a different stage of progression with regard to our karma and thus the means by which we experience this life is particular to our present incarnation. In this way, our individual practice of living each yama will be specific and distinct. The gross understandings of “non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and non-greed” can perhaps be universally accepted; however, the nuance and implications of how each interacts with another should always be kept in mind and no judgment should be meted out to those whose intentions are pure in living each yama to the best of his or her own ability.
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