Getting started with meditation

 A friend recently asked me about my view on how to get started with meditation.  Here's my answer in the form of five keys.

 The first key is -- know that meditation is anything that centers you, purposefully. Different people at different times in their lives have different practices that help them meditate, because there are different causes of being off-center and an endless number of methods of intentionally re-centering.  In addition to very traditional methods of sitting meditation, I personally know people who meditate by knitting, running, playing music, martial arts, painting, attending support groups, and many, many other things.  One of the most important things about re-centering, finding balance, is that it's a mainly just-for-today thing, a constant course-correction process. 

 Which leads to the second key -- spot check. Take one minute to do a back-of-the-envelope inventory. How are you doing in terms of balance in some key areas -- rest / activity, diet / elimination, work / play, solitude / social time, mental / physical, stability / change?  You may have your own axes of assessment -- use them.  The key is to see if there any areas where you're consistently further to one end of the spectrum than you know is healthy for you, or are falling short of what you really want or need?  Once you are in touch with what's not quite right about the complexion of your life right now, ask, what can I do that might help?  Try to keep the answers simple and specific-- like -- "need more quiet", or "get exercise" or "make music" or whatever.

  Over time, make the spot-check a continual habit. I've benefited from setting a timer on my computer or cel-phone for various lengths of time or times of day -- every six minutes, every hour, at meal-times, before bed, etc, to pause and do a momentary check-in and undertake a gentle course-correction.  The more frequent the course-correction, the gentler the invention usually.  If it's every six minutes, I usually just take a deep breath, stretch my arms or twist in my chair, and continue what I'm doing.  If I don't do it for weeks or months, I can need a long vacation and lots of effort to find that clarity and center again.

 The third key is -- creative action. Once you know what you need, choose a simple practice or method to help begin to restore personal balance -- ideally, a way you're already know you are pretty skilled with or enjoy.  For some people, having solitary highly-focused desk jobs and car-based commutes, the key things they need to restore balance is vigorous exercise of some kind and an opportunity to be social in a creative way, like playing music or dancing. For others, who are working on their feet, dealing with the public, multi-tasking, using public transit, the key thing is time to be alone and do something very simple, like sitting quietly just watching the breath rise and fall.  Choose a practice that you know you can definitely do -- it really can be anything that you think will work to help center you, like sitting quietly for ten minutes just observing your mind, or going for a short jog, or jamming out musically with friends once a week. If you're choosing something you've already done before -- sport, art, music, just sitting doing nothing -- it's important that you now choose to do this practice with a primary intention of centering yourself, of restoring balance in your self and in your life, not with any external goal. That's what makes it meditative; without this intention clear, it's just not going to work consistently as meditation.

  The fourth key is -- commit to a regular effort.  When getting started, make the commitment for a brief but substantial time frame, say ten minutes a day for three weeks, or once a week for an hour for six weeks.  Then, see if the benefit you experience is worth it.  Especially when starting out, the deeper benefits require some consistency to realize themselves, so an initial commitment to a specific practice for a specific time frame to get yourself over the hump is key.  For me, I have three 1-hour commitments to yoga and meditation on different evenings of the week that I do with groups, and I put them into my calendar and treat them as real and important as any other appointment, deadline or commitment in my life.

  Fifth -- get curious. Be open.  Go where the practice leads you. Whatever the specific practices of centering you work with, as soon as they start to work, you are likely to become  inspired to deepen your knowledge and connection to various techniques or traditions behind them. Honor that curiosity, that calling--for many, it is the most powerful way to opening new creative possibilities, resolving long-standing issues, and fostering personal growth that leads to greater peace, contentment and success.  

  Last (same as the first) -- remember the point. Like anything in life, if you don't experience the benefit, you won't continue for too long. So this is the single most important thing for the beginner -- do not confuse the various techniques and traditions of meditation for the essence of it.  The essence of meditation is centering, and you can achieve this on your very first day of conscious effort at taking a spot check, choosing a practice, and doing it.  

  As your practice deepens and evolves, the techniques and traditions can open up new possibilities and new growth but they still should be done with this basic intent firmly in mind.  There is an art or a science to many practices, valuable for their own sake as well, and the specific mental, verbal, physical, breathing and movement techniques of meditation that exist can lead to tremendously accelerated growth and deeper peace. Yet when those aspects overshadow the basic personal purpose of centering, it's time to remind yourself of this purpose, and either accept that what you're doing is no longer meditation, or return to doing it in a way that is.  So remind yourself of this intention whenever you begin practice and whenever it seems to have slipped away in the course of doing it, and you'll again experience the benefit. This mindfulness is key to any practice working.  

  So these five keys are what make any method of meditation work: mindfulness of intention, regular spot-check, creative action, commitment, and curiosity.  Keep applying these and whatever shape your meditation efforts take, you will experience the benefits and make steady progress.

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A Sane Discussion of What's Wrong with Current US Economic Theory

Worth watching!  This is the first sane discussion of U.S. economics that I’ve seen in a very long time. 

Thanks to http://www.christiansarkar.com/ for posting.

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Why I blog

What is blogging to me?

Most people who were around when it began know blog is short for web-log. 
  • Web -- the world wide web, defined by the HTTP protocol, a medium for computerized transport of semi-structured information, related to weave, from Old German
  • Log -- a piece of a tree, then the act of writing onto one as ships used wooden logs as a medium of tracking progress, onomatopoeically from Greek logos for "word, speech, discourse, reason"
Etymologies adapted & paraphrased from http://www.etymonline.com.

While having a meditative conversation today with my best friend, I realized that I blogged long before I got on the Internet. The essence of blogging is sharing words in a thoughtful social medium, initially as monologue, but potentially as conversation.  I shared this kind of space in my friendships with certain people over the years; sometimes it was in person, on the phone, in email, on group listservs, and on websites.  Or, through books.

It is always a special space when a friend could give me a prompt like, "So, what's been up with you?" and indulge me a thoughtful, perhaps long-winded answer, without judgment or interjection.  And then ease into conversation with me about it. 

This is the essence of blogging to me -- the holding and usage of this monologue-initiated and subsequently conversational space.  It may happen on a blog website, or in any medium in which such mode of communication is possible, which includes everything from books to tweets. To me Facebook and Twitter status updates are a form of blogging,   and not actually very good because you don't actually know for sure that anyone is really listening...

So I think blogging is actually a very good term for a whole range of discursive spaces as it reflects their simultaneously socially interconnected and verbal nature.  

Why do I blog?

I blog to:
- meditatively begin to understand my world, to experience it and extend it through the lens of what it becomes when verbalized and shared
- share and extend my meditation through its verbal product with an audience, whether it is one person on the other end of the phone, or hundreds or thousands of people on the web
- experience the engagement of that audience, to open myself to the impact of that attention on my own appreciation of my experience
- evolve myself, and allow my evolution to occur in part in a shared space in the faith that will accelerate my own process and enrich others in some way

It's a virtuous feedback cycle wherein experience and meditation give rise to the initial communication, which is received as an experiential meditation by an audience, and then a greater meaning evolves as the message is returned, deepened through the prism of others' experience.  

How can I blog better?

It's claimed by some communication experts that human communication is 93% non-verbal; only 7% of the total message you convey in in the words you actually say.  The rest is voice tone, body language, and context, including the emotional, intellectual, and social state of those participating.  So, approximately, words are essentially none of the real message communicated.  If this is so, how can there be any hope of blogging really working for the aims I articulated above?  

I realize now that having a real audience, even if only one person, truly matters.  As a medium of social meditation, the integrity of the experience breaks down if no one is really listening, with their whole self.  A million people mostly listening isn't the same as, or to my mind, as useful as, one person who knows me or is willing to open themselves to knowing me more deeply, who is really, fully listening with their whole self.  

Now sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, that one person can simply be me, at a later time.  I'll post a tweet or status update as a way of making a note for myself.  But, for this to work, I regularly need to cycle back through my posts and be really present with them from the vantage point of a 'different self', to be in a perspective-taking and meditative-listening mode, not simply re-reading prior posts without this deeper intent.   

Better still is to have someone tuned-in, real-time.  Although the window of what constitutes "real-time" is different for a full-length book (years to decades), long-form article for publication (months to years), blog post (two-three days), an FB status update (a day and a half) a tweet (a few hours). This immediacy is enormously important to the efficacy of blogging as a medium of collaborative co-evolution, which is what I aim for it to be.

I invite all who read this to meet me here, at this depth of real engagement, sharing and listening with one another  We have the opportunity to more fully realize our full selves here and truly need each other to seize it.

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Comments on yoga celebrity and true refuge

There was a Newsweek piece today cheekily entitled Bow Down to the Yoga Teacher that brought up some interesting thoughts for me on why people do just that.

Posted three comments about it, two to YogaDork.com where I first heard about it – 
http://www.yogadork.com/news/newsweek-on-fame-monsters-and-yoga-groupies/comment-page-1/#comment-18394

And then one directly on the Newsweek site – 
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/20/bow-down-to-the-yoga-teacher.html

Here were my key points. From YogaDork comment:

My greatest experience of learning with it has been through my principle yoga teacher — Amma. She’s a very public figure — over 50,000 people have come to see her at a time when she tours in India. She’s started hundreds of universities, hospitals, orphanages, housing programs, has toured the world for decades giving her particular message of realizing peace through a life of Love and Service. No matter how many people come to her, she always gives each person a heartfelt, personal audience and hug. And she’s humble enough to continue in her own spiritual practices daily and not make any claims of perfection — yet, and here’s the tricky part for me — she allows others who wish to worship her as the Goddess to do so.

So one point is that fame and celebrity for yogis, and the deeply egoistic, dualistic relationships that can arise from it are not just a Western phenomenon. They’re the product of two things that can arise anywhere:

1) a teacher really does have something special to offer

2) many who seek need answers so badly that they’re willing to believe that because a teacher has something special to offer, that they are above the ordinary human experience of ego, confusion, despair, and healing

The problems come when teachers themselves begin to believe the second item — that they are above the universality of suffering. That’s a recipe for megalomania.

For me, Amma demonstrates it’s possible to allow yourself to be an object of devotion or worship from a place of real humility, and that there can be real good in this for those doing the worshipping.

Isn’t it better they have their idealization of you to hold on to if they need it, rather than nothing at all? The state of woundedness and fearfulness that would make a person cling so tightly to an ideal of a teacher is a temporary condition, and it offers a safe place, a refuge in which to heal. Many people need that, and don’t have it within themselves or in their previous ideas about the divine.

This is the role of a sat-guru, and my belief is that there’s nothing wrong with it, so long as the guru encourages their followers to look beyond the duality of disciple-guru context when they are ready.

Amma’s teaching to her followers is — learn to see Amma in everyone — but she recognizes that many people’s karma doesn’t allow them to see and embrace that for some time on their journey, and allows for that too.

 
And from Newsweek comment:

It's easy and I believe good to poke some fun at overblown egos, and to admonish teachers against megalomania.

It's also a very interesting thing to me to ask, why do people set up others as Gods? What's going on with a person that they'd need to do that? And what's the good in it? Since this pattern is at the root of all religion -- setting someone up as a God -- and it's been going on since time immemorial, what need is it fulfilling?  

My take is that people need refuge, a safe place to heal from the otherwise overwhelming hurt and confusion which life brings. And that there's nothing wrong in needing that, and in taking refuge where you are called to take it -- whether in a God, religion, teacher or practice. For many, these may be better refuges than the alternatives our society often encourages -- consumerism, addictions, and other things that function more as temporary escape than true refuge.  
   

To me, however you do it, the trick is, to know you're taking refuge -- which a good teacher can help you see -- and to know that this can be a temporary stage in your evolution, that it is possible for you to heal and to grow strong enough, that you can help others through the hard things and confusions in their lives too.  


And one more comment on YogaDork:

I've found it goes in waves for me .  There's an ebb and flow of generosity and self-care, of offering to myself that I may be of service to others.  

In that vein of holding seeming opposites at once, I recognize there's a difference to me between being a celebrity and seeking celebrity, but not so big... Fame and humility can be at odds, both for those receiving adulation and those giving.    But they aren't necessarily.  

Similarly, seeking fame and being humble are not always at odds  -- if the seeking is part of an honest self-estimation that you may have a better message to offer the world than many of the messages that currently have a wide platform, then you need to honor that conviction ...

Human beings are the most social animal.  It's certainly part of my humanity to seek social status, the approval of others, and fame.  It's part of my humanity to be attracted to and give approval to others' status and fame, and to take refuge in a great personality....  To me, it's just part of the karma we're all working out, a part of the journey.

I'm a bit dubious of anyone claiming to be absolutely beyond these things or willing to criticize others they don't really know on a public stage for pursuing celebrity, and especially those who do so without acknowledging they're building their own celebrity in doing so.... 

I think we all 'know' yoga to varying degrees, if yoga is a state of Union and  transcendence of the ordinary dualistic, subject-object, Us-Them, Me-Not Me relationship with the world.  There are just those who don't know they know (young children), those who do (realized yogis who may or may not call themselves 'realized yogis'), and those who think they know more than they do (probably most all of us who read, write, and 'do' yoga :-)...

To me, humility is being true to as much as you really are, acknowledging both your flawed, limited, long-suffering humanity at the same time as your creative, eternal, joyous divinity.   They are all One thing....  

That's my yoga.  

Though it's not always my first instinct,  I like to believe it has room in it to love and respect others, wherever they are in their journey.

Filed under  //  yoga  
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On Objectification and Yoga

I’ve been meditating recently on how better to describe the type of yoga I practice – and its relation to all the other ‘yoga’ out there.  An intuition has been evolving and recently distilled itself into this:

 

My yoga is decidedly not the objectification of yoga.  In fact, it can encompass all yoga that moves away from the objectification process – whether it is aimed at the body, the spirit, money, relationships, society, truth, the compulsion to objectify is itself perhaps our greatest ailment.  

 

Words are inherently objectifying, as is all representation -- including images, videos, and other recordings, whether mental or in other media.  There is a direct experience of one’s own Truth, of Life filled with Joy and Creativity, Sorrow and Stuckness,  the real Truth of our human grandeur and frailty that is at the heart of yoga.

 

A reverence for this full, direct experience of the deepest Truth is what my personal path of yoga means to me.   People on any path can share in this reverence for that deep Truth– not just self-avowed yogis.   I recognize it instantly when I see it in myself and others – it’s the very best thing.  Young children almost always have it.

 

The objectification of yoga is an inevitable consequence of 3000 years of scientific and philosophical discourse which began with Greek Atomists, crystallized by Aristotle, as well as the Indian Vaisheshika philosophers, who articulated an approach that objectifies the entire universe.  It turns out this view is immensely useful for the manipulation of the physical world, and thus underpins much of modern science, technology and economy.  It is, however, not the whole story. 

 

The assertion of the objectifying view is that there are things and voids in between them.  This makes Me different than You, and lets me use you, whether you are a person, corporation, animal, or other thing.   So we objectify one another – economically (through buying and selling ourselves without regard for each other’s true well-being), socially (through status-seeking, in-group formation, and ostracism whether forced or suggested), physically (through fantasy and violence, perpetrated often first and most on ourselves) -- in myriad ways.

 

The assertion of the yogic view is that there is but one Thing, a deep, interwoven Unity of which we are all apart.  All that ultimately separates us is our very own notion that we are apart, not reality itself, which is One.  In this view, I participate in a Universal field that is Loving, Respectful, Hopeful, Creative, Playful, Sexy, Beautiful, True.  

 

When I am awake to this reality, what comes clear is the absurdity of thinking everything is cut off from everything else, that I can succeed with the approach of objectifying anyone or anything for very long.    It just doesn’t. 

 

Objectification is a very useful intellectual tool for mathematical analysis of relationships in a chemical laboratory or an economic transaction, but it is not the whole story.  Yoga teaches me to embrace and include, but never stop, with the objectified version of reality.

 

There’s always something Truer and deeper as well.   The practices of yoga are intended to awaken a bit more into that Truth.  My teacher, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, has said, “It’s easy to wake up someone who is sleeping, but very difficult to wake up someone pretending to be asleep.”

 

I think we have, especially among the scientific and economic materialists in the Western mindset, taken objectification far too far, and in a sense, a big part of world politics and economy, and consequently, many people’s notions of personal security, are built upon it.   And we have pretended for too long to be asleep to this deeper truth of ourselves, of Life and the Universe.

 

It’s time to for me to assert that objectification is useful as an analytic technique, but only to a point.  As I do, I’m finding a deep happiness and passionate desire to be alive and of loving service to all Creation comes and stays when I acknowledge and embrace this Truth.  And that to me is the real point of all yoga.

Filed under  //  yoga  
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On "teaching yoga" and "spiritual activism"

One of my first spiritual and most important teachers in adult life was my great uncle Dr. NC Surya, an Integral Yogi in the Sri Aurobindo tradition.  He wrote that yogic speech is accurate, compassionate, appropriate, and useful.  If it can’t be all of these things, then silence is preferable.  As my readers I hope are a community of spiritual and scientific-minded progressives, I wanted to share some of my experience and perspective on “yoga teachers” and “spiritual activists”, in hope they are of some service to some of you, who are likely to interact with (or yourselves be among) those who so consider themselves.

In my own yoga journey, I’ve been very wary of “teaching yoga” and being “taught yoga” in the Western frame even though I’m descended from a long line of yogis, have completed a yoga teacher training program taught by someone who is a longtime yogi and who ran the course on a pure donation basis.  I know in my heart I’ve been a sincere aspirant and witness to my own journey of yoga over the last 18 years of adult life.  That conscious journey began when I said my first heartfelt prayer to Sri Krishna at age 16, just before leaving home for college, asking for the blessing of His Wisdom – one He has given many times over in various ways, almost always as a result of mis-steps and mistakes. 

However, the total journey I discovered began long before even that, as I grew up in a home in which spiritual values were integrated into the very fabric of being.   On a recent trip to the village in India from which I am descended, I discovered that (like many Hindu families) all my relations (up to my generation) for the past 700 some years at least, are named from the Hindu pantheon,  whether after Ganesh, Saraswati, Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, the Goddess, or others,  and (unlike many) we are descended from a line of Hindu Brahmins whose chief role was village administration, which blended the deeply practical – concern for issues of agricultural science, justice, education, health care, and fiscal management -- with ancient spiritual values and practices – temple management, tantric rituals, and conducting rites of passage.   So the practicalities of teaching and leading people in yoga and spirituality are deeply ingrained.  Also, as I mentioned, among many other dimensions of spiritual life, I completed a yoga teacher training course, and discovered that this may allow one to safely lead a hatha class.  However, due to my upbringing, I was also powerfully cautioned by an inner voice that, in the ancient tradition, there are two primary qualifications to truly teach others Yoga, and neither involves a TT program. 

The first, most fundamental one is direct, personal experience of Truth (God, the Infinite, the All-pervading Soul, Supermind, Transcendent Love, the nameless, or however one conceives it), often first achieved spontaneously, but then sustained over the better part of a lifetime through some method of practice. The traditional methods discussed in the principal yogic text -- the Bhagavad Gita -- vary from meditation, to intellectual contemplation, to devotional practice and service.  Not even mentioned there, and mainly used as a support to the body to recover from the strain of extreme lengths of sitting or service activities, Hatha practices developed, both vinyasa (flowing) or asana (situated). 

In modern times, my experience is that yoga can meaningfully be said to include the “conscious contact” which 12-step practitioners speak of and also the profound awakening which is experienced by hatha-yogis who extend their body-based practices into comprehensive healing modalities.  Unfortunately, in the West the physical practices of hatha have become synonymous with ‘yoga’ for the uninitiated, without the understanding that these were initially intended as supplementary aids to people established in a traditional path, not as a complete path unto itself.  Even in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the most seminal work for many Hatha yogis, Hatha is but one of eight limbs of practice and in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, another key Hatha text, it is one of four areas.   

So many people now come to yoga first through Hatha and quickly experience the deep gifts of the yogic intention as expressed in postures, and then go on to ‘roll-their-own’ awakening including other modes to varying degrees.  Yet however one proceeds toward attaining this realization of Truth, a teacher is strongly suggested and advised, but not required – as there is a universal Truth and Teacher which is available to all, and many great yogis are self-realized.   Regardless of which path one proceeds along, this profession of self-realization is what it truly means to be a yogi, and it is a journey -- not a destination or an achievement, or a certifiable event.  

Thus, qualification #1: Become a yogi.

 The second qualification to teach yoga is to be personally asked to teach by a sincere aspirant.  The suggestion for most people is to find and cultivate a deeply personal guru-shishya (teacher-disciple) relationship sustained over years, and make that the center of the process of individual spiritual awakening.  The importance of this cannot be overstated.  It is the rare being who arrives into this life able to chart their own course to Truth without becoming stuck in any of the many, many pitfalls which can beset any aspirant to excellence in any discipline – money, security, sex, and fame foremost among them.   To teach others well, most of us must experience the love and attention of a true teacher ourselves.  If we can be our own Teacher, that is wonderful, but many are often beset by the pitfall of modern individualism -- drawn to that self-directed path out of hubris and arrogance, not because it is what most will be of service to themselves and others…   

Thus, qualification #2: Teach when asked.

The notion of “Yoga Teacher” and “Yoga Teacher Training” is a very recent, Western, assembly-line, industrial-age approach that has many pitfalls – not to say that some true yogis haven’t evolved from this approach -- but much confusion and conflict has as well.  The biggest pitfall is the status-seeking inherent in the notion of external criteria and certification, a major block to humility and to the direct experience of Union which is at the heart of what the word Yoga means.  A closely related pitfall is the arrogance to believe that because one is “certified to teach” yoga or even made a celebrity yoga teacher by our modern machinery of media, that it necessarily means anything about the internal experience of Truth that is at the heart of being a yogi.  Renunciation, letting go, of such ego binds are fundamental to the humility required to know God and teach others to know God; this notion is fundamental to all of the Eastern spiritual paths, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Yogic.  This topic of “surrendering the spiritual ego” is one I’ve never seen addressed in any TT curriculum, but is perhaps the most fundamental issue of the whole endeavor of being a “yoga teacher” or public-facing “spiritual activism”.

I’m going on about this at some length because I feel much of those involved in controversy around various aspects of modern yoga practice and its recent outgrowth of “spiritual activism” are to some degree suffering from their disconnect with the source of the yogic tradition, yet are trying to speak as authorities on yoga in their respective ways, but missing something essential from the source.  A key step in the awakening process is to dash the subtle, pervasive illusion that somehow because we all speak the same textual language, be it English or Sanskrit, we all speak the same language.  We do not at all.  In the traditional view, we are profoundly fortunate to find even one true teacher who truly understands the contours of our karma and can guide us confidently in its release, the real language of the spirit.

Various people come from different schools.  The modern intellectual – a jnana-yogi, though they may not name it as such will have a very different approach than those to have first come to yoga through hatha, and who are in a process of expanding their vision and path into that of karma-yoga as “spiritual activists”.  These are deeply different in their mechanisms of action, in their modalities, in their underlying philosophies, in the lifetimes of karma that led us to them – and people on different paths are just not always going to interface with each other very well.  The various systems of yoga articulated in the Bhagavad Gita (namely jnana yoga, raja yoga and karma yoga) did not arise simply for the sake of variety or to create a distinction without a difference – the systems were necessarily held separate in order for the respective paths to work.

Jnana-yoga is about going through the verbal, analytical, discursive faculties toward God.  In this frame, interpersonal conflict over great ideas and the inherent challenges of anger and fear this conflict brings, is necessary and useful, even central, to the journey.  However, Karma-yoga is about the physical, emotional and social planes primarily.  In this frame, heartfelt love of God and active, practical service to His Creation is the path – and raising interpersonal conflict over mere ideas can be viewed as a needlessly hurtful and wasteful. Hopefully, as a jnana-yogi progresses, there is a realization of the power of words and ideas, and of the impact of conflict, and he becomes far more judicious in their application; and as the karma-yogi progresses, there is a realization that the bumps on the path of service are themselves the path and need to be embraced as originating from the Source one seeks to serve.

As Sri Krishna expounds in the Bhagavad Gita, both paths are valid and lead to the same place hopefully – lives of deeply awakened service to the cause of relieving suffering -- but even then, the lives of a jnana-yogi and karma-yogi may well look very different.  However, from that place of awakened consciousness, we are able to recognize each other as liberated beings and understand each other as natural allies united in intention, if not the arc of our actions...

My Great Uncle Dr. NC Surya left his body in 1996. My guru today is Mata Amritanandamayi (also known as Amma, the Hugging Saint).  She was once asked, “What is it like when you meet another mahatma?” She replied, “It’s as though two mirrors are looking into one another.”  What a beautiful image – enlightened infinities reflecting into one other ... 

I pray this vision is realized for all of us -- that we can forgive, embrace one another as we are, and evolve together toward our Highest Purpose, and reflect each others’ light into each other and into the world infinitely.   In that process, may we trust that all the aims of our “yoga teaching” and “spiritual activism” will naturally unfold and manifest as they were meant to all along… 

I hope my post here was accurate, appropriate, compassionate, and useful, and invite responses and questions offered in the same spirit. 

Om Namah Shivaya -- I bow to the Light in you all!

 

Filed under  //  yoga  
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Specific Diseconomy of Nonprofits

My great-uncle NC Surya wrote often about the topic of 'specific diseconomy' -- a measure of the degree to which systems are self-undermining.  In his case, as a doctor, he was interested in the degree to which the medical system contributed to people's sickness, and thereby perpetuates itself.  The concept applies anywhere -- degree to which legal system contributes to injustice or IT systems contribute to inefficiency -- but it happens gradually so systems get more stuck over time...  This recent SSIR article entitled The Nonprofit Paradox (freely available for another week, until the end of July 2010)  has a similar flavor I thought worth sharing focusing on non-profits.  In this case, he talks about how nonprofits can take on the personality of the problem they try to solve. 

 

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Paths Many--Truth One

In response to this article from Dr. Aseem Shukla in the Washington Post online entitled The Theft of Yoga, and comments from Deepak Chopra and many others -- Love and Light to you all!

In the healthy debate over the origins and intentions of yoga,  please let us not lose sight that – in those first ancient words of the Dao De Jing – The Way that can be spoken is not the True Way. 

Hinduism, Yoga, Hatha, Dharma, Asana ....  These are all made-up words, first created by seers to aid seekers on their path.  Then, others carried those words beyond those first compassionate offerings -- some in the same spirit --but others to build walls of ignorance out of fear, walls through which seekers must even now struggle to move through.   Either way, the words were never, and even now, are not Truth.  At best, they are aids on our journey.  At worst, they are sources of division and difficulty.   

Let us pray we choose to allow these words to aid…. And may we reaffirm now in our hearts -- words are not Truth and cannot contain Truth.

 Only We can do that, in how We live, and love and serve one another.  This is true regardless of the place, time, and nature of the chosen path. 

Whether through athleticism (hatha), devotion (bhakti), song (bhajans and kirtan), service (seva), ritual (tantra), sacrifice (yajna), sensory indulgence (vama), renunciation (sanyaasa), individualism (ahamkara), communism (saamyavada),  knowledge (jnana), investigating the mind (raja-yoga), repetition (japa), life science (ayurveda), dance (natya), martial arts (dhanurveda),  despair (vishada), fellowship (sangha),  spiritual suffering (tapas), laughter (haasa) --  all these, and many other approaches, tools and methods -- when practiced with the spirit of sincere seeking, have led people in every place and time to awakening, and to people teaching one another how they did it.

Some paths explicitly set out with that aim, but all paths arrive at it eventually, through the inherent virtue of their sincere practitioners. This consistent fact -- that people awaken to Light and Peace whenever they honestly try -- this is the evidence that there is a Truth, and that It is beyond all words and methods, and is reachable by anyone.    

This is as true in America today as it was in ancient India, which is why above I used the English words for these diverse practices first -- they are techniques, just as scientists use in the lab.  They are not the province of any one culture, but, while they have their historical and cultural roots to some extent in particular places and times, they are our common human heritage. 

In America, it is the founding premise of the republic.  Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence –

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

America begins speaking of self-evident Truth.   

Yoga is  ancient India’s name for the process of awakening to this Truth – of coming into Union -- whatever the path. But Union with what exactly?  A traditional answer is Union with Truth, God, the Infinite, the Universe, or however you call your higher power.   

My experience on my path thus far is that when one experiences this Union, it can happen as a sudden intuition of mystic unity with all that Is.  I had such a moment when I was 19,  in my home near Washington, looking out at evergreen trees, and realizing that we are not separate, that everything is deeply bound together, that even in that moment, I was breathing in the air they had just breathed out, that always, we are in this intimate, interwoven web of life and being.  

That experience I cherish, and it led me to my first deep relationship with a spiritual teacher -- my great Uncle NC Surya.  But I've also seen in the years since that the more substantial change occurs gradually, in stages, as the intuition of unity takes a great deal of work to integrate fully, and the more it does, the more the 'with' part (of Union) slowly drops away -- there is less and less of an other with which to unite.  It is a state of completeness or fullness unto itself.  In this way, the Self evidences Truth, by direct experience.

In America, reading revolutionaries like Paine or Jefferson, or philosophical forefathers like Locke, one is hard pressed to imagine that these men didn't also have spiritual experiences and lives.  Somewhere, they found the courage to imagine and bring into being a society based on such self-evident Truth as the equal rights of all.   Yes, it was deeply flawed -- they were not perfect any more than many Indian swamis and yogis who still, at some level even if not publicly, cling to ancient caste, class and gender distinctions. 

The beautiful thing is  -- in America,  awareness of self-evident truth is not some rarefied state only some select few attain; it is our birthright.  In India, living in this Truth is well understood to be our most universally shared experience -- not only with countrymen, but all human beings, other animals, plants, the Earth, Sun and stars. 

In any place, we can just forget or ignore it sometimes (or a lot), and separate ourselves from each other, believing how we differ is greater than what we share. 

That is a great falsity.  We are One.

The ancient Eeshavasya (“Lord’s Abode) Upanishad is a revered mantra which beautifully expresses Union, as that fullness or completeness, which is the Lord’s Abode, the dwelling-place of Truth:

Purnamidah Purnamidam
     That is complete -- This is complete
Purnaat Purnamudacyate

    From That Completeness comes This Completeness
Purnasya Purnamadaya

    If we take away This Completeness from That Completeness
Purnameva Vashishyate

   Only Completeness remains

Click here to download this beautiful recording off Ravi Shankar's Chants of India. 221 KB

… So ...  Relax. You are held -- in Truth, in Completeness – and so are we all.  When that sense of ease arises, then Union with that Truth which cannot be spoken, is possible.

Now what is the aim of this Union and the peace that comes with awakening to It?

When an ox, famer and plow are yoked together, they create a new life-giving entity that prepares the field to issue its bounty. The point is not merely to learn intellectually how to unite the ox and plow, or even to do it just once; that is but the beginning of the useful work that happens.  Once united, the ox, farmer and plow have their ultimate purpose fulfilled in the harvest, and that bounty is also dependent on their careful cooperation with nature, and grace of Earth and Sun to provide life-giving conditions. 

Similarly, yoga is the work of plowing the field of life, of staying connected to Truth, and serving It.  So it is with all forms of sincere seeking – growing in a deep, heartfelt, intuitive way into one's right relation to the universe and oneself -- as a part of a whole, as a part that can see and know the whole, and thereby honor it and make the conscious choice to align with it. This work naturally, gradually gives rise to the life of service that results from such Union. 

Just as there are many processes by which one may experience such Union, there are even more ways in which this knowledge in turn issues out in action -- through love, service, generosity, devotion, art, inquiry, scholarship -- these are but a few ways of honoring one’s own Truth, of enjoying the experience of It while fulfilling one's duty  to abide It.

Being a yogi is in fact our natural condition.  It is our choice, whether to invite all the words, ideas, and practices either to lead us astray into confusion, conflict and harm, both internal and external – or to lead us back home into our Selves, our Truth. 

So, once again -- we must remember always, the Way that can be spoken is not the True Way.   The True Way is found only in our own experience on our own path, and it is our personal Truth.   One way I feel I have drawn closer to It is when I can recognize deeply, intuitively know, that my experience of It is the same Truth that others have found, that there is but One.

Along the way, I've long felt there's no great mystery to awakening people once I learned what  -- usually, they are deeply humble, non-judging, and forgiving, ever growing in dignity, in their capacity to love themselves and others, in laughter and joy,  in their ability to behold beauty, and in being true to their heartfelt calling in  life.  To me, this is the real-life four-dimensional moving picture of yoga.  It knows every country and language and every era. 

So finally, with the frame in which we are asking the question on firm ground -- we can meaningfully turn to the debate of Dr. Shukla and Dr. Chopra – is yoga as practiced in America aware enough of its roots in Hinduism? 

My view is that I say this is not a good question to ask, for three reasons. Two I've already addressed -- first, the falsity of discursive, verbal truths, and Truth of direct experience -- and second, the understanding that the essence of yoga is universal -- that yogis have been in every era, in every place.  

So the answer for each of us on a personal level depends entirely on whether we have yet come to know what is our personal yogic path, and whether we are called to the ancient Vedic, Buddhist or Christian roots, or to the modern, diverse global branches of every kind.  None are wrong; they are simply preferences for an entry point to a Universal journey.  They all lead to the same place, even if they are not trying to lead anywhere, if we are sincere seekers, the needed path will reveal itself.  The Truth is that powerful. 

If you are called to the Vedas or asceticism or rigorous hatha practice, wonderful!  These are tried and true ancient paths.  They are often slow, but sure.  If you are called to modern teachers and teachings, that's wonderful too. 

Even drug abuse or gluttony or sexual addiction can serve the intention to find freedom from suffering, if one has turned to those things sincerely seeking a way out of suffering and into the light, even those clearly harmful paths will reveal Truth in due course, by demonstrating the wisdom of abstinence or moderation as appropriate for you, and leading you to people who can help you along such a path. Needless to say, those are far riskier and more painful roads, and the suffering you endure may overwhelm this body you inhabit, before the needed moment of clarity and awakening arrives in this lifetime.  

But the awakening to Truth can also come much more decisively and quickly, if one chooses to use the pain of their path as fuel for spiritual growth.  I have seen many, many people come into direct and deep communion with their Higher Power in just such a way, of healing the pain of various self-imposed harms, then leading the way to healing the pain of all our life experiences, our past karma. 

Karma lives on in many ways -- painful memories, phobias, prejudices and other serious inexplicable or irrational limitations, harmful personal habits, and diminished feeling of freedom and joy that is our natural state when we feel deeply loved, respected, and useful. 
For me, directing healing intention and gentle action toward healing past karma is the basis of why any path works: whether that is through asana (postures) or talk therapy or any sincere striving.  In the presence of sincere striving for anything -- whether relief from the pain, whether riches, fame and fortune or whether for spiritual attainment -- Truth will eventually put you face to face with your karma. Any path, so long as you are true to your desire to be free of suffering, can heal it.

In the end, yoga is the universal inner calling to seek and find and grow into Truth --  there is no wrong choice, no universally right method -- there is just the next step on a wonderful path opening out before us in the present moment. Any tradition, any experience can enrich and inform us -- whether the preserved words of ancient Avatars like Krishna, or an interaction with a homeless person, or yet another moment of our routines of life -- if only we allow it.

 

Om Lokah Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu
  May we humbly pray that all beings everywhere be happy and free

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti
  Humbly we pray for peace, peace, peace

Om Shree Gurubhyo Namaha
  Humbly we bow in reverence to all those who have removed darkness from our path

Hari Om
  To that Truth which Sustains All, we pray humbly

 

 

 

Filed under  //  america   equality   india   jefferson   meditation   religion   spirituality   yoga  
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Obama and the Hanuman Chalisa, word-for-word

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President Obama carries in his pocket a figurine of the Hindu deity Hanuman – the embodiment of the divine strength that arises from humble, devoted service.  Tonight, I adapted this page from the Neem Karoli Baba website to create a PDF of a word-by-word translation of the Hanuman Chalisa, a hymn of forty verses many bhakti-yogis sing to remind us of the story and character of Hanuman, told in the great Ramayana epic -- which Obama read as a young man in Indonesia. I’ve made the PDF  so that it’s one front-and-back sheet of paper you can print and use to sing along to a recording or can inexpensively reprint and conveniently distribute for kirtan.  Enjoy!

 

Click here to download:
Hanuman_Chalisa.pdf (75 KB)

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