A bit of a handful, but bear with me, the Bee and the Rose shall make it clear enough, soon enough.
Once we begin to see the logic and the method behind the Yoga Sutras, things begin to become a bit clearer (though not always...as we shall see). When I talk about the Sutras, I stress one thing, they are in line with the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhism in one very important distinction to all that has come before in Indian thought, that is, Samsara, the cycle of birth and re-birth, influenced by one's storehouse of Karma, and characterized by duhkham, or suffering, can be broken within this lifetime. Previously, the duhkham, suffering, of life was unavoidable and eternal. There was no release, no true moksha, only pacification of the gods by sacrifice and mitigation of suffering by noble birth as a male, brahmin priest, steeped in the knowledge of the Vedas, the definitive texts on the nature of the Universe.
We were merely the Who's such as those living on the dust speck, at the mercy of an uncaring, impersonal Cosmos.
And, along came our Horton, Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha. The Buddha came from the warrior caste, the kshatriya, not the priestly caste of the brahmins. This could not be more important. Since time immemorial, the brahmin priests had sole authority over the welfare of our Souls...we were doomed to rebirth based upon our lack of full reconciliation of our karma storehouse.
The Buddha, however, more in line with the Upanishads, which moved from the general cosmology to the specific person, set out one day and stumbled upon the harsh facts of life. We suffer. We get sick. We get old. We die.
From his wanderings in the city as a pampered and sheltered prince, and against his father's wishes, the young warrior (heir to the throne), devised what has become known as The Four Noble Truths, which is important for our following Sutras, and the Sutras' ultimate method for moksha, or release in this lifetime.
They are in shorthand form: (Pali/Sanskrit)
1. All is suffering (dukkha/duhkham).
2. Suffering is caused by craving, or thirst (tanhã/trshna)
3. There is cessation (nirodhah) (hmmm...sounds familiar) of suffering.
4. The way is the 8-fold path (patipada/ashtanga...let's put a pin in that one shall we...)
As such, the Buddha basically levels the entire teachings of the brahmins within fewer than 50 words...quite the accomplishment. As you can imagine, the Priests were none too happy about this. (Rush's classic LP 2112 comes to mind when our protagonist rediscovers music, much to the distress of the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx.)
So, how can we map this onto our Sutras at hand? Let's take a look. Patañjali has given us the definition of Yoga, that being the cessation/temperance of the vritti's, which he then lists and defines, and now, we get the first part of the Method to bring this change about in our lives with 1.12.
abhyãsavairãgyãm tannirodhah 1.12
Or,
The cessation/restraint/temperance of these (tan=vritti's here as a collective pronoun) by way of (the dual compound, meaning both are necessary) abhyãsa (diligent practice) and vairãgyam (disinterest in worldly objects).
Or, in plain words,
We can calm the mind with diligent practice and relinquishing the desire to possess.
As such, we have a two-fold preparatory approach to dealing with the vritti's, which will later be complemented by Patañjali's own 8-fold path (I seriously doubt that 8 is a coincidence here, which we will discuss later in chapter II...). We have diligent practice/effort and a disinterest in material goods. Let's go further with this as there can be some confusion, especially concerning vairãgyam.
First, we take on abhyãsa in the following two Sutras:
tatra sthitau yatno'byãsah 1.13
sa tu dirghakãlanairantaryasakãrãsevito dridhabhumih 1.14
Or,
When firmly established (locative absolute for you linguists), diligent practice is an effort. 1.13
Moreover, it is a firm foundation, attended by a reverence for uninterrupted (effort) over a long period of Time. 1.14
The first comment I would like to make is on the word yatnah, or effort. When I am teaching an ãsana-based class, whether it be Yin, Hatha or Vinyasa, I stress the difference between "effort" and "strain". There is a fine line between the two, and part of one's Yogic practice (abhyãsa) should be attention to that difference. When we cross the threshold from effort to strain, we often cross many other boundaries as well including: discomfort to pain, dedication to obsession or humility to arrogance. These are all pitfalls in life that we may encounter, and the insidiousness of the subtlety between one and the other is often what lands us in unsavory situations. Again, I speak from experience, having transcended each of these thresholds at various times in my life, whether it be in relationships, sports, Yoga, studies, work or you name it. This is real. It can happen to you.
So, we must be vigilant not to cross the line. But, oh, the places you'll go...sometimes you will cross the line. Then what? Then, you re-set. More often than not, these transgressions shall cause you and others pain. Do you give up and throw in the proverbial towel? No, you re-set. Re-set the humility. Re-set the dedication. Re-set the mind.
In 1.14, Patañjali goes a step further, telling us that this diligent effort of abhyãsa must be done over a long period of Time, with a sense of reverence. My excuses to the late Mr. Lennon, but this is not Instant Karma.
Reverence, or here in Sanskrit ãsevitah, is one of my favorite words in English. One of my old colleagues (though I was vastly junior in every way) at The University of Texas, Prof. Paul Woodruff, wrote an excellent book on this word, entitled (you guessed it!) Reverence. Reverence is not religious as it might seem on first blush, but it is a heightened respect for something greater than ourselves. I recently attended a workshop with Mati Guerra at Antwerp Yoga about the Yamas and the Niyamas of the Sutras, and he pointed out that words can lose meaning. I could not agree more. "Love" has lost nearly all of its meaning in modern times, especially in America.
For example, what does it mean any more to love someone or something? If you have no reverence for the word, it basically means no-thing. Only a reverence for the word, for the emotion, for the experience can retain its meaning, and only you, the bearer of the reverence can ever really know. For me, that word, Love, still retains a great deal of reverence, and I do not use it lightly with people or things, but, it does require vigilance not to abuse those big words that make us so afraid, as Stephen Dedalus says in James Joyce's Ulysses. Abhyãsa then requires a sense of reverence. It is not merely showing up on the mat in the shala, or at the dojo for zazen, or the pool to swim laps, or whatever one's diligent practice is. It requires attention and samkalpa, or intention as well, buoyed by a sense of reverence.
Furthermore, this diligent practice must be executed uninterruptedly and over a long period of time. Easier said than done. With work, kids, relationships, bills to pay and mouths to feed, our abhyãsa can suffer. And, something I find rather hypocritical in the Yoga world is a lack of empathy for when this happens. There is a lot of head shaking and tsk-tsking whether verbally or silently judging, despite the shellac of "non-judgement" espoused in studios across the globe. Sometimes, life simply gets in the way. Again, do we roll over and call it quits? No, when you can regain your center, when you can gain control again, you can re-set, re-implement and resume. This is a lifetime's process, not merely a Summer fling for your body and Soul. Yoga becomes a way of life, but, over a long period of time.
The second prong on this initial Method to tackle the vritti's is a bit trickier and easily misunderstood. One of the leveling criticisms of Buddhism (and Yoga as we shall see) over the ages has been: it is an escape from feeling/emotion, and therefore not really living, but a pessimistic checking out of life's course. Not necessarily. However, vairãgyam is the culprit for this sentiment with respect to Yoga. Literally taken, it means "a total absence of 'taste/craving/desire, that is rãga'" and "for material goods" is implied for good measure. On the surface then, it seems like it means, you don't care. Let's see.
dristhãnushravikavishayavitrishnasya vashikãrasamjñã vairãgyam 1.15
Or,
Vairãgyam is the conscious/volitional control of one who is devoid of thirst for material objects, whether seen firsthand or learned from scripture. 1.15
And,
tatparam purushakhyatergunavaitrishnyam 1.16
The highest form of that (vairãgyam) is the absence of desire/thirst of the gunas for the perception of the Soul.
Right. What do we do with that mouthful?
In 1.15, we see that this is volitional, a choice. So, if someone is immersed in vairãgyam, you could say that he or she chooses to check out of life. You could, but that is missing the point. In Western philosophy, we have correlation in Kant's Third Critique, that of Judgement. Kant speaks about the disinterested observer as being the true observer, because no filters or categories are used. In other words, there is no pre-judgement or pre-judice. We just simply experience it. Kant further tells us that the only two things we can truly experience in this way are: the Beautiful (Schönheit) and the Sublime (Erhabenen). When we encounter Beauty or the Sublime, we experience, according to Kant im-medi-ately. In other words, there is no "I" thinking that "oh, that is a beautiful flower" or "that mountain range is sublime". It just happens. There is literally an absence of taste or Geschmack, which is an exact translation of vairãgyam. That, for Kant, is dis-interested observation. Vairãgyam is similar in that it is not a lack of "care" it simply precedes that.
So, a rose is a rose is a rose...right?
Maybe; imagine we experience a beautiful rose. In the moment before we even classify it as a rose, or that it smells nice, or we like its color, or that we say that it is beautiful, at THAT MOMENT, we experience Beauty, without taste, without pre-judice. The moment, we then say, "that's a rose" perhaps because a Bee stings us as we smell the flower and are jolted into "reality", then we are judging the Beauty, not experiencing it. As soon as we judge it as rose and as beautiful, something sinister happens, we desire it. Why is this sinister? Because, the result of desire of something is the will to possess it. The Ego then steps in and says, "I want this beautiful thing to be mine." And, that is the beginning of our duhkham, or suffering. The desire which leads to the will to possess.
Vairãgyam, then, is not a distancing ourselves from the material world, nor for tuning out, but rather, for willfully putting that desire to possess into check, because, we can never truly possess another thing, nor person.
When we can see the rose, experience the immediacy of its Beauty, and then not have the desire to possess it, but to let it be, then we are one step closer to vairãgyam...
Once we begin to see the logic and the method behind the Yoga Sutras, things begin to become a bit clearer (though not always...as we shall see). When I talk about the Sutras, I stress one thing, they are in line with the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhism in one very important distinction to all that has come before in Indian thought, that is, Samsara, the cycle of birth and re-birth, influenced by one's storehouse of Karma, and characterized by duhkham, or suffering, can be broken within this lifetime. Previously, the duhkham, suffering, of life was unavoidable and eternal. There was no release, no true moksha, only pacification of the gods by sacrifice and mitigation of suffering by noble birth as a male, brahmin priest, steeped in the knowledge of the Vedas, the definitive texts on the nature of the Universe.
We were merely the Who's such as those living on the dust speck, at the mercy of an uncaring, impersonal Cosmos.
And, along came our Horton, Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha. The Buddha came from the warrior caste, the kshatriya, not the priestly caste of the brahmins. This could not be more important. Since time immemorial, the brahmin priests had sole authority over the welfare of our Souls...we were doomed to rebirth based upon our lack of full reconciliation of our karma storehouse.
The Buddha, however, more in line with the Upanishads, which moved from the general cosmology to the specific person, set out one day and stumbled upon the harsh facts of life. We suffer. We get sick. We get old. We die.
From his wanderings in the city as a pampered and sheltered prince, and against his father's wishes, the young warrior (heir to the throne), devised what has become known as The Four Noble Truths, which is important for our following Sutras, and the Sutras' ultimate method for moksha, or release in this lifetime.
They are in shorthand form: (Pali/Sanskrit)
1. All is suffering (dukkha/duhkham).
2. Suffering is caused by craving, or thirst (tanhã/trshna)
3. There is cessation (nirodhah) (hmmm...sounds familiar) of suffering.
4. The way is the 8-fold path (patipada/ashtanga...let's put a pin in that one shall we...)
As such, the Buddha basically levels the entire teachings of the brahmins within fewer than 50 words...quite the accomplishment. As you can imagine, the Priests were none too happy about this. (Rush's classic LP 2112 comes to mind when our protagonist rediscovers music, much to the distress of the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx.)
So, how can we map this onto our Sutras at hand? Let's take a look. Patañjali has given us the definition of Yoga, that being the cessation/temperance of the vritti's, which he then lists and defines, and now, we get the first part of the Method to bring this change about in our lives with 1.12.
abhyãsavairãgyãm tannirodhah 1.12
Or,
The cessation/restraint/temperance of these (tan=vritti's here as a collective pronoun) by way of (the dual compound, meaning both are necessary) abhyãsa (diligent practice) and vairãgyam (disinterest in worldly objects).
Or, in plain words,
We can calm the mind with diligent practice and relinquishing the desire to possess.
As such, we have a two-fold preparatory approach to dealing with the vritti's, which will later be complemented by Patañjali's own 8-fold path (I seriously doubt that 8 is a coincidence here, which we will discuss later in chapter II...). We have diligent practice/effort and a disinterest in material goods. Let's go further with this as there can be some confusion, especially concerning vairãgyam.
First, we take on abhyãsa in the following two Sutras:
tatra sthitau yatno'byãsah 1.13
sa tu dirghakãlanairantaryasakãrãsevito dridhabhumih 1.14
Or,
When firmly established (locative absolute for you linguists), diligent practice is an effort. 1.13
Moreover, it is a firm foundation, attended by a reverence for uninterrupted (effort) over a long period of Time. 1.14
The first comment I would like to make is on the word yatnah, or effort. When I am teaching an ãsana-based class, whether it be Yin, Hatha or Vinyasa, I stress the difference between "effort" and "strain". There is a fine line between the two, and part of one's Yogic practice (abhyãsa) should be attention to that difference. When we cross the threshold from effort to strain, we often cross many other boundaries as well including: discomfort to pain, dedication to obsession or humility to arrogance. These are all pitfalls in life that we may encounter, and the insidiousness of the subtlety between one and the other is often what lands us in unsavory situations. Again, I speak from experience, having transcended each of these thresholds at various times in my life, whether it be in relationships, sports, Yoga, studies, work or you name it. This is real. It can happen to you.
So, we must be vigilant not to cross the line. But, oh, the places you'll go...sometimes you will cross the line. Then what? Then, you re-set. More often than not, these transgressions shall cause you and others pain. Do you give up and throw in the proverbial towel? No, you re-set. Re-set the humility. Re-set the dedication. Re-set the mind.
In 1.14, Patañjali goes a step further, telling us that this diligent effort of abhyãsa must be done over a long period of Time, with a sense of reverence. My excuses to the late Mr. Lennon, but this is not Instant Karma.
Reverence, or here in Sanskrit ãsevitah, is one of my favorite words in English. One of my old colleagues (though I was vastly junior in every way) at The University of Texas, Prof. Paul Woodruff, wrote an excellent book on this word, entitled (you guessed it!) Reverence. Reverence is not religious as it might seem on first blush, but it is a heightened respect for something greater than ourselves. I recently attended a workshop with Mati Guerra at Antwerp Yoga about the Yamas and the Niyamas of the Sutras, and he pointed out that words can lose meaning. I could not agree more. "Love" has lost nearly all of its meaning in modern times, especially in America.
For example, what does it mean any more to love someone or something? If you have no reverence for the word, it basically means no-thing. Only a reverence for the word, for the emotion, for the experience can retain its meaning, and only you, the bearer of the reverence can ever really know. For me, that word, Love, still retains a great deal of reverence, and I do not use it lightly with people or things, but, it does require vigilance not to abuse those big words that make us so afraid, as Stephen Dedalus says in James Joyce's Ulysses. Abhyãsa then requires a sense of reverence. It is not merely showing up on the mat in the shala, or at the dojo for zazen, or the pool to swim laps, or whatever one's diligent practice is. It requires attention and samkalpa, or intention as well, buoyed by a sense of reverence.
Furthermore, this diligent practice must be executed uninterruptedly and over a long period of time. Easier said than done. With work, kids, relationships, bills to pay and mouths to feed, our abhyãsa can suffer. And, something I find rather hypocritical in the Yoga world is a lack of empathy for when this happens. There is a lot of head shaking and tsk-tsking whether verbally or silently judging, despite the shellac of "non-judgement" espoused in studios across the globe. Sometimes, life simply gets in the way. Again, do we roll over and call it quits? No, when you can regain your center, when you can gain control again, you can re-set, re-implement and resume. This is a lifetime's process, not merely a Summer fling for your body and Soul. Yoga becomes a way of life, but, over a long period of time.
The second prong on this initial Method to tackle the vritti's is a bit trickier and easily misunderstood. One of the leveling criticisms of Buddhism (and Yoga as we shall see) over the ages has been: it is an escape from feeling/emotion, and therefore not really living, but a pessimistic checking out of life's course. Not necessarily. However, vairãgyam is the culprit for this sentiment with respect to Yoga. Literally taken, it means "a total absence of 'taste/craving/desire, that is rãga'" and "for material goods" is implied for good measure. On the surface then, it seems like it means, you don't care. Let's see.
dristhãnushravikavishayavitrishnasya vashikãrasamjñã vairãgyam 1.15
Or,
Vairãgyam is the conscious/volitional control of one who is devoid of thirst for material objects, whether seen firsthand or learned from scripture. 1.15
And,
tatparam purushakhyatergunavaitrishnyam 1.16
The highest form of that (vairãgyam) is the absence of desire/thirst of the gunas for the perception of the Soul.
Right. What do we do with that mouthful?
In 1.15, we see that this is volitional, a choice. So, if someone is immersed in vairãgyam, you could say that he or she chooses to check out of life. You could, but that is missing the point. In Western philosophy, we have correlation in Kant's Third Critique, that of Judgement. Kant speaks about the disinterested observer as being the true observer, because no filters or categories are used. In other words, there is no pre-judgement or pre-judice. We just simply experience it. Kant further tells us that the only two things we can truly experience in this way are: the Beautiful (Schönheit) and the Sublime (Erhabenen). When we encounter Beauty or the Sublime, we experience, according to Kant im-medi-ately. In other words, there is no "I" thinking that "oh, that is a beautiful flower" or "that mountain range is sublime". It just happens. There is literally an absence of taste or Geschmack, which is an exact translation of vairãgyam. That, for Kant, is dis-interested observation. Vairãgyam is similar in that it is not a lack of "care" it simply precedes that.
So, a rose is a rose is a rose...right?
Maybe; imagine we experience a beautiful rose. In the moment before we even classify it as a rose, or that it smells nice, or we like its color, or that we say that it is beautiful, at THAT MOMENT, we experience Beauty, without taste, without pre-judice. The moment, we then say, "that's a rose" perhaps because a Bee stings us as we smell the flower and are jolted into "reality", then we are judging the Beauty, not experiencing it. As soon as we judge it as rose and as beautiful, something sinister happens, we desire it. Why is this sinister? Because, the result of desire of something is the will to possess it. The Ego then steps in and says, "I want this beautiful thing to be mine." And, that is the beginning of our duhkham, or suffering. The desire which leads to the will to possess.
Vairãgyam, then, is not a distancing ourselves from the material world, nor for tuning out, but rather, for willfully putting that desire to possess into check, because, we can never truly possess another thing, nor person.
When we can see the rose, experience the immediacy of its Beauty, and then not have the desire to possess it, but to let it be, then we are one step closer to vairãgyam...
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