Innovate with Love

Category: Exploring Spirituality

  • On the YogaGlo video patent

    So there was a recently a spurious patent issued for shooting video of a yoga asana class from a particular angle.  From my view, this is the inevitable result of “yoga” not being about … well, yoga. Fortunately, there can never be a patent on the inner state of awakening that makes one lead a life of love and service, whether it is go feed the hungry, console the suffering, take joy in the good of others, help awaken the spirit of the downtrodden, or humbly serve in whatever ways one can. In my experience, many yoga teachers in America get this, and lead very simple lives for the privilege of teaching or otherwise serving full-time. However, many studio owners and corporations like YogaGlo are perpetuating the concept of the yoga “industry” — and it reveals deep ignorance of the yama of aparigraha — non-grasping, non-covetousness, non-possessiveness (aka generosity). For some reason, of all the yamas and niyamas, this one is the most freely dispensed with in the West.

    We cannot imagine it is yogic to have a lifestyle based in hurting others, lying, stealing, or lusting, but — yet this one, we hold on to. Of course we have to look out for number one! People won’t take us seriously if we don’t charge something! Americans don’t ‘get’ the culture of generosity — as a studio owner, what can I do? I have to survive??

    From the start, having a fixed price of entry for a yoga class begins a slippery slope — while not ill-intentioned — it can create a profound violation of this principle of aparigraha. Many of those who most need to experience mindfulness of their bodies — victims of childhood abuse, the trauma of war, homelessness and extreme poverty — see yoga culture as utterly inaccessible to because of the prevalence of fee-based yoga. I view all such classes as physical exercise classes which incorporate, selectively, and perhaps unwittingly self-servingly, only those elements of yoga culture which are convenient to the class of people who can afford them — and leave out the rest.

    This type of public legal battle over specious “intellectual property” claims is a natural consequence of ignoring this principle of aparigraha. Yoga need not be for wealthy studio owners to pay their extra jumbo mortgage or children’s private school tuitions — perhaps this may be a happy consequence after many years of dedicated service — but from the start, the purpose of yoga is to give away a kind of freedom, which if you experience, you could never imagine charging for the privilege of sharing, or ever suggesting you might deny anyone access to on the basis of money. Denying people the right to take a “money shot” angle of a yoga class is not so different.

    Until one personally experiences this freedom, the natural tendency is to seek control instead, which are what the fees, the “industry” and the patents are about at their base. As a community, it is time we moved away from all this needless grasping. It’s just getting in the way of our own freedom. There is beginning to be a movement for completely donation-based studios — LA has 4 at last count. This is yoga. I believe in it and I stand for it. Yoga is actually possible, here in America. And not just possible, but inevitable.

    Addenda: A little while after this was written, in October 2014, YogaGlo Inc elected to relinquish all claim on this patent.  I continue to stand by the inevitability of yoga.

  • Ancient, Alternative, Emerging Science and Medicine

    In a recent discussion with an attorney about the US FDA and the current state of science and medicine, he shared this joke to summarize his view:

    Comedian Tim Minchin sums this up best when he says,
    “By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work?
    Medicine.”

    He went to stake out the claim that a number of views of alternative medical community are anti-science.

    My response to him is as follows:

    In this description of what is Alternative vs (purportedly) Authentic Medicine, and the statement that [a particular alternative health news website] has many claims that are “anti-science” — I would just offer this response as a philosopher of science:

    The “Science” and “Medicine” you are speaking of is actually the culture of empiricism that derived from Aristotle, but has mostly evolved in the West from the 1700s until the late 1900s… These are far from the only science and medicine the world has known, but unfortunately, empiricism leads these fields to take on a rather closed form where progress derived from existing theories is steady, but fundamental innovation is very hard.

    And any honest scientist will tell you that while most of our specific results are verifiable, there are huge gaps in our essential understanding that require fundamental innovation, whether in physics or neurobiology. Any honest medical professional who has thought deeply on it will freely admit, we actually have no positive theory of health, and that our current models of development, metabolism, nutrition, and wellness are disjoint and woefully incomplete.

    However, there are both older medical systems from the east (Ayurveda and Chinese Traditional Medicine) as well as an emerging new science at the intersection of theoretical/quantum physics, genomics, systems biology and information theory — which point us toward a larger context than we can yet fully empirically, reproducibly test, but which is nonetheless are very observable and which offer applicable approaches and insights worth exploring, applying and testing.

    These translate into a new holistic science of energetic health and medicine, which have at their core a deep regard for the profound interconnectedness and intelligence embedded within each of our individual molecules, cellular organelles, tissues, organs and bodies, seeing them each in themselves as a unique society or ecosystem, as well as occupying a unique place in our larger human society and global ecosystem.

    These ideas are paving the way to a new vision of personal health and medicine, one that is also meaningfully integrated with a healthy vision for our world society and environment — and this change has already been afoot since the 1980s or so, and will become mainstream “Science and Medicine” in perhaps 20 to 40 years.

    So to put things quite as patly in tearing down “Alternative Medicine” and “anti-science” — well, yes, that may stand up in a court of law today, but it misses one of the most important and exciting changes in the history of humanity in how we think about ourselves, our relationship to each other, to our truth, and to our planet.

    While there will be many wrong turns in this process, the basic intent — to establish a broader, more integrated and holistic perspective on what we really are and how we really work best — is a good one — and shouldn’t be dismissed as quackery just because some of claims that come of it are the inevitable wrong turns, or, even worse, just haven’t yet been empirically, reproducibly demonstrated … That’s closed-minded and unfair, and hinders the process of fundamental change needed in our theories of science and medicine. Just because this new science’s practice and application aren’t yet perfected enough to be defensible in a court of law doesn’t mean anyone, including lawyers, should be closed-minded about it.

  • Being Vegan

    A friend posted  to my Facebook wall this recent NPR article entitled “Do Vegetarians and Vegans Think They’re Better Than Everyone Else?” Despite its cheeky tone, the question seriously got me thinking about the community of vegans — do we think we’re better?

    I had to admit my initial gut answer is that yes, a lot of vegans do, maybe even me.  And not in an entirely wholesome way. So I wanted to explore it because, clearly, it’s a potential sign of arrogance and ignorance to think such a thing.  

    To start, I think President Bill Clinton does a great job of talking about why he went vegan in this two minute video. 

    Getting deeper into this, I’ll start where Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals picks up this topic.  In his first chapter, he discusses his grandma’s Chicken Carrot Soup, and the legendary status it had within his family. On the way to sharing the story of how this came to be, he beautifully draws out how we have a very delicate, complex psychology around our relationship to food that runs through our relationships with family, friends animals, and the planet — and weaves its way into our most basic daily choices, like “what’s for breakfast — fruit and granola, or bacon and eggs?” Deep emotional attachment and in some cases, addiction, are a big part of that psychology for most people.

    So it can really impact people on a deep level to hear about why anyone chooses to be vegan, and why I deeply hope others make similar choices in ever-larger numbers if they feel it’s right for them.  Fair notice. 

    Now my simple answer to the article’s question is — obviously, I think it’s better not to take any creature’s life needlessly. I don’t think we should cut down forests any more than we should slaughter birds, fish or cattle. It’s holistically not great — for our planet, our health, our karma, our relationship to each other, and to all the dead, and those who live on. 

    Veganism is a modern take on the spirit of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” That spirit is non-violence. Love. Through veganism, among other practices, I strive to live out my belief in Love. 

    Morally, I believe slaughtering animals is wrong, and feel toward it just the same as I feel about slavery and racism. Taking life needlessly, for pleasure, and without a reverent regard for the web of life of which that life plays an integral part — that, to me, is deeply ignorant and dark-hearted.  To refrain whenever possible, in the spirit of the Biblical injunction “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and the Buddha’s admonition to first practice ahimsa (non-violence) above all else is a real virtue.  Yogic philosophy and Gandhi, and much of Eastern philosophy, focuses on ahimsa as the foundation of a more deeply alive, meaningful life.

    However, despite mention of religious injunctions — I want to affirm that I am really not ideological or fanatical about this. I appreciate the spirit, but realize, in practice there are lots of situations it may be necessary or good to eat meat.  For example, I don’t fault an indigenous tribesman living in a desert or tundra where agriculture and money are unavailable to kill an animal and feed it to his family. This is clearly part of our human heritage; it’s just that we don’t need it now, in our global economy with so many alternatives available.  Ethics are complex, but I believe when you can choose better practically, and are informed and awake in spirit enough to do so — then we are living up to our human potential for creative, inspired, positive action.

    I have entertained the idea, and know some who cling to it tightly — that “meat is murder.” This is the extreme ethical vegetarian’s view.   But I believe to hold this view is deeply hurtful to the holder, as well as to those people who are judged, and ultimately to the animals who meat-eaters go on eating for lack of a sensitive, nuanced and fair conversation about the ethics and practicality of their choices.  

    It’s just not quite accurate to say meat is murder — and by extension that most meat-eaters are murderers.  But there does need to be a clear-eyed acceptance that we all do participate in a deadly system — and most of us are complicit, even if not directly responsible.

    The nature of that deadly system has a name — just like slavery had a system, called racism, which we are still recovering from 150 years later. In the case of animal killing, it’s called carnism. And it’s the ideology that consuming animal flesh for pleasure is perfectly justified, in some cases — “the psychological disconnect which allows people to eat some animals while remaining resolutely sentimental about others.” 

    It was written about recently on the NY Times website here:
    http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/carnism/

    Why DO we love dogs, wear cows, and eat pigs?? Carnism is why — it’s a complex, contradictory ideology that deserves close exploration by any person who wishes to deepen their practice of compassion. Many books could be and will be written about it — the spiritual, economic, psychological, political, scientific, nutritional dimensions each have their own nuances that deserve to be addressed. But this is a blog post, not a book.

    So I’ll try to wrap it up by saying, I believe we are with veganism where the anti-slavery movement was about 200 years ago, in the 1810s. There is an impending global ecological, food, and water supply crisis, driven in large part by industrial-scale meat production and consumption and related depletion of forests and food/water supplies required for meat, which otherwise would feed humans.  

    Confronting this globally will force some deep reckoning, and may possibly even precipitate war, akin to the Civil War, but on a global scale. I am not the only one who believes this. Climate change scientists at the UN do as well:
    http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/will-we-all-be-forced-to-be-vegetarian-by-2050/ 

    I would rather we avoid this fate, and feel it’s responsible and forward-thinking to try to work to avert it.  And I hope, through compassion and honesty, that we each make personal choices to effect a transformation without further bloodshed, of any kind. In the current world, I don’t believe eating animals is good, for anyone. We have nutritious plant-based alternatives and supplements that can meet everyone’s needs. 

    Finally — I know it makes me a better person than I was before to choose to care about all this, and to make the choices I do — each day, I literally feel better, more serene, more integrated, more connected to nature and all of life, more happy, more healthy, more able to be of service to others. It’s up to you to decide whether you might feel like a better person to do likewise, and to try it for yourself. 

    So — to answer in all seriousness the question the NPR article somewhat cheekily poses — my answer is: look, I do think it’s useful to meditate on this deeply.  For me,  I really feel there’s no consistent framework in which I can assert I’m better than anyone else.  But — what I do feel sure of is that I’m better than I was.  

    And, just like anyone with the experience of positive change in any area, I hope others who need or want it, have all the support they can to find it.

  • Evolving into Love through Self and Non-Self

    A persistent topic among my Insight Meditation circle of friends is that of anatta — non-self.  

    On this theme, a quote from Tricycle’s Daily Dharma was recently shared:

    The Limited Mask of Self
    Of all the words we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than ‘myself.’ It consists of a collage of still images—name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships—that are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It’s not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled-together and transient as everything else. — Andrew Olendzki, Self as Verb

    I decided to write about it here because anatta is an especially useful meditation topic for me right now, as I’ve been deeply challenged by the passing of my niece earlier this year to have some clarity on whether I believe in a soul that persists across lifetimes, and how this relates to karma and rebirth.  

    A super-natural (ie, more than simply biological/physical) notion of a Universal Self (atman) and a personal soul (jiva) is deeply wound into Hindu philosophy, and into Tantric buddhist traditions — in which a soul enters a body at birth (or perhaps conception) and leaves a body at death, and this soul has a “self”, an identity in some sense, that is subject to karma, rebirth and liberation.

    When family asked me what I thought of all this, and how it relates to my niece’s soul’s journey — I realized this is an aspect of spiritual life with which, while I have read and heard the teachings of great masters and practiced my family’s traditional faith to some degree — I really have had no direct experience per se, and I felt nothing much of substance to offer …  

    But it’s right and good to ask such questions, if at least to honor the departed, and perhaps even  to come to good answers for oneself on the journey. I had to do this once before, when my father passed.  As his eldest son, I performed the funeral rites and good works in his name in careful accordance with Vedic injunctions, which are said to aid in the freeing of his soul to depart this world peacefully, and to join the abode of our family’s ancestral souls.  Doing so helped heal me, and my family, and in some sense that was his unfinished karma with us.  In the process, I developed a loving, living memory of my father that is with me still.  However, in the process, I did not feel I came to know in any ultimate sense whether he had a soul, and if so, whether it went to the abode of the ancestors or the abode of Vishnu, or what have you.  The rites helped us, the living, make our peace; this was reason enough to do them.    

    I’m trying to find answers again, anew, and I see that over the years since my father passed, I’ve come to believe not in a personal soul per se, but that there are streams of karma embedded in one another, complex interleaving patterns of life and existence that repeat and evolve over time, and that these are reflected in, and in some sense, carried forward by physical reality — the complex patterns in DNA, in cells and organs, in language, in culture, in the environment — that what philosopher Ken Weber calls holons (levels of reality which are at once whole unto themselves in one sense, but also inextricably part of a larger order of existence) do exist, and that these do have some literal continuity in between their phases of arising and passing, are embedded in physical reality that assert themselves over over lifetimes and aeons, that these, in much the sense Darwin suggested for species, do evolve.  And this evolution occurs at every level of reality, that it can be an interpretive frame for the entirety of nature.

    So perhaps in some sense it can be meaningfully said these levels each have a ‘soul’ or a ‘self’ that is the encoding in the physical reality from which they arise, and in which they operate, of how they come to be just so …   But I’ve also come to believe that it’s a somewhat arbitrary or perhaps simply an aesthetic choice to believe this, as opposed to non-self; that these are all impersonal streams, that there is no special particularity and persistent identity to any one of them….

    The wikipedia entry on anatta (non-self) mentions how it’s commonly subject to the fallacy of reification — unskillfully asserting that an idea is more concrete than it is intended to be.  For me, being aware of this fallacy is the key in applying the anatta teaching — not forcing it to be more concrete than is really useful or observably true.  And anatta is highly abstract; it takes aim at the very subject-object frame underlying in our usual process of abstraction. Just like dukkha (suffering) and anicca (impermanence), anatta is a powerful insight to achieve liberation from the usual conditions of our thinking & existing… Pick up the tool when useful; set down when not.

    It wouldn’t be useful to focus so morbidly on suffering or impermanence that one loses the ability to undertake daily activities of living.  At times, I have been capable of a degree of such existential darkness.  Not helpful or skillful.  A bit wiser now, I carefully try to avoid this.   Likewise with anatta.  There is a self needed to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, pay the bills, and also grieve loss, feel joy, serve others, give care, and meditate, contemplate, etc.  Refuting the existence of the self on this level in the name of anatta is not the point of the Buddha’s teaching.  As the saying goes — before enlightenment, fetching water, chopping wood; after enlightenment, fetching water, chopping wood…
    The point for me is to get free of my clinging to this frame of subjectivity (aka “self”), that comes with all sorts of fears and limiting beliefs about what I can do, what I need, who I should associate with, why I’m here.  To see my idea of “me” as “cobbled-together and transient” is to open to the power inherent in the meditative and contemplative process — to get a glimpse of the long-suffering, impermanent, groundless being that is “me” — so I can have the choice to do something useful with it, and not be compelled by this “me” to react, to cling, to avoid, to suffer. 

    I can direct this “me” to serve to free all beings, in the spirit of the bodhisatva vow.  Or at least, freely choose my karmic output — to react, to cling, to avoid, or whatever, if that’s what is most useful to do.  Or, to choose to believe I am part of a larger Self, that is Love.

    Various Buddhist teachers use the construction ‘selfing’ from time to time.  “Oh there I go, selfing again.”  Thinking obsessive thoughts of — What about my … (career, home, marriage, politics, ideas, friends, children) … ?   Yes, well … what about them?

    Insofar as they’re useful & helpful things to be ‘mine’ — I say let them be yours — use this construct, take their help…  But it’s important to see they’re not inherently, actually ‘me’…  They’re just what I’m identifying with as ‘mine’, for now.  It’s like the Native American notion of land ownership; we’re really just temporary stewards, not holders of a permanent dominion.  I’m the temporary steward of this suitcase of experiences, ideas, feelings, preferences, tendencies, atoms and cells that I call “me” and “mine”.  I am free to re-arrange the contents of that suitcase at any time; to do so, it is often helpful to unpack it completely and get clarity about what is in there, and discard what will not serve for the journey ahead.

    So anatta is a teaching that reminds me to not hold on so tight to all that we usually do …  To chose a relationship to ‘my’ story and stuff that is useful in getting free of fearfully dwelling on ‘what about me’ — but to retain a useful sense of stewardship and prudence in all those things I’m connected with … That is a real need, of practical, spiritual life…

    But then, sometimes you don’t want to get free of ‘me’, nor should you, and it doesn’t help to try; it may even feel wrong, like a shortcutting of our essential humanity.   For example, when the particular ‘me’ in question is a beloved child who is no longer here in the body — it’s not much comfort to say, “Well, she had no self, no soul in the first place, so the loss we’re feeling, and the grief and the questions about where she is, what happened to her spirit, what’s happened to her karma — they’re misplaced…”  No. That’s not helpful.  It won’t do at all.

    Love is real; to the extent that we love one another with our limited idea of “self” intact, that “self” is real. Love deserves celebrating every win and grieving each loss.  It can be dangerously shortcut by detaching or dissociating through conceptual meditation or philosophizing on non-self.  At such times, focusing on dukkha and anicca, suffering and impermanence can be much more healing. That said, anatta can expand the frame of belief to provide a healthier, more sustainable idea of  what is a win, what is loss, and who or what even is loving and is being loved.  It can help open the door to seeing a Love that is bigger than any of us, than any narrow “self”, and in which we can all abide.

    In this way, I believe life can be full of great joy, that we do really love, and our love for one another is part of a bigger Universal Love that is ever-present.  I can, by letting go of my past conditioning through contemplating and realizing the application of anatta, choose to consciously align myself with this Love, and to practice the courage to love completely, which comes with a price — with inevitable and sometimes unexpected and tragic loss.  

    Buddha’s teachings on suffering, non-self, and impermanence are profoundly useful tools — in awakening compassion, in freeing the mind, in surrendering our clinging and aversion — in cultivating detachment.  So are Krishna’s teachings on dharma, the journey of the individual soul, and the Eternal.  But neither are the final truth for me, just beautiful tools.   

    For me, the deepest truth is in how we’re consciously evolving into Love, here and now, on every level, in this moment.  When my eyes are open to that, when I participate in that — I am in Truth, and it transcends any teaching or practice. 

  • April 12, 2012

    I’ve been sad lately.  On April 12, I celebrated 10 years of continuous 12-step recovery; it was a moment shared with over 100 people, including my mother and so many dear friends, to celebrate this gift of life I’ve been given.  In the moment, one of the happiest days of my life.
    On that very day, unbeknownst to me until the following day, across the country, my beautiful six-year-old niece Lara died in a tragic accident at the beach in Santa Cruz.   Along with many others who love her and who spoke heart wrenchingly at her funeral, I shared a eulogy.
    Today, I miss Lara.  I had just felt I’d begun to know her; I made the youthful, natural mistake of thinking there would always be more time, yet I’d also recently made the heartfelt commitment to spend more of it with her and her sister Kaira more regularly, more often, at more length, at any opportunity…
    And I find myself missing what I realize Lara represented to me — the perfect beauty of unspoiled youth, the fearless joy of unconditional love, innocent happiness that arises spontaneously from the ground of being…  Childhood.
    I am feeling heartbroken at the randomness of life.  Random is another word for “no meaningful pattern or explanation” — it’s very hard to feel this, as I do, in my gut, in my heart, in my feet, in my head, in my throat, in my teeth, in every cell of my being — about life itself … And to press on just the same.
    The last 10 years, I took refuge in self-care, healing, following my heart, clearing my karma, being of service, and doing my dharma the best I could discern how. It has been a revolution in my existence.  I am not the same man I was 10 years ago — my motives, my patterns, my interests, my intentions, my bodymind itself — have all deeply shifted.  I want to be of service, to experience and give love the best I know how, as much as I can.  I am grateful for this change, and for this life.
    I know it would have been impossible without faith and perseverance, and that I am, in a sense, still quite young on this path.  The seeds were there before, but the field was fallow, and the life of recovery and of faith I’ve found has been, at various times as a bright sun, a sweet rain and a cool breeze to my gently awakening spirit …  It was recovery that brought me back to my family, to Lara — as a wholer, happier, better man.
    So my heartfelt hope is this time of darkness in my life and spirit evolves into something light and pure and good and true.   I have faith it will. I want to be there for myself, my family, my job, my community, be my best for us all.
    The Bhagavad Gita begins with Vishada Yoga — Arjuna’s despair at facing the prospect of certain death of loved ones.  He throws down his bow and says, “I will not fight!”  Yet, somehow, Krishna lovingly teaches him that is just what he must do, to get up, soldier on, fulfill his life’s purpose in the face of certain death and impending grief…  I need that quiet certainty now, that hope that there is redemption, salvation, nirvana, samadhi, moksha, heaven, bliss, or just something good in pressing on…
    At a friend’s suggestion, I’ve decided to read the classic Dr. Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.  I haven’t gotten through it all yet, but the basic existential question it asks is — faced with overwhelming trauma, pain, and sadness — why live? Who or what do you love enough to struggle through life for?  As a Jewish doctor imprisoned at Auschwitz, Dr. Frankl had to answer this question himself…
    And, ten years ago, in the depth of a profound depression — I had no good, clear answer to that question.  But now I’ve got hundreds of answers to why to live…  So I know I will come through this time stronger, but I’m feeling very existential nonetheless, and it’s not comfortable to feel these deep questions and deep forces of change churning in me…   I’m feeling I need to re-answer that question even more clearly, with even more urgency.
    I have begun to and will continue to…   And in light of Lara’s passing, hope to have a single, adamantine answer that really honors her perfect, too-short life, and her enormous heart — and my own — and all of us …

  • Yoga, Addiction, and Recovery

    a blog post in five parts 
    by Vikram Surya Chiruvolu

    I. A Global Culture of Addiction

    To begin with a small example: a friend recently posted to their Facebook page about the book, It’s Just a Plant — a children’s book about marijuana.  In the preview of the book on that site, the central character is a young child, and the plot is a series of conversations with her parents, then Farmer Bob, then Dr. Eden, then a group of casual pot smokers on the street, then the police who begin to arrest them. The preview ends there but even this much gave me pause.  The book is but a small example of what is now a global addiction-positive physical culture, and as such, is the product of a number of potentially dangerous urban myths. 

    At the most basic level, there needs to be a clear-headed acknowledgement that marijuana today is not “just a plant”, but has been hybridized and selectively bred for thousands of generations, into being a potent, addictive drug that just happens to be prepared through horticultural techniques for the multi-billion-dollar global drug markets.The very same people who get so exercised over GMO crops can ignore the reality that cannabis has been genetically engineered to a degree of potency far greater than anything nature would ordinarily permit. 

    Even more importantly, both the children’s book and the drug-positive physical culture from which it emerges, do not seek to honestly address the all-important reality that many people abuse marijuana, telling themselves that their use is purely ‘recreational’ or in some manner ‘spiritual’, instead of facing the fact they are self-medicating underlying problems.  Rather than deal directly with why they want to alter or escape their reality, many people simply seek escape, and are aided in this by a consumeristic global culture that aids the process.  I fell into this pattern myself for a long time, and the suffering it brought was the direct cause of my interest in a path of healing through yoga and 12-step recovery. 

    From years of experience working with people in this aspect of their lives, I can say that for many, especially those with addictive personalities or dysfunctional family patterns, this escapism can become a lifelong habit that diminishes their social, spiritual, intellectual and emotional lives by dulling their minds, polluting their bodies and distracting their spirit.  It is also can cost a good deal of money, and, because much recreational drug use is not legal in most nations, and drug-testing is common for many jobs, it sharply limits social and economic well-being.  

    Many of the same statements can be made about alcohol, though alcohol is legal in much of the world.  Also, all over the world, the usage of highly-refined food products that act like powerful numbing drugs on the bodymind has become commonplace — whether excessive sugar, salt, starch, or fat.  Caffeine and nicotine also are ubiquitous objects of the addictive cycle.  In addition, there are many objects of addiction which play on the built-in drug store in the body’s endocrine system — the so-called behavioral addictions like gambling, sex, rage, and spending.  All of these revolve around the rapid triggering of powerful hormonal and neurochemical changes that provide a quick drug-like “hit”, a rush of adrenaline, testosterone, oxytocin and other components of the body’s internal drug-store. 

    In all cases of addiction, the basic pathology is similar.  A person undergoes some profound experiences of difficulty — sometimes as subtle as not feeling ‘heard’ in the childhood home at times, or as violent as sexual abuse or the loss of multiple family members, and ceases to feel good in their natural state.  The people around them, and their own conditioning, do not allow for the fullness of a safe space to heal from the difficulty, and it becomes deeply lodged in the bodymind.  Then, at some point, a fast-acting substance or behavior creates physiological changes which provide short-term comfort and relief from the stored pain of the difficulty, which can be such a powerful experience that it is conflated with a ‘spiritual’ experience.   However, it leads to long-term degeneration, as well as possibly immediate and serious damage.  As the cycle completes, the drug effects wear off and discomfort returns, and the craving for the comfort brings the addict back time and again to the source of ease, at their own, and often others’, expense. The more deeply rooted is the source of the initial discomfort, the more aggressively the mind then invents, rationalizes and seeks out supporters to persist in the addictive pathology.  

    Because many people sense intuitively that modern physical culture does not provide a way out of this dilemma, but only drive them deeper into it, they turn to yoga and various other forms of spirituality.

    II.  The First Two Limbs of Raja Yoga — Yamas and Niyamas

    In yogic terms, the real question here is not whether to encourage one object of addiction or other, but whether to encourage honesty, openness, and love over escapism, substance use and all its related dysfunction — whatever forms the latter addiction takes.  In yogic terms, any pattern of sensual attachment, but especially regular drug use, whether marijuana or any psychedelic, tobacco, alcohol or anything else, is not compatible with sincere, sustained practice of the yamas and niyamas.  

    In relation to drug use, the yamas (restraints / abstinences) are:
    • ahimsa (non-violence) — whether on the physical or subtle plane, acting on addiction is violent to your body
    • satya (truthfulness) —  much addictive acting out is illegal or has strong social taboos on it, so one must necessarily be sneaky about its use
    • brahmacharya (continence) — addictive acting out is wasteful of vital, spiritual energies
    • asteya (non-covetousness) — sustained acting out tends to divide one against oneself and society, and induces jealousy, rebelliousness and resentment toward one’s own higher intention, as well as other people’s aims or society itself
    • aparigraha (non-grasping) — acting out requires that you take from the world more than is necessary to indulge in harmful pastimes
    The niyamas (practices / observances) are:
    • shaucha (purity; cleanliness of bodymind and spirit) — acting out is impure and dirties the bodymind and spirit
    • santosha (happiness) — it powerfully says one is unwilling to find contentment with reality as it is, unaltered
    • tapas (austerity; willingness to use pain for growth) — acting out is usually a self-involved escape, an avoidance of pain
    • svadhyaya (spiritual study) — acting out can significantly diminish mental capacities
    • ishwarapranidhara (self-surrender to God’s will) — no great avatar ever advocated the general use of drugs or any pattern of addictive acting out for spiritual attainment, whether Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or modern saints like Amma 
    To many, it may seem that what I’m saying here about addictive acting out being incompatible with yogic life is quite obvious.  Unfortunately, it isn’t obvious to everyone. I have seen regular drug use even among people who are yoga teachers.  It is a profound failing on their part to rationalize the yamas and niyamas with drug use.  It is also a profound failing to miss the terrible example they set for others who may seek out yoga for its spiritual and health benefits only to have their energies diverted into drug culture. I cannot recommend, with an unencumbered heart, that anyone attend the classes of such teachers.

    III. Addiction & Spirituality


    I also have seen, from experience, that addiction is a very profound problem that can take years of sustained work to find real freedom from on the deepest level of the complex web of karma which motivates the compulsive desire to escape.  However, I have seen this work cannot be carried out in earnest until the addictive pattern itself is arrested, and remains so.  Even with legal addictions, the promotion of tobacco and alcohol as relatively harmless or even beneficial are devastating lies that have killed more than a hundred million people world over.  That is a holocaust of staggering proportions that continues unabated.  

    In popular culture, I’ve also seen the promotion of various drugs as ‘sacramental’, ‘natural’, and ‘spiritual’ — whether psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline/peyote, DMT/ayahuasca, or marijuana — and this also has done tremendous harm to millions of people, and continues to do so.   Having deep unmet spiritual needs as a young man, I heard these messages, and experimented with some of these.  I can say there from my experiences that there is some validity to the notion that such drugs are ‘mind-expanding’.  It is possible to have chemically-induced experiences which can later help point the way toward a sustained spiritual, non-chemical experience of those expansive states.  However, the price of these experiences was not worth the risk for me, nor is it for most people, and this is why their use is prohibited or controlled.

    Addiction can develop quickly, and once it takes hold, can take a lifetime of work to heal, and it’s not a given that one will ever recover.  In the grips of addiction, I have seen many, many people die early deaths, or suffer imprisonment, whether by society or just in their own spirit.  As long as they are using their drugs, their life potential is frittered away in the midst of a certain but vague existential confusion and doubt that never seems to lift, no matter how many highs one gets, no matter how much internal work one does, no matter how many doctors or teachers one consults, no matter how many gurus or Gods one finds.  The reality that abstinence (niyama) is a starting point for a sincere journey of spirituality is often lost on those in the grip of active addiction.  

    My spiritual teacher is Amma, who says, “It is easy to wake up someone who is asleep, but impossible to wake up someone pretending to sleep.”  Active addiction is just this sort of pretend-sleep.  Those who practice regular drug use live in a self-deceptive state, ignorant of the costs to their own health, finances, and spirit, and to the real harm that comes to all those whose lives they touch, especially those who are closest to them and who look to them for guidance.  


    None of the states that are accessible through drugs are only available that way, and none are sustainable that way.  For one, yoga provides another way that is sustainable.  The sincere, lifelong practice of spirituality, whether through yoga or in other contexts, can expand the mind and spirit into the Infinite.  In their own wayand language, every great master has taught this Truth.  

    For many, the rationalization that the particular drugs are ‘natural’ or ‘just plants’  or ‘sacred herbs’ is a powerful part of the rationalization of addiction, the ignorance of the reality that they are still working as drugs, with powerful, direct, harmful physical effects and long-lasting side-effects.  

    With addictive personalities, denial and rationalization are extremely potent.  It’s my hope that at some point, everyone in the grip of using anything as an escape tries to live some years of their lives without that release, and observe the radical change in their health and happiness that comes.  For addictive personalities, it is a far greater tapas (asceticism, self-mortification, burning of karma) to surrender the use of all their modalities of escape and abuse, and all their rationalizations (especially those that lean toward the spiritual, natural or social), and just live in the bright, clean, inviting, open space of self-chosen abstinence.  

    As is often said in 12-step recovery, if at the end of that time, they aren’t satisfied, their misery will certainly be refunded.  As they do stay abstinent, they may experience the opportunity to directly heal the underlying cause of their attraction to the addictive acting out, and find a kind of peace and freedom they never knew possible.  The eight-limbed path of yoga provides a direct route, as does 12-step recovery, and they are deeply allied modalities.

    The ‘natural’ argument is an especially potent rationalization for addicts.  Industry knows and exploits this mindset well.  For example, for a number of years, I was a tobacco addict, and allowed myself to be comforted by the fact that my cigarettes of choice were “all natural” tobacco, and persisted in the habit and associated delusions for many years. It is a widespread affliction.  Similarly, “kind bud” — organic, highly potent marijuana — commands a premium on the black market, and there are all manner of “organic” wines, beers and liquors on the market as well.

    In each case, the rationalization that it is the chemicals added, but not the essential harmfulness of the thing itself, that creates  problems is a persistent error, one to which aspiring yogis seem particularly susceptible due to the love of nature that yoga can awaken.  It takes courage to look at the heart of the matter and face that, just as nature makes poisons we cannot safely ingest, it makes addictive, harmful substances that should never be taken with any regularity for someone who wants to avoid harming themselves and to keep their bodymind and spirit clean and clear.

    Also, in the last 50 years, there have been cults which arise which attract wayward people to use indigenous plants as “sacraments” in a group setting, providing a second addictive dimension of the respectability and status of a community that rationalizes their use.  This is not to cast aspersion on the original community’s long history of sacramental use and the spiritual benefit derived thereby, but to say that there is a grave risk and error in attracting people who are not raised in that culture, but rather in the global addiction-positive culture, to such use.  The dynamic of social acceptability and the “cover” of indigenous or traditional use that such communities give to people whose main goal is escape is often just as powerfully addictive as the substance itself.  It is  a potent, but dishonest rationalization reinforced by social support.  Human beings are the most social animal,and we become addicted to our lifestyles and communities, and the breaking of ties with them can be for some more fearful than death. 

    However, for a sincere yogi, one must find the courage to transcend them, and live only in the natural, simple life — appropriate shelter, pure diet, clean air and water.  This choice reflects a profound faith in a transcendent intelligence in each molecule of existence, in each cell of the body, that exerts a powerful healing force if given the chance.  Abstinence and pursuing a journey of healing through yoga and 12-step recovery is just the chance many addicts need.  

    The social dimension of providing respectability, community, and ideology to rationalize addictive acting out is extremely powerful, and exerts long-term effects.  Recovering addicts who do not attend recovery meetings and have personal supporters  often return to acting out.  Positive social ties must be cultivated to replace harm-inducing ones — this is the value of a recovery fellowship and yoga sanga, but the yoga sanga must clearly be committed to honoring the yamas and niyamas in their purest form.

    IV.  Mental Health & Pharmaceuticals

    Next, in light of yoga, I also want to say a word about pharmaceutical drugs prescribed for mental health, which to me fall into two basic categories: those which are relatively mild, slow-acting, non-habit-forming — non-narcotics such as antidepressants such as Prozac or Wellbutrin and the like, and those which are fast-acting and addictive — such as Adderall and other amphetamines, or Klonopin and other narcotics.  While all pharmaceutical drugs go through testing for safety, that process varies in its scientific rigor and effectiveness; the US FDA is not at all an impartial entity, and is often swayed by the influence of politics, money and lobbying.

    In general, the mild, non-narcotic drugs may be a significant, if placebo-like, help to people who cannot even begin to contemplate sustained effort without outside help to change diet, exercise and improve their mental, emotional and spiritual condition. However, while possibly helpful, even in this case, the drugs are not a solution; they are a temporary crutch on the way to a solution — which ultimately is to find and sustain those habits of healthy living that allow one to do the work of healing the deeper issues that caused the dysfunctions to arise in the first place.  

    On the other hand, the fast-acting pharmaceuticals are at least as dangerous as street drugs should be avoided at almost all costs, to be used only in cases where a person has literally lost control of themselves, where powerful sedatives maybe temporarily necessarily. It continues to amaze me that, around the world, doctors diagnose people with mental illnesses, and then give them powerful drugs to use on their own mental self-direction.  It is a preposterous contradition, a shining example of iatrogenic illness, when doctors make people’s suffering worse through ill-considered palliative care, instead of seeking and treating the root of the problem.

    That said, I don’t believe the self-administered use of any powerful drug ought to be a criminal act. It also, however, should not be an unregulated one.  Freedom is a birthright; but it comes with tremendous responsibility.  We need to work toward ways in which that freedom and responsibility can be balanced when it comes to all forms of addiction, while focusing on treatment and recovery for people struggling with addiction, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and other emotional and mental disorders,and these in various combinations, which are the recurring patterns behind drug abuse.  

    V. Physical Culture and the Goal of Yoga

    Even underneath these psychological labels is the deeper, personal karmic truth of suffering and redemption which yoga seeks to directly address from the outset.  However, for many people who cannot sustain practice of the yamas and niyamas I mentioned above, pursuing other modalities to release them from the grip of active addiction are essential, whether that is 12-step, therapy, or other support groups and community resources.  This abstinence opens the door to real, lasting spiritual life, and it frees them from the false ego projections that necessarily arise when people try to be “spiritual” while in the midst of active addiction.

    “Yogas chitta vritti nirodha” — Yoga is the mastery of the modifications of the mind — begins the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  Through yoga, we can arrive at a state wherein the mind is under the perfect control of the Spirit or in-dwelling Self that is One with the Infinite.  In practice, yoga can be an important part of the healing process from mental and emotional disorders, or simply from whatever difficulty one’s karma presents.   

    Raja yoga (the 8-limbed system taught in Patanjali’s yoga sutras) begins with sincere observance of the abstinences (yamas) and observances (niyamas), which lay the foundation for postural (hatha)and breath (pranayama) practices, which in turn provide the basis for pratyahara (sense control) and dharana (concentration), which in turn open the door to the experience of dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (awakening). This process of awakening may be gradual for some, rapid for others.  Any sincere aspirant can attain to it, and their rate of progress is only constrained by their degree of surrender.  Thus, we are given one prescription for awakening of body, mind and spirit.  Other yogic modalities, such as bhakti (devotion), karma (service), and jnana (knowledge) proceed on spiritual, social, and intellectual planes.  Raja yoga proceeds on the practical, physical plane, gradually refining a person, beginning with social interactions, gradually inward toward the subtlest energy.

    Western physical culture, which has evolved into the global addiction-positive culture — which normalizes the use of refined foods,  intoxicants, psychedelics and pharmaceuticals in order to relieve the commonplace fear, sadness, and lack of creativity and connection that people feel in their daily lives — and would even seek to co-opt hatha yoga itself for this purpose — must be seen clearly for what it is.  Physical culture and its offshoot of addiction-positive culture is the best response of an increasingly alienated, isolated, and dysfunctional culture to the problems it is creating through lack or loss of spiritual values; however, this response is coming in physical terms, though the source of it is deeper still.  

    As Einstein said, “A problem cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created it.”  In yogic culture, the premise is that we are always part of integrated whole, a Divine Unity.  And because our deepest self already knows this, it needs only to be reminded through direct experience for the most powerful healing to occur.  

    As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita Ch. 2, Verse 61, “One who restrains himself from sensual attachments and fixes his consciousness upon the Divine, is a true sage.”   When one succeeds in the sincere practice of spirituality on an ongoing basis, no drugs, no addictive behaviors, and no sensual attachments of any kind are needed to awaken the spirit.  In time, with sincere, sustained effort, all those hindrances and false refuges will all fall away, and only awareness of Unity remains.

  • 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.

  • Celebrity and 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.

  • 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.

  • 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!