- The main message I am receiving from Prashant’s teaching is that he feels we are too focused on doing actions, on working on the body. To him yoga is finding a balance of exchange, or of give and take, between every aspect of our embodiment—the mind, body and breath. I would add that balance requires the kind of mindful practice he recommends, and cultivating compassion toward our limitations, state of mind, etc., toward whatever we do experience. If we practice in this spirit, then our practice can lead us to experience spontaneous moments of deep joy and contentment. These moments are (I believe) moments when we experience the Self.
1. In the New York Times bestseller, Buddha, Karen Armstrong recounts Gotama Siddhartha’s quest for enlightenment. He tried and quickly attained various stages of concentration and absorption through the best of the yogic practices that were available to him at the time. These were similar to the practices we have come to associate with Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutras several hundred years after Gotama became enlightened. But even though he attained these deep meditative states, he still felt trapped by the negative aspects of ego we all experience once he came out of his ‘trance states’. His solution, which ultimately led to his enlightenment, was not to completely turn away from his yogic practices, but to supplement them with the intentional cultivation of what he called the ‘immeasurables’: universal love and friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Whereas the yogic practices dampen the klesas (‘causes-of-affliction’), the cultivation of the ‘immeasurables’ channels the energy and focus of our yogic practices into wholesome states. These ‘immeasurables’ happen to appear in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, in sutra I.33. When we practice with tapas and intensity to accomplish various actions in our bodies, we essentially are dampening the klesas. But at the same time we can soften and open our hearts while practicing, to keep from hardening our minds. And we can become emotionally and mentally receptive to the energy and vitality generated by the physical practice. Natural states of love, compassion, joy and acceptance will arise spontaneously from this kind of balance that we can then share with those around us. It is in the sharing and radiating of these states with others, as well as in the practice of asanas and pranayama that (as the Buddha found) they become our natural response in challenging moments.
Nov 13 - 15
- There are three aspects of the breath that readily lend themselves to the practice of asanas, as well as pranayama: timing, location and number. Each of these is mentioned in sutra II.50. Consider location, or place: where does the breath occur? By location is meant not only where the air itself enters into your body, which is just the nasal passage, windpipe and lungs, but where does the movement occur in the body that initiates the intake of air and that facilitates its spread throughout the body? For once the air reaches the lungs it spreads throughout the body through the blood stream. What actions in the body facilitate this spreading? There are so many ways to feel and alter the location of the breath, for example whether it is allowed or made to reach down into the lowest part of the abdomen, or the outermost corners of the front of the chest (that is, whether the movement in these regions create the experience that the breath reaches there, which means that the prana reaches there, if not the air per se). But here is another way to parse the location of the breath: inner and outer, and interstitial. Be aware of the inner body, the outer frame of your body, and the boundary between these two. Becoming aware of the inner body happens naturally if we perform linked actions. From there we can explore how the breath touches the inner body, outer body and the space in between (e.g. connective tissue).
- Is there an aspect of the physical body that is a natural progression from gross-level awareness to more subtle awareness? Is there a way to practice poses so that we cultivate more of a witness perspective? The Iyengar method is one way to evolve from body-centered consciousness (prakriti) to the witness perspective (purusha). Guruji’s method is to link, to practice paired (or opposing) actions; Prashant’s is also to link, through the recognition and exercising of the existing links (samyoga) between mind and body. By ‘addressing’ and making one thing an ‘aspect of’ another (as in making some part of the body an aspect of the breath), we become aware of samyoga (see Yoga Sutra II.17).
- (Prashant's approach) It is in the process of becoming aware of this linking (samyoga) that we can let go of it and acquire the perspective of the witness. Once we acquire the witness perspective, then we have teased apart the unconscious linking (samyoga) between seer (drastr, or purusha) and seen (drsya, or prakriti) that is the cause (hetu) of that which is to be overcome (heya). 'That which is to be overcome' refers to avidya and the other klesas (YS II.17).
- (Guruji’s approach) The act of linking one action to another creates a transformation (parinama) in the practitioner’s consciousness: the ability of holding one action whilst performing the second constitutes the first transformation (nirodha parinama). The mind now becomes quiet. Coming to understand the two separate actions as a single, integrated, action, constitutes the second transformation (Samadhi parinama), where the many actions become one. In the moment when this transformation occurs, the mind lets go of its identification with the body as consisting of the two separate parts (dual mind), and becomes identified with the body as consisting of the single action (non-dual mind, on a small scale). So, incrementally, we are letting go of samyoga. Now, if we can expand the performance of such paired actions to where all the actions, encompassing the whole body, are performed as a single action, then we come to a cross-road in our practice. We are presented with an opportunity to drop the entire body-mind and suddenly acquire the witness consciousness. This is the final transformation, nirodha parinama, which is defined as occurring when the quiescent (santa, or past) and uprisen (udita) mental contents (pratyaya) are similar (tulya). In other words, nirodha parinama occurs when our consciousness is no longer alternating between the doer, the doing, and the ‘being done to’.
1. Before exploring connectivity between the mind and body, or the mind and breath, there has to be clarity about which qualities of the mind interact with body and breath. There are probably an uncountable number, but consider a few Prashant mentions:
a. Inwardness: are you aware that for each inward turn of your mind, there is also a greater expansiveness once you release the inwardness? This is true until there is perfect pratyahara throughout the asana practice. The mind is like sand in the hand—for every gap you close, two or three open…The power of the mind to affect asana depends on how deeply inwardly it has been collected. Physical discomfort, annoyance, disagreement, doubts, all these scatter the mind and reduce both its conative and cognitive power.
b. Reflectivity: when you perform an action, what is the mind’s response? Is there an immediate comparison with the intended action, and a judgment about its efficacy? Or is there a poised reflection in your mind’s eye of the local and global effects of your action, like the perfect response in a calm pool of water to whatever touches its surface? The first is reactivity, the second is reflectivity. In the first, the mind is stuck in conditioned responses, in the second the conditioned responses are temporarily suspended—to notice something new…
c. Pensiveness: similar to reflective, except that some emotional content is permitted to inform one’s thoughts and observations, for meaning and value…‘pendere’ means ‘to weigh’. As you practice an asana, an action within the asana, a prana kriya, be aware of its purpose, its value. See sutras III.45 & 48 for scriptural references to the use and benefit of this kind of inquiry.
d. Profundity: as are all the gunas, and all phenomena that derive from them, citta and the mind appear in layers (parvani). See if you touch the deeper layers of the mind while in asana, and via asana.
e. Penetration: this is a measure of how focused the mind is, penetration can mean depth within the body and its layers, and it can also mean resolution, how fine the details are you can perceive, both in space and in time. How well can the mind perceive what is not obvious?
f. Sublimity: how well does the mind grasp what is subtle, and perceive what is sacred in what at first glance seems mundane?
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment
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