Thoughts :: Archive

What does it mean?

Originally published August 13, 2006

As a follow up to More pain, less gain..., my last post on resuming a yoga practice after a substantial break, I thought I might spend a few minutes ruminating on the spiritual, as opposed to the purely physical, aspects of the practice.

I should start with a warning: if you are spiritually inclined at all, consider yourself a 'seeker,' or generally subscribe to the theory that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, then I recommend that you cease reading forthwith, because everything to come below will probably infuriate you (or, you will just end up thinking that I am a complete idiot - an opinion you will not be alone in holding).

So, after all those years of yoga, of reading the requisite texts, sitting in silence, listening to gurus etc., what have I arrived at? It's simple. Whether it is yoga, zazen, puja, fasting; whatever your particular spiritual inclination, it is all to the same end: to make you realize (lower case 'r') that it is all completely friggin' pointless.

You can stand on your head, as one of my teachers once observed, for 20 years and still be no closer to getting it. Of course, the catch is that as long as you think that there is something to get and someone to get it, it doesn't matter what it is you are doing. So my advice, if you have got this far down the page, is to just GIVE UP. Right now, no more fucking around, just walk away... Trust me, you will be much happier.

Unless of course you are really a serious seeker. One of those people who doesn't do things by halves. Want enlightenment? Then you better be prepared to make a serious fucking effort. (If you read the previous post then this should be ringing a few bells). You don't just do yoga. You do ashtanga, and you get up at 4:15 every morning to do it. Not only do you not eat meat, you eschew garlic, onions & chilies because those foods are rajasic, and they create disturbances in your prana that might prevent kundalini from rising...

I don't need to tell the more emotionally developed amongst you that this sort of behaviour is just plain weird. But to those on the path, this sort of stuff is not just reasonable, it is mandatory. If you want to progress, then you better be prepared to have, as we used to say at footy, a red hot go. There is no transformation without sacrifice.

You see the recurring theme here? Chogyam Trungpa called it spiritual materialism. The notion that the more postures that you master, the more mantras that you recite, the more self-abnegating you are, the more you advance towards realization. It's all acquisitive. And, for ashtangis, it is a very real part of the practice. The whole thing is predicated in the notion that you advance from one posture to the next, from one sequence to the next, towards some ultimate goal. Of course, for most of us who exhibit even vague obsessive tendencies, it is a tremendous trap.

And the trap is exacerbated by the hierarchy of students that this telos encourages. The desire for more advanced postures is fuelled, the lust for the endpoint intensifies. Yoga status: yeah, baby. Talk about fucking up your means & your ends...

But then, at some point (hopefully, unless you are a complete masochist, sooner), something snaps. You just get worn down with trying to put your ankles behind your ears, or you sit in vipassana for 15 years following your breath and one day you just get up and walk out for a beer and a smoke and think to yourself, "What the hell was that about?" You see that no matter how hard you try, how earnestly you apply yourself, you can't stop your mind. YOU HAVE NO CONTROL.

Who wants to stop the mind? Who wants to attain samadhi. Who wants to be enlightened?

Who cares?

Comments?

Hear! hear!
Emma

what does it all mean? hmmmmmmm. why do we pray? if yoga as prostration is a form of prayer, why do we do it? because we want something back? god is not an interventionist, and the nature of prayer is not about desire, but devotion. we pray because we love the divine, whatever notion of the devine we have, manifesting in a guru, established deity, or nature, mother earth. we do not ask the divine for anything but can be grateful to be in its presence.
Ian

Absolutely. The prayer just is the spontaneous manifestation of love. But then again, so is everything we do...
/J

Yeah. Who cares. Except the self obsessed maybe. Thats why I have just finished a sausage and enjoyed it. One of those ones you buy from the supermarket. Organic. Yeah right!! And about to go and have a nice glass of wine with lunch. The thing is , have we been duped by the East or have we duped ourselves thinking the East has the answer. Then you might ask ' what answer? and was there a answer in the first place. I realise and have for a while that doing astanga is not going to enlighten me. I don't like to force any more but I do enjoy practicing. It does in some way help me through the day. Love your work and look forward to more.
Paul

LOL. Perfect. I've often marvelled at those most 'advanced' practitioners who act like real assholes a lot of the time. OK, austerities can help... but if tying yourself into a gordian knot makes you self-realise, why aren't those Chinese acrobats walking on water? And what about all those smiley Tibetan monks who eat almost exclusively flesh? There's some metaphor about the path of the baby monkey vs the baby lion -- the Shiva path is the monkey, where you cling to the mother, trying hard for enlightenment; the krishna path is the lion, surrendering as you're lifted by the scruff of the neck. What's so great about 'enlightenment' anyway? Does it make you happier, or a better person?
Jon

It just is: whether it is happiness, sadness, grief or joy - it is all the same thing. I guess that means that it just makes you the same person. (If that helps?)
/J

oh and you might think about posting this but someone very high up, and I mean high up if you know what I mean, in the astanga lineage was heard to say that " money frees the mind". So if money frees the mind we are being duped.
Paul

Well I understand Pattabhi Jois has issues about money and happiness because he came from poverty and thus money has afforded him happiness to an extent. I quite like what Rolf De Heer said about language in his documentary The Making Of Ten Canoes which was screeened on TV recently. He described white mans language as being based on classification and categorisation, whereas the the aboriginal languages are more about interconnectedness of things and relationships(with the land etc). I suppose these gaps and unknowable things are the spaces where the so called 'divine' is housed. But our language is so reductive that dogma steps in the instant we try to articulate the 'profound experience'. I like this quote from Robert Johnson about 'enlightenment':
"If we stay with the paradox we will find that the single eye that is beyond quarrel and a compromise. We will find instead a unified attitude that marshalls all energy to a fine focus. This is worthy of the term enlightenment."
Robert Johnson Owning Your Own Shadow - The Dark Side Of The Psyche.
Then there is an interesting chapter 'The Paradox of Love and Power'.
em

Language is certainly a good pointer to the dilemma: our experiences are presented back to us as concepts and, in most languages, these are structured as either/or. Experience itself, however, is non-conceptual. RJ is right, although I don't think it is an attitude, but the inescapable essence of being.
/J