our-yoga

Practice this morning was great. Still modifying most of my half-lotus postures, except Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana and Ardha Baddha Padma Paschimottanasana; the idea is to work on getting into these postures slowly, taking as much time and as many breaths as are needed, and try to move into them by using the external rotators and the adductors rather than just muscling into them; the general idea is to initiate the action from the hips/core rather than from the knee. I figured that if I can teach my body how to get into these first two half-lotus postures effectively and safely, I can then apply the same lessons to all the other half-lotus and lotus postures in primary and second. This approach seems promising so far. I'll write more about this as things develop.  

On the backbend front, there are some interesting developments. Over the last week or so, as I bring my mind's eye to focus more on opening in the mid-back, I have been able to get deeper into Kapotasana. This morning, I managed to grab that area where the Achilles Tendon ends and the calve begins on both legs (is there a name for this part of the lower leg?).

That's the thing about asana practice sometimes; you "lose" something, but "get" something and "progress" in another area. Interesting, don't you think?

But there is really no such thing as a bad practice in Ashtanga. We have a tendency to judge and differentiate between "good" practice days and "bad" practice days. "Good" days are commonly thought of as days on which the practice flows smoothly and seamlessly, when one's breaths and movements are (relatively) smooth and unencumbered, and one's mind is not full of "monkey thoughts". "Bad" days are, well, everything that good days are not. But in the bigger scheme of things, even so-called "bad" days are actually good days. I think Guruji once said, "The only bad practice is no practice." In his latest post, Patrick expresses this very nicely when he writes:

"And in this way, devotional practice is regular practice, because there's nothing to gain or lose. I still get sore (annamaya) but it's the energy management (pranamaya; and with it, hints of emotional management) that really happens. Annamaya contains, runs with, alongside, pranamaya, and it's more and more, now emotional energy that is cracked out of fascia, anger at my household situation, mourning about my father earlier this year, anxiety about the holiday travel with my family's chronic weird communication and suburbanity, other things. Practice is not ABOUT these things, but I am about these things, and I learn this in practice. I see my own noise better. I hear the jam band that is my emotional/physical/energetic state, over the bass note of practice's equanimity."

"I see my own noise better"... I like that. Do we become better people when we are able to see our own noises better? I think the answer is yes, according to the Official Yoga Party Line. If you are able to see your own noises better, you will be able to achieve a certain level of detachment/distance/separation from your own noises, and you will then be able to make more conscious, "yogic" decisions, rather than simply react to those noises. Problem solved. 

Several years ago, at an asana intensive, Nicki Doane approached what I think is the same point from a slightly different direction. She said something to this effect, "If one has a beautiful asana practice, but is an asshole off the mat, then one is merely doing gymnastics."

I suppose one way to respond to Nicki's words might be, "Well, what's wrong with doing gymnastics? It's at least good to look at, if nothing else. Think about it: Any asshole can be an asshole, but it takes something to be a gymnastic asshole..." But of course, being the nice Asian guy that I was (and hopefully, still am), it did not occur to me at that time to muster such a comeback. Sidenote: I will seriously pay a lot of money to see the expression on Nicki's face if somebody were to muster such a comeback. If you are planning on doing this soon, please let me know :-)

Hmm... that wasn't very nice, Nobel. I wonder what's wrong with me today; I've been in a rather subversive mood the whole day. But anyway, I guess what I was trying to say (before I got sucked into that subversive digression) is that according to the Official Yoga Party Line, what Nicki is implying is that if one hopes to get more out of the asana practice than mere gymnastics, one needs to do something more with the asana practice than simply strive for physical perfection. Or, as Kino would say, one must "make the transition from a fitness oriented approach to yoga into a devotional one."

Sounds good. But maybe things aren't that simple... What do I mean? Well, in the course of making that transition to a devotional approach to the practice, one often has to radically change one's lifestyle habits and schedule. These changes do not just affect oneself: They also affect people close to oneself. For instance, your significant other may start noticing that you are no longer willing to stay up late to, say, watch movies or hang out or partake in other, uh, more intimate activities. Or you may start turning down perfectly legitimate requests from your friends to help them out with certain things at certain hours of the day, because you either have decided to set aside those hours for practice, or you have decided that you need to be getting certain of your own stuff done by a certain time if you are to get to bed by a certain hour so that you can get up and do your practice at a certain hour tomorrow. (How do I know about all these things, you may ask?...)

And might it not be possible that the friends and loved one/s you have turned down in the course of this transition might see you as an asshole for being this way? Oh well, maybe you don't have this problem. Good, good... But what if you are one of these unfortunate souls who do face this kind of dilemma?

On one level, it is probably things like this that have rightly or wrongly earned Ashtangis the reputation of being uptight/anal/dogmatic/judgmental/whatever type A personalities. So, one solution is obviously to "let go", "get a life', and don't be so uptight/anal/dogmatic/judgmental/whatever. Well, okay, but I can't help feeling that one can only "let go" so much before one throws out the proverbial baby with the bathwater (sorry, can't find a less violent metaphor...).

Anyway, I think this is becoming one of those posts where I'm not quite sure where I'm going, or how I'm going to end. So I may as well end now, while I'm still semi-lucid. But I guess you can see that there is some kind of a paradox here, which is something like this: In the course of trying to move towards a devotional approach to the practice (which would, if everything goes according to plan, make one less of an asshole), one becomes the asshole that one is trying not to become. Interesting, don't you think?   

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The answer to this question is quite complicated. But in order to make sense of what I am talking about, I have to start from the beginning. So please bear with me.

So, let's start from the beginning. Earlier today, I read with great interest Claudia's recent post about her recent trip to Mysore, and the comment thread that follows it. Claudia writes about how she has come to terms with the need for certification or external validation of one's "yogic status". She writes:

"Wanting some validation, or some external certificate, is a way of filling an emptiness or insecurity that perhaps we didn't realize we had. The true yogi is overflowing with a happiness generated by every limb of the yoga sutras working in conjunction.

Nobody can give me a certificate for this. Nobody might even know it but me. And once that certificate is hanging on the wall, will the emptiness that desperately requires it truly be filled?"

I think these are very wise and beautiful words. At the same time, Claudia also observes certain displays of seemingly not-so-evolved behavior among supposedly advanced students:

"I was shocked to see some advanced students screaming at the coconut guy, one of the coconut guys, the details do not matter, it may not have even been a coconut guy, the point is there was rudness, yelling.  I was shocked to see advanced students gossiping, or advanced students resenting the levels reached by others.

The point I am trying to make is that I am surprised to see many people calling themselves yogis of a certain level who cannot, will not, be kind, be honest, be happy.  Of course this includes me too, I am not perfect, and I make mistakes."

Claudia's observation seems to have struck a sympathetic chord among her readers. For instance, one of the commenters on her post writes:

"Here's what I struggle with--situations like those advanced yogis, or even John Friend, who has done yoga for years. It seems like the yoga doesn't work at all--that the system is just like any human system--terribly terribly flawed. You do seem true and real and like you are working with integrity to try to be your best and to be honest when you are not. But that may be you--something you have become unrelated to yoga. It may be who you are. Maybe it's not the yoga, not the yoga at all. That is my worry. And if you are who you write, you are a true yogi--it has nothing to do w/ the poses. So why should we put ourselves into all of these shapes? Or perhaps, it's the surrender that does it--to something greater, and that can come by giving yourself over to the poses, or to prayer, or to a higher source. Perhaps it's surrender to what is good and true more than anything.

Tara"

Tara's dilemma (if I may call it that) seems to be this: If the yoga practice is such a great system for achieving self-transformation/self-realization, then how come we still see all these supposedly advanced yogis engage in behavior that is, well, unbecoming of an advanced yogi? Does this mean that ultimately, what determines whether or not you become a self-realized person has nothing to do with the yoga, but with what you already are or have become? Or, as Tara puts it, "that may be you--something you have become unrelated to yoga. It may be who you are."

If this is the case--if becoming self-realized is more a matter of who we already are rather than what the yoga practice does for us--does this mean that yoga ultimately cannot help us to attain self-realization? Maybe some of us are born with a Self-realization Gene (Claudia appears to be one of these people :-)), and some of us aren't. If you have this Gene, then all you need is a little work and voila!, you are then Self-realized! If you don't happen to have this Gene, well, you're out of luck. No amount of yoga (or whatever) is going to turn you into a Self-realized person. At least not in this lifetime. May you have better genetic luck next time.

Is this what the deal is? Is the potential for Self-realization genetically determined? Is Genetic Determinism with regard to Self-realization (GDS) true? Are those of us who don't happen to have this Self-realization Gene condemned to be jerks/assholes/douchebags for the rest of this life?

Hmm.... I don't know. With my practice being as superficial as it is, I really am in no position to answer this question. Or maybe my practice is so superficial because I don't possess the Self-realization Gene. Which means that Genetic Determinism with regard to Self-realization is true, and I am condemned to lifelong jerkhood/assholism. Ha! Takes one to know one, don't you think?

But I have a hunch that, as with most big questions, the answer to this question is a little bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. Let's begin with that Holy Grail of yogic practices: Samadhi. According to the Yoga Sutra (or at least, according to my superficial understanding of it), the highest level of samadhi is objectless or nirbijah samadhi (YS 1.51).

Does attaining objectless samadhi guarantee that one will attain non-attachment (vairagya) and, along with it, Self-realization? According to anecdotal accounts I have heard, the answer seems to be no: Attaining objectless samadhi is a useful tool that one can use to attain self-realization. However, as with all tools (including, as we all know, the asana practice), one can become overly attached to the attainment of objectless samadhi, and be distracted from the path, in much the same way in which one can be distracted from the path by one's asana achievements. My friend Tom attests to this in a comment on an earlier post on this blog:

"Samadhi is simply a tool that can help us get to realization. We still must use that tool regularly and allow purification to happen on deeper and deeper levels. And without the foundation of purity of intent (like if we are still striving after experiences, energetic openings, or mystical phenomena) the tool is useless and eventually can be self destructive.

I once worked with a teacher, quite an adept who could abide in samadhi state and who could and did demonstrate some pretty fantastical attainments (siddhis/psychic powers). Despite his fantastical displays of knowledge and abilities, the striving in his heart (and suffering that goes with it) was still rather obvious. His workshops were like a 3 ring spiritual circus! I used to think anyone of his level of accomplishment must have done the work, must be on he right path, but after a while it became very clear what the yoga sutras say about attainments possibly indicating progress on the path but also being a big distraction and trap..."

So even abiding in samadhi can become a circus act! Well, now I don't feel so bad about my own circus acts (see this post)... But I guess what Tom's comment shows is this: Yoga is a powerful system or set of tools that can enable one to attain Self-realization. But tools--especially powerful ones--can always be misused, and become self-destructive to the user whose intention is not pure. And it is ultimately our intentions that will determine whether we use these tools to become self-realized beings, or whether we use them to become samadhied assholes. 


So, to come back to my original question: Is Self-realization genetically determined? Well, I think it would have to depend on whether our intentions are genetically determined, since it is ultimately our intentions that decide whether or not we become self-realized. Well, are our intentions genetically determined? Uh, I don't know... I don't even know how to begin to try to answer this question. Gosh, being a philosopher really sucks! You answer one question, and then a bigger question comes tumbling down the hill at you! There's something very Sisyphean about all this, don't you think? :-)

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Or, at least, in this Ashtangi. As I mentioned in a recent post, I have a slouching problem. And, judging from a comment by an anonymous commenter on that post, at least one or two other Ashtangis out there also have an issue with slouching.

Now, as many of you know, Ashtanga has a reputation for attracting Type A people. Could it be that some Ashtangis (yes, I know that two Ashtangis is probably too small a sample size to warrant the description "some", but still...) slouch or otherwise have bad posture in order to (over)compensate for certain undesirable Type A traits, such as being overbearing or having an inflated ego? If slouching is indeed associated with low self-esteem, as my massage therapist friend suggests, could it then be employed by some Ashtangis as a sort of psycho-somatic mechanism to depress or suppress an inflated ego?

This thought occurred to me earlier today, after I read this interesting article in Yoga for Smart People (damn! don't you hate it when, a few days after you dissed something, it comes back to bite you in the ass when you actually find something interesting in it? Oh well. Maybe being smart isn't always such a bad thing, after all...) Here's an excerpt from the article:

"If you take an individual with an inflated ego and make their muscles strong and beautiful and limber and encourage them to acknowledge themselves and the contribution they are supposedly making to the world by just showing up on their mat and they have a lot of anger and don’t have a lot of self-awareness and they don’t have the tools to deal with these things and they don’t know where to get them and all the yoga teacher says is “breathe” and “trust yourself” then what happens in the moment that they want to punch someone in the face?

They just breathe. And trust themselves."

To be sure, the author of this article isn't talking about Ashtanga, but about what she calls "postmodern hybrid yoga". I'm not entirely sure what this is; it's probably a catch-all phrase that refers to all those millions of vinyasa flows and hot yogas that we find everywhere in our beautiful (post)modern yoga scene. But I can't help feeling that what she is saying here may also apply to Ashtanga yoga practitioners; if nothing else, a regular six-day-a-week Ashtanga practice can also cause one to have strong and beautiful and limber muscles (trust me, I know what I'm talking about :-)). And I think it was David Swenson who warned that doing asana is like plowing the soil of our being; depending on what you plant in that soil, you will end up with either a very self-realized human being or a very strong and limber and physically beautiful asshole (again, trust me on this; it takes one to know one...).

Anyway, here's my hypothesis: Could it be that some Ashtangis, knowing the powerful potential of this practice to transform one's being for better or for worse, try on some subconscious level to limit its power (say, by slouching, or by adopting other transformation-stunting behaviors)? I don't know if any of this is true or even coherent (as I said, I am working with a very small sample size), but I can't help but wonder, nonetheless.

None of the above, of course, should be taken as an excuse for having bad posture or for developing any other bad habits. It's just me thinking aloud, as always. Well, I do need to go somewhere now, so I'll sign off here. But if you think any of this makes sense, and would like to say something, I'll love to hear from you.      

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Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by repeated and liberal use of the F-word (sounds like "duck"), and are also easily offended by grumpy Ashtangis who like blaming others for any interruptions to their daily practices, read no further! Consider yourself warned. 

"Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature

I had a moment during practice this morning when I actually preferred the destruction of the whole world to the interruption of my practice. Yeah, crazy, right? How unyogic is that? I'm definitely not proud of it, but hey, it happened, and since this is supposed to be an Ashtanga blog in which I talk about things that come up in my practice as honestly as I can, I decided I'd share this here anyway. Maybe some of you out there will be able to relate to this, maybe not. Or maybe this means that Ashtanga is slowly turning me into a psychopath, and I seriously need help (like, maybe go to an Ashtanga-holics Anonymous (AA) meeting somewhere.) Anyway, you decide.

What exactly happened? Well, here's what happened. At the beginning of my practice this morning (I think I was at the fifth Surya A), my fiancee left the apartment to go down to the coffeeshop to get some coffee. A couple of minutes later, as I was completing my first Surya B, the door buzzer rang, startling myself out of my yogic blissed-out state and also startling the cockatiels whom, I was sure, were experiencing a "contact bliss" as a result of being in the proximity of my great yoga practice.

"FUCK!!! She must have forgotten her keys again. WHY DID SHE HAVE TO INTERRUPT MY YOGA PRACTICE?! FUCK!!!"

With this thought, I reluctantly got myself out of Utkatasana, walked over to the buzzer, pushed the intercom button, and murmured "Yes?" in a rather irritated tone. "Let me in. I forgot my keys." Came her voice over the intercom. Damn! Just as I thought! If I get a dollar for every time I have to buzz her in because she forgot her keys, I will be such a wealthy man by now. I buzzed her in anyway (like I have a choice), and stalked back to my Mysore rug in an angry state of mind. I don't know why, but there is something about that combination of the loud obnoxious sound of the buzzer ringing, my having to interrupt my practice, and (in my opinion) the very stupid reason for having to interrupt my practice that got me really, really mad. I got so mad that I almost wanted to pound the counter with my fist, but stopped myself at the last moment ("Don't waste energy! And besides, do you really want to get a yoga injury (if you can even call it that) from breaking your hand on the counter?" Said my more rational self.).

A couple of minutes later, as I was in downdog in my second Surya B, trying to anal-breathe away my angry state of mind, she came in the door. "You really should remember your keys before you leave the apartment." I couldn't resist murmuring from the depths of downdog. She said yes, she should, and then proceeded to look through her purse (which she had left the apartment with) again, just to be sure the keys weren't actually in there. And guess what? They were! In her own words, they were "in some other corner of the purse that I seldom look at."

DAMN!!! So I basically buzzed you in for nothing! If I had ignored the buzzer and just went right on practicing (like I could, anyway, with that loud obnoxious ring...), you would have found the keys and let yourself in! Damn! I thought to myself. And then I had this really, really nasty evil thought:

"WHY IS THE WORLD SO FULL OF STUPID PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE THEIR FREAKING HOUSEKEYS ARE?! WHOEVER'S RUNNING THIS BIG COSMIC JOKE THAT WE CALL THIS WORLD NEEDS TO END THE WORLD RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT. YOU KNOW, BRING ON JUDGMENT DAY OR WHAT-HAVE-YOU, PUSH THE RESET BUTTON ON THE UNIVERSE, SO THAT A WHOLE NEW WORLD--A WORLD WITHOUT STUPID PEOPLE WHO DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE THEIR FREAKING HOUSEKEYS ARE, AND WHO WON'T INTERRUPT OTHER PEOPLES' YOGA PRACTICES JUST BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW WHERE THEIR FREAKING HOUSEKEYS ARE--CAN COME INTO BEING IN ALL ITS DIVINE GLORY, SANS THE ABOVE STUPID PEOPLE, OF COURSE."

Well, now you know that I am really not the enlightened sounding Ashtanga Fundamentalist that I have pretended to be thus far on this blog. Oh well, I guess it's still not too late to stop reading, or to "un-follow" yourself from this blog. As I said, I'm not proud of what I was thinking, but it really did happen. I'm even less proud of the fact that I remained in this angry state of mind for all of primary series (I did full primary this morning); the anger only started to subside when I got to the finishing backbends. Come to think of it, if even the heart-opening effects of backbending could not wash away the anger, I don't know what would; in which case, I would really be a serious whackjob who needs to go to an AA meeting right away.

But actually, from a purely physical point of view, the anger wasn't all bad, either. I think I actually had more upper-body strength and bandha control because of the anger. For instance, halfway through jumping through into Triangmukhaikapada Paschimottanasana, I suddenly remembered that I was jumping into the pose the wrong way: As you probably know, you're supposed to jump with your legs positioned so that they kind of slide conveniently into the pose rather than do the standard cross-legged jump-through. I remembered that in mid-jump-through, and actually managed to reverse my body in mid-jump all the way back to chaturanga, and then jump again. Not to brag or anything, but that mid-jump-through reversal back into chaturanga was simply priceless. I wish somebody had gotten it down on video; I'm not sure if I would have been able to pull that off if I didn't have all that extra angry energy to boost me. So yeah, I guess this shows two things: (1) It is possible to do primary series in an angry state of mind, (2) Sometimes, an angry primary series can be quite spectacular, asana-wise.

As I said, I'm not proud of all these angry destructive thoughts that went through my mind this morning. But here's something from an Elephant Journal article that Tim Feldmann wrote a few months ago that may be relevant to my experience here. Tim writes:

"Recently I have had several students approach me with a particular question about the presence of strong negative emotions in their practice and their lives. 

Sometimes the practice of yoga triggers deeply seeded behavioral patterns and brings them to the surface.

For example, you sometimes find that when you practice yoga you may actually feel increasingly more aggravated than before. When you leave yoga class you may even find yourself barking at the people closest to you, such as your children, co-workers and loved ones. 

When you practice you may even find that the irritation increases and you might be wondering what is wrong with you and your practice if it takes you to this “un-yogic” place."

Hmm... sound familiar? But there's hope. Tim continues:

"But have faith, this is exactly what the practice is meant to do...  

Yoga is here to bring us closer to reality, closer to what is really going on inside and outside of ourselves.

Yoga aims at bringing light towards what really is and to find the courage to see clearly and the peace to accept whatever arises without the necessity to remove or change it. If grief is there, if anger is there or if pride is there, our yoga practice is sure to slowly strip away the layers of subconscious veils in a timely fashion, appropriate to what we can handle.

Methodically, like a surgeon’s scalpel we uncover years of psychological armor, escapism and denial and by doing so we slowly reclaim a life beyond it all."

I think Tim's words here are very wise and insightful, and sheds much light on my experience this morning (and maybe, for some of you out there, yours too). And where does asana practice come in? Tim has this to say:

"The next step is finding a vessel to help us move through the darkness towards the light tower.

 And, this is where yoga’s asana practice comes into the picture because the practice is the vessel. Yoga’s asana practice gives us the opportunity to shed some of the layers which ‘protect’ us from feeling, seeing and perceiving what is really happening on the decks below, by cultivating awareness and sensitivity in body and mind, by submitting to a method grander than ourselves and by sticking to it.
  

It is often also at precisely this moment we begin to feel that the practice is not working as it sparks a sea of negative emotions to which we were, perhaps, previously not experiencing.



So we can say that the asana practice serves as a sort of safe space for us to confront, explore, and eventually "melt away" the ugly things within ourselves that we would otherwise rather not confront. But we need to confront these in order to see ourselves for what we are. And we need to see ourselves for what we are in order to get anywhere on the spiritual journey of yoga.

So yeah, maybe I'm not such a whack-job after all...

P.S. I hope my fiancee never reads this post.    

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A very interesting thing happened to me after practice this morning. After savasana, I got up from my Mysore rug, and was floating around the house in my post-practice lightness/glow. I really love that post-practice almost-unbearable lightness of being. For me, this almost-unbearable lightness typically lasts for about 20 to 30 minutes. After I take a shower, the lightness mellows somewhat, to be replaced by a feeling of contentment. And then I step into the hustle and bustle of the "real" world. And then the dust--both physical and mental--of the "real" world settles over this feeling of lightness-contentment, and the rest of the day becomes a battle to retain and remember this feeling as much as I can.

But I digress. As I was saying, after practice this morning, I was moving around in my post-practice lightness/glow. While I was enveloped in this glow, my fiancee came up to me, and asked me what my plans were. I replied that I was going to take a shower, and then go downstairs to the coffeeshop to have an espresso (I have my own special interpretation of Sharath's famous "No Coffee, No Prana" dictum: For me, this means that if you practice and then drink coffee, the ability of the caffeine to circulate prana throughout the system is greatly enhanced. But I understand that many Ashtangis--and probably Sharath himself too--differ. But it's okay. Whatever works for you :-)...).

And then my fiancee said, "How about vacuuming the house?" I smiled sheepishly, hemmed and hawed a little, and then... I agreed! Now this may not strike you as anything out of the ordinary or even interesting. After all, Saucha (cleanliness) is one of the niyamas. So cleaning the house ought to be something that comes naturally to an Ashtangi, right? Well, yes, probably. Except that I have always disliked cleaning, and basically try to get away with cleaning as little as possible. Which means I probably don't score very high in the Saucha department... actually, here's an idea: Maybe this is something that Yoga Teacher Training Programs out there can implement. You know, have the teacher trainees live in some kind of residential setting for a certain period of time, and have the trainer rate each trainee on how he or she performs in each of the yamas and niyamas. But then how would you assess somebody's performance in Brahmacharya? Maybe have a fairly attractive fellow trainee of the opposite sex (or same sex, if the trainee is homosexual) parade naked in front of the trainee who is being assessed, and see how well he or she holds up under temptation? But then the stakes are probably too high here; who would want to volunteer himself or herself to be the "temptation"? And this is probably sexual harassment, anyway; the studio or yoga school holding the training will probably get their pants sued off (talk about Brahmacharya...) and be forced to shut down.

But I didn't mean to go on this tangent about Brahmacharya. Can't seem to keep my thoughts straight today. As I was saying, I've always disliked cleaning, and probably don't score high in the saucha department. But my fiancee picked the right time to ask me to clean; if she had asked me later in the day, I probably would have found some excuse or other and put it off indefinitely. But, as things stood, she asked me when I was in that post-practice blissed-out state, when the reading on my Asshole-meter is at its daily lowest. What Asshole-meter? You may be thinking. Well, some years ago, at a workshop in Florida, David Williams said something along these lines, "Everyday, you get on your mat and do whatever practice you can do. And then you go into savasana. When you come out of savasana, you are in this blissed-out state. Today, you may be able to stay in this state for 10 minutes after savasana. And then you go back to being the asshole you are. Maybe tomorrow you will be able to stay in this state for 11 minutes before lapsing back into being an asshole. And so and so forth."

These weren't the exact words that Williams used. But I think they are pretty close; I'm very sure he actually used the word "asshole." The idea is that, over a period of time (10 years, 20 years, maybe one lifetime, or even two) of consistent practice, the amount of time in the day when you are blissed out will slowly equal and maybe even surpass the amount of time you are an asshole. Finally, you will get to the state when your "asshole time" is very short, even negligible to the point of being, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. And maybe this is when you will finally achieve Self-realization. I don't know for sure, but I think this is the idea.

But all this is just me. Maybe none of this really applies to you. Perhaps you love cleaning and score very high in the Saucha department. If so, more power to you, and please ignore everything I've said above. But maybe you will still find all this entertaining, in some way, in which case you would still have gotten something good out of reading all this. :-)

In other news: Several Ashtanga bloggers have written a few wonderful posts on how to start an Ashtanga practice (at home or at a shala): Check out these posts by Grimmly, Maya Lassiter, and New York Yogini. Maybe I will also write a post about this in the next couple of days: I'm too blogged out right now, and also have a few other things to get done today.

Speaking of home practice... As you will know if you read this blog regularly, I practice mostly at home. Sometime last year, a studio near my home started a once-a-week Mysore program on Saturdays. For a while, it was quite well-attended. I also attended whenever I could (see this post). But since the beginning of the summer, the owners of the studio have suspended the Mysore program due to personal things going on in their lives. And as far as I can see, there are no plans to restart the program.

None of this really affects me; I still happily do my daily home practice. But in some corner of my mind, I feel this urge to do something to get some semblance of the Ashtanga flame burning again in my part of the world. And recently, a friend also remarked to me half in jest, "What good is having a beautiful practice if you don't do anything with it?" Hmm... are you supposed to do anything with a beautiful practice? But maybe he has a point. And besides, as I mentioned, I do feel this urge to contribute in some tangible way to spreading the Ashtanga practice, beyond blogging about it.

But due to my present circumstances, actually starting an official Mysore program myself is not feasible. I live in an apartment, which means opening my house is not an option, as there simply isn't enough space. My finances are limited now, which makes renting a space unfeasible. And besides, I am also trying to devote more time to getting more research done, with the aim of eventually landing that thing called a tenure-track position. All of which makes taking extra time out beyond my daily practice to teach not a very viable option.

I have toyed with some ideas here and there. For instance, I have thought about going out to a park nearby on some mornings to do my practice, and maybe, in this way, attracting interest in the practice in an organic fashion and teaching whoever wants to learn it. But I wonder if people will just look at me and think I'm some kind of a Chinese Yogic Freakshow ("Welcome! Welcome to the one and only Chinese Yoga Freakshow in the Upper Midwest! Featuring the One and Only Ashtanga Fundamentalist in these parts..."), and then just walk on. Then again, maybe this is what David Swenson and his brother Doug had to contend with in their early yoga days, when they practiced in a park in Texas...

Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud here. If you have any thoughts and/or suggestions, I'll love to hear them.

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These past couple of days, I have been reading, thinking and preparing for my philosophy of art class that meets on Wednesday evening. The questions that my class will be discussing this Wednesday are: What is artistic value? Is the artistic value of a work separate (or separable) from other values that it may possess; values such as cognitive value, moral value, social value, educational value, historical value, therapeutic value, or economic value, among others?

To illustrate these questions better, let's use an example. Suppose a person who is having some issues in a romantic relationship feels better after watching Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, not because the movie offers any direct solutions to his relationship troubles (knowing Woody Allen, it probably doesn't :-)), but because the plot of the movie and its characters somehow function to help this person better put his relationship troubles in perspective. So the movie has psycho-therapeutic value for this person. But an art critic may say that the therapeutic value of this movie has nothing to do with its value as a work of art: Just because the movie is effective as a psycho-therapeutic tool says nothing about the production value of the movie, or about the aesthetically relevant aspects of the movie (cinematography, story, character development, etc.).

There is a lively debate in contemporary philosophy of art over whether the artistic value of a work is related to the other values (such as therapeutic value) that the same work may possess. Our art critic above believes that there is no relation between artistic value and other kinds of value the work may possess. But others may disagree.

On a related note, there is also a lively conversation over the question of whether the moral value of a work of art is separable or distinct from its artistic or aesthetic value. Should proper appreciation and understanding of a work of art function to make us better people? If we do not become better people as a result of engaging in artistic endeavors, have we in a sense failed to engage in art properly? Again, different people have different views about this. The American poet and literary critic Yvor Winters argues that poetry is and should be a means of strengthening intellectual and moral character:

"Poetry... should offer a means of enriching one's awareness of human experience and so of rendering greater the possibility of intelligence in the course of future action; and it should offer likewise a means of inducing certain more or less constant habits of feeling, which should render greater the possibility of one's acting, in a future situation, in accordance with the findings of one's improved intelligence. It should, in other words, increase the intelligence and strengthen the moral temper; these effects should naturally be carried over into action, if, through constant discipline, they are made permanent acquisitions."  

But I suspect that many will disagree with Winters here. After all, history seems to provide abundant examples of seemingly highly cultured individuals who nevertheless are highly morally deficient; Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, was a published novelist who also had a doctorate in romantic drama. Or maybe these individuals have failed to understand and appreciate the significance of art in some important sense; perhaps, despite their extensive engagement with art, they have failed to bring about the strengthening of the moral temper that proper engagement and involvement with art should bring about.

I don't have an answer to any of these issues. But I think there is much to think about here. But there is definitely a certain parallel set of issues with yoga practice here. One recurring theme in my posts over the last few months has been the relationship between asana practice and moral development or character. Should "correct", "proper" practice of asana result in some kind of strengthening of the moral temper and make us better people? We know that, as with the case of art, real life seems to provide us with abundant examples of advanced asana practitioners who nevertheless do not appear to be very morally evolved: See, for instance, Claudia's recent story about the coconut-men-yellers in this post. Actually, we don't even have to go all the way to Mysore to look for examples: I myself have engaged in some assholic behavior that I am definitely not proud of (which is not to say I am an advanced asana practitioner, of course; hmm... does this get me off the moral hook? :-)).

I guess the question is: What is the diagnosis for these asana-practicing assholes (myself included)? The way I see it, there are at least three possible answers:

(1) One straightforward answer could be that these folks (again, myself included) may be proficient at asana, but have not done enough to incorporate the other limbs (especially yama and niyama) into their yoga, so that they are really not practicing yoga, but only appearing to. 

(2) Another possible answer could be that the yoga is working even on these assholes: If you think I'm an asshole now, wait till you see me when I don't practice...

(3) Yet another possible answer could be that despite everything we've been brainwashed--uh, I mean, taught--to believe, yoga really isn't all it's cracked up to be. You do whatever yoga you can do, but whether or not you become self-realized in the end has nothing to do with the yoga (maybe it's genetically determined?). Which means the system really doesn't work. Quick! Jump ship while you still can! Maybe go do Pilates or Taichi or something...

Again, I don't know what the answer is: I'm hoping it's (2), but what do I know?   

Anyway, time to go eat some dinner. This is what happens when I don't blog for a couple of days: You get subjected to one long-ass post! Well, I hope you find at least some of this useful (or at least entertaining...).

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Some recent posts in the blogosphere (and more generally online) have caused me to ask some fundamental questions about the practice of Ashtanga yoga: What exactly should one aspire to in doing this practice? Is it alright to practice Ashtanga only for the purpose of getting a tight ass, for instance? And I don't just mean people who are new to the practice, who may quite understandably be attracted to the practice because of such "tight-ass considerations" (one irony here is that making one's ass too tight (i.e. if one clenches the buttocks too much) may make backbends difficult and even injurious. But this is a topic for another post). If this recent article in the NYT is any indication, even long-time "advanced" practitioners may still be motivated by "tight-ass" or fitness considerations.

Which is totally fine, as far as I am concerned. If doing this practice for the sole purpose of getting a tight ass or beach body (or whatever ass/body) works for you and rocks your boat, more power to you. After all, didn't this particular South Indian gentleman, one Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, famously declare, "Do your practice, and all is coming"? The "all" here, I suppose, should include tight asses and beach bodies, don't you think?

But I suspect that many people out there may look at the tight-ass-motivated Ashtangi and shake their heads in disapproval, saying that our Ashtangi here should be aspiring to more exalted things. After all, if our friend here has "advanced" to second or even third series, shouldn't he or she have totally transcended any ass considerations, and be striving for higher, less body-oriented goals?

What might be these goals be? Energetic openings might be one possible candidate. The trouble with energetic openings is that, for one, they are not things that you can necessarily will or intend to occur at particular times or places in the practice (then again, is there anything in the practice--or indeed, in life--that works this way?). For another, according to Owl, it is quite possible that:

"most westerners intuitively slow down their own transformation by half-assing the concentration, relaxation, diet or drste. At first, some rajas or tamas intake (emotional, dietary, mental) may act as insulation." 

As somebody who half-asses these things in more ways than I can count (or am conscious of), I think I can understand at least some of what Owl is saying here, even if I may not fully appreciate what my half-assing is preventing me from experiencing (or insulating me from, if one wants to put a more positive spin on it... it's very much a matter of perspective here, I suppose :-)). If many other Ashtangis in the west are in the same position as me, then it looks like if one is to have any chance of experiencing any kind of energetic opening, one would need to eliminate those things in one's concentration, relaxation, diet or drste that are causing one to half-ass one's practice. Which is possible, I suppose, but definitely no mean feat.

Long story short: Striving for/aspiring to an energetic opening is probably counter-productive, and would probably lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering from unfulfilled expectations.

So striving for/aspiring towards energetic openings as an explicit goal of practice is out of the picture. What other possible candidate/s is/are left? What about Samadhi, that holiest of holy grails of yoga practice? After all, if one is going to forego tight-ass considerations as a motivation for practice, one may as well strive for the highest possible yogic goal. But samadhi turns out to be a little more complicated than might be apparent at first glance. Yoga Sutra 1.17 describes four forms of Sampragnata or distinguished samadhi:

"Thorough knowledge
is accompanied by inquiry
into its four forms
analytical thinking about an object,
meditative insights on thoughts,
reflections into the nature of bliss,
and inquiry into one’s essential purity."

translated by M. Stiles

According to Swami Shyam, these four forms of samadhi culminate in an inquiry into bliss during which there is an awareness of peace and joy, and a lack of awareness of words, meanings, time, space. At the same time, there is also an awareness of the fluctuations of asmi, the source of ahamkara, or ego.

Commenting on this passage, Swami Satchindananda further cautions that the practice of samprajnata samadhi must be pure and selfless or else the practioner or sadhaka will abuse their new found powers and abilities.

I find Satchindananda's words here very interesting: If one does not practice samadhi with pure and selfless intention, one will abuse one's newfound powers in this area. This means that it is possible for one to attain samadhi while having impure intentions and being selfish. In other words, it is possible to attain samadhi and still be a total asshole! Which means that one can be a self-realized asshole!

Interesting... But if one is going to make all these efforts to attain samadhi and still remain the asshole one was, why bother? Why not just stick with tight asses and beach bodies? At least one would have less things to worry about that way.

Maybe I have discovered a certain paradox; let's call this the paradox of samadhi: One starts out the yoga practice being an average asshole. In order to overcome this asshole nature, one embarks on the practice of yoga, aspires to and eventually attains samadhi. However, if Satchidananda is right, then it is quite possible that one could still be an asshole after attaining samadhi. A samadhied asshole, but an asshole no less.

Or maybe the goal of yoga practice isn't actually to stop being an asshole, in the first place. Maybe it's just this: Do your practice, and all is coming (and even if you are an asshole, it is still coming...). Shows what I know, right? :-)

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This morning, I woke up with a very troubled and anxious mind. I felt weighed down by some practical and personal things that have been bugging me lately. I'm not going to bore you with the details of what they involve; suffice to say that they are personal enough to bug me deeply, and at the same time practical and immediate enough to allow me no room to ignore them (or so it seemed at the time). At any rate, because of my state of mind, I really did not feel like doing my practice this morning. Heck, I thought, no amount of Surya Namaskar, or getting into a deep Kapotasana, or even finally being able to come back up from Karandavasana is going to change all these things, are they? So, really, why bother?

I listened to this inner whine for a couple of minutes, and then went ahead and did the practice anyway. And I am really thankful I did. The things that were bothering me did not magically go away, but there was a semi-magical transformation of the way the world appeared to me. Somehow, something inside me had shifted somewhere between that first Surya A and Utpluthih, so that by the end of practice, the things that were bothering me seemed more tangible and manageable, and less overwhelming than they did when I first got out of bed this morning.

I believe that many practitioners have had such semi-magical experiences at various times in their daily practices: Indeed, I'm almost certain that experiences like this are what make the practice and its attendant rigors and schedule-adjusting demands worth our while, in the final analysis. But what makes such experiences possible? What kind of shift or transformation happened between that first Surya A and Utplutih, so that one is almost literally not the same person between one point in time and the other?

One response to this question is to appeal to sheer biology: The physical practice releases endorphins into the system, so that we feel more "relaxed" or "high" at the end of it. On this level, doing the practice would really not be that different from, say, going for a run. Actually, it might not be that different from directly injecting endorphins (or endorphin-inducing substances) into the system, come to think of it.

Which is not to say there is anything wrong with having an endorphin high. It's a perfectly respectable thing to have. But perhaps one wants a more... yogic response. In which case, the question might be: Does the practice do anything to the mind and the spirit to bring about this semi-magical transformation?

From my own practice experience, and from reading and listening to others' practice experiences, it seems to me that there are two ways of answering this question:

(1) By making the effort to overcome inertia and get onto the mat and practice, one is able to get to a place of higher (more evolved?) energy. From this place of higher energy, one is then able to see what was troubling one before with a bigger and broader perspective, and be less overwhelmed by it. If I remember correctly, somewhere in his book, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness, Erich Schiffmann describes it this way: If you think of the journey of life as a drive on the freeway, then yoga practice is like a radio that tells you about the road conditions ahead, so that you can "see" further and have a bigger perspective, and be better prepared and secure about what is coming. So, perhaps somewhere between the first Surya A and Utplutih, my "inner radio" got turned on, and I became more aware of where my problems stand in the universe in relation to me. Equipped with this awareness, I became more secure and less fearful about what's out there.

Which underscores the importance of the practice to daily life. Somebody once asked some senior teacher (I can't recall exactly who this is; having a bad memory day :-)) how he could possibly have the time to practice, given all his teaching and other commitments. He said, "I don't have the time; but that's why I practice." To him, the practice wasn't just some optional activity that one does when one has the time; it is precisely when one doesn't have the time that one needs the practice the most. Interesting paradox, no? :-) 

(2) In the course of doing the practice, problems that are not so important simply fall away. I've heard many yogis' experiences of how the practice enabled them to overcome certain not-so-desirable habits (smoking, etc.). There is a common thread running through most of their accounts: It's not so much that one overcomes the undesirable habit in question. The habit simply falls away from one, so that one day, one simply notices that the habit (smoking, for example) isn't so desirable anymore, starts indulging in it less and less, and eventually stops doing it.

I wonder if a similar thing could be happening, on a smaller scale, with our day-to-day worries on the mat. Perhaps this morning, in the course of doing my practice, the things that were bugging me lost their hold on me, and simply "fell away" by the time I finished my practice. Is this possible?

Well, maybe I should also relate this line of thought to my recent asshole meditations. Is it also possible for certain character traits to kind of "fall away" from one with regular practice over a period of time (maybe over the course of many years?); so that, for example, one's asshole characteristics naturally and gradually fall away from one over time? Or--to borrow a phrase that Grimmly used in his latest comment on Bindy's recent post--is it possible that practice causes one's character to undergo a self-lobotomy and get rid of those parts of it that make one less effective in the world? Of course, in saying this, I am making a couple of assumptions: I am assuming that being an asshole (a) is an undesirable character trait, and (b) makes one less effective in the world. To date, neither of these assumptions have been proven. But nevertheless, this is at least something interesting to think about, wouldn't you say?

It could also be that, in the end, (1) and (2) are not two different answers, but simply two different aspects of what is essentially the same thing. That's possible, but I don't know for sure. As usual, I'm just thinking aloud here. If you have anything to share, I'll love to hear from you.

 
            

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I just saw this video over at Linda's blog. The perfect video to continue my asshole meditations (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see this post) :-)

In my previous post on assholism, I got totally caught up with coming up with a definition of "asshole", and did not get around to pondering my question, which is: "Are there ever circumstances on or off the mat in which one might be justified in being an asshole?" Or, to put the same question in terms of my definition of "asshole": "Are there ever circumstances on or off the mat in which one might be justified in believing (if only for a moment) that one is superior to others, and to adopt the appropriate attitudes and actions to put somebody down?"

I would think that the answer would quite probably be no, if one were on the mat: Whatever style of yoga you practice, and wherever you practice, your practice space would hopefully be a safe space in which you would not need to exercise any asshole powers. But what about off the mat? Might there be circumstances in which one's boundaries and/or interests are sharply threatened, in which the only way to preserve one's sanity or well-being is to asshole one's way out of the situation? Might there be circumstances in which, in order to stand up for your own rights or those of others', one needs to treat the transgressor in a way that is less than "nice", which might make one come across to the transgressor as "being an asshole"? Could it be, then, that one person's hero might be another person's asshole?

I have some thoughts on this, but I think I'll keep them to myself for now. I'm more interested to hear what you might have to say about this. If you have anything to say about these issues, I'll love to hear them.  

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Ah... blogstorms. I love and hate them at the same time. I hate them because if, like me, one is a blogger who can't keep his cyber-mouth shut, they can prove to be an enormous expenditure (waste?) of time and energy. I love them, because without them, I would have less avenues to deposit the unceasing output of chitta vrtti.

So it was with the recent wave of criticisms of Okin Carmegorg (I'm starting to get to the point where I probably remember this anagram better than the original name...). There was a part of me that went, "Oh no, not another wave of this!" But another part of me was secretly happy, because now I have more things to ponder and write about.

One concept that came up quite a bit in this recent blogstorm is that of being an asshole. If you were following the blogstorm, you probably already know how this unfolded, but here's the short version of it: When accused of being mean/abrasive/nasty, one blogger, instead of defending herself directly, took the interesting move of declaring herself an asshole. As I understand it, she was essentially declaring: "My blog is a space in which I am free to express myself. And that includes being an asshole at least some, if not all of the time!" At least, this was how I understood her position.

Before I go on, I should make something clear: I have nothing against this blogger's stance; nor do I have anything against said blogger personally. On the contrary, I think this blogger is admirably honest and forthright in openly proclaiming such a position. I really, really think so; I'm not being sarsastic. 

But this nevertheless brings up a question: Is there a place for assholism (not sure if there's such a word, but whatever) in the yoga practice, in the blogosphere, and perhaps, in life in general? If there is, what would be the conditions under which one is justified in being an asshole?

Given what I do for a living, I can't go on with this discussion without trying to define the term under discussion. So, what is the definition of "asshole"? The online Urban Dictionary defines an asshole as (1) "someone being arrogant, rude, obnoxious, or just a total dickhead....", (2)"Your butt hole. Where your s#%t comes out." 

(2) is obviously an anatomical definition, and thus not what we are looking for. As for (1)... well, it seems to point us in the right general direction, but I think it is inadequate and not precise enough. Why? For one, it is possible for somebody to be arrogant, rude or obnoxious without being an asshole. Being rude or obnoxious is generally something we ascribe to particular things people do ("It was rude of me not to knock before I came in the door", "The music that was playing in that coffeeshop was simply obnoxious", etc.). Being arrogant can be described as a state of believing that one is superior to others by virtue of something one is or possesses. As for dickhead... the trouble is that if one defines "being an asshole" in terms of "being a dickhead", one would then have to define what "dickhead" is in order to understand what "asshole" is, and in philosophy (well, at least in analytic philosophy) one tries to avoid multiplying definitions whenever possible, unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

Nevertheless, although (1) is inadequate as a definition of "asshole", we have actually learnt a few things about what being an asshole might amount to by thinking about what it is not. We now know, for instance, that while somebody can be rude or obnoxious without intending to be so, being an asshole is intentional: One cannot be an asshole without deliberately choosing to be one. Being an asshole is also more than simply believing that one is superior to others. In order to be an asshole, one has to believe that one is superior to others, and then adopt the appropriate attitude that would enable one to constantly remind others of one's supposed superiority, and to employ that attitude in such a way as to put others down and make them feel lousy.

Wow, who knew that being an asshole could be so much work? The thing, though, is that, as with any other acquired character trait, being an asshole becomes easier with practice. Indeed, I am pretty sure that the most accomplished assholes are those for whom the appropriate attitude and accompanying actions have become second nature, almost biological. This is where (2) might actually be useful in describing what an asshole is, even though it is supposed to be an anatomical definition. At the risk of being very crass, one might say that for the accomplished asshole, having the appropriate asshole attitude and accompanying actions come as naturally and smoothly as s#%t flowing out of the biological orifice of the same name.

Hmm... I started this post with the intention of pondering whether there is ever a place for assholism in yoga, in the blogosphere, and in life in general. But the task of finding an appropriate definition of "asshole" took up much more time and space than I expected. So I have not gotten to pondering this question. And I am too blogged out right now to write anymore. So I guess this question would have to wait for a future post. Yeah, this happens more often than not in philosophy: You start out trying to answer one question. And then you realize that you can't answer that question without first tackling another question. And that other question leads you down another rabbit hole. Oh well. At least we got our definition of asshole straight. So here's my official working definition of asshole:

"An individual who believes himself or herself superior to others, and consistently adopts the appropriate attitude and takes the appropriate actions to use her perceived superiority as a club to hit others over the head, put them down, and make them feel lousy about themselves."

Pretty neat definition, no?

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