our-yoga

At the beginning of my philosophy class this morning, a student came into the lecture hall carrying a yoga mat. (Full disclosure: To my knowledge, none of my present students know that I practice yoga. I don't exactly know why I keep my yoga and academic/teaching life separate. Maybe it's because I have this notion that people might somehow take me less seriously as a person of ideas if they find out that I can put my body into some interesting shapes.)

Anyway, as the student settled herself into her seat, I asked, as innocently as I could, "Is that a yoga mat?" She said yes (What was I expecting to hear, anyway? "No, this is actually an extra-long seat cushion"?). This is roughly how the conversation proceeded from this point:

Nobel: "Did you just come from yoga, or are you going to yoga after this class?"

Student: "I'm going to yoga after this."

Nobel: "Ah.... I would imagine that standing on your head must be a good antidote for doing too much philosophy."

That last statement drew a collective chuckle from the rest of the class. Meanwhile, the student in question smiles sheepishly (I hope she doesn't think I'm a creep).

I don't know why I am telling this story here (probably because there is no other place to tell it; if I were to tell this to my colleagues, they'll probably think I'm being cheesy, or worse...). So there. For the first time in a long time (or maybe for the first time ever), there is no moral to my story. I'm just telling it like it is. I hope you find it interesting or (I can at least hope) entertaining.   

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Today is the first day of classes of the fall semester here in Idaho. About half an hour ago, I was walking around in the student union food court, when a Chinese student stopped me. I know she's Chinese, because I had overheard her saying something in Mandarin to one of her compatriots just a few seconds earlier.

Anyway, Chinese person came up to me and asked (in English), "Hey, where are you from?" I stood in surprise for about two seconds, and then blurted out, "Uh... Singapore?" Her face visibly fell, and she said, "Oh, okay." And then she turned away from me. Apparently, I wasn't the person she thought I was, whoever that person might be.

As I walked away from her in a slightly puzzled state of mind ("Who did she mistake me for?"), a slightly mischievous thought struck me: If I were a little quicker on the uptake, I should probably have said, "My mother's uterus," instead of plain old boring "Singapore". Because, if nothing else, it is technically true that I am from my mother's uterus (as is she, and everybody else).

But since I am not quick on the uptake, I guess I will never find out what her response to this alternate response would be. Ah, the woes of not being quicker on one's feet!

Anyway, that was a (hopefully) cute little story from my little life here in Idaho. As you can see, there is nothing yoga-related about it at all; unless, of course, being quick on the uptake is somehow a siddhi. At this rate, I'll soon be reduced to posting off-color jokes on this blog...

But then again, doesn't womb/uterus translate as "Garbha" (as in Garbha Pindasana) in Sanskrit? So maybe there is something yogic here after all... but then again, "my mother's garbha" wouldn't quite elicit the same kind of effect as "my mother's uterus", would it?  

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"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sartre

In my Introduction to Philosophy class this morning, we discussed the Grand Inquisitor chapter in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

In most of my classes over the last couple of years, there have always been a strong and vocal contingent of religiously devout students (I shall call them "the religious contingent" for the rest of this post) who are quite passionate about their faith and happy to speak freely about their belief in God. Some philosophy professors I know discourage the expression of personal religious belief in class, for understandable reasons: Very often, proclamations of religious belief come down to the relating of certain subjective religious experiences (revelations, being in the presence of God, etc., etc.), which are objectively unprovable, and therefore, not easy to incorporate into a rational discussion.

But I have no objections to expression of religious belief in class; in fact, I encourage it. I've always believed that if people are not comfortable saying what they feel about a particular subject (whether or not what they are saying is objectively provable), they probably won't be open to hearing what I have to say either, and will then just "switch off" and not engage in the class at all.

Which is the last thing I want to happen. So, in most in-class discussions on philosophy of religion, my default position is that of the friendly devil's advocate (i.e. the pagan non-believer who is nevertheless sincerely curious about what it would be like to be a God-fearing person). I figured that this stance of the friendly devil's advocate is the most productive position for me to take, pedagogically speaking: If I come across too strongly as a non-believer (say, as an angry, ranting atheist), I'll end up alienating these students, there'll be no common ground between me and them, and fruitful discussion would then be impossible. 

I'm telling you all of the above to give you a sense of how my classroom environment is like, and to set you up for the little story I'm about to tell (can't write a short blog post even if I try :-)). At one point during this morning's class, the discussion turned to the topic of Heaven. Again playing the role of the friendly devil's advocate, I posed a question to the religious contingent: "What is Heaven like?" A young woman answered: "Heaven is a place where I am surrounded only by people I love and know well and care about." A couple of other people in said contingent nodded their heads or made some noises of approval.

"Funny", I thought to myself, "I've never heard this definition of heaven before." But I decided to run along with it. So I answered, "But doesn't this sound like Facebook?" That got a hearty chuckle from everybody (or at least most people) in the room. "So isn't Facebook then a gift from God?' More chuckles.

But seriously, who needs heaven when we have Facebook? I mean, think about it: I've actually overheard conversations here and there in which people confess that these days, they don't even read the papers anymore. The first thing they look at when they wake up in the morning--and in some cases, the only thing they look at throughout the rest of the day--is their and their friends' Facebook pages. Which means that many people in the world today have effectively created a social media cocoon around themselves, one which consists only of their friends and like-minded people who share their specific worldviews. They have, in other words, created "a place where I am surrounded only by people I love and know well and care about." They have, in other words, created Heaven. Hmm... who, then, is the God in this heaven? (Jesse Eisenberg/Mark Zuckerberg?)

I'm not saying any of this to pass any judgment ("judge not, lest ye be judged...") on anybody or anything. In any case, if creating your own Heaven/media cocoon makes you a happier person, improves the quality of your life and those of others around you, and gives you the strength to get up in the morning and do what needs doing, who am I to judge? But being the kind of person that I am, I just can't help making these idle observations anyway...  

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I just read Spark's recent blog post, where she ponders why she is in Mysore. Even though I have yet to go to Mysore, I feel that a lot of what she writes speaks to me. She writes:

"Ashtanga vinyasa yoga is a system, where you learn directly from your guru, who learned directly from his guru. This practice should be done in a certain way and I personally feel that Sharath is the right person to show me this way.

But this way is also such a crazy struggle. I have faced so many obstacles, practice has been so hard with my injuries and I have hesitated this practice a lot. I have had many days, when practice has been just crap. I have been tired, fed up, lonely, hopeless. I have hated this practice so much and I have cried. I have also faced (and will face) so many people, who can’t understand my decisions related to this practice. They will never understand, why I studied a degree in law, then gave up my career and just started to focus on my practice. They won’t understand, why I want to spend all my money to be able to be here with my teacher. And it’s not always easy to be here either. Sometimes India is just getting on my nerves and making me very tired. This is my fifth Christmas away from home, second in Mysore and my family keeps asking, if I ever plan to be at home during Christmas time. And among other small questions they keep asking, where I am going to live and work, when I go back home.

For me it is just some really strong feeling, that I have to be here. That this practice is actually doing some good for me and this way is right for me."

Spark's personal story really, really speaks to me, even though Spark and I are in quite different circumstances. There is something very powerful yet often lonely about giving away everything you've got in order to do what you believe is the right thing to do for your life. Being somebody who has voluntarily chosen to live and work in a place that is half a world away from where I was born and grew up, I certainly feel very vividly many of the feelings that Spark describes. This may sound very cliche, but it is never easy to make a conscious decision to depart from a particular "default" way of life that you have grown up with and/or have been socialized to believe is the "right" way to live, and adopt another course of life that you (and sometimes, only you) know to be the right way for you. For the sake of brevity, let's just call this kind of story the "departure narrative." 

In the feel-good movie version of the departure narrative (at least, in the Hollywood-movie-version), the hero or heroine goes on a long journey somewhere, accomplishes something tangibly great, and returns home to become a hometown hero/heroine. In this version, the closing scene usually shows the hero or heroine sitting by a fireplace or patio as an old person, regaling his or her cute grandchildren with tales of the valiant journey that he or she undertook back in the day.

Things often aren't that clear-cut in the lives of off-screen people like you and me. For one thing, in off-screen dramas, the hero or heroine usually does not look anything like, say, Brad Pitt (I don't). For another, the thing that the hero or heroine sets out to do (in Spark's case, going to Mysore every year and giving up a law career to do so; in my case, coming to this country first for grad school, and then staying to pursue a career in academia) is not tangibly great, at least not in the eyes of others. Indeed, in the eyes of others, what the hero or heroine sets out to do may often seem incomprehensible, even downright foolish ("So you give up spending Christmas with your family every year just to go to this place on the other side of the world where you live in spartan conditions, get up super-early every morning, bend your body into funny shapes while sweating like a pig, and risk possibly injuring yourself? And how much do you get paid for doing all this?"). And as for the ending of the story... well, I don't know, I can't predict the future. I suppose it's possible that one may one day have grandchildren who will be regaled by tales of getting up super-early in the morning in some strange country to go to this place to bend oneself (and get bent) into funny shapes.

Perhaps what's even more frustrating is that, as far as I know, none of the traditional moral philosophies can be appealed to in order to justify taking on this long journey. For example, if you believe that to do the right thing is to do the thing that brings about the most happiness to the greatest number of people, then it seems that going to Mysore or going to another corner of the world to work and build a life there would be the wrong thing to do, since a lot of people (namely, your family and close friends) would presumably be happier if you had chosen to stay put where you are instead of leaving them. I don't think that Kantian theories or Confucian philosophy would think well of such a choice either. Which is one of the reasons why I think that traditional moral philosophy is pretty much intellectually bankrupt. But well, this is probably not the place to go there...

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is this: In most real-life departure narratives, the hero or heroine can undertake the journey only at the risk of being in a situation that often involves being "tired, fed up, lonely, hopeless." And there is no guarantee that there will be a lovely sunset and cute grandchildren to regale at the end of the story. So why do people still do shit like this? Because they're dumb? Well, maybe... but I like to think that we do shit like this because it is the right thing to do. Even if traditional moral philosophy can't prove this.

What is the moral of this long drawn-out post, you may ask. Well, I'm not sure. Maybe it is this: Real life is not like the movies. But I'm sure you already know this. Oh, well. Thank you once again for taking the time to read about something that you already know.

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