our-yoga

I just read this Elephant Journal review by Jay Winston of Carol Horton's book, Yoga Ph.D (which I, incidentally, have not read, but will hopefully do so soon, when my procrastinating self gets around to it). Since I haven't read Carol's book, I can't really say anything about it, much less recommend it to you. But the title and subtitle of the book ("Integrating the life of the mind and the wisdom of the body") sounds too intriguing and intellectually tantalizing not to make it worth a read at some point. So, well, I guess I am recommending the book anyway. :-)

But back to Winston's review. Like me, Winston also first began practicing yoga in graduate school. It seems to me that the things that drew him to yoga, as well as his motivations for practicing, are quite similar to mine. For instance, Winston writes:

"I first got into yoga as a graduate student—more specifically, a graduate student on the edge of losing the mind I was trying so hard to cultivate...

To bleary bifocaled eyes, the local studio seemed a calm happy oasis in the harsh, deconstructive deserts of my overly intellectualized existence. In place of the valorization of the intellect above all, body and spirit—whatever the hell that meant—were nurtured. From a place where distance from one’s subject was considering essential, on the mat, knowledge was largely experiential, the test subject always oneself. In stark contradistinction to a milieu where it would be embarrassing to admit that I found the books I planned on dedicating my life to studying personally meaningful or moving, feeling was held in higher esteem than thinking. Never mind that I hated downward facing dog.

Still, it wasn’t until after I got fed up and left academia that my practice got serious. And then, crotchety intellectual that I remain, I couldn’t help but start thinking about it, and soon realized that, yes, it is probably a good thing to try to feel more and think less if you’re seriously going to try and swallow the ludicrous affirmations and blatant contradictions that pass for so much of popular yoga philosophy.  (And, y’know, seriously, in a society where most people are doing their best to avoid knowing about looming environmental catastrophe because it’s depressing, what could be more appropriate than making a conscious effort to think even less so we that can enjoy the simple pleasures of our conspicuous consumption?)"

There is much here that speaks to me personally. With the benefit of some hindsight, I can say that one of the main things that attracted me to yoga in the first place was my perception that in the yoga practice (and in yoga blogging as well) heart matters as much as mind, if not more. As Winston puts it, "feeling was held in higher esteem than thinking." As yogis, we do not hold feelings in high esteem in order to psychologically or psychiatrically evaluate them at a detached intellectual distance; at least, we are not supposed to do that. In other words, there is no intellectual agenda. Or, to put it in yogic terms, we simply let ourselves be in the present moment with our feelings without evaluating or judging them.

If I may be so bold as to speak for other people, I believe that it is this apparent lack of an intellectual agenda that attracts many people in our overly-analytic world--a world which holds that anything that is of value or that is worth taking seriously has to be analyzable in materially-quantifiable terms--to yoga. Actually, come to think of it, this may also explain why the majority of people who practice yoga in this country are folks who have a certain amount of formal education. Many of these people may also possess advanced degrees (I happen to know one of these people very, very well...). Which stands to reason; people who are most likely to be disenchanted and distrustful of intellectual agendas are people who have spent a big part of their lives following or even contributing to these intellectual agendas, and who have realized that no amount of materially-quantifiable intellectualizing can get us anywhere close to the ultimate nature of reality, or help us come to terms with our place in the order of things, whatever that might amount to. It is in such a space of disenchantment with and distrust of the mind that yoga enters into these people's lives, and promises a more heartfelt and heart-ful way of exploring and understanding self and reality.

The obvious question to ask here would be: Has yoga delivered on its promise? Or, to borrow a biblical image, has yoga succeeded in delivering us to this promised land where the mind is free from the shackles of material analysis, a land where words, thoughts and deeds supposedly flow from the depths of truth--a truth that is just as obvious as, yet is much deeper than, say, 2+2=4?

Although I have not read Yoga Ph.D, I hereby shamelessly surmise that questions such as the above are among some of the many interesting issues that Carol tackles in her book. At least, this is what I gather is going on in the book from reading Winston's review. Yes, I am essentially reviewing a book I haven't even read, based on a review of the same book by somebody else! Talk about intellectual integrity (or, more precisely, the lack thereof...).  

But since I have shamelessly started this not-quite-review, I may as well finish it. Quite naturally, the above questions raise yet more questions: Is yoga even a reliable vehicle for getting us to the promised land, in the first place? If it's not, is it then just another exercise-wellness fad clad in ancient-looking clothing? Is yoga really just aerobics or Pilates with some Sanksrit nomenclature thrown in? Twenty years from now, will people look at us yoga practitioners in the same way in which we look at adherents of, say, step aerobics today (just so you know: I have nothing against step aerobics per se)?

But let's be a little more optimistic: Let's assume that yoga is not an exercise-wellness fad clad in Sanskrit clothing. Let's just naively assume that most yoga practitioners today (as well as their teachers and gurus) are all engaged in a good-faith attempt to preserve and pass on a tradition that has been handed down to us from the wisdom-filled depths of antiquity (again, just so you know: I am not assuming that anything that is from antiquity is by default filled with wisdom.). And finally, let us also suppose that these teachers and gurus have done a pretty competent job of passing down these teachings and traditions.

Now here's the million-dollar question: If, despite the best efforts of these gurus and teachers, yoga still does not succeed in delivering us sincere yogis from the shackles of materialistic analysis, where does the problem lie? Is it because we as practitioners haven't worked hard enough at freeing ourselves from our minds and their assorted chitta vrtiis? Or does the fault lie with the teachings themselves? Could it be that, just as many western bodies are not able to sit in lotus posture for hours (or maybe even at all) due to the nature of our culturally-conditioned physical environments, many western minds are also not structured in such a way as to be able to operate without engaging in discursive thought and analysis about the world around them due to the nature of our culturally-conditioned social environments? If this is true, then if a westerner is ever to succeed in fully integrating the yogic teachings into her life and free herself from discursive thought, she would have to overcome centuries, if not millenia, of cultural conditioning.

Which brings us to yet another question: Is it worth overcoming our cultural conditioning just so we can attain self-realization, or whatever the final goal of yoga practice is? I mean, if some people are correct in holding that cultural conditioning is part of our "cultural DNA", then we would have to basically transform ourselves into beings that are unrecognizable by our native cultures in order to attain the final goal of yoga. If cultural DNA is an integral part of our identity, as some people out there claim, this would mean that in becoming yogis, we are in an important sense discarding certain important parts of our identity.

Well, as always, I'm just thinking aloud here: I ultimately do not know if any of the things I said above is true. I know this sounds like a cop-out: I basically just said a whole bunch of things and made a whole bunch of hypothetical claims, and then tried to absolve myself of intellectual responsibility by saying that I don't even know if they are true! But maybe intellectual responsibility is a little overrated... Anyway, maybe if you read Yoga Ph.D, you will find some answers to these questions there :-) On this note, I promise to read it someday soon...        

Update: Erica has just informed me that I am actually quoted in Yoga Ph.D (see comments below). Since my ego cannot stand knowing that I have been quoted in some book without wanting to know what I am quoted on and how, I went ahead and placed an order for the book on Amazon just a couple of minutes ago (circa 4:30 p.m. MST, January 21st 2013). Hmm... this makes me wonder how many other people out there have quoted me in their works without my knowing it... Moral of the story: If you want people to read your book, quote them! On a different note, this probably also means that you will actually get to read a proper review of Yoga Ph.D on this blog in the near future. Stay tuned.

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Although this blog is primarily about yoga, I sometimes also write movie and food reviews. Why? Because I do watch movies and eat food (I have yet to attain the siddhi of surviving only on prana), and there is no other public medium where I can readily express my views about these things. So although movies and food are not the central themes of this blog, I do write the occasional movie and food review.

Very interestingly, it seems that my recent review of Melancholia has unexpectedly been generating a lot of traffic for this blog; so much so, that it is now of the most read posts on this blog! Who'd have known? I'm guessing that many a Kirsten Dunst or Lars Von Trier fan have inadvertently stumbled upon this blog by googling "Melancholia", "Kirsten Dunst", "Lars Von Trier", or some combination of the three.

When I first discovered this, I was inclined to just file it away in my mind as one of the funny things that happen in a blogger's "career", if you may call it that: Occasionally, you write these posts that you don't expect anybody to read, and voila! It becomes a big traffic-generating source for the blog. But as I pondered this matter a little more, I couldn't help wondering: Could there be some kind of subtle connection between yoga and movie-watching? Could watching movies be a yogic experience in some way? If one defines "yoga" broadly as a process of union with something greater than oneself, could watching movies bring about such a union?

I pondered these questions a little, and then set them aside. And then, yesterday, I came across this recent New Yorker article by Anthony Lane. Most of the article consists of a review of a couple of recent movies (Melancholia among them). But there is one passage that speaks to the questions I was pondering. Lane writes:

"There’s only one problem with home cinema: it doesn’t exist. The very phrase is an oxymoron. As you pause your film to answer the door or fetch a Coke, the experience ceases to be cinema. Even the act of choosing when to watch means you are no longer at the movies. Choice—preferably an exhaustive menu of it—pretty much defines our status as consumers, and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience, from the Athens of Aeschylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for the folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on the stage or screen. We are strangers in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels now are ended."

Most of this passage, as you can see, is a critique of home cinema, which I am very sympathetic to; I'm one of those people who get really peeved at having my movie-watching experience interrupted. But I also find it very interesting that Lane describes the traditional movie-going experience (as opposed to the home cinema experience) as one involving "compulsion", in that "we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will."

If Lane is right (and I think he is), then going to the movies involves an act of surrender. For a couple of hours, you leave everything else that is in your life at the door of the movie theater, and immerse yourself fully into the universe of the movie that you are watching. You become a fly on a wall in the world of the protagonist; for just a couple of hours, your physical body exists only in order to facilitate this fly-like immersion in the movie universe. You become a part of something bigger than yourself, namely, an alternate universe. We might even say that being fully immersed in a movie is, in this sense, a sort of out-of-body experience.

I often wonder if this kind of "out-of-body" experience is what draws movie-lovers to the movies. Perhaps, without being fully aware of it, they are seeking a kind of yogic experience; an experience of surrendering their wills, even if only for a couple of hours, and becoming part of something bigger than their individual egos.  In so doing, the moviegoer also allows herself to be subtly altered by the world in which she has immersed herself, and emerges from the experience a slightly different person.

Interesting, don't you think? :-)

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It's almost 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon. I'm sitting here in front of my computer, musing over a few things that have occurred to me over the course of the week, both from the blogosphere and from "real" life. Hmm... maybe I should start a weekly series of such "Friday Afternoon Neither-here-nor-there Musings." In any case, here are my musings on this donwcast, snowy Friday the 13th:

I. There are siddhis that you probably don't want to have

This occurred to me yesterday during my Buddhist Philosophy class. I was relating the story of Gautama Buddha's enlightenment. According to legend, at the moment that he attained enlightenment, Gautama was able to see all his past lives. A student raised her hand, and asked me if there were any special meditation or yoga techniques that one can practice to attain such knowledge of one's past lives. Now, if I had been a little quicker on the uptake, I would have recognized this moment as an opportunity either to:

(1) Promote Ashtanga Yoga ("Yes, there is a special series of yoga exercises called the Primary Series." If you practice this series continuously for a thousand days without any interruption (except Saturdays and moon days), you will gain the siddhi of seeing your past lives at the end of the thousand days. Wanna try? I can teach you...")

OR

(2) Become the leader of a new cult, The Being-Able-to-See-Your-Past-Lives-By-the-Grace-of-Guru-Nobel-Fellowship: Maybe I would ask her to close her eyes, then walk over to her, place my hand on the crown of her head, and ask her if she feels a warm sensation there. She would presumably answer yes (how can it be otherwise, when a hand is on your head?), and I would say that if she allows me to perform this Past-Life-Knowledge-Transmission-Technique on her head continuously for one thousand days straight, she will gain the siddhi of seeing her past lives at the end of the thousand days.

But of course, not being so quick on the uptake, I missed this great opportunity to perform (1) or (2), and simply told her that although I don't know what the Buddhist answer to this question is (I really don't), I do know that from the perspective of yogic philosophy, being able to see your past lives would probably be a siddhi that is granted to the yogi by Shiva/Krishna, and is something that is beyond the yogi's control. At least, I think this is what the answer is.

At the same time, I was also thinking to myself: This is one siddhi that you seriously may not want to have. I mean, are you really prepared to receive the full knowledge of what you were in all your past lives? What if you were to discover that you were a serial killer in one of your past lives? What if you were a cold-blooded killer who raped and mutilated hundreds or even thousands of people before killing them? Wouldn't this knowledge be a heavy burden to have to carry around for the rest of your present life?

I don't know where I'm going with this. As I said, this is a very neither-here-nor-there post.

II. Is there a better way to blog? 

If you have been paying even a little attention to the yoga blogosphere in the last week or so, you will know of that infamous NYT article about how yoga can do some not-so-nice things to your body (and quite possibly, your mind too). Many bloggers have responded (and are still responding) to article, including senior teachers and yours truly (in putting myself and "senior teachers" in the same sentence, I'm not saying I'm a senior teacher. I'm just saying that I responded to the article. Please, I'm not that grandiose..).

Many of these responses are very well-written, and I think they all do a good job of presenting a more balanced picture of what yoga really is, in a way that the article in the reputable NYT has unfortunately failed to do. Nevertheless, over the last few months, I have started to notice a recurring pattern in the yoga blogosphere. The pattern goes something like this:

1. Somebody publishes an inflammatory article or blog post. The content of such blog posts or articles vary widely, but they are generally articles or blog posts attacking a certain yoga style or even a particular yoga teacher. Examples include that Elephant Journal post by that Sklivas person alleging that Ashtanga is only for the super-fit, or that article about how Ashtanga practice messes up one's pedicure. More recently, there was that NYT article about how Ashtanga is not the best thing to do if you want a tight ass. And then there was also Kinogate 1 and Kinogate 2. 

2. A few brave bloggers rise up to the challenge of debunking whatever erroneous claims that were made in the article or blog post in question.

3. The article/blog post and the first few responses to it set off a series of after-shocks that reverberate through the yoga blogosphere. Before you know it, every blogger that is worth his or her salt (including, again, yours truly: I leave it up to you to judge whether I am worth my salt...) has jumped into the fray, and has his or her own more-or-less unique take on the issue. Although truth be told, some takes are probably more unique than others. But I'm not supposed to say this. So pretend you never read this last line [wink].

4. The after-shocks, in turn, set off a further series of after-after-shocks. And if the after-after-shocks are strong enough, we may even have after-after-after-shocks. And so on, until there are no more shocks.

And then everything is relatively peaceful in the blogosphere, until the next inflammatory post or article comes along. Then repeat steps 1 to 4.  

I'm not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing. After all, people have been writing inflammatory stuff and stirring up s&%t ever since humans learnt to read and write. And so long as humans have chitta vrtti, at least some of this chitta vrtti will spill out of the minds of humans and onto the printed page (or the internet). So perhaps all of this is in the natural course of things. But still, I can't help but wonder: Could be there a different (and maybe, better?) way of life in the blogosphere?

I also don't know where I am going with this. As I said, this is a very neither-here-nor-there post. But I thnk you for bearing with me and reading all this, as always.   

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Yesterday, in my theory of knowledge class, I had a discussion with my students about what knowledge really is (what else can you really talk about in a class like this, anyway?). One interesting question that came up was: Is it possible to have knowledge without having any concepts?

Right now, you may be wondering: What has any of this to do with yoga? Why are you writing about this on a yoga blog? But stay with me a little: I'll get to the yoga part in due course.

Here's an example that we thought about during our class discussion. Consider an infant who has yet to learn and speak any words. This infant is being breastfed by its mother. We can imagine that every time it is being lifted to its mother's breast to be breastfed, the infant will experience a certain series of sensations: a sensation of warmth and firmness as it touches its mother's body and starts suckling on its mother's breast, a sensation of warm liquidity as it feels the milk from the mother's breast flow into its mouth, a sensation of sweetness as it tastes the milk.

Here's the question: Does the infant know that it is obtaining nourishment through this process? The students and I had different answers to this question. My students believe that even though the infant does not have the words to describe its experience, it knows that it is obtaining nourishment: If the infant is being breastfed regularly, it will become intuitively aware that this is the process it goes through (or rather, this is the process its mother puts it through) when it is feeling hungry, and that the succession of sensations described above always results in the feeling of hunger going away, to be replaced by a feeling of being sated. Thus, the infant knows that it is obtaining nourishment, even if it does not have the words and concepts to describe and label this experience.  

I understand where the students are coming from, and am actually sympathetic to their view, on some level. But on another level, the stuffy analytic philosopher in me refuses to accept that the infant knows anything in any meaningful sense. Here's why: If one is to be able to say that one knows something, one must be able to explain or give an account of what it is that one knows. If I say, for instance, that I know that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for my health, I should be in a position to be able to explain how I know this to a friend who asks me why eating fruits and vegetables is good for my health. There are several different ways to go about explaining this: I can appeal to personal experience, and tell my friend that my overall health has improved since I started eating more fruits and vegetables. Or I can appeal to expert opinion, and refer my friend to some books on diet and nutrition that purportedly offer scientific support for my claim. Either way, I am giving an explanation of why I claim to know what I know.

But why is it important to be able to give explanations for what one claims to know? Well, because if I can't give an explanation for what I claim to know, then for all we know, I may just be lucky. Even if I can't give any explanation for why eating fruits and vegetables is good for me, I may still turn out to be right that eating fruits and vegetables is good for me. But if so, then my being right is a matter of being lucky. And surely we wouldn't want to say that something as important as knowledge should be left up to luck and chance?  

Which brings us back to the infant: Since the infant does not have the words and concepts to describe and label the various sensory experiences, and to try to explain why those experiences are related to obtaining nourishment, it cannot give any explanation of what is happening when it is being breastfed. Which is another way of saying that until the infant acquires the relevant words and concepts, it really does not know that it is obtaining nourishment when it goes through the experiences it goes through in being breastfed.

Maybe you are thinking: Why are you picking on an infant who does not have words or concepts? Surely there is something... low about using words and concepts to charge an infant with not having knowledge when the infant cannot possibly be in a position to use words and concepts to defend itself against this charge? Well, if this is what you are thinking, then I think you misunderstand my intentions. I'm not being snarky or meanspirited here and picking on infants. I am really just trying to show that one cannot have knowledge without words and concepts. And I don't mean "not having knowledge" in a meanspirited or derogatory way: In other words, I don't mean "not having knowledge" in the sort of mean-spirited way in which one may accuse someone of being ignorant or dumb or whatever. I'm just saying that if I happen to be right that words and concepts are indeed necessary for knowledge, then since infants (and other beings that do not possess words and concepts) do not possess words and concepts, they necessarily do not have knowledge.

I said that I was going to try to relate all of this to yoga. Well, I was; I was going to try to say something about how all this might show that we don't actually know yoga when we do our daily practice, because a big part of our daily practice on the mat consists of visceral experiences that we may not (yet?) have the words or concepts to describe and characterize. So, perhaps, when we are on the mat, we become like infants, in a way. Again, please, I don't mean this in a snarky or derogatory way. But I'm a little too blogged-out right now to write much more about this yoga connection. So I'll have to leave things at this, and maybe (?) write a follow-up post to this in the future. Please forgive me: I think I just baited and switched you in reading a long post about philosophy!

In any case, when all is said and done, it is not always clear that being in a state of not having knowledge of the world is such a bad thing. Consider, for instance, the sentiment expressed in the following poem by Tagore:

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead
And the restless water is boisterous.


On the seashore of endless worlds
The children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand,
And they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave
Their boats and smilingly float them
On the vast deep.
Children have their play on the
Seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim,
They know not how to cast nets.
Pearl-fishers dive for pearls,
Merchants sail in their ships,
While children gather pebbles
And scatter them again.

They seek not for hidden treasures,
They know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter,
And pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
Death-dealing waves sing
Meaningless ballads to the children,
Even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with children,
And pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
Tempest roams in the pathless sky,
Ships are wrecked in the trackless water,
Death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the
Great meeting of children.

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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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Disclaimer: If you are easily offended by bathroom humor, poems about bathroom humor, cross-references between yoga and things that happen in the bathroom, or irreverent cross-references between the sayings of Guruji and things that happen in the bathroom, READ NO FURTHER! But if you have a slightly stronger stomach (i.e. full engagement of mula bandha and uddiyana bandha), then you might find the following interesting, maybe even funny...  

So anyway.... I was just reading this poem about meditation and taking a sh*t over at YogaDawg, and realized instantly that the same things could be said about yoga! So I have taken the liberty of substituting "yoga" for "meditation", and coming up with a new poem. Here goes:

So remember: No matter what happens, keep practicing (sh*tting?). Because sh*t happens. But so does yoga.

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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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Frances over at Lila blog posed this big question in her latest post. Frances's post was, in turn, inspired by a recent post on the Babarazzi. Both posts are very good reads. Feel free to check them out.

Just to get this out of the way, I'll start by giving my answer to this question. My answer is: It depends. It depends on what you take yoga to be, and what you want yoga to do. The next part of this post is devoted to trying to make sense of this answer in a very long-winded kind of way. If you can't bear to read long-winded responses, and don't want to know my reasons for thinking why yoga may or may not be about self-expression, you are welcome to stop reading now :-)

Let me begin by saying that there do seem to be good reasons for thinking that yoga is about self-expression. After all, there are more yogas in the world today than there are fingers on my hand (duh!). These range from:

(1) more "traditional" styles that claim to be following lineages that can be traced all the way back to Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras (Ashtanga, Iyengar, Sivananda, Kripalu, the Himalayan Institute, and a whole bunch of styles that I cannot call to mind right now), to

(2) contemporary off-shoots of these traditional styles (Power Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Trance Dance, and a whole bunch of off-shoots that I am ignorant of), to

(3) a whole bunch of contemporary yogas that serve to fulfill certain particular functions or certain particular fetishes (Yoga for Golf, Yoga for Runners, Yoga for Chocolate Lovers, Yoga for Wine Lovers, Yoga for Chocolate and Wine Lovers, Yoga for Chocolate Lovers Who Hate Wine, Yoga for Wine Lovers Who Hate Chocolate, Yoga for Better Sex, Yoga for People who want to have less sex... The list goes on and on. It's simply impossible keep track of all these yogas these days. It seems that everywhere I turn, there is a new yoga or two springing up somewhere...).

I hope you will excuse my long-windedness here (I did say you could stop reading, right? ;-)). But there is a method to this seeming madness. Let me start by observing that the move from (1) to (2) to (3) is roughly chronological in order. Many of the yoga styles that are based in some lineage or other ((1)) were created by their creators either sometime in the nineteenth century or in the early part of the twentieth. The offshoots ((2)) were mostly created in the last twenty to thirty years (think Beryl Bender Birch's Power Yoga or all the many vinyasa yogas out there). Lastly, unless I'm mistaken, what I call the function- or fetish-oriented yogas ((3)) only appeared on the scene somewhere around the last ten to fifteen years (maybe even more recently).

Is there a reason for this chronological order? I don't know... But I'm quite sure somebody could look at (1), (2), and (3), and say, "So how is something like Yoga for Runners really all that different from, say, Ashtanga Yoga, when all is said and done? Sure, there are different poses in each yoga, and one yoga prescribes a certain order in which to do them while the other doesn't. But what's the big deal in the end? Just as Pattabhi Jois or Krishnamacharya took some moves from Scandinavian gymnastics and Indian wrestling and wove them into a particular sequence of postures that they claim is beneficial for people and called it Ashtanga Yoga, the creator of Yoga for Runners also took some yoga moves that she claims is beneficial for runners and called it Runner's Yoga. When it comes down to it, isn't it all about taking a bunch of otherwise disparate things, slapping a label ("Ashtanga Yoga" or "Runner's Yoga") on them, and then marketing the resulting product as something that will benefit you? And if each yoga turns out to benefit at least some people, what's the problem? And if marketing a product amounts to creating something, we can also say that Krishnamacharya and Pattabhi Jois and the creator of Runner's Yoga are all expressing themselves. Therefore, all yoga is self-expression. Q.E.D."

I'm sure somebody could respond to the above argument by insisting that what people like Krishnamacharya and B.K.S. Iyengar and SKPJ are doing is very different from what people like the creators of yoga for runners or yoga for chocolate lovers are doing. The former are taking a particular tradition (the yoga tradition, as outlined by Patanjali) and interpreting it in a particular way in order to create practices that allow people to connect to this ancient tradition, whereas the creators of yoga for runners and yoga for chocolate lovers are simply catering to functions and fetishes that are unique to our post-industrial world without attempting to come up with some kind of narrative about what enjoying chocolates or running well has to do with the yoga tradition.

But something tells me that such a response probably wouldn't cut much ice with the person who believes that all yoga is ultimately self-expression. After all, it could be argued, what kind of difference does what one takes as one's starting point really make? Why should it matter whether one's starting point is to create a practice that makes Patanjali's yoga sutras relevant to the people of today, or to create a particular yoga that caters to people in the throes of one particular passion or fetish? One way or the other, one is responding to an urge--a creative urge--to fashion something out of the things already at one's disposal. Why should one starting point be deemed to be "better" than another? Aren't all creative urges equal?  


The above exchange could go on and on, without either side putting forth a really decisive argument. Why is that? Could it be that each side means something different by the word "yoga"? In her book, Yoga PhD, Carol Horton points out that what we moderns (or post-moderns) take yoga to be has evolved drastically from what the classical brahmanical conception of yoga was. Whereas the brahmins of classical Indian society understood the objective of yoga to be moksha, or liberation from the endless cycle of birth and death, the average person who takes yoga classes at a studio or gym today is not looking to free herself from the endless cycle of births and deaths (she may not even believe in reincarnation). Indeed, we can even go further and point out that even many of today's adherents of the yoga lineages in (1) do not have moksha as a goal; it is possible to practice Iyengar or Ashtanga without believing in reincarnation.

Horton notes that for many (maybe even most) of the practitioners of modern (or post-modern) yoga, the goals of the practice are more this-worldly in nature. They could range from something as immediately physical as relief from back pain, all the way to something less tangible like equanimity in the face of the challenges of contemporary life. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that the goal of the typical modern yoga practitioner is of a totally different metaphysical quality from the goal of the brahmin living in classical Indian society. And since goals define the nature of the activity, we would also have to conclude that the yoga that is practiced by us moderns (or post-moderns) is not the same yoga as the yoga that was practiced by the brahmin in classical Indian society. The same word ("yoga") refers to two different activities that may have some similarities when seen from the outside, but are ultimately very different in nature. While it is possible for some practitioners of modern yoga to have some form of self-expression as one of the goals of their practice, self-expression was quite definitely not on the radar screen of the brahmin in classical Indian society. For the latter, the practice of yoga was a roadmap and a vehicle for getting to moksha, no more, no less. So the brahmin in classical Indian society had a very different idea from us moderns of what yoga is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to do. Hence there can probably never be any agreement in the debate over whether yoga is about self-expression.  

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I just read this recent article by Richard Karpel in USA Today. In this article, Karpel briefly reports on the ongoing legal case between the Encinitas Union School District and the NCLP over the teaching of yoga in the school district. Karpel also cites the views of a few yoga scholars, who explain the non-sectarian nature of yoga. Here are a couple of excerpts from the article that are worth taking a look at:

"Like many scholars of yoga and religion, Christopher Chapple, professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University, says that yoga is a non-sectarian practice. The Yoga Sutras, the most commonly cited classical text that forms the basis for both traditional and contemporary yoga philosophy, make no specific theological claims, according to Chapple. It is the non-sectarian nature of this text that has allowed it to resonate for more than 1,500 years, he says...

Mark Singleton, a yoga scholar who teaches at St. John's College in Santa Fe, notes that many of the influential pioneers of modern hatha yoga insisted on its non-sectarian, democratic and secular nature, and sometimes had an aversion to the association of yoga with religion. This, says Singleton, is in keeping with the anti-sectarian spirit of early Indian hatha yoga." 

If you read this blog regularly, you will know that I have written a few posts expressing my personal views about this ongoing legal case and the issues of spirituality vs. religion that it brings up, so I won't repeat myself here. But I just want to point out that it is significant that a mainstream national newspaper like USA Today has published an article which reinforces the view that yoga is not a religion. Hopefully, this will have a positive impact in shaping public perception and the direction of conversations around the country on this matter.  

Well, I said I wasn't going to repeat myself by saying too much more in this post. But after thinking about this matter a little more, it turns out that I do have more to say anyway. So here goes.

In the USA Today article above, Mark Singleton notes that in keeping with the anti-sectarian spirit of early hatha yoga, many influential pioneers of modern hatha yoga insisted on its non-sectarian and secular nature. I am no yoga scholar, but I can't help speculating that a big part of this insistence on the non-sectarian secularism of yoga is also driven by what I would call "spiritual pragmatism". The idea is that it doesn't matter where a particular spiritual practice comes from or what its specific doctrinal origin is: If it benefits you and helps you to function more effectively as a person in the world, why not adopt it?

I have noticed that this spirit of pragmatism informs much of eastern thinking, and not just in spiritual matters. For instance, it famously finds expression in Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's maxim, "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice." It was this spirit of pragmatism that allowed Deng to incorporate extensive economic reforms in a China that was reeling from the effects of the cultural revolution, and reform the Chinese economy without ostensibly deviating from Marxist/Maoist doctrine.

Applied to spiritual matters, this means that so long as a particular physical or spiritual practice helps you to function more effectively as a person in the world, the fact that it originated in a spiritual system that is alien to your own is secondary. If it benefits you, you would do well to adopt it (and maybe find a way to fit it within your spiritual system further down the road).

I also can't help observing that this spirit of pragmatism is rather lacking in much of Judeo-Christian thought. I have noticed that there is a tendency for much of Judeo-Christian thinking to be rather binary in nature. I'm actually not sure if this is because Judeo-Christian thought is itself inherently binary in nature, or if it is because westerners who grew up in this tradition tend to be binary in their thinking (I suspect it's a combination of both.). In any case, such a way of thinking goes like this: Something either fits into my system, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then it probably goes against some basic belief of my system. Therefore, I should reject it, no matter how beneficial it might otherwise be to me. To use a very specific example, I believe that it is this lack of a pragmatic spirit that led my Christian friend to hesitate about starting a yoga practice for fear that it might involve yoking with the devil.  

Well, I think I have rambled enough for today. All of my views here about spiritual pragmatism are strictly my own subjective musings; I have not conducted any systematic research to back these claims up. But since this is my blog/personal soapbox, I've decided to air them here anyway: What else are blogs for? As always, if you have anything to say, I'll love to hear from you.     

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Starting from sometime around a couple of months ago, my email inbox (the one attached to the hotmail account listed in the top-right-hand corner of this blog) became inundated with tons of promotional emails from yoga retreat centers, marketers of cool yoga/enlightenment T-shirts ("wear our tee, and you will experience more-or-less instant enlightenment... or at least look super-good!"), and even vegan cookies.

I'm not at all annoyed by all this spam; most of the time, I just chuckle to myself ("Wow, they actually think I can help them make a milllion dollars by selling or promoting their products!"), and then delete them without even bothering to read. I'm guessing that, since I'm not a famous yoga teacher (or even an un-famous one), all these assorted peddlers of yoga/enlightenment wares must have gotten my email address from this blog. Which adds even more to the irony, since I have hardly been posting over the last few months, and when I do, it's usually shit about my personal practice and/or my own personal idiosyncratic stories about things and happenings in my immediate little environment. Hardly the sort of thing that would make me a famous yoga presence.

Anyway, the mere presence of all these emails from yoga ware peddlers wouldn't have warranted breaking my by-now-usual blog silence (as I said, most of the time, I just delete these emails without a second's thought), were it not for the fact that somebody recently directed me to this Elephant Journal post by Harmony Lichty, an authorized Ashtanga teacher living and teaching in Victoria, British Columbia. In her post, Harmony said something that resonates with my experience in this area. She writes:

"There is a beautiful, glowing, tantalizing, nymph-like monster called “The Business of Yoga.”... If you’re at all interested in yoga, I’m sure you have already come face to face with her. She is obvious and yet somehow still deceptive. Agitating our minds and seducing our desires, she is invoked whenever business mixes with yoga, which is pretty much unavoidable these days.

Recently, I’ve been bombarded with messages from various sources all saying that, as a yoga teacher, you need to find some angle to market “your unique talents and abilities.” Lessons on using the right catch phrases and how to sell yourself will help to create more buzz.

Of course, everyone has the miracle solution on how to do this, and for only $9.99 you can download the latest e-book that will change your life!

Whether it is YouTube or Facebook, what seems to matter most is how you brand yourself and I fear that all of this advertising is merely another distraction that keeps moving further away from the essence of what yoga is supposed to be about..."

I think that Harmony's fear is quite well-founded, but I'm not going to go into a long rant here about how this whole business-of-yoga business takes us away from the essence of yoga; I'm sure the yoga blogosphere already abounds with plenty of erudite articles written on this topic by a whole bunch of--who else?--smart yogis. But I do want to share what Harmony has to say about what real yoga practice is about, because, again, what she has to say really speaks to me:

"It seems obvious, but it must be said: yoga is not about the clothes or the mat, nor is it about the way we look or even the way we feel. It is actually not a hobby or an activity to keep you occupied in your spare time, and perhaps contrary to popular belief, it is not simply a class you can drop-in to or drop-out of.

Yoga is a way of life...

It is meant to permeate our entire existence and shine the light of awareness into every corner of our lives. That is, if we can just get out from under the pile of stuff we are hiding in.

Yoga is a process of self-transformation...

Yoga is a discipline.

It is a discipline that works to renovate your mind, body and habits.

It can be challenging and frustrating.

Some days you won’t feel like getting out of bed to meet yourself on your mat or your meditation cushion.

Some days you won’t want to look in the mirror of your life choices to experience the veracity of how they are affecting you. Yet, when you do begin to clean the dust off your inner mirror through a regular practice, you will feel better for it...

Practice. Serve. Love. Repeat.

Try getting up and practicing without anyone watching, without fancy clothes or your favorite mat, without any goal in mind except to sink deeper into your own present moment awareness of breath. Practice as best you can on any given day, regardless of how you feel or how you look—this is the yoga.

I believe that there is one way to wade through all the distracting illusions that deceptively disguise themselves as yoga and that is to go deeper into our own personal sadhana, spiritual practice..."

What Harmony says here really speaks to me because most of the time, I practice by myself at home; I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of days I have practiced with other people in the past year (most of these few days occurs during the times when I travel to attend workshops with senior teachers). And I definitely do not wear fancy clothes when I practice; in fact, I typically practice in my briefs (TMI? My apologies...). I mean, really, why even bother to put on yoga shorts when nobody's watching?

And also, I quite often make myself practice on days when I seriously don't feel like getting on the mat. For instance, last night, a couple of friends from work invited me to their place to hang out and play chess. They proceeded to offer me wine, which I could not resist, and I drank a couple of glasses too many. As you can probably imagine, I felt rather groggy (no hangover, fortunately) when I woke up this morning, and almost fell asleep standing up! I made myself roll out the mat and practice. My body movements felt really sluggish; throughout the standing postures, it felt like I was moving through a thick karmic sludge. But I somehow managed to make myself go through my usual practice (half-primary plus second up to Karandavasana), and definitely felt much better at the end of the whole thing, and was happy that I made myself do it anyway.  

None of any of this is really ground-breaking or earth-shaking; I'm sure most of you out there also have plenty of experience with making yourself practice on days when you just don't want to. But, as Harmony would say, sometimes the obvious is what needs to be said.    

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