Demystifying Yoga Introducing a Series Meant to Study Yoga

atha yoganuśānam

“Let us study yoga together.” 

 

The Sanskrit word in Patanjali’s first Yogasutra that tells us what we are going to do here is anuśāna, which means, to study and to study together.  Yoga will be our subject, more about that later.  But properly speaking this is a śastra, a text formulated as an argument that should be taken seriously and for which a case must be made.  No matter how Patanjali resorts to personal experience to validate his claims, his treatise is the shareable, serious argument.

 

“He is not a serious person.”  I doubt this statement from our current Vice President and candidate for the American Presidency changed one vote.  In fact, I don’t think most folks gave it a second thought and, I could be wrong, but I don’t think she was even understood.  The opposite of “serious” here might include frivolous, senseless, pointless, foolish, idiotic but I think she also meant dangerous and inept.  Given Vice President Harris’s target, all of these meanings apply.

 

“Serious” too often means grim, severe, it is rarely welcomed in any sentence.  Coming to terms with being serious may be a requirement of adulthood but it’s usually one we can postpone, ignore, avoid, or neglect until we have to.

 

Serious can be seriously unfunny and who wants that?  It will also require thinking; dare we say thinking for yourself and engaging with understanding and the responsibility to create meaning rather than merely adopt it or say things.  None of these matters should be confused with happy though they not necessarily opposed.  No one in their right mind can oppose happiness though I might suggest we too often substitute it for meaning or resort to it so that we don’t have to cope with more.  None of these invitations to our learning to be human are either simple or natural.  Serious is a complexity, and we don’t won’t by that without learning to think, which is hardly natural.

 

Thinking for yourself is not easy; to do it well we must learn what it means to think critically because that’s not the same as caviling, disparaging, much less insulting or being depreciative.  We can be more astute and develop greater sensitivity to the complexities of experience.  It can be hard to express our thoughts, our seriousness without seeming to be on the attack, ad hominem, making it personal.  But that’s why it’s hard to learn and important to do.  (n.b., that might be yet another definition of yoga.)

 

Yoga traditions considered “argument” an essential skill except when they were too busy trying not to think, as if thiswere the problem, or surrendering their autonomy to a supernatural force, some or another “blessed one” who somehow mysteriously knows better. 

 

There are plenty of yogas and other spiritual traditions (Can we just call them religions? Please?) that dismiss, dissociate, or decry thinking, much less thinking critically and learning how to be serious about it all.  Let’s not be too much the downer.  But I’m going to let those who insist silence be their teacher and the sole guardian of truth be left to their quietist desires.  Silence is the space between the notes, so it too is music but without the notes, well, it’s just silence.  Carry on.

 

Traditions also maintained that thinking can and indeed must be taught if we’re to gain greater skill-in-yoga.  As the Gita (2.5) puts it, yoga karmasu kausalyam, that is, yoga is efficacy in actions.   There is no spiritual practice more humanizing than learning to cultivate our cognitive abilities in the service of a more complete sense of embodied existence.

If you’re interested in becoming more than merely human, say, “enlightened,” or “perfected” in some way that obviates human conditions and limitations, there are yogas that purport to bring you to those states or realizations.  Good luck with that.  Blame it on karma or maybe your next rebirth but we’re going to get on with being just human.

It’s only cynical to dismiss such “perfection” claims if you think they are not by definition dehumanizing.  Humans cannot not make mistakes; we remain incomplete and unfinished at our best; and if that is apostasy to certain yoga traditions---and it is to nearly all if you have studied them seriously---there’s still no good reason to think otherwise.

 

We may want there to be a perfect being, place our faith in an ideal, a purported achievement, or some other claimed possibility, but such a belief is a religious assertion, and there’s nothing about such a claim that retains shared humanity.  Why do we want there to be such perfection?  That strikes me as the far better question than if there is perfection.

This is not a call to reduce our experience to only the rational.  We are as much non-rational beings whose feelings, impressions, intuitions are human and warrant our respect.  I’m sure my teacher was more clearly aiming at the true alternative, the irrational where claims or beliefs reduce to the personal and cannot reach across the boundary to shareable, dare we say, demonstrable or even provable truths.  Resorting to the irrational is serious only insofar as it is to claim there is more we want from human life than to be human.

Rudolf Otto, whose effort to describe religious experience he called das Helige, the Holy, was translated from the German as The Idea of the Holy.  Otto thought that the Holy was a numinous reality and that those who had not had such experiences could never understand it.   He thought the absence of such experiences disqualifying for the “true” meaning of religion or, as we might put it, the spiritual experience.  But this is nonsense or, at best, another assertion that a spiritual life demands some measure of supernormal, supernatural, supermundane experience and that reality is offering just such a thing.  Okay, if you say so.  But am I disqualified from a “spiritual life” if I don’t have or even want such experiences?

 

Thus “das Helige,” the Holy, includes any kind of superhuman being lest the spiritual life actually have to admit we are merely human.  If folks need those ideals, aspirations, or claims---and they cause no manifest harm to others---you’ll hear no further objection from me, but you may not want to read much further.

 

I would have to agree with Hitchens that most formulations of God---to which I would add Buddha, Siddha, etc.---create some degree of positive impediment to cultivating a more humane yoga, a deeper engagement with our selves.  Do we need a soporific salve to find deeper meaning and purpose?

What’s on offer?  I’ve studied yoga traditions formally for fifty years now.  Learned some of the many languages in which they have been recorded and travelled to experience and practice with scholars and believers.  I still have much to learn because that too is a requirement of a more humane yoga.  But I will say that only the rarest expressions of yoga (or other religions, call them spiritualities if “religion” rankles) resolve their claims to achievement with an entirely humancharacter. 

 

Many teach us to be more humane, to be gentle, capable, compassionate, dignified beings---and who could disagree that this is commendable when there is so much cruelty and worse in this world?  But virtually none of these spiritual paths are content with ideals that leave us with flawed, vulnerable, uncompleted humans and every last one of them claims morethan that limited degree or conditional quality of human potential.

 

I have two intentions for the essays that will follow in this series. 

 

First, I will take up specific sources, authors, and ideas from across yoga traditions, particularly from Hindu, Buddhist, and other comparable sources, explaining their positions and claims charitably.  Chartiably means I will take them seriously, give them every benefit of the doubt, attempt to imagine their experience with sympathy for their assumptions, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions.  I will consider their non-rational claims too.  In short, we need to understand the case and their theory of their case, that is, why they believe what they believe and why we think they believing.

 

Second, I mean to point out the value and goodness we might draw from their good-faith efforts and then point out the drawbacks, expenses, consequences, and even the damages done by assenting to such claims.  I don’t need our critique to claim any superiority but neither need we demur.  Just because people’s religious or spiritual claims are personal doesn’t mean they are exempt from understanding or from serious criticism.

 

True, people are tender and that makes the subject unlike others.  If you prefer softball to hardball then that’s okay.  But serious isn’t cruel, it’s just the opposite.  It's trying to keep it real and be honest and get folks to engage.  That’s the kind of yoga, I was taught but not all that I have studied.

 

Being “serious” can appear unfriendly, severe, unfriendly, even hostile but its critical purpose is to be revealing, candid, sober, human and humane.  Meaning is not happiness: it is the deeply human endeavor to find value, worth, dignity, significance in the face of our shared mortal existence.  This yoga thing isn’t just about feeling good or being “happy.” It’s about deciding to be serious when the world doesn’t often invite or value such prospects.

 

And it’s gonna be fun if you’re up for the ride.  Because while we might offend or touch tender feelings, being human requires humility.  After all, we’re unfinished and we’ll ask ourselves how we could be mistaken before we claim to be right.  We’re in it to learn so that we can think for ourselves rather than be indoctrinated or just believe.   We’ll not mistake positive thinking, aspiration, or potential for belief: instead, we’ll ask what is possible when all we have are our wits and each other.

 

&&&

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About Rajanaka: Our Definition and Boundaries

 This week I received an email from a former student. A brilliant, gifted, lovely soul. He knows quite a bit about Hindu worlds, having been born to it, being a fluent Tamil speaker, and he is a fine Sanskritist. He asked to study the Srividya with me. Here is my lengthy reply. I thought you folks might be interested because there is a fair bit of explanation of Rajanaka here too.

***
The end of the semester unfortunately has delayed my reply. Apologies. This is also the third year we are not in India due to covid and truth to tell my heart aches for Nataraja’s darsan. Whatever else might be said about the situation in the temples, culturally, the commitment we see (and don't see), I can still walk into the courtyard of Nataraja and feel that feeling, know my way around, find the way inside.

I understand your frustrations with study both in India and beyond. To be honest, there hasn't been terribly honest or serious scholarship in years, which is not to say that there aren't competent scholars---but the ethos and purpose of study seems to have been...how shall we say? Forgotten? There is neither enough critical temperament nor care and concern for the depth of learning and evolution of the soul. After all, why would someone make this a course of study in this world? We need clear boundaries between our ability to think critically (as students of history and ideas) and our personal investments. "Religion" as a subject is too often not a subject of study.

Allow me also to address your curiosity and query about studying the tradition of Auspicious Wisdom or Śrīvidyā. I would take a broad and inclusive definition of Śrīvidyā. In addition to the focused work involving the goddess as Lālitā Tripūrasundari, the mantra, and śrīcakra, I would include virtually the entire study of Veda, Tantra, and the Hindus as the principal subject.

I have lived two lives with Śrīvidyā. One is to present the historical landscape of theory, practice, ideologies, the spectrum of materials in critical, academic formats. I think we need to understand what has been presented as we consider the development of the larger body of phenomena that might be classified under the term.

What is Śrīvidyā? That is still a matter of complexity in content and resources that remain largely understudied. (I am going to assume here that you understand the most basic identifiers of the goddess cult within Śākta Tantra. I would be happy to elaborate if need be.) In critical historical terms Śrīvidyā studies ar not much further along now, some 40+ years after I began. There is far more open practice and advocacy, more available work from within the traditions but there is still very little interesting or important scholarship. We might see more resource scholarship, more forensics of texts---and that has improved since the early era when there was virtually nothing available. (Frankly, I doubt we will see much devoted scholarship; the subject remains too inaccessible or obscure to most. Further, the skills in Sanskrit (and other languages) and the required special access knowledge required, since the work is so encoded and recondite, makes it unattractive.) But no one seems to have much to say, either as reportage (just describing the historical phenomena) much less what it means or could be about. We cannot expect more or better work anytime soon. There is simply not much incentive to produce such scholarship and fewer people than ever who have the interest or the skill to teach it. From inside the tradition there is no serious scholarship even though there are many skilled practitioners. This takes us to the next matter.

I am still a student of historical Śrīvidyā. While there are important differences amongst lineages and movements (the terminologies are imprecise: kula, mata, acara, sampradaya, mandali, etc) there is a certain body of resources and practices. In modern terms (let's call that from at least the last century or so), there are reasonably consistent religious goals, theories, practices, claims. I can happily explain those materials but they are not my practices, much less my beliefs. Śrīvidyā as a bhakti cult and as a transformational Tantric tradition involves religious claims that I continue to study but don’t reflect my personal my interests. (Honestly, I have no religious interests as such but that warrants further explanation.)

I say this to you because you are long past your undergraduate time with me. At University I would only treat the subject academically. We might study practices but ours is entirely a critical and historical agenda. There should be no religious teaching advocated in any college classroom. I don't reveal or talk about my personal practice or relationship with Śrīvidyā with undergraduates or indeed even within academia. But you have asked, so you would need to understand what it is the Rajanaka is about. Rajanaka is the name Appa gave to our tradition of practice.

My teacher was for appearances sake an orthoprax smarta Aiyar, a brahmin raised in Cidambaram, not only professor of Sanskrit (at Madurai) but also deeply immersed in his own circle (mandali). There were several terms and names used to describe that small circle (mandali) within the larger sampradaya (tradition). Suffice to say that the principal "larger" circle of the Śrīvidyā ethos that Rajanaka avows is the most straightforward commitmenst to moral responsibility and decency that excludes much of what is commonly referred to as vama(cara). Rajanaka has no use for the transgressive, abusive, or sexually oriented practices that are common in the Kaula Tantra and Kaula forms of Śrīvidyā. (Much of what the traditional Kashmir Śaivites teach would be ethically untenable to us since they advocate rituals involving sexual practices that are, in effect, non-consensual (such as kulayaga, etc.))

But Appa's brahminical concerns, such as diet, lifestyle, etc., were not beliefs that he insisted apply to everyone or everywhere. To wit, he was of a liberal, culturally open-minded, and non-dogmatic temperament. I don't know how he would have adapted or changed himself had he come to live in America (and that was our plan before his illness) but he had a very open sense of the phrase vyavahārika vaisnavah (lit., ‘for the everyday the worldly-Visnu dharma) meaning something like act normally about the everyday world and like "when in Rome be a Roman."

Adapt, adjust, follow your family traditions: our yoga does not involve giving up a culture, changing your religion, or even having a religion. Rajanaka is a conversation, it is about soulful living, and it's not a religion by any definition I have studied. Admittedly, we dally in religious worlds, we participate and engage in all sorts of religious events but for our own purposes. We mean to be respectful of those who are engaged for their own reasons too.
For conventions and customs sake Appa was not inclined to wear his religion or spirituality too much on his sleeve---he preferred a very private practice and as for his customs in food, dress, habit, I would say he was more than accommodating. He wanted us to love life, to enjoy our family traditions and customs, and to do the things that make us feel at home and healthy. Pretty simple. No dogmas, just decency and tolerance.

Appa more than once suggested (that is the optative for the imperative here) that I not make anything too out of the ordinary in any context. (if I happen to have done a puja or meditation and smeared a bit of vibhuti, I am mindful not to go into the world (here) wearing it.) It's not hiding so much as simply not wanting the slightest bit of attention and bringing no notice to one's self---and this extends not only to appearances but also to speech or revealing any participation whatsoever in the Vidya. We are more like undercover, long term spies but without any nefarious agenda but rather as a way to just keep our business, our interests personal and private. Why does the world need to know? Why would I want the world to know anything about my personal life? And the truth is, I don't.

But Appa's Rajanaka was much more than the specific sadhanas of Śrīvidyā or the Śāktas. Śrīvidyā was the core drawing itself into the larger picture but the resource/canon goes far beyond Śrīvidyā. (It extends far beyond matters belonging to India. Rajanaka involves the study of any resource in imaginative thinking (literature, art, etc) or science with the intention of being well-informed and incorporating those facts and understandings into our lives.)

Rajanaka begins with every bit of critical historical scholarship taken to heart and its interpretive tools at the ready. Never abandon reason or empirical learning. Always commit to human fact-finding and the powers of imagination to create symbolism and metaphor. Rajanaka is a clear-minded, cool and determined effort to uncover the facts as we know them. That must come first. It has no interest particularly in supporting, advocating, or believing much of anything. It is in this first sense true academics without the slightest tinge of religion.

Rajanaka is rooted in secular scholarship and never suspends those agendas and aims: we are after an accounting that studies claims, beliefs, and practices but has no belief in them. Appa used to say that belief is rarely an ally in the pursuit of facts or of the truth such as it is. I would add that I might be the least "mystical" person you might ever meet who has a deep and abiding interest in a spiritual life. I will appear as respectful when people make religious claims or talk about their spiritual experiences (in religious or mystical terms) but my critical heart and mind is rooted in earthly, rational, evidence-based, even more commonsensical understandings.

When Śrīvidyā talks for example about liberation or siddhis I take those ideas seriously enough to study and attempt to interpret what is being said. But I don't truck in the mystical or supernatural: I am interested in a spiritual life that deals entirely with mortal life well-examined and one that celebrates our limitations and conditions as individuals, as natural and socially constructed human beings. I have no personal interest in supernormal achievements, which of course makes Rajanaka a heresy from within the Śrīvidyā. This is the next matter to reveal more thoroughly.

Appa called Rajanaka a "Vaidika Śrīvidyā," not to claim puritanical behaviors or moralizing but to distinguish Vedic goals from the Śrīvidyā that is devised on Hindu terms. By "Vedic" he meant the basic claims of Vedic (not Hindu) "religion" as characterized in the phrase dehi me, dadami te, give to me, I give to you. (See Tait. Brah for this reference or read the Jamison and Witzel article.) To put this simply, we have, metaphorically speaking, merely come down as rain and evolved into the plants and animals, we transact this world of power, desire, interest, seeking advantage and success, and then, in the end, we go up as smo ke. And that’s that. We are here to live long and prosper.

Now how that journey through the gift of mortality can be done more deeply, curiously, richly is the matter at hand and that is what we call yoga. But there is no liberation, no moksa because there is no bondage. Instead, we must choose our bondage as far as that is possible and address the rest with a decent acceptance of the facts. The bandha/moksa paradigm (that is, bondage and liberation) is Hinduism but it is not the old gods ways of Vedism. Bandha-moksa models further imply the rest: determinative bondage by karma, samsara, life as a problem to be solved ultimately and finally by liberation. Rajanaka has no interest in that model.

Ours is a spirituality of living in this world as a human being, with all of our foibles and inheritances of light and shadow. We are ever flawed, incomplete, vulnerable, and limited beings who must learn to live with ourselves by exploring as deeply as we how our physical, psychological, and cultural worlds inform our individual inheritance. The Vedic concern with svarga is at best a metaphor, for where is that heaven but within one's own mortal joys and tears? So we are at best Hindu heretics and far outside the usual definitions, norms, and claims of Śrīvidyā or any of the Tantra, Saiva or Sakta.

Rajanaka is what we might call a self-conscious misreading, a deliberate misinterpretation of the Tantra that emerges principally from the Saiva Sakta milieu of Tamil country. We appropriate all of the resources of text, history, temple life including darsan and tirthayatra, basically the entirety of Vedic and Hindu lore, imagery, and practice. But from our self-conscious, considered and calculated misrepresentation of traditional meanings, interpretations, and practices, we develop a revisionary relationship with tradition itself and mean to take matters forward into a secular, humanist life of purpose and meaning. To be clear, I didn't "invent" this approach or the Rajanaka interpretations, I learned them from a deeply learned traditionalist from south India. He and his conversationalists brought this revolution, this heresy into being. By nearly any standard it is heresy. In fact the Rajanaka reading has been called by critics "outside" the Tantra and not any longer "Hindu". I don't think I would agree (for reasons I would be happy to explain) but neither does any of this criticism matter to me. Why should it?

Learning to live is no small matter; learning to live with yourself is the deepest individual endeavor; making a life with others is what we must do to further our personal development. Again, that is our yoga.

Appa thought a great deal about and of Jungian analysis and I would say that Jung forms an important part of our interpretive matrix. Alas, Jung too came to claims of self-realization and fulfillment that strike us (me, Appa) as a bit more than is likely or even possible. We are journeying souls of memory, lost and found, collective and individual, and that project of interrogation and swerving, gaining, losing, and finding our way is a life of sadhana. Our tools are drawn from the Vedic/Hindu quiver, our Śrīvidyā with all its complexity is a vital resource of symbolism and initiative.

Rajanaka sadhana is a life that tries to uncover what lies within and address the world however it presents itself, for better and worse. We are creatures of light and shadow, there is joy inside this strange gift of life, there is the chance for love (if you get that chance) and if we are so fortunate then there is certainly only more grief and sorrow---real, unassailed and deep, we are creatures of love and grief, in a world of karma and lila. It is play of consciousness to which we are parties until...well, there is no point in discussing "afterlife" but to say that we are bits in living memories and join the collective unconscious in the ocean of memory---but I have nothing to say about immortality as a personal experience, much less a fact.

That is all far too much but you asked to study the Śrīvidyā. That is possible. But I teach the Śrīvdyā from within the Rajanaka and that is a worldview far outside the mainstreams of Hindu, Sakta Tantra, or other traditional interpretations. That is what you need to understand. You don't have to sign up for anything. You certainly would never owe me a thing, not loyalty, time, or money. Appa understood the word guru to mean the grace of your own critical understandings, the depth of your soulfulness, your love and respect for learning and sharing a "weighty" and serious seat for the examination of self, nature, society, life. So we have respect for teaching and teachers but we have no guru because there are no "superior" persons--only folks with learning and wisdom we can respect.

Think about this, think about what you want. When you're ready, let me know. It would be perfectly fine to say that this Rajanaka tradition is not for you. (You wouldn't be the first to search elsewhere and go with all my blessings, truly. Suit yourself, you should follow your heart.) Should you want to learn more, you are never obligated, you aren't signing up for anything, you are free to come and go, to step in and step out whenever it suits you. My promise to you is that I will offer what I know with as much honesty and presence as I can muster. There is at present a vast archive of learning---literally thousands of hours of courses, sessions, and work. Access to this only demands from you that you treat that work with respect, whether you agree or not, like it or not: you are on your honor to treat these resources as a friend would treat a true friend.

We mean to care for the soul by being caring, inclusive, and decent folk engaged in serious conversation. That's the offer. You might prefer other more mystical (or however one might describe) paths. There's is nothing about Rajanaka that demands any singular loyalties or commitments. What you will find in me is consistency in the message and the offering---that promise is evidenced in the last 20 years of offering the conversation to others.

Take care, write when you can, apologies again for the tardy reply,

as ever, profdbrk

Creating Collisions of Value

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie.

—-W.H. Auden

 

W. H. Auden discovered his calling when, at the age of 15, a classmate asked him if he’d considered writing poetry. By the age of 23 his Poems had won him acclaim well-deserved. I first came upon Auden’s work as a young man when in India I encountered the translations and interpretations of the sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa through the work of Christopher Isherwood. I was not only looking for sagely wisdom from the modern Bengali sant, I was in search of searchers.

 

I needed to know who had come before me, what they had found, and how they’d brought their encounters with India into their personal lives. Isherwood, I soon discovered, was a complicated person and when I found out a bit about his relationship with Auden, well, one thing led to another. Auden was not interested in India’s spiritualities but his voice pierced my soul.

During the time Auden collaborated on plays with Isherwood in the 1930s, the young poet began a complex journey involving politics, love, and a relentless pursuit of the soul. When in 1947 he won the Pulitzer for his long form poem The Age of Anxiety, Auden established himself as a voice of the age. The war was over but the depths of anxiety were only beginning to emerge in a world threatened by the price of nuclear victory and harrowing revelations of the evil made manifest during the Holocaust. What human beings could do to one another brought into painful focus the deep conflicts that reside in every soul. Anxiety might not be only another feature of our experience: it is the soul’s light casting shadow as a constant companion. And what might we do about that?

 

During this same time in my own India journey reading about Ramakrishna ad then Isherwood and Auden, my studies of Jung were deeply connecting, I felt like what these sages, storytellers, and poets were offering was the primary resource, the well-spring from which Jung was developing his theories of analysis. This provided my first collision with Jung’s notion of colliding.

 

What makes us grow, Jung says, is bringing our ego in collisions, that is, into troubles, anxiety, sorrow, even suffering. Now it’s important to understand that the ego is not itself a problem, at least not necessarily. In contrast to some readings in India where ego is nothing less than the problem to be solved or even eliminated, for Jung the ego focuses human consciousness and is rooted in the unconcious.

 

Without a strong ego we cannot obtain or transform the content of our inner experience and a weak ego will succumb to mere impulse and reaction. Thus while the ego can be selfishness, it can also be the source of altruism—ego as such is morally neutral and is better construed in terms of how we create agency. Engaging ego-consciousness is a key to creating purpose and direction and, importantly, we are free to choose and make choices because our ego can learn and we can move with, through, even past the powers of mere impulse and emotional reaction.

Sometimes we need to hold our egos in check because it’s freedom is limited, we’re so eaily and profoundly moved both by internal events and what the world is offering up. In his Aion, Jung told us that the ego “is not a simple or elementary factor, but a complex one…which cannot be described exhaustively.” He is telling us here that we are somatic, physical beings and psychic ones and that these are commingled, integrated complexities: what we feel in our bodies and conjure in our minds are coextensive. The ego is body-based insofar as it experiences itself through the body but it is as much the case that the body that the ego expriences is psychic: we are body imagers, not just bodies.

 

To develop a closer and more empowering connection with our selves we are going to have to learn how to engage with our ego collisions. Those experiences are going to happen, there’s no avoiding our inner conflicts, anxieties, and sorrows. But we’re going to have to take great care because the word is collision and that can be problematic, even catastrophic in terms of inner turmoil. An important strategy is to invest in creative potential, taking up modalities of inner expression that give us purpose and meaning. You might paint, do your yoga practice, write in a journal but you gotta get in to get out.

 

When we study mythologies together we enter into cultural virtuosities creating structures, symbols, and modalities of self reflection that can give voice and invite participation—-the collisions we are experiencing can be brought into images and framed in ways that allow us to deal with the difficult work. Myths are hard to understand but one of their great purposes is to soften the blow, make accessible the harder truths despite the fact that they themselves can be difficult to penetrate. When we can dismiss as so much fairy tale or flummery we are using it to protect us from its more challenging messages. But when we take the time, learn together, and put the myth into a context of healthy conversation, then the collisions become opportunities, we deflect less and engage more.

 

It can feel “demanding” when we try to make meaning out of mythology but what we now know is that we are dealing with collisions. How could it be otherwise? Best not to go it alone, like I said. Best to bring along sages and storytellers and poets who can provide the resource and the insight. To develop our own, best to make the effort in safe company.

Here’s a bit more from what I wrote about this morning.

We must not lose our voices, resign or relinquish, forsake or surrender. Stay in the conversation and allow, even create what Jung called “collisions.” We collide when the world and our inner self find incongruity, discomfort, impediments or vexations. Our natural tendency is to retreat, allow the withdrawal to bury the experience.

 

When we can’t “collide” then our circumvention turns this shadow experiences into latent resentments and painful, undisclosed feelings. We usually try to camoufloge and disguise further, dissemble, stifle, and duck. Next thing you know we’re acting out and we don’t know why and it all compiles. So what can we do? We have to unfold the folded lie, as Auden puts it. We have to give permission for the collision and be kind enough, gentle enough, committed enough not wreck ourselves.

There isn’t only one way to lift those shrouded curtains of the soul but it’s not going to be easy because seeing yourself isn’t easy. The power of storytelling, mythic symbolism, and thoughtful contemplation can shelter and at the same time encourage disclosure.

 

We don’t have to lay ourselves bear, exposed and unprotected to address the inner collisions. But when we commit to the endowments of human genius in the cultural grace of the story, we can learn how to release and unwrap the inner narratives. Myths conceal themselves behind veils of truth so that the anxious unknown becomes less daunting, so we can enter into a more delivering, exonerating conversation with the self. The undiscovered territory is you.

 

This week we begin again our studies of the mythic possibilities: Thursday with poems and songs to Goddess Kali, Saturday with a fresh, innovative look at Krsna stories, and Sunday in the greatest tale ever told again and again: Mahabharata. You can find the Zoom links in your Newsletters But I’ll put them here too. Come if you can. We’ll make some safe collision, play inner bumper cars with the self in the cherished company of friends. Don’t try too many collisions all by your lonesome. Best to keep good company because you will become the company you keep. See you soon.

 

A Story in the News, Rajanaka, the Past and Future of Yoga

"I read the news today, oh boy...and... the news was rather sad..."

As you know I've only had a peripheral connection over these many years with the "yoga world." The person mentioned in this NPR story cited below was not known to me, personally or otherwise. I am sad for her family, her friends, her students, for her. She died of a pulmonary embolism. I know that can happen to anyone because I too have lost friends suddenly this way. I have nothing more to say about this particular case and person. In a world in which love can be measured in grief, the depths of grief are unfathomable. May love find more to measure even if it too is unfathomable.

My reason to write is to comment about this well-known yoga teacher's involvement in conspiracy theories, QAnon, vaccine-denial, and the rest that has caused us all so much pain and confusion.

I have heard, again all second hand, that the conspirators are rampant in the yoga world.  In the article Matthew Remski makes the point that it's not uncommon with the "find your own truth" crowd. (For the record I have always had a wonderful, genial relationship with Matthew who came once to a seminar.  I hold his work in warm regard.)

Ironically, historical yoga philosophers (at least the ones writing in Sanskrit) have never been about finding "your own" truth. That would be a terrible misreading of their claims. Rather, their aim is usually about bringing you to experience *their* versions of truth, especially their conclusions (siddhanta) and dogmas. This is true of Hindus and Buddhists (and Jainas, etc) alike. The goals are undoubtedly personal and experiential but they are decidedly not yours---these are constructed as arguments of persuasion "verified" personally in experience.

This is an important distinction becasue this renders Rajanaka (n.b., Rajanaka simply means what Appa taught me) once again entirely outside the mainstream of these traditions.  Rajanaka is obliged to yoga traditions by sharing resources---mythologies, queries and questions, ideas and values along with practices.  But Rajanaka has no siddhanta as such, it is more method than goal, and I suppose we should say that it aligns itself more closely with the methods of scientific truth-seeking and tasks rooted in shared, empircal learning aka academics.

A Rajanaka critic once said to me that "this makes Rajanaka just another strategy of secular humanism." I offer no objection to this characterization. Rajanaka loves Hindu lore, the history of religions, the artistry and passion of the Indian tradition in all its forms---and all forms of serious learning and artistry, in all culture and history. We are seekers of a shared humanity, of human achievements, the imagination and the power of creativity in fostering a life of values, tolerance, integrity. We're here to learn and converse about things we think are compelling and important because they contribute to shared concerns.

Appa made this point with me on day one: we are here to learn, to take processes of inquiry seriously, to ask better questions and understand how "truth" is a process, provisional, empirical, experimenting with facts. We are learning about ourselves, about the world as we have been made and as we make it.  It's called a Vidya---the word is cognate to the English "verify" or "verification"---he said, because Rajanaka really is like science, knowledge refers to  hat we verify using our senses and minds, in reason and in shared empirical studies: our learning is not perfect, just the best we can do in learning.

As most academics would likely put it the problem with conspiracies is not unlike the problem with "finding your own truth." This is not a serious way to learn. "Seriousness" is something of a technical term to us: it implies methodologies and the pursuit of shared learning. Those not trained academically, skeptical or hostile to academic methods may not fully appreciate the effort placed on "seriousness."

But let me be clear with you good folks: Rajanaka loves seriousness and has little use for conspiracies or the nonsense that passes these days as "truth." Reducing to "your own truth" is a slippery slope to foolish solipsism and, worse, a kind of stochastic nihilism. That's a fancy way of saying that you think your own opinions (whenever you are thinking or feeling them) are not merely valid but sound, important, true because you say or believe them to be. This is a kind of subjectivism that can be dangerous but it is certainly the opposite of "serious."   All experience claims made in good faith are valid but not all qualify as sound.  We observe this important distinction.

I would be happy to explain the distinction further but I think this can suffice for now. The link between Trumpist conspiracy/QAnon nonsense and yoga worlds in this "personal truth" creates a swift path to stochastic nihilism. In no time things are true because you say them, feel them, believe them---and more likely because you hear them and follow along.

The whole point of "seriousness" as the alternative is to learn how to think critically, read closely, and write argumentatively. This is my mantra to undergraduates; this is what we are learning to do. It is precisely the same in Rajanaka. I am not here to teach you what to think. I am here to help you learn how to think.

Thinking is no small matter. It requires information and methods to sort out misinformation and disinformation. When Rajanaka disagrees or rejects or criticizes yoga traditions (or religions) it does so using historical facts and sources. Our aim to point out the process of argument that is implied or stated. "Argument" is another misunderstood term (like "seriousness"). 

Argument is how we conduct rational discourse, it is not a quarrel as such. We ask what are the assumptions, evidence, reasons, and conclusions drawn. It is the very process of learning itself. Rajanaka makes no religious arguments because religions begin with the notion that their conclusions, like their assumptions, are beyond disproof. More correctly, there are matters we believe withstand the critical method and so deem true and thus what remains isn't skepticism but the persistence of method. What could be disproven remains even if we are reasonably sure we have arrived at a fair and honest provision, a truth as such. 

Rajanaka takes this stance common to scientific and indeed to all historical critical method: we are vigilant in the pursuit of facts sharable because we share methods. Some religions, like certain elements of modern Buddhism, claim not to function like religions (where assumptions and conclusions are theoretically disprovable). But I've yet to find such a Buddhist like our pal the Dalai Lama who didn't subscribe to non-empirical, non-verifiable (by method) claims.

Some such claims are clearly not in the least dangerous to the common wield. In other words, there's lots about religious claims that don't do damage, even things that are downright helpful. Like "be a good person" or "be compassionate" for which there may be little argument to sustain the case. We're not reducing the world to argument, only looking for ways to have a sensible conversation about what makes us human.

I study religions professionally not because what they teach is "true" but because I seek truths. Truth is what happens when you share in a conversation that takes facts seriously, that enjoins human achievement to human fallibility and flaw. Truth depends on asking better questions, learning to formulate argument and attend to what is serious--and that too is a learning process.

Conspiracy is hearsay, gossip, nonsense, repeated as if it were true but without the processes of serious or honest learning. That's where Rajanaka stands, if you wanted to know. We are serious about learning and we mean to study yoga to engage life as fully engaged human beings. Serious learning can be soulful though it need not be, it doesn't have to be. What I mean by that is we can ask "how does this really matter to me or change the world or effect life." How does what I learn create purpose, meaning, and value in my life?

Truth isn't necessarily about relevance or application but it can be. Art can move us and shape us and change us and reveal things in our hearts we know, we feel, that are true. Sometimes the facts alone don't suffice. But they are never not the facts. So it's no small matter. The "what" is not the "so what." Understanding that distinction is helpful to having further serious conversations. "Serious" doesn't mean un-fun or boring. But it does ask more from you than your "own truth."

Cited article:

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/02/1146318331/yoga-guru-qanon-conspiracy-theories

Appa Tells Us About Love and Loyalty

 An Appa Story Notebook dated 1985

One day I took a rickshaw home to Sumeru from the city because it was raining really hard. I negotiated the fee with the driver amiably taking into account the hardship and he was eager for the fare. I was carrying a huge bundle of fruit and stuff, otherwise I'da' walked.

Anyways we get home and the rickshaw driver demands an unusually high fee. I pay him what we agreed and added some but not all of his (genuinely unfair) demand. He shouted an obscenity at me in Tamil and this brought Appa from the house. He was irate that such language be used at his doorstep, in front of his mother and children. He then said to the fellow, "How dare you speak to that man with such lanugage. Do you know who he is?" And I was, well, nobody really, just a guy in his 20s living in India. When the rickshaw fellow used bad language towards Appa I came running out of the house in a rage befitting Bhairava and his dog. Appa turned abruptly to me and pointed to the third floor. He was arguing vociferously with this fellow but turned to me in his usual wonderful eerily calm voice: "Go into the house." I could do nothing else.

Later we had a bit of a talk about the incident and I apologized for the matter wholly. He assured me that I did the right thing. "If we let him cheat you then he will cheat anyone. And he will cheat more vulnerable foreigners. No one should be cheated. You already paid him much more than the fare. You did the right thing because you can afford that, it is a generous act. But how he behaved we may not excuse so easily." This was all very Appa.

But then he made me cry, 'cause I could not help it. He wanted to make a point, so he told a story. He said, "You love me and want to protect me too. I know you are loyal to me and I am loyal to you. Do you know why? Loyalty is a true friend to love but they are companions and they are not the same. Love is Varuna, who is Sovereign. But loyalty is like Mitra, the Friend who is always at his side. Mitra knows that loyalty is always being challenged, not like their love. Now, this is not a bad thing. Loyalty is something that will be tested and because it is earned and then it is re-earned; loyalty never turns an eye from the truth. That is why Lord Varuna keeps Mitra so close. He loves him but he welcomes these test. They have earned each others' hard won loyalties. Their love, well, that they can't help."

I sad and worried for those whose loyalty is blind, whether it is gurus or politics or whatever it is. Loyalty is best with your eyes open. You can close your eyes sometimes when you're in love. That can feel right too.

How We Learned Together

These are the weeks in April when I celebrate my teacher’s birthday, remember his teaching, rejoice in his life, and grieve his passing.  I’ve tried over the years to describe what it was like learning with him.  Today I was reviewing some very old notebooks, more like log books of times spent in India with Appa.  This transcribed passage is from my 22 year old self, dated April 1978:

There is nothing to prove, nothing even on offer.  It is simply here.  If you want *it* you will have to notice it and its value.  If you want it you will have to understand how to get it.  If you expect anything from the teacher other than what he does  you have not yet understood the opportunity.  There is nothing  for sale though he may make the opportunity appear.  If you don’t understand  all of the terms under which all of this happens that too is not going to be explained.  You are going to have to figure out what you want and then figure out how it is being offered because it is not being offered.  it is simply being done.

We might think when people do something or make something that their work will also somehow be on offer.  The work might be for sale or for hire, or it might even be for free because that too can appear to be the offer.

We want to know the terms, the cost, the effort and time it will take: we want to know if the offering is something worth it to us.   It only seems normal: we want to know what we might be getting and getting into, and likely have all sorts of questions about the offering and the offer.

When I encountered my teacher it seemed to me at first that what he had chosen to do with his life and what he accomplished was somehow on offer.  He had studied, he had credentials, experience, and a long history of engagement with his work.  What would I have to say to receive or do to acquire that ?

He never once asked for terms nor did he set conditions or a price, not even after I gathered the courage to ask him to teach me about his work.

 

He wasn’t offering something of great value for “free.”  Every moment of life is one less moment we have to live and from mere respect for time we should consider seriously questions of value.  He did not put a price on his time or his work but did make himself available.  How do you pay for someone’s true experience or repay a debt that seems beyond any measurable compensation?

 

It’s not wrong or wrong-headed to consider monetary value on value received.  In fact, it seems to me wrong to think that we would not somehow try to make compensation, offer some kind of remuneration.  If none is suggested, none asked for, that doesn’t mean the work is “free” any more than we are freed from the notion of just rewards or offerings.  Things of value can have a price no matter who decides it.  If we are not prepared or willing or can’t pay that price then that is merely another life circumstance.

 

When I started my journey all I knew is that my curiosities had somehow brought me to a complex body of images and suggestions, into words and ideas where one thing had led to another.  There was history, a subject and in fact many subjects, there was learning and clearly a process of acquiring skills and understandings.

 

Any of these endeavors would take time and involve remaining a person in the world with responsibilities and ordinary costs of living.  None of those matters were ever going to simply disappear---that is not my good fortune.  But what relationship we can we create between what we long to learn, who we want to be, and making a living in a world that promises us none?

I didn’t have a plan or a goal because I didn’t even know what it was that I had found.  I felt confident that what appeared seemed only the very tip of an iceberg and that the iceberg was unfathomably vast and genuinely beyond my abilities to fathom.  The subject involved complex ideas, implied arguments and materials that even at the surface level appeared exotic, unfamiliar, and labyrinthine.  I had no idea if these pursuits really were worth the time and whatever efforts they might entail.

 

I remember as a kid having heard in school that Albert Einstein had important theories.  So, I went to the library to get my hands on his work, copies of the original documents.  How better to learn?  Of course what I found was so utterly beyond my comprehension that I had to reconsider, well, everything  I thought I was trying to do.  Things worth doing are not only likely hard to learn but may well leave us wondering how even to start.  It wasn’t only what Einstein apparently knew, I couldn’t fathom what he was doing much less how he learned it.  Of course, he went to school, he had teachers, he applied himself.  This too seemed to be on offer if one has the curiosity, the aptitude, the commitment to the work.

But with respect to my teacher’s work, that can only partially be learned from things on offer because of the simple and practical fact that he worked as a University professor.  If I enrolled in his classes he was contracted and obliged to offer precisely what was expected.  I soon learned that his professional offerings were only fragments of what he had done but not what he could do, much less what he was doing.  What he offered as a “professional” was only a fragment of who he was and what might be learned.

 

What my teacher might teach if only I knew how to learn was never for sale and never went “on sale.”  What you might learn or receive from him was somehow available if you first understood those facts.

 

“It isn’t that what we might do together is intellectual or “spiritual” that matters about the work.  Nothing should cause us to believe our work is different from any other endeavor.  I might be making pottery or building furniture.  What would it matter?  What there is to do in life and how we choose to do, that may not have anything to do with one’s job.   One is somehow curious and interested in the work or not.  What is “produced” might be sold and those sales may provide a living.  One’s work as one’s artistry, can do many of the same things as any job and there is nothing wrong with having a job, making offerings or sales.  Some of the skills I have learned help provide my living.  Of course, people must find ways to sustain themselves.  But if someone wants to learn what I have learned there is no need for me to make an offer, though it might be available to learn.  My job, my profession, that is only a portion of myself, as it is for anyone.  Why should I want something from you that you have not asked of me?”

 

My teacher never said “this is what I do, this is who I am, would you like to learn this.”  He didn’t even imply as much.  He never spoke about the value of his work in his own experience, much less how others might benefit from it.  He expressed no attitude regarding accomplishment or objectives; there was no suggestion of profit, advancement, or gain.

When I asked him why he did his work he said it had come to him first as something curious, that it had somehow called to him and turned into a way of life.   He was now just doing his work.
Is it important?  Perhaps not to the world, he said.
Is it valuable?  So long as we try to avoid particular harm to the world then we should be free to live as we choose.
You don’t sell your work?  I make a living from work I do.  

 

 

What I eventually came to realize is that I would have to learn how to ask for what was never being offered until I could ask for it.  At that point, the “offering” was commensurate to commitment and a process of learning how to ask the next question, about what seemed to be the next thing in the learning process.

 

 

Among my first lucky stumblings I came upon a quotation that said three-fourths of everything remains hidden, unknown, or unseen.  There were few clues to explain further the value or the purpose of the pursuit.  I had curiosity, even romance and mystery but that I realized was all of my own making---the clues uncovered expressed no particular interest in creating any interest.  There was no pitch, no seduction, no vending, no deal to be made, no demands, and nothing to market.  This situation was never less true so the very idea of something being on offer was actually never the case.  There was no interest expressed in eliciting my interest or anyone else’s.

 

If my teacher’s work were completely private, if no one had ever noticed or asked, I am confident that it would have made little difference to him.  If no one came along to carry forward his traditions of learning---what he knew was clearly passed through a process of learning---he wasn’t going to be concerned.  He felt no need to carry forward, spread, or advance any agenda.

He wasn’t doing his work so that others would profit from it though, he conceded when pressed, they might well find it meaningful and worthwhile.  After all, he did and that suggested others’ too might find it worthwhile.  That may sound selfish or self-preoccupied because there is no expressed motive of altruism or service to community but neither did he ask or expect benefit, reward, or acclaim.  If there was inspiration, influence, or an evocative muse, none was deliberate, none was being implied.  Once we engaged together in learning there were no obligations, no incentives, nothing expected.

 

So what happened was this: I found a person I had reason to believe knew something about matters of real curiosity to me.  I went to ask him a bit about what he knew and if he would teach me.  He respectfully listened, gave me his time, and at the end of our first “interview” he said that he would be here, at his desk, in this place tomorrow at certain hours.  Could I come to see him?  His affirmation was in his smile.  He wasn’t cold, haughty, or indifferent but neither was he particularly more inviting.  He was being himself, doing his work, and I could come or not.  This arrangement, as it were, was never made more complex or conditional.

 

It soon became clear that our relationship was entire, meaning that so long as I “showed up” he too would “show up” with all of his gifts and abilities.  I would ask for things and then be assigned tasks that would be in pursuit of those requests.  He never graded or evaluated.  Each day he would express or suggest things that were clearly in furtherance of my curiosities and the queries I was able to make. I was never praised or cajoled, never admonished or approved.  We simply continued our process day after day.  I never asked for “input” nor did I receive any assessments or valuations.  I was learning how to learn when there was nothing being offered or sold, no bargain, no requirements, no obligations. 

 

I once asked him, while living in his house, what we would do if I did not come that day to learn together.  He said, “I hope we would at least have lunch” and he laughed a little.