We are on the verge of serious political
decision in America. A
friend asked my opinion about how we might choose to comment, to express
opinions, to enter the fray with friends and in the public discourse as “contemporary
yogins.” Let me define “yogin” a
bit more plain and simple: any person
committed to deep engagement with all that
life might promise. We’ve had
occasion before to think about this definition here so, for now, let’s work
with this much.
With this then, a bit of background. Yoga traditions, as diverse and
contentious as they are in championing their own views, assume two common postures
and, for some, the one preempts if not excludes the other. There are those pravrtti, literally “turning
towards” the world with a commitment to sustaining the values of personal
integrity and the social welfare.
This is sometimes characterized (or reduced) to the life of bhukti or “enjoyment” and it has gotten
something of a bad rap in the view of those espousing versions of mukti or “liberation” from/within the
limited, temporal, and conditional reality in favor of a state that extricates
and exempts one from worldly controversy and conflict. To achieve such liberation one must
become nivrtti, that is “turn away,”
which usually means privileging some form of introversion, silence, or
disinterest in the messy business of a world that cannot confer absolute certainty and so lead to transcendent
or “unconditioned” awareness.
In contemporary yoga such voices of nivrtti often resort to two strategies
of criticism meant to proffer the superiority of taking a “higher” and
“spiritual” path that contrasts with the conflicting views and uncertainties of
a mundane human reality. The two
strategies are covertly (or not) coupled with certain logic of
superiority. It goes like this: any
effort to express views that might be contentious, disputed, or cause conflict
are deemed (1) the work of the “lower” features of an Ego---n.b., the capital “E” works a certain magic meant to express
the authority of the claim that Ego=culprit in the equation that affirms (2) silence in the role of our better angel
for “spiritual” accomplishment. So,
it is implied, to become silent and
so serene beyond measurable response is set apart as the higher path of a
“true” yogin. The “spiritual” then
becomes the apolitical. But even a
little more candor reveals that this apolitical spiritual path---revered as
superior is more an effort to keep one’s politics private, to silence the
process of a more honest conversation precisely because it could complicate or
challenge relationships. The next
bit of legerdemain is to assert that this unifying
view of the “true” nature of reality not only transcends any contentions
but also manages to render everyone’s individual opinions equally true so that
there is no need to have the challenging conversations in the open. Just go inside and everything will be
better.
There is another take on the matter that I think
warrants our consideration.
Should we fail to enter the public discourse
without our opinions stated with reason and articulation we fail to engage a
life greater than our own private assertions and feelings. How can we presume to be in a world together without making the effort to
challenge our own views by engaging those with whom we might disagree?
This is especially important when we share our
views, make our arguments, and offer our experience with those we have come to respect
as members of our community. If we
can't argue with our friends then every contention begins without the deeper
emotional connection that tempers our views with an indulgence and deference
for friendship. But won’t a
conversation about hot button politics trigger emotions, stress our abilities
to convey our feelings and thoughts rationally, and threaten otherwise
respectful friendships because views are so deeply heartfelt? Well, yes. Welcome to real world engagement. I might even want to call that “yoga,” but the word we use
is hardly the point.
It can be the case that real conversation not
only stakes out our life’s views but also recognizes that others’ views will
cause us to address the boundaries of our tolerance. When can we live and let live? When do we say, “You shall not pass”? There are views worth living and dying for, unless of course one believes
that “turning away” (nivrtti) is the superior life. To such anchorites whose engagement
into isolation from mere worldliness
serves as the principle that sets yoga apart from the world I have but one further
observation: such a cave of meditation that serves this “higher” purpose will
not protect you from all the real turmoil an embodied life in the world
promises. You can withdraw but you
cannot cease to matter to the rest who accept the responsibilities of
conversation in public while you are meditating in complacent splendor. Don’t mistake me, meditation is a
surely process that enriches life but not one that confers safety from life. Come out, come out, wherever you are!
I’m not suggesting that debate become the theme
of your yoga class much less that every or any context will serve as an
appropriate place to have debates or just challenging conversations. Of course not. But I am suggesting that avoiding such
conversation because it is deemed a superior spiritual path or to leave it red-flagged
because it may cause trouble is hardly a deep engagement with life. What is not worth the trouble is
not worth your love. That would
include community, friends, and family, no?
In yoga we can frame the matter as Dharma---the
sustaining power to create relationships with a world that demands bringing some
sort of order to entropy. That Dharma fails to achieve agreement or, for that matter, anything like a
complete order for living is not a problem to be solved but an acknowledgment
that life offers more than any of us can fathom. If we will to take up the conversations of political life
there will be contention even in our agreements. We might seek to avoid turbulence life’s
flight because political issues merge the personal and the public: what we
"defend" for our public view has implications for our own personal
welfare. But to reduce such matters
to contending “egos” ---a favorite claim of the superior introversion---is little
more than another discourse of avoidance: it assumes that your personal view is
somehow not important enough to be shared.
Ego is the way in which views that are worth
sharing make their way through the lens of the individual and the personal. There is for a human being living in the
world no other avenue for meaningful conversation even if there is the choice
to disengage into introversion or placid dissociation. If one means to say that individuals
reduce the case they make for their public opinions to mere assertions and
emotional claims, then the problem isn't the ego: it's the inability to state
those opinions in ways that could be persuasive by the powers of argument. Without those powers of argument well
honed in conversation--- especially among friends who may not be
like-minded---how can we pretend to be fully engaged with the gifts of our
human capacity to share meaningful conversation? Must all conversation be reduced to the merely irenic, the
trite acceptance that every view is just as good as every other? No serious person could believe that.
Some of the most important conversation may not
appear to be "kind", especially when the issues at stake have real
human implications. Should we be
"kind" when we take up the abuses, real and understood to be harmful
to innocents or the vulnerable? It
may be necessary to be more honest than that in order to convey the gravity of
a real emotion. Silence becomes
yet another form of denial and repression when it contains within itself the
inability or the command to revert to
isolation when everything about being human cries out to our shared
conversation in a deeply challenging, often conflicted world.
