I woke this morning thinking of the famous nine lines from Robert Frost that most of you will recognize.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Of course I was thinking about a world on fire and far too much melting ice. I was thinking about an America that I can no longer recognize but for the ways hopes and dreams are under siege. And I was taking it all personally because the actuarial tables suggest that under ordinary circumstances I can expect about 7,655 more days as a sentient being.
As a student of yoga I think it's always the best and worst of times. The world is always coming to some or another end, so Frost's Armageddon is nothing unusual, at least not to anyone who spends his days thinking about Nataraja's dance. I think that's pretty much all I think about, one way or another, though that metaphor may not reach as far into your experience. There are any number of ways of talking about this but every end is a beginning, a next and a more.
How we feature ourselves in a world that is always fire and ice is what Rajanaka call "yoga."
We are all obsessive beings because that is the only way to continue living. There is no "moderation" but by the imposition of a narrative that addresses the needs and consequences of our thoughts and actions.
Life is in a contest to sustain a mean that is always in crisis, always under assault, always demanding and answering to the proximate circumstances of the given. We humans are 98.6 degree creatures and the smallest variant puts us in immediate danger. Rather ironically, our homeostasis produces opportunities to act in ways that may not support our future but that too is part of our human story. We aren't really naturally adept at producing "goodness" except for the ways crisis becomes more relevant. Other living creatures seem to have more reliable instincts for survival while we have a greater concern for what is possible.
To address our needs and desires, that is, to meet the mean of sustainability, we don't seek the mean but instead seek the boundaries. In other words, to create sustainability (the mean of homeostasis) we're going to use methods of fire and ice, we're going to need to participate in creating _some_ crisis to address the crisis at hand. We measure out those things giving priority and finding ways to ameliorate what would otherwise overtake us. This is the part of adulthood that reveals how inept and competent we can be: we're inside systems, worlds of information that we don't control and to which we are subject. How we attend and what we can do depends on more than our bodies and wits though it depends on those too.
We act _engaging_ the issues of living, whether those are past, current, or future. Such engagement with ourselves Rajanaka calls "yoga." By "yoga" we don't mean we will do things effectively or somehow for our "good," but we do suggest we could do everything better if we are able to apply ourselves more attentively. We're not alone in the world and we can't always help ourselves.
What you want becomes our question because there's always something to want. Desire is not merely a problem we continually solve---and desire surely isn't something we can really ever aver---but rather desire being what we are places demands on us to answer to it. We will become a form of our desires, for better and worse. We don't always answer in ways that promote our self-welfare or that of others, but we are capable to the limits of circumstances. Just what constitutes "better" from worse is no small matter, for that is the issue with which any competent yoga must contend. What we eat, how we live, what we do with our bodies, minds, and emotions becomes the definition of a life lived in whatever "yoga" or engagement defines us.
Rajanaka begins with a simple premise: crisis is the ordinary state of affairs constantly being addressed both consciously and unconsciously. We are never beings without needs or wants. We are always beings in search of meeting those needs and wants. We are resourceful beings because we want to survive, nay, to flourish, and so to have needs and wants met, whether or not we are advancing our welfare personall, in the relationships we require, or under the circumstance in which we find ourselves.
We seek relief from crisis in every breath and naturally driven by those stresses, we're looking for methods, intentions, understandings, and actions that we can use. We call all of those things "yoga" too.
We're complex insofar as our desire to flourish is not some addendum to survival as such, it is part of our nature. We want pleasure but there's no necessity to aver pain unless pain defines itself as an aversion. We're more likely to assume patterns that lead us from moment to moment whenever those kinds of behavior suit us---water flows down and so human beings take paths to resist less even if those paths create more problems or fail to address the crisis effectively. But what we want will not only define us, it will invite us to create a life of desires met, filled and unfulfilled. What we do about that will make all the difference.
