Confusion arises when we look at the more restricted use of yoga to signify one of the six orthodox traditions or systems of “philosophy.” The Sanskrit word that I translate here as philosophy, darshana, actually means “direct vision or sight.” This points to the fact that rather than being a mere intellectual pursuit, the Indian emphasis has always been on a direct apprehension of truth. As orthodox “viewpoints,” these six philosophical systems all base their authority on the ancient Vedic literature of India.
As such, when we speak of yoga as one of the darshanas, we are speaking of what may formally be called classical yoga, propounded by the great sage Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra sometime around the second century C.E. (Some scholars argue for the earlier date of circa 200 B.C.E.) Classical yoga may also be referred to as ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga or raja (royal) yoga.
Interestingly, while most forms of yoga (preclassical and postclassical) tend toward nondualist thinking, Patanjali’s classical yoga, allied as it is with the dualistic school of Samkhya Darshana, is itself dualistic. Patanjali asserts a strict bifurcation between spirit (purusha) and nature or matter (prakriti). In this system, there seem to be innumerable purushas, and the basic thrust of his teaching and practice as found in the Yoga Sutra is for the practitioner to cultivate the discernment (viveka) between the transcendent purusha and all that is “not self” (anatman); this includes the entire psychophysical organism, which belongs to the realm of prakriti. (It should be noted that Patanjali is using anatman slightly differently than Buddhist texts use it.)
So here, ironically, yoga becomes the separation and withdrawal from phenomenal or relative reality until the yogini recovers her true self. In fact, commentaries on the Yoga Sutra have said (in what sounds, misleadingly, like a Zen koan) that “yoga is viyoga”—union is separation!
Whether we choose to adhere to the metaphysics of Patanjali’s system or not, this procedure of discernment, or viveka, is used even by nondualist schools of thought in yoga, Vedanta, and in Buddhism. Thus even for nondual Buddhists, study of the dualistic Yoga Sutra of Patanjali can be richly rewarding. Additionally, many in the Vedantic and tantric traditions claim that Patanjali was offering only a model for practice and teaching rather than a freestanding ontology.
Fluidity of interpretation, and tolerance for contradiction and paradox, are strong factors found in all yoga teaching.
So, after all this, you may be wondering where the postures come into the picture. As I mention above, for the larger part of the history of yoga practice, the postures we know and practice today played little or even no part. Even in the Yoga Sutra, only three of its 195 aphorisms relate to asana, and these state that asana is stable and easeful, practiced by relaxing effort and leading to the overcoming of the “pairs of opposites” such as heat/cold and pain/pleasure.
What is clear from this and other early texts is that the asana that is being discussed here is the seated meditation posture. For Patanjali, asana is an aid in developing sense withdrawal and deep concentration leading to meditation. In fact, the word asana itself means “seat,” and originally referred to that which the yogin sat upon. So you see, whenever you take your seat in meditation you are, quite literally, practicing yoga!
Over time, and under the influence of tantric teachings—which view the body as the vehicle through which awakening can occur rather than seeing the body as an obstacle to awakening—a form of yoga developed that emphasized working with the body in order to perfect it as a basis for self-realization. This hatha yoga (literally, “forceful yoga,” so called because of its emphasis on discipline and its dynamic quality of practice, as well as its concern with awakening kundalini-shakti, the divine feminine life force that is said to sleep coiled at the base of the spine) evolved the myriad postures that have become so popular in the West.
Even from the first, however, there were sages who warned against emphasizing the postures at the expense of meditation, for this could lead to even further identification with the physical organism and the development of overweening pride, envy, and frustration. Sadly, even before coming to the West, this tendency to exaggerate asana practice led some sages to warn, as in the Garuda-Purana (a tenth-century text whose author is not known), that “the techniques of posture do not promote yoga. Though called essentials, they all retard one’s progress.”
Today, in America and the West, all too frequently yoga has been reduced to mere asanas. Go to most yoga classes, and there is little if any meditation, let alone discussion of the larger context in which to engage asana practice. When I first began my study of yoga, there was no real meditation instruction. Though asana was nominally seen as preparation for meditation, we never seemed to get around to meditating.
The Buddha taught that we should cultivate meditative awareness in each of four positions or “postures” which are meant to represent all the activities of life: sitting, standing, walking, and lying down. And how we do this is by maintaining mindful awareness of all we do and of all that arises. It is living in the “eternal now,” keeping what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “our appointment with life,” which is ever in the present moment.
The Buddha gave detailed mindfulness meditation instruction in two major discourses, the Anapanasati (Awareness of Breathing) and Satipatthana (Establishment of Awareness) sutras. In Chapter Six, I will introduce these sutras and show how they support each other, and how through specific exercises the Buddha has offered us, we can practice asana as mindfulness meditation.
When we approach yoga-asana in this way, as described in Part Three, we can achieve transformative and healing insight, and we can even free ourselves from much of our limiting and destructive patterns of thought and behavior. The Buddha assures us that practicing the awareness of breathing will lead to success in practicing the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, which in turn, if developed and practiced continuously, will lead to an abiding within the Seven Factors of Awakening. These factors will in turn give rise to understanding and the full liberation of the mind.
But don’t take his word (or mine) for it. Practice and see for yourself!
INTERLUDE
MANY YOGAS
Yoga’s roots can be seen in the Vedas, the most ancient of India’s texts that are accepted as revealed scripture by devout Hindus. Dating from as early as the fourth millennium B.C.E., the Vedas are considered eternal, uncreated and incontestable—though subject to many various interpretations. From these earliest beginnings, yoga has always had as its aim the practice of disciplined introspection or meditative focusing directed at the transcendence of the egoic self. At first, much of the meditative focusing centered on the performance of sacrificial rituals. With the rise of the Upanishads and the Upanishadic yoga practice that evolved over many centuries, the meditative focus began to turn inward, and the sacrifice became metaphorical and internal rather than explicit and external.
Ironically, for a word that means “union,” the tradition of yoga has never been unified. From the first, there have been many schools and approaches. Views and practices differ even among teachers within a single school. Sometimes the various teachings contradict each other. So when we speak of yoga, we speak of a multitude of yogic paths and orientations—and even apparently different goals, though all say their goal is liberation. And this is as it should be, because there are many different kinds of personalities, proclivities, and stations in life among those who are called to practice yoga. The Buddha himself is reputed to have said that there are 84,000 Dharma gates—practices for attaining liberation.
However, despite the diversity within the yoga tradition, all approaches agree on at least one thing—that the world as it seems is not the world as it is, and that there is a very real need for “selftranscendence,” for going beyond the limited human personality with its reactivity and constricted habit patterns, in order to awaken to the truth of reality as it is. What is different from school to school or tradition to tradition is the way this transcendence or awakening is accompli
shed and how it is conceptualized.
Within the larger yoga tradition, which from the perspective I take includes the teachings of the Buddha, the Jaina (as practitioners of Jainism are properly called), sage Mahavira, as well as the variety of yoga approaches within the cultural realm of Hinduism, we see several main forms of yoga that have gained prominence: bhakti yoga, karma yoga, jnana yoga, raja yoga, mantra yoga, and tantra yoga. Also extant are hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, and laya yoga, which are all closely related, although often mentioned as independent schools; further, the three can be seen as influenced and perhaps even derived from tantra yoga.
Bhakti yoga is often called the path of devotion, and its practitioners most often conceive of the Transcendental Absolute in personal terms. Some practitioners adhere to a dualistic approach and prefer to see the Divine as Other. Others seek to merge the self with the Divine by repeatedly annihilating the illusion of the distinct ego-personality until the Divine is realized as the only reality there is. This is the path, it is said, for those of a more emotional bent, and among their main practices is kirtan, the chanting of devotional songs.
Karma yoga is the yoga of action, but specifically the kind of action that is done with a certain inner attitude—the attitude of “selfless service”—that is itself a form of mental action. (The word karma means simply “action.”) To act, to do what one’s duty dictates with no regard to the outcome, is the practice of a karma yogin. This egoless action is akin to the “actionless action” taught in Taoism and is highly praised by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. In a very real sense, this mental posture is the basic asana practice of the karma yogin.
Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge, which has become almost a synonym for Vedanta, the Hindu tradition of nondualism that seeks realization through the discernment of the real from the unreal. It is said to use the mind to go beyond the mind. A modern example is the great sage Ramana Maharshi, who taught his students to practice by continually asking, “Who am I?” This technique is similar to the koan practice of Rinzai Zen.
Raja yoga, or royal yoga, refers specifically to the yoga system of Patanjali. It was originally used to distinguish Patanjali’s eightfold path, emphasizing meditation, from the relatively younger hatha yoga. I will have more to say about this form of yoga later in the book.
Mantra yoga is a form of yoga that utilizes the power of sound to affect consciousness. The esoteric meaning of the word mantra is “that which protects the mind” from itself by leading to salvation through the concentration of the mind on an empowered sound. In one of this school’s most sacred texts, sixteen “limbs” of practice are mentioned, including devotion, posture, meditation, and samadhi.
Tantra yoga began as a pan-Indian movement, arising as a response to the world-weary or life-denying tendencies that had arisen within the yoga practices of both the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Despite the nondual teachings of the Buddha and of the Upanishads, the habit of dualistic thinking had led to a denigration of this world in favor of the Absolute. The tantric practitioner asked, If there is truly only one Reality, why must there be a struggle to realize it? Why must spiritual practice be framed as a battle? Why do we need to abandon the pleasure of the body and of this world in order to realize the Absolute?
Hatha yoga arose from this tantric approach as an independent school, focused on perfecting the body in order to more fully enjoy the bliss of transcendent realization. Enlightenment is seen as a whole-body event, and so the practices of hatha yoga embody the ideal of tantra: to live in the world out of the fullness of realization rather than to withdraw from the world in order to gain enlightenment. Of course, while its psychospiritual practices of pranayama (breath control) and asana were to be seen within this context of realization, some practitioners sacrifice their spiritual aspirations and degenerate into ego-driven practice. Because some hatha yogins have become caught in the trap of narcissism, hatha yoga got a bad reputation with some scholars. Unfortunately, ego-driven practice does indeed seem to be a trap that is all too easy to fall into—especially in our body-conscious society. And yet, the benefits of hatha yoga practice are not to be underestimated.
MANY HATHAS
Hatha yoga, the most popular yoga in the West, emphasizes the postures that in most people’s minds have become synonymous with yoga. The esoteric meaning of hatha is that ha signifies the sun and tha the moon. Hatha yoga is therefore the yoga that unifies the power of the sun and the moon—the male and the female energies within all of us.
Any of the popular yogas that utilize postures are a form or style of hatha yoga. Iyengar yoga is a form of hatha yoga that has been inspired by the towering figure of B.K.S. Iyengar. Power yoga, Ashtanga yoga, Kripalu yoga, Anusara yoga, Integral yoga, Sivananda yoga, and all the others are merely different stylistic approaches to hatha yoga. A form of hatha yoga that emphasizes following the Buddha’s teachings of mindfulness can easily be called mindfulness yoga or Buddha yoga.
The benefits of hatha yoga practice are many and have been quite extensively propounded. Briefly, asanas work on all levels and systems of the body, strengthening the body while creating greater flexibility and ease of movement. Asana practice is said to purify or cleanse the body, promote healthy digestion and elimination, balance hormones, and calm the nerves. With the application of concentrated awareness, deep emotional and mental habits can be seen into, and self-understanding and transformation can be cultivated.
PART ONE
PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
CHAPTER ONE
THE BUDDHA’S YOGA
THROUGH ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE, we are now beginning to understand that the Indus/Sarasvati civilization, located in the northwest of the subcontinent of what is modern-day India, prospered as far back as 6500 B.C.E. and reached its maturity between 3100 B.C.E. and 1900 B.C.E. It was apparently a complex civilization: technically proficient, using wheeled carts and boats and a decimal-based measurement system which, among other things, has revealed a remarkable ability to accurately measure weights. Further, there were baths in most homes which were connected to a public drainage system having brick-lined sewers fitted with manholes. Only the Romans, over two thousand years later, had a comparable system. It has been conjectured, based upon the ordered geometric plan of the towns (all quite similar to each other although spread out over an area larger than the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Assyria and Egypt combined-over 300,000 square miles) that this Indic civilization was governed by a conservative priestly elite.
Cultural artifacts left behind by this great civilization—including terracotta seals depicting a variety of figures reminiscent of later Hinduism—suggest that they already practiced a rudimentary form of what we now know as yoga. One featuring a male divinity surrounded by animals, has been thought to be an early depiction of Lord Shiva, the archetypal yogin known as the Lord of the Beasts. They also apparently worshipped a Great Mother or earth goddess figure, as indicated by a ceramic depicting a female from whose womb is growing a plant. Other objects depict images relating to the male and female generative symbols still utilized in tantric practices. Certain trees and animals were sacred to them. One such tree had particular importance: the pipal tree, which many years later would be revered by others as the Bodhi Tree, the tree under which Siddhartha Gautama would sit when he achieved enlightenment, becoming the Buddha.
The religious and philosophical teachings of this civilization were recorded orally as the Vedas (which literally means the “knowledges”), which are still considered by devout Hindus as revealed scripture. Recent research suggests that the earliest of the Vedas date from between the fifth and fourth millennia B.C.E.
By 1900 B.C.E. the great Sarasvati River had dried up and many of the cities along its banks were abandoned. The center of the Vedic civilization shifted east to the fertile banks of the Ganges. This disruption and dislocation led to great social changes, including the arising of a professional priestly class. These Brahmins and their commentaries on the Vedas, which are
called the Brahmanas (a name also used for the Brahmins themselves), gave rise to a religion referred to as, perhaps not surprisingly, Brahmanism.
In what may have been an attempt to solidify their superior position in society, a caste system evolved with Brahmin priests occupying the top of the social hierarchy, along with senior officials and counselors to kings. Next were the Kshatriyas, the ruling and warrior class, followed below them by the Vaisyas, the emerging merchant class. The lowest class, the Sudras, consisted of common laborers akin to serfs. A group considered so low that they were outside the caste system, or “outcastes,” were the Panchamas.
This caste system, along with the ever more particular and ritualized practice of the Brahmins, had the effect of removing the Brahmanic faith from the lived experience of the majority at the bottom of the social ladder. From as early as 1500 to 1000 B.C.E., others began to expand and develop the ideas of Brahmanism from an outwardly focused ritualized system based upon the fire ceremony, and even animal sacrifice, into a more internalized form of spiritual practice. From this movement arose the earliest of the Upanishads.
Mindfulness Yoga Page 3