Mindfulness Yoga

by Frank Jude Boccio

  Anyone who has practiced yoga-asana for any period of time will tell you that asana practice is a great way to practice reflecting on the change and aging of the body. From one day to the next we can sometimes see great changes. Of course at first, the changes may be quite “positive,” as we find improvement in our range of motion, our strength and stamina. But at other times, we may find that what we were able to do just yesterday comes with some difficulty today. It is always changing, and if we remain attached to any one way, we are setting ourselves up for dukkha. And no matter how consistently you practice, the aging process will still continue. Even the great yogi B.K.S. Iyengar, who in his eighties is able to do what most yogis half his age cannot, is not able to do what he had been able to do twenty or thirty years ago.

  Many people, upon hearing the emphasis on contemplating impermanence, think this is a “downer” of a practice. But sometimes medicine must be bitter. Yet it isn’t a downer if we can see how ignoring change and the truth of impermanence perpetuates so very much of our misery and anguish, and how truly seeing it is liberating. If we go beyond just the mere intellectual contemplation of impermanence and truly see it, then we also begin to see how our attachment to that which by its very nature is impermanent is simply foolish and not pragmatic. It dooms us to suffering. Trying to turn a blind eye to reality takes a lot of energy and ultimately is destined to fail. Another reason I value the practice of asana is that by working with the body and becoming intimate with it, we learn how to remain fully present, with our eyes open to life as it is, moment by moment, and breath by breath. This is the practice of the spiritual warrior—to never turn away—and every yoga teacher, in one way or another, is continually reminding students of this, because we all need to keep hearing it.

  The Buddha emphasizes developing insight into impermanence in his yoga teachings because it serves so well as a door into his central teaching: the truth of dukkha, its causes, and its cessation; insight into anatta, or nonself; the realization of shunyata, or emptiness of a separate self; and tathata, the understanding of the “thusness” of all dharmas. All authentic teachings of the Buddha are said to bear the “Dharma seals” of impermanence, suffering, nonself, and nirvana or extinction. Through the practice of impermanence we also come to penetrate the Three Doors of Liberation: emptiness (shunyata), signlessness (animitta /alaksana), and aimlessness (apranihita).

  As S. N. Goenka writes, the clear seeing of impermanence can be said to be the heart of vipassana meditation. In his approach, meditators observe the constantly changing sensations throughout the body. In practicing Mindfulness Yoga, we can observe the constant changing of all experienced phenomena. Again, we begin with the breath and notice how it is ever-changing—no two breaths are the same. As we move on to the body, we notice constant change, some of it subtle and some readily apparent, in the beating of the heart, in sensations, and in the changing position of the body in space.

  We can see how our emotions and thoughts are in constant motion. One object follows another, and even when we seem to be caught in one particular emotion, if we look deeply we will see that it is constantly varying in intensity and tone. We can see how the mind jumps from one thought to another, often in a seemingly bizarre and random process. We can even see that the states of deep calm, ease, joy, and happiness that we may experience in our practice are impermanent. This is not merely philosophical reflection, visualization, or deduction that we are engaged in, but a deep and unrelenting seeing into the reality of our lived experience. What we realize eventually is that what we are seeing is that we are impermanence.

  The Buddha talked about two kinds of impermanence: the kind of change that is occurring in every instant and the kind that involves the whole cycle of arising, persisting, and ceasing that results in a marked change. While heating water for tea, in each instant the water is changing by getting hotter. With the sudden appearance of steam, we see the cyclic impermanence of the water. In our practice, we observe both kinds of change.

  Often it is said that because of change or impermanence (anicca) there is dukkha. A classic formula presenting the Three Dharma Doors is “Impermanent, therefore suffering, therefore nonself.” But suffering is not the result of impermanence and is not inextricably tied to it. The root cause of our suffering is our attachment to what is by nature impermanent. It is our attachment, not the reality of impermanence, that is the cause of our dukkha. If we wish to affirm and celebrate life, we must be able to affirm and celebrate impermanence.

  If we only look at impermanence superficially, we may assume that it is a negative aspect of life. All that we love changes, and sooner or later we are parted from it all. But with the clear seeing of vipassana, we can see that impermanence is neither negative nor positive. It just is what it is, the “thusness” of things as they are. And it is not merely an aspect of life but its core: without impermanence life itself would not even be possible. Life without change is merely a concept, devoid of any true reality. And besides, without change, how could we hope to transform our suffering?

  If we take the self to be understood as some entity that persists over time, then the deep seeing that all dharmas are in constant transformation leads inevitably to the clear view that all things lack such an unchanging self. This is a central observation made by the Buddha regarding all phenomena.

  This is not to say that you and I do not exist, but rather that you and I do not exist in the way that we normally imagine we do. You and I (and all things) are without an enduring, independent, essential core. Even the consciousness of self that we take such pains to protect and bolster is not an independent and separate entity or thing; it is a process that is in constant flux and is itself conditioned by everything else that is in constant change. This insight into nonself is what is meant when we speak of emptiness (shunyata). Emptiness itself is not some “thing” that is our essence. Emptiness means that we, and all phenomena, are empty of a separately existing, enduring self. Impermanence is just thus. It’s just that!

  Because we are empty of a separate self, we may say that we are full of everything that is. To be empty of a separate self means to inter-be with everything else. When we look into our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental formations, and our consciousness, we see that none of them can be by itself. They all can only inter-be with everything. So, to borrow Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful example, as you read these words in this page, can you see the tree from which this paper comes? And what of the tree? It depended on its ancestors, the earth, the nutrient elements, the rain, and the sun. This paper, and the words written upon it, also inter-are with the trees, the rain, the earth, and the sun. In order to be here, there has been the interbeing of the loggers, the paper processors, the truckers, and the printers and publisher. And then there is my mind and consciousness that has written these words, and your mind and consciousness that reads them. Emptiness and impermanence are not two.

  Impermanence also leads us through the Dharma door of signlessness. The reality of thusness—of all that exists—is beyond all concepts and verbal expression. The categories of thought and perception are signs. Signs are wonderful instruments—they are models and maps that we can use, but they become cages when we misperceive them for absolute truth. An example often used to help us see the signless nature of reality is that of wave and water. A wave can be great or small, it can arise and it can disappear. Great, small, arising, and disappearing are all “signs”—specific traits of a specific phenomenon. If we identify with a particular wave, then we will feel happy or sad according to the sign. But if we can touch the nature of the wave—if we can touch the water, then we are going beyond the signs. If we can touch the signless, we go beyond fear and all dukkha.

  When we look deeply into the impermanent and selfless nature of reality, we touch the signless, which is another word for nirvana. Nirvana is not a place we go to, but can perhaps best be understood as the extinction of all our notions and ideas about reality and how it should be, so that
we may perceive reality as it truly is. And the truth of the matter is that there is nowhere to go in order to touch the signless other than right here in the world of signs. In penetrating the wave you touch the water. To penetrate the suchness of the water, you must penetrate the signs of water and see its true nature of interbeing. Thich Nhat Hanh puts it this way: “The reality of everything that exists is its signlessness, since it is a reality that cannot be grasped by concepts and words. Because it cannot be grasped, it is called empty. Emptiness here does not mean nonexistent as opposed to existent. It means signless, free from all imprisonment by concepts—birth/death, existent/nonexistent, increasing/decreasing, pure/impure.”

  Finally, since all dharmas are empty and their reality is beyond concepts, through insight into impermanence we enter the door of aimlessness (apranihita). The wave does not “attain” the suchness of water by adding water to itself. We cannot add on or take away from the true nature of all that is. We do not seek liberation outside of what is. For within the very dharmas, the awakened nature is already fully present. The tenth-century Vietnamese master Thang Hoi was asked by a student, “Where can we touch the world of no-birth and no-death?” He responded, “Right here, in the world of birth and death.”

  For our practice of Mindfulness Yoga, this can come down to the very practical and concrete practice of seeing impermanence and change in our experience of the asanas. Don’t get caught up in impermanence as some philosophical concept or thing in itself that we are looking for and into, but simply see the reality of change in your body-mind, just here, just now, just this. We can observe how change is happening in every moment when we practice longer holdings of the asanas and when moving slowly. For instance, in WARRIOR TWO (can you tell this is one of my favorites?), we can see how the sensations increase from moment to moment and how our reactivity grows and changes, conditioned by the ever-increasing sensations.

  At first, as the sensations arise, we jump to the notion that this pain is a thing. We identify with the pain and may say, “My shoulders are killing me.” A fantasy may arise in the mind about how much we hate this posture and our teacher for having us stay in the posture too long—at least, too long for our taste. Instead, we can commit to really paying close attention to what is happening. Really observe the sensations. What we see, if we stick with it, is that the sensations are not personal. The sense of self grows less hard and solid. There is just sensation and it is constantly changing. The discomfort and pain is seen to be empty. It is not you and it is not a separate entity with which we should do battle. It is a natural conditioned process. It is no different with feelings, mental formations, or consciousness.

  When we finally release from the posture, we can see the cyclic change in the cessation of the sensations and the beginning of a new cycle of sensations and reactivity as we grasp after the feeling of relief. Clinging to this feeling and attempting to make it last is additional dukkha. And yet, if we can let sensations and thoughts just be, the impermanence we experience will help us keep from clinging to the sense of relief, and we can simply enjoy it and let it pass as we move into the next asana. In faster vinyasa practice, the cyclic pattern of change can be observed in this way, for instance, throughout the entire SUN SALUTATION.

  Whether we are moving strenuously, maintaining a challenging posture, or sitting or lying still, we can rest in the awareness of the breath as it constantly changes. Richard Rosen, author of The Yoga of Breath, asks the somatic koan “Who is the breather?” As we observe we may arrive at the seemingly paradoxical realization that while there is undoubtedly breathing going on, no breather can be found. The thought “I am the breather” is seen to be just that, a thought added on to the bare experiencing and the simple reality. Lying in CORPSE POSE, you may begin to feel that the breath is moving into and out of the body, breathing you—but even that too is just a thought.

  If throughout the practice of anapanasati, there has remained this idea of a “breather” or a “witness,” then through deep realization of impermanence, this last vestige of self-consciousness can be dissolved and no longer do you have the sense that “I am paying attention” or “I am observing.” At first, we may have had to utilize the witness in order to break through our identification with the constantly changing sensory and mental experiencing, but now the witness itself is seen to be nothing more than a mental formation.

  Many beginning practitioners find this potentially frightening and disturbing: “You mean I will cease to exist?” But this question itself is based on the false assumption that an “I” ever exists at all, even now. The Buddha’s teaching is not that we must destroy the self or the ego, but that this idea of a self is based on ignorance of reality, and when our ignorance ceases, so too does our misperception of self. When that has been clarified, there is no basis for fear. Through continual practice we get to taste “drops of emptiness.” Either through many such tastes, or through an intense and deep draught, one’s life may be transformed.

  Through deep penetration into the reality of impermanence, we begin to let go of our attachments to those ephemeral phenomena we for so long had clung to. We see that the attachment is not only a cause of suffering, but a form of suffering itself. The second contemplation of the fourth tetrad is the growing awareness of this disappearance or fading away of clinging and grasping. Whenever we have such thoughts as, “If only I could have that (whatever “that” is), I would be happy,” we are experiencing attachment, grasping, and clinging. This comes up often in asana practice when we believe that if only we could do a particular posture, or do it better, we’d be a better yogi. Be very wary of any “if only”!

  If we grow in our understanding that any object we may desire is by nature constantly changing and bound to dissolution, our desire for it to be what it is not (permanent), and to give us what it cannot (ultimate happiness), will also begin to lessen and fade away. In the exercise above, we observe the process of fading away of attachment. In Mindfulness Yoga, when we see the impermanence of our experience—physically and mentally—we grow less attached to a particular outcome. We remain open to what is happening and do not use some idea of what should be happening to flog ourselves. A classical analogy is that watching attachment or clinging dissolve is like watching the stains in a white cloth fade away as it is bleached by the bright light of the sun. Awareness is the bright light that dissolves attachments of the mind.

  For many, the idea of nonattachment or dispassion sounds cold and unappealing, but this is mistaking nonattachment for indifference—and these two are not at all the same. For me it is the experience of attachment that is lifeless, in that when we are attached (whether to a relationship, an emotion, a concept, or some physical object), we want the object of our attachment to not change and to last longer. This narrow, tunnel-visioned view drains the vitality and juice from life and attempts to freeze-dry and package the moment. Imagine being so attached to a particular note in a piece of music that you attempt to hold on to it and make it last. In the process you destroy the beauty and integrity of the composition. It is nonattachment—the practice of it—that allows us to let the music play so that we can enjoy it fully in its very passing.

  We create mind-forged manacles with our attachments, binding us to the limited view that life is my life, my body, my lover, my family, my possessions. When we see the truth of interbeing, through the insight into impermanence and nonself, we extend beyond every limit we have created for ourselves, and see that our life is not really ours but all of life itself. The impermanence and dissolution of any particular phenomena (including our body-mind) do not touch the suchness of life, just as the arising and the dissolution of the waves don’t affect the existence of the water.

  The Sanskrit and Pali word translated as “fading away” is viraga (or vairagya), which is also said to mean “without attachment” or “dispassion.” In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali states that practice and dispassion are the twin poles of yogic discipline. Practice includes all the “techniques�
�� utilized by yogis to cultivate understanding, and dispassion or nonattachment is the attitude the practitioner must maintain throughout practice. Of course, it is only through the deepening of one’s practice that nonattachment can be cultivated.

  From the deep penetration of impermanence comes the fading away of clinging found in the fourteenth contemplation and the unfolding of the cessation that is realized in the fifteenth exercise. The word translated as “cessation” is the Pali and Sanskrit word nirodha. This is a difficult word to translate, and yet is central to all yoga practice. In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali says, “Yoga is the nirodha of the fluctuations in the field of consciousness.” While some translate this as “cessation,” many others agree on “restriction” as more appropriate. There are apparently four levels of nirodha culminating in the complete restriction that coincides with the realization of the “cloud of dharma ecstasy” (dharma megha samadhi).