The Mirror of Yoga

by Richard Freeman

  One traditional way of practicing eka tattva is to consider any obstacle as having been placed in your path by the elephant-headed god Gaṇeśa. When you shift your perspectives in this way and are able to imagine a problem that is arising in your life as actually a special gift offered to you by Gaṇeśa himself, then you are more likely to be open to the teaching that lies in the heart of the problem. For example, if you have a headache, you could interpret the pain in your head as not an obstacle, but as the god Gaṇeśa poking you and inviting you to observe the specific sensations and feelings that compose the distraction named “headache.” In that way you can begin to enter into a state of meditation in the presence of the obstacle itself. You can even consider the obstacle, its causes, and its effects to be Gaṇeśa himself. With this shift in perspective, the obstacle becomes the object of meditation and is transformed from an obstacle into a gateway into a far deeper level of practice.

  Another method for overcoming obstacles is to simply practice friendliness and compassion. The root of so many obstacles has to do with our relationships with others or our relationship with ourselves. Our concepts and beliefs about ourselves and others are a rich source for the creation of obstacles. Patañjali says that if you practice friendliness for those who are happy, if you practice compassion for those who are suffering, if you practice great joy when you meet someone who is full of virtue, and if you practice total indifference when you meet someone who is not virtuous—someone who is creating misery—then the mind will become clear. We have to realize that this is not only an external process, in terms of the people we meet in the world, but that it also has an internal element to it and that it applies to experiencing happiness within our own body and within our own mind—meeting those states within ourselves with this same gesture of equanimity. Practicing friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference for yourself when you meet these states of being within your own body and mind is a remarkable step toward practicing kindness and compassion toward others as well. This practice is, in a sense, the quick path to yoga because all of the structures and the conditionings of the mind—all of the deep saṁskāra—tie into our heart and into our relationships with others.

  Meditating on luminosity or simply contemplating inspiring beings—those who are already enlightened—is another simple and related path toward achieving a liberated mind through yoga. In a sense this is the same as Patañjali’s recommendation to practice joy and to experience a deep sense of virtue, and this happens almost automatically when you meet someone who is virtuous. Imagine, for example, one afternoon you are enjoying a cup of tea with friends when into the tea shop walks the Dalai Lama! Even if you were a scoundrel, the mere presence of someone so virtuous would send a shock through you, and you might feel virtuous. Your mind state would shift, your posture would improve, and you would naturally let go of the distractions of mind that had you trapped before he entered the room. Related to this basic idea, Patañjali points out that sometimes even within dreams we have experiences that move us very deeply, affecting us to the extent that a seed for contemplation is planted within us. This, in and of itself, can bring the mind back under control. In fact, this sense of being deeply moved by the virtuous, the real, and the truthful can also happen through meditation on anything that is desirable or agreeable. This is Patañjali’s profound teaching: whatever your unique life circumstances are, if you find any kind of pleasing content of the mind that inspires—anything that can actually become a seed for your contemplation—then contemplate it. This teaching from the Yoga Sūtra demonstrates a remarkably open-minded approach, composed with the intention of truly teaching people to find whatever method possible to liberate the mind. The Yoga Sūtra could even be considered a nonsectarian description of the generic process of cultivating genuine, mystical experience.

  There are four books, or pādas, within the Yoga Sūtra. As we have seen, the first book, Samādhi Pāda, sets forth the underlying vision of what yoga is and describes the basic techniques of yoga that stabilize that vision. The remaining three pādas describe and deepen this understanding of yoga from slightly different points of view and with different emphasis. The additional pādas allow us to get more comfortable with the basic subject matter of yoga, and they also invite us to explore a little more deeply as we build an understanding of the content that is presented. The second pāda in particular, the Sādhana Pāda, gives us the tools to actually become grounded through the practice of yoga. Most of us have had moments of great inspiration and insight in our lives, but they are usually very brief moments. After an inspirational moment we may suddenly find ourselves back in our ordinary confused and miserable state of consciousness. This is perfectly normal and is a state of affairs that was not foreign to Patañjali. After laying out the basics of yoga in the first pāda he begins to “get real” in the second pāda. In the Sādhana Pāda, Patañjali explores life as it is as the central aspect of the teaching, offering the idea that insights from life can help extend the brief moments of clarity. In this second book an entirely new definition of yoga is offered, that of kriyā yoga, or the yoga of action. Kriyā yoga is defined as having three components; tapas, which means “practice” or “austerity”; svādhyāya, which means “self-study” or “self-reflection”; and Īśvara praṇidhāna, the complete surrender to God or the offering of everything to God.

  Tapas is heat; it is the light and the luminosity that arises when we finally set limits for the activities of the mind. Tapas occurs naturally when we enter into a space that we have identified or established sacred. When we enter a mosque or a church, when we are in the presence of a highly intelligent and inspired teacher, or even in a more mundane sense when we step onto our yoga mat, we have set limits for the mind and have defined the space as sacred. Without doing anything, it is likely we will experience a palpable feeling of heat or intensity arising merely through the definition of the space or the situation as exceptional, sacred. Even though there is a natural tendency for tapas to arise, there is also a kind of friction that initially wells up upon entering a new situation or a new space, because the mind (which thrives on distraction) wants to go off and do something else—anything that will not require it to be present and still in an unfamiliar situation. But if we are able to corral the mind when we are entering the space, we begin generating heat, and this happens automatically whenever we concentrate our mind in this way. If we stick with the concentration, then the tapas naturally causes a state of self-reflection through which we begin to inquire into the source of our suffering, so that we can begin to explore and to find out who we really are. From this self-reflection we come to the point of Īśvara praṇidhāna. Praṇidhāna, which means “surrender to, or stretch out in front of” can be examined from two different points of view; one passive and the other active. In the context of kriyā yoga, it is helpful to examine the active form in which we offer service to Īśvara who, as was explained earlier, is considered to be the primordial guru within the heart of the yogi. Īśvara is everything: one’s intentions; one’s actions; the functions of the senses; the flow of the breath; all fantasies, disappointments, emotions. Whatever arises is offered to Īśvara . Essentially through this offering to Īśvara we cultivate the vision that Īśvara is in the core of the heart of all other beings, including all other human beings. We discover that Īśvara is actually their ultimate identity. By rendering service to others in this way, first through having the vision of who they truly are and then by attending to them as if they were God, we can quickly gain access to the innermost depths of yoga.

  One purpose of kriyā yoga is to bring about samādhi. In this deep meditative state, in which we participate fully with whatever the object of awareness is, there is no sense of subject or object, and the state of samādhi itself becomes our basic tool for probing into the depths of reality. Another purpose of kriyā yoga is to lessen the kleśas, which are the torments or the afflictions that are considered to be the root of suffering. There are five kleśas ment
ioned in the Yoga Sūtra. Four of them grow out of the first, which is avidyā, or ignorance. Ignorance is said to be the confusion of that which is temporary, unclean, impermanent—that which is not really the ātman or the self—with that which is permanent, pure, and happy. This basic misidentification of the temporary as the permanent, of the happy as the unhappy, of the pure as the impure, this confusion generates all sorts of miseries. The second misery is asmitā, which means “I am-ness” or the establishment of a sense of self as separate from all else. When you see yourself as separate, the mind goes in search of objects that will satisfy the senses, needing to accumulate all kinds of things in order to prove its own false hypothesis that it is something that is quite unique and separate from everything else. From this confused state, rāga, or desire, appears, accompanied by a sense of grasping for those things that will support the false hypothesis that the self is separate. This is also accompanied by dveṣa, which is a state of repulsion or rejection of those things that are perceived as being threatening or of no use to the falsely defined separate self. A fundamental truth quite difficult for the mind to comprehend is that when we are grasping or holding on to something, we are also pushing away its opposite with an equal intensity. This process of grasping and rejecting is a root cause of great misery. This is because the things that are being sought are actually incapable of giving us the type of dissolution and pleasure that the mind is actually searching for. The quest for and attainment of objects is ultimately an inadequate method of returning the mind to its natural state of samādhi—which is ultimately what allows for true pleasure and lasting happiness.

  The first part of the Sādhana Pāda offers a real vision of heaven and hell, which can be imagined as a gigantic tree whose roots of suffering, of hatred, or of hell, grow and are firmly rooted into the earth. As deep as these roots extend down, the branches and the leaves of its opposite, or of heaven, reach up. But the tree is just one thing, a single aspect of a much bigger matrix of interconnected expressions of life. If we contemplate the image of the tree, we eventually realize that all of its parts are composed of the primordial constituents of prakṛti, of creative energy. We can then let go of the image of the whole tree, knowing that, even in its complexity, it is not separate from its background, and in that release we can begin the process of yoga. When we have insight into the complete creation of our mind and a new vision of the entire world as being one large interconnected web of happiness and distress, heat and cold, of innumerable sets of opposites, we come to the final kleśa, one final root of suffering. It is said that even wise people suffer from this kleśa, abhiniveśa, which means “clinging to life.” Interestingly enough, abhiniveśa, or the fear of death, is intimately connected to the deeper experiences of a mature yoga practice in which we start to feel that everything is dissolving around us as if we were dying. Not only are things we would like to have dissolve dispersing, but we see all things, even those we do not want to be rid of, also disappearing. We recognize that things both way out in the world and those close at hand are melting away, as are things deep inside the very core of our own mind—within our emotions and our own bodies. The initial reaction to this recognition of our own impermanence is naturally one of ultimate fear or panic. Yet if we can simply rest with the knowledge that all is impermanent, and if we can trust in the process of not-knowing—both are qualities integral to change—then insight into the truth of impermanence is possible. Understanding this is considered to be the dawning of the light of discriminative knowledge. This sense that everything around us is composed merely of vibration and is therefore impermanent is a profound insight of a good yoga practice, and it reveals how out of the field of avidyā, the ignorance of not realizing that everything is impermanent, the other kleśas easily grow. The real work of yoga, therefore, is to remove the ignorance from which this sense of separateness stems.

  It is said that the kleśas can be either manifest—that we are aware of the confusion and pain they cause and the sense of separateness and ego, grasping, revulsion, or fear we may feel—or that they may be nonmanifest, experienced as emotions or discomfort we do not clearly identify with a root cause. Kleśas that in the subtle form, lying deep within the core of the mind, can be shifted by what is called prati-prasava, which means to “reverse the flow,” to turn the current of the kleśas back on themselves. For instance, if we become angry or distraught for no apparent reason, we may still notice and identify this sign of discomfort we call “anger.” If at that point we can release the wave of emotion that is sweeping over us, we may realize that the way we feel might be connected to the recent death of a friend, or even our subconscious awareness of the concept of death due to the news of a public figure passing away; it could also be related to an underlying discomfort with anything that has changed or transformed within our world. We can then trace our emotions, fears, and attachments back through our primordial repulsion to death and impermanence, our attachment to the one who has died or to the situation that has shifted, and our identification with our concept of ourselves through them. Eventually our distress can be traced back to the fact that deep within us there is a part that feels completely separate and isolated from all else—the underlying cause of our suffering, which is the ignorance known as avidyā. Having traced the charged feelings and our mental constructs back to this original source within our minds, and having seen the empty nature of our misperception of separateness, we can then allow that train of consciousness to dissolve back into our hearts and minds, bringing awareness back into the circumstances that are arising in the here and now. We may notice the flow of the kleśas at any point, from avidyā through asmitā to abhiniveśa. Placing attention on the vṛtti pattern, we trace the vṛtti back through the flow of the kleśas, resolving the suffering we are experiencing back through ego into fundamental ignorance. Those kleśas that have manifested as citta vṛttis, those aspects of our suffering we more easily name, such as the anger we may feel when our ego is challenged or the frustration that arises when we cannot get something we are attached to having, these more blatant kleśas can be dissolved by practicing dhyāna or meditation on the immediate mind state that is arising. So again we see that the entire practice of yoga, the path to liberation in fact, is to get to the root of whatever is presenting itself.

  This process of bringing awareness into the deep and underlying concept of separateness that keeps us stuck in the realm of mind and emotion is not an easy task. It is one that must be approached again and again and again as the mind quite naturally slips back toward the secure realm of ego function, of identifying us as separate from others and the rest of the world. Until we actually take up yoga, we tend to spend our time and arrange our activities with a focus on trying to repair the surface of things in order to create a state of happiness and pleasure in our lives. As we go through life and countless experiments within our own experience of the world, as we experience trials within our work and our relationships with others, we discover that just smoothing things out on the surface does not really work; this never results in lasting happiness. As long as the root of suffering and the deep conditioning that is held within the memory is still there, all of the habits and techniques of avoidance that we have developed to help us navigate through life (perhaps through many, many lifetimes) will not actually eliminate our suffering. This is because the cause of our suffering is the great ignorance of avidyā—the misperception that we are separate from our background. Of course this is complicated by the fact that it is the same confusion that automatically leads us to attempt to repair the surface of our lives. The insight that we are not separate, that truth or God is the interpenetrating link that lies within each “separate” being, is the starting point on a path of liberation from the suffering caused by avidyā. When we begin to see that each molecule, each thought, feeling, or sensation is part of an interconnected web of life, we necessarily develop the skill of discriminative awareness that enables us to function with clarity and compassion.

/>   In this light, the Yoga Sūtra describes eight different limbs with which to cultivate discriminative knowledge. If you consider the idea of pure insight, you might think that one limb would be the true practice since the insight is one immediate experience of truth. However, even though it is insight that gives us knowledge, it is not a practice in and of itself. The only way to truly attain yoga is to have many limbs, or to approach the teaching from multiple angles and to cultivate the insight from various aspects of awareness. Trying to pedal down a path on a unicycle is very challenging especially if you come to an obstacle. Easier than a unicycle is a bicycle, easier than a bicycle, a tricycle because you have lateral stability, and so on. So it is with the study of a complex subject such as yoga; approaching it through only one perspective or studying only one limb is far more difficult than taking a multifaceted approach. The Yoga Sūtra describes a vehicle for insight that has eight limbs, something like a spider. So when we come to an obstacle in yoga we are able to approach it from many different points of view—from its physiological angles, its psychological viewpoints, and its philosophical perspectives. The different limbs of yoga allow us to consider the problem of existence and to cultivate a sense of insight into truth in a diverse, comprehensive, and grounded way. This eight-limbed vehicle of a balanced yoga practice is called aṣṭāṅga yoga. Aṣṭa means “eight,” aṅga means “limbs.” The eight limbs are: yama, ethical practice; niyama, observances; āsana, postures; prāṇāyāma, extension of the internal breath; pratyāhāra, abstraction of the senses; dhāraṇā, concentration; dhyāna, meditation; and samādhi, deep meditation in which all sense of a subject and an object disappear. These eight limbs at first appear to be sequential, as if you must begin with the yamas and work your way systematically through the others before having a brush with the liberated and compassionate feelings associated with samādhi. Upon closer examination we discover that the limbs of the practice are intertwined; they are each contained within one another and the practice of each limb, just as the experience of samādhi itself is forever deepening as we continue to practice.