Monsters

Last week I was talking about “monsters”.  Those tricks of the mind that fool us into thinking our thoughts are real and that we are better off staying safe and not venturing out into the scary unknown. But when we face our monsters and take them on, then true transformation can happen. 

I had been sharing from Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth and wondering aloud what would be the next book I would read.   One of my students recommended Tea and Cake with Demons by Adreanna Limbach.  It fits so nicely in with the theme of monsters.  In the introduction Ms. Limbach shares the classic story of the Buddha and the demon Mara: 

There is a widely circulated Buddhist story about the time that a demon came to town and everyone lost their minds. This wasn’t any garden-variety demon, mind you, and yes, there are garden-variety demons. A touch of awkwardness, restlessness, longing—anything that nibbles at our peace of mind can be considered a demon; albeit some are harmless and benign. These are the basic sorts of demons that we meet any old Monday afternoon when we’re pinged with the impulse to be somewhere else or somebody else or to just go grab a snack out of boredom. This particular demon story, however, is about Mara, who in Buddhist cosmology is the most malignant demon of all. You might recognize Mara if you saw him, but if he’s a pervasive force in your life, then in the same way that we can develop an acclimated blindness to what is overly familiar, you might not see him at all. Mara is the specter of delusion whom we chauffeur through our life; the interior voice that robs us of our faith, trust, and confidence, of our belief that we are fundamentally whole. In Buddhist mythology, Mara is self-doubt personified; a force that’s depicted as convincing, relentless, and strategic, and in this story he’s coming for the Buddha.

Buddha’s attendants caught wind that Mara had materialized, and they went running to alert Buddha that his nemesis was near. In my own paraphrased version, I imagine a cohort of visibly shaken monks clad in saffron robes banging on the Buddha’s door. “Buddha! Buddha! Mara is here! Mara is here!” When the Buddha opened the door to his distressed attendants, they understandably launched into strategy. “What should we do? Should we run? Let’s pack up our begging bowls and get out of town. We have enough advance warning that we can probably outrun him!” Another monk chimed in, “We’ll never be able to run fast enough. Let’s hide! I know of a place that is secure and hidden. Mara will never find us there. Quick!” Yet another chimed in, “Maybe we should plan an ambush! Let’s arm ourselves with shields and spears and face Mara on the offensive!”

This part of the story I relate to deeply. It’s as though these monks are diplomats of my own mind. More than a decade of meditation practice has afforded me many hours of watching my relationship to discomfort. The moment I feel it, I’m on the express track to strategizing my way out of it. This reaction applies to even the most mundane experiences. The absence of air-conditioning in August. An awkward conversation. A mosquito in my vicinity. Never mind how I might react if Mara, the Lord of Delusion, rolled into town with my name in his mouth. Just like the monks, without skipping a beat, my mind launches into How do I fix this right now? I don’t want to spend time with my discomfort. I certainly don’t want to feel it. I just want it to be different. Better . . . with the least amount of effort, if possible.

There is something universal being spoken to in this story of Mara, which is, of course, the enduring beauty of mythology. Each of these monks represents our habitual ways of reacting when we come into contact with our demons. We want to run from them, or hide, or fight. What the Buddha does instead is so counterintuitive that it offers us a wholly alternative plan of action for when we encounter our demons. In the presence of his attendants trying to strategize the problem of Mara away, he holds his seat and gives simple instructions: “Go fetch Mara and escort him to my door. Set the table with my finest china. And invite him in for tea, not as my enemy, but as my esteemed guest.”

Emotions on the Mat

I was listening to this radio program about how some people get emotional at the gym during a workout.  While it was interesting, it didn’t have any real answers except to say that it happens.  I’ve not had much experience with emotions at the gym, but I have experienced and seen a lot of emotions on the yoga mat.

After my father died, I couldn’t lie down for Savasana without crying.  I wasn’t aware that I had even been thinking of him at the time, but suddenly I would be flooded with tears.  It didn’t happen if I did Savasana lying on my belly or if I just sat in meditation while everyone else was lyingd own.

The article talks about how your brain receives information through your senses and it has to figure out what those sensations were caused by. 

“We all have these four most basic types of sensations. They’re called affect, Barrett said. “Things like feeling worked up, feeling calm, feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant,” she said.

Affect is basically always there while you’re conscious.

“Emotions are the brain’s attempt to make sense of what the bodily sensations mean in a particular circumstance, in a particular situation, based on past experience, based on memory,”Barrett said.”

I underlined the part about how your brain processes what bodily sensations to mean based on past experiences.  While the article doesn’t state this, (you can read the whole article here.) what that means is that our “issues are in our tissues”  (I like to quote this, but I didn’t make it up, it comes from Candace Pert, a molecular biologist who wrote a book called the Molecules of Emotion.)

Another way to say this is that if something happened to you that caused your body to react in a certain way, then every time your body feels a similar experience, it will cause your brain to respond in the sam way it did to the first occurrence. In yoga we call this a samskara.

I’ve noticed that this can happen a lot in yoga.  Because we stretch and contract our bodies every which way on our mats, it’s inevitable that we will stretch a particular part of the body that may have previously contracted in response to a certain situation. 

For example, we call back bending postures “heart openers”.  For a lot of people, emotional pain causes them want to protect their hearts from future occurrences. The typical response is to contract the muscles on the front body by rounding the shoulders forward and drawing more into themselves in to not be hurt by the outside world, again.  Performing postures that challenge that physical pattern can recall the original emotion associated with the response.  Sometimes you can feel this emotion coming u and you can stop it. Especially if you feel self-conscious getting emotional in a public setting.  But sometimes the emotion is surprising and strong and you can’t help it. 

I think what was happening for me was that I was closest to my dad.  He was the one that always made me feel safe and held.  When I would lie down in Savasana, I felt like my safety net was missing.  He was no longer there to catch me when I fell.  This went on for about a year, until I finally felt strong enough without him.  And then my crying jags on the mat stopped. 

There is always a box of tissues in a yoga studio.  My training as a yoga teacher has been to allow people their emotional space if I notice someone crying quietly on their mat.  Reaching out to them during the episode can bring it to a halt and processing their emotions can be very therapeutic.  However, I do like to reach out to that student afterwards, to check in and see if they are ok.  You always have to exercise your own judgment.  Maybe that student needs your help right then.  I try to let their behavior dictate how I respond.  Some people will quickly exit the room, sending a clear signal that they want to keep their emotions private.  But some people have lingered on their mat as everyone else is leaving.  I have read that as an invitation for me to check in and offer a hug or a shoulder to cry on. 

In my example, I didn't really want anyone to interfere with my emotions at that time. There was something sad and delicious about those moments, almost as if I could feel his presence. That would immediately evaporate as soon as someone asked me what was wrong. I wanted those few extra moments alone with him, even if they were sad.

Processing our emotions as we open our physical bodies and challenge our patterns and habits is part of the transformative process of yoga. 

Have you ever had an emotional experience on your yoga mat?  What is your take on it? I'd be curious to know. If it happened during one of my classes, would you want me to comfort you? Or, to leave you alone?

The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards by William J. Broad

This book came out in 2012.  I had read the New York Times review of the book and never wanted to read any more.  I think I was afraid that, by listing all of the risks, the book would ruin all the things I loved about yoga.  But I have to remind myself that the book also lists the rewards, too.

When my friend and mentor, Mel Robin, was downsizing and moving out of his house, he invited me to come over and take some of his vast book collection.  The Science of Yoga was one of the books I took.  It sat on my shelf for a while until I recently decided to pick it up.  In the prologue of the book, it mentioned MelRobin.  Well, that piqued my interest! I also saw that the author used Mel’s extensive work on the science of yoga as are source for his book.  It was this connection that caused me to commit to calling Mel up to make a lunch date.  And that is when I discovered that he had just passed away.

What we in the west have come to practice and know as yoga is very different from its ancient roots.  Read along with me to discover those ancient roots (some of which may surprise you!) and see what science can tell us about this ancient and ever evolving practice.

Ego and the Current State of Humanity

Words, Tolle points out, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell on you.  You can easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is.  The fact is: You don’t know what it is.  You have only covered up the mystery with a label.  Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable.  This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

Words help create form.  Ego is always identification with form, seeking yourself and thereby losing yourself in some form.  Forms could be material objects, but they could also be the forms of thought that continuously arise in the field of consciousness.  The following list are some examples some of the forms that we identify with.

Words and labeling – allow us to pretend we know something because we have identified it and attached a label to it.  It fits into our preconceived idea of what it is.  It allows us to not dig any deeper.

Possessive pronouns.  Once we attach the words: I, me and mine to anything, it becomes a part of who we think we are and shores up our ego.  If something happens to our stuff, we suffer because our stuff is an extension of ourselves.

The voices in our head.  Often we confuse the thoughts swirling around in our heads with who we are.  This coincides with the Cartesian idea of “I think, therefore I am.”  But, Jean Paul Sartre had the insight, long after the yogis did, that the consciousness that says “I am” is not the consciousness that thinks.  The only truth is that “I Am.”  If you identify with the thoughts in your head, you are lost in ego.  If you realize that you are not your thoughts, you are beginning enter into a new state of consciousness.

Identification with things and wanting more– Our ego often gets caught up in the identification with things.  The ego sees the car we drive or the clothes we wear, or the house we live in as a definition of who we are.  This identification with things can lead to wanting more as the newness of things wears off, or others acquire things that we think we should have.

Identification with the body.  The body is another symbol of impermanence.  What happens when youth, good looks and athletic prowess fade?  Who are we then?

The illusion of ownership – having vs. being.  The ego identifies having with Being.  I have, therefore I am.  But our satisfaction with having is relatively shallow and short-lived.  Concealed within it remains a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of “not enough”.  “I don’t have enough, yet.” By which the ego really means, “I am not enough, yet.”  We all know that expression, “You can’t take it with you.”  So what does it mean to really own something?  And if we lose what we own, are we diminished in any way?

Awakening can arise out of a sense of Being

Being.  Feeling the inner body or life energy = being.  Body awareness , not body identification, not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego.  It also strengthens the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself.  Body awareness is feeling the life force in your body.  Feeling that life force and that part of you that is aware that you are aware, is one of the first steps towards Being and Awakening.

Awakening can often happen after a sense of loss.

When forms that you had identified with, that gave you a sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form.  When there is nothing left to identify with anymore, who are you?  When forms around you die or death approaches, you sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form.  Spirit is released from its imprisonment with matter.  You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications.  You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with.  That’s the peace of God.  The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I am.

Loss can cause an awakening, a dis-identification with form. However, it is also possible to create a strong attachment to being a victim of loss which can create a new contracted and more rigid form of ego.  Whenever loss occurs, you either resist it or you yield.  Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise and loving.  Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life.  Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego.  You are closed.  Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (negativity) will create more outer resistance and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful.  When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with.  Circumstances and people become helpful, cooperative.  Coincidences happen.  If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender.  You rest in God.

Our Inherited Dysfunction

From the Yoga Sutras:

Atha yoganusanam Y.S. I.1
With prayers for divine blessings, now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga.

Yogah cittavrtti nirodhah Y.S. I.2
Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.

Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam Y.S. I.3
Then, the seer dwells in his own true splendor.

Vrtti sarupyam itaratra Y.S. I.4
At other times the seer identifies with the fluctuating consciousness.

In A New Earth, Tolle explains a core insight that is common to most ancient religions and spiritual traditions. That is the idea of a basic problem or dysfunction of the human mind. (see Y.S. I.4 above)

In the yogic texts of Hinduism this problem is referred to as maya, or the veil of delusion. I often talk about this in class. It comes from the Yoga Sutras and describes the kleshas, or the five afflictions of the mind. These are the citta vrttis of the mind from Y.S. I.2 above. The first, and most important of these is avidya, or not seeing things clearly.

Avidya asmita raga dvesha abhinivesha klesha. Y.S. II.3
Avidya – ignorance
asmita – self-centeredness
raga – attachment
dvesha – aversion
abhinivesha –fear of death
klesha – afflictions, impediments, obstacles

The five afflictions which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of “I”, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life.

In Buddhism this fundamental problem is referred to as suffering, or dukkha. The important thing to remember about dukkha is that it will manifest in every situation, good or bad, sooner or later.

According to Christian teachings, there is the idea that we are all born with an “original sin” (fundamental problem). Over time the word has come to mean that we did something that was bad, and maybe on purpose. But Tolle points out that the original meaning of the word, from the ancient Greek, in which the New Testament was written, means to miss the mark, or to miss the point. It means to live unskillfully and thus to cause suffering.

Tolle points out a lot of suffering in the world is caused by this first delusion. He calls this the bad news. This first problem is the cause of destructive, cruel wars motivated by fear, greed and the desire for power which have been common occurrences throughout human history, as have slavery, torture and widespread violence inflicted for religious and ideological reasons. As you can see from the sutra above that the rest of the kleshas follow from the first. You cannot eradicate the other four without acknowledging the first.

Often we are unaware of these states in ourselves or others. We cannot see when we are motivated by fear, greed or the desire for power. We are simply aware that we are suffering.  These are symptoms of the inner dysfunction that every human carries within: the ego, which is the second klesha.

The second core insight in A New Earth is the good news. And that is that our normal state of mind can be transcended. In Hinduism this is called enlightenment, in Christianity it is called salvation and it is the end of suffering in Buddhism. Liberation and awakening are two other terms used to describe this process. This is the promise of Y.S. I.3 above.

In the past, there were a few enlightened beings that emerged: Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu. They have sown the seeds for future people to awaken from the dysfunction of their minds. The world was not yet ready for these teachings, although they were a vital and necessary part of human awakening. Their teachings, over time, became distorted and misinterpreted. Many things were added that had nothing to do with the original teachings, but were reflections of a fundamental misunderstanding. Teachings that pointed the way beyond the dysfunction of the human mind, the way out of the collective insanity , were distorted and became part of the insanity itself.

Tolle’s book teaches us the way out of that insanity. He describes how the title of his book came from a reference from the Bible that appears in both the Old Testament (Isaiah 65:17) and the New Testament (Revelation 21:1) which describes the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of “a new heaven and a new earth”. He points out that heaven is not meant as a location but refers to the realm of the inner consciousness. Earth is an outer manifestation of form, which is always a reflection of the inner.

The way out of that insanity is to understand the second Yoga Sutra; to be able to see clearly the fluctuations of the mind and to recognize the dysfunction that every human being carries within: the ego.

The Flowering of Human Consciousness

In A New Earth, Ekhart Tolle describes how a flower could be said to be the enlightened stage of growth for a plant.  That the stage of flowering in  a plant’s life cycle implies a discontinuity of development, a leap to an entirely new state of being and, most important, a lessening of materiality.  He suggests that flowers play an essential part in the evolution of human consciousness.  Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature.

The Buddha is said to have given a silent sermon once where he held up a flower and gazed at it.  After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile.  He is said to be the only one who understood the sermon.  According to legend, that smile (realization) was handed down to 28 successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Tolle also describes how  the transformation of a rock to a crystal and the evolutionary process that enabled some reptiles to grow feathers and take flight as stages of enlightenment. Flowers, crystals and birds have held special significance for humans.  This can be attributed to their beautiful and ethereal quality.  We can discern some sort of divine Presence in these special forms.

People have often meditated on flowers, crystals and birds, using them as a window into the formless realm of spirit.  These enlightened forms have played an important part in the evolution of human consciousness.  Think about it: the jewel in the lotus flower is a symbol of Buddhism, and a white dove signifies the Holy Spirit in Christianity.

In this book, Eckhart Tolle asks the following questions:  Are we ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection?  Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, transparent to the light of consciousness?  Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?  But then he describes the necessary stages and steps we can take towards awakening.  Although the journey is simple, it isn’t easy.  But don’t let that discourage you.  The process is much like the opening of a flower; it is slow, but progressive.  No progress on the path is ever lost.  The possibility of awakening is available to all of us.  As he says in his book:  “If you are reading this, you are already on the journey.”

Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the best known and important texts of Indian literature. The words of the title mean “Song of the Lord”.  The teachings of the Gita are presented in the form of a dialogue between Sri Krishna, whom the Hindus regard as the Lord Himself and Arjuna; a warrior, an archer, the leader of the Pandavas who are in a battle against their cousins the Kurus for control of a kingdom.  Arjuna is the good guy and the bad guys are the blind King Dhrtarastra and his hundred sons.

“The Gita can be read as history, but it lends itself to being an allegory.  In this mode, Arjuna represents the individual soul and Sri Krishna the Supreme Soul that dwells in every heart.  Arjuna’s chariot is the body.  The blind king Dhrtarastra is the mind under the spell of maya, or ignorance, and his hundred sons are man’s numerous evil tendencies.  The battle is an eternal one that is always going on between the powers of good and the powers of evil.  The warrior who listens to the advice of the Lord speaking from within will triumph in this battle and attain the Highest Good.”  From the foreword of the Bhagavad Gita as translated by Winthrop Sargeant.

The following verses contain one of the main teachings of the Bhagavad Gita: (Stephen Mitchell version)

You have a right to your actions
but never to your actions fruits
Act for the action’s sake
And do not be attached to inaction

Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thoughts of results
open to success or failure
This equanimity is yoga.

Action is far inferior
to the yoga of insight, Arjuna.
Pitiful are those who, acting,
are attached to their actions fruits.

The wise man lets go of all
results, whether good or bad,
and is focused on the action alone.
Yoga is skill in actions.  (B.G. II.47 – 50)

Since Arjuna is an archer, the following lesson from is an appropriate follow up.  One of Arjuna’s concerns that we all share is wanting to know the outcome.  What if I win?  What if I lose?  Krrisna’s teaching above is reflected in the wisdom of The Way of Chuang Tzu, as translated by Thomas Merton

The Need to Win

When the archer shoots his arrow for nothing, he has all his skill.
When he shoots for a Blue Ribbon, he is already nervous.
When he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind and sees two targets.  He is out of his mind; his skill has not changed, but the prize divides him - he cares.  He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of all his power.