The Mirror of Yoga

by Richard Freeman

  As an extension of the contemplation of impermanence, therefore, when you come across another person (or any sentient being for that matter) you are able to appreciate their unique yet temporary circumstances in such a way that a sincere connection with them is truly possible. When we look into each other’s eyes we see that we are looking into the eyes of someone who is dying. In a sense, there is actually nothing better for your relationships—and for your own state of mind—than to realize and embrace the fact that we are all dying. Centuries ago, gaining this base understanding of impermanence was the prerequisite for learning any of the more technical aspects of yoga practice. Today with the popularization of yoga we hope that practitioners will gain a taste of this understanding through an awakened practice of postures that integrate the observation of sensation and feeling, the flow of the breath, and a pure observation of the circumstances in life.

  Whether or not we practice yoga, the real problem so many of us come up against in life is that too much of the time we are busy generating theories about what is going on. We fabricate an idea about who we are today: “Today I am thin, today I am fat, today I am doing well, today I am doing badly, today I am black, I am white, I am big, I am little, I am old, I am young!” There is no shortage to the theories we generate about ourselves, others, and life itself. In fact, this is what thinking is—it is creating propositions and speculating about reality, so that we become defined by our thoughts about who we are. We describe other things by the labels we make for them, classifying them by the uses we have for them or by their function. We reduce the miracle of a tree to the name assigned to that kind of tree or to the uses we have for it, unable to appreciate the sheer presence of the tree in and of itself. Through this process of reducing the immediate experience to our thoughts about it, we become disembodied theories of ourselves and insubstantial theories of each other. We cripple ourselves, unable to touch the immediacy of life and incapable of comprehending why we are not deeply connected with others. When we reduce anything to our theories about it, we cannot really appreciate what we hear, taste, smell, feel, and see, so the magic and joy, the simplicity, and the innocence of life are lost because we are adrift in our thoughts. Stuck in thought, confusion arises and suffering begins.

  Within the context of yoga, the cause of suffering is referred to as avidyā, which means “ignorance” or “to not know.” Avidyā is the identification of what is eternal—true, pure life, that which is joyous and free—with what is impermanent, unconscious, and mechanical. This superimposition of what is unreal onto what is real is the same confusion we experience when we mistake what is permanent for what is impermanent. It is a form of ignorance that does not allow us to see things as they truly are. Avidyā is considered the root form of ignorance, or of not knowing, and it is deemed to be the origin of all suffering because it precludes our having genuine relationships because the confusion prevents us from appreciating others as they truly are.

  In this light you could say that yoga can be summed up as one simple practice: that of observing what is actually happening in the present moment. This is not just watching sensation and feeling alone, but it is also a witnessing of the very phenomenon of ignorance (avidyā) itself. In the process of yoga we do not attempt to get rid of ignorance; we quickly discover that there is no real need of doing so. Instead we develop the art of awakening to the mental process of avidyā, by seeing that its continuous representation of one thing by another thing is inadequate and unending. We practice waking up to the fact that this habit of reducing things to our theories about them, like all else in life, dissolves as we observe it. Waking up little by little we begin to meet face-on the experience of not knowing, and we are able to accept that we do not have ultimate control over our own body, let alone the entire universe, so that as we meet the truth of impermanence, change, and time, and we find it to be remarkably exhilarating. This continuum of insight through letting the mind rest in the present moment is at the root of all yoga, which is why it is said that at first yoga seems like a poison but that it then transforms into nectar. As we begin to inquire into our existence and impermanence, observing our body and mind and then the very core of the body—all those feelings and sensations that lie along the central axis become vivid and alive. In this process of yoga, feelings of extreme fear and avoidance often arise when we first encounter change, impermanence, and the deeply rooted patterns of feeling within the body. The initial “poison” of yoga is our response to the revelation of truth, which has been avoided for years. But as we continue to practice by inviting the mind to stay with whatever is arising, rather than grasping onto pleasant perceptions and rejecting those things we see as unpleasant, then the nectar of the practice unfolds as the mind dissolves into the core of the heart, revealing the interconnected meta-pattern, the matrix of all things.

  As our yoga practice evolves, our power of clear observation increases. We learn to trace continuous strings of feelings and sensations along the central axis of the body, from the pelvic floor up through the root of the navel and the core of the heart, then moving on up through the throat, behind the soft palate, between the centers of the ears, and on out through the crown of the head. When we refer to the core of the heart we mean that part of our anatomy, behind the center of the sternum, which lies on the central axis of the body, not the middle of the actual physical organ of the heart. By the root of the navel we mean behind the navel, right where the plumb line of the body and the residue of the umbilical cord connect. The center of the pelvic floor is the central tendon one-quarter inch up and in front of the anus. These points define the central channel, the suṣumnā nāḍī, and it is by meditating on this line that we refine our skill of observing subtle change within our own body and begin to intuit a deep, visceral understanding of the nature of change. Along this line we encounter feelings that are intimately connected to our theories about the world, powerful feelings that are reflected in the way we think about ourselves and others. As we develop an appreciation for perceiving things as they are, we find that meditation on the suṣumnā nāḍī becomes easier and more natural. Whenever we notice ourselves reducing things to our theories about them, we also experience uncomfortable physiological effects deep inside the core of the body, through the mirror of this sensitive, piercing channel. These subtle yet profound feelings are a physiological response to our natural tendency to short-circuit the process of change and the truth of impermanence by imposing our theories about the world onto what is actually arising. It is human nature to formulate ideas in order to understand what is arising, but when we become stuck in our own realm of name and form, created by our own mind as a means of identifying our perceptions as true, permanent, and unchanging, then we experience discomfort along the central axis of the body. We actually feel our own denial about the truth of impermanence right in the core of our own body. Eventually we recognize that impermanence is inseparable from those feelings of change we are experiencing, and this reveals that insight into the nature of impermanence is inseparable from an experience of having the core of the heart open and luminous. We find also that when we are aligned with the truth, the core feelings we encounter are so wonderful and sublime, so nice, that they are almost impossible for the mind to stay with, and that unbeknownst to us, all of our lives our own cherished mind has been devising schemes to avoid experiencing this core consciousness. It is the nature of the mind to avoid feeling these deep sensations just as it evades the core of reality and the heart of relationship. The mind shuns deeply intimate aspects of reality because such profound truth has an element of not-knowing at its foundation, and the conceptual, controlling mind avoids not-knowing like the plague. But under the right circumstances, when it feels safe and not threatened, the mind is also eager to let go of its need to know, its desire to organize, to categorize, and to define life in word and in form. The mind’s initial fear of not-knowing is a taproot of the initial “poison” often experienced when starting yoga. As we stick with the sim
ple practices, as the body’s core feelings are released without obstruction, our fear of the unknown subsides and the exquisite nectar released through the practice can be experienced. The only word that truly describes these core feelings is radiance, but not our concept of radiance; rather an unknown manifestation of it that we must allow to unfold. It is the pure radiance of love. And true love, like so many acute aspects of life, is utterly dependent on surrendering theory and philosophy into the field of the great unknown.

  Many thousands of years ago in India there were the ṛṣis (pronounced “rishis”), the seers, who sang the descriptive and lyrical poetry that were the hymns of the Vedas. These hymns describe the rhythms of life, the patterns and pulsations of the universe. They are prayers to God, gods, and goddesses, wrapping myths into myths and metaphors into metaphors. They proposed no one point of view, no single philosophical or theological system. In about 800 B.C.E., times changed, as they always do, and the age of philosophy began to replace the age of the gods, mythology, and poetry. This was a time in which people started to consider and discuss the patterns of how they were thinking about things, rather than just tolerating or not tolerating each others’ myths, gods, and customs. In the philosophical age, people became interested in finding the essence of an experience in order to refine and express it more clearly and universally. This same pattern of philosophical exploration was happening all at once in Asia and in Europe, and it was particularly concentrated around ancient Greece and India. The global age of mythology—in which the myths were memorized and passed on through chanting—shifted into an age of philosophy. In India the first scriptural expressions of philosophical thought outside of the hymns of the Veda were the early Upaniṣads, which taught a group of simple unitary doctrines now know as Vedānta. Ved means “to know,” and anta means the “end,” so the Vedānta initially means the “end of the Veda” and esoterically implies the end of “knowing” as in a mystical experience of reality beyond the construction of thought.

  The early Vedānta took terms from the Vedic hymns, such as puruṣa, ātman, and Brahman, and developed a simple path out of the delusions of a conditioned mind and into the experience of pure, awakened, open consciousness. This was said to be the real purpose of the Veda and the ultimate purpose of human life. The ordinary meaning of the word puruṣa is “man,” as in human. The ordinary meaning of ātman is “self” as in myself, and Brahman has always referred to the all-pervasive, ever-opening radiance that is pure being. The sages of the Upaniṣads taught that the true self is not any of the localized, temporary sheaths that we mistake it to be; rather it is pure, unconditioned awareness itself, identical to the Brahman. Even more important (and here is the slippery counterthought), the ātman is not a separate thing from the world we experience. When we are seeing this world, this experience clearly, we are seeing ātman. When seen incorrectly due to ignorance, or avidyā, we see separate and unconnected things making up the world. This early teaching of nondualism is best conveyed by the texts themselves:

  For where there is duality as it were, there one sees the other, one smells the other, one tastes the other, one speaks to the other, one hears the other, one thinks of the other, one touches the other, one knows the other. But where everything has become just one’s own self [ātman], by what and whom should one see, by what and whom should one smell, by what and whom should one taste, by what and to whom should one speak, by what and whom should one hear, by what and of whom should one think, by what and whom should one touch, by what and whom should one know? By what should one know him by whom all this is known? That self [ātman] is (to be described as) not this, not this.

  (Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad, IV.5.15)

  From this declaration that the ātman is “not this, not this” arises the early form of dialectical thinking that serves to continuously take us deeper into experience by not allowing us to cling to partial or incomplete versions of the whole. In Sanskrit “not this, not this” is neti neti, words that actually make a pleasant chant, adding on as many netis as you like, enjoying the reverberation of the sound and occasionally drawing your mind back into the meaning that all of this is “not this,” not what you think. The neti neti methodology has been called by modern thinkers “negative dialectics.” Such a cheery, warm name has given many contemporaries the wrong idea about the early yoga philosophy (and even some early philosophers had the same misconception). Not used to metaphysical thinking, some consider yoga philosophy to be negative, gloomy, pessimistic, and even depressing. When grounded in the fact of impermanence, however, yogins find negative dialectics to be as sweet as honey and as bright as sunshine, since negative dialectics allow us to let go of temporary conceptual divisions as they spread through ever finer layers of our thinking. Teachings and philosophical statements are often misunderstood and taken out of context when first heard. Yoga students are often bewildered by the discussions and arguments that go back and forth within and between schools of yoga, as we misunderstand each other and ourselves rather than observing the phenomena in all of their layers. The arguments, misunderstandings, and constant changes of viewpoint and definition have their own importance and beauty.

  The early Upaniṣads are beautiful expressions of the truth, but their ideas had not yet matured in the fires of debate and questioning that inevitably occur when you meet someone from another system or from a different culture or religion. The early philosophical thinking found in the Upaniṣads was first condensed and developed into what is called the Sāṁkhya system by a sage named Kapila in about 600 B.C.E., just before the time of the Buddha. The system was later refined and placed in the form the Sāṁkhya Kārikā by the philosopher Īśvara Kṛṣṇa. It is through Sāṁkhya terminology that most different philosophical schools of yoga and Vedānta, and even various systems of Buddhism, have based their arguments. To understand yoga it is important to appreciate and to study Sāṁkhya even if we do not agree with all of its propositions. The word Sāṁkhya, which literally means “to count or innumerate,” is in one sense essentially a listing of all of the different things that we encounter in both our external and internal experience. The system describes the layers of reality that are nested one within the other—a hierarchical ordering of sorts—aspects of which we touch in the direct experience of meditating, making it simultaneously a psychological and a philosophical system. Sāṁkhya is primarily a tool that explains and illuminates the experience of close observation of the very process of life, while also explaining philosophically who we are, what the world is, and how the cosmos might be structured.

  It is very important to realize when looking at any of these early philosophical systems, including Sāṁkhya, that though they present a philosophical doctrine, they are intended to be psychological tools that provide a view of what the immediate experience might have been of the sage who was writing the text. So it is good to approach a system like this with an open mind, an open heart, and with a grain of salt. In fact, while studying yoga in general, and yoga philosophy in particular, it is very important to give yourself license to entertain different ideas. There is no obligation at all that you must believe or buy into the ideas presented in a text. The intention of the original philosophers was quite the contrary; it was that you would learn to think for yourself so you could experience reality as it is. When studying philosophy you will always get far more out of it if you yourself go deeply into whatever thought is being presented, rather than simply swallowing the philosophical propositions without question, allowing someone else to do the thinking and experiencing for you. You should never accept any philosophy simply because someone else has said it is so, and this experimental characteristic of good philosophy has endured to this day within parts of the yoga tradition.

  Sāṁkhya philosophy is based on a dualistic axiom that draws a line splitting what we believe to be the totality of the universe into two very clear categories. One category is called puruṣa and the other prakṛti. Prakṛti means “creative energy.�
� Puruṣa, though literally meaning “man” or “human,” refers to the seer or the one who is experiencing the universe, and in this sense puruṣa is you. The split differentiates and makes sense of the experience of consciousness by defining as two separate categories that which is the true self and of true value (puruṣa), and the endless world of forms that are the content of experience (prakṛti). The nature of puruṣa is that it is the seer, the witness; it is pure consciousness. The nature of prakṛti is that it is the seen, the object of awareness. Prakṛti, then, is everything that is presented as a limited form or a limited pattern, gross or subtle, as well as the substratum or cause that is behind whatever is presented. In other words, prakṛti is anything and everything. You, the puruṣa, perceive small corners or bits of prakṛti as whatever is presented in your awareness. So the object—be it a cloud in the sky, a thought, an emotion, a physical sensation, or an everyday object like a teakettle—is the seen, it is prakṛti. Puruṣa, the seer, is simply pure awareness, pure consciousness. This distinction between puruṣa and prakṛti, the underlying structural understanding that all we encounter in life is the seen, is the foundational tenant of Sāṁkhya. The idea seems simple enough, but when you think more deeply about the idea, it becomes quite slippery, incredibly difficult for the mind to keep hold of, because it requires the mind to examine itself. From the perspective of Sāṁkhya, the mind’s own perceptions, its own conclusions about what it is perceiving (for example, thinking that it understands the basic definition of Sāṁkhya as a dualistic system that defines puruṣa and prakṛti), even an idea of the person who believes himself or herself to be at the helm of the mind, the one who is doing all of the perceiving (you)—all of those things are aspects of prakṛti. So understanding the difference between prakṛti and puruṣa can be very confusing at first, because everything that we experience in the outer world as well as everything in our inner world is prakṛti. The tangible things we encounter, like another person or a stop sign, as well as things we encounter within our imagination, including all of the ideas and subtle feelings that we might have about the puruṣa or consciousness itself, are prakṛti. Puruṣa is strictly pure consciousness, pure perception. Once puruṣa is recognized, identified, named, at that instant those labels, images, and feelings form as prakṛti. Puruṣa cannot be cognized or re-cognized as an object or thing at all, which is what makes the Sāṁkhya system so confounding and difficult to understand.