The Mirror of Yoga

by Richard Freeman

  One of the greatest texts for studying the variety of schools of yoga is the Bhagavad Gītā, “The Song of God,” which is part of the Mahābhārata. It is the climax of the story of Prince Arjuna, the warrior who finds himself in a moral and spiritual crisis, confused about what action to take under dire circumstances. The book opens on the famous battlefield called the Kurukṣetra where opposing armies have gathered after a long struggle between two political dynasties, one good and one evil. On one side of the battlefield are Arjuna and Yudhiṣṭhira, his elder brother and the rightful king. With them are Arjuna’s younger brothers and his fellow warriors, all of noble and good character. On the other side of the battlefield are their cousins, all considered to be troublemakers, and who are led by Duryodhana, the evil son of the blind and weak King Dhṛtarāṣṭra who is the usurper of the kingdom. Arjuna’s crisis is that although he understands the events leading up to the battle and feels deep alignment with the warriors on his side, upon looking across the field at the faces of his opponents, he sees many of his cousins, friends, and teachers. He is overwhelmed and immobilized by conflict, knowing that whatever action he takes, people he cares deeply about will be harmed. Neither of the sides is totally bad nor is either side totally good. Arjuna becomes caught in a dilemma in which he understands that no matter what action he takes, the consequences of his actions and the problems that may arise as a result are bound to be horrible. Perhaps no more difficult a situation could have been presented to Arjuna. The root of the crisis is that Arjuna is a very good person with a sweet and open heart; he is kind, compassionate, and extremely honest. He finds himself in a truly human situation in which he feels his own conflict and sense of anguish, but he also perceives the incredible amount of suffering that is going on around him. Arjuna realizes that all of the formulas and religious systems that he has studied and immersed himself in—all of his theories and techniques—will not salvage the situation, and that no matter what he does, his actions or nonactions will result in many deaths and the possible destruction of the culture he truly loves.

  Arjuna’s teacher, who is the god Kṛṣṇa, happens also to be his charioteer in the battle. In Indian mythology Kṛṣṇa represents the archetype of the guru and is considered to be the teacher of teachers, the innermost self in the heart of all beings, and the Bhagavad Gītā is carefully crafted to point out to the astute reader (the listener) the parallel between themselves and Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa informs Arjuna that he is lost in a world of name and form and that his body is merely a very brief phenomenon within a tapestry of change. Arjuna’s initial response to confronting the temporary nature of all things is one of immense depression and fear. Just as he realizes that he is already in the process of dying, so too in following the story the intelligent reader also recognizes the nature of impermanence in all things and sees that they themselves are presently in the process of dying; that the temporary nature of all things is a fact of life.

  The Bhagavad Gītā is so skillfully crafted that carefully reading it allows you to appreciate the fact of impermanence not only intellectually, but by actually feeling it in your skin and by experiencing its meaning in your muscles and bones. Perhaps this is one reason the book has had such a long and lasting effect, because through such a visceral understanding there is an opportunity for profound insight into the nature of reality. When you experience the vibration of your breath and you truly recognize the vibratory quality of everything you encounter, when you feel constant change in all that is going on around you right now, then you have deep insight into the meaning of life. However, when first presented with this all-encompassing nature of impermanence you may, as Arjuna did, become depressed and filled with fear and doubt. If you pay close attention to this very state of mind as it arises within you, you might notice your breath has quickened, which is an excellent indicator of your own vulnerability—of your heart opening to the reality of your own impermanence—which it turns out is the only way to navigate the situation with compassion and intelligence.

  Anyone who has ever been in a relationship with another person knows that as you open the gates of your heart a taste of this crisis—the predicament of dying—always arises. This is because if you are truly going to experience another person as they actually are, rather than projecting your theories, preconceptions, or mind states onto them, you must surrender or at least suspend those theories. To be in an ongoing relationship, whether it is with a friend, a lover, a teacher, or simply a casual acquaintance, you must step out of the way. Stuck in a world of name and form Arjuna was at the point where he needed to give up not only his concepts and images of himself, but more important, he needed to give up concepts and images of the other warriors and people in his life. From there he could then relinquish his fixed ideas about society, religion, and dharma. A profound and not always obvious facet of the teaching in the opening of the Gītā therefore is the universal nature of impermanence that we share with all embodied beings and with all forms and manifestations. This insight of all-pervasive impermanence was the precondition for Arjuna’s enlightenment just as it is for any of us; we must be open and attentive both inwardly and outwardly.

  The very first verse of the Bhagavad Gītā reads, “Here, in the field of dharma [dharma kṣetra], here in the field of action [Kuru kṣetra], assembled together, eager to fight, what did my army and the army of the Pandavas do?” (Pandavas is the name of Arjuna’s family.) The word kṣetra means “field,” dharma means “duty, truth, religion, law, and the fundamental constituents of all things,” and kuru means “action.” So the story begins where the fields of dharma, religion, and deep idealism meet the field of action in practical, grounded necessity. When you find yourself in any situation in which your circumstances require you to do something, you must act, and your actions must be in accordance with your own sense of truth within your circumstances. The entire story of the Bhagavad Gītā is a playing out of what happens inside each of us whenever we unroll our mat to do our yoga practice. It is as if we are stepping onto the field of dharma and the field of kuru as we draw together the deep truths represented in the yoga practice and take some form of action within the practice to connect to the unique particulars of the body and mind at that moment. We are compelled by whatever reason to come to the mat and to begin a practice. Exactly what has brought us to yoga, precisely what our intentions are in terms of the practice, and what we actually do once we are on the mat are variables that are completely different person to person and often day to day for any one of us. “Should I try hard, and express the radiance and joy of the ātman, or should I take it easy, and remain sleepy, dull, and safe? Should I push to extremes, and injure myself, or should I take a step back and just bask in the sunshine?” Questions like these go on and on in different forms and combinations every time we practice. The answers to our inquisitiveness are not always obvious. As we step onto the mat, we are stepping into the middle of a battlefield between two armies of choices and counterchoices, of thoughts and counterthoughts so that we may deal with the particularity and the totality of our circumstances. Like Arjuna, we might find we need a little advice.

  The hero of the Bhagavad Gītā, the prince Arjuna, deeply enmeshed in an unpleasant fratricidal war, is caught in a spiritual and practical dilemma. Neither side is totally good nor totally bad; the two sides are interdependent like the sides of a coin. Neither the arguments for fighting nor the lines of reasoning against the battle are airtight. If he decides not to do anything, then the evil army will conquer the good army. This would cause great anguish for the entire culture because the unjust rulers would take over, resulting in mayhem for the whole civilization. If, on the other hand, he decides to fight the so-called righteous war, then many and maybe all of the noble people on both sides would be killed. Ultimately even though the outcome of this choice of action would mean the establishment of a more just and conscious social order, it might not be worth it because many of those who could enjoy such a good kingdom would be dead. In
the presence of his friend Kṛṣṇa, the archetype of the teacher or the guru, Arjuna sobers up to the situation and has his moment of full spiritual crisis. He calls a time-out, and it is during that pause that the telling of the story of the Bhagavad Gītā unfolds. Perhaps no more difficult situation could have been presented to Arjuna. It was tailored to trap him at a crossroads where formulas and habitual responses would not do. This dilemma is a brilliant representation of our very own human circumstance, where at critical times in life each of us finds ourselves within our own unique versions of Arjuna’s crisis.

  Part of the conflict that Arjuna feels is a result of his being already an advanced and intelligent yogin, a compassionate man with a job as a warrior that requires (when unavoidable) some violent action. His problem is that he lives in an imperfect society with rules that are flawed, so that no matter what action he might take, there is bound to be a great deal of suffering. A major theme in the Bhagavad Gītā is that all of our actions have some element of imperfection to them. The outcome of any given action might be good, but it will not be absolutely perfect. Even those actions that seem to be bad actions will most likely contain some good elements or will result in some positive effect. Likewise, all systems of practice (yogic, religious, political, and so on) have some imperfection to them; they all have some blind spot. So if you practice a system unwaveringly, something will remain unaddressed or unresolved, and there is likely to be residue from the practice and some aspect of your life that remains unconscious. Under these circumstances where action must be taken, we run into the familiar notion that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t; however, the Bhagavad Gītā offers the insight that the residue of work, when experienced with the same attentiveness given to our original dilemma of crisis, keeps us from falling back into reducing beings and things to just name and form. The story of the Gītā is a demonstration of how to stop the cycle of a crisis being resolved by a solution that just creates another crisis later. Acknowledging the nature of names, forms, theories, and techniques as being incomplete, the Gītā opens the door to love, and it is from here that the tale unfolds.

  The first formal teaching that the smiling Kṛṣṇa offers to the dejected Arjuna is the underlying principle of Sāṁkhya yoga. He explains to Arjuna the notion that there never was a time when he or Arjuna (or all of the warriors on the field or any being, for that matter) did not exist, nor will there ever be a time when they will cease to be. He explains that just as we pass from childhood through youth and old age, so at death we take another body and that the wise are not confused by this. Kṛṣṇa illuminates the idea that the bodies of all the warriors on the battlefield are going to die, because they are compositions of the creative energy, prakṛti (which by nature is always changing). The bodies of those warriors, like the bodies of all living creatures, are impermanent. Even if the warriors survive this battle, they are eventually all going to die. He continues to make clear that from this perspective what really counts is the ātman, the puruṣa, the true self. This ātman, which is both all-pervading and localized in each of us, is indestructible and changeless. Even though the body changes and dies, the ātman does not. With this insight, Arjuna sees that in order to resolve his crisis, he needs to follow the path of buddhi yoga, or the yoga of insightful intelligence. A clean and integrated buddhi leads to discriminative knowledge, or the ability to discriminate between that which is the permanent and whole and that which is illusory and impermanent. Buddhi yoga is the term used in Sāṁkhya to refer to a broader approach called jñāna yoga, that of knowledge or wisdom. Arjuna learns that simply understanding the value of discriminative knowledge is not enough, that the insight must be integrated into a broad and complete understanding of the human condition in order for it to be truly insightful.

  Through the continuation of the story of the Bhagavad Gītā, it is shown that although it may be true that the ability to discriminate is imperative, it is also important to recognize that even the most powerful insight into the nature of reality is itself reflected in ideas that are part of prakṛti. The structures and containers of the insight must eventually be released. With wisdom alone the intelligence tends to create a subtle ego or knower hidden in the background. This can result in a sense of pride and might create a disdain for the world and for the ignorant. Even the wisdom contained within jñāna yoga itself, however, must dissolve back into the heart rather than turning into a dogma, because then it will be the theory rather than the truth of the ideas that drives action and thought. For example, if you go up to a stranger on the street and begin to explain to them that everything is an illusion, and then proceed to attempt an explanation of the entire Sāṁkhya system of yoga, you will probably get a look of great confusion or disbelief. Someone not immersed in an in-depth philosophical inquiry into the meaning of life is likely to think you are presenting a very depressing view of reality—that everything is an illusion and that it is temporary to boot—even though that philosophical standpoint might be cosmologically true. This is part of the problem philosophers run into; when Sāṁkhya yoga (or any perspective for that matter) is presented as dry and dogmatic, it completely misses out on the root of philosophy—which is an attempt to explain and get back to the ecstasy and richness of the human experience, shedding light on what is going on deep in the core of our hearts as dharmas meet the real world of practical action.

  Within the story of the Bhagavad Gītā, Arjuna is the perfect character to receive and filter an understanding of the teachings because his heart is so open and so sensitive that he has the innate capacity to allow his insights to dissolve back again and again into his own heart and through his own buddhi. For instance, when he finds himself on the battlefield, he feels compassion for all participants on both sides in the impending battle. Before the fighting is to begin, he is so deeply moved that his mouth feels parched and his hair stands on end. He feels weak and his bow drops from his hand as he is swept by an overwhelming wave of compassion and of not-knowing what action to take. Kṛṣṇa’s initial teaching of Sāṁkhya yoga leaves Arjuna even more confused and thoroughly perplexed. So Kṛṣṇa then proceeded to teach Arjuna karma yoga, which has a much more inviting and human face to it.

  Karma yoga is the yoga of doing something; it is the yoga of work. As we all know, one of the best therapies in life is to just go out and work, to get your hands into something. Good old work will get you off of your high horse of theories and bring you down to earth because you have to use and abandon techniques and tools as you adapt and readapt to real situations. The beginning of karma yoga is the need to eat, to survive, and perhaps to get a paycheck. The result of that food or paycheck is the survival and hopefully the health of body and family. Body and family are not the happiness, joy, or the final goal or purpose of work: wisdom and compassion are. The underlying premise of karma yoga is that as you work, you should work eventually for the joy of working rather than becoming attached to the fruits of your labors. If you work to become wealthy or to become famous, if you work with the motivation of doing a good deed, or of becoming a better person, you can easily become attached to those goals and those ideas of who you are, and you can also become attached to the fruits of your work. Perhaps, for example, you have done so many good deeds that others frequently tell you how important your work is and how valuable you are—things just wouldn’t be the same without you. Soon you begin to consider yourself quite generous and magnanimous, and before long it is difficult for you to imagine how the world could get along without you; you have become enamored with and attached to the image you have of yourself as the openhearted and talented person that your work has shown you to be. This is a natural progression of the function of mind—especially when others bolster your ego with compliments—and it provides an opportunity to either bite the bait and fall into a realm of self-absorption or to step back and observe the workings of your mind rejecting it or holding on tightly.