sAdhanA – Looking In, Looking Out (Part 1)

In the philosophy and practice of Yoga, the words sAdhanA and abhyAsA are used almost interchangeably. In my swadhyaya, I recently saw and felt an expanded view of the idea of sAdhanA, a view that I have hitherto read about, appreciated, and tried to emulate in an intellectual way. 

One of my mentors blessed me after I recounted a particularly insightful and transforming meditative experience to her. Her blessing was “May this (experience) create a shift in your sAdhanA”.  Sometimes teachers and their words can be like clear mirrors that one can look into and catch a stunning sight of oneself. 

The flash of a question and a picture of sAdhanA arose in quick succession in that mirror.  The question in my mind had been, “oh, hasn’t the shift already happened? Wasn’t I doing my sAdhanA / abhyAsA with all that meditative practice?”  It was followed by a view of Practice or sAdhanA made up of seemingly discrete images and scenes from my own life, excerpts from stuff that I have read and stories I have been told, all coming together into one whole picture. I attempt here to draw that picture I seem to be holding.

The word sAdhanA is related to the following words in Hindi / Sanskrit:-
- sAdhan – a tool or instrument that helps us reach our goal,
- sAdhya – is like an achievement and / or possibility,
- sAdhaka – is the practitioner.

sAdhanA is a continued practice or discipline that is undertaken in pursuit of this goal. abhyAsA is a persistent and steady effort in one's practice. Both indicate that there is a direction of movement, while also having the quality of staying still with a pursuit / enquiry.  This dual quality is important to my meaning of practice. 

The ultimate journey and goal is to the truth within. This is like a theertha yatra that one undertakes – the big “who am I?” For, what is the truth within one is the most sacred of all things sacred, and the most mysterious of all mysteries, that philosophers, artists, writers, poets, dancers, and all spiritual seekers of all times have sought.

In this Yatra, I have been finding “me” at various times in different ways, at different levels and depths. One seemingly obvious truth that has hit me again and again with progressively harder impact until an extremely protective and hard shell layer cracked and shattered open, is that I can only be myself!  “Everyone else is already taken”.  (Someone has said this quoted phrase, I am not sure who). I have to nourish my unique beauty, as does each one.

It is only when I reach the real “me” inside, shattering years of hardened, comfortable notions, assumptions and beliefs about myself, can I meet the real other.  It is when I can see the ‘me’ who is behind many layers of the front-me that I can see the real person behind the other that I am trying to engage with and relate to. Their real desires and dreams underneath masks of politeness and propriety perhaps. Masks of cultural and other conditioning. The real fears, doubts and strengths.

My sAdhanA takes me continually to the more real Me and a more real world that I inhabit. However it cannot stop there.  Finding the real worldly me cannot be my purpose in this world. Finding this me is for getting to the purpose of my existence in this form. Of this I am now very sure.  It is through and while fulfilling this purpose that I can reach the ultimate Me that is the truth of all truths. In another lifetime.

In Yoga Therapy, especially in the Krishnamacharya Tradition which is my mother and father in Yoga therapy education and training, working with one’s Exhalation is given primary importance for healing and transformation. “It is exhalation that cures” is a statement I have heard often from my teachers.  The Elders say, “Inhalation takes care of itself. It is given by the Lord, the Universal Consciousness or Truth, and an extension of one’s Exhalation.  Make the Exhalation active and strong, and you will find the Inhalation also getting where it is meant to be.”

The Inhalation then is like the prasAdam (sanctified / consecrated gift) that we get after we serve our offerings to the Divine. I am sure this is also something one of my teachers must have said at some point, I don’t remember who or when.  The Inhalation is then all the gracious gifts that I receive from my world. I’m aware - just like that, in the blink of an eyelid, I have substituted the Divine with the world. This feels completely natural and a given for me. Must be the Vedantic upbringing and cultural atmosphere that I live in. Swami Vivekananda saw his Shiva in every being that he met, and served that Shiva (in his own words, Lectures from Colombo to Almora).  That is just one lived example and practice of the pantheistic understanding of my religion. 

The life that I receive is Inhalation. 

It then follows that the Exhalation is what I am offering to the world. What I give to the world around is like the Exhalation that I follow during my AsanA-prANAyAma practice.  I also wonder that there is a correlation between the quality of one’s Exhalation and the quality of one’s contribution in prANA exchange. (Every engagement in the world is an underlying exchange of prANA)

My sAdhanA on the mat is a practice of keen attention on the breath and body, which continuously takes me to a keen attention on where my attention is.

My sAdhanA off the mat is the keen attention I am able to offer to my world and the natural manifestations of that attention.

The spiritual practice that we call sAdhanA then does not stop with an individual, personal practice that I do with this limited ‘me’ that I can conceive of – limited by this body, my thoughts, emotions and breath.  It will include all that I do in the world outside, and even beyond to what my world is doing.  Every movement (physical, mental, emotional…) has to be infused with sAdhanA then for it to be worth its name (without making it into an injunction!).  And ‘my’ sAdhanA is not just mine. It is connected to everyone else’s.

The Yoga sutras talk of Bhava Pratyayas, people who are born in or experience and live in an exalted state of awareness, in a state of Yoga. Ramana Maharishi for example. These people don’t do, and don’t need to do an active sAdhanA as we understand it. Their very being is sAdhanA and if anything, they also undertake sAdhanA for the sake of healing and transformation of others. Their very presence is sAdhanA.

But for the rest of us, an active sAdhanA is prescribed by Patanjali in the Yoga sutras. And I realise that for me this includes all the work and everything else that I do, off my mat as well. And do, I must. This is part of my spiritual practice.  The keen inward attention during my personal practice, and the keen attention on matters of the world are like two polarities that I have to hold together, simultaneously. They make each other. Like Exhalation and Inhalation together make a breath.  Make life.

Someone like a Swami Vivekananda didn’t rest with his individual moksha. He served incessantly and achieved enormously in the public domain within the short life that he lived.  He talked some, and demonstrated much more, the interdependence and mutual existence of one’s inner journey and its outward, social manifestation. Gandhi’s life without a doubt was cut and woven together from the same spiritual cloth.  I recently read in an article by Pannalal Dasgupta about “this strange, Janus-like quality of Gandhiji – two faces looking in seemingly different directions.” 

This is the quality I believe my practice needs to strengthen.  It is the Practice. Of being able to look in and look out simultaneously without letting go of either.  For sAdhanA to come into its power, it needs to move out from the mat and change matter; Manifest as a coming together of the inner and outer journeys. And this is the meaning I give to the blessing I received from the mentor.  

Unrequited Love?

The old story was that of unrequited love. From parents, from friends, situations, opportunities, relatives, a beloved canine, my childhood journal...from the world. 

There is no question of requited or unrequited love. Love is just love. It is there, a spontaneous exchange, connection and perception of prANA. By unrequited, what we actually mean is that it was not requited in the way we wanted or expected it out of our limited and conditioned minds. 

The new story for me has at least two nuances to it. One is that I have been blind to the universe's ways of requiting my love. My environment and cultural conditioning includes an axiom that the universe does requite our love; there are no two ways about it. I stand on this fundamental ground. What's more, I have in recent times been experiencing the truth of this in many small and big ways. I have started to recognise the numerous ways my love is being requited. Just not always in the ways that I envisage it. 

The other nuance and corollary to the above is that I have always been expecting an equal and returning force of love, a requiting, from humans around me. What a huge burden to put on myself and another. This reduces my capacity of love to a transactional expectation. It also functions on a limited understanding of how people love, and constricts the space of love. Who is to decide how much is equal and the same? And how can it ever be the same when no two entities are the same? There are as many ways to love as there are creatures on Earth, or more. How is it then possible that another give me love just the way I give another? There is only one unique me, and there is only one unique another. And this is not even yet taking into considerations the vagaries of one uniqueness - the circumstances, duhkhas, preoccupations, changing aspirations, needs and whatnot through the passage of seasons and time. 

Here's then to new stories of Love, stories that have no beginning or end, but just a constant buoyant recognition of another in oneself, and self in another, or a striving for that union. 

Reflections after Facilitating a Workshop in a Style Unique to Ritambhara*

Kaya Madhya Sutram (KMS), Tiruvannamalai, Jan 2018 - Reflections

Even while planning for the programme this time, I was planning with a lot of space. Usually I pack a lot in my planning and tagging several items in the sequence as ‘optional, if there is time’. This instance I straightaway noticed that my inclination was towards keeping the minimum required for it to be a KMS event. A vinyasa where each activity led to the next in natural logic. This actually gave me a lot of space to work in and flow and play and allow the same for others as well. I realised while planning and while executing, how much I have been cluttering my space with overplanning and overthinking. (I am not going into the roots of the overplanning and overthinking here, not within the scope now).  Without that clutter, the pressure for it to happen, and happen in a certain way was absent and I was completely aware of this. What freedom!

At the recent ECC (Exploring Contemplative Conversations) workshop, a reflection that came up in one of the early morning theatre sessions:  

I have never been able to feel Veeryam after any other Rasa but Roudram. I necessarily had to get in touch with Roudram in order to experience Veeryam.  Pre-planning and during KMS, for the first time, I was in a quieter space and a sense of courage and conviction that was flowing out of connection and quietness, manifesting in action at the event.  I am afraid and cannot give the quiet space any rasa name categorically for I don’t know what is lying further underneath in deeper layers of the mind and being.  Nevertheless, for this layer, there was a quiet breathing that I was connected with, and there is a Friend that I seem to be continuously in touch with. Feelings of clarity, fear, tentativeness, a definitive conviction and awareness of what I am doing at the moment, were all seemingly being held simultaneously.

A nuance of holding space that I got in touch with in the sessions mentioned above: during the pair dancing (with palms or fingers touching and no talking), the experience that when I actually stopped trying to lead and fighting the resistance (even when it was my turn to lead), and simply left my palm there, it became the other’s responsibility and effort to hold on and follow. My palm was simply there and the process started shifting from leading-following to simply a natural dance and co-holding of space.  I was holding this awareness within me as I went into the event.  Thank you Ganesh for demonstrating this beautifully during ECC programme.

I am also aware that the action and conviction, the sense of quietness will not stay just this way all the time. This sort of a being is also due to the external influences and satsangam of, KMS at Hyderabad, Parenting Retreat, ECC, circles and conversations here in Tiruvannamalai, and individual interactions with several of you**.  So much is happening on the outside to keep this going.  And a couple of other things that I have been doing / practicing (including asana-py-bhavana- of course), which have started the important work of establishing some of these new movements within me firmly.  There are and will be times when all the external support systems are not there and I am by myself, and those will be the test of how much I have been able to stabilise this ground and will tell me where I need to intensify efforts, what I am missing from the whole picture and so on.  What I hold here is also the dance between community / support systems and standing alone, which seems to be especially important for us as practitioners, (training to) hold space for others to explore / discover / understand in different formats.  

I got in touch with what feels to me as a significant factor in the ways I have been listening and what I need to pay close attention to.  I am realising that I saw it perhaps because of that space of quietness and awareness that I carried with me into the event. This was allowing all my senses to be so wide awake and I was both listening to the outside and inside at the same time.  Ok, cut the hemming and hawing already.  It has been and probably still is difficult for me to stay with and even look at my vulnerabilities, leave alone sharing them, putting them out on the table, unless the other is expansive and strong enough to hold space for me to do this in a safe and comfortable way. However I am inclined to intense feelings, passions and able to inspire and evoke others to touch their passions, deepest desires as I have often experienced.  What has been happening in the interface is that, I evoke this in the other just as I do for myself, but then run away or get into escape routes just as the going gets intense, and I leave the other perhaps hanging or colluding.  The intensity of the evocations touches my most vulnerable spot every time – the tension between who I am and who I am not.  I am always guarding who I am, and afraid that who-I-am-not will change or invade who-I-am.  This is also why when the other provides a ‘safe’ environment, (which for me is, not threatening my sense of who I am), I can let go and be ‘myself’ and end up indulging the ‘who-I-am’ and not stepping back and examining this process.  I had been unable to stay with this tension between the I-am and I-am-not, and so whenever the exchange starts getting into this tension area, it gets intense (if it already was not!) , I would quickly jump into my fortress and deploying, possibly, all kinds of weapons from there, just varying degrees of potency.  And I can get intense about the batting of an eyelid! 

The sad part of this process is that because of years of practice of building up the fortress, it has become a habit.  So even in moments when there is actually no real fear, simply the force of habit takes over.  I am feeling immensely sad because of all the pictures that are coming up for me just now when I have allowed a particular moment to wilt or not bloom to its full beauty and authentic expression because of the guard.  I am realising that the sadness is from a mixture of love (of the other and people and discoveries and unfolding) and anger (at myself that I have not given this space for myself and my world).

I am seeing the friend sitting here with me, just now after some breath-watching and shifting focus to some immediate domestic chores for a few minutes. She is holding a lot of kindness for me and is reminding me of the magic of this entire process and to keep at it.  I remember this sutra that Raghu brought up during ECC, which took off like a flashbulb inside me: Smrti-parishuddhau svarūpa-shunya iva artha-mātra-nirbhāsā nir-vitarkā (YS 1.43).  I experienced tangibly with the veeryam (mentioned in the 2^nd para), how just the act of giving attention to something can momentarily shift the entire picture.  And then it’s ‘just’ continuing to give attention!  J

Today is the first day of the Tamil month of Thai.  A proverb goes, “தை பிறந்தால் வழி பிறக்கும்” (rough translation of the essence in this context: with the month of Thai comes a new beginning).  A tangible bhavana / exercise / activity that I need to do as preparation before every event is: walking out of the fortress and into the gardens, fields and forests out there, and meet and walk with friends under the open sky.  The giripradakshina around Arunachala comes up for me as a space and time when I feel open, vulnerable and strong.  

--------------------------------------------------------

* Ritambhara - Go to the Website

** - friends (co-practitioners and colleagues)

Where from my Muse?

This essay is inspired by a friend's question on reading one of my poems. Here is the complete poem. 

One of the stanzas has the lines, 

"She sees these portals of Purity 

Her mind's eyes turning Red,
As she contemplates her anger and disgust. "  

And follows up the above lines with, 

"With a sigh of quiet resolve,

She turns to the day ahead,

..."   

The friend's question is, 'How did the anger and disgust transform?'  (I am guessing, such that there could be a "quiet resolve" in the next line). My initial reaction was along the lines, "this is the practitioner's work, our entire practice is that transformation(?); it is each one's journey and the 'how' of this transformation (if at all) is a wheel that has to be turned time and again, it is different for different entities..." 

However, from awareness of some movements that happened in the mind exactly at that inflexion point, and for the joy of this examination, I write further. 

An opening to the examination could be, I dont really think that the anger and disgust transformed into something else. 

The original last line of that stanza that had floated in my mind was "As she contemplates flying away".  I paused at that point, looked up at my beloved, sacred hill, drew him in with my breath, held him, allowed him to pervade my being, and that union flowed out through my pen with my exhalation. I changed the words to the current ones as my contemplation did, and sat watching this and my breath for a short while (or it could have been an eternity) before the next line happened. 

I could dedicate this process to my daily, long-standing practice of asana-pranayama-meditative-enquiry, that seems to have a life of its own, and takes matters into its own hands sometimes. The yoga sutra, "Sa tu dheergakala nairantarya satkara adhara asevito drdha bhoomih" (I.14) comes to mind. [Meaning of sutra: Practice becomes firmly established when it is cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time]. 

And I could dedicate this timely intervention to the grace of Arunachala whose town I reside in. “Bhagavat Kaingaryam” (roughly, the grace of the Universe / God / Higher forces) according to elders.

Much of the time all that seems to be needed is that pause and space for observation; space for just being with what arises, between one line and the next, one step and the next, one kshanam (approximately, a moment) and the next.

Examining further, that space of contemplation and what was happening for me then; I feel that words may never be able to capture those sensations and nuances of movement precisely. I can at best say that, a larger love, understanding, happened in those moments. Many pictures and scenes from my life, and of others flashed in front of my eyes like a movie, and some questions arose. Amidst pictures of many blurred uncertainties, the next certain lines presented themselves to my mind’s eye in sharp focus, even as I continued to watch my breath.

I did not see anger and disgust transforming into anything else. In retrospect, I think that the pictures I saw were of instances where these emotions were held and expressed in different ways (I want to add the word ‘appropriately’ here, but tentatively and with a question mark for I can only speculate on the appropriateness or lack thereof).

And with quiet resolve, the crow could have flown way to other parts to scavenge. She could have transformed to other colours, birds, doing other things, each of them possibly pausing on other terraces and window-sills and returning to crowhood. To burst again into more colours. I don’t know for sure, the possibilities are endless. It may be another story the next day. A different crow perhaps.  

Herein for me lies the Art of it all. The art of writing. The art of this very life. Many have looked at the meaning of art in their lives and tried to describe it. For me, all Art seems to be a search and / or expression of glimpses of an Infinite source of everything. It seems like we are trying to touch and express something that is eternal, infinite through what we can hold of transient and finite life, and death.

A painter is trying to capture the eternal beauty underneath the grotesque ugliness of urban landscapes that he is seeing. A husband illustrates the small moments of togetherness with his wife and family, attempting to put in his frames, everlasting love. Look at the temple of Arunachaleshwara here in Tiruvannamalai. There is something larger than life, larger than the finite hands and bodies of the sculptors and workers that flow through the stone. What infinity did they see that transformed their finiteness?

I am seeing Art as the channel, the medium of that infinite source within us, within everywhere. And by this very nature, art lends itself to other factors:

-       It is a process that is ongoing and reflective. I believe that it is not possible to touch, glimpse or taste something in the subtler and finer realms, and give over to meta processes, with the cognitive mind.  By the very swadharma of being art, it forgets / bypasses the cognitive mind and reaches beyond this to a space of insights and subtle sensing. And this space is that of Nature, of Life, of Reality – which means it is ever-changing, it is a process. It cannot be bottled or packaged into a static form of time and space. How paradoxical it is that we need to dive into a space of ever-changing change in a search for the constant!  A corollary is that it is possible to express from that reflective state. Art is that expression. It is also true that in expression, the cognitive mind can also jump in out of sheer habit and propensity. It may also happen that a cognitive mind and expression is necessary.  And this brings us to another factor:   

-       That of context. Very often (I actually want to say, ‘at all times’) the manifestations depend on the context. There are many who would refute this factor. In any case, we cannot really have conclusions. I believe that we are not looking only at art and the artist. Both, the artist and the process of art exist in a context, and this context I believe is alive in them, whether the artist is conscious of it or not, whether others in the context are conscious of it or not. This is most visible in performance art, in theatre.  The art is not simply a rehearsed piece that is performed on stage. Art is happening with the active participation of the audience during the performance. It is an alive conversation.  The conversations get more complex when the art involves, say, a poem. Like mine for instance. The artist dwells on her reflections, and in the process of creation / art. There are times when a third (say, you, the reader) is already present even during the creation (like with this essay) and there are other times when there may not be a conscious intention of presentation (like with the poem). Even here there are complexities that can be examined, and conversations with the self, abound. When a reader actively enters the scene, he / she brings in her reflections and is creating art anew then. There are questions of belonging and ownership that come up for me here. The same piece of expression could become an object of analysis and cognition the next day.

Like today, I am looking at ‘my’ crow fairly analytically and dissecting it, while also attempting to reflect and put together a larger picture. And we could still be in the realm of Art. Or not.

For my crow this moment

is empty

and still,

all the anger

and disgust

having become

foam and froth

with the water in spate,

that flooded

every nook and corner,

purifying,

taking with it

fishes and plastic

garbage

and plant matter

all the same,

while gushing downstream,

towards its destiny.

--------------------------------------------

Notes :-

-       At this point, the YS II.48 comes to mind – “Tato dvandvanabhighatah” – From this, one is not afflicted by the dualities of the opposites.

-       I must say thanks to my friend and co-sadhaka who spotted the exact point of inflexion and asked the question which wouldn’t leave until I wrote this.