Adi-Yoga

Chapter 1

Om.

Someone once said - God is everywhere. Learned masters have revealed to us that enlightenment (or whatever else it is called these days - how about "whatchamacallit") can be achieved anywhere - apparently, even on a crowded Chicago bus (some of you will recognize this. For the rest, apologies).

So I decided to start my first (and likely, only) thread - to get enlightened. If "it" can happen anywhere, why not here?

This is not a frivolous exercise. It is partly in jest, and partly driven by a desire to enhance my understanding and be enriched through the countless perspectives on this forum. Through the process, I intend to also share a few nuggets/anecdotes/experiences that I thought enhanced my understanding of whatchamacallit.

So, let's start.

On some other thread, I was saying how humanity may be better off if we went easy on concepts we don't comprehend - "spirituality", for example. Some have said - how about understanding compassion? Compassion is very close to being at the root of all emotions - close to being the noblest emotion. Compassion is the ability to look at your boss who yells at you and not feel angry. Compassion is the ability to effortlessly emote with the street kid who's tugging aggressively at your sleeves when you are looking forward to taking in the sights of the Taj.

True and uninhibited compassion requires effortless control over anger, desire, fear, etc. Sounds like enlightenment to me! But what do I know. In one of the classical structures of Yoga, also known as the Ashtanga Yoga (eight-limbed yoga), it is understood that whatchamacallit can be achieved if you climb the eight steps. The first limb is called Yama. These are 10 guiding principles or foundations of living, without mastering which, one was considered ill fit to progress down the more nuanced aspects of Yoga. One of the integral Yamas is Daya - compassion is a loose translation.

The amazing thing about compassion is that it's a concept that most of us readily "get". We know what it looks and feels like. We have all experienced it sometimes, and have expressed it at other times. We all felt "good" when we were part of this experience. If the objective of enlightenment is to feel good eternally, maybe compassion has something to do with it. The other amazing thing about this emotion is that it spans religions, thought structures, space (geography) and time (history).

I will stop for now, with an poser: if compassion is indeed in the same zip-code as enlightenment, and if compassion is also generally understood by most, what stops us from becoming more compassionate - and therefore more enlightened? This sounds like an impossibly naive question, and my next post will attempt to explore this naivete through the annals of Ashtanga Yoga.

Om.

Adiyogi

Let me respond as a lay man who knows very little about either Enlightenment or Yoga:
Compassion doesn't feel good it hurts, it is easier to turn your heart into a stone and move on than to stop and feed every begging child on the road. You may say why can't you feel compassion for these children? What good is compassion without action? If I feel compassion for a starving dog I have to feed him and not just feel compassion for that moment and than go home and have a hearty meal and never think of the dog again!

The other reasons why we stop ourselves from feeling and being compassionate is because of the fear of being deceived or taken advantage off, and insecurity ! If we keep on being compassionate and giving , who will take care of us when we don't have !

I know this take on compassion is restricted to compassion for those without means, and compassion or empathy towards everyone is what you are talking about!

If so, you may actually be one of lucky ones. Most of what passes for "Yoga" today is actually something else entirely.

Thanks for your thoughts. You raise an important distinction - compassion accompanied with action vs. not. The natural question is - is compassion without action largely meaningless? After all, if the child went hungry, my feeling of compassion did precious little to alleviate the specific situation for the child, didn't it?

Maybe compassion by itself ain't so bad. Maybe compassionate action is even "better". A relatively well-known cornerstone of the Bhagawad Gita goes as follows: Karmanyewaadhikaaraste Maa Phaleshu Kadaachana. The import essentially is: you have a right to action, never to the result.

Realize though that we are talking about compassion from the perspective of an individual who feels the pain of what he/she perceives as external to himself/herself. On the contorted and counter-intuitive path of self-realization, one swings between true altruism and perfect selfishness.

As I will discuss later, I personally swung hard between these extremes - buffeted by what I saw externally, and then by what I was perceiving internally. The analogy I remember visualizing one day was that of a dimensionless point tracing a circle. It starts off from its starting location in search of infinity...wanting to subsume the whole world...only to come back to where it started and realize that it is complete right where it began! The amazing thing though is that unless the point undertakes that journey, it would never have realized this simple truth.

Anyway, I digress....

Adiyogi

Just wondering why would you feel that you will not have what you need at some future stage, when you have had everything you need thus far. Bearing in mind the only thing we can really ever be aware of is how our organism is functioning from moment to moment. Everything else is our story or a construct about this or that, but that’s another thing really.

If one performs a certain action in a certain way, does that mean one is compassionate? I wonder if it is possible to be compassionate, or is there just life, and compassion (com=with, passion=love) is encoded, the natural expression of a complete human being? Or does one actually reach somewhere deep inside and bring relief from suffering to oneself firstly, before another? This may or may not be important. Sometimes too much energy is spent on resisting or countering everything that comes into view, and frankly the help or relief of suffering we can bring to anyone is extremely limited because of their own story and constructs.

But it seems that if compassion only exists in a person as an idea or an ideal, it can never be expressed as an action. Perhaps if one is truly compassionate there is no further reasoning about it, for it is automatically expressed when the idea of being compassionate is dropped.

And anyhow if there is a feeling of pride, or a feeling of importance from what one believes to be compassion, does it have any meaning? We can play with it intellectually and it might be a bit of fun for a short period. But if it strikes one and penetrates right to the core, it becomes an understanding at a physical level. The organism rejects the desire for compassion, and the result is compassion and abracadabra there’s no further worry about it, about beggars, being deceived or taken advantage off, and insecurity.

There are possibly a few billion of people thinking they are compassionate in the world and look where we are. Is this world the result of compassion? Or the result of fragmentation? If one sees the results of this, can any move from a fragmented position bring wholeness to the world?

Can I really feel compassion if to a happening that is external? Doesn't death, hardship and destruction in one's own country cause more pain than when it happens in a foreign land!
Now think about the Gawahati incident, we would have been more compassionate and pained if it was a girl from our neighborhood, a friend, or a friend’s child! Why?
How much would more would our pain and compassion be if the girl was a family member! We suffer more when a loved one is suffering or is in pain than when it is someone else.
Isn’t that because a loved one is a part or an extension of our selves in some way? If other’s troubles don’t affect me in any way emotionally, can I have compassion for them?

If the extent and intensity of one's feeling of compassion has a direct co-relation with the extent to which one feels connected or identifies with the sufferer, then is compassionate action primarily an attempt to alleviate one’s own suffering caused by other's pain and hardship? If true, then are true altruism and perfect selfishness are not diametrically opposite extremes!

True! Maybe the intellect has no role in the feeling of compassion, (children's and animal's feelings and expressions of compassion are more spontaneous and natural than those of an adult!) However the intellect is necessary for the expression of compassion , and that prevents compassion from being spontaneous and natural!

I have what I have thus far because I didn’t give what I have to all the needy who came my way! Most of us have way more than we need , some maybe willing to share the excess with the needy and express compassion, but not knowing what and how much we'll need in future prevents the natural expression of compassion!

The conflict is between self-preservation and the natural expression of compassion.

Or put another way, the deep fear that gets entrenched that one will lose something greatly important if one expresses oneself naturally.

i'm extremely wary of conclusions, it's like some finality where ego has won the day and so cut off any further research into the matter. And equally, compassion, love, creativity and so on, none of these things are conditional, i.e. dependent upon some 'what if' scenario.

What if's are simply rooted in fear and so to me it seems you greatly underestimate, along with most of the population of this planet, what you are capable of. Fear based love reality dominates the experience of love, actually creates it. We see ourselves receiving love which is conditional, and watch ourselves dispensing it conditionally.. and while we withold and retreat and set conditions, a part of us knows this is not what love really is, let alone it's derivative - compassion.

Get this sorted and the not knowing what and how much we'll need in future will cease to be of concern along with a lot of other what if's and anyone will be laughing at why did it take so long to realise, born crying die laughing.

Because ideally there shouldn't be a conflict, yet that is exactly how most of the life is led by most of the people, fragmentation rather than wholeness. We can go round for ever in the superficial thinking about something and try to communicate about these things but we are restricted by the enormous limitation of words, and so get nowhere, while completely avoiding the NowHere.

Thinking about something and feeling about something are obviously not the same, although they can happen simultaneously. If you want to know what is true for you about something, discover how you're feeling about it.

Feelings can be tough to reveal and usually tougher to acknowledge, feeling is the language of consciousness so to speak, and hidden there in one's deepest feelings is one's truest truth... and i would say that those feelings are infallible, and all one need do is follow their truth and everything works out as it should. I understand this all sounds like space cadet stuff and can't be proved or anything, so it becomes a case of deny it or try it really!

What you wrote here "Compassion doesn't feel good it hurts, it is easier to turn your heart into a stone and move on" has unfortunately been surfacing in my thoughts. I do get the harsh conclusion of it, with a caveat that you cannot experience yourself as what you are until you've encountered what you are not - you may be in a struggle like we all are, but i don't believe for one second that you actually will live that statement.

Thank you to Paleface and happyhippy for bringing out the nuances of what Compassion represents.

Chapter 2

Om.

So let's continue. Above, we briefly explored one of the 10 traditional Yamas - Daya (Compassion). Recall that Yamas represent the first step of Ashtanga Yoga as it came to be known after the codification of a section of the ancient texts that dealt overtly with Yoga. To put things in context, the 8 steps were: Yama, Niyama, Aasana, Praanaayaama, Pratyaahaara, Dhaarana, Dhyaana, Samadhihi

A technical digression is in order at this point. I'm not a stickler to nomenclature, but it is important to also understand that Ashtanga Yoga is not a "stream" or "type" of Yoga by itself. It is more of a descriptor. The closest true form of Yoga that identifies itself with these steps in whole is the classical Yoga form known as Raaja Yoga. It was understood that Raaja Yoga was intended for anyone - irrespective of spiritual inclinations or abilities or judgments. A Yoga for dummies, if you will. You followed the 8 steps and got "there". Other more "advanced" forms of Yoga took short-cuts, but were also intended for individuals with certain traits. More on that later.

The reason I bring up these points is to illustrate that in classical Yoga frameworks, Yama and Niyama were the foundations of a successful practice. The rationale was that meditation / contortion / breathing exercises won't work unless you have simplified your life. In ancient times, that simplification was thought to be achievable by practicing these Yamas:

Ahimsa (Non-violence), Satya (Truthfulness), Asteya (Non-covetousness), Brahmacharya (Celibacy/Faithfulness), Kshama (Patience), Dhriti (Perseverance), Daya (Compassion), Arjava (Honesty), Mitaahaara (Appetite moderation) and Shaucha (Purity).

I was born and raised in a background that was steeped in these classical traditions. My immediate family (my parents), however, had a more logical and practical bent. They emphasized logic/science/math. And so, I grew up with this dichotomy. The simplicity of childhood made it easy to accept the dichotomy as given. As I grew up, it became harder to reconcile. The urge to reconcile eventually transformed into a raging storm in my mind. It led me down the following twin paths:

1) Push logical thought to the extremes of my intellect and try to tease out the parameters of the ultimate equilibrium

2) Learn classical Yoga more deeply and move away from learning about Yoga to becoming a Yogi

All of this played out for a long period in the limited confines of my intellect and mind. This drove me to travel - not necessarily extensively, but selectively. My logical self saw materialism and "success" as life's ultimate path. Never living in one place for more than 4 years, this took me from the remote villages of North Kerala that I called home, to Manhattan. My intuitive self dissected this journey and examined it through the lens of classical Yoga.

My fervent apologies for taking this thread personal, but I do not know of a truer way to explore these topics outside of personal experiences. I have often found that attempts to discuss these matters at a global or abstract level lead to ineffective communication. And so, this journey led to deep explorations of the twin fronts alluded to earlier. Dialogs played out as follows:

"Adiyogi: I'm all about building solid foundations. So how should I interpret the Yamas in my modern life today? If I don't get these, how the heck am I supposed to climb the other 7 steps?!

Adiyogi's mind: Why am I even bothered by some arcane Sanskrit texts that I cannot even radio-carbon date? Maybe they were written by some dudes high on weed. Until I can explain it logically, why even bother?"

Notice the nature of these questions. The former question is "How". The latter question is "Why"? In the next Chapter, I will meander into the "Why" question, and explain how my mind attempted to peel the onion through logic. In the meantime, if there are folks out there who have contemplated and are comfortable with a scientific approach to explaining existence, and who do not feel the need for Yogic or spiritual mumbo-jumbo, please share your thoughts.

Om

Before you jump to "the why" let's stick with "the how" for a while Adi,do you really think that by practising the Yama's you can become non-violent,celibate,truthful,pure etc? The word practise suggests that someone is still violent,dishonest,impure etc,some people would say it's the other way around & that through meditation the vasana's will drop or burn away of themselves.In other words "you" can't do it by supressing desire, urges etc something needs to take place at a much deeper unconscious level,which can't be forced. Others would say that by seeing that you are desirous,dishonest,violent etc & staying with that & not trying to escape the fact then once again these urges, desires,fears etc will drop away of themselves.KK

Thanks for your thoughts kullukid. The question you pose ("do you really think..") is one I am posing to myself as well. Lets say I do not know the answer to your question. In such a situation, I am left with 2 alternatives:

1) Stick to the how, as you indicate, and trust that the urges, fears, desires, fears will drop away

2) Start with the "why" and attempt to make sense of things using logic - a language I am familiar with - and maybe fall short spectacularly

Maybe while I wait for the deeper levels to get activated, I may as well wallow in the why, and then come to the conclusion that the approach you are articulating works better after all?

Adiyogi

Thank you for sharing so much in this thread. And thanks to the contributors for helping explore and focus the discussion.

I have an interest in this subject as well. For one thing, my wife is formally studying ashtanga yoga. For another, I too wonder about some of these concepts (and others).

Before I catch-up, let me say this about "compassion". Consider the compassion of a priest. A good priest has lots of compassion for others, and acts upon that feeling to help others. On the opposite end would be "zeal". We all have seen preachers who preach too much, or call for violence when unnecessary. Both zeal and compassion stem from the same branch. That branch has deep roots in justification or justice concepts. But either way, there's an action that gets utlized. Thus, compassion without action is nothing.

I really like your pencil circle analogy; the journey is the destination. What purpose would it serve if the pencil knew the circle would be complete? Taking it further, if everyone is like that pencil--each drawing our own circle--why would we all want to draw the same thing? We wouldn't, and so we don't. Some will get whatchamacallit from daily practices and service. Others might get there by thinking of the true differences between compassion and non-compassion. So many different circles, we cannot even discuss them all.

Ooh there is such a lot of interesting back story there -

First reaction is that i was immediately reminded me of Gurucharan Das', sub titled 'On the subtle art of dharma.' He too being steeped in a classical, yet eclectic Hindu family - which atmosphere was permeated ultimately he says, on a single metaphysical insight about the unity of the individual and the universe, which has self-development as its objective - of which Yama's are surely the bold headings. Once contemplated they are activated and the wonder of yoga, or perhaps consciousness, is that they get worked on even without one taking notice - trying to echo KK and can't articulate that very well so shouldn't try!

Wintry and windy Manhattan also seemed an unusual choice for a 'forest-dweller' at life's third stage. Benares, the home of classical learning in N.India would have been a more conventional choice... But i did not want to escape into 'our great classical past'. I wanted to learn about that past with full consciousness of the present - and also to learn something about the present in encountering the past.

The tension showed when he was asked by a journalist if it would be more interesting if Froome were in another team. Wiggins snapped: "Of course it would, we're first and second in the Tour de France, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work that out." Wiggins had not, he said, looked at the routebook for either of the two vital Pyrenean stages.

"I don't want to look too far ahead for fear of not seeing what's in front of me."

Time trial gold for Bradley. Not bad eh! sad for the great Cancellara.

Has the impossibility of looking too far ahead, even past the event horizon – silenced some/all of us, herein -nah, impossible as well.

Reminded myself of forgetting too often enough that if one ignores reality then for sure it will come round soon enough to give a very good slapping - After disastrous flooding up here, she just did that! Let me not get carried away in the water or in the flood of thoughts.

My Guru bhai, Seva Giri, naga baba, Juna Akhara, i just met down at Gangori. Was a bit worried as i knew his house was totally gone, but surely knew he'd not be in it. Still where was he? Then we met.

His is an interesting story anyhow. He lived in the saddhu kutir within the precinct of Kashi Viswanath temple in Uttarkashi - for many years tapas. One day before sunrise, out by the river, he heard a crying baby on the banks. He found twin babies, abandoned. He saved and raised those kids on his own. He had nothing material of course but had to become a sadhu father/householder in order to keep his word with himself to raise the kids to college.

He did that. Their house washed away. He effortlessly smiling, indicating - wah nature! Getting on with the insecure practicalities yet simultaneously and impenetrably secure.

Nishkaam Karma. Thanks for this vignette.

Adiyogi