Beyond Salt and Pepper

When I grew up we had two spices on the table.  Black and white, and we could put some of each on our meat and potatoes.  Cuisine was not a word we used, and dinner was eaten with a certain nervous vigor.  My older brother and I would ask to be excused from the table, after which we’d go and have fun.

In Canada in the 60’s and 70’s this relationship to food was probably the common experience.  Reductionist, somewhat oppressive and not a lot of fun.  What was fun was dessert and candy, highly refined mood-altering substances eaten sometimes in secret to avoid scolding.  What we are taught when we are young makes an impression that is not easy to alter.

Eating food is communion with the universe.  What we eat becomes us, sitting down to eat is a ritual action.  In a country like India, spices and combinations of them are too numerous to count.  The palate can become educated, and moods and emotions arise from the taste of food prepared with love, eaten with awareness and digested completely.

We were also taught a concept of heaven and hell, darkness and light, and how to suppress our appetites for more.  When we can not suppress any longer, we indulge in sinful treats.  This process too, is reductionist and not a lot of fun.  It also creates a duality that is not present in reality, only created in the mind of the suppressed and then passed on to the next generation of living, eating beings.

This model of living does not serve our potential.  There are millions of experiences between salt and pepper, right and wrong, meat and potatoes.  To begin to experience more takes a certain courage and honesty in recognizing our current limited ability to taste difference and nuance created by suppression and limited experience.

Tantra’s many definitions included technique, synthesis, or to weave together.  To take the dark and the light and weave them into a contrast, to engage the full spectrum of colour and create art within life, cuisine out of food, sacredness out of empty ritual.  To do this, one has to reach for an unfamiliar spice, experiment with it and see how it tastes and digests.

What vehicle does your yoga teacher place you in?

I have owned a lot of cars.  Old cars mostly.  Old, weird cars primarily.  It is tempting to say that I chose the cars I’ve owned based on some of my own weird old personality quirks.  That would be true.  I’ve owned cars made in countries that no longer exist - try getting parts for those!  But I loved all my cars, even when I was sometimes stranded on the highway calling the Automobile Association for a tow truck, trying to spell out the name and model of the vehicle to an incredulous switchboard operator.

Yoga teachers offer their quirks and particular view of things as they teach even a very physical form of yoga - hatha yoga.  If a yoga teacher teaches with sincerity, they offer a  unique vehicle.  To be effective, that unique vehicle must still have the ability to safely stretch, strengthen and calm the body and mind, just like a car must have the ability to get you where you want to go safely and relatively comfortably.

We often buy cars from large manufacturers.  You can go to an Auto Mall and choose from many vehicles.  Car salespeople represent one manufacturer, so they have a vested interest in you choosing one of their cars.  We have “styles” of yoga, and teachers of that style have a vested interest in promoting the benefits of that style.

A great car salesman would be one that places the interests of the buyer first.  The world’s best car saleswoman would ask the potential buyer what they are looking for, assess their needs (4 door?  Sports car?  Truck? MPG?), and then point them to the vehicle that best suited their needs regardless of manufacture, new or used.  Or maybe even suggest taking the bus.

A great yoga teacher would assess a student’s needs in the same way.  But in order to do that, the teacher would have to know the benefits and possible detriments of all the different “styles” of yoga.  This would require dedication, curiosity, an open mind, a willingness to let go of believing what they teach is superior, and of course they would have to practice daily and reflect on their experience.  This could take some time.  Yes.

Luckily, hatha yoga styles are a lot like cars from different manufacturers.  They are marketed for their unique qualities, often very subjectively with an appeal to emotion.  But in reality, we have cars, trucks, station wagons, luxury vehicles, sports cars, and then all the hybridization of those basic categories.  Each vehicle has a more or less specific function - speed, comfort, hauling ability - but all must fulfill the primary requirement.  They have to get you where you want to go.

Yoga practice is similar.  There are ways of practice that include restorative, meditative, active outer movement of the body, active inner movement of more subtle muscles, movement of even more subtle energies, therapeutics for injuries, and the use of sound and vibration.  These components appear in the modern brands or styles of yoga and it is these components that need to be understood and practiced by the yoga teacher in order to be fluent, knowledgeable, and able to serve the best interests of the student.

Unlike large vehicle manufactures, yoga teachers have a distinct advantage.  That advantage is their own quirks and particular way of being.  Those quirks appear as they teach, and if the teacher can recognize the quirks and couple them with a good understanding of yoga and the essential components of practice, they can offer a unique vehicle that will get their student where they want to go, quirks intact.  Like the way my old MG's wooden steering wheel felt, or the sound of my Skoda's engine peaking at 85kph.  I loved those cars.

Success!

A friend of mine who recently released an album of his original songs expressed his frustration at what seemed to be a lack of interest and support for what was a labour of love and quite a good album.  As artists and human beings, we want our gifts of art and beauty to be recognized - that is as it should be I think, and the last half of the equation of creativity - someone to appreciate the art.

Our tribal and nomadic ancestry, the only way we humans have essentially lived, except for the revolutions in agriculture and industrialization, evolved our desire for community and interdependency.  A medicine man, an artist or musician in a nomadic tribe would have had the role, among other roles, of pointing to the subtle beauty and mystery of life in song, dance, or painting.

With the explosion in population due to the agricultural revolution, our world became settled, compartmentalized, and monetized.  We now speak of the value of beauty in dollars, and we measure success in hits on a website, sales of our gifts, and worldwide recognition - to be celebrated.

Our desire for widespread, even planetary recognition of our gifts is inversely proportional to how little real community, interdependence and attention we have left.

The question is raised “how does one become successful in the (music, art, yoga) industry?  Our planet has billions of humans that can transfer information - art, music, dance, writing - instantaneously.  Many of those humans wish to share their gifts.  How much can your personally receive?  For me, almost none.  I’m too busy trying to share my own gifts most of the time.

The desire for recognition is a desire for love, and to be seen for who you are at a deep level, beneath culture, gender, age, income or race.  We need this more and more because we’ve shifted so far from our true connection to who we are. One of the things  we are is our relationship to who and what is in front of us.

I have musician friends who play to gatherings of more people than live in my village.  These friends entertain more people at once than any tribal medicine man, dancer or musician ever did.  And they do not consider themselves successful.  I’ve felt this way too as a musician.  I felt that way because I tried to replace the lost richness of being with recognition and celebrity.

Some of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had as a yoga teacher or musician have been in small groups of people who know how to pay attention.  People that came for a reason, to share and receive something of value - a value that cannot be measured in dollars, hits or number of sales.

This model of success is not the model we seem to value right now.  The model of success we value is the model that has overfished the oceans, cut down the forests, turned friends into potential multi-level marketing opportunities, wives into trophies and our gifts into commodities.  In short, it is the model that has no value.  But like a sleepwalker among sleepwalkers, waking up can be a solitary and uncomfortable experience.  So my friends, keep making beauty, regardless of who seems to be listening.  Your gifts are recognized.

Why yoga may have happened

Imagine yourself 10,000 years ago.

You awake to the smell of the earth as the sun warms and begins to evaporate the dew.  Your simple portable dwelling provides some shelter from the elements.  Your tribe all rises at dawn, children scamper around playing.  You know everyone in your tribe, and they all know you.  When later that day game is brought back from the hunt to be cooked, it is shared by all.  When the sun sets, a fire is made and you observe the wood turning into heat, light and ash.  The smoke rises into the sky where the stars are so clear due to the lack of any ambient light that you can recognize constellations like old friends.  When it is time to sleep, sleep comes easily to a body in tune with the rest of nature.  When the tribe moves on, you look behind and all that is left of your presence there are the folded grasses where your shelters were, and a fire-pit.  In a few weeks even this will become invisible.

The idea of “having relationships” with others in your tribe is not a concept anyone understands.  You’ve known these people all your life.  Some you like more than others, but there is no getting into and out of the relationship you have with them.  They literally are your relations, just as the animals and plants are.  The children around you are everyone’s responsibility, and they learn different skills from others in your tribe as they move freely around.

This is a gift economy.  Currency does not exist, and the natural response to the abundance of life on the earth is one of gratitude.  No-one has the idea that human life should try to be prolonged, or that youth is better than maturity.  The spirits of humans and animals are on the earth.

The scenario above may sound utopian.  That is largely because through projection  and some quite unscientific studies by 19th century Europeans, we’ve been led to believe that life for our ancestors was “brutish and short”.  This was not the case.  Nor was it the case that our ancestors were less healthy than we are.  Eating a varied “organic” diet, sugar in any form being quite hard to come by, and walking miles daily, our predecessors were generally fit, healthy and competent at a variety of skills. 

Our nomadic ancestors deep integration with the natural world made recognizing the continuity of all things their first nature.  Only when we began to coerce nature to supply us with more than we could readily consume through the advent of agriculture did we remove the idea of spirit from nature, for a gift can never be demanded, and once demanded, it is not longer a gift.

Leaving behind a state of recognition of the sacred nature of all things, a hierarchy of spirit began.  Once removed from the earth, sprit was moved to the mountains - the domain of ancient gods - and then the heavens.  Up is better that here, down is even worse.  To ascend toward is good, to descend into is bad.  This “verticalism” also diminishes our horizontal connection with one another.  When you look at the history of organized religion, the  representative of god is “higher up” - on a platform, a throne, or if you are walking about, a very tall hat.

The muddy, fecund ground of everyday life was now not sacred, and along with a vertical model of sprit came another model - purity.  White, translucent, unstained.  Our instinctual, carnal human nature became less than spiritual and finally sin, then an abstract idea of Heaven pursued. Man’s purpose in life was now not only to restrain outward nature - cultivation of land and domestication of animals - but to restrain his inward nature.  To become cultivated.  

The creation myth of Adam and Eve flung out of the garden of Eden has been inverted.  A garden is the natural world become cultivated by man.  Adam and Eve were flung into a garden, where they had to till the soil by the sweat of the brow.  

The origins of yoga are somewhat mysterious, the tradition being largely oral in nature.  Carvings found in the Indus river valley civilizations of Harrapan and Mohenjo-daro depicting a figure seated in what may be a yoga pose are dated at 2500 BCE.  

The origins of agriculture begin approximately 5,000 years before this.  The practice of yoga arises after the agricultural revolution.  Most, but not all hunter-gatherers became farmers cultivating the land.  Farmers must protect their crops, build fences, store excess food and be able to trade that excess.  So agriculture precipitates ideas such as ownership, control, currency, policing and law.  Stratification of society ensues.  Farmers eat a mono - diet of planted crops and domesticated animals as opposed to the varied diet found in season by hunters and gatherers.  The negative effect on health and lifespan in many cultures was enormous.  The practice of yoga may have arose as a cure for this new lifestyle.  A way of reconnecting with natural forces and rhythms that were becoming forgotten.

The tools of yoga are the ones we already have - body, breath and mind.  Some of the later yoga’s view of the body is much different than the idea of the self divided from spirit that has become embedded deep in our culture, attitudes and behavior.

The word yoga can mean “union”, or an application of means, in this case the means to re-connect something.  Let’s remember that something is already here.  There is no separation of spirit and nature except in our mind.  Any dedicated outward searching will ultimately lead us back to a remembrance of this ground of being.  The ideas of the mind drop into the heart and body, and like any thing rooted to the earth, the flowering of our awareness is related to how much nectar is drawn up from our connection to the primal elements we grew from. 

Upanishad

I am sitting down near my Swedish wood stove and thinking about this word Upanishad.  The word means “To sit down near”.   The Upanishads are a collection of wisdom from the yoga tradition, in the form of stories and poems originally transmitted orally.  To sit down near something, you must make an effort to get close.  When you go into a college lecture hall, often as students come in they will sit at the back of the auditorium.  How close you decide to get to your teacher and the teaching is an indicator of how much you want to hear, and how much you want to engage.

But I digress.  Back to my wood stove.  It is burning well now, at about 400 degrees.  It is turning mass into energy, unlocking the potential heat and light within each piece of wood.  Some of the wood is very dry and ignites easily.  The transmission of heat from the coals to a newly introduced piece of wood is immediate, and even a big piece of wood will ignite when laid upon a hot bed of coals.

To get the fire started in the morning I use very dry kindling and a match.  The match simply needs to be struck to ignite the phosphorous in it, and this “striking” is really an introduction of friction.  The phosphorous is responding to this “itch”.  It is its nature to ignite easily and burn quickly.  I light the kindling using a piece of paper (a form of wood) and if the platform of kindling I made in the stove has space for air, the fire starts easily.

I bring in wood as I need it from outside, and some of it is damp.  The damp wood will not ignite easily, so I place the wet wood close to the stove.  The heat of the stove will dry the wood so that it too will ignite when in the stove, changing state from density to light and heat.  The closer to the stove’s heat the wet wood is, the more heat it absorbs, the quicker it dries.  It is not an intellectual process, it is a physical process.  The wet wood is not ready to ignite, and cannot yet be moved into the center of ignition which is inside the stove. When it is ready, it will be.  This is Upanishad.

Like salt in water

One path says dissolve into your experiences like salt in water. You dissolve into the world and the sense of individuality ceases. The other path says stand strong against the influence of the world like a diamond, and recognize that the world is in you. 

In either case, the destination is the same. The sense of separation melts. The world is in your awareness and your awareness is the world.

These two paths have been articulated in many ways, and it often the dogma surrounding them created by intellectualization rather than practice that causes some problems.

By practice I do not mean regimentation of a physical kind, or any kind.  One practice might be to read a line of poetry and pause and let the images begin to find a home in awareness.  Another practice might be getting angry and feeling where the anger is inside, then watch it shift.  Or you could create your own practice.

Practice becomes interesting when the objects of our desires become less interesting.  It is not something you can force or should do, anymore than falling in love.

Don't be shifty

Standing, it is common to shift weight from one foot to another. This temporarily avoids the consequences of misaligned hips - discomfort in the low back. Shifting gaze frequently moves awareness from one visual object to another without fully absorbing any one object into awareness. When we see someone shifing both weight and gaze, they appear shifty.

Holding a posture long enough to recieve the karma - the results of the action - is the opposite of shiftiness. It is said while most try to avoid consequences, the yogi seeks the causes.

Asana focus - even breath and gaze, longer holds in traditional poses.