...the Whole Between...

Balance and Turmoil

2011-09-15T13:18:00.001+10:00

Balance and Turmoil

Balance

is a word

that is often applied

to a physical or mental state

where disturbances and fluctuations

are kept in check,

understood and

controlled.

In a changing and chaotic world

balance has become an alluring concept,

so much so
that
phrases

work/life balance

have been adopted into pop-psychology

and corporate strategic thinking.

How

does this

attraction

toward balance

adversely affect

our relationship

to those necessary

and irreplaceable moments

of being out of kilter,

of being shaken beyond control,

of being at a loose end

or in the depths

of turmoil?

Would balance imply a state in which

those unpredictable catalysts of inquiry

are warded off or kept at bay?

Interestingly it seems

the very moments

we are
out of balance

are often
the same moments
in which
we are

impelled

to
entertain

the
disturbing ideas
and the
perilous notions
that rattle

detached complacency
and clarify
the necessity for change

...those unsettling thresholds
of dangerous beauty

that allow us to
embody contradictions

celebrate flaws
relish attachments

and hold the righteous literalistic puritan

inside each of us

with a delicate and skeptical

arms length trepidation.

If balance implies the subjugation

of all those interesting instigators of variety

that lay beyond our conscious control,

then perhaps its not as desirable

as pop psychologists,

ayurvedic enthusiasts
meditation maniacs

and self development gurus

would have us

believe.

Perhaps this is also why

Ganesha is honoured

not just for his role

in overcoming obstacles

but also for his part

in creating them.

self portrait balancing chickoo and egg

Mysore India 2011

Purity and Dilution.

2010-12-05T08:12:00.010+11:00

Purity and Dilution.

As referred to at www.kpjayi.org :

Parampara is knowledge that is passed in succession from teacher to student. It is a Sanskrit word that denotes the principle of transmitting knowledge in its most valuable form; knowledge based on direct and practical experience. It is the basis of any lineage: the teacher and student form the links in the chain of instruction that has been passed down for thousands of years. In order for yoga instruction to be effective, true and complete, it should come from within parampara.

Parampara implies and emphasises the necessity for undiluted and unaltered teaching acquired through first hand experience which has at its basis an effort to preserve purity within transmition. Therefore embedded in the principle of parampara is a stance or leniency upon the polarity of purity and dilution.

The emphasis on the preservation of purity erects a subtle challenge to the notion that traditions evolve and adapt freely according to time and context and holds a question mark over who has the right to initiate change within a tradition and who is in the position to claim the inheritance of lineage or pure teaching.

The concept of purity when viewed through alternate historical narratives can shed revealing light upon this process.

From within the context of certain developments in 20^th century western art, for example, the concept of purity was approached through negation and refinement. The development of photography initiated a conceptual shift in the understanding of the painted image. Artists working in paint began to question, what is painting in relation to the photographic image and what is painting in its most pure form?

This impelled a process of negation that could be traced from Cezanne, through Cubism, Suprematism and latter geometric abstraction. The non-chronological conclusion of this narrative perhaps is best epitomized in Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918.

This particular reading of art history evokes the notion that purity itself is a mirage that tends to dissipate the closer one gets to it.

Alternatively when viewed within the context of parampara purity is approached not as an end point or goal, but something to be preserved and maintained. In this context purity is understood as pre- existent rather than something to be approached through time. In this sense what is passed on through the direct transmission from teacher to student is considered irrevocable and therefore anything but illusory.

It could be argued that the split between these alternate understandings of purity is reflective of a deeper divide between the western notion progress (toward a point of arrival) and the Eastern emphasis on the timeless.

Light and Dark

2010-11-19T07:02:00.005+11:00

Light and Dark

Although Diwali celebrates the light, interestingly it does so against a backdrop of darkness as it falls on the day before the new moon when the sky is at its most black.

Brightness has an alluring quality. We move toward the light naturally. That which is obscured by darkness is seldom acknowledged and easily ignored. We prefer clarity to ambiguity. Light helps us sustain this preference.

The tendency to gravitate toward the light is echoed in the favouring of all that’s associated with it: happiness, joy, efficiency, clarity, reason, weightlessness, playfulness, heat, friendliness.

The gravitational pull toward the light, initiated by our first entry into the world, has a momentum that can abstract attention from the darkness from which we emerged. Although we are born into the light, we arrive with our eyes closed and only after being nurtured in darkness. In this sense it is possible to be blinded by the light.

Light divorced of darkness is like florescence that flickers on and off too fast for the senses to register. It has an artificial quality that can never suffice the absent appreciation of true light; that which shines with a natural vigor only when highlighted against the honest backdrop of a very dark night.

Theory and Practice

2010-08-29T06:59:00.053+10:00

Theory and Practice

"99% practice – 1% theory"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ K.Pattabhi Jois

"Theory itself is practice;
there is nothing more practical than forming ideas
and becoming aware of them in their psychological effects.
Every theory we hold practices upon us in one way or another"
James Hillman

Contemplative and mystical traditions often emphasise the necessity of direct experience. The underlying supposition being that ideas, thoughts, descriptions of reality (theory) are derived and sustained from an intellectual process that can only lead out of the body, to the ‘unreality’ of intellectual rumination, analytical categorisation or academic study; i.e. deeper into conditioned existence (to use the derogative umbrella term suggestive of the processes that bound one to ones mental constructs or to ones social or biological state).

This notion can lead to the ultimate suggestion (or the dogmatic assertion) that descriptions of experience inevitably diverge from the very experience that is being described.

In the previous post we saw how Rene Magritte succinctly pointed out this dilemma in his painting The Treachery of Images. This can be read as caution regarding mistaking the menu for the meal, and therefore never satisfying the reality hunger.

Further problems can develop when this notion is read not only as an initial caution regarding the limitations of language but as an ultimate statement regarding the fundamental nature of reality. That is when it reformulates itself in the following manner:

Reality, being multi faceted and infinite can never be entirely contained within a single description.

to:

All descriptions are illusory therefore they have no value in relation to reality.

In this post I will attempt to explore how this transition occurs with a view to loosening the fundamental stance that can crystallise into ones worldview, knowingly or not, as a result of this process.

Part of the appeal of yoga and meditation practices and their recent expansion and proliferation in the West is their ability to soften and loosen the dominant control of the thinking mind. Many who gravitate toward these practices find release in the bodily experience of breath, posture, devotional chant, and movement. This can be a healthy antidote in a society where thought and the products of thinking are glorified as our greatest achievements.

The hierarchy of our value systems are largely determined and governed by the explicit and subtle systems of reward and punishment structured around the achievements of thinking. Thus it can become increasingly difficult through our educational systems and work life (which for the most part are part and product of this system) to gather perspective on this process. Yoga, meditative inquiry, and methods of self-reflexivity, can offer such perspective and can provide an avenue to explore the function of thought without being enveloped by its content.

The mechanistic momentum of thought has a self-perpetuating vigour. Once the ball of thought is rolling it can easily envelope and consume the thinker in a complex web of analytical and illusory images and concepts. The seductive power being that the images that are created can easily assume the mantle of being independently real, that is, they are often assumed to exist in their own right prior to thinking about them.

Look at a painting of a tree. Think about the tree. Thought identifies leaves, branches, trunk, bark, etc. Continue the process and thought finds roots and may recall how roots travel down through the earth. The image of soil, moisture, nourishment, rain, clouds, sky, sun, breeze... Then, notice how with the delicate flicks of Corot's brush breeze becomes visible- air becomes paint, paint evokes taste, wetness, flesh and spirit... Now come back to the tree again.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Les Petits Denicheurs

The thinking process divided the tree into an assemblage of parts which endlessly proliferated beyond the first image one had of the tree. When consumed in the thinking process all those parts through labels and classifications can convincingly present themselves as being independent of each other.

When one steps out of the thinking process into a broader awareness of how things gather form and how form is determined by invisible processes, one can see not only the interaction of parts as a whole, but the whole celebrated within each part as it emerges more fully in it's 'eachness'. From this perspective the authority that the thinking process originally assumed, in the dissecting phase of analysis, is gently loosened.

The realisation that the images and conclusions that thought has provided are of relative value in relation to the broader reality can bring either or both, momentary despair or a deep solace depending on the content of the thoughts one is invested in.

To realise that the story of ones own suffering may be to some extent an illusion can bring relief, however when thought is invested in an illusion of grandeur this realisation can be equally disturbing.

The transition between loosening the grip of the thinking process to assuming that thought is of no value altogether is a dangerous one that can leave one floundering in a precarious and unsettling position somewhere between ones thinking processes and reality itself.

Disregarding thoughts that may have relative value can be not only dangerous on a practical level (one could deny the thought that tells one to stop at a red light on the basis that thought is illusory only to…) but can also be insidiously destructive on a psychological level potentially leaving one in a suspended state of self-mistrust.

The last line of David Whytes poem Farewell Letter written in the persona of his deceased mother reads:

P.S. All your intuitions were true.

What would happen if we didn’t doubt the thoughts, feelings and intuitions which may have no logical basis but on a deeper level provide a foundational connection to reality? And, perhaps more importantly what happens when we do?

One possibility is that we find security in the assumption that the products of thought- (ideas, intellectual exploration, knowledge itself) being relative and limited - have no relationship to reality. Such a conclusion provides the backbone for many of the belief systems that denigrate intellectual life, academic study or other activities that require vigorous intellectual discernment on the dubious grounds that thought is illusory.

This is a classic example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The bathwater being the thinking processes that mistakenly assume the heir of ultimate truth and the baby being the discerning intelligence that has the capacity to probe deeper into reality with the awareness that possessing it ultimately and entirely is an impossibility.

The human mind has infinite capacity and a multitude of functions many of which are being explored further everyday though both knowledge and experience, theory and practice. To assume the mind or the products of thought cannot take us deeper into reality is to deny and subvert the very process of evolution that has taken us beyond our animal ancestry. This is not only an arduous journey but an impossible one. One that’s laden with fear of the very mechanism which enables us not only to survive but to appreciate the immense and complex beauty of the world of which we are both part and product. Perhaps that 1% is the most important of all.

~~~FAREWELL LETTER

She wrote me a letter

after her death

and I remember

a kind of happy light

falling on the envelope

as I sat by the rose tree

on her old bench

by the back door

so surprised by its arrival

wondering what she would say

looking up before I could open it

and laughing to myself

in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time

for me to leave you.

I am afraid that the words

you are used to hearing

are no longer mine to give.

they have gone and mingled

back in the world

where it is no longer

in my power

to be their first

original author

nor their last

loving bearer.

You can only hear

motherly words of affection now

only from your own mouth

and only

when you speak them

to those

who stand

motherless

before you.

As for me I must forsake

adulthood

and be bound gladly

to a new childhood.

You must understand

this apprenticeship

demands of me

an elemental innocence

from everything

I have ever held in my hands.

I know your generous soul

is well able to let me go

you will in the end

be happy to know

my God was true

and I find myself

after loving you all so long,

in the wide,

infinite mercy

of being

mothered myself.

P.S. All of your intuitions were true.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~David Whyte

Body and Mind

2010-08-06T10:16:00.015+10:00

Body and Mind

The relationship of the body and the mind, both the apparent separateness and the merging indivisibility, has spurred and impelled a vast spectrum of philosophical and psychological inquiry, scientific investigation, and artistic exploration throughout recorded history. From the nucleus of this apparent duality belief systems have been founded and elaborated, the results of which are upheld and revised through institutions that structure our society and condition our worldviews. For this reason it seems important that this duality be re-explored afresh, free to the greatest possible degree of any predetermined agenda or underlying motive.

The word “yoga” is often translated as “union”- referring to the union between body and mind, thinker and thought, seer and seen, observer and observed, self and other. The very word “yoga” implies a focus toward the connection and the inseparability of either side of these dualities. Thus from the first encounter there is underlying supposition at play. That is; union, connectedness, joining, synthesis are emphasised and perhaps favoured over separateness, division, dislocation and fragmentation. This often leads to the tacit suggestion that union is fundamental (true) and that separation, boundaries, and the self, are either secondary and/or illusory.

Starting from this pre-supposition it can be difficult to explore the legitimacy and viability of this or alternate points of view. Could it be better to ask the question: Is there a view which honours both, (and therefore favours neither), the merging nor the separate aspects of body and mind?

Many Eastern perspectives generally suggest that during moments of unification we move closer to our fundamental nature and in moments when the mind is separated from the body we move toward a less favoured state of division and disharmony.

Western history can be read as triumph of the mind beyond bodily connection. Much has been achieved through the capacity of the mind alone (i.e. intellect independent of bodily connection), to the point in which the Western mind has come full circle back again into the body to draw from the connections that fuelled much of Eastern philosophical development.

Congruently one can trace an underlying movement from within Western artistic, poetic and philosophical traditions that acknowledges and pays homage to the embedded nature of body and mind. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleay Ponty is an example of a Western thinker whose work developed into a direct engagement with the intertwining of consciousness, body and world. The physicist/ philosopher David Bohm is another example whose primary concern for ‘undivided wholeness’ formed the impetus behind much of his work. There are also countless examples of pre-modern, modern and contemporary Western artists and poets who draw upon the intertwining of body/mind directly as subject or as a platform for further exploration.

As the lines can no longer be heavily drawn between East and West, nor can they be conclusively set between body and mind. There are times when the body and mind feel separate; moments of mental ecstasy with in the midst of bodily pain, freedom of thought during moments of physical disability; love, empathy and compassion whist being physically agitated or constrained. And then there are moments when the elation of mind meets the lightness of the body, when hope and possibility become a bodily experience, or when mental suffering is so acute that one feels it in the depths of ones heart. All these experiences shed a different light on the mind body relationship- so who is to say what is more real or fundamental- union or division?

Endnote: Injury in yoga practice.

A current vogue in the yoga world is the emphasis on minimising injury during practice. Terms like “alignment”, “anatomical correctness”, “neutral spine”, “pelvic tilt” and “safe practice” are relatively new introductions to the language used when approaching asana practice.

Anatomical study and the language associated with it are often introduced as a way of further understanding the workings of the body with a view to preventing injury. As the word ‘injury’ is associated with pain, disability, decay, it is tempting once the concept has been introduced for the mind to become fixated with avoiding it.

One of the functions of the mind is to impel fear. This is a necessary function- jumping out of the way of moving car or a falling tree is an example of when the instinct of fear can fulfil this function. Because we are biologically hard wired for survival this fear can easily become all encompassing and can extend beyond realms of its legitimate necessity.

The Western mind is use to dividing, separating, categorising, and labeling as a method of exploration and understanding. Anatomical classification is an example of this methodology. This can be used either as a useful and necessary antidote to fear, as a convenient avoidance mechanism, or as way of deepening understanding, depending on whether it is taken with a healthy grain of salt. That is when the method itself is not assumed to provide a complete picture of the thing or the situation described.

One of the implications gleaned from quantum mechanics is that observed phenomena is inevitably limited and influenced by the instrument of observation. Krishnamurti used to say “the description is not the described”. See Rene Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images in which written under an image of a pipe is the text “this is not a pipe”. The pipe will always be more than what could be said of it. Likewise, the body is a gestalt that though, in the process of observation, it may be separated into various parts, it can not be understood through the parts alone, as it is the complex and subtle intertwining of energy and form that shape its indivisible completeness and guide it’s ultimate mystery.

The journey into asana practice is not just the articulation of various components in the safest possible manner, but also an exploration into an unknown field where body and mind interact in ways that can never be completely known and may not be entirely safe. Has anybody ever looked at a photo of a challenging asana, or performed one and thought- “that looks/feels safe!” Safety may be possible, but the irony is if we are fully engaged in this mystery, which is the body mind connection, if we are humbly attentive to it, with neither dominance nor submission, we are probably more likely to practice safely than if our minds are fixated on the very thing we are attempting to avoid.

Rene Magritte The Treachery of Images 1928-29

Discussion points:

How is it that the body and the mind can simultaneously or consecutively, feel indivisibly intertwined yet completely fragmented and should either of these states be considered more 'real' than the other?

What does labeling something 'real' do to everything that excludes that category?

Freedom and Authority

2010-07-01T22:09:00.003+10:00

Freedom and Authority

Feeding the fire without suffocating the flame

Bad pizza is my guru.

Looking within at the deeper questions regarding what it is that is most needed in order to live a life fully (with meaning and significance), the concept of freedom would usually be either tacitly invoked or directly encountered. Be it freedom as an ultimate state of mind, an external condition (political or social), or just freedom from something; perhaps from suffering, in any or all of its various guises.

Other than the primal instincts toward security and biological fulfillment, the desire to ‘be free’ strikes at the heart of what it is that is driving human beings and what it is we are fundamentally seeking both, psychologically, spiritually and materially.

The concept often viewed in opposition to freedom is limitation. Limitation is seen to involve restriction, boundaries and the restraining of possibility and potentiality. Limitation can either be ontologically present (that is real prior to it being externally imposed) or applied willingly in order to control to a manageable degree the often overwhelmingly vast frontier of possibility.

Usually the method by which freedom is limited or controlled is by the use of authority, be it the authority of previously acquired knowledge, past experience, a fragmented and controlling part of oneself, or that of another human being or group; cult, religion or government.

Through authority one can develop both the trust and the expertise to approach and explore unknown frontiers to potentially push beyond the personal limitations of ones own pre- established understanding. Authority can also provide useful information to guide one toward that threshold of the unfamiliar.

Providing a map for a traveler new to the territory can serve a useful function. Problems however develop the moment when the map is mistaken for the terrain itself, at which point the authority of the ‘knower’ transfers, in the mind of either party, to the authoritarianism of the ‘all- knowing.’ This can occur in any arena where knowledge is being passed from a learned and experienced source to less knowledgeable (and perhaps more vulnerable) receiver of the information.

Upon being aware of this tendency the fire of freedom may begin to burn of its own accord at which point attempting to control it by authoritarian means can deaden the flame. The question then becomes; how to maintain the balance between feeding the fire and suffocating the flame? That is how to give knowledge, past experience, authority their rightful place but not be bound by them? How can one live with lessons learnt and at the same time be open to re-visioning? How can one simultaneously honour and relinquish a connection to a giver of light or a dispellor of darkness (to use the common, though far from literal, translation of the word 'guru')?

Recognizing that the fuel for the fire of freedom is not limited to the form it takes liberates this apparent dichotomy. Shifting the importance toward the knowledge itself rather than the method or the person by which one attained it, opens up the potential to gather fuel from a variety of sources. It may be that one gathers it through more knowledge passed on by the same authority, and that may be sustaining for a lifetime. But it may also come through daily awareness, through a relationship, a break-up, death or a near death experience, a good coffee, a surprising encounter, a synchronicity, a tragedy, through overwhelming confusion, despair or joy, a song, through ones spiritual practice, loneliness, artistic exploration, bad pizza, therapy or through close attention to an area of consciousness often ignored.

Via whatever means the flame is ignited and kept alive, maintaining a degree of space around the fire can give the flame a chance to breath. From here one can hopefully stay innocently warm without being burnt by the often harsh reality of lived experience and can therefore sustain a clearer perspective on whether limitation is imposed on a situation or implicit in it. This clarity, however limited and momentary, can set a foundation by which one can broaden the possibilities for freedom.

Unity and Separation.

2010-05-31T15:18:00.002+10:00

Unity and Separation.

We live in a world of endless divisions. Thoughts capacity to divide and categorise has taken our species beyond our primate origins into highly organised language based societies that attempt to control to varying degrees both our immediate and distant environments and the future consequences that stem from how we relate to those environments.

Division and separation is part of the thinking process, so much so that it often becomes difficult to discern whether thought creates all separation or if separation exists independently of thought as an inherent part of the internal and external world.

Yoga practice can initiate a process whereby divisions that sustain polarities such as: mind and body, thought and action, pleasure and pain, internal and external, unity and separation are called into question.

The breath used in Ashtanga yoga is called ujjayi. This is often translated as: victorious. One might ask; victorious over what?

Ujjayi has many functions. On an immediate level it can be tool to release tension and move into a posture. It can create the necessary heat (tapas) in the body and can facilitate the flow of vital energy (prana) through the control of locks (bandha). It can also be the vehicle by which the mind travels back into the body when awareness gets caught in the external world.

This could suggest that the victory of ujjayi is not of one thing over another but lies in flow between alternate sides of polarity, particularly the commonly maintained division between the internal and the external. This is particularly significant because the apparent reality attributed to this division provides the psychological framework that sustains the polarity of unity and separation. And as this framework sets the conditions by which we relate to such fundamental concepts, the worldviews we inherit and construct are either tacitly or directly affected by it.

The exploration into the polarity of unity and separation has a rich and long history, and the varying emphasis and conclusions that have been reached are often dependent upon the cultural and historical context in which the explorations took place.

Generally speaking Eastern philosophies suggest that unity is primary, that is; that which underlies all separation is connection. Whereas the western view is more inclined to emphasise the differences and the distinctions in the attempt to rationally discern and interpret reality. The consequences of adopting an either/or stance in relation to this polarity are far reaching.

The Eastern view leads to the ultimate suggestion that the boundaries around the self are illusory, therefore anything related to ego becomes suspect. The Western view ultimately leads to a reality so intensely fragmented that underlying relationships are often obscured or denied. Where one happens to stand on the spectrum of this polarity is often the outcome of circumstance; i.e. one’s cultural heritage.

Some key questions come to the fore:

Is there a view which is not the outcome of cultural bias and which therefore neither favours unity or separation?

Can unity and separation exist independently of each other?

Can there be unity without separation?

And what would it mean to separate if things were not already united?

Meditating upon such questions can lead to an understanding whereby both concepts are viewed as an embedded relationship and therefore lose meaning when extracted from each other. The ujjayi breath can both metaphorically and actually dissolve the distinctions that keep these polarities at a distance. The understanding that follows is capable of holding both experiences (and the concepts that result from the experiences) congruently. From this point of view neither unity nor separation are glorified as the fundamental reality. Fundamentalism is thus kept at bay by honoring both unity and separation with impartial discernment in a wholistic interpretation of reality.

Control and Surrender

2010-04-30T14:26:00.001+10:00

Control and surrender are inter-related concepts that play significant roles on the journey into yoga. Their relationship forms a dynamic interplay on which the practitioner may confront the limits of, and potentially transcend, self imposed boundaries or patterns of conditioning. This happens on an immediate level when one encounters a blockage of energy in the body or a boundary imposed by thought. Bringing the limitation into the breadth of awareness and surrendering to it, can create it’s own momentum which may allow the blockage to shift or release. This process may initiate a sense of vulnerability, for confronting the edges of possibility requires a relinquishing of control.

Control is the reverse side of surrender. As with many polarities (self- selfless, heavy- light, good- bad, unity- diversity) there is a tendency to favour one side of a polarity over the other. In simplified renderings of yogic principles surrender is often favoured over control. From this point of view control is often villainised and thus either suppressed or to a certain degree relinquished. The question might arise who or what is doing the suppressing? For paradoxically, control is never entirely done away with, for it is always imbued into the very fabric of surrender. This suggests that opposites may contain and be contained by each other. Thus when one appears to be letting go of control one may be just subjugating or projecting it outside the bounds of conscious attention.

Realising that control and surrender are actuality two sides of the same coin can allow the practitioner to give each a rightful place and in doing so maintain a faculty for discernment. However when a concept such as surrender is removed from the immediate context in which it is useful and necessary and is promoted for its own sake, the sense of vulnerability is prolonged. From this position subsequent concepts like loyalty and devotion can gather an intensified fervor.

Loyalty and devotion may also play significant roles in the journey toward or over the edge of preconceived or habitual limitation. However one might also recognise that these, like many other grand concepts, are often not what they at first appear to be, as much can lay dormant behind the weight of words, particular ones loaded with tradition and confused by daily rhetoric. It seems the grander the concept the wider its potential range of interpretation.

In an environment such as yoga school where the powerful swing between control and surrender forms the fabric of daily practice, maintaining a conscious awareness of how and for what purpose that power might be used, is in itself a deepening into yoga.

* The polarity of Freedom and Authority will be explored in the next blog.