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| Author photo: Elemental weathering |
using everything
a continuous present
--Gertrude Stein
I am sitting here at the computer in the room where I do my writing imagining the quiet in that big space we occupied all week at UCLA for the visit of Ashtanga Yoga's Paramaguru Sharath Jois. It was a week--for precision's sake, six days--of practice, conference and community. Ashtangis from all over California and other states and nations came together to stand at the foot of their mats awaiting Sharath's call to practice together: Ekam, inhale. In Sanskrit, ekam means one. We begin this practice with the count of one, and as one, we inhale together the intention of those who established this discipline many ages ago, and which Patanjali, the transcriber of this science and discipline, set down in his first lesson or sutra, "Now the instruction of Yoga is being made." And what will that instruction of Yoga ultimately make of us? In the words of Sharath's Guru and grandfather Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, with continued practice Ashtanga Yoga will make of us sages of our one true nature.
To the right of the computer I am typing with is the only window in the room we call the office, and which I refer to as my writing chamber. See above for prior reference. As if for my singular delight, a hummingbird built her nest in the earliest days of spring high up in the tree that occupies pretty much the entire view from that one window. I like it. The world looks so green from its vantage. Summer is closing in, and that nest is quite empty. At dinner, we watch the two very busy offspring routinely feed from the plants in our backyard and the hillside that escapes from it. I wonder if that nest even registers in their memory, so full are they of their arrival to each new moment. Today, as I gaze out that window during the natural pauses in this writing, I cannot help but compare this very small empty nest to the Student Activity Center on the UCLA campus where Sharath's six-day call to practice has reached its end. I imagine the energy of the community's week-long practice settling around the stillness of that now vacant hall, and the final communal exhale making its way out into the world like those newly hatched hummingbirds. Where will that exhale lead us? According to Sharath, and his grandfather before him--a man who dedicated his life to the transmission of this royal practice--with enough devotion to this lineage, we will find ourselves immersed in an ocean of wisdom. I, for one, look forward to the day I will swim there.
As of yet, I have not had the great good fortune of studying in Mysore, India with Sharath at the Institute his grandfather built to teach this practice. In the tradition of Parampara, or the unbroken transmission of knowledge from a teacher to his/her student, one's education takes the form of a residency. The shishya (student) not only trains daily with his Guru, but remains with his Guru as a family member for the duration of her education. This is the idea behind Mysore. Every year, students of this lineage apply for a spot at the Institute for a three-month intensive practice with Sharath. During one of the conference days at UCLA, Sharath told us that applications now number 5,000 annually. So, my sole personal experience with Sharath thus far is the one I experienced during this recent six-day intensive at UCLA. And yet, a black and white picture of Sharath and his grandfather sits on my altar, and I sit before it every time I take my seat for my meditation and pranayama practice. It is a playful photo of the two--Guru and shishya, grandfather and grandson. That photo reveals a devotion shared between these two men, and this is what makes me feel that I share something personal with Sharath. I, too, had a special love for my maternal grandfather.
The summer before I turned eight, we moved from Illinois to California, leaving behind the world as we knew it. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends that numbered into triple digits. And, of course, we said good-bye to our grandparents. It was not until a few years later, after my grandmother had died, that this grandfather flew to California to stay with us. After he returned home, I began writing him letters. The prose was rather standard and dull in the beginning: Dear Grandpa, How are you? I am doing well. What are you doing? But through the course of writing these letters, I became more inventive. These letters taught me something important about writing. Reach for a more interesting way of saying something routine. At some point, I started sharing a joke or a riddle in these letters with him. Soon enough, my grandfather started sending me riddles and jokes in return. He subscribed to the Aurora Beacon, one of the daily newspapers of the time. Every day, the Beacon printed a joke or a riddle, which my grandfather would clip from the paper and enclose in a letter to me.
Then, one birthday, my grandfather sent to me a small spiral bound book, like a datebook that had gone out of date. Upon each page, my grandfather had pasted row after row of jokes and riddles he had collected from numerous copies of the Beacon. He had carefully cut the strips and pasted them in the book in sandwich style with the answer to the riddle laid down first and pasted so that the question portion of the riddle or the joke covered over the answer. He had determined to paste just the left edge of each strip. That way, I could lift up the top sandwich strip from the right edge to reveal the bottom strip, which held the clue to the puzzle underneath. I would later marvel at the time it had taken my grandfather to make this book for me; and in its making, I considered all of the thoughts that passed through him, the coffee he may have been sipping as he worked, the sounds of life around his house he listened to as he continued this task. I had never held something that held so much love.
When I first saw Sharath, I was seated in the hallway along with some of the closest members of my yoga tribe, awaiting our turn to practice. It was day one, and we were all registered to practice the led Intermediate Series. Sharath was in the big hall finishing with the students there for led Primary practice. When the door to the hall opened, I turned my head at its sound, and there in the hallway walking toward us was our Paramaguru Sharath Jois. I raised my hands to my chest and brought them together in the gesture of the Namaste greeting. I looked at him and smiled, my head bowing slightly. He looked at me and smiled in return, never pausing in his errand. I grabbed the arm of my friend closest to me, both of us overcome, each of us smiling and dabbing at tears. Later, in his presence during class, I felt Sharath's steadiness throughout practice. Then, on my second day of Intermediate practice, toward the end of practice, Sharath was one row in front of me and to the right of my mat where I watched him help a student drop back from a backbend to grab her ankles. In Sanskrit this pose is known as triang mukha uttanasana and translates as "three limbs facing intense West stretch pose. Needless to say, it is an advanced pose. Eventually a practitioner's body opens enough to allow her to grab her thighs and stand while bent at the waist facing backward.
This pose comes toward the end of the Intermediate Series. I was able to watch at this point in the practice because all practitioners have completed three backbends and then have stood up and dropped back for three more backbends. At the end of this backbending sequence comes the opportunity for triang mukha uttanasana. All students who cannot do this pose unsupported, almost everyone, wait for the possibility of being guided into the pose by Sharath. It was the smallest of gestures on the part of Sharath, but it brought home to me this man's devotion to both his grandfather and this path, and, of course, by extension, all of us who practice. I watched his hands at this woman's waist, steady and steadying her before she began to drop back and into this pose. I saw in those hands that ocean of wisdom this practice guarantees for the devoted; I saw his grandfather's sturdy instruction in those hands; I saw the sacrifice both of these men have made to keep this practice alive and thriving into the 21st century. What can I say? I was overcome with joy and tears again.
On the very last day of practice, it was the very last question of the final conference period that brought the whole week into a moment of clarity for me. One of the students who had practiced all week with us at UCLA had also been at Stanford the previous week to practice with Sharath. (Sharath's U.S. tour includes four stops, two in California--at Standford and at UCLA--one in New York and one in Miami.) The student had remembered that Sharath had asked the Stanford practitioners whether, as a result of practice, they had seen God. Like a good student, this practitioner had picked up on the thread of that question and turned the inquiry on Sharath. He asked Sharath whether he has seen God, and if so, could he talk about that experience. Sharath explained it this way: God has no shape. God is all energy. Even the scientists now are doing research that involves what they have determined are god particles. Atman is our inner soul and our inner soul is very pure. This is the ocean we are laboring to enter; this is what our asana practice is preparing our body to receive. God is energy. Positive thoughts create positive energy. In other words, do good and be good, and all is coming.
To follow the path of Ashtanga Yoga is to discover at last that the answer lies within, a notion Yusef Cat Stevens once introduced to me by way of his music in the late 1970s. Peace and joy, man. Peace and joy. This is the divine Truth within. We are training our bodies to return to this Truth, which we understood perfectly when we first came into this world. Throughout life, well, the message gets lost in translation. And the search for that translation? This is the path of our lives. And this is what I saw in Sharath's beautiful calm hands, steady and patient at the waist of this student. I saw a piece of this Truth, a mere particle of energy; and suddenly I knew I had found my teacher.
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