This morning, I begin my day by trimming the wick of the candle that sits on the piece of furniture I have fashioned into an altar for my meditation sessions. It's a plain wooden box with a removable lid, not so very big. It sits in a corner of our guest room where our oldest comes to sleep when she's in town. Inside this box are stacks of the children's books we read to our youngest night after night after night when she was a smaller version of herself. These books--sacred in their own right--give some weight to this altar. And I like to think that the words pressed upon their pages--kind, but mischievous guardians all--will take my thoughts and prayers, my worries and my plans out for a spin, leaving me alone to practice keeping quiet, getting still.
I trim the wick and strike the match, today, like yesterday. I light the candle and sit in silence learning, once again, to watch my mind, to let it go, to recognize, even for a moment, what it feels like to be at peace. These are, after all, peace-keeping sessions, and I am definitely in training. It is easy to forget that the life of peace John Lennon thought we should all be living begins with each one of us, in the beginning, alone.
To advance my own understanding of Yoga, and the path of my own practice in particular, I have been reading the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I have checked out many translations of Patanjali's sutras over the years from various libraries. Recently, I settled upon purchasing my own copy, this one translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda who founded Integral Yoga and the Yogaville ashram in Virginia. Satchidananda's commentaries are simple and playful. (He was, after all, the opening speaker at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.) These characteristics are increasingly important to me because I am learning that it is all too easy to be rigid and austere when adopting yogic practices.
So who is Patanjali, what are these sutras, and why should I bother understanding them while I am trying to master downward facing dog, adho mukha svanasana? Sri Patanjali Maharishi is considered the Father of Yoga. He composed the sutras, or threads, as a means of systematizing the existing ideas and practices of the yogic science. There are a little more than 200 of them, and they are not intended to be read as a novel or something one could finish in a marathon reading session. Rather the sutras, as Satchidananda writes in the preface, are to be studied slowly and carefully. "Meditate on them," he instructs. He also suggests learning the most important and useful ones by heart, perhaps say, as you would a beloved poem. Which are the most important and useful? That will depend upon the individual student; Patanjali's threads were set down to help to guide us along our spiritual paths. Like the candle I light for my own sittings, the sutras are meant to light our way forward through the dark places in our lives.
While I waited in the car at my daughter's soccer practice last night, I thought more about this word sutra as thread. I have threaded many a bead to make necklaces and prayer strands for friends and teachers dear to me, so I understand in a very physical way this distinction. As a student, we learn, and as an apprentice, we do. When it comes our turn to teach--whether it is ourselves or our families, a classroom or a community--we add to this thread our personal aesthetic, which comes not merely from our study, but out of our experiences or the stuff of our lives. I see Patanjali's wisdom, then, in setting down the sutras for the practitioner to study and learn and for the teacher to impart. Like the Buddha who taught not to accept the wisdom of another without experiencing the truth of it ourselves, so the sutras of Patanjali are meant to be learned not only in the reading and study of them, but in their practice as well. This means, no one practice will look the same just as not one seeker resembles another. The result: Wisdom becomes tangible, and Truth becomes something we understand as Real.
"If you can control the rising of the mind into ripples--or the mind-stuff--you will experience Yoga." This is Patanjali's lesson in sutra number two, Yogas citta vṛitti nirodaḥ, as translated by Satchidananda. According to Satchinadanda, all of the other sutras continue to explain this one. It gives both the practice and definition of Yoga. It also provides its goal: To maintain peace of mind in all circumstances. That's it. Easy, right?
Lately, my mind stuff has been rippling like mad. A new opportunity has come my way, and I am thrilled. Still, new opportunities bring new anxieties, and anxiety sends awareness off into multiple directions. Think, awareness on steroids. Think of a mind like a freeway clover-leaf, at rush hour, with an accident in the mix. Or a bee-hive getting ready for the queen to arrive. Busy, busy, very busy. And very uncomfortable, despite the fact that it is good news I am anxious about. It's like this. We labor in obscurity; we do our small good thing--of course, wanting someone to notice--and one day, someone does. The axis shifts, a doorway opens. Suddenly, and with a boom, expectation descends. A whole lot of them, as a matter of fact. The clarity I had been growing more sure of is disturbed, and I am no longer in the still part of the lake but in the center of the ripples where the pebble has been cast. Peace of mind in all circumstances? For the moment, you can forget about it.
Gradually, I call myself back to the practice. I go back to what I know. I grade the papers, schedule computer time for composing my blog, go to practice, water the garden, make the school lunches, cook dinner, brush my teeth. And, there it is, I am peaceful again.
Enlightenment, or samadhi, happens slowly. One day, if we have been good and doing good as Satchidananda's guru used to say, it may happen all at once, and like the Buddha we will have attained satori. What then? We return to our work, our practice, our rituals, the stuff of our lives, and we grow more content, become more joyful, discover that we can be at peace.
"Before Satori, chop wood carry water; after Satori, chop wood carry water."
Every semester, when I meet my students in the classroom for the first time, I write on the board these words from the Japanese Buddhist monk, Dōgen Zenji :"The way is here. The path leads everywhere." In other words, it all happens here. Be good and do good, here in the classroom; take that goodness with you when you leave. Learn the lessons. Do the practice. Entertain the possibility of enlightenment. Then, come back and get your work done.
I trim the wick and strike the match, today, like yesterday. I light the candle and sit in silence learning, once again, to watch my mind, to let it go, to recognize, even for a moment, what it feels like to be at peace. These are, after all, peace-keeping sessions, and I am definitely in training. It is easy to forget that the life of peace John Lennon thought we should all be living begins with each one of us, in the beginning, alone.
To advance my own understanding of Yoga, and the path of my own practice in particular, I have been reading the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I have checked out many translations of Patanjali's sutras over the years from various libraries. Recently, I settled upon purchasing my own copy, this one translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda who founded Integral Yoga and the Yogaville ashram in Virginia. Satchidananda's commentaries are simple and playful. (He was, after all, the opening speaker at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.) These characteristics are increasingly important to me because I am learning that it is all too easy to be rigid and austere when adopting yogic practices.
So who is Patanjali, what are these sutras, and why should I bother understanding them while I am trying to master downward facing dog, adho mukha svanasana? Sri Patanjali Maharishi is considered the Father of Yoga. He composed the sutras, or threads, as a means of systematizing the existing ideas and practices of the yogic science. There are a little more than 200 of them, and they are not intended to be read as a novel or something one could finish in a marathon reading session. Rather the sutras, as Satchidananda writes in the preface, are to be studied slowly and carefully. "Meditate on them," he instructs. He also suggests learning the most important and useful ones by heart, perhaps say, as you would a beloved poem. Which are the most important and useful? That will depend upon the individual student; Patanjali's threads were set down to help to guide us along our spiritual paths. Like the candle I light for my own sittings, the sutras are meant to light our way forward through the dark places in our lives.
While I waited in the car at my daughter's soccer practice last night, I thought more about this word sutra as thread. I have threaded many a bead to make necklaces and prayer strands for friends and teachers dear to me, so I understand in a very physical way this distinction. As a student, we learn, and as an apprentice, we do. When it comes our turn to teach--whether it is ourselves or our families, a classroom or a community--we add to this thread our personal aesthetic, which comes not merely from our study, but out of our experiences or the stuff of our lives. I see Patanjali's wisdom, then, in setting down the sutras for the practitioner to study and learn and for the teacher to impart. Like the Buddha who taught not to accept the wisdom of another without experiencing the truth of it ourselves, so the sutras of Patanjali are meant to be learned not only in the reading and study of them, but in their practice as well. This means, no one practice will look the same just as not one seeker resembles another. The result: Wisdom becomes tangible, and Truth becomes something we understand as Real.
"If you can control the rising of the mind into ripples--or the mind-stuff--you will experience Yoga." This is Patanjali's lesson in sutra number two, Yogas citta vṛitti nirodaḥ, as translated by Satchidananda. According to Satchinadanda, all of the other sutras continue to explain this one. It gives both the practice and definition of Yoga. It also provides its goal: To maintain peace of mind in all circumstances. That's it. Easy, right?
Lately, my mind stuff has been rippling like mad. A new opportunity has come my way, and I am thrilled. Still, new opportunities bring new anxieties, and anxiety sends awareness off into multiple directions. Think, awareness on steroids. Think of a mind like a freeway clover-leaf, at rush hour, with an accident in the mix. Or a bee-hive getting ready for the queen to arrive. Busy, busy, very busy. And very uncomfortable, despite the fact that it is good news I am anxious about. It's like this. We labor in obscurity; we do our small good thing--of course, wanting someone to notice--and one day, someone does. The axis shifts, a doorway opens. Suddenly, and with a boom, expectation descends. A whole lot of them, as a matter of fact. The clarity I had been growing more sure of is disturbed, and I am no longer in the still part of the lake but in the center of the ripples where the pebble has been cast. Peace of mind in all circumstances? For the moment, you can forget about it.
Gradually, I call myself back to the practice. I go back to what I know. I grade the papers, schedule computer time for composing my blog, go to practice, water the garden, make the school lunches, cook dinner, brush my teeth. And, there it is, I am peaceful again.
Enlightenment, or samadhi, happens slowly. One day, if we have been good and doing good as Satchidananda's guru used to say, it may happen all at once, and like the Buddha we will have attained satori. What then? We return to our work, our practice, our rituals, the stuff of our lives, and we grow more content, become more joyful, discover that we can be at peace.
"Before Satori, chop wood carry water; after Satori, chop wood carry water."
Every semester, when I meet my students in the classroom for the first time, I write on the board these words from the Japanese Buddhist monk, Dōgen Zenji :"The way is here. The path leads everywhere." In other words, it all happens here. Be good and do good, here in the classroom; take that goodness with you when you leave. Learn the lessons. Do the practice. Entertain the possibility of enlightenment. Then, come back and get your work done.
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