Intensive 1 - Reading
Read the below passage and comment on what your biggest take away is.
Asana as a Technique and the Practice of Hatha Yoga by Godfrey Devereaux
It is important for students to note and understand the distinction between the quality of posture and the externality of its shape: it is indeed possible to master many of the complex geometrical arrangements that have come to be known as Asanas, without regard to the basic disposition of the body, breath, or the mind “within” those shapes. If a student’s training is characterized by struggle, even though there may appear to be mastery of the body and its possibilities, no Yoga is present. The following section is an excerpt from a transcribed talk given by Godfredev. It addresses the relationship between the practice of posture and the transformation of consciousness that characterizes Asana.
“I’d like to begin to contextualize the practice of yoga postures within the concept of Form. Of the five elements of yoga practice, form is the earth aspect. The five different aspects of the yoga method, and the five techniques expressing the five elements of the yoga method, are inherently not separate. So when we practice posture, what we’re trying to find out – – in action, in the body – – is the true nature of the form aspect of doing yoga, and through that, what the true nature of form is within the whole manifestation of existence itself.
Obviously each yoga posture has its own shape, its own form. Even though some of the postures have similar forms, nevertheless, for them to be the unique postures that they are, they have to have different shapes. Shape making is an important aspect of yoga, an important part of the power of the practice. Its importance and power rest to a great extent on the integrity of the forms we assume. It’s not enough to make a rough approximation of the shape. You may get a bit of exercise, stretch this muscle, or contract and tighten that muscle. You may get stiffness here and tension there, but this is not yoga. You may feel like you’ve had a bit of a workout, but this is still not yoga.
Within the context set forth by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, the pragmatic purpose of posture practice is to free the body from tension (II-47), and establish it in joyful steadiness, or tranquil stability – – sthira sukam (II-46). Tranquil stability and joyful steadiness obviously mean no tension. So, in order to arrive in sthira sukam, the body must be free from tension relative to the shape of the posture, relative to its particular form. Each one of those hundreds of yoga posture addresses itself to the potentiality of tension in the body in a unique and different way. So each one of those forms is a unique opportunity to release tension from the body.
However, most of the postures are to one degree or another unnatural. This does not mean impossible to execute: they are not outside the capacity of the human body. Many are simply uncommon or unusual, not used by most people in their lives. Gymnasts, athletes, dancers, and acrobats may know them, but even so, there’s a huge range of forms or shapes amongst the postures that bear very little relationship to the way you normally live. Therefore, they can be a direct and successful invitation for tension to enter the body if they’re not approached with care, integrity and understanding.
Take for example a posture like Virabhadrasana, in which you turn the trunk forward, bend the front leg, stretch the arms up and look up. If this is not done with care and understanding, it will develop tension in the inter-vertebral spaces in the lower back, the neck, and the shoulders. Rather than being good for you, the posture becomes dangerous: even if it’s developing your stamina and your concentration. Even if it’s developing your determination, it’s still damaging your back and your neck. So precision in the expression of form – – – in the articulation of the body into various positions – – – becomes the fundamental way of not only securing the effectiveness of the yoga postures, but also ensuring your safety.
You could look at the form of the body in a posture and consider angles, relationships between planes, and relationships between lines, as if the body was a geometrical arrangement. But this is not very helpful: every person’s body has a unique pattern of tension, or limitation, and a unique pattern of potential or capability. Even though any given posture has its inherently perfect line, that line exists only for a body free from tension relative to that shape. If your body is not free from tension, then the perfect line is not available, and trying to impose the perfect line or the perfect shape is an invitation to tension. So looking for the line, or establishing the form of a posture, has to be a process of self-enquiry: svadhyaya, a sensitive, honest, and open investigation of what your potentiality is, what your capability is – – – right now. This enquiry is undertaken without regard to what your capability was yesterday, and without regard to what you would like your capability to be.
Everyone lines themselves up slightly differently. But even so, in order for Virabhadrasana to be Virabhadrasana, the basics of its shape must be present. For instance, nobody should bend the back leg, even if that means the front leg only bends one degree. The bending of the front leg is not the point of Virabhadrasana: the point is what’s happening in the whole body, and if the back leg is bending, the lower back is accumulating stress: it is compromised and probably being damaged. Damage to the lower back may not become obvious until years later, and even then it’s not obvious it has arisen from Virabhadrasana – – – it was because somebody pushed you over, or you fell off your bicycle – – – or whatever. But perhaps you fell over because you damaged your back in Virabhadrasana, and the integrity of the spinal muscles was lost. So even though the description given of the movements to be taken refers to a specific shape – – – you could say a geometrical pattern – – – how you express that shape, where you go, how you accommodate your limitations,
depends on you.
Patanjali has given a compass to guide you. That compass is sthira sukam, joyful steadiness: a disposition of being grounded that facilitates comfort and release. Sthira Sukham applies to the body as a whole, to its shape as a whole, to its form as a whole – – – to every single part of it. So if one part is not stable the whole cannot be comfortable. If one part is not comfortable the whole cannot be stable: shtiram sukam has to be applied throughout awareness of the whole body as it expresses the form of the posture. And even though the postures are many, addressing yourself to the form of the body in each one of the postures is always exactly the same. You always have two legs, two arms, two hands, et cetera. This remains the same, no matter what the shape is.
The unique similarity within the variety of forms is the articulation of awareness in action. This articulation is always exactly the same: a spirallic extension of the trunk, radiating into the limbs equally. So you’re looking for a similar internal action and awareness in each externally different posture: within diversity, unity. For example, how far apart should your feet be in Virabhadrasana? This is not determined by any geometrical criteria. It is determined in your own practice by the presence or absence of shtira sukam: your stability is always that upon which your comfort depends. In a standing posture stability always depends entirely on grounding your foundation. Any builder will tell you this is obvious. There is no point in bothering yourself with the roof: if the foundations have not been correctly laid, the roof will be off. There is no way out. And this is the same in a yoga posture.
The active grounding of the foundation in the yoga posture happens breath by breath, second by second, moment by moment. It is not like building a house, where once you’ve laid the foundation you can forget about it. That means you ground the parts of the body in contact with the floor as fully, evenly, and actively as possible – – – while recognizing that this contact, this grounding, is by necessity constantly fluctuating. All you’re trying to do is minimize and stabilize that fluctuation. It’s not about being aggressive, not about imposing stillness or forcing stability. Again, it’s an inquiry: is it possible to keep both the front and back foot as grounded as possible? And as the answer starts to become, no, then the question has to be asked, “Have I not gone far enough – – -have I gone too far“? If the answer is yes, then you adjust.
What that means for many people in Virabhadrasana is that the bending of the front leg, the forward movement of both the body and the attention – – – which are the most obvious results of the actions in the pose – – – must rest upon and originate in grounding the back foot: attention must be kept to the back. Grounding the back foot, especially the heel, but also of the inner edge of the foot, always depends upon the activity of the leg. If the back leg is not working, it is going to bend; and even if the back heel does not come up, it loses full contact with the floor, in which case the spine is no longer supported. Going deeper into the posture without regard for the back heel punishes the spine. You can’t feel it because you are probably thinking about something else, maybe how difficult it all is – – – how hard you are working. But how difficult it is, is something else entirely. Bending the leg doesn’t require any thought. If thought is required, it is best expressed as enquiry: “am I grounding my foundation?” But thought isn’t really necessary. Feeling is enough. Feeling is what tells you if your foot is grounded properly – – – not thought. Thought might ask the question, but thought cannot answer the question.
If the back foot becomes ungrounded, stability is compromised and lost. Sthira is not present and therefore sukam cannot be present – – – no matter how easy you are taking it, no matter how much you are giving yourself a break from effort. Effort is not the point, and ease does not mean no effort: ease means no tension – – – there is a difference. Sukam refers to that difference. It doesn’t refer to doing the posture in the most lackadaisical way. This is not yoga: this is stretching to relax without regard to damage being done to the body. So you could say that your effort is directed primarily to sthira, to stability. Effort is directed primarily to stabilizing, grounding, and securing your foundation. And then to actions that may be going on elsewhere to create freedom and ease.
So, in all postures in which you turn the pelvis along with the front foot – – – the double plane postures – – – how much you turn the back foot depends on the capacity of your body, specifically the restrictions in your pelvis. Likewise, your current capacity determines whether or not you move the front foot to its side, or not. You can move the front foot a lot to its side in order to become more stable, but if you go too far, the ability to release is lost: the posture becomes stagnant; you drop downwards and there is no lift. Likewise, if you don’t move your front foot enough, you can’t turn, and there is no release. So the foot is not moved according to a geometrical measurement; it is moved according to the compass of sthira sukam. And this is always the case, with every adjustment, in every posture. You thereby refine the shape of the posture into its true form, which is the unique combination of line, plane, and effort in which your body is most deeply released.
I don’t take you into the classical postures because you are not ready: you don’t have the body awareness or the training in the muscles to safely do them. If you continue to do them as you have, you will be hurting yourself. But if you go step by step, you will know when you are ready for any action. Executing actions in a state of unreadiness, especially within the strangeness of a yoga posture, is bound to be harmful – – – no matter how much it may develop your strength, or your pride. So little by little, step by step – – – yoga unfolds like that. Life also …
Patanjali’s definition of asana is simple: “sthira-sukham-asanam”, joyful steadiness in the body free from tension. Sthira sukam, joyful steadiness. Sthiram is steadiness, stability, security, effort, or stillness. Sukam is ease, comfort, openness, and joy. So this is what you’re looking for – – – not flexibility, not strength, not stamina – – – yoga practice is not physical exercise You’re looking to release the body from tension on the basis of establishing it in sthira sukam. Yoga practice is an invitation to awareness of that which is actually happening, so that you can live your life as it is, instead of pretending to be something or someone that you’re not, instead of living your life as something it isn’t. Because, despite the popular belief otherwise, you only live once, and when you’re dead, you’re dead. The genetic code that is currently expressing your existence is unique, and it will never ever exist again. You have one chance to live your life, and it’s now. It’s not tomorrow – – – it’s right now. Yoga is simply an invitation to honor the life that you’ve been given, by living it according to the capacity that it has, not by trying to make your body be like John Scott or Richard Freeman. This is an invitation to despair and dissatisfaction. Subtle perhaps, not admitted probably – – – but dissatisfaction nevertheless.
The form or shape of a yoga posture is fundamentally a lens- – – an aperture – – – which Patanjali has opened. We look through it to find out what is actually happening in our lives. This lens is comprised of ten facets called yama and niyama. So within the form of the postures you are being invited to recognize the presence or absence of sensitivity, honesty, openness, focus, generosity, commitment, contentment, passion, self-awareness, and selflessness.
When your body is challenged, when it has less capacity to articulate a given shape, Yama and Niyama will be compromised more than when your body has the capacity to make the shape. The degree to which you must compromise Yama and Niyama in assuming any shape is an indication of how far you should be going. So the application of the principle compass of stiram sukam is within the context of yama niyama: all enquiry is undertaken with sensitivity, openness, honesty, focus, generosity, commitment, contentment, passion, self-awareness and selflessness. With these ten factors, or you could say twelve – – – sthira, sukam, ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha, suaca, santosa, tapas, svadhyaya and isvarapranidhana, you are being invited to become aware of
what is actually happening, in order to become aware of what is actually possible.
In other words, yama and niyama are the tools of your enquiry. You are not an engineer. Life is your engineer. Life has determined what you can do. All you can do is see what you can do, and how you are doing it. Your physical capacity in the moment, right now, any moment, is predetermined: it is what it is. And the purpose of yoga is to just find out what it is: to just use it – – -to let the shape of the posture be an invitation to your capacity to express itself.
So the result, the form, or the appearance, of what you are doing is not the point. The point is what’s happening inside: Shtira or not, Sukam or not, Ahimsa or not, Satya or not. Are you actually awakening to your capacity? Are you actually alive to your life? Or are you trying to pretend to be something, or someone else? Trying to be somebody else does not work: even identical twins do not have two identical bodies, two identical forms. Each one is unique. Likewise, each one of the postures is unique, and each one of our bodies is unique. Nevertheless, each posture and each body is guided and articulated in the same way. And only one aspect of it has so far been talked about: the twelve principles, including Yama niyama, sthira sukam. Just bear in mind when you’re practicing that you are never likely to be as stable, or as relaxed as you would like, and that’s fine. Simply enquire into how stable and relaxed you can be, and as that becomes ok, you will relax more. As you relax more, you’ll become more stable – – – if you are able to accept your restrictions. And if you are able to honor your capacity as it is, only then will that capacity increase.
Utilization of the postures and the cultivation of the freedom of sthira sukam within them is directed towards one single and very simple end, which is simply to free the body from tension. All kinds of things have been said about yoga since Patanjali, most of which lead only to a dead end if they’re pursued: you may well develop superhuman strength, you may well develop the ability to hold your breath for five minutes, you may well develop the ability to read people’s minds, but these things tend to make you less relaxed due to anxiety about losing them, or pride about having them. So there’s a huge magical element that has been imposed on Patanjali by the hatha yogis of the middle ages. Of course if you’re interested in magic then fair enough. But if you’re interested in living in harmony with yourself, with others, the world, and with life itself, then beware of all of these temptations that are presented in yoga books about power, about shakti, about siddhis, about the ability to control your life and the lives of others. It can be done. You can exert control over your life up to a point. You can control other people somewhat, but not while being relaxed and at peace with yourself, and not with any understanding of what control really means – – – what power really is, and where it really comes from.
Again, within the context set forth by Patanjali, the yoga method is directed at freeing the body from tension. His description of what the body feels like when it is free from tension is what the word asana means. Asana is not a shape: asana is the state or experience that is being invited – – – perhaps – – – within the process of articulating the shape. Take Pascimottanasana for example, which means to intensely stretch the back of the body – – – that’s the shape. Within that shape, the experience of
asana may or may not come.
Patanjali defines asana completely as “joyful steadiness in the body free from tension and manifesting the infinite beyond duality”. The dualities or “opposites” (dvandva) that he is talking about are primarily structural. Most directly they are experiences of front-back, left-right, topbottom, inside-outside, and centre-periphery. Asana is freedom from the experience of these dualities – – – which Patanjali assumes is an inherent impediment to meditation. As such, asana is freedom from the experience of the body as an object, as something “other” than you.
This does not mean that objectification never happens again. It means that asana is another possible disposition or perspective from which to experience the body and within that disposition there is an incredible spaciousness and lightness and ease. The potentiality of this experience is developed in yoga posture by cultivating sthira sukham in the midst of intense and often incredibly complicated action – – – using each part of the body in a very specific way, a way that allows you to no longer feel
those parts and the actions they express as separate. So you could say that as a technique, asana is paradoxical: its aim is to free you from the experience of the body as a separate form, to free you from the objectification of yourself as a body, but it accomplishes this through the articulation and investigating of the nature of form itself.
The pragmatic significance of the words “manifesting the infinite beyond duality” is then really simple: established in asana, you don’t feel your body anymore; you don’t feel the usual sensations that tell you there is a left side of something, a front of the something – – – of the knee, of the arm, or of the head. Within asana these kinds of sensations do not arise, or let’s say you don’t perceive them in a way that can detract from your sense of stability. So relative to left right, front back, top bottom,
inside outside, centre periphery – – – what’s happening in the nervous system is not the theme of your conscious mind.
By the phrase “manifesting the infinite beyond duality”, Patanjali doesn’t mean anything weird, esoteric, or beyond your capability: you all know what it means to be free from the perception of your body as an object – – – which is how it is experienced for instance when something’s wrong with it. If you are doing something that really interests or satisfies you – – – watching the sunset, or listening to Mozart – – – the body, as a body, disappears from your awareness, even the parts that you are using: your ears are not present as objects when you are listening to Mozart, or at least when you’re hearing Mozart. And when you lie down in a shaded hammock, or on the beach in the sun, for a moment your backache doesn’t bother you; tightness in your left hip doesn’t talk to you; the lack of mobility in your right shoulder does not impinge itself on your attention. During these times, even though the body is present as an object in space, particularly to someone else who might see you, it is not the theme of your awareness. We are all familiar with this. We all know what asana is without necessarily recognizing it as anything special, or something hard to get. Its uniqueness becomes apparent when you recognize it’s happening, and you recognize that happening relative to
the experience of the body as an object.
Now I want to speak about how the structural dualities of the body are pragmatically transcended in the yoga postures. Most effectively, this transcendence comes from the practice of the bandhas. The human nervous system has an infinite potentiality for object perception. Mr Iyengar has made objects in the body that he didn’t even know existed, and he’s seen and felt actions in other’s bodies that they themselves couldn’t feel. This sort of thing can go on forever. You can carry on making objects and actions as long as you refine your awareness, and just like the physicist, who never gets to the fundamental particle, you never get to the fundamental part of the body. Perspective is the law of experience and perception: no matter how much you refine your perception, you still only experience an aspect of that which is- – – get a more powerful instrument and you only see something smaller, a different facet of what has always been there. The beauty of the bandhas is that you don’t have to go in that direction. You can do what yoga implies: you can unify instead of fragment by allowing the dynamic of the bandhas to radiate from the core of your equally into the rest of the body – – – the left upper, right lower, going into the left arm left hand, right leg right foot, and etcetera.
The bandhas are expressed most freely – – – let’s say in the right arm – – – if the right is free of tension. But you don’t actually have to address yourself to the tension itself: you don’t have to say, “Is there tension in my shoulder?” You just try and express the bandhas within the context of Yama and Niyama, and you let the left hand’s expression of the bandhas speak to the right hand, and the left foot to the left leg, and etcetera. The bandhas allow the apparently separate parts of the body to communicate. Each part recognizes itself as unified with the other parts because of the
comprehensive continuity of the spiraling dynamic and its structural expression – – – which is liftingbroadening- lengthening-opening and etc. Each part can thus encourage the others: the left can say, “look, I’ve got it – – – it feels like this, now you do it”. So, when you recognize the spiraling dynamic and its structural expression in one particular place, you just look for it everywhere. And you are looking for the same thing everywhere: a lifting-broadening- lengthening-opening that creates space, lightness, and ease in action. Eventually, the actions that could be analyzed into separate things by an anatomist spontaneously generate one another: you don’t think about individual actions, you just think about opening, releasing, and relaxing.
Opening and relaxing is sukham, and it cannot happen without stability, which is sthira. Mulabandha establishes sthira, and uddiyanabandha establishes opening. Take for instance uttanasana – – – forward bend. In uttanasana, you stand with the feet apart and activate the internal feet spirals as you tip the pelvis forward and fold toward the legs. The internal feet spirals release the pelvic floor as the inner thighs move back and the buttock bones come apart, and this is the opening of sukham. However, if you carry on too much with the internal spiral, you start to fall
forwards. Opening must therefore be balanced with stability – – – sthira – – -which arises from the activation of the external spiral: broadening from the mound of the big toe to the mound of the little toe, and extending back along the outer edge of the foot to the outer heel, limits the opening of the buttock bones, by slowing the forward tilt of the pelvis and compressing the outer hips inwards. Combined with the initial opening, that inward compression pushes the spine out like toothpaste from a tube, and it releases, relaxes, and descends effortlessly.
Thus, the bandhas constitute the process of freeing the body from tension, so that it manifests the infinite beyond duality is. Normally, our attempts to establish freedom focus in the area of our immediate intent – – – into the hamstrings in forward bends, or the shoulders in backbends – – – whatever. With a partial approach only a relative freedom is established, and that usually comes at the price of restriction or tension somewhere else. But if you work with the bandhas this can’t happen: the spiraling dynamic establishes an equivalent freedom, which radiates from the core of the body into the left and right, front and back, top and bottom, inside and outside, and etc.
As you activate the bandhas, you can feel very clearly what’s happening in the lungs: the lifting, broadening, and opening. As you activate the feet spirals, you can feel very clearly their impact on the pelvis: the opening and the stabilizing. As you activate the arm spirals, you can feel very clearly their impact on the front and back of the upper torso. When you combine what’s happening in the pelvis with what’s happening in the lungs, and then what’s happening in lungs because of the arms, you are deeply enmeshed in a process that eschews conceptualization – – – though conceptualizing before it has matured can be helpful. You no longer are operating as if each part of the body is separate. And you are no longer operating as if the actions being performed are separate. You can feel that what done to the ball of the big toe manifests clearly in the lungs. What this means is the usual distinction between the different parts of the body – – – here’s the finger, here’s the hand, here’s the forearm, here’s the upper arm, here’s the shoulder – – – is recognized as a function of the mind; and if you say to yourself, “extend the little finger”, you can feel it in the lung, because you have actually done something to the lung, the shoulder, the arm, the elbow, the forearm, the wrist, and the hand – – – simply by applying intent to the finger.
So the bandhas foster the realization that the apparently separate parts of the body turn out to be connected in a very specific way: they are absolutely and totally interconnected, which means that their connection is primordial – – – prior to any conceptual recognition of it as a fact. If you are sensitive enough while moving any part of the body, that movement and its structural effects can be felt in any other part – – – any part. You can become somatically, functionally, comfortable with the interconnectivity of the apparently separable parts of the body.
When you start to realize that the apparently separable parts of the body are not actually and inherently separate, the significance of the word yoga is being manifest in your experience. You haven’t unified lung and finger – – – you have rather discovered that lung and finger are not separate. Yoga does not create union. Union is there. Unity is there. Non-separateness is always already there, and that non-separateness can be recognized in any moment, at any time – – – and you don’t have to have done yoga to realize it. Yoga is not about making things happen. The process of yoga is about seeing what happens by itself. That recognition can free you from false assumptions about yourself and about life.
When the experience of interconnectivity ripens into a clear, pragmatically functional realization of inherent non-separateness in an instant – – – the infinite is manifest: the body as a whole is no longer an object, because the usual cacophony between its apparently separate parts is silenced. The bandhas invite this very rapidly. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. It doesn’t matter how flexible you are. It doesn’t really matter if you carry tension. To a great extent, tension in the body is maintained by the mind and its habit of perceiving objects. Objectness” describes the state of everyday perception, in which the mind’s habitual tendency is to relate to form as somethingseparate and autonomous. The bandhas invite you to drop below that level of perception, to experience more deeply what’s actually happening. In that release of your perception to a deeper level, relaxation naturally happens … If I stick a needle into you with an anesthetic, you go to sleep and this kind of perception goes away. You relax, because the mind has gone, and with that its habit of objectifying the body ceases. Simultaneously, the body becomes soft – – – it no longer manifests parts; it no longer has restrictions. Likewise, when the bandhas internalize attention, coarse perception of separateness drops away, because you are looking for subtle things – – – connections between things – – – the inherent dynamic through the body continually relates. Then the body as a body and its corresponding habitual tensions dissolve. This doesn’t mean that they won’t come back immediately – – – they will when you come back to consciousness of objects. But momentarily everything can be suspended.
So ultimately the practice of the bandhas demonstrates the significance of form – – – that it is a function or a product of perception. You can see this quite easily in people’s physical self-image. I read an article in some magazine the other day that gave four or five examples of this: the article
showed roughly ten photographs of four or five women, one of which was original, nine of which were re-touched. The re-touches made various parts of their bodies look bigger or smaller – – – and the women could not identify themselves. They always thought they were bigger than they actually were. Their boyfriends tended to get it right. This misidentification is true of all of us to one degree or another: we can’t see ourselves clearly because of our preferences, because of what we would like. This blindness is not restricted to the physical aspects of our lives either – – – it can be psychological. I know people who are incredibly intelligent who would never, ever dare to admit it, because they hadn’t read any books. So ostensibly they are not well educated, which means they tend to believe that they are not intelligent, and therefore, they tend to defer to the judgment of the more educated – – – who themselves may well be less intelligent people. They wonder why things keep going wrong – – – they could have seen it all better themselves. But they have got this image of themselves as not being intelligent.
Form itself is actually just perception: perception makes form. The bandhas take you out of apparent form: they change your perception by undermining its divisive tendencies, which orients it toward inherent unity. They take the things closest to you – – – the parts of the body, and show you that the apparent separateness of those things is merely a function of perception. So what the bandhas are doing is freeing you from objectness.
Objectness manifests in daily life when we say or think things like “she is a bitch”, or “she is really sweet”; or, “I know she is a bitch because she said something bad about me behind my back and I know that she is sweet because she said something good about me.” That’s how we objectify people, and that’s how we make objects: we define, we fix an object on the basis of a few actions that we have normally heard about second or third hand – – – rumor. And this is where we get caught. Nice person, not nice person. Good person, bad person. Right, wrong, blame. We have made objects where there are not necessarily any – – – the necessarily word being said deliberately, because sometimes we need to make objects. For instance, when you are learning to cook, you have to make an object of the knife or you might cut your finger. You have to make an object of the finger. But you don’t have to make an object of the cook if you don’t like the meal. You can just say, “I didn’t like the meal”. That’s the only thing you can really truly say – – – “I didn’t like the meal”. You can’t truly and honestly say the cook is bad just because you didn’t like the food.
Objectness is where we are all caught: we tend to relate to form as separate and autonomous. And at the root of this tendency is what is at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching – – – who was perhaps the most lucid spiritual teacher that there has ever been. The essence of his teaching is simple: that very special object – – – the self – – – does not exist. That doesn’t mean that there is nothing there in exactly the same way as if I am saying that the finger doesn’t exist as something separate from the lung – – – not that there is nothing there. Of course there is something there. If you think I mean nothing then come and try to take my finger off with the knife and see what I do. There is something there, but it is not the object. It is not what we think.
In the yoga postures we are also investigating the nature of objects – – – simply because they are not separate. An object is that which does a perceived action, or is affected by a certain kind of action – – – that’s how you define an object. So they are not separate: actions and objects always happen together. But if you can come away from the perspective that generates object perception, and move into the disposition that perceives “actionness”, then what happens to the actions? They arise and take place more freely because they are no longer associated with specifically defined objects. So Tom has in his life done many, many, many, many things – – – many of which likely pleased people, some of which did not. There are probably some people whose experience of Tom is focused mainly around the actions that did not please them, and they don’t really like you. I mean, they’re dead stupid, I agree. But that’s likely to happen. So that’s all I’m talking about. Nothing weird. But happening all the time. We make a mistake when we define a person’s being by the characteristics of the actions which we’ve experienced relative to them.
And the bandhas are the key, an invitation to really come to grips with the nature of our tendency toward objectness: they help you see what objectness is – – – a function of action, a function of perception; or a function of the perceptions required of action. You need to make an object occasionally. But when you’re lying on a beach, really relaxed, and there’s nobody there – – – you know there’s nobody there because you are in your own compound and you’ve got guards all around, and there’re nets to stop the sharks – – – you know there’s no way anything can get in – – – so you relax, and you don’t make an object out of anything. That is what all of your money is for! It is – – – that’s what all of everybody’s money is for – – – to relax … feel safe … let go ….
But it doesn’t work for any length of time – – – only a moment. Then you sober up: “oh my god!” Objects and actions come back, but especially objects – – – like – – – I don’t know – – – the other corporation might steal my contract, or whatever. So when you can see that everywhere, that all of these objects are functions of perception, functions of a mind that’s gripped with anxiety, when there’s nothing you can do about them, you just leave them alone. But if there’s something that you want to do about them, something that you can do – – – then you create the necessary objects for your endeavour, and you go and smash that corporation – – – or whatever it is. Fine, but not while you’re lying on the beach. While you’re lying on the beach you relax. But we don’t …
We have this habit: you’re lying on the beach and you think, “person over there, person over there talking, person over there talking about football!” This can happen very easily in Ibiza. You think it’s a dead cool spiritual place and you go to the beach and they’re arguing about football or tit size or something. And then you get really pissed off. But you don’t have to. Honestly, that sort of thing can be happening right next to you, without you’re even noticing – – – if you are relaxed.
There is a difference between perceiving and perception: if I say there is no perception, it doesn’t mean no perceiving. If I say no perception, it doesn’t mean unconscious. Perception is an orientation towards what is that is saddled with our projections, fears, anxieties, ideas, concepts and etc. It is the perspective that generates objectness. Perceiving is the disposition in which attention embodies an unobstructed flow, in which and the separateness of apparent objects is not the underlying theme of awareness. So no-perception actually means highly conscious – – – but not conscious-of anything in particular.
There is a very common delusion about spiritual practice, about yoga, and about meditation. It manifests as the belief that these practices make you more conscious. But this statement can only be made if it’s understood. Spiritual practice does not make you more conscious-of … if you become more conscious-of, you are caught in the realm of perceptions, and you become overloaded: a universe of separate objects floods the mind, all begging for your undivided attention – – – and the only thing you can do is relax and go with the flow by stopping the compulsive urge to identify everything. So becoming more conscious in way that can be considered helpful to our overall sense of well being is not being conscious-of anything in particular.
Being conscious-of is not relaxing; it’s actually a very tiring thing: imagine if you were conscious of everybody’s thoughts right now – – – how exhausting that would be. And there are a lot of people who do yoga trying to get that, people who actually judge themselves by the fact that it either is, or is not happening. Sometimes it does happen: sometimes, when doing yoga, you become conscious of somebody’s thoughts, but only because they’re pertinent to action. You feel something coming and you turn around and go, “fuck off!” It happens – – – but only because it’s pertinent to action, not because you’re just picking up this, that, and the other. Likewise, when you’re meditating you do pick things up off each other. And these things are pertinent to your action, meaning they’re pertinent to your current thought process – – – there’s a resonance. So you can ask a question …Lilly can ask me a question, and she can be speaking for five people, all of whom are supposedly separate from separate from her. This happens, especially with people who have been here a long time. They know the answer to the question. They’re not interested in the question. But they hear the question not being asked by people who are shy. So they ask it – – – it just comes out of their mouth – – – because we are not truly separate.
This is what the bandhas teach us: that which appears separate in perception is not inherently separate, and that means this body is not inherently separate from that body. How can you say it is if I can hear you? There is something making a connection. If I can see you we are connected – – -however you want to look at it. You can see the stars. This is not an expression of separation, it’s an expression of union. In Zen there is a saying, a Tantric saying: this very body, not just mine but each one – – – is the entire universe. And it means just that: this very body is the entire universe if your awareness penetrates its true nature. So if you experience it in its fullness, you must experience the entire universe. This is a Tantric-Zen saying, but it’s also stated very clearly in a book called Wholeness and the Implicate Order, by a quantum physicist named David Bohm.
Bohm demonstrates that in order to understand and define any object, you must first investigate it thoroughly. Investigation reveals that the attempt to define any object exhaustively must itself explain the whole universe. Why? Because separateness is a function of perception and we live in that realm of perception – – – there is the appearance of separateness there. But that separateness is like the cloud that passes through the blue sky: just as the appearance of the cloud does not completely obscure the sky, objects do not corrupt the underlying non-separateness out of which they themselves arise.
So from the conceptual perspective – – – the disposition supported by a mind overloaded with objects of perception – – – my left little finger is separate from my right little finger. But from the perspective of their activity, their functioning in daily life as an expression of me, they are not separate – – – so nobody but me is going to feel this. And nobody but me is going to benefit from it. Separateness and non-separateness are always already functioning together: left and right are functioning together; sky and clouds are functioning together, and front and back are functioning together.
But we tend to function only in objectness, from the perspective that assumes separateness. We forget the non-separateness, the fact that – – – depending on how you look at it all – – – there really are no separate things. All things are inherently one – – – they are particular, localized, manifestations of the totality of what is. So the purpose of yoga, the bandhas in particular, is to show us the context within which separateness arises – – – to give us a clear experience of the underlying ground from which objectness arises. Eventually, we just stop forgetting the ground. That’s all.
The whole purpose of meditation really is to let go of objectness and relax. If you are trying to control your mind, you are enmeshed in objectness: there are two apparently separate things present, you the controller, and the activity of the mind. So then you are just where you normally are, doing the stuff that you always do – – – you’re manipulating objects, and it may well be that doing that develops your concentration, your power to control, but it doesn’t help you to relax. And your power to control, if you experience it like that, if you experience the holding of the mind still on an object of perception, as an expression of your power, your skill, then you become a slave to fear. Your power is making you a slave to fear. And you are a slave to anxiety.
