Yoga and What is it?
Each one has a point of view
As I travel to various places and meet with various yoga teachers and practitioners and researchers, I beleive I am too small a person to comment on all that what I hear and see. Either they are great passers or they are trained under some great master or have read a lot. They have their own beliefs and theories. I thought of sharing my journey into yoga and my insights which might throw some light on the feel for yoga to some of you.
My childhood
Belonging to a family with athletic bent of mind, I was good in in my physique right from childhood and also in many sports. I was also as a child good in yoga postures and practices. With the enthusiasm as a person with spirit to achieve and not give up,I could do most of the complicated yoga postures, kriya and bandhas in yoga . May be because of these practices especially postures and kriyas, I used to have good health and stamina.
Though I was doing all these yoga physical postures,my deep urge for spiritual exploration and experience in terms of so called meditation, practices of devotion and the enquiries about the existence of god, saints and sages for ancient times such as Vasistha Vishwamitra, Valmiki etc grew day be day.
During our childhood days, our father organized a group of Balanandam children group where we used to perform plays,songs,stories etc from our scriptures especially stories of Rama Krishna and other gods and saints from ancient scriptures. I also used to visit temples of various gods and goddesses. Our movies, dance programs and Classical music programs were all around spirituality. Having been involved in these things I was so much interested seriously in spirituality, I tried to seek guidance from so called spiritual people in the society. During this journey meditation and devotion to God appeared to be the tool for spiritual growth and finding answers to my questions. As a simple boy knowing nothing about all these things I started meditation and thinking of god from heart with love. I never thought that I have to ask god for some favors. He gave birth and thereof he knows what to give and what not. In this process I came across the book of Bhagavad-Gita where I found every chapter is a chapter of yoga and there is reference of meditation in that. That convinced me that the meditation which I appear to be doing is part of yoga. That is how I got an entry into yoga. But that was too far fetched to convince me that these positions and postures in yoga have some thing to do with spiritual journey.
Meeting Sastriji and the insights I gained
It is only much later when I met SastryJi who clarified with the help of Patanjali’s science of yoga that spiritual journey is to reach the deep inner silence which tradition calls it as silence or in the form of “not-this, not-that, neti - neti “. This in real sense is meaning not this body and not this mind etc.
SastryJi was a scientist at his core and the most sincere sadhaka without any ego of being a sadhaka-a very unique combination. Together with that he was also equipped with very high degree of convincing logically and he can not thrust his ideas into a blind belief. He simplified with scientific accuracy many things which are said in the scriptures. Our spiritual Sadhana is to calm our mind to go to consciousness or self. It is easier said than done. Therefore we require Sadhana which essentially can be either slowing or expansiveness or both. Speed and constriction are the way creation takes place while “slow and expansion” is the way we dissolve the creation and go to origin or Brahman or Atman. The very meaning of Brahman is expansion without any boundaries.
The inner speed when manifests on Prana(inner energy )shows up in the form of speed in all the activities.In body it manifests as tension or tightness. At mind level it is agitation and at intellect level it is “I” the form of confusion. This is the actual experience of anyone. Whenever we are in a hurry we do things out of confused mind. Therefore tension at body level, speed at Prana level, agitations at the mind level and confusion at the intellect level and certainly they are not happy state. Only when we come out of that we are comfortable! Being comfortable is being ‘at - home’ being uncomfortable is going away from home.
Lack of inner awareness results into going away from our nature and we need to get back to our natural state at all these level consciously. This is yoga according to the yoga-author Patanjali. Vrutti takes you away from your nature and with vrutti nirodha we go back to our nature.
Patanjali says, “ yoga is chitta vrutti nirodha” - a state of calm mind and the consequence is that tatha drastu swarupe avsthanam - the person - drastuh- will be established in his own state - swarupa. Vrutti identifies you away in the outside.
Further according to Patanjali, asanas are relaxation - stira sukham asanas and Pranayama is slowing at Prana .. gatih vichcheda - cutting speed….
Holding body tight or tense may be needed for accomplishing in the world but for approach of the Self, one has a to go in the opposite direction which is “relaxation”.
Normal techniques of relaxation such as sleep or the support of external agencies may not give us effective relaxation as much as the conscious form of relaxation. Similarly speed is the way at Prana level being away from self. A conscious way of slowing Prana is the definition of pranayama.
There is an indicative statement in scriptures that our body-mind consciousness complex on its own can stretch and relax. But in this statement there is a very important pointer which we have to do it consciously. when there is tension or tightness then relaxation is consciously undoing it. As much as the stretching is important equally,relaxation is also important. As much as tensing is important for our body same way loosening is also equally important. We use the ability to tense or stretch for achieving things of the world outside and by loosening or relaxing we will get back to our source or consciousness.Consciously doing things is called doing with awareness or prajna !
Happiness and Harmony-Our true innate nature
Deep inside, our nature has ability to heal. The word “Health” comes from healing and this process of healing is going on all the time, as long as we are in this body. Another interesting fact is that happiness and harmony is also there as our innate nature and the nature of the whole creation. If you observe a plant-the roots,flowers and foliage in the sky are in such harmony. An orange fruit has bitter seed inside and the sweet fruit are born together,grow together.The seed does not disturb the fruit and the fruit does not disturb the seed and they live in harmony and that harmony is the health of the fruit.
In Gita, Acharya Krishna says that, the essential features of this creation is activity. Everything in this creation is doing activity of its own. Following the same law since the physical body is there it has to follow its natural activities this is what is called as physical exercises. In addition we can also train our body more depending on our demand. An athlete can train extra depending upon the requirement. Another factor is however much we do exercise we can not demand more from this physical body more than what natural law permits it. It is like, when we are hungry food will give us satisfaction. But that satisfaction is limited and once again after some time we feel hungry and we look for food once again. We can not expect eternal satisfaction from food.
Only happiness which is not a byproduct of doing some thing can be permanent happiness!
This is a general picture convincing us to pursue to reach our inner core or pure self which is the purpose of yoga and meditation and all our spiritual paths whether the technique is Jnana yoga,Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga or Raja yoga the goal of yoga does not change.There are other stages and steps in between which can be discussed when the the need comes. This understanding is fairly simple and whole in itself.
But when we go into market there are hundreds of techniques of yoga, thousands of techniques of meditation exists - some are very popular and some are not so popular but they emerge fresh. We need to understand one thing is that when it comes to practices, there are so many techniques in number that any yoga master has to give a package of few techniques and give a name to that package. There can be some degree of personal investment therefore it is natural that they talk high of their package.
There were also sages and saints who have accomplished in the field of spirituality such great heights that they never appeared to have followed any structured pattern of yoga. Ramona maharishi is a good example. JK has almost denied all practices or packages.Sri Ramakrishna suggested that one need to transcend every and any technique. One of the most significant feature of our Vedic wisdom is that things are logical and rational this is the trend you see in the upanishads or Bhagavad Gita or all other texts. With that background my choice has always been to be logical and connect with the reality of life.
Though I am convinced and I like about this thinking, I found that there are so many other thoughts prevailing.
Belief of different people about Yoga
Some beleive that physical practices of yoga is most important thing or only thing in the name of yoga.In several other cases physical practices of yoga are dome for the body and the spiritual practices is believed to be visiting temple or doing havan and pooja. They are not interconnected and the goals of both of them are different. Some others consider sun salutations Suryanamaskars is the main thing. Since they hold the physical postures as ultimate and especially today so much of knowledge is available about human anatomy and physiology they try to describe and convince about how a particular practice is better than other.
Further these days several newer trends also emerged in yoga. Using the props to improve your posture, doing the postures on ropes or hanging cloths, doing yoga postures on exercise gadgets, doing postures on the water of swimming pool, and etc. I don’t think it will stop here and we can not imagine what more can be there in store! Some people hold pranayama practices as the highest practice of yoga. And there, also, some explain prana is nothing but breath we take. We all know that we can not exist without breathing. So pranayama is the ultimate practice of yoga.
Some schools insist that all yoga practices have to start with breathing and loosening but some others insist that before anything, we need to go to head stand posture and then from then on to other postures. One person insisted that he knows a swamiji who lived for more than hundred years which is the ultimate aim of life and this happened because he practiced every morning more than fifty to hundred sun salutations everyday without fail. But we also know a SwamiJi who never practiced any suryanamaskaras any time in life but he is one of the sincere spiritual masters who is healthy and joyful even at the age of 110 years. He still reads four to five hours every day without glasses and he can hear so clearly and participate in conversations without using any gadgets like hearing aid.
Is living healthily without any suffering a long life be the purpose and idea of all our spiritual Sadhana?
Contrary to that Adi Shankara lived for only thirty-three years and Ramana maharishi lived for less than fifty years. Swami Vivekananda lived not to see forty. All these are considered in this culture as great saints.
In meditation again there are several things coming up. All these techniques may be fine because in all these techniques there are followers who insist that they are benefited and they are very fortunate and lucky to have found out ‘ THE GURU’ who has given them the technique. Some times we get into confusion whether technique is great therefore guru is great or guru is great therefore technique is great! We need not break our head for that reason and let us be humble that everything is great and why not!
Meditation techniques range for mantra to mauna [silence], mindful to empty mind, with bhava [feeling] to without bhava to beyond bhava called bhavateeta, chanting to singing meditations, symbols to precious stones, images, colors to patterns, bright light to immense darkness,
These days another important factor is dominating the field of yoga. That is the techniques of yoga are subjected through lab tests to show the changes in right direction happens by practicing yoga techniques. This practices started with people like Swami Rama Mahesh yogi etc.This is essentially to convince the scientist population about the benefits of yoga. Thus yoga masters now claim evidence based yoga. Here again the evidence is in the world outside. Hopefully there is inner transformation which has resulted into the showing evidence externally. Almost every school of yoga is now actively involved in producing yoga based papers. Giving us Physiologic benefits and psychological benefits, benefits in management skills, benefits of memory improvement, improvement in retention and reproducing abilities. Someone proves it provides good sleep another shows by doing yoga you can cut on sleep hours. Every conceivable area is being subjected to this evidence base. Earlier yogis used to claim about siddhis or supernatural powers and today it’s the managing ability in this world around. The number of publications since 1960s are growing exponentially every year. It appears in my view, yoga is now more and more ‘doing -based’ and not ‘being- based’. But each has its own importance.
One visible thing is when yoga was practiced because it was believed to give these benefits yoga was more considered as close to religion. But when more and more evidence is presented yoga is now being accepted as science, even though there are several people still consider yoga as Hindu religion, if not every aspect but some aspects like joining the palms together called ‘Namaskara Mudra’. Another important thing one can notice is that philosophical texts which are the basis for yoga do not have importance more than a simple academics. It is like practicing geometry in life and taking Euclid’s geometry principles only as academics.
I always tend to see that after all yoga means harmony which is also our nature. That harmony makes the chorus of different instruments. Therefore I have no disagreement with any one particular school of thought. Let us not make it based on commercial activity or purely an academic subject. Let us not waste our energies in trying to prove I am right and you are wrong and at the same time let us not ignore the good and bad or benefitting or damaging experiences of the Sadhaka .
-N.V .RAGHURAM