During my teacher training, I had a classmate who struck me as strong and vulnerable at the time. The first time I heard her speak was during the night we all had to introduce ourselves. Even though all of us said very similar things because we all felt quite connected to the Jivamukti practice, we each had our own personal details about how we got into Jivamukti and how the practice spoke to us. Many of us were vegans, and all of us felt we belonged there, that we found ourselves accepted in Jivamukti, that we found a home for our spirit. Katherine, that is her name, worked for human rights causes for her day job at that time. At the same time, she feels strongly about animal rights and wants to do something about it. She pondered the question: Should I join the ALF or should I become a yoga teacher? ALF stands for the Animal Liberation Front. They are an informal group of individuals who take direct action to liberate animals. What this means is that they dress up in all black, like burglars, and break into private property, like burglars, except instead of stealing, they give freedom back. Something they would do is break into an animal testing lab to rescue beagles who were bred for testing purposes and subjected to painful and unnecessary procedures day in and day out. (If you are not familiar with such standard procedures that are considered normal in our society, I suggest looking into animal tests and vivisection. The documentary Earthlings covers this component of animal use.) What the ALF does is illegal. They risk their own freedom and their own lives to do this kind of work. I will not hesitate in saying that to me they are heroes. And they are needed. And they do admirable work in the frontlines. Katherine chose to become a Jivamukti Yoga Teacher. So did I. I think we all have to make choices that make sense to us. We have to choose a path that allows us to heed our calling, to contribute to the good of the world, while having the space necessary for us to surrender. We choose to do what we can exert our best effort in, and we leave the results to take care of themselves. Jivamukti Yoga teaches that activism is part of the practice, that to live the principles of yoga means we are conscious of what we think, say, and do. We acknolwedge our active participation in the world. To be an activist in the world, we practice ahimsa (nonviolence). To be a spiritual activist, we practice both ahimsa (nonviolence) and bhakti (devotion). I am not saying that the ALF or those who choose direct action do not have bhakti or that a specific way of doing things is required for the practice of bhakti. All I am saying is we get to choose in what way we can incorporate these two tenets of Jivamukti Yoga in our lives. In what way are we most effective and humble and loving and compassionate? For many of us, it is easier to focus on the active components of our lives. We see this too in our yoga asana practice- to push hard, to hold the pose, to tense up- that is what we think it is all about. But the releasing component is just as present. It is present in every exhalation, every forward bend, every savasana, every meditation practice. It is the same with our activism. For many vegans or activists involved in working towards elimination of violence of any kind, it is easy to get consumed with anger and hopelessness and resentment and self-righteousness. But we do need to take breaks. We need to take care of ourselves. We need to be able to release the negativity that is keeping us stuck. Our own lives need to be an expression of our own freedom and happiness. Ahimsa without bhakti can wear us down. We will keep seeing separation. We will keep labeling right and wrong, perpetrator and victim. With the practice of bhakti, in acknowledging that there is something bigger than us, we can ask to be rid of anger, jealousy and fear. We can start to see that in an oppressive situation, the oppressor himself or herself is a victim too- a prisoner of his or her own ignorance, fear, and pain. And instead of anger, we start to feel compassion. It means that we continue to take action to eliminate violence, and we are motivated not by vengeance, but by selfless and unconditional love. As my teacher Sharon Gannon wrote as the title of March focus of the month essay: Bhakti Trumps All.
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Every morning, I take my dog out for a walk. Some days I am really distracted. I look at my phone. I check my email. I check my Facebook. Look, notifications for comments on my vegan food photo! Other days I make a more conscious effort to be present. I resolve to see the world through my dog's eyes. Those days, I feel a lot happier. My dog would see a tree and it makes him happy. My dog would see a post and it makes him happy. He would see a flower or a paper bag or a trash can and it makes him happy. One day I was in that full awareness mode walking my dog in Greenbelt. I saw this lady coming out from the church and crouching over to get to the side of the lawn that people are not allowed to go. They cut the grass and landscape it and all that, so it was all very pretty and for show. I was curious. I wanted to know why the lady wanted to cross over, so I stayed and watched. She walked over to where a cat was hiding, and she took out food from a brown bag she had with her. It was pre-meditated feeding. She knew there were many stray cats in the area, so she brought food for them. When I saw that, I thought of how sweet the gesture was. How beautiful. Love is all around. Small acts of kindness happen all the time. The focus of the month for March is Bhakti, and this devotion to God, or yoga of love, is expressed in seeing that love is everywhere, in everyone and in everything, all the time. It is just that we do not always notice. Or that we are distracted. Or we are quick to judge. Imagine if I had not stayed and watched the lady, I would just think she's strange, labelled her, all without knowing the full story. And that is what happens all the time, doesn't it? We do not know the full stories of others, so we judge and label and categorize and segment and cloud the essence of all things. If we did not have these biases, we may see that all is an expression of love. The Divine is everywhere, in things ordinary and everyday. Even when we attend yoga classes, we forget. We forget that the people we practice with are Divine, that they are full of love, capable of giving love and receiving love. So look around you, and start to notice how everything comes from love. As we practice yoga asana, we can start to apply this attitude. We do the poses in love, even and especially during challenging moments. We can also work with partner exercises on backbends. It can be invigorating, this knowledge and experience that through our own actions stemmed from love, we can literally lift others up. Our yoga practice is not for show. The asana is not the full story. The asana is the beginning, a toe dipped in the water, exploring how vast our capacity to love is- to love ourselves, to love others, to see the Divine everywhere and in everything. As our yoga asana practice progresses, we become aware of our power, not only the power to do a pose with our body. More important than that is the power we have with the choices we make with this body. Be the person who lifts up others. Be the person who crosses over a superficial barricade to help homeless animals. Be the person who thinks, speaks, and acts from a place of love. Be vegan. See the divine in our fellow animal beings. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. YS II.3 avidyā-asmitā-rāga-dvesa-abiniveśāh pañca kleśāh Mis-knowing, egoism, attachment to pleasure, hatred, fear of death. These are the five hindrances to yoga. YS II.10 te pratiprasava-heyāh sūksmāh The five hindrances are overcome by resolving them back to their source. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is like an instruction manual with tips that we can apply to our lives if we want to reach the state of yoga or liberation. Chapter two is the chapter on practice. Patanjali enumerated the five hindrances to yoga. Mis-knowing is a specific kind of ignorance. If we merely say ignorance, it could mean we do not know something. But mis-knowing is to think we know though the reality is that we misunderstood. We mistakenly think we know but we truly do not. We may even arrogantly cling on to what we believe to be true. This mis-knowing applies to our true nature, that we may have mistaken it for a pettier and more worldly version that is easier to accept. Egoism is how we tend to identify ourselves as separate from others, thinking that we are superior or inferior to others, thereby building this wall that prevents us from seeing that there are no "others". Attachment to pleasure is a hindrance because if we develop dependencies on things that give us pleasure, we start to crave and want more of it. Hatred stems from instances where we feel aversion on a very minute level, even in little temporary discomforts that we feel in the body. We do not hate external situations as much as we cannot stand how these situations make us feel. Fear of death is perhaps the biggest fear that the ego has, and all other fears are directly or indirectly associated with it. As yogis, we need to understand that it takes scrutiny and honesty to be able to identify these hindrances. Many actions can appear good on the outside, but still tainted with mis-knowing or egoism or attachment or hatred or fear on the inside. For example, a person may be a successful social entrepreneur. His business is vegan and eco-friendly and fair-trade and local. He even donates 90% of the profits to charity. On the outside, it looks good and his choices help many. However, if he starts to think that he is a hero, and that those he help owe him something, and that his employees would be completely lost without him, then his actions, though helpful to others, are not helpful towards his own liberation. What to do then? Patanjali not only listed the hindrances, he also offered a solution. He said that we can overcome these hindrances by resolving them back to their source. In other words, to give them up. To whom do we give them up though? We surrender them to God or our Higher Power in whatever name or shape or form we can relate to. We incorporate Bhakti into our practice. It is to start to believe that we do not have to do everything alone. It is to seek support and love and be open to support and love. Since the two sutras come from the chapter on practice, then the best way to understand what Patanjali was saying is to put these into practice. If we are not ready to give up or surrender, then at the very least, we can observe these hindrances as they arise, observe how holding on makes our bodies feel. Our bodies are storehouses for the karma or actions that we take. Therefore, how the body feels is consequently a result of the karma or actions that we put in. When we come to our favorite yoga pose, a pose that we think we do really well, do we get attached? Do we crave more of this pose so we can look good and show others what a great asana practitioner we are? When we have to do our least favorite pose, do we begin to feel aversion and project our hatred to the pose or the teacher or the yoga practice itself? Our asana practice is a very safe place to explore when these tendencies come up. And when they do, as they often will, we can experiment with how we feel in holding on versus giving it up. When we hold a pose we do not like and cling on to the feelings of hatred, do we notice how uncomfortable the body feels and how tense we are in the mind? If we do the same pose but change our approach, we think of ourselves as light as a feather because we do not have to be burdened, does the pose in many ways become more bearable? The yoga practice is precisely that: a practice. We will come into many situations in our lives that we have no control of. And that too is a practice. Our asana is just a rehearsal for the tougher arena. Being able to surrender to a God or Higher Power takes both courage and humility at the same time. And though we experiment with these practices with the vessel that is our body, what will fuel this practice is our openness to view the world in a different way. Instead of seeing our lives as a series of struggles, maybe we can see our lives as an opportunity to surrender to love. Our options are kept simple. We can hold on to the five hindrances to our own detriment, or we can just give them up. Namaste. Nothing lasts forever. People come, people go. I think in some way this is romantic, because it shows how adaptable our love could be. There is beauty in releasing someone from our lives, because it is an act of honesty and gratitude and an exercise of our freedom. Sometimes we need to let go of a relationship. Sometimes we need to let a friendship take its natural course of drifting apart. Sometimes we need to leave a place we briefly called home. Sometimes we need to bid goodbye to a dream we once had. Of course it is painful and sad, but to have the courage to release is a most honest way to live. I know what it is like to hang on to a relationship long after the end is due. I know what it is like to try to keep an old identity just to keep a friendship going. I know what it is like to live somewhere and be really good friends with a few good people and have to tell them I cannot consider their home my home anymore. Everything is temporary. Some things just last longer than others. A release is not an indication that the relationship was not meaningful or the connection not genuine or the time spent not worthwhile. Things change. Maybe we start to get to know ourselves better and have to move on. Maybe we realize we cannot accept being told how to think or what to do, to be less vocal, to be more sociable, to be more of this and less of that. Maybe the timing or circumstances are just not right. We are not meant to change the pace of our lives or progress because someone told us so. We are not meant to be afraid to make mistakes and be imperfect. We are meant to live our own lives the best way we know how, as we are meant to accept others in the way they live their lives in the best way they know how. Our choice is in whether to hold on or to let go. Love stays for as long as it needs to. Love does not end. It only changes. Release is difficult, but it is also the most natural thing to do. Every sad ending means that a story worth telling had occurred. A final release is to cut our spiritual ties. It is not to not care. It is to trust that freedom supercedes any pain. Release is hard on many levels. But holding on, if it is an effort, is harder. We may forget who we are. We may make the mistake of relying on someone else for our happiness. We may choose the relationship over our own sense of being alive. Happy endings are not about things staying the same. Happy endings are about us being able to fill our hearts with gratitude, being able to forgive and let go of petty grudges, being able to feel the sadness and know that that too will not last forever. Release is goodbye. But it is more than a sad goodbye. Release is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life. Thank you for sharing a piece of you with me. Thank you for allowing me to share a piece of myself with you. Thank you for being you. Thank you for how you made me feel. Thank you for awakening me to my own capacity to love. Thank you for reminding me that life is a mystery. Nothing lasts forever. But knowing this is not being a cynic. I think it is very romantic, this idea that we choose the people in our lives to continue to be in our lives, not because we owe them something or they owe us something, but because in that moment we are our truest selves and we can connect and love and share. And if circumstances change, we would be big enough and brave enough to allow ourselves and those in our lives to keep experiencing that love and connection again. To release is not only to let go of the other person or relationship or situation, it is also to let go of our own limited notions of what had been and what should be. To release is to let go in love, to transform our love into trust, to know that there are gains in these losses. To release is to love with the love that we have without asking for anything in return. When we hear the name Carl Sagan, we usually associate it with science. He is an astronomer, after all. We might think his views have no place in yoga. So why am I bringing him up now, especially when the Jivamukti focus of the month is bhakti or devotion to God? Here's the thing. I read something he said and I thought that is exactly what bhakti yoga is about. The yoga of devotion requires humility. Carl Sagan said, with quite a lot of wit in my opinion, that "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". One sentence. It encapsulated bhakti, that is to humble ourselves to see ourselves not as the only doer, but as a player- or instrument, if you will- in this vast expanse of creation. Bhakti yoga asks us to renounce the fruits of our actions, to defer to a power or force higher than our limited mortal selves, to recognize that there is a God, even if we don't call it God. Whatever name or face inspires us to acknowledge the expansiveness of our temporary lives on Earth is our higher power. It is personal and there is no right or wrong, only what speaks to us the strongest, only the face or concept we see when we think of unconditional love, when we are in awe of the universe and everything about it that is mysterious to us, when we look at creation and we are moved by the beauty of it. We have many names for it. We call it God or Jesus or Krishna or Buddha or Allah or Yahweh or Nature or the Great Void or anything else. For whom we like serving does not matter. The service itself, the devotion itself, the desire to love with all of our hearts is what matters. The act of devotion is not only limited to prayers and chanting, not limited to the structures of churches and mosques and temples. The act of devotion or renunciation can be and should be in every aspect of our lives. Brushing our teeth, eating our dinner, growing a garden can all be acts of devotion or practices of bhakti if we acknowledge that we are not the only doer. In other words, if we have a sense of gratitude with everything that we do, and we give credit where credit is due, the action becomes a spiritual one. If we practice yoga asana thinking that we alone are responsible for the shapes that we are able to form with our bodies, then we are forgetting the apple pie and universe concept. So to borrow Carl Sagan's words and change it a little bit, if you want to come up to a handstand, you must first create the universe. If we start to approach our practice with this sense of vastness, then we might consider that every move we make is a little way of saying thank you, and maybe the entire 90 minutes of a yoga class is a dance of gratitude and devotion. If we think of ourselves as the only doer, we may feel proud. We may even put it in our heads and become arrogant. But if we consider that we share this experience with countless others, it actually becomes more meaningful. It can move our spirits to a new place. Think about how many different bodies and body types are capable of coming into yoga poses. Think of how many yoga classes are simultaneously happening all over the world. Think of how even in nature animals do these yoga poses without having to get a one-week pass or a monthly unlimited package. Think of all of us doing yoga asana together. Now isn't that more amazing and expansive than us alone coming to a single yoga pose? To give credit where credit is due- to God or the higher power in which we choose to acknowledge- does not minimize our accomplishments. On the contrary, it expands our experiences and makes us connected to the rest of the vast and beautiful universe. When I was in college with a headache that lasted for days, I was convinced I had an incurable disease and will not live past college. In other words, I have a flair for drama. Based on my past (over) reactions, I will most likely not be evicted. Yesterday, I was asked to see my building's administrative manager. It felt like being called to the principal's office. I knew right away what it was about: my dog. I bought my place during pre-selling, back in 2009 if I have the date right, and the agent had assured me then that I could keep my dog in the building. Well, fast forward to present day where put simply, I'm in trouble for the exact same thing I wanted reassurance for. Irritated that I was asked to see him, with a nap disrupted nonetheless, I prepped myself to keep my cool. I know I teach yoga and I am supposed to know about equanimity, but there are certain situations I know I am prone to lose it. I lose my cool with phone and credit card companies, and the last time it happened I felt so guilty. My co-teacher Chris, in an effort to appease me, said that the Dalai Lama did not have to deal with such things so who knows how he would react. But that's another story. So I reminded myself that I have to stay calm if I want to win him over and get him to see my side. Plus of course, there's my equanimity. Basically he told me it was against house rules and that was it. I explained my situation and asked for a compromise. He told me that what I can do is perhaps make a written request and he could escalate it to the board. I thought about my options. One, I could write that letter but it would mean there is written proof of me admitting that I have violated house rules. But then again, there's CCTV in the elevator and all of the guards know I have a dog. If I write that letter and I get no for an answer, will I be fined some amount that I cannot afford? Will I be evicted? Two, I can pretend that my dog has left the building and ignore future warnings. But what message would that send about our animal companions, that they are disposable at the first sign of inconvenience? I will be reinforcing speciesism if I pretended I could do something like that without a second thought. Besides, all the guards will still know he has not left the building because I have no intention of keeping him from the highlight of his day which is his morning walk. Three, I could be as persistently annoying as David Thorne until they leave me alone. If you have no idea who he is, you must- absolutely must- read this correspondence about animals in the building. But I don't think I have his imagination, and it could go the other way completely. They might hate me so much they want me out. I went for option one. I figured if they agreed, then I no longer have to hide my dog. If they did not agree, then I will appeal and re-appeal and find other options. I have been distracted all day yesterday and today, and I have to remind myself that at worst this is a major inconvenience, that is all. The absolute worst thing that could happen is I am going to be fined or asked to move. And if that happens, though I hope not, in the big picture, it really is not a big deal. I could lease out my place or sell it. I could move to an animal-friendly building. It's not the end of the world. And as annoyed as I was by the building administrator and the agent who sold me the unit, I realized while I was brushing my teeth tonight that I should be grateful that this is my problem. I should be grateful that I live in a building where the employees actually want to do their jobs. Am I going to be evicted? I truly hope not. I like living here. If I get them to officially allow my dog in the building, that would be great! What about my cat, you ask? (In case you are my building administrator, you have to know you are a kind person with a heart of gold. What cat?) |
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March 2020
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