Upeksha is the fourth advice of Patanjali in retaining serenity of the heart-mind. I hesitate in using the word indifference as a translation, as indifference can mean apathy or not caring. It seems passive, to not do anything. Upeksha is a Sanskrit word in which upa means over and iksh means to look. To look over is to be able to see the whole picture instead of what is just immediately in front of us. To look over is an effortful path of acknowledging that there are several sides to a story, multiple dimensions to a person's character, countless histories layered over a situation. A friend was telling me that during the time he attended a yoga retreat, there was this big news. A man who had raped and murdered young girls was due for an execution. The facilitator of the retreat asked them to pause and ask for the liberation of the victims, their families, and the person who committed this crime. Being a father himself, he was aghast at the suggestion. Why would he wish for the liberation of someone who had done such horrible things? It felt personal. He identified with the situation as the father of the victims. Most of us can understand his reaction. Most of us share the same sentiments. We feel that our anger and even desire for vengeance are justified. How could we not feel the way that we feel? The teaching in upeksha is equanimity, that we are able to look over the situation in entirety, to relate to the suffering not only of the victims but also of the perpetrator, to identify with all who are involved in the situation and not only the ones easy for us to identify with. Upeksha is equanimity in wishing for the freedom of all beings, not only towards those whom we deem as worthy. Upeksha is even-mindedness in seeing that the perpetrator of the crime is a sentient being too who suffers just like us. Upeksha is the effortful path of removing the divide between the self and the other, especially when the other threatens our identity of being "good". We do not like identifying with what we label as "bad" because we refuse to acknowledge that that potential to hurt others exists in us as well. We find it easier to not forgive others. We find it easier to hold on to our judgment and anger. We fear that if we let that go, it means we do not care enough for the ones who suffer. We can certainly hold on to anger and judgment. Many of us do. But the anger and judgment can consume us and put us in the place of victimhood. Then that does nothing to advance our project of serene intelligence. My teacher Sharon Gannon says, "One thing is certain: an enlightened being and a victim—never the twain shall meet—they cancel each other out. A yogi is someone who is focused on enlightenment." The knowledge of what upeksha is would be for naught if not put into practice. As a Jivamukti teacher, I spend a lot of time articulating concepts of yoga teachings, but faced with a real-life situation, I sometimes struggle with practicing what I preach. Recently, I came upon a children's book called "I Want to Be Bacon When I Grow Up" that upset my equanimity of mind. I felt angered by the insensitivity and the ignorance, appalled by the idea that children are going to be brainwashed into believing that innocent sentient beings would willingly choose to suffer and die- for someone else's pleasure! Indifference towards the wicked, said Patanjali? My thoughts and actions went to a place as though I have never heard those words. I was very busy judging the authors as wicked. I spent a lot of time going to Amazon not only to write a negative review myself but to go through all the other negative reviews so I could feel self-satisfied in my self-righteousness. Was I right to feel the way that I felt? I believed my sentiments were justified. Did I have serenity of mind? The answer is a resounding no. A story about the Buddha occurred to me which I think is a practical tip in exercising equanimity. A person went to the Buddha, very angry, cursing him, spewing out a lot of negativity. The Buddha remained calm. The person was surprised that his anger was not reciprocated. This is what the Buddha said: If you show up at my home with a gift and I receive that gift, the gift stays with me. But if you show up at my home with a gift and I choose not to receive that gift, the gift stays with you. Anger and consequently all negativity are like those gifts. They are presented to us but we have a choice not to receive them. We can say, no thank you. Return to sender. This way, the practice of equanimity is in seeing that we do not have to react to what is immediately in front of us. We can look over the situation and decide to not take on the negativity and the anger and the burden and the weight of the world. It is not passive and it is not apathy. It is an effortful path of choosing to solve our own problems, drawing boundaries, and allowing others to be responsible for their own problems. It is letting go of that divide between the self and the other, and with it the need to judge. I have been vegan five years and non-vegan the thirty years before that. For most of my life, my actions were exactly the same as that of the authors'. I need to look past my initial reactions and look over the big picture. Possession is an affliction so pervasive in our present culture. I own this and that. This is my property, my car, my watch, my phone, my money, my idea. We are so used to owning we think we have to own everything that presents themselves to us, even anger and judgment. Next time our serenity of mind is challenged, we can practice what the Buddha taught, and choose not to accept that gift. We can ask ourselves: Do we really need to own it? Upeksha or equanimity is the fourth element of love, after maitri or friendliness or loving kindness, karuna or compassion, mudita or sympathetic joy. It is the loop that closes the infinity of love, to not favor one over the other, to not judge, to not possess. Equanimity is to identify not only with a few, but with all. Equanimity is the state of heart-mind that embodies the mantra Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. May all beings- with no exception- be happy and free.
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Mudita is often described as sympathetic joy. I thought long and hard about what this means, and I think what resonated best with me is how it is likened to a soft heart. It is the ability to appreciate the good in others. Imagine you are stuck in traffic, which is not hard to imagine if you spend any time at all on the road in Manila, and you are alone in your car. Maybe you are starting to get bored, even hungry, a little impatient perhaps. Then you glance over to the car next to you and you see that there is this happy family, laughing together, undisturbed by the traffic. And you look at them with amusement and delight. You are able to celebrate in their joy even though you are not a direct participant. All you feel is delight at what others are experiencing. You may also experience the same thing when you observe your animal companions. You and your dog may not speak the same language, and you have very different interests. When your dog stops at every post to pee, it does not make you want to copy him, but you could feel the delight in his satisfaction, because you are able to appreciate what it means not to you but to him. You can sense that this is important to him, and seeing that he has his need met satisfies you too. In PYS I.33, the attitude of mudita or delight is prescribed towards the punya or the virtuous. In this sense, what we are called upon to practice is the antidote of envy, jealousy, and even apathy and boredom. To feel delight towards the good things that another one does is to acknowledge that we all have the same goal of happiness, and it does not have to be done my way for it to make me happy. For example, as a devotee of the Jivamukti Yoga practice, I share the teachings of compassion as it was taught to me in this lineage. This is my personal commitment and my path. But I can feel delight when I see teachers and students and devotees of Ashtanga Yoga or Dharma Yoga or any other practice progressing in their path. They did not choose the same path as I have, and that is not a problem, and I can celebrate in their joy of finding a practice that they love as much as I love Jivamukti. The delight comes from sharing a larger experience that transcends separation. There is shared delight even if the experience itself is not shared. Why is mudita an essential practice in cultivating serene intelligence? The Dalai Lama said it best. "It’s only logical. If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!” To live in this world with joy and with lightness, we need to be able to derive that joy not only within the confines of our limited vehicle. Going back to my example of Manila traffic, our whole lives are like traffic. It is oftentimes chaotic and we are constantly challenged. Without mudita, we can get stuck in the vehicle of our own mind and drama. With a sense of delight, with the ability to feel joy outside of our own experiences, we can face the world brimming with the joy of others, knowing there is always something worth celebrating, knowing there is always a reason to smile. This life can be very good, and we need the openness in the expression of mudita to truly see it. Patanjali's second advice in YS I.33 is to be compassionate towards those who are unhappy. Compassion means to "suffer with". It is different from empathy in that even though both connect to the suffering of another, the feeling within compassion is so deeply entrenched one feels as though it is one's own. It may feel natural or almost instinctive to cultivate feelings of compassion towards those whose suffering is visible to us. We see them, we sense their suffering, we yearn to eliminate that pain of theirs like we would our own. But how about the angry, aggressive, abrasive people whose words and actions create so much pain for others? Maybe some of us have such people in our lives who are making us feel miserable. Can we feel compassion for them? Why even include them in our thoughts, in our consideration, in our web of compassion? They say hurt people hurt people. It is those who live with intense pain that hurt others the most, and they are the ones who need our compassion the most. It is not that they are evil people deriving joy from causing us pain. It is that their pain is so huge that if they allowed themselves to immerse in its intensity, they might not know how to deal with its magnitude. They never learned how to cope. They never learned how to forgive or move on or let go. They carry with them histories of hurt and pain and the only way they know how to deal with it is to pass it on. It is not our job to judge them or figure them out or even save them. One's self-inflicted pain is one's own to unload. But if we want our own serenity of mind, we choose not to mirror their anger with our anger, we choose not to fight their aggression with our aggression. Instead we choose love in its expression of compassion. We choose to see that behind the mask of anger is fear, buried within their hurtful actions and words are the intrinsic desires to be free, to be happy, to be accepted, to be understood, to be comforted, to be loved. Karuna (or compassion) towards the dukha (or the unhappy) is what is natural to us. When we were newly born into this body, we did not know how to separate or segregate or discriminate or judge or label or categorize. We felt one with everyone else- without condition. Our yoga practice is to bring us back to that state, this time widely awake, as our choice, with full consciousness. Our job is to remember that despite our different bodies and forms and shapes and lives and dreams and personalities and yes even problems and struggles and pains, we are ultimately just one soul. Karuna, compassion, is to suffer with all those who suffer, to see we are all mirrors of each other, reflecting back who we are and who we were and who we could be. May our hearts be open enough to walk this path of compassion, to soften our hearts towards those whose suffering is apparent to us and those whose suffering is hidden from us and those whose suffering is redirected in ways we find difficult to understand. May all beings everywhere be free from suffering. May I be the expression of compassion. Serene intelligence is intelligence not just of the mind. In this type of intelligence, we are not concerned with IQs or Mensa. The Sanskrit word manas is sometimes translated as mind and other times translated as heart, and these two translations appear to us to be very different ideas. But in some cases, it is translated as a third concept, the heart-mind, a connection between two seemingly different faculties. It is the intelligence of this heart-mind that we are concerned with. In yoga, we are interested in having a peaceful mind, an equanimous mind, a serene state of mind. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra gives us some advice. PYS I.33 maitrī-karunā-mudito-peksānām sukha-dukha-punya-apunya-visayānām bhāvanātaś citta-prasādanam To preserve the innate serenity of the mind, a yogin should be happy for those who are happy, be compassionate toward those who are unhappy, be delighted for those who are virtuous, and be indifferent toward the wicked. The word citta means content of the mind while prasadanam comes from the word prasad which means blessed. Citta prasadanam is a state of blessed mind, a state of peacefulness. This sutra speaks about four components of interacting with others that are necessary for our peace of mind. At first glance, the advice seems simple enough, maybe even glaringly obvious. The first part of the advice tells us to be happy for those who are happy. Maybe the first thing that comes to mind is someone delighted over a happy event, and we find that of course, we can be happy for this person. Well, if we dig a bit deeper into our own real-life experiences, we may find that this is more difficult than we think. Jealousy could arise. Envy could arise. Judgment could arise. Say, for example, that you have been eyeing a job promotion for years and somebody else ends up getting it. This person is happy, but you are filled with jealousy, because this person got what you wanted. Or maybe you have become aware of animal cruelty and turned vegan, and while eating at a restaurant, you glance over to a group of people enjoying their cheeseburgers, and you begin to judge how their actions are wrong. Or maybe you found out your ex is now in a new relationship, and you find yourself upset that he or she has found happiness in someone other than you. These reactions are very human, though these reactions do not give us any peace of mind. And what happens when we drown ourselves in the misery of our jealousy and envy and judgment? The person who is happy will still be happy, we only end up hurting ourselves. And so, how do we become happy for those who are happy and set aside our own selfish tendencies? We practice yoga in order to be able to observe our thoughts and our tendencies and our patterns. When we use GPS to get to a destination, we may make a mistake, miss the cues, and end up somewhere unintended. But that's okay because the GPS can reroute to get us back on track. Our yoga practice is our own personal GPS. If we somehow take a wrong turn, we can start from wherever we are and get to our destination, which is peace of mind, from wherever we have left off. That is to say, whenever we notice jealousy or envy or judgment coming up that prevents us from being happy towards those who are happy, we observe this reaction, pause, then mindfully and consciously change course. Think of a person whose happiness has triggered jealousy or envy or judgment in you. Now, start to see this person as having a serene contented smile in his or her own face. And also start to see yourself as having that same serene, contented smile on your face. Because no matter how our delusions may lead us to believe that happiness has a limited supply, the truth is that happiness is not a zero sum concept. There is enough for everyone. One person having happiness does not mean that it takes away from another's. In classes this week, I asked students to pair up and assist each other in pincha mayurasana or forearm stand. The person assisting needs only to extend one arm out, that's it, no more and no less. I emphasized this instruction. When the exercise finished, I noticed that many if not all ended up doing additional things, giving words of encouragement, cheering the other person on, even reaching out with the other hand to stabilize the person doing the pose. This appears to be in direct opposition of the Milgram experiment, wherein it was found that people would obey orders even at the expense of causing suffering to others. The practical experiment I witnessed in class showed that students readily disobeyed instructions and went far and beyond what they were told to do, because they want to create the maximum happiness for the other person. Instinctively, these yogis knew that the other person being happy will not take away their happiness, the other person coming up to a pincha mayurasana will not take away their own capacity to come up to a pincha mayurasana. We are all in this together. Not only can we be happy for those who are happy, but when we are in a position to create this happiness, we do it. Patanjali's advice is practical. It like a formula. When we attend Jivamukti classes, we may notice that after completing a series of intense backbends, we counter with a forward bend. This formula presents itself again and again because it is what works for the body. If we are committed to having a serene mind, the same concept applies. We practice the same formula again and again. Be happy towards those who are happy. But don't take Patanjali's word for it. Experience it for yourself. Be happy towards those who are happy. Live it as though it were your personal mantra, and see how the quality of your life changes. Go. Do it. |
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