The Yoga Activist
A womanifesto--OneBlissBody
New moon energy bubbles up everywhere around us. The days
are now getting longer, nights shorter. Our main lights gain strength and it’s
time to take life by the horns and stop pretending to be alive. Yoga philosophy
includes a principle that at the level of the innermost sheath or kosha of our
body/minds, we are one, OneBlissBody. With this principle in mind, here are
some thoughts on the new year on the yoga path.
The last year has been one of many changes and challenges;
globally many nations, beginning with Ukraine in February, experienced deep
unrest and turmoil, even to the brink of armed conflict. The regime in Syria
has continued to do battle with rebel armies, and the refugee situation there
is unparalleled. Ebola has haunted West Africa, and begun to terrify the rest
of the world. Armed police have broken up pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong
Kong. The earth experienced its hottest year on record, and debates still rage
about how or if to extract known reserves of oil from below the ground or from
the ocean. Finally, police in the United States have killed unarmed citizens,
and deranged citizens have assassinated armed police. These human tragedies
scar each human’s bliss body, no matter how far from the actual events.
In the US we are daily bombarded with the message that a
people’s democracy serves the people best. Yet we have allowed our political
campaigns to be overtaken by big money.
When we send our troops overseas to topple dictators we believe are
harming their population or support armies in nations where we believe they are
on the side of democracy, we are broadcasting to the world that we want a
government by the people to prevail everywhere. What kind of message does this
obvious disconnect send to other nations? Furthermore questions
have arisen, about whether a democracy based on late-industrial, debt-based
capitalism can co-exist with an earth that has limited resources, an earth that
is suffering from the extraction of fuels and the burning of those fuels.
Where are we? What do we stand for? How can spiritual
practice serve us? What direction are we to take now that civil society and
culture are breaking down so completely around us? How are we to live when the
earth reacts so dramatically and sometimes violently with our pillaging of her?
At no point in the past during my lifetime that I can
remember has there been such a keen interest in yoga and meditation practice.
The year was l968 when I began to attend yoga classes—so I feel and appear like
the yoga grandmother I actually am! Media reports daily sing the health praises
of both disciplines—reduced stress markers in the body, increased strength,
flexibility and clarity of mind. Many large corporations have not been content
simply to build out gymnasiums on their “campuses” but have also created quiet
zones, yoga rooms, and meditation sanctuaries. Heck, even some airports have
yoga and/or meditation spaces available to travelers.
Of course, we
can only become practitioners or activists according to our temperament and
resources, both personal and financial.
We are in a situation not dissimilar to that of Arjuna, the famed
conflicted warrior of the Bhagavad Gita, who complains to his charioteer (who is the god Krishna disguised as a
charioteer) that he cannot possibly go to battle to right the wrong done by his
kinsmen in swindling his part of the family out of a piece of land. If he goes
to battle, he realizes that he will have to kill his kinsmen.
This dialogue between god and man took place at a time when
the culture of the Indian subcontinent was severely stratified. The caste
system in place meant that your birth parents and their station in life would
be yours. If you were born to the warrior caste, as Arjuna was, your duty, your
dharma, was to be a fighter. If you were born to the priestly caste, your
dharma was to lead the rituals that the people expected of priests, if you were
born to a merchant, you became a merchant, and if you were born to an
untouchable, your dharma was to perform menial labor to earn your bread. There
was simply no way out of this predicament for a human being in this society.
I realize that this is a reductive reading of the Gita. It
is, of course, a key text for Bhakti Yogis, for it has much to say about the
yoga of devotion. Our democracy is based in freedom of religion, so we ARE free
to worship whatever god or gods we choose, or none at all. This is a freedom
that I firmly believe is worth defending.
We also live now in a country that claims to value education and freedom
of choice, but we do not choose our parents, and many of them had no access to
quality education and live in poverty. This will mostly likely be our fate as
their children, despite the small advances “affirmative action” and federal and
state aid to early education have made.
My younger yoga colleagues most likely had an experience of
a slightly more racially balanced education than I did. Beginning school in
Boston and finishing in Dallas, then going onto university in Canada to finish
at UT Austin, all before 1984, I did not experience much racial diversity in my
classes. I know that my children did to an extent, in schools in Austin, Dallas,
Denton and Chicago. Before deciding to attend law school, I studied education
both in British Columbia and in Austin, and apprenticed in schools in both
countries. By the 80’s there was much more diversity in the public classroom
than I had known as a child growing up.
But where has this diversity brought us? To a place where we
can elect a mixed race president AND to a place where we can watch helpless as
police profile, arrest and sometimes kill people of color, to a place where
finally a dialogue about reparations to African American people for our
country’s legacy of slavery can begin. Indeed, we have arrived at a place of
huge contradictions.
Two spiritual teachers have given me light, and I will share
their ideas now. The Dalai Lama has expressed surprise at the high incidence of
depression among people of our nation. His response has been: “But we all have
Buddha nature.” This Buddha nature gives us all reason to respect and love our
very selves, for we are capable of enlightenment along with every other human
being on the planet.
Guruji B.K.S.
Iyengar made a distinction between action and motion in his world-famous
teaching on using the practice of yoga poses to realize all the eight limbs of
yoga. These eight limbs include moral and ethical living as well as yoga poses,
pranayama, meditation and enlightenment. This very body, this “mortal coil” is
capable of moving into a pose, experiencing stability in a pose, and moving out
of a pose with a clear intention. When the practice combines these
factors--clear mind, focused motion and stable abiding, we have a connection to
the health-and enlightenment-giving powers that yoga offers. Iyengar, after all
his years of teaching and world travels, would say that he saw “much movement,
little real action” and chided his students, sometimes harshly, sometimes with
a sense of humor, about our failure to measure up to the potential of the
practice.
Thank goodness we HAVE a practice. As yogis, we are gifted
with an amazing ancient tool. Rather than eternally seeking the perfect pose
and perfect clothes and the perfect yoga retreat, my proposal is that we,
according to our temperament, ALSO find a place to put our focused energies on
taking this clarity and good health out into our communities so that more may
experience the benefits of it. This may involve simply volunteering at a soup
kitchen, after-school program, literacy project, drug rehab center, old folks
home. Here’s a partial list:
Working with the homeless—www.frontsteps.org
Working with the dying—www.hospiceaustin.org
Working with families experiencing violence—www.safeplace.org
Working with animals—www.austinpetsalive.org
Working with the poor on shelter--www.austinhabitat.org
Volunteering with any of these organizations might involve
offering asana/pranayama/meditation to staff or to the people they serve, or it
might NOT involve such activities. Sometimes simply sharing a cheerful
disposition on a soup kitchen serving line or home construction site would be
most useful and appreciated. I volunteered for ten years and taught a yoga class
for folks involved in a voluntary drug program. I have colleagues who work with
older adults, veterans, and young people who like to ride bikes, offering yoga
asana practice after the “yoga ride.” The possibilities are many-faceted; I’m
sure that something could suit almost any kind of yoga temperament. It’s clear,
however, that some don’t have the call to this kind of work, so of course in
that case, the yoga will work its power in individual lives.
Actually, I’ve seen many people take on the practice of yoga
and/or meditation with the result that their commitment to their own visions
deepens. Songwriters make time to write more songs, artists dive deep into
their work, musicians get in the practice room more often. On many levels, I
see this as work coming from soul or spirit, and hope that those who don’t do
this kind of work will support those who do. In fact, as yoga grows it seems
that the awareness of local art and local food are growing too. These
phenomena, I believe, are interconnected—over time we could envision a world
with more art, music, drama and dance, and healthier, organic, pesticide-free,
cruelty-free delicious food that we could cook for each other! More on these
themes as the “ekadashi” days of 2015 roll out. This twice a month writing, 11
days after the new moon, then again 11 days after the full moon, I thought
would be sustainable. Future posts will be shorter. I’ve been thinking about
this first post for some time now.
Bottom line, after teaching yoga for going on four decades
and teaching teachers for two decades, I’m proposing that we first give
ourselves credit for being willing to slow down and welcome a non-competitive
practice that includes the body, mind AND spirit into our lives. At this point
we can take our self-respect into our yoga classes and communities and practice
rooms. Finally we might begin a dialogue about how our increased health,
strength and clarity might be of service in sustaining and beautifying the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment