Book Club: "The Body of Truth" by Ajahn Amaro Bhikkhu (Continued)

Whew! Long time between posts about this book, eh?  There’s been a lot going on, what with becoming a granddad and heading off to Hong Kong, having a group of wonderful folks studying the Precepts for Taking Refuge and all!

I've also noticed that there's been not one comment on this month's Daily Practice of karuna-bhavana. I hope at least some of you are joining me in this practice this month! What's up?

Last we left off, we were making our way through Ajahn Amaro’s offering: “The Body of Truth.” As a forest-dwelling monastic, he speaks of “the body of the forest” teaching us. We may wonder what this has to say to us who live in the ‘concrete jungles’ or even just suburbia or the rural countryside. He says “there’s a profound physicality involved in living in a wild environment” and that is true indeed! Yet, living in Brooklyn, the sheer physicality of getting to the Laundromat, the post office and back home in one afternoon was pretty physically demanding!

“The forest,” he writes, “itself is recognized as our body, even the great earth itself,” and I would hope that no matter where we live, we come to recognize that! It’s not so much where we live, but how we live where we are that allows us to see the truth in that statement. The water than flows out of the faucets in our kitchens comes from rivers, mountain snow melt and deep wells. We drink it and it becomes this body here, reading these words. No separation.

Finally, the uncertainty of forest life is not really different from the uncertainty of any life, and we had best, as Ajahn says, “let go, recognizing that that uncertainty is part of the intrinsic nature of all things.” A practice I sometimes offer is “One-Way Practice.” Whenever you go to do something, even simply getting up from your desk to go to the rest room, take a ‘one-way ticket.’ After all, you’ve got absolutely no guarantee that you’ll be coming back to your desk! And yes, Cathy, life is that uncertain!

In the next section, “The Body of Truth and The Body of Fear,” Ajahn Amaro makes the important case that our routine identification with emotional states is a leading cause of duhkha. In the following section, “Embodying the Mind: The Case of Fear,” the practice he is advocating is pretty much what I suggest to those caught in strong emotional storms: drop out of the cognitive aspect of the experience and really turn to what it feels like in the body. Where is the sensation? What are its qualities? In effect, what we are doing is investigating the mental formations as they exist in the body. It can be rather difficult to ‘just see’ emotional states, but the energy of mindfulness can more easily be cultivated to contain the pre-cognitive state of feeling (vedana).

Of course, this requires the persistent, diligent practice of mindfulness so that we ‘build a bigger container,’ or else even the feelings – if they are intense – will seem to overwhelm us. I like that he uses the phrase I first heard from Tara Brach: “radical acceptance.” Such a mental stance strikes directly at the ‘picking and choosing’ that keeps us from true intimacy with life as it is.

metta

Book Club: The Buddha and The Yogi: Paradigms of Restraint and Renunciation by Mu Soeng

I was looking forward to Mu Soeng’s chapter, and for the most part, was not disappointed! In fact, personally, along with Chip Hartranft’s, Goldfield and Taylor’s and Powers’ chapters, this one by Mu Soeng is one of my favorites.

His opening paragraph makes his the first to really address the “commodification” of Yoga and Mindfulness found in this book (Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind). And ironically, there’s been a lot of words shared in the blogosphere around the argument as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing! For some reason, those with the most vested interest in the popularity of Yoga (in particular) seem to take offense with anyone speaking up and saying – as Mu Soeng puts it – “something seems to be missing; something fundamental to the raison d’etre of both traditions.” I don’t see anything controversial about such an assertion, and yet, there seems to be many who take offense at such an observation.

I am delighted that more and more people are becoming aware of the liberating power of mindfulness. Yet, without articulating it, many remain unaware of the ‘ultimate’ liberating nature of mindfulness in regard to our culture’s consumerist worldview. Even at the time of the Buddha, he said that mindfulness goes against the grain in it’s vision of “individuals and society grounded in restraint and renunciation, in simplicity, in doing away with the clutter of possessions, and so on.”

When Lululemon tights go for $100.00 and more, I think it safe to say we may have lost sight of the deeper truths Yoga and Mindfulness offer. The three major sources of suffering, according to the Yoga Tradition (including Buddhism) are greed (craving), hatred (aversion) and delusion (ignore-ance). The Yogic way of life is one that seeks to counter-balance these three ‘poisons,’ through the “yoking” involved in meditation (as well as pranayama and asana practice).

Where things get a bit hairy is when the Yoga Tradition creates a cosmological and ontological “samsara” that one seeks to liberate oneself from. This makes not being ‘reborn’ into the best thing you can do with this life. IF one takes this in a purely metaphorical, psychological way, as does the modernist Buddhadasa Bhikhu, then I have no problem with this. But when we reify this understanding into a cosmological worldview, then this life tends to be devalued. In fact, this devaluation is addressed by Mu Soeng as a "positive hermeneutic." This is something, as a naturalist, I wish to avoid.

When we remember that “samsara” is not a place but a process; “the process of craving and clinging; of greed, hatred, and delusion,” as Mu Soeng writes, then we can utilize this humanistic, psychological understanding. In fact, other scholars have also pointed out that to think in terms of “entering nirvana” is also inappropriate as nirvana is also not a place but it too is a process! As ugly as it may sound to our ears in English, the Pali can best be translated – according to these scholars – as “nirvanizing.”

I really appreciate Mu Soeng’s speculation regarding the two competing ‘value systems’ with that which adopted Shiva (the god of asceticism) and that which adopted Vishnu (the householder’s god). Certainly, I don’t think it can be argued otherwise than that the Buddha clearly preferred the way of the renunciant over that of the ‘dusty house-holder.’ However, to his credit, he did teach householders, and recognized many as becoming fully awakened arahants.

As Mu Soeng points out, we “moderns” wish to have our cake and eat it too. I think that to at least some degree, this is what lies behind the huge popularity of so-called “tantric” based forms of hatha-yoga. “Everything is divine” goes the party line, so why hold back from enjoying all life has to offer. Why indeed? But is enjoyment really what one seeks? And if so, is it the enjoyment of a string of ephemeral experiences, possessions and relationships?

Bikram poses with his 50 Rolls Royces, and the obscenity of this seems to escape all too many students and practitioners of yoga! One may say, it’s fine if one is not attached to the cars. But I would argue that there is more than one’s level of ‘attachment’ that is at issue here.

Now, Mu Soeng’s conclusion is where I part company with him! He seems to feel that the only alternative to living a mainstream, consumerist life is “to align oneself with the worldviews of these traditions if one is to go beyond the habits of consuming desires…”

If he means we need to align ourselves with the ideas of going against the stream of our craving and grasping, our aversion and delusion, than I’ve no argument there. But that is – to my mind – a far cry from aligning with the worldview that life, in particular the householder life, is something to escape from!

As I think I have done in my Zen Naturalism blog, one can and perhaps ‘should,’ contextualize one’s contemporary spiritual views and intentions based upon modern, even secular, humanist, naturalist worldviews. We needed take on tradition supernatural, dualistic, transcendentalist worldviews to avoid commodification of the teachings and practices. As I tell my students, while I am old enough to have protested the Vietnam War, hung out at C.B.G.B.s and make ‘punk’ movies, there is nothing as counter-cultural and radical as attempting to live mindfully and simply.

Book Club: Brahma Viharas, Emptiness and Ethics: Conclusion by Christopher Key Chapple

Practice

In a way, this penultimate section, being the most personal, is one I feel less inclined to comment upon. After all, each person’s yoga is ultimately uniquely their own. And after all is said, I am moved by the examples Chapple is willing to share in this section.

Interestingly, the first example he gives as an example of the Brahma Viharas, from the more Classical Yoga approach of categorizing questioners leads to a similar response I would tend toward having from the broader understanding of compassion, empathetic joy, friendliness and equanimity. When I find myself confronted with an aggressive questioner (thankfully, relatively infrequently), I remind myself that perhaps the person is venting anger or criticism because they are suffering, perhaps the teaching is hitting them in a tender spot and they are resistant; I try to connect with my wish that the person be happy; I am happy if they are comfortable with their own understanding and/or practice; and finally, I remind myself that whether they are happy or suffering, that ultimately they alone are the heirs of their karma and only they can make themselves happy or unhappy.

Chapple’s example of “emptiness” practice takes it from the rarified heights of philosophy into a very down-to-earth understanding. I appreciate this, but also think it may overly simplify the radical liberating power of this teaching. Seeing emptiness of oneself is an important step; we must then go on to see all beings as empty of self, for it is this that opens the heart to unconditional compassion.

And finally, the ethical teachings are truly best understood as lived experience. This is why I appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh referring to the Five Precepts as “Mindfulness Trainings.” Through keeping them in mind throughout the daily activities we join in, we grow in mindfulness, understanding and compassion. As mindfulness, understanding and compassion grows, our lives become more exemplary of the trainings.

Book Club: Brahma Viharas, Emptiness and Ethics by Christopher Key Chapple

“Brahma-Vihara, Emptiness, and Ethics”

by Christopher Key Chapple

Well, the holidays have passed, and I hope those of you who have been reading Michael Stone’s Freeing the Body, Freeing The Mind with me as part of this ‘virtual book club’ are still sticking with me in this new year!

Christopher Key Chapple is a professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and one who has done much wonderful work on Patanjali and other Yogic texts, so again I was looking forward to reading his contribution, especially as just last year I had written over 7,000 words on the Brahma-Viharas for Yoga Journal. As Chapple begins his chapter, he points out that along with the Viharas, emptiness and ethics are “three points of contact between Buddhism and classical Yoga.”

However, I was much surprised – and a bit dismayed – to find that Chapple takes the Classical Yoga approach to the Brahma-Viharas and implies that this is the same understanding in the Buddhist Yoga tradition. The translation from Yoga-Sutra I.33 he uses reads:

Be friendly with the happy, compassionate toward those who suffer. Celebrate the success of the virtuous, be even-minded toward those who lack virtue.

While I was happy to see how he translates upeksha as “even-minded” instead of the (to my mind) awful “disinterest” and “disregard” favored by many other yogis from the (Hindu) Classical Yoga tradition such as B.K.S. Iyengar and Swami Satchidananda, I felt dismay that he takes that tradition’s contextual conditions as crucial and central to the practice of the Four Brahma-Viharas! 

In fact, in the Buddhist Yoga tradition, these four qualities are also often referred to as the Four Immeasurables, and are to be practiced toward all beings, as we see in the translations of people like Georg Feurstein and Chip Hartranft who translate this same sutra thus:

The projection of friendliness, compassion, gladness and equanimity towards all objects -- <be they> joyful, sorrowful, meritorious or demeritorious -- <bring about> the pacification of consciousness.  – Feuerstein

Consciousness settles as one radiates friendliness, compassion, delight, and equanimity toward all things, whether pleasant, or painful, good or bad.  – Hartranft

I hasten to say that I am not saying the classical tradition is ‘wrong.’ For the Classical Yoga emphasis on one’s own ‘inner peace,’ cultivating these states of mind is a way of restraining or reversing what Patanjali calls vikshepa, the tendency of the mind to be distracted and outwardly directed. Patanjali tells us that when we react haphazardly or callously to what people do around us, inner disturbance is the result. These four attitudes combat that disturbance and bring us closer to a state of balanced equilibrium.

When we see happy people, cultivating a friendly attitude toward them will help forestall feelings of jealousy and envy. When we encounter those who are suffering, we should compassionately do what we can to help—for our own sake as much as for the person who is suffering. "Our goal is to keep the serenity of our minds. Whether our mercy will help that person or not, by our own feeling of mercy, at least we are helped," Satchidananda says.

Appreciating and delighting in the qualities of virtuous people will inspire us to cultivate such virtues ourselves. And finally, when we are faced with those we deem nonvirtuous, the classical yoga tradition teaches that we should strive to have an indifferent attitude toward them. Often, we indulge in judging and criticizing those who we feel are misguided. This hardly helps us maintain a serene state of mind! Commentators in the classical yoga tradition point out that the yogi should not divert attention from his or her own practice in order to try to reform those who are unlikely to heed advice. As Satchidananda points out, "If you try to advise them, you will lose your peace."

However, the broader view is the one emphasized in the Buddhist tradition, where the brahmaviharas, as I mentioned above, are also known as "the Four Limitless Ones" and "the Four Immeasurables," reflecting Buddhist yoga's emphasis on social relationships and the interdependent nature of all beings. Both of these perspectives are valuable; reflecting on the intention and purpose behind each gives greater depth to our own practice. I only wish that in the desire to emphasize the similarities between the two Yoga traditions of Classical Yoga and Buddhist Yoga, we don’t blur, bury or soft-pedal the real differences.

Other than this, I do find Chapple’s emphasis on the significance that the terms for each of these qualities have a feminine ending very interesting! Patanjali is often criticized (most often correctly, in my view) as being male-centric, so it is helpful to see a way in which the importance of the feminine principle can be found in the practices Patanjali offers.

Tomorrow I will post on the section on “emptiness,” but for now, I’d love to hear from those of you who have been reading along any thoughts you have about the Four Brahma-Viharas. For those of you who are interested in reading my articles on them from Yoga Journal, here are the links:

Maitri/Karuna: “Love In Full Bloom”

Mudita: “I’m So Happy For You”

Upeksha: “Calm Within”

BOOK CLUB: "Mind and Body at Ease" by Sarah Powers

I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Powers’ work, so I was looking forward to reading her contribution to Michael Stone’s anthology, Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind. Sarah’s essay is Chapter 7 of this book, and she begins right out of the gate, so to speak, asserting, “Hatha Yoga is an introspective path.” Of course she’ll have no argument from me on this point, but I wonder still how many practitioners understand it as such?

The next part of her opening sentence strikes me a bit strangely though, when she seems to place the “introspective path of self-transformation” that is Hatha-Yoga purely in terms of using “the body as a vehicle for harmonizing and strengthening one’s energy” that allows one to then – with this ‘balanced energy’ – be in a place of better understanding for freeing our minds with the “meditative awareness practice” that is mindfulness. She goes on to speak of “braiding” Hatha Yoga and mindfulness together as our practice life.

I say this strikes me strangely because I think that in our practice life, these are not at all two ‘things’ we braid together as much as one fully integrated, comprehensive practice. In cultivating a mindfulness of body, for instance, while practicing the postures and movements of Hatha Yoga, the practice jointly balances energy and cultivates understanding and freedom of mind. In my own practice, I cannot sense them as two when we approach Hatha Yoga as an introspective path.

I don’t wish to belabor the point here, but I do want to clarify that what may seem like two practices that complement each other can indeed be approached as one single, comprehensive practice. And honestly, this is how it feels when I’ve taken class with Sarah: seamless!

Her distinction between “active attention” and “receptive attention” is an interesting one. Of course, various mindfulness meditations emphasize these different forms of attention regardless of the posture one is in. For instance, the body scan most often used as either First or Second Foundation practice requires much active attention as one directs one’s attention throughout the body in a systematic way. While doing so, one is encouraged to maintain an ‘equanimous mind’ which is a non-reactive receptive state.

That she sees these two forms of attention as related to yang and yin approaches to yogasana is telling, and again makes sense. Whenever I am offering equanimity practice, I emphasize yin-yoga practice, though of course, again, this kind of receptive, non-manipulating kind of attention is also needed in more vigorous vinyasa as well – as Sarah also mentions. It is always, ultimately, a matter of emphasis. Almost always, distinctions made for didactic purposes over-emphasize the differences and make it sound like they are truly separate, while in practice, we find a more fluid relationship to these approaches.

One thing I really appreciated about Sarah’s contribution is her examples from her own life. It is important for practitioners to understand that this ‘practice’ is, as she writes, a ‘life-practice,’ so her use of her hot flashes as an example of working with mindfulness is very pertinent. One caveat: ‘awareness of sensations’ is more accurately associated with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, and I suspect her referring to is as the First Foundation on page 92 is a typo or simply a slip of the pen, so to speak, which I think becomes obvious when she refers to the First Foundation of Mindfulness as “mindfulness of the body” on the very next page.

I completely feel at resonance with Sarah, especially when she writes about what I call ‘building a bigger container.’ When we rest in a more receptive mode of attention in the face of discomfort, we are doing so not to become more stoic, but to cultivate the ability and capacity to meet the unavoidable afflictions, disappointments and difficulties of everyday life “without adding suffering to our suffering,” as she puts it. This is a real freedom that is truly available to any of us, if we simply give ourselves the time and permission to stay in that receptive state.

I also appreciate her drawing attention to ‘self-talk’ as part of our mindfulness practice. So much of this self-talk can be so unkind and self-lacerating. Most people would be appalled at the idea of saying such things to others, but their minds lash out at them with such vitriol. And then there is all the under-mining self-talk that she speaks about.

In the chain of causation, there is what she refers to as the first and second ‘beats’ of stimulus and assessment, and the third and fourth beats as reaction and action. Mindfulness is a form of nirodha, or containment. We feel a reaction of grasping or aversion to a sensation that is assessed as pleasant or unpleasant and we consciously inhibit any action based upon the conditioning so that we can choose a more creative way to respond.

Sarah strongly makes the point that mindfulness allows us to see the choices our life experience make available to us. Without mindfulness, we live in an almost automatic mode of conditioned reactivity and end up feeling ‘victimized’ by ‘fate.’

Along with Chip Hartranft’s opening chapter, “Awakening to Prana” and chapter five, “Joining With Naturalness” by Ari Goldfield and Rose Taylor, I find Sarah’s contribution to be my favorites so far. All of them offer solid, sound understandings and approaches that I hope are making the relationship between Yoga and Buddhism more clear among readers. What do you think?

Book Club: Zen Body by Eido Shimano Roshi

Chapter Six, the entry from Eido Shimano Roshi, is rather short and, in my opinion, rather slight, so my comments will also be short – and most likely slight as well.

In his opening sentence, it’s rather clear that by joining “Yoga” and “sports” as things the Buddha was trained in, along with the presumption that having studied yoga and sport, the Buddha was “very fit,” that Eido is thinking of Yoga as physical training. If I could, I’d tell Eido that everytime he trains a student in zazen, he is teaching Yoga!

Where I have complete agreement with Eido Roshi, is in his assertion that “the body is indispensable as the mind for finding ultimate liberation.” In fact, I often quote Georg Feuerstein, who said that enlightenment is a full-body experience.

As a long-time student of Zen, I appreciate Eido Roshi’s discussion of soji (cleaning). Since the baby’s arrival, I’ve found that I’ve more opportunity to practice while cleaning (laundry, dishes, diapers etc) and it has been truly a very nourishing practice. When fully immersed in this practice of cleaning, mind becomes still, at one with action. Action seems still, even in movement, as mind has ceased to run commentary.

As I teach in Body of Peace, when body, breath and mind are fully and completely aligned and relaxed into action, the true body is seen to be the 10,000 things. As Eido, quoting Dogen puts it:

"The entire world in the ten directions is nothing but the true human body."

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving Day, I hope yours is truly a time of reflection on the myriad gifts we receive daily. As the November Daily Practice of Naikan allows us to see, we benefit from countless, innumerable beings constantly.  And to all of you, I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your practice, for your desire and commitment to awaken for the sake of a more loving and joy-filled world.

Book Club: Joining With Naturalness by Ari Goldfield and Rose Taylor

I was looking forward to reading this chapter as it deals with Tibetan Buddhist Yoga, which is one Buddhist tradition I know relatively little about, and I was not disappointed at all! I was glad to see how in their opening paragraphs, Goldfield and Taylor acknowledge that there is indeed a wide variety of “Buddhist Yogas,” and so they take some time to define the terms as they will be using them! This is an important step that I also attempt whenever I teach, but one that many others do not take, and which leads to needless confusion and debate among practitioners.

What Does ‘Buddhist Yoga’ Mean?

I was very much taken by their explication of the Tibetan terms for Buddhist and Yoga. I like the idea of the “insider” as someone who looks and explores ‘inside’ one’s experience. This reminds me of Georg Feuerstein’s referring to yogis as being “psychonauts.” I also found it interesting that sang jeh, the Tibetan term for “Buddha” literally means “awaken” and “expand,” pointing to the fact that the qualities we associate with being a buddha are inherent within us, and that awakening is a kind of expansion of that innate nature. The understanding of nal-jor for “Yoga,” meaning “to join with naturalness” adds an interesting take to the oft-said definition as simply “to join.” It reminds us that ultimately, we are not joining two things that have separated but joining with what is always ‘naturally’ present!

In their discussion of what it means to “join with naturalness,” I like their emphasis on the non-separability of mind and body: the importance of involving mind when working with body and involving body when we work with mind. I think this is an important point, which when forgotten, leads to the mistaken notion that meditation is about the mind and hatha-yogasana is about the body. As I often remind students, when you are sitting in meditation, much of the experience is dealing with bodily issues: tickling, aches, numbness, tightness etc. and how to relate to them. And when practicing hatha, often we are taken up with recognizing the constant commentary the mind produces as we move through our sequence of postures: “I can’t stay here another moment!” “Darn, this side is soooo tight! I can’t get as deep into the posture as the guy next to me and this is his first class!” etc.

I don’t want this to go on too long, so I’ll comment on their main points regarding the Foundations of Buddhist Yoga tomorrow or the next day. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from any of you who are following along your thoughts about this piece so far.

Book Club: Zen or Yoga? by Victoria Austin (Part Three)

Taking up where I left off in the last post, Austin answers the question, “What is an ongoing student’s experience like in Zen? And in Yoga?” I think she captures the truth of such students’ experiences – especially in the context of contemporary practice where hatha practices of asana and to a lesser extent, pranayama are just about all that is practiced!

Her response to the following question could have benefited from more depth, I think. First, as phrased, the question “Is there a problem particular to an ongoing student of both Zen and Yoga” reifies the very distinction Victoria argues against in her opening introduction! Zen is a form of Yoga! However, if it is phrased, “Is there a problem particular to an ongoing student of both Zen and Hatha-Yoga (or Zen and Classical-Yoga)” then I do agree that such a student can become confused, but such confusion would arise more from the language and ‘metaphysical’ differences between the two.

For instance, let me offer an example from my own experience. In the mid-90s, I was invited to begin offering Mindfulness Yoga sessions during Ango at Zen Mountain Monastery, as well as weekend retreats there twice a year as part of their ‘body practice’ training. I was told at the time that they had tried bringing in a hatha-yoga teacher several years earlier, but the students became confused and sometimes put-off by the teacher’s use of terms such as “True Self” and “devotion to the divine,” which are terms that can cause cognitive dissonance with students learning about the Buddha’s teachings on “not-Self” and “emptiness.” As someone who has practiced and trained in Zen, they felt that my instruction was in harmony with the Zen Dharma teachings offered and in fact were a helpful adjunct to their other practices.

So as for Victoria’s suggestion that students take up one discipline as a main practice and any other disciplines as support for at least five years, I would say I agree if we’re talking about textual study of philosophies. As shown by the experience at Zen Mountain, a Zen student would be confused by the Yoga-Sutra if she studied it before having cultivated a deep understanding of Zen. I think Victoria would agree that if one were to take up serious Zen study and practice, asana and pranayama could be a wonderful support right from the start. Once grounded in experiential understanding, studying the Yoga-Sutra would not be confusing and could indeed shed light on one’s Zen practice. I believe similar things could be said of the serious Yoga student.

Again, from my experience teaching long-term, seriously devoted students of Integral Yoga at Yogaville, the Buddhist teachings and approach to meditation initially cause many of them confusion, and even doubt, before they find that the teachings can support and deepen their own awareness of the Classical Yoga and Vedanta they are steeped in. In fact, for many of them, many forms of Buddhist meditation do not fall into their understanding of what meditation is!

As to the question of how to integrate the two practices, I think the choice falls into either the ‘complementary’ approach or the fully integrated approach. For years, I practiced a ‘complementary’ approach, treating asana practice as a way of preparing my bodymind for sitting. With such an approach, obviously all I was doing was taking the physical practice from hatha-yoga and adding it to my practice of zazen. Zen was the ‘core’ practice and study.

Now, I fully integrate many teachings from Patanjali that I believe support my Zen pratice. Concepts such as abhyasa and vairagya, to mention just two, for instance, while not absent from Zen teaching, are not as fully explicated as in the Classical Yoga tradition. In my teaching, I quote from both Patanjali and the Buddha fairly freely.

In Victoria’s response to this question, I was a bit taken aback when she seems to equate “Self (the Yoga term) or Mind (the Zen term)” as I think this confusing and inaccurate.

Again, the question about structuring a practice that includes asana and seated meditation falls into the reductionist model of equating Yoga with the physical practices of hatha-yoga. As far as that goes, I think it’s good to experiment and see for oneself. I personally find that sitting meditation after asana practice (and perhaps some pranayama) tends to be deeper and stiller. But I know others who prefer to meditate before practicing hatha-yogasana.

As to ‘confusing’ the two practices, for me, whether I am practicing asana or walking or sitting meditation, there is no real differnce, so there’s nothing to ‘confuse.’ Of course, I do not wear my Zen robes while practicing hatha-yogasana, and would not wear my Yoga pants and tee-shirt to offer a Zen Dharma Talk.

As you can see from my response to the question of ‘integration,’ I totally disagree with Victoria that one ‘risks losing what makes each lineage a teaching’ if one uses concepts from both traditions. Does either tradition need the other as if either were ‘incomplete?’ No, of course not. But I do find that integrating concepts from both make for an even more comprehensive, coherent practice.

In fact, the response to her next question seems to fly in the face of her own response here as when she says that by obeying her Zen teacher and stopping attending Yoga classes she ‘unintentionally ignored yogic self-study.’ This whole notion of svadhyaya is of course not absent from Zen; after all, Dogen explains zazen as ‘the study of the self.’ But I do think that articulating it as clearly and forcefully as the Classical Yoga tradition does is indeed a support to one’s over-all inclusive Yoga practice of Zen!

The next question I think is yet another variation of others already responded to, so I will skip adding to that and finish with my response to the last question:

“Which philosophy best describes reality?”

Well, isn’t that the $60,000 question?! And another important question is “Can we know for sure?” Victoria jumps right into the breech by pointing out the dualism that is fundamental to Patanjali’s Classical Yoga. Prakriti is the ‘essence’ of nature she speaks of, thought to be ontologically real. It is the ‘first maker’ of all the manifest universe including your body and mind! Whereas Purusha is the “Self” which is simply and only the ‘witness.’ It is stressed by Patanjali that Purusha is completely uninvolved in the workings of Prakriti.

The Buddha’s core teaching of anatta says that there is no transcendent, independent, autonomous, ‘essence’ behind, above, within, or without the ever-changing flux of experience. He did not deny that there is a ‘self,’ but this is a phenomenological and empirical self that is always changing because it is completely part of the causal flow of conditions.

Now, Victoria may be accurate in saying that “Buddhism is not usually thought of as dualistic,” but this is an incorrect perception! Her statement that “Ultimate reality and relative reality are not considered to be separate” is taken to be absolute nonsense, for instance, by the Theravada Buddhist tradition. I think it may come as a shock to many Mahayana/Zen and Vajrayana Buddhists to read the following essay by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Dhamma and Non-Duality 

I will only quote a few pertinent passages here:

“The Mahayana schools, despite their great differences, concur in upholding a thesis that, from the Theravada point of view, borders on the outrageous. This is the claim that there is no ultimate difference between samsara and Nirvana, defilement and purity, ignorance and enlightenment. For the Mahayana, the enlightenment which the Buddhist path is designed to awaken consists precisely in the realization of this non-dualistic perspective….

The teaching of the Buddha as found in the Pali canon does not endorse a philosophy of non-dualism of any variety, nor, I would add, can a non-dualistic perspective be found lying implicit within the Buddha's discourses….

At the peak of the pairs of opposites stands the duality of the conditioned and the Unconditioned: samsara as the round of repeated birth and death wherein all is impermanent, subject to change, and liable to suffering, and Nibbana as the state of final deliverance, the unborn, ageless, and deathless. Although Nibbana, even in the early texts, is definitely cast as an ultimate reality and not merely as an ethical or psychological state, there is not the least insinuation that this reality is metaphysically indistinguishable at some profound level from its manifest opposite, samsara. To the contrary, the Buddha's repeated lesson is that samsara is the realm of suffering governed by greed, hatred, and delusion, wherein we have shed tears greater than the waters of the ocean, while Nibbana is irreversible release from samsara, to be attained by demolishing greed, hatred, and delusion, and by relinquishing all conditioned existence.

Thus the Theravada makes the antithesis of samsara and Nibbana the starting point of the entire quest for deliverance. Even more, it treats this antithesis as determinative of the final goal, which is precisely the transcendence of samsara and the attainment of liberation in Nibbana. Where Theravada differs significantly from the Mahayana schools, which also start with the duality of samsara and Nirvana, is in its refusal to regard this polarity as a mere preparatory lesson tailored for those with blunt faculties, to be eventually superseded by some higher realization of non-duality. From the standpoint of the Pali Suttas, even for the Buddha and the arahants suffering and its cessation, samsara and Nibbana, remain distinct.”

Wow! There couldn’t be a stronger refutation of Victoria’s assertion that “Ultimate reality and relative reality are not considered to be separate.” Pali Buddhism has much in common with Patanjali’s dualism, especially if you replace Prakriti with samsara and Purusha with nirvana. Now of course, if one understands Purusha as the “True Self,” then the Buddha would part company with Patanjali over this, as he sees even nirvana empty of Self.

She offers that from her experience, these differences are merely “apparent conflicts” that arise “when we attempt to describe experiences beyond words.” That may be so, but the Buddha spoke many words about his experience and understanding, and refuted those who taught Samkhya. He most likely would have refuted the later Mahayana non-dual teachings in a way similar to how Patanjali criticizes some Mahayana teachings in his Yoga-Sutra.

So, does this all matter. I don’t know. I know people who are compassionate, wise-acting, full of joy and peace who practice and believe all sorts of things! I know such practitioners in the Theravada as well as the Mahayana and Vajrayana, not to mention practitioners of Vedanta and Tantra! (Here I am sticking to traditions within the larger Yoga Tradition; obviously there are such folk who are Humanists, Christians, Muslims, Jewish etc.)

Victoria is perhaps wiser than I am, as I notice she really avoids responding directly to the straight-forward question. From my side, I believe the Buddhist teaching on anatta and co-origination make sense and seem to describe reality more accurately – from what we apparently know through empirical science – than the other philosophies. 

This ends my comments on this thought-provoking essay on Zen and Yoga. I look forward to hearing from you as to your thoughts!

Book Club: Zen or Yoga? by Victoria Austin (Part Two)

Taking up where I left last post, Austin responds to the following question, “How did Yoga become a word for a physical tradition?” by quoting B.K.S. Iyengar. However, the quote speaks of “merging the individual soul … with the Universal Soul” and while this may be one way of speaking of Vedanta, it makes absolutely no sense in Patanjali’s model, which elsewhere Austin says Iyengar teaches. This is one of the more tenacious misunderstandings rife in the western hatha-yoga community!

In fact, I don’t think Austin ever really answers the question. A more straight-forward response would acknowledge the historical and cultural conditions that led to the emphasis on physical practice when Yoga was brought to the west over the last century or so. Ironically, Vivekananda, often seen as the first Indian yogi to introduce Yoga to the west spoke at the Chicago Congress of Religion at the end of the 19^th century, but never mentioned the word “yoga,” and shied away from asana practice because he thought Americans would find it ‘strange!’

In the following question, as to whether Yoga and Zen, as both ways of uniting body and mind aren’t after all the same path, Ausin offers a really good response. Undeniably, both offer practices designed to unite body and mind, and both speak about suffering, its causes, and how to ameliorate it, but they offer dramatically distinct rationales. So, they offer distinct paths, while being ‘universal’ to some degree.

Sadly, I think Austin falls far short in her response to the following question, “Why would someone study both Zen and Yoga.” After her clear and concise introduction, in her response to this question, she falls back into equating Yoga with the physical practice of asana and Zen with meditation!!!! I find this frustrating. The second half of her response does indeed call this a “false duality,” but the whole first half speaks in terms of Yoga providing a way to ‘search out obstacles of body and mind that otherwise may block the Zen practitioner from taking real refuge” because they may have “great difficulty sitting.” And Zen, she says, with its “teachings of sitting, precepts, and work can be a revelation for the Yoga practitioner who has lost contact with any of the eight limbs of Yoga” by providing “a wider view.”

What Austin is describing here is the way things are when we speak of the situation in the majority of Hatha-Yoga studios, where it is all physical and little or no teachings of the ethics and meditation. BUT, it would have been clearer had she spoken of Hatha-Yoga and Zen, rather than Yoga and Zen.

I think her response to the last question I’ll take up here, “How is Buddhism yogic?” is excellent. I am delighted that she even says something I often mention in my History and Philosophy lectures: the Buddha’s teachings are the “first sustained expression and development of yogic ideas.” So many contemporary yoga practitioners, because of their limited understanding of Yoga as the physical practice of asana, are confused and surprised when I make similar comments. Yogic ideas permeated the Upanishads (some of which appeared before the Buddha) and the epic poems (including the Mahabharata and it’s Bhagavad Gita), but nowhere before the Buddha do we find such a coherent path laid out. And we don’t really see it again until Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra.

I hope to file my final posting on this chapter of Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind by the end of this week, but meanwhile, I look forward to your comments.

Book Club: Zen or Yoga? by Victoria Austin

As this is another fairly long essay, and one I believe to be important for our discussion, I am going to post two or three responses. Today, I’m offering my initial response to Victoria Ausin’s opening and the first few questions she addresses. I look forward to hearing from those of you reading along!

Interestingly enough, the opening of this essay from Victoria Austin sounds similar to something Stephen Cope wrote about several years ago about being on a plane and entering into a similar conversation with someone who asked how he reconciled practicing Yoga and Vipassana. I never seem to have these kind of conversations on planes!

When I read Victoria’s statement: “My seatmate’s very natural questions reflect a common view: that Yoga is practice for the body and Zen, practice for the mind” I was delighted! This is a succinct summary of the common misperception practitioners have in general about Yoga and Buddhism. I was further delighted to see her add: “I see the assumption of a mind-body split, Zen versus Yoga, as a feature of the English language, rather than as any actual separation between the territory of Buddhism and that of Yoga.”

Those of you familiar with my own work know that I think it ludicrous to speak of “Yoga and Buddhism” as two different things. Buddhism is a form of Yoga. However, it is legitimate to speak of “Classical Yoga and Buddhism” or “Classical Yoga and Zen” as two different philosophies of Yoga!

Austin makes a point that I am gladdened to see when she speaks of others’ attempts to “integrate these disciplines” that perpetuates or reinforces this assumption that Yoga is about physical practice (the body) and Buddhism is about meditation (which is thought to be about the mind) and singles out Cyndi Lee’s Yoga Body, Buddha Mind as one example. She also mentions Zen Mind, Yoga Body, a work I am not presently familiar with. While I have gone on record as someone with really respects and enjoys Cyndi’s work, I am not as sure as Austin that “… experiencing the books and workshops would resolve the split” that a mere reading of the titles alone would reify. Ironically, I have a student participating in my Body of Peace program here at Kripalu who has recently taken training with Cyndi, and she said that the split is reinforced by the clear “division of labor” with Cyndi teaching asana and her husband, David Nichtern teaching meditation!

While I agree that “Buddhism” has become a religion, it is not inherently so! The concept of “religion” is one alien to the time of the Buddha. He taught a yogic path of liberation, like many other yogis of his time. And Yoga, while not a religion, is religious in its concerns: the freedom for suffering through awakening from delusion or ignorance of our true nature.

After Austin’s “Introduction,” including a brief biographical overview of her own practice path, she presents several questions she has been asked over the decades about her practice of Zen and Yoga, along with her responses.

The Questions

Her first question provides a simple, bare response of what beginners might expect when taking up the practice of Zen and/or Yoga.

Her second question responds to what the promise of Zen and Yoga practice is. I like that she basically shows that while the Buddha outlined the Four Noble Truths, Patanjali pretty much works from the same base: ignorance is the primary cause of suffering; and each offers an eight-fold path to the elimination of suffering.

Her response to the third question, “How much of Zen is mind training?” I think could have been a bit more succinct, but she eventually gets around to saying that seeing Zen as simply “mind training” is an impoverished view. Primarily, I would add, this impoverished view is based upon the assumption that mind can be fully separated from body, and engaged action in the world. A huge part of my Zen training was work practice, which over the years included weed-pulling, painting, hanging sheet rock, dusting, cooking and assorted other activities. Can this be called “mind training?” Can it not be called “mind training?!”

I would also add that along with “family practice, diversity, and mass media,” important other contributions America (and the west) have brought to Zen is psychological sophistication and understanding, recovery programs, political activism, feminism and ecological activism.

The fourth question is the parallel to the third: “How much of Yoga is body training?” I think Victoria muddies the issue here by bringing in the eight limbs as having been transmitted in diverse traditions and styles, and then referring to Bhakti, Hatha, and Raja. The famous eight limbs of Patanjali are not the only models of Yoga. There are paths with less and paths with more limbs. Bhakti Yoga is itself made up of many individual traditions, many of which never speak of the eight limbs.

Indeed, some scholars assert that the eight limbs found in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra are a later interpolation, and that the original Yoga taught by Patanjali is the three-limbed Kriya-Yoga! Iyengar Yoga does indeed offer an integration of the Hatha-Yoga tradition (which famously downplays the yamas and niyamas as evidenced in the Hatha-Yoga Pradipika, its earliest foundational text) and Raja-Yoga as embodied in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra. Each alignment instruction given in an Iyengar class is seen to be a dharana, or a point of concentration. Austin’s profound example of B.K.S. Iyengar’s exhortation “to learn to take the muscles evenly inward” is further evidence of the fallacy of thinking we can separate the body and the mind.

Book Club: "Body and Mind Dropped Away" Roshi O'Hara

The opening paragraphs of Roshi O’Hara’s essay articulates the primary place so many meditators get stuck: thinking meditation is merely about the mind! Joko Beck once described zazen as “exquisitely physical,” and Dogen’s emphasis on posture in the Fukanzazengi, the root manual of Soto Zen meditation makes this clear!

Roshi speaks about feeling/thinking of her mind as some kind of balloon floating over the body. Years ago, I used to think that most of the students coming to my classes lived from the neck up. Nowadays, I think it’s more accurate to say that most of us living today live from our eyebrows up!

The phrase, “body and mind dropped away” can be confusing to those new to “Zen speak.” I remember when I first heard the phrase, I interpreted it to be a reference to some trance-out state of numbness with no sensation of the body and no mental activity. This is why I am grateful that Roshi provides a clear example of what she means by “body and mind dropped away” at the bottom of page 32 into the top of page 33: “The dropping away of all concept of body and mind is like a distorting lens falling away and what is left is a realization that I am the snow, the ice, the earth and sky, while I have not stopped being myself.” I offer a similar example of this in my book, Mindfulness Yoga, where I describe the “dropping away of body and mind” in a hatha-class, where I was the sound of the teacher’s instructions, the music she was playing, the audible ujjayi breath of us students, etc. This experience is most certainly not the blocking or suppression of body and mind.

We all use words, concepts, and there is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with words and concepts. Our error is in forgetting that we are using them, and so they begin to ‘use’ us. Contemplate any weather related sentence: “It’s raining today,” “It’s really windy,” “It looks like it’ll be a sunny day,” etc. What exactly is the “It” that we are talking about? Is there really a subject separate from the rain, the wind, the sunshine? This is no different from the situation of using words such as “I,” “Me,” and “mine.” All serious practice comes down to “What is this ‘you?’”

The Korean Seon (Zen) Master, Chinul, would often exhort his students to ‘trace the radiance back.’ Illuminate the self to become clear about the nature of this ‘self.’ When you go beyond the labels you use to identify ‘yourself,’ (man or woman, teacher, poet, carpenter, liberal, conservative, white, black, yellow, Buddhist, Christian, atheist etc. etc.) what is left?

At the bottom of page 36, Roshi speaks of jijuyu samadhi, the samadhi of union. Many practitioners seek such a state, and don’t realize that striving for it can keep it from arising. But then, as she writes, “there is often an odd and surprisingly pleasant, joyful, and energetic feeling that arises. It is likely that in several tiny time spaces between effort and distraction there were moments of dropping away. The effort and distraction were never necessary, only the willingness to practice as it is.” These “drops of emptiness,” as Thich Nhat Hanh calls them, are indeed blissful moments of clarity, energy and joy. Over time, “we” find ourselves ‘dropping into’ such a natural state with greater ease and frequency.

Not to seem a killjoy, but the danger here is in becoming attached to this state of bliss; this state where body and mind drop into pure play. There are spiritual traditions that more or less drop us here and leave it at that. Roshi speaks for the Zen tradition in saying that this is not yet full freedom. As Chinul said, “It is not enough to be awakened; we must live an awakening life.” From here, we must step out and manifest the Body of Peace in all ten directions and nine times. The image Zen presents is the yogi who comes down from the mountain peak and enters fully into the market place. And goodness knows, the market place needs those who, having dropped body and mind, have seen through the delusion of separateness, and understand that we are all in this together! There is no way that your practice can be for yourself alone. Thinking that possible is itself based upon thinking you are encapsulated in the fathom-long skin bag.

So, thank you for your practice.

Metta,

Poep Sa Frank Jude

Book Club: "Awakening To Prana" by Chip Hartranft (Continued)

In today’s post, I’d like to take up where I left off in the previous post in discussion of Chip Hartranft’s contribution to Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind. In section five Chip introduces Yoga’s Eightfold Path, Ashtanga.

He begins by saying that despite differences of philosophical description and emphasis, the yoga paths of Patanjali and the Buddha are “virtually indistinguishable.” In fact, I have heard some scholars say that Patanjali offers a form of “samkhya-vipassana,” and while I think this is actually quite accurate, there are other scholars, such as the esteemed Georg Feurstein, who though giving Chip’s translation and commentary on The Yoga-Sutra a very strong positive review, also asserted that Chip goes too far in drawing the parallels. Here, Chip even implies that Patanjali was inspired by the Buddha “to adopt the well-known structure of the Buddha’s eightfold path.” I think there is no argument that one eightfold path influences the other; however, there is some evidence that may lead one to assert that the ‘real’ yoga originally taught by Patanjali is the kriya-yoga he describes and that the yoga he is most known for, ashtanga, or the eight-limbs model, is actually a later editorial insertion!

An interesting observation, in any case, is that in the Buddha’s eightfold path, the first two limbs are related to wisdom, the middle three to ethics and the last three to meditation, which in Patanjali’s eightfold schema, the path begins with the first two limbs of ethics, then goes into progressively deeper interiorization of consciousness. Here again, many (Buddhists) have asserted that all the following limbs are devoted to meditation, and that Patanjali’s path lacks the wisdom component. I disagree with that assessment, but it does seems that wisdom for Patanjali must come from the deepest levels of concentration/absorbtion (samadhi) while that is not seen as necessarily so for the Buddhist tradition. One last remark about the two paths here that I’d like to make is that when the Buddha’s Eightfold Path is presented as the Three Trainings, then the first limbs are ethics, the middle three are related to meditation and the final two are related to wisdom. This ordering seems more in line with Patanjali’s ashtanga-yoga.

In the next two sections, Chip briefly notes the yamas, as “disciplines” that address the yogis relationship to the world and the niyamas as “disciplines” relating more to the yogi’s internal personal sphere. While this is something often stated, and makes for a handy, efficient summarization, the situation can easily lead to overstatement. For instance, the first yama, non-harm (or as Chip has it, non-violence) does indeed relate to how a yogi should act in the world with the intention of causing no (or as little as possible) harm to others. But many teachers have also pointed out the importance of non-harming oneself through one’s thoughts and actions.

In his section on asana, Chip makes the important point that if we take Patanjali’s instruction here to heart, then rather than being merely a progressive ‘step-ladder’ the eight limbs are holistic and even holographic in that any one limb carried to its deepest depths can – in Chip’s words, “mature to the point of transformation.” In fact, after years of practice, several years ago I began teaching a retreat/workshop entitled Body of Peace that is based simply on the three aphorisms related to asana (as well as a single paragraph from Dogen’s Genjo-Koan.) Another point Chip emphasizes is though one can indeed seek to create stability and ease in hatha-yoga-asana practice, it cannot be denied that the most subtle levels of relaxation Patanjali is speaking about cannot arise outside of more stable postures such as sitting – and, as the Buddha might add, lying down.

I totally agree with Chip’s take that the pranayama of Patanjali is not to be confused with the more active pranayama of hatha-yoga, but instead relates to the subtle changes that naturally arise when one “yokes” one’s attention to the breath and the energy currents riding the breath. I am sure many of you who practice meditation have found times when the breath has grown very slow, with long gaps between the breath, and perhaps even periods of time where the breath seems to have stopped completely, effortlessly. 

Extending into pratyahara, Chip describes this as attention becoming so unifed that the power of externals to distract is “neutralized.” What I find interesting about pratyahara is that while many speak of this as akin to a tortoise withdrawing it’s limbs, and to a complete blocking out of any awareness of “externals,” I find the Zen teaching on keeping the sense doors open, so that awareness of externals remains, but, without distraction a kind of more subtle and deeper practice of pratyahara. In fact, the kind of samadhi where all awareness of externals is absent is often derided in the Zen tradition.

Chip concludes his overview of Patanjali’s ashtanga-yoga by simply stating that the final three limbs form a continuum where all “names, concepts, psychosomatic structures, and volitions come to subside, after which only a phenomenon’s bare arising and passing away remain.” Hence, from one-pointedness (dharana) to one-flow-ness (dhyana) to total absorption (samadhi).

The birds have vanished into the sky,

And now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

Until only the mountain remains.

--- Li Po