Building a Routine

February 27
The Meditation from the Mat messages today (I’m reading several at a time since it’s a library book and has to go back) have to do with not being too harsh with one’s self and not racing and running through yoga as one would a regular “sport.” If I find myself unable to achieve a posture or the deepness of one – or a state of mind that I feel I ought to be able to – my training has been like most Judeo-Christians, to feel shame and then to be angry with myself. These entries are teaching and remind me that it is not the yoga way. We should observe what happens, and let emotions swirl away. Boredom, frustration? They arise and pass away. If an asana or the pace is difficult . . . rest. In child pose or rest in the posture.
Then there were a couple about how most come to yoga through an exercise-type class, but find themselves hungry for more. They suggest the “more” is the yamas and niyamas. Which at first I suppose it is. How doing the physical, the asanas every day without the yamas and niyamas is like rowing your boat madly all night only to find in the morning you are still tied to the dock.

February 28
I had a long yoga session yesterday. 40 minutes or so. Some parts felt better than others. I still felt jerky and like I wasn’t sure how I should be moving from one to the other. That – how to get from one asana to the next when you haven’t worked up to the full Rishikesh sequence – and how to breathe – when inhale, when exhale – are two weaknesses of the text. I think I remember that in general one exhales as one enganges in movements that bring limbs closer to the trunk and when lifting, and inhale on the reverse. Maybe I can find a reference in the others, or maybe Van Lysebeth says in a general comment somewhere. He doesn’t include it as a part of each asana’s instructions, which I’d prefer. Before I begin today, I’m going to review all the directions for all four of the ones I’m doing, and maybe also the Locust and the first 3 parts of the Sun Salutation.
I realize I’m already spending 40 minutes, but I don’t have to spend as long in each posture or do all of them every day. It shouldn’t take me as long to get my breathing under control and get relaxed before I start as I get better, either.

March 1
[Pelvic pain had been getting increasingly worse; almost went to emergency room night before, resolved to make appt with ob/gyn today. Journal entries much taken up with whether or not to make appt for couple weeks now]

One of the Meditations from the Mat readings is about pride. It is amazing to me how much pride can still be a factor even when I am practicing in a room by myself where no one can see me. No one is going to laugh if I look ridiculous or struggle with something that “should” be easy. No one will ever know how long it takes me to master certain things nor how many mistakes I make along the way. Likewise, there is no one to congratulate me or stroke my ego for doing something well or learning fast. Yet I can’t seem to stop keeping “score” in my head, imaging an audience, imagining what Jim will say when he sees what I can do eventually. Fantasies develop around the first time I get to attend a class with others . . . how they’ll be amazed by my knowledge and stillness and form and grace . . .!!! And then I remember that I won’t know any, or few, of the asanas they do, nor how to move between them. Probably I will breathe wrong, and may have developed all sorts of bad habits. So the fantasy turns nightmarish, with everyone laughing at me, only they are too evolved to laugh – they just feel pity and compassion for poor little me who needs so much correction.
All of this in split seconds, then I realize – “What am I doing? What is the purpose of this again? To impress people when I visit an ashram some far away day? Or a random person who peeps over the fence some summer day? To wow Jim with my new flexibility?” But Pride has long been my enemy, my foe. And spiritual pride is the most insidious. It sneaks up on me in so many guises. Satya – honesty – is the way to combat it. I think to acknowledge that yes, there are parts of me that would like to show off how well they have mastered the asanas is helpful. Especially when I remind those parts that the honest truth is we need a lotof work to deserve the praise of others. We are in this for many reasons: the pursuit of ultimate liberation, health here in this life, increased widom, patience and compassion, better digestion – LOTS of reasons! If the ego’s drive for recognition helps get us through the hard parts, I guess it isn’t such a bad thing. It just can’t be allowed to rule the castle.
Hmmm. What a concept! Observing what is, in oneself, and accepting it! Not slating parts for immediate or eventual demoliton. This is kinda new.
Another reading (several actually) discusses the riches that come from small changes in our daily lives, the “doing the next right thing.” He talks about correcting his flat feet by learning to lift his arches in yoga. But it took a teacher. We can only see so much about ourselves; at some point one needs a teacher with more knowledge and wisdom who can see what you can’t. The Upanishads and Patanjali say if you do the work to get ready, when you are ready the right teacher will appear. But they were written in the social context of India, where there were teachers everywhere. What are my chances here? My only option is to trust their wisdom. Do all the preliminary work. Get as ready as I possibly can, go as far as possible on my own, and see what happens. I can always drop in at the downtown center, too, to see what it is like. I shouldn’t reject it without every visiting.
The third yama is asteya, non-stealing. What are all the ways I steal without thinking about it? Borrowed books unreturned? Work time in which I am unproductive? I think I make up for that in spades. “When we look honestly at the ways in which we’ve been stealing, we come to understand that in each instance, there is an attachment to a specific result that overrides our deeper values.” P.42 “Beneath the attachment we find fear.”
He provides a sutra that speaks to that fear: “When abstention from stealing is firmly established, precious jewels come.” Yoga Sutra If he’s right, which he surely is, all we have to do is trust. Trust that the Universe will take care of us, will provide what we need and what will give us deep pleasure. If you really, really believe this, there is no need to steal anything from anyone. Not time, food, money, a kiss, a compliment . . . you can just relax into the faith that whatever it is that you need is on its way to you.

March 2
My yoga practice really is taking 40-45 minutes every day and leaves me in a great state of mind to meditate. I guess I need to get up even earlier or something so I can add 30 minutes, or at least 15, of that to my routine. I have to begin making some kind progress on knowing my Self. I feel panicky about it, as if I’m racing the clock, which surely isn’t the right frame of mind in which to find the most healing parts of myself. Maybe after I see the doctor I’ll be able to let some of the anxiety go.
Wow. The first reading included the quote, “Our vision is beclouded and the pathway of our progress is obstructed until we come to know that God can and does express as Good in every person and every situation.” – Ernest Holmes. Rolf talks about how students come to him with anxiety over physical ailments and problems in their lives and he used to tell them that those were opportunities to be mindful. Now, he says, he thinks about it as an opportunity to pay closer attention to what we do, and to put our faith in our ability to heal. “We are not meant to be on the edges of our seats, anxiously paying attention so that we can control events and outcomes. We are meant to stand firmly in the postures of our lives, bearing witness to the moment, to our experience of the moment, aware as we do so that, in the words of Charles Johnston, ‘we are encompassed and supported by spiritual powers’.”
Maybe all I need to be doing right now is be aware of myself experiencing this pain. Stand in it, and do my best to feel the support of the universe. Have faith in my ability to heal myself. Yesterday I did have a cool moment of feeling the earth spinning on its axis, me a part of it, held by its gravity. Have faith in healing like I have faith in that, that I won’t fall off the planet.
The last yama is chastity, brahmacarya. Temperance. Literally, to walk with God. Gates makes the loud point, or point loudly, that to interpret this as celibacy is to miss the point.

Really Learning Yoga

February 26, 2009
I read a bunch more of my new yoga book and I found it so helpful! I’d like to know if he wrote others and if so, buy them. He explains things in such detail, gives both Hindu and Western biomedical reasons for doing things. He gives explicit, motion by motion instructions for each asana, provides alternate instructions for beginner and adept, even down to where our concentration should be. For example, beginners generally need to focus on carrying out the movement correctly. As one gets better, one’s focus shifts to carrying the movements out correctly, slowly, without jerking, and being sure all uninvolved muscles are relaxed. During the static stage, beginners should focus on breathing, then on immobility. Experts should focus on the specific part of the body the asana targets: the organ, muscle, etc.

He provides lists of incorrect movements, common mistakes, and then some pictures. So for each asana, there are like 3-7 pages of text and 2-4 of pictures. No wonder he only covers a handful of them (10). Plus a quick run through of one version of the Sun Salutation. He has chosen one of the series developed and taught by Shivananda at Rishikesh – the place I want to go. The home of Integral Yoga, which has spawned Yogaville here in the US, and a couple of others. The full Rishikesh Series in this book is Breathing, Self Awareness, Salutation to the Sun, then:
Sarvangasana (Candle – Shoulderstand)
Halasana (Plough)
Matsyasana (Fish)
Pashchimattanasana (Forward Bend)
Bhujangasana (Cobra)
Shalabhasana (Locust)
Dhanurasana (Bow)
Ardha-Matsyendrasana (Spinal Twist)
Shirsasana (Headstand)
Uddiyana or Nauli, Shavasana (Relaxation)
He provides a chart suggesting when to integrate which postures; not in weeks, but in stages. When you feel you’ve made good progress on stage one, integrate the things from stage 2. So yesterday I did breathing, self-awareness, sarvangasana and matsyasana, both twice. They felt great. I was jerky and shaky, had little control, but it felt wonderful to be doing them. Felt right. Also in the category of what I should be able to do are cobra and spinal twist. I’m thinking of reading about and doing them today. Then on days when I have time I’ll do the whole set; when short, I’ll alternate or be able to pick from 4 which I want to work on, instead of just the 2.
Later: So today I ended up doing all four asanas. I had a much smoother rise and descent in the shoulder stand, but I need to check on the Fish, to see if I was doing it correctly, because it kind of hurt my head, and yoga shouldn’t hurt. Case in point – that other book I had, which in fact was published by Yoga Journal but tried to strip out virtually all spirituality, had photos and instructions for each asana including the Cobra. But it was an entirely different thing. Entirely! In the other book, it was basically a push-up. I couldn’t really figure out what was different.
In this one, he shows how the arms should be positioned, adds a step that was lacking, and then explains how the upward motion should be driven by the head and the neck. The arms should be as relaxed as possible. So it is not at all a push up; it has nothing to do with strengthening the arms! I did feel – still – that I was rushing everything. But the ones I had done before I was able to be more mindful in/about. So I’m hopeful that as the newness wears off, the urge to rush and the distraction level will, too.

Since I’m really practicing now, I’ve returned to reading Meditations from the Mat. Today the reading was about how we commit to a practice, a lifestyle, a priority, and if we really are comitted, our lives rearrange themselves around that almost without effort. From that commitment, then, when renunciation is necessary, when it comes time to give something up, we will actually be ready, so that it will not feel like a death, but like a new birth. I know that feeling – there have been times in my life when I changed so much that some old habit just didn’t fit anymore. And when I realized it and gave it up or had it taken away, I thought it would be hard and it wasn’t. It just felt right, and life got even better and fresher. A gift from the commitment you made to the new practice.
Is that how it will be with smoking? That’s what I’m hopingand praying for. Guess the practice and commitment has to come first though. The other gift is that the practice sustains us through all times/seasons/moods/etc. You don’t know, when you make that commitment, if the next year is bringing you trips abroad, promotions, status – or illness, loss, death. You know there will be days when you will excel at your practice – yoga, meditation or whatever – and days when nothing will go right, and lots of days in the middle. But the point is that you just keep doing it, every day, and in that way it will always be there for you. If good times come, it will keep you grounded. If disaster comes, it will be your life line, keeping you sane.
In exchange, all you really have to give is the effort of overcoming the initial inertia. That “Oh, I’m so comfy on the couch and I don’t feel that well and I don’t have that much time today” feeling. Because once I get over that feeling and just do it, I love it. It isn’t like exercise, like aerobics, which is just torture all the way for me. Not at all. It feels good. It isn’t torture, or painful, or like giving up anything. It is pure gain.

Anger about Shame and other things

I seem to be losing some readers – maybe partly because I haven’t been doing a very good job spell-checking my posts, and partly because my parsing of the Upanishads just isn’t very intersting to a large audience. I guess I am one of the very few who actually likes poking around in these super ancient texts and making sense of them. Ah well. But I admit that some of these entries just aren’t that interesting. So I’m going to skip around and skip ahead. And I will try to be more careful about the spelling.

February 15, 2009
I’ve been reading the Katha Upanishad, formally belonging to the Black Yajurveda. Olivelle says that it is obviously a late work and never formed an integral part of the Brahmana of that school. The text has an episode that relates the establishment of various ritual fires that he thinks was originally part of the Kathaka Brahmana but is now housed in the Taittirya Brahmana. It’s pretty cool, even though it is extremely confuising and without the commentary would make no sense to me.
It ends up being a conversation between Naciketas, a boy, and Yama, Death. Naciketas’ father sends him to Death’s abode in a kind of fit of pique; Death isn’t home, and because the rules of hospitality to a Brahmin are violated (no food, drink, etc. offered), Death owes him something, and he grants him three wishes.
Clever boy, Naciketas asks for knowledge. Well, first he asks to be returned alive to his father. Second he asks how to construct the fire altar that leads to heaven, which is also asking how to make sacrifices and good works not decay. For his third he asks how to exit the cycle of birth and re-birth. How to get beyond dying just to live, just to die again, just to live again, etc.
Death begs him to ask any other question, have any other wish fulfilled: lust, wealth, power, greed . . . Naciketas asks, “What good are any of those things when one knows one is just going to die? And then live again? What is the solution? What is beyond all of that?”
Death praises his wisdom and insight and begins to speak about brahman. From here through the rest of the chapter this really sounds a lot more like the Gitas. It is poetry, for one thing, but much of the phrasing and the ideas are the same.

February 16
Just wanted to record this verse for myself, from KaU 6.11
When senses are fully reined in,
That is Yoga, so people think.
From distractions a man is then free,
For Yoga is a coming-into-being
As well as a ceasing-to-be.

Not by speech, not by the mind
Not by sight can he be grasped.
How else can he be perceived
Other than be saying “He is!”

February 21
I am so in thrall to this novel [Stones From the River] that it is hard to do anything else. There is so much we forget, or just don’t know, about the Holocaust. But in the last 20 years all of these books and movies have been coming out to fill in the picture. At first, I guess the first 40 or 50 years, it was all we could do as a world to absorb the images of the concentration camps. The reality of them. The large-scale, totalitarian, bureaucratic brutality. Uncovering the details of the work camps, the starvation, medical experiments, torture, varieties of mass murder and experiments in extermination. Learning how it all unfolded and whose ideas were whose, who gave tho orders, holding people responsible – that came next.
And then trying to understand how an entire nation went along with this. That’s what is really difficult. At first the blame settled on the Gestapo, the SS, Hitler’s elite. Then spread to his army. But as more was known, it had to be faced that it took an entire country to vote for, applaud, allow, cheer, turn in, look the other way, inform on neighbors, parents and friends . . . the whole nation was guilty. But now we’ve gone one step further and realized that can’t be true, either. Because people escaped. People were hidden through the entire war and longer. From the roundups in ’37 and ’38 all the way to the Allied Liberation. It is so much more complicated.
These books – like Hegi’s and Lost and others – paint pictures of hundreds of small towns and cities across Germany and Poland and the Ukraine in which people of different ethnicities and religions lived and had lived for centuries. They’d had their problems and there might have been tensions between groups, but for the most part the towns were functioning pretty well, and there were a great many cross-ethnic, cross-religious economic and social ties, including ties of marriage. There was also room for people who didn’t fit in, and who were unproductive. There almost always is in small-ish groups. Like the town drunk, or the woman who lost her mind when she miscarried, or that little man who drools and was never “right” from the day he was born.
I mention these misfits because one of the things we so conveniently forget in our retelling of the actions of Nazis in the US is that they didn’t just go after Jews. Jews were first, sure, because they were the most obvious “cause” of the nation’s economic problems to Hitler. They were the most obviously different, the easiest to target and they had a larger pool of wealth. Plus whatever personal hatred and pathology you want to throw in and the ancient beliefs about Jews killing Jesus and eating Christian babies, etc. It seems important to note that children were taught in school – even Jewish children – these beliefs about Jews, yet before 1937 it didn’t stop Jewish and Christian children from playing and being friends together.
What we forget is that by the time they’d pretty well rounded up the Jews, they had an efficient work and death camp system going. They weren’t going to just stop. Plus the economy hadn’t gotten magically better, and they still needed to rationalize and fight the war. You know what else isn’t rational and efficient? A town supporting blind, deaf, crippled, mentally retarded, and psychologically disturbed people. Adults for sure, but children will just grow up to be burdens. Off they go. Homosexuals are not only sinners but traitors, since they aren’t producing children for the state. How long would it have taken them to get around to barren women? Women past menopause?
The people on the internet forums here in Wisconsin make me shudder because they sound just like this. Every month it is a different group of people they want to “round up” and “send away” or “get rid of.” No, they aren’t proposing concentration camps . . . that I know of. But they have the same idea that it is okay to label a group you believe is unproductive or unhelpful to the community and have them taken away. They seem to have no inkling that once you begin that, it never stops. The process becomes itself insatiable and sooner or later they will come for you.

February 22
In relation to Stones . . ., although not intended, I don’t think, as an indictment of the Church, or not entirely, there were many times while reading the novel that I became so angry at the Catholic Church I was almost shaking. The number of lives it has twisted and bent, deformed and maimed, retarded and delayed, not to mention the millions of lives it has outright stolen, ended and murdered. The teachings of that Church, I believe, since it has been able to become a as powerful, widespread, influential and long-lived as it has, have done more than any single institution in the history of humanity to destroy humans – what is best in us. They did it by labelling the very parts of us that make us human sinful, so that people would have no choice but to recognize their “original sin” and thus their need for the Church. If you have curiousity, questions, which is doubt, desire, a thought for yourself, anger, envy – all of which are part of human nature – then you have to confess them to a priest. You might even have to pay for that privelege. Then there will be someone who will always know the dark secrets of your heart and be able to make you feel shame whenever they feel like it.
Of course it isn’t a bad thing in itself to have a system that encourages people to be unselfish, avoid envy, etc. All religions do that. What is so evil about the Catholic Church is that it infused people with shame for just being who they are. For being human. For feeling things and experiencing things it is normal and natural to feel. No, of course it would be better if no one experienced envy. But it is normal to feel envy. Shaming those who feel envy is NOT HELPFUL!!! It simply compounds the problem and makes them feel worse. How about instead providing instruction for what to do when you feel envy? Saying envy arises from th ese causes, it is perfectly natural, but since it feels bad, here is how to avoid the causes and thus avoid the feeling. No shame, just compassion and good directions. Oh yeah, that’s Buddhism and Hinduism.
And in fact, it isn’t the God of this religion, as I thought for a long time. It is to a certain degree, but look at the difference between how Jews experience Him and how Catholics do!
That shame – inscribed on the souls and embodied by children as soon as they begin to understand what is going on, along with the teachings of exclusion. “Only we are right. Everyone who believes even slightly differently is going to burn in hell for eternity” makes for very frightened, lonely people. And what do frightened, onely, shame-filled people do? They hate. They strike out. They find ways to attack anyone who is different. Or they attack themselves. They subject themselves to terrible mortifications and they deny themselves all the pleasures of life because they don’t deserve them. Often, in the meantime, deforming their children in the process.
It is sick. Sickening, disgusting, hateful. Evil. Yes. The Nazis would never have been able to do their work if the Catholics hadn’t set the stage, prepared the ground. Here in the US today, what prevents teens from getting the information they need to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy, cervical cancer, and deadly disease? A Church that believes if you talk to teens about sex they will go and do it. And if they do, these same teens, who swear their parents love them, will be terrified to go home; ashamed now and sure their parents will “kill them” because of their sin. These same parents will vote against their conscience on every single issue: war, taxes, education, healthcare, the environment, etc., because their priests say they must vote for the anti-abortion candidate or risk mortal sin. So the Church is saying that all the dead who would result from a longer unjust war, a truly exploitative and faulty health care system that denies coverage, practices that are destroying the very planet and will eventually kill us all – these do not matter whe weighed against abortion being legal. That is the only law God cares about. The only lives God cares about are the unborn, apparently.
Well, I need to stop ranting. My anger and hatred of the Church serve no purpose and get me nowhere. I just wish it was possible to expose children to choices, so they would be free to decide for themselves which philosophy they wished to be indoctrinated with. I doubt the version the Church espouses would last very long, in that case.
My SU reading is very cool, very interesting. It is the Svetasvatara, Chapter One, and it begins with a kind of list of questions that people always ask about brahman: What is its cause? Why were we born? By what do we live? Governed by whom? Do we live in pleasure or pain? And in the questions it summarizes a lot of the positions taken up by different schools in the other Upanishads. “Should we regard it as time? As inherent nature, as necessity, as chance, as the elements, as the source of birth, as the Person?” 1.2
Then it gives an answer, which I’ll have to consult footnotes to get all of. It starts by saying that those who have meditated have seen God, the self, the power, all hidden by their qualities (gunas?). Meaning – we don’t need to convince you of this part, because you have all seen it? That’s kind of how it reads to me. Then our expertise says brahman is:

A wheel that is one-rimmed and three-fold
Wheel is implied, not stated. One rim = primal nature or prakrti. Three-fold = the gunas of Samkhya (sattva, rajas, tamas)
With sixteen tips and fifty spokes
16 tips = five elements , five organs of perception, five organs of action and the mind
50 spokes = 50 dispositions (bhava) of Samkhya listed in Samkhya Karika
Twenty counterspokes
10 organs of perception and action and their respective objects
Six sets of eight, whose single rope is of many forms
1) Five elements, intellect, ego, and mind
2) Eight elements of the body: outer skin, inner skin, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, semen
3) Eight yogic powers: very small, very large, very light, obtain anything, freedom of will, subdue one’s will, lordship, supress desire
4) Eight dispositions: righteousness and unrighteousness, knowledge and ignorance, detachment and non, superhuman power and lack of it
5) Eight divine beings: Brahma, Prajapati, Devas, Gandhavas, Yaksas, Raksas, Ancestors, Prsacsas
6) Eight virtues: compasion, forbearance, lack of jealousy, purity, ease, generousity, auspiciousness, absence of desire
One rope = desire or “glittering”
That divides itself into three different paths
Footnotes say – righteousness, unrighteousness and knowledge, but provide an alternate interpretation. Johnston (1950) has argued the rope image refers to the 3 paths to liberation – knowledge, yoga and devotion (bhakti). I’d like to read that or someone, because that seems to make sense.
And whose delusion regarding the one springs from two causes.
The two causes are good and sinful actions and the one is the one from above who governs all causes. Johnston sees this as a reference to the samkyha ignorance where the self regards the 2, purusa and prakrti as just one. He may be right.

This is pretty cool imagery; in just a few words it summarizes all that has been laid out and argued about in the previous texts and foreshadows the Gitas. But there is more. One image isn’t enough. In case the wheel doesn’t work for you, the SU offers another: [Several more pages follow of analysis]

. . .

“The one God rules over both the perishable and the self. By meditating on him, by striving towards him, and further, in the end by becoming the same reality as him, all illusion disappears.”

We yearn toward God in the same way Christians do. But the end result is so different. Instead of a Judgement Day where some will be thrown into an everlatsting punishing fire or worse, and some will get to go praise yet still be separated from their beloved, we will come to “share the same reality, become the same reality as him” and “all illusion of separation will disappear” forevor. Certainly no room for punishment and shame and other ugliness like that.
The next chapter is really playful and fun. It is kind of an ode or a prayer but it has double entendres and insider jokes; its playful. For tomorrow!

Body and Mind

February 8, 2009
The reason I was so upset is this – I had worked until 3 or so yesterday, then did half an hour of yoga, which felt great everywhere except my butt, which felt as if I’d torn something open. Earlier I thought I’d maybe hurt the healing surgical wound because I’d begun bleeding there again. I hopped in the shower and realized it wasn’t the old wound torn open. No. I have a brand new hemmorhoid. Why? I have been doing all I was told to do! I have done all I can think of to stay healthy. I began yoga almost as soon as I thought I was well enough, and in fact, it might have been too soon. Maybe the asanas I chose were wrong. I don’t know. I’m just trying to do my best.
There is absolutely no way I am going through another surgery like that. So now I’ll have lived through that hell but STILL have hemmorhoids? It’s enough to make me scream. Makes me wish I believed in a God I could yell at.
I am not giving up on yoga, that’s for sure. My new plan is to go through Turlington’s book and find all the poses that are good for the colon, rectum, small intestine, spine, and right torso. Make a list, then figure out which asanas are the building blocks for those, and create a routine that enables me to learn and master the basic asanas, integrating the more complicated ones whenever I feel my body and spirit are ready. Make it so that there is a little variety from one day to the next. And then I’m going to stick with it. Every day. I hope that at least 3-4 days a week it will lead straight to meditation.
That is all I can think of to do. I feel like my body is so weak, so vulnerable. It just can’t take very much more. It needs a great deal of kindness. I was so angry at it yesterday. But how is that helpful? Or fair? Or kind or compassionate? It is not my body’s fault that it has been ravaged by shingles and an incorrect signal to attack itself instead of the shingles virus. I’m sure it’s very sorry. It is not its fault that its genetic code is programmed for weak rectal veins and endometriosis. Our only way out is to recognize that we have to work together. I need my body to stop fighting me, and I need to stop fighting it. Since I’m on the side (by definition) of the ability to have the symbolic idea, I need to lay down my “weapons” first.
No more hateful thoughts. No being angry at body parts for their failures. No skipping doses, no forgetting Activia. Plenty of sleep, vegetables, fluids and spiritual discipline. This is the best I can do. If my body continues to fall apart despite my best efforts, at least we’ll be friends while it happens. Maybe it can be more gentle, less fearful and anxious that way.
The “meditation from the mat” for yesterday was about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Why didn’t I just read that when I got it for J? It’s up next, after the Upanishads. Anyway, the eight-limb path of Patanjali’s, which he put together from the scriptures, is so straightforward one doesn’t really need a lot more commentary or instruction.
So how is it, again, that I always understood about the yamas and niyamas, but then jumped right into svadhyaya – self-study, skipping right over the other first two tapas, the asanas and pranayama?
The MfM describes pratyahara this way: turning inward, as “the mind withdrawing from the senses of perception.” Where dharana, concentration, can occur. “The Light of our awareness can begin to shine on our soul. The deepest form of connectedness is now possible.” P.5
Why did I believe I could get to the end by skipping two parts? I guess because the Upanishads, the jnana yogi way doesn’t stress it, nor does Krishna. But it is there – a constant given. Hatha is the underlying assumption they all took for granted and I, in my Western, Cartesian ignorance, kept leaving out.
The MfM concludes that all that is necessary to undertake a yoga practice is: “We must simply remain open to our own spiritual potential and be willing to take action on our own behalf.”
Chapter 2 of the KsU felt like it was tying right into what Stephenson’s [Neal – Anathem] characters were saying about consciousness. He has one of them arguing that the mind functions as if it were a multi-celled organism in which the indiviudal cells had evolved in order to communicate with one another across sensory modalities. i.e. one could hear, one smell, one see, etc. How does something that only hears communicate with something that only sees? Or smells? They’d have to develop a shared language mutually. Functionally, that’s how our brains work, how they deal with sensory information. I’d just read that, and then the KsU 2.1 says,”Brahman is breath . . . now, of this breath that is brahman, the messenger is the mind; the guard is sight; the crier is hearing; and the maid is speech.”
But the rest doesn’t explain any of this. It just says if you know this, you’ll have messengers, criers, etc. And that the vital functions or deities bring offerings to a knower without having to be asked. I guess that means that once you understand it, the vital functions are under your control and are generous with you, kind of like how my body isn’t, right now.
2.3 tells how to do a ritual to get objects you want. I think the significance is that instead of praying and sacrificing to the gods, one directs all the parts of the ritual to the vital functions – speech, smell, sight, hearing, mind, intelligence. More ritual instructions though 2.10.
2.11-13 reiterates stories fro the other upanishads, establishing breath as the pre-eminent, most important vital function.

Deciphering the Beginning and the End

February 7, 2009
Today my reading is the entire Aitereya Upanisad. It consists of chapters 4-6 of the Aitareya Aranyaka, which is part of the Aitareya Brahmana, belonging to the Rg Veda. Olivelle says, “The distinction between the Upanishad and the Aranyaka proper is womewhat artificial, there being little difference in the topics covered.” P.194. The first little bit tells the story of creation again, and yet again it is consistent:
“In the beginning this world was the self (atman), one alone, and there was no other being at all. He thought to himself, “Let me create the worlds.” AU 1.1 I guess the story is a little more Semitic, because he creates “the floods, the specks, the m and the waters. The sky. He ‘incubates’ man, who is hatched like an egg. Ah, those were the deities. Then the being makes humans for the deities as a “dwelling in which to establish” themselves and for their food.
I had to back up and start over. I had been expecting the text to say one thing, but it doesn’t. After the creation of the waters it gets funky. A mouth was hatched like an egg and from it came speech. Ears hatched, and from them came hearing, and son on. The vital functions are taught as having emerged from this deity that is hatching. The deity, or the functions, get hungry and demand food and shelter and that is when the One creates man. At the end of this chapter, this original deity somehow becomes Indra. Not the One, but the first-made. Or maybe it is brahman.
I don’t know if I’m just being dense, am not wise enough, am too tired, impatient, or in the wrong mood, but I am finding this one way too mystical for me. As it ends, “the gods are cryptic.” It might go back to the different “ownership” between castes. Maybe Prajapati figures more in some Vedas and Indra in others? I’ll have to check on that.
I have also begun using another devotional tool now that I have begun asana practice; a book from the library called Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison. It is meant for people who came to spiritual awakening after beginning yoga for health or beauty reasons, so the first few readings are pretty simple and basic. But humility requires being open to learning from everyone, right? So either just before I sit down or just after, I’ll read a section from there.
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Okay, another part of the Rg Veda, the Kausitaki Upanishad belongs to the Aranyaka and Brahmana of the same name. The Kausitaki Aranyaka is also called the Sankhanya Aranyaka, which itself is part of the KsU Brahmana of the Rg Veda. Very confusing to one not familiar, still, with exactly how these Vedas work. Olivelle says the KsU corresponds in many ways with “its sister school” the Aitareya, so I may end up just as baffled here. They were both pre-Buddhist, so 5-6th century BCE. The transmission of this one has been “less faithful than that of many of the other Upanishads; Frery’s (1968-9) edition has shown that the sequence of passages in the vulgate edition is probably inaccurate.” P.200. This one is quite a bit longer. But hey, we know for certain that other holy texts have never been messed with : )
This is much more interesting! C would have loved it. I’m afraid I can only appreciate it as metaphor, because 1) we already know that the text is corrupt, and much more importantly, 2) Krishna said and I believe that we get what we want and expect after death. In fact, I think this Upanishad may be trying to hint at that. But first things first.
It opens with an amazing social fact, if the translator has it right: A Brahmin father and son put themselves under the spiritual training of a Kstraiya guru! Wowee. Now that’s humility. They do it to learn what happens when we die. Citra, the teacher, says this:
First we go, by means of the lifebreath, to the moon. All during the waxing of the moon. Made me wonder if there was a link between this and Krishna’s advice to make sure you die during moon-dark if you want to go one direction, and moon light if another?
During the waning of the moon, Citra instructs, souls unable to answer the moon’s questions are sent back to earth, there to take up new bodies – including animals – according to the kind of life they’d led. Those who can answer the moon’s questions, which boil down to identifying (who are you? A-I am you! You are me! We are Brahman!), are allowed through heaven’s door. And there begins quite a journey. S/he must pass through a wold of fire, world of wind, then Varuna’s world (the king of demons), the Indra’s world (king of gods), Prajapati’s world, and finally the world brahman. But it’s not over.
In this world there is a lake one passes over with one’s mind. Without knowledge (of brahman) one drowns in it. I presume that menas you find yourself living another life here on earth. Or somewhere, I guess. Then there are watchmen, but they flee. A river comes next, whose name means “undecaying” or “pure”. Here all of one’s deeds fall off, good and bad. But get this; they fall onto your family members according to who you like! Good deeds to your buds, bad deeds to the jerks. How’s that for payback? One also gets to see it all laid out “like two wheels.”
Having been stripped of all karma, one is now ready. Brahman sends servants (debate over what these represent – seems to be various aspects of perception) with flowers, lotions, garments, cosmetics, ornaments and perfumes. One gets all beautified, then approaches the throne room, which has lots more symbolism. Finally the throne, onto which one climbs, right foot first.
Now brahman asks, “Who are you?” And your answer better be, “I am You.” It can be dressed up, as it is here, but that is the bottom line. Brahman asks some probing questions to be sure you really get it, both what brahman is and your identity and that’s it. “All my bliss is yours. My immortality, my power.” The Original Self says.
Very cool.

More Connections; Vowels to Cows

February 5, 2009
I thought some more and realized that I am actually afraid to make any kind of committment, like to join another committee, seek a grant, etc., because I just don’t know how I’ll feel. I went the first two years on the assumption that I would be able to do anything I wanted or set my mind to do, and look what happened. I ended up letting down so many people, over and over, and causing disruptions to their schedules and plans. So I am shy of just planning my life. It isn’t as if it were just flare-ups of PHN. My entire body seems so out of whack . . . one never knows what is going to break down next. It could be absolutely anything. It seems likely to be something I‘ve never heard of or had problems with before.

The solution is still the same – yoga and meditation. Only by incorporating my body in the healing will I have a chance at a different future. At avoiding cervical cancer, maybe.
I’m not going to write about the part of the CU I read yesterday and the day before. The fun story of Indran and Virocana going to Prajapati to learn about atman. The demon satisfied with the easy answer, Indra going back again and again. That ends the CU and we move on the TU.
“The Taittiriya Upanishad constitutes chapters 7, 8 and 9 of the Taittiriya Aranyaka which is a supplement to the Taittirya Brahmana of the Black Yajurveda” P.177. They are named Chapter on Instruction, Chapter on Bliss and Chapter on Bhigu. Oh boy. This is going to be some deep, maybe impenetrable stuff.

The first part is all about phonetics. And unlike in English, it matters how long one stresses or sounds the vowels. The text says it will illuminate the “combinations.” A footnote explains that in Sanskrit and Hindi the first syllable of the first word affects the last syllable of the second word – sometimes? In some paired words? Or always? There are these secret connections that allow one to build innuendo and double meanings into what you are saying. No – the first syllable of the second word modifies the meaning of the last syllable of the previous word. That makes a lot more sense.

Okay, so the TU1 is an invocation and blessing. In 2, it describes the field of phonetics: phoneme, accent, quantity, strength, articulation and connection. The latter I’ve just explained, and quantity refers to the length of the vowel. 1=short, 2= long, 3=prolate. Articulation = speed of recitation of Veda: madhya-medium, druta=fast, vilambita=slow, teacher for pupil.
When a text is “connected” in that secret way, it is called samhita, which is also just a general record used to refer to the Vedic texts.

So in TU3 we are ready to learn how those texts reveal secrets. Unfortunately, it doesn’t point us to a specific text, or Veda. Maybe because that knowledge would be so obvious? The “large scale combinations” refer to the world, light, knowledge, progeny and the body. “The preceeding word is the earth, the following word is the sky, their union is space, and their link is the wind.” So by using the syllables to modify one another and put them together to create new words, they get these linkages. I’ve seen this elsewhere in the Bu and CU. It is very much like the Kabbalistic study of Torah, too. Its fun, an dkind of cool to see what correspondances you can get, but is this really, ultimately, what we should spend our time doing?

This whole Upanishad has a different feel. I’d guess it is much later, was explicitly written for use in an ashram or monastery/temple, and reflects the life there. Maybe it was meant to be a guide for those who would start their own? Olivelle says probably later than the BU and CU, but still pre-Buddhist and so still 6-5th century BC.

My idea that it is for a community of students is not exactly brilliant. The opening prayer adds a blessing on the teacher. The prayer in 1.4 begs for prosperity and that “students will rush to me.” I just read through the whole first chapter on Instruction, and I don’t think there is much in it for me at this time. Perhaps the next, on Bliss, will be more accessible.

BTW – had two very productive days at work, and good meetings. I am grateful that I don’t wear misery on my face, but what am I supposed to say when people say, “You look great!” when I feel like shit? Am I supposed to say, “Thank you, but in fact I am this close to keeling over?” For most it doesn’t matter, but for those in supervisory positions, those who need to know why I am missing work or bailing on my responsibilities . . . I guess it just isn’t doing me any favors that I don’t look as ill as I feel. How do I say, with grace, that just getting through the day is a struggle?

February 6
This is the Chapter on Bliss, and like so many parts of the B and CU, it is a reflection on how to think about brahman, how to grasp it. So it goes through all the things brahman is. It begins by recounting where the physical body came from. Atman the Self generates space, from space comes air, then fire, water, earth, plants, food, bodies. Then there is this lovely verse that reflects reality – the Great Chain of Being – and makes one wonder how so many Hindus came to be vegetarian:

From food, surely, are they born;
All creatures that live on earth.
On food alone, once born, they live;
And into food in the end they pass.
For fodd is the foremost of all beings
So it is called ‘all herbs’
All the food they’ll secure for themselves,
When they worship brahman as food;
For food is the foremost of beings
So it is called ‘all herbs.’
From food beings come into being;
By food, once born, they grow.
It is eaten and it eats beings.
Therefore, it is called ‘food.’

You can’t really put it more plainly, can you? I think this would make a good pre-meal blessing. Then the scripture goes on to acknowledge that we are more than just eater and eaten. “Different from and lying within the man formed from the essence of food is the self (atman) consisting of lifebreath, which suffuses that man completely.” 2.2.1

The physical shell, the meat-man . . . I was about to say is not the real man, and I was going to attribute mind/body, Cartesian dualism to these ancient Indian sages. But that is NOT correct. Because look: First, we were just told that body is brahman, too. Worship food as brahman! Next, the following text shows us multiple more layers. The self is more like an onion. We can keep peeling off layers, each layer contributing another flavor, more richness, complexity, subtelty, depth, etc. But when we’ve peeled the last layer away, there’ll be no core, no pit, and no “real” self. The whole thing together is the real thing.

After the lifebreath, which is always so important, comes the mind, and then perception. About the mind it says, “Before they reach it, words turn back, together with the mind; One who knows the bliss of brahman, he is never afraid.” In terms of the correspondences (all of them are related to parts of the human body), the mind is connected to the Vedas. For perception, the head is faith, the right side truth, left side the real, torso (atman), performance, the bottom celebration.

Hmm, applied to my health, am I having trouble perceiving the truth, performance and celebration? Just a thought. Let’s check out the others. Inside perception is bliss, of course. The head is pleasure; right is delight, left is thrill, torso is bliss, and the bottom is brahman.
In 2.6.1 we have the alternate version – brahman coming out of nothing. Here’s the whole quote that I love:

“He had this desire: ‘Let me multiply myself. Let me produce offspring.’ So he heated himself up. When he had heated himself up, he emitted the whole world, everything that is here. After emitting it, he entered that very world. And after entering it, he became in turn sat and tyat, the distinct and the indistinct, the resting and the never-resting, the perceived and the non-perceived, the real (satya) and the unreal (anita). He became the real, everything that is here; that is why people call this sat.

In the beginning this world was the non-existent,
And from it rose the existent.
By itself it made a body for itself;
Therefore it is called ‘well-made.’”

I guess that verse, which is actually much older than this Upanishad, is really only referring to the world, not to brahman itself coming out of nothing. I do find a lot to love in this chapter. It isn’t saying anything radically new and different, but it seems very straightforward and helpful. And continues to be so, though 2.8 doesn’t do too much for me, as it attempts to describe blisss simply b comparison – the Ghandavas have so much, Indra has so much, other gods so much, etc. What is important, and the radical teaching of these “secret doctrines” is that you, I, can have excatly equal bliss to the very highest of the high. A person who knows brahman – who travels through her own food, breath, perception, mind – will share in a bliss – “a hundred times greater than this of Prajapati”. He who is here and he who is in the sun is the same.”

So actually it was chapter 3, the Chapter of Bhigu, which I read while out smoking, that I was continuing to find so practical and down-to-earth. It continues the themes from chapter 2 regarding the path to brahman through the onion-of-self and the importance of food, which it really stresses. Need to remember that as fodder for anti-omnivore arguments. I don’t typically argue with people about their eating choices. But if they start preaching at me, especially if they assume they know something about Hinduism and accuse me of hypocrisy, well, it’ll be handy to have more than a few verses handy.

Chapter 3 begins with the story of Bhigu, who went to his father Varuna and asked to learn about brahman. “Food, lifebreath, sight, hearing, mind, speech.” Then, “That from which these things are born; on which, once born, they live; and into which they pass upon death – see to perceive that. That is brahman!”

So Bhigu goes off and “practiced austerities.” Footnote says tapo ‘tapyata is the term, which also can mean “heated” or “incubated” so it is unclear exactly what he did, but he went and pondered – where do all these things Father mentioned come from, on what do they subsis, and where do they go upon death? After awhile he figured out, “Food!” He came back and told Dad his answer, then asked for more and Dad said, “Seek to perceive brahman through austerity. Brahman is austerity.” Eventually Bhigu recreates – or maybe creates? – the whole path – food, breath, mind, perception, bliss.

So 3.7-10 are basically a rant against austerites, especially food austerities. 3.7 begins, “One should not belittle food.” 3.8 “One should not reject food.” 3.9 “One should prepare a lot of food.” 3.10 “One should never turn anyone away from one’s home.” And all of it is backed up with connections and correspondances that basically say, “Hey! Brahman created things this way! We ARE food. We are part of this chain, and animals and plants are too, and we are all one, and it’s all beautiful, and let’s get down and enjoy it until we become food again!” I love it!

2:30 I did it! Yoga for an hour. In addition to the first three breathing exercises – all supine. I did the Dvipada Pitham – two-legged platform, another supine pose, and then switched to prone – the Chakravakasana (sunlord/cat stretch) and Balasana (Child’s Pose). They all felt pretty good except that with the Dvipada Pitham I couldn’t feel each vertebra the way you are supposed to. I think tomorrow I will do the same thing but add the Bridge Pose. It grows right out of the two-legged platform. Setu Buhdhasana it’s called. And maybe the Apanasana, knee-to-chest pose, which is inbetween them in difficulty. And I’d like to add one or two fo the seated poses from the other book.

This book presents yoga as if it were a matter of learning the movements so that you can master them quickly. Do multiple repetitions of them, over and over, in various orders to get your heart pumping and burn fat, as in aerobics. I’m sorry, but I will never believe that was the purpose of hatha yoga, and it is not a method with which I feel comfortable. Since the Yoga Center downtown – the only yoga center for miles – is Astanga, I’m afraid that is how it will be, too. Power yoga, for Krishna’s sake! I suppose some of the fitness centers and health clubs might have yoga classes. Maybe even on campus? But I fear it’ll be the same thing. I need someone who teaches Integral or even Ananda or Kripalu. Viniyoga would be a middle way that I could live with. For now I’ll just muddle on by myself.

Me and Me and Me in a Dream

February 4, 2009
In the dream – well, before the dream, when I went to bed Indy [my cat of 12 years] settled between my body pillow and my belly, kind of propped on a hip and an elbow and my chest. I could feel her touching several places and knew if I shifted at all I’d disturb her, which I hate doing because it is so rare she sleeps on me rather than beside me. It was very cold night, on the below side of zero with gusting winds, and she was willing to share body heat. I think her position influenced the dream.

In it, Indy and I walked out of wherever we were for a stroll in a beautiful landscape. We were enjoying one another’s company, frisking and communing and feeling free and in sync. All of a sudden, when we were some way from the safety of the place we’d come from, a bunch of squirrels and four or five rabbits shot out from around corner and a hole/door in the structure we were just approaching. Some birds may have taken off, too. All these animals appeared and then zipped off across our path, obviously running for their lives. We were startled, maybe the fight-or-flight response already beginning in us. And then the predator appeared. A yellow-grey mountain bear\rottweiler\wolf\hellhound\lion\cheetah thing. He was a mix of all the scary wild animals I imagine, I guess. His fur was matted and dingy, yellow-gray rather than golden, but his eyes were pure gold. He’d been hot on the trail of the rabbits, but when he saw Indiana, who was much bigger than them and I guess therefore a better meal, he came to a dead stop.
Indy, in a crouch since the first startle of the animals, went completely frozen. I moved faster than I ever have in real life. I bent and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck – something I’ve never done and don’t think would be smart now, she’s so big. But I did, supporting her weight quickly with my other hand and pulling her tight against my body. She was just still and alert. Not a dead weight, and not trembling.

But now what? His attention had shifted to me. Previously he hadn’t really cared that I existed. Now he did, and he was laughing at me. Daring me to try anything. And he was right. I needed both of my hands to support Indy; if I let go with one, she’d either dig into my flesh with her claws so deeply the pain would distract and weaken me, or she’d fall and be eaten by the creature. I had my feet. I could kick, which I did the first time he took a step. I think I even connected with his muzzle, but all it really accomplished was to give him a measure of my strength. Or lack thereof. What could I do? I was getting really desperate. Terrified. I couldn’t turn and run back to where we’d come out of. I knew he’d attack then, kill or maim me then run off with the baby. My Indy.

I was wondering if there was some way I could turn Indy around too, let her natural attack abilities work with mine to help us escape while still protecting her. Or would that just get her killed? Was I going to get her killed anyway? No matter what I did?

I cannot convey how awful it was. How frightening. How helpless and frustrated I felt. Because the solution seemed just out of reach. A whole series of “if only’s” went through my mind. As I looked into the animal’s eyes, the certainty that I was trapped, largely by doing the only thing I could do – pick up my cat – my frozen cat, before she became someone’s dinner. And I woke up.

Indy was still there, which soothed me somewhat, but I could not shake off the effects of the dream. I was still full of adrenaline, still frightened, still feeling bereft. That piercing loss. Since Indy was with me, and purred as soon as she felt me wake, I began to worry that the dream signified the loss of someone else dear to me.

This morning, after telling the dream to J, I realized that Jung would advise me to analyze it as if I were playing all the key roles. J said, “Or just forget it.” But it was too powerful to just forget. Too emotional to be meaningless. To packed with meaning to perform no analysis. Some dreams are just a recycling of the day’s work, making sense of sensory input; mental housecleaning. And some dreams are not. Some are powerful, important, encoded messages from the unconscious, or pre or subconscious mind. I believe that because subjecting such dreams – mine and others – to analysis has produced tremendous insights in the past.
So, who am in the roles of myself, Indiana, and the predatory lion/wolf/creature? Well, what most terrifies and disgusts and threatens and disrupts my life right now? For many it might be the economy, their jobs or fear of losing them or something like that. But for me it is most definitely disease, pain, and illness. If we ran with that for a moment and said the predator is the part of me eaten up with pain and illness, threatened by disease, what does that make the other two?

At first I was tempted to say, “I am me,” but that is hardly illuminating. That was a part of me that responded quickly – first assessed the situation and determined the danger, responded decisevely and bravely, selflessly out of love for a friend. Her focus was intently on Indy. A warrior. But maybe too protective? Because she didn’t give Indy a chance to defend herself. Maybe Indy wasn’t frozen but biding her time? Waiting for the cat/wolf/thing to make the first move? The me-woman will never know now, since she intervened to “save” Indy and only ended by getting them both stuck.

Then who is Indy? Who is the best friend, with whom a simple walk is pure joy? Is that atman? Or maybe the part of me that is ready for yoga, wants to meditate every day, has the discipline to pull out the scripture each morning and will lead us to the new, healthier, more spiritually rich life? Indy was ahead, leading, by the way. So does that mean that the healer/yoga part of me is so vulnerable, so fragile or frightened that it is frozen by the sight of disease and pain?
I have certainly used it that way, saying I’ll begin seated meditation again and yoga once I’m healed up from this last surgery; or I’m in too much pain to focus right now . . . I use the mantra a lot, and nothing keeps me from intellecualizing the scriptures. But if Indy represnts the experiential part. . . could it be that the warrior part only thinks that joyful part is vulnerable and in need of protection? Maybe she was finally getting it when she realized she needed to allow that part, Indy, to help protect hersef, protect them both with her claws and her instincts.
I know I had a terrible fear that I was going to lose whatever Indy represented, in part because I had acted so quickly to protect it. Maybe there is a lesson there, too, about not being so frightened of the pain that I allow it to dictate my actions. Force myself to remain calm, assess, evaluate what is best in the long term for all, and only act then. Perhaps inserting that pause will enable me to see that the best course really is to meditate or pursue yoga, not see another doctor or read scary articles on WebMD or something like that. I confess that negative Pap is haunting me a bit. I know the answers – yoga and meditation. Why not start today?

Connections of Different Sorts

February 2, 2009

I’m worrying about my relationship with an old friend. It seems to be suffering because I no longer drink. Maybe that throws a wet blanket on everything. Because I don’t lose the thread of the conversation; I will follow but I don’t get lost in tangents, and am not bamboozled by ridiculous arguments. I don’t take the bait on those with near as much heat as I used to when I was similarly trashed. So maybe I’m just no fun to talk philosophy with anymore. Maybe I’ve grown too pedantic and teacherly and know-it-all.

I have caught myself lecturing a couple times. See, I discovered that with all his knowledge of Buddhism, Taoism and even the fringes of Jainism and Sikhism, he knows next to nothing about the central beliefs of Hinduism. He knows enough to mask his lack of knowledge and understanding, so he starts with “Which hinduism? Jains or Sikhs? The Bhagavad Gita? Isn’t that the battle on the Plain, where the Pandava clan . . .” blah, blah, blah. Yes, but what is the message of the Gita? What does Krishna say in it? No clue. See? Slippery fellow to talk to. He begins to make you feel like a heel for daring to suggest he hasn’t fully considered all the aspects of something (all the while insisting he knows nothing so you cannot have hurt his pride), but if you push at the structure, you realize it is a house of cards. And then he says, “Well yeah, I told you I don’t really know anything about all this stuff. I don’t really care about it, either. Just something to pass the time.”

So I was lecturing him a bit, because I wanted him to at least have the alternate, Sanatana Dharma, jnana yoga, Upanishad and Gita reality in his head, as something to contrast to his very negative, life-denying and judgmental mixed up combo of Buddhism and Calvinism he’s got right now. He’s tied together the Buddha’s view that all life is suffering and there are no actions that relieve the suffering permanently except detachment, with his father’s beliefs that this world is run by Satan. So he has pretty well programmed himself to see only the negative, only death, sickness, greed, dissolution, evil, etc. And he sees no hope for the world; he doesn’t believe in a redeeming savior, he is not really even seeing Buddha as a figure that helps pull the raft. Pretty hopeless. And he really hasn’t stressed much of the compassion. He doesn’t seem to remember that the Buddha was always laughing and smiling; he wasn’t walking around wailing and glum.

There also isn’t much room for action. There isn’t any point so why bother? On the one hand, humans got themselves into this mess and will have to get themselves out. On the other, he doesn’t believe in actually working toward that end. Or at least, he’s been going around in circles about that for the ten years I’ve known him, freely admitting it might be an excuse to avoid having to do anything. A decade is a pretty long time to be in the same place philosophically and spiritually. I devoutly pray I will not remain in the same place I am right now for 10 days, let alone 10 years.

Chapter 8 of the CU will help me along the path. It begins by saying that inside “this fort of brahman,” meaning our bodies, “There is a small lotus, a dwelling place. And in that lotus there is a space. That is what you should try to discover.” The space is smaller than an atom and larger than the galaxy. It does not age, is never sick, is not killed, does not die, and no evil attaches to it. It is the eternal, joyful, blissful part of us that we should seek to know.

February 3
In the CU 8.2 it says that you get whatever kind of heaven you want. A person who has fully found that space inside the lotus – “If such a person desires the world of fathers, by his intention alone fathers rise up. And securing the world of fathers, he rejoices.” Or the world of mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, perfumes and garlands, food and drink, singing and music, women – whatever he desires. Okay, so it is not heaven, it is here on earth. Once you know the true Self, you control Reality.

Then again . . . 8.3 is impenetrable. It says all the desires (real) are masked by (unreal) desires. Though real, they wear an unreal mask “for when someone close to him departs from the world, he doesn’t get to see him here.” But, all the things he desires but doesn’t get, he will get by going there, “. . . for these real desires, masked by the unreal, are located there.”
Where is “there”? Okay, it can’t be heaven, or after death, even though the example is a departed loved one, because of the context. We are talking about that lotus-space in the heart, the dwelling place of atman.

And 8.3.2-4 confirms by saying it is like a buried treasure; those who don’t know it is there will tramp over it every day, never realizing they are walking on gold. In the same way, the people and creatures use and go into their own hearts every day, they never suspect such power is right there. “The name of brahman is Real (satyam).” I note that because my novel is all about people deciding what is “real” and what is not – creating and sharing reality in that way. [Probability Moon by Nancy Kress].

This is interesting and I need to share it with Mara. 8.4 “Now, this self is a dike, a divider, to keep these worlds from colliding with one another.” Doesn’t it seem more like “to keep them from flowing into one another” than colliding? Either way, we can and will pass over the dike eventually, into where old age, illness, death and evil cannot follow.
Oh man, this is so cool! But to explain why it is so cool, I have to explain so much about the novel I’m reading. I wasn’t planning to, but I just got to the point where she (Kress) explains the most recent scientific theories about the quantum basis of thought, of human consciousness. Our understanding of how the mind works is still limited, but it has gotten far enough to tell us that our first idea, electromagnetism, is certainly occurring but does not explain everything that happens in the brain. The second idea, neurochemicals, transmitters, was a huge leap forward and explained so much more. We can now analyze and tinker with brain chemistry in a much more sophisticated way than with electicity or – I guess what was really first, plain old mechanics – just anatomy – open it up and chop something out and see what happened.
But even neurochemistry doesn’t explain it all. “The electrical impulse hits the presynaptic grid; it has a measurable, constant voltage, the same voltage across all neurons. But sometimes it causes a release of neurotransmitters and sometimes it doesn’t. The probablility of release varies from .17 to .62 depending on the kind of neuron. And no one really knows why.” (Kress 200:128)
See, the problem is this – why do we have thoughts with no external stimuli? That’s one of the problems. And why, given that constant electrical impulse, does the exact same stimulus only have a 17-62% chance of causing some mental reaction?
Because, maybe, we are dealing with quantum effects. Probability waves. At the end of every nerve synapse we have vesicular grids. Billions of them. They are what control how much neurotransmitter is released with each nerve impulse. “Paracrystalline vesicular grids are very small. They operate according to the laws of quantum physics. They can cause quantum events outside their energy barrier, because part of their quantum probability field lies there. More and more, it looks like that is how consciousness affects the brain. Through altering the prbability field. There’s no other way for a purely mental event, such as deciding to get up from your chair, to produce an effect in the natural world without violating the law of the conservation of energy.” P.275
And when you start talking quarks, you bring in quantum entanglement. This has so many implications I can’t think through them all right now. It applies directly to my belief that metaphor is the mind’s language, not linear, digital, binary code. But check out what the very next part of the CU 8th chapter says, that blew me away with its timing:
In 8.5.3 it mentions two rivers “in” a “land” of brahman, kind of like a metaphor for perfect bliss and joy. These rivers are called “the rivers of the heart.” So in 8.6 it says these rivers flow like or with the rays of the sun, like a long highway they traverse the worlds, the one “up there” and the one “down here.” When we sleep and dream peacefully, we have slipped into those rivers and been transported to the sun “up there.” No evil can disturb us because we aren’t even here, not “really.” When we die, we rise up along these same rays, with the sound OM. “No sooner does he think it than he reaches the sun.” That’s the line that really grabbed me. “It is the door to the farther world, open to those who have knowledge, closed to those who do not.” 8.7.4

Where and What Atman Is, Part 1(?)

January 31, 2009
In the CU 6.9-11 the lessons continue to be about the nature of atman brahman, this living essence, or this essence that pervades and defines our existence. I’m not quite sure if he’s referring to what happens when we die, or what is always true, in reference to the Self – the atman part of each thing/creature. Each verse uses a different metaphor. The first, verse 9, uses honey. Bees collect nectar from all over to create honey, but once it is all together, each part doesn’t say “I came from here, I came from over there, etc.” No, it is just all the one honey. In the same way, our atman does not know it is a tiger, wolf, C (a friend), Me, Indiana (my cat), etc. It is just one thing. In v.10 the metaphor is rivers flowing into the ocean.

Verse 11 is different. Here, the father/guru speaks of sap in a tree; wherever one cuts the tree one finds living sap flowing, and wherever the sap stops flowing, those branches die. In the same way, wherever there is the essence, atman, there is life, or living (jiva). “Know that this, of course, dies when it is bereft of jiva, but life itself does not die.” “The finest essence here – that constitutes the self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the self (atman). And that’s how you are.”
It takes the animating force of jiva to keep our bodies alive – as C would say, our animal part – but because we are more than animal, because we are Atman, too, the death of the animal part, the shell, is not the death of life. It is not the death of us, though the earlier verses certainly indicate that it is the death of our consiousness as individuals. Do all the Upanishads teach this? I thought this was a difference between Hindu and Buddhist thought. I mean, at the end, at the merging, or moksha or samadhi, of course one lets go of individuality. So it is just a symptom of my spiritual immaturity that this bothers me in the slightest. We are One. Why hold on to the whitethoughts-construct?

V. 12 and 13 are good, short, profound lessons too. In 12, the teacher asks the son to cut up a fruit from a banyan tree, then take a tiny seed and cut it up into quarters. Now point to a quarter. He can’t, because the pieces are so small they’ve disappeared. Just so is the essence that pervades us; atman is invisible to see, but the essence, as in the seed, was/is mighty enough to start and uphold a great banyan tree.
In 13, he gives the son a chunk of salt to dissolve in water, asks him to retrieve it, to taste the water in several locations, and finally to throw the water out on a stone (where it will evaporate and the salt re-emerge). Just so is atman in every particle of our being; not here nor there but everywhere. Just so is it invisible, even when you doubt and disbelieve. That is what and who you really are.

February 1
The Seventh chapter of the Changdogya Upanishad is another treatise – using the “Socratic (how arrogant is that, considering how many others created the method pre-Socrates?)” method – on what brahman is, and what is the “greatest” part of brahman. Since brahman is everything, I guess I don’t really understand these sages’ preoccupation with determining the “most” important or “best” part of brahman. What I am witnessing here is partly to do with the development of the philosophy; they had to go through the stage of questing for most and best. And maybe it’s also about what to focus on. Its fine to know that all the cosmos is brahman, is One, but where does one begin? On what should one train one’s attention in order to really grok that? Theortetically, absolutely anything can be your doorway, but aren’t some easier to enter than others?

So in Chapter 7 a man comes to Sanatkumara and says he’s learned everything anyone else can teach him. He has studied and mastered the Vedas, ancestral rites and histories, mathematics, monologues and dialogues, astrology, mythology, etc. Yet still he suffers from sorrow. He has heard Sanatkumara can teach him about self, and that this will allow him to pass out of sorrow. He begs to become a student and is accepted. The first thing the teacher says – the first lesson – is that everything he has studied is “nothing but name.” We are back to what we talked about a couple days ago; the words for things. But here he just says, “So venerate the name.” Venerate brahman as name. Right, extend it maybe, at least to labels. All those words are just labels, and if you venerate the lables as brahman, you are getting it, you are looking past the label, the ritual, the duty, the chants, whatever, to the real thing, which is One.

The student asks if there is anything greater than name. Yes, speech. Because speech makes all of those things known. Venerate brahman as speech and you can go all the places speech goes. After a bit . . . Is there anything greater than speech?
The mind. The mind envelopes both name and speech. One formulates both speech and names in the mind, so it is greater. Even greater than mind is intention. Samkalpa. Will, purpose. One must have these in order to shape words in the mind. This is a rather longer set of verses that says the earth, sky, the Vedas, rituals, the essence of all of them is intention. There is a whole pattern of intention laid out in the pattern of the cosmos and in the rituals and the body and the vital functions. So venerate brahman as intention.

That isn’t the end of the chain by far. Still greater, in order of ascent, are thought, deep reflection, and perception. So far, all of these seem consistent – logically and with later teachings. But after perception, the student asks again, “Is there anything greater?” And the surprising (to me) answer is “Strength.”
“Even one strong man strikes terror into the hearts of a hundred men of perception. When someone becomes strong, he comes to stand; standing, he moves about; when he moves about, he becomes a pupil; when he becomes a pupil, he comes to be a man who sees, thinks, hears, discerns, performs rites and perceives. By strength does the earth persist . . .” 7.8.1 Without the first sentence, on could argue that this is referring to personal force – that strength/power by which we move ourselves through the day and life, not brute strength that can be used on others, though I suppose the two are necessarily related. If strength is truly better than perception, why not dedicate one’s life to body-building, rather than meditation? Is it that one must keep the body’s strength up through hatha yoga and healthy eating?

Obviously, I was surprised to find this so highly ranked. And look what comes next – greater than strength is food. One must eat to stay alive, and eat well to live well, to be strong, able to perceive, reflect deeply, perform rites, speak, etc. Even more important than food – water. We can go longer without food than water. All the vital functions rejoice over water. Therefore venerate brahman as food and water, which give us strength.

More posers – at first at least – what is greater than water? Well, what can dry up water and prevent it from coming? Heat! And what contains the sun, rain, moon, lightening and more? Space.
Really not knowing what to expect next . . . It is memory. Without memory “they would not be able to hear, consider, or recognize anything. Clearly it is through memory that one recognizes one’s children and one’s cattle.” 7.13
Hope is even greater, since without hope we wouldn’t bother remembering or having intentions or even eating and drinking. And finally, the very greatest . . .
Life breath. All this is fixed to lifebreath, as spokes are fixed to a hub.

There follows an injunction to the student that he must follow a course of learning in order to really master this knowledge of the self. But the teacher seems to contradict his orders. I mean, he seems to lay out what was perhaps a standard belief and practice of the time and say, “but I don’t think that’s true, or right.” What he says is that the student, in order to speak truth, must first perceive it. To perceive truth, he must understand perception, and in building like that, the order is, perceive thinking, perceive faith, produce, act, attain well-being, attain plenitude.

The notes help us understand that there was a belief, to which the teacher is referring, that one’s faith was demonstrable with monetary wealth in Vedic India. Makes sense. The gods reward the faithful, and if you do the rites properly, wealth will flow your way. Plus, one has to have wealth to do the rites and pay the priests and have over all the guests and show proper hospitality to humans, priests and dieties.

Thus the injunction to produce, which requires action and the attainment of material well-being. So here is where this radical Upanishadic thinking breaks with that tradition: The student asks, “Sir, on what is plenitude based?” He answers, “On one’s own greatness. Or maybe it is not based on greatness. Cattle and horses, elephants and gold, slaves and wives, farms and houses – these are what people here call greatness. But I don’t consider them that way; no, I don’t, for they are all based on each other (my emphasis) 7.24”.

Then he says plenitude is below, above, in the west, east, north and south. It extends over the whole world. Now substitue “I.” I am below, above, in the east, east, north, and south. I extend over the entire world. Next substitute the self. The self is below, above, etc. “The man who sees it this way, thinks about it this way, perceives it this way; a man who finds pleasure in the self, who dallies with the self, who mates with the self and who attains bliss with the self, he becomes completely his own master; he obtains complete freedom of movement in all the worlds. Thsow who perceive it otherwise are ruled over by others and obtain perishable worlds; they have no freedom of movement in any of the worlds” 7.25

In 7.26 he says that a person who perceives it this way – for him lifebreath, memory, hope, space, heat, water, food, strength, perception, deep reflection, though, intention, mind, speech, name, vedic formula, rites – all spring from his self. The whole world springs from his (or her!) self.
One sees here both the upholding of the Vedic rituals and the utter breaking with the old interpretations and meanings. Everything is being recast in the light of the new insights, but they are managing to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The search for the greatest makes a little more sense, in terms of developing ever deeper insights. One imagines the dialogue taking place over a long period of ime, as the student goes away to digest the first message and practice venerating brahman as mind, the feels dissatisfied and realizes this is only part of it, “let me go back and ask if there is something more.”

C and I were talking yesterday about how ridiculous it is that we still smoke (cigarettes). With all of the emphasis on breath – that breath is the absolutely most important and fundamental part of life and spirit – which should be kind of obvious – I really wonder if, when I begin hatha yoga, it will help me feel ready to just let go of the cigs. I want to want to. I am getting closer. Just not quite there yet. Hopefully between yoga, meditation, Chantix, a cervical cancer scare and the cold weather, I can give it a try.

Prana 101

January 29, 2009
My Upanishadic lesson today is a parable in which a boy learns from various animals that brahman is far flung, limitless, abode-posessing and radiant. This is in the CU 4.1.1-10. Each of four creatures reveals one quarter of brahman, but he still wants to hear it from a human teacher. I think that is largely out of respect.

Then in CU 4.1.10 that boy is the teacher, and he won’t teach this one student. His wife keeps saying, “You better teach him, before the fire beats you to it.” But he ignores her, and sure enough, the fire tells the student, “Brahman is breath; brahman is joy; brahman is space.” He says he understands the first part, but how can the others be right? How can brahman be joy AND be space? “They are the same thing,” says the fire.

But the explanation is more of those semantic, metaphoric chains of signification they so depend on in their magic; this word is like this word which is like that object which comes into the world the same way this does and therefore this last thing equals the first thing. Huh? [I unfortunately fell asleep here – drugs took me off so the pen just trails into unreadable, which is unfortunate because I think I was onto something.]

January 30
One last health thing I forgot to report that is preying on my mind a bit: my nurse practitioner called to tell me that the results of my PAP were abnormal, so she had them re-tested specifically for the HPV strain that causes cancer, and that was negative. She said that meant all we have to do now is wait and make sure I get tested again in 6 months, and step up the testing schedule. Of course, my mind stattered chattering away; why only the HPV test? Is that the only thing that causes cancer? And for a little bit I felt dismay, that “Oh no! How can one more thing go wrong” feeling. I haven’t even had a chance to demonstrate what I’ve learned from this last round!
I just have to trust her. Take the rest of the winter, spring, summer and early fall to put into practice what I think I’ve learned. Begin to incorporate my body into my spiritual development and discipline by learning yoga, and when I go for my physical in the fall, the results will hopefully reflect a changed reality. We will be eating from our garden and the farmer’s market, getting the exercise from gardening and walking in our neighborhood in addition to yoga, so my body ought to be super happy. We will just make it a place where cancer does not feel welcome and cannot find a foothold.

Turning to the fifth chapter of the CU, it begins with a series of statements that Socrates might not have argued with in principle – to know good is to do it. “When a man knows the most excellent, he becomes the most excellent.” In v.1, the “best and greatest” is breath. V.2, the “most excellent” is speech. V.3 the “firm base” is sight. V.4 “When a man knows the correspondences (sampad) his desires, both divine and human, are fulfilled. Correspondence is hearing.” V.5 Refuge is the mind.

We’ve seen these – breath, speech, sight, hearing and mind presented before in various ways. Sometimes with other things like smell, touch and taste as well. They are, together, the vital functions – prana. Sometimes prana seems to refer only to breath, and sometimes to all of them together. Verses 6-15 explain why, telling the same story told in the BU about how the vital functions argued about which was most important, agreed that each would leave for a year. Speech leaves, and the body lives like a mute for a year. When speech comes back, sight leaves, and the body lives for a year like a blind man. Then hearing leaves, and the body is deaf; when the mind leaves, the body is a simpleton for a year. Each of the years has its difficulties, but the body gets along. Then comes the breath’s turn. When breath tries to leave for its year apart, it so jerks all the other vital functions, in the way a fine horse would jerk all the stakes to which it is tethered, that they all gathered around him and implored, “Lord, please stay! You are the greatest among us, do not depart!” v. 12.

This is really helpful. I found it super confusing in some contexts. Studying the Upanishads sometimes feels like an uphill battle, or like a . . . not useless, but a task that will bring little benefit. A kind of luxury, intellectual playing at something, because the culture of the authors is so far distant from me in time and space and - - culture. How can I possibly know what they might have meant? The translation I have I’m sure is very good, because I trust his notes as a scholar. He explains why he makes the decisions he makes, who he is following and why, etc. But he is not a Hindu. He’s not an Indian. There is much about the culture he can’t explain, and there is much about the philosophy I don’t think he even begins to understand. The more I read, the more I realize that for him the scriptures are a very challenging and intriguing linguistic puzzle/task/work. And for that we can maybe trust his scholarship more; he has no side, no concern for how the chapters are interpreted spiritually. But that doesn’t help me get when I’m stuck philosophically.

So I was saying, sometimes it does get to feeling a bit too dry and scholarly for me. What does it mean that the breath is so important? I mean, both the BU and CU speak endlessly about it, and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita and the Uddhava Gita said we had to get it under control as part of our devotion and discipline. How could I so blithely ignore that all this time? Doesn’t it mean that it isn’t just asanas I must add to meditation, but pranayama? Likely all the yoga methods include pranayama . . . or all the good ones.
I wonder if, after I have learned experientially some things about breath through those practices, if all the scriptures will take deeper significances. Like the Gita did after I had a mantra, and the U. Gita did after I’d been meditating. It still comes as such a shock to me – the person who has always lived so much in her head – that there are things that MUST be learned that CANNOT be learned with the mind. Whoa! Hunh? As an anthropological theorem I liked the idea of embodiment, embodied culture. It seemed true. But I still wasn’t really getting it, because I wasn’t putting my body through the experiences it needed to learn things.

In the end of the CU 5 comes a description of a collection of wealthy and wise households, all intent on learning more and understanding better what atman and brahman are. They travel together to two teachers. The second asks them each in turn what he venerates as brahman. Each has thought about it, and each has a different answer. Sky, wind, space, earth, sun, waters. The guru says to each, “That thing is brahman, but it is just the (head, foot, breath, arm, etc.) of brahman. Venerating it is good, it has brought you wealth and a family and standing among your people, but if you had continued to be so limited in your conception it would have killed you.” Waters are the bladder; it is good to have one, but if you keep filling it constantly, the bladder will eventually burst and kill you, sort of thing.

He gets them to see that brahman is all of that. All of those things at once. Then he gives them instructions for a ritual which the notes say became a very important one in the brahmanical tradition. In fact, it seems like one I could maybe do. With food, when eating one makes sacrifices in order – to the out-breath, the interbreath, the in breath, the link breath, the up breath, each time saying, “To the out breath, svaha.”
This rite is called praagihotra – the fire sacrifice in the vital breaths. Svaha, recall, is a word used in rituals that has no actual meaning. A ritual call to the gods. This seems an easy enough blessing, right? Especially once one knows what the breaths are?

Oooh. I decided to keep going and stumbled onto a treasure. First, it begins with a father requiring that his son go away and study rather that be a Brahmin in name only, which reminds me to record that there have been several indications that caste is more than a matter of birth at this time; in fact, birth is sometimes demonstrated to be irrelevant.

What Chapter Six is really about, though, is how the universe(s) – cosmos – come into being and how that determines the nature of the composition, development, and relationships. This is presented as a secret teaching; something the son was not taught at his Brahminical, Vedic school where he became arrogant and swell-headed. The father begins by presenting the “Law of Substitution,” which is almost cool enough. He says, “By means of just one lump of clay one would perceive everything made of clay – while the reality is just this, its clay.” He says the same with a copper trinket, by which one can perceive everything copper, and an iron tool, by which one could perceive everything iron, “It is a verbal handle, a name, while the reality is just this, the thing.”
I said this to C (a houseguest), said “think about this for awhile” and he said, “Well now, I’ve been thinking about that, about how the Bible says ‘In the Beginning was the Word.’ Why a word? What does it say there, does it say logos” I was stunned, because the very next part of the scripture is about the origin of the cosmos! “In the beginning . . .” I about fell off my little donut-pillow! How in the world had he made that leap? I said “That’s amazing!” and I read him the next part and we began discussing the merit of various origin stories, the meaning of the Garden of Eden myth and my rocky relationship with it and my current peaceful acceptance of it as a myth that explains god’s gift of choice and the pain of growth and knowledge. Then we got sidetracked by making menus and whatnot and I only just now got back to thinking about what this verse means and I just aksed him what his thought process was, how did he get from the thingness of a thing to the origin of the universe?

His answer made perfect sense; he was thinking about the word. Why IS it a “Word” that exists first? These verses insistence that it is “just verbal handles” while the reality is something else had made the connection. He was thinking about the Bible verse “the Word became flesh” and wondering if things aren’t existent until we name them. Do they have reality in and of themselves, beyond the words for them?

The Upanishad is saying yes – penetrate the word, the verbal handle, the mere name, and you will get to the reality of the thin-in-itself. Once you perceive the reality of copper or clay in one thing, you get “copperness” wherever copper is. Okay, so why does the Upanishad make the leap to the origin? To “in the beginning”?
It explains that this cosmos was “simply what is existent – one only, without a second” CU 6.2. Meaning there was a deity/being/consciousness/thing that existed befere/outside the cosmos. The father explains that some people teach that there was no existence – nothing – and out of that nothing, existence emerged, but that is wrong. The One existed, and it said to Itself, “Let us be many. Let me propogate myself.” And it emitted heat. Out of the heat came rain, and out of the rain came food. So these are the three essential characteristics of the deity and of every aspect of the cosmos; heat, water and food – according to this teaching.

In 6.3 he establishes that there are only 3 sources from which all creatures originate. More importantly, 6.3.2 “Then that same deity thought to itself: ‘Come now, why don’t I establish the distinctions of name and appearance by entering these three deities here with this living self (atman) and make each of them three-fold’.” In every thing, heat, water, food – red, white, black – are present in different quantities and distributions. Is this the origin of the three gunas? Like some of the early teachers/sages were figuring things out and got different pieces, and eventually it coalesced into the formulation presented in the Gitas and Puranas, which hangs together so well it hasn’t been seriously changed or challenged since.
Geez, reading one of the footnotes where he actually provides some insight makes me realize how very much I am NOT getting out of these scriptures. Well, it is a first time through. I’ll have them forever. One has to begin learning somewhere.
A little taste in CU 6.8.7, it concludes with “and that’s how you are, son.” Olivelle defends his translation, saying it is often translated “That art Thou.” The latter is impossible, claims Olivelle, because the pronoun ‘tat’ cannot refer either to ‘sat’ or to ‘animan’. The Sanskrit of the contested text is tat tvam asi. Anyway, the phrase “does not establish the identity between the individual and the ultimate being (sat), but rather shows that (the son) lives in the same manner as all the other creatures, that is, by an invisible and subtle essence; it indicates the cause of his existence.” P.349
The father has shown that the “whole world exists because of the essence, which is the truth and is lasting and real. It is the self, for everything exists in relation and reference to it. Then the father personalizes the teaching by making the son realize he should look upon himself the same way – he, like the tree and the world, is pervaded by the essence, which is his final reality and his true self.”
I was getting some of that, but not all. Ah well, how fun would it be if there was nothing to go back for?

The Very Real Body

January 24, 2009
[I’ll spare you the details – a beautiful journal ended on descriptions of pain and mess of the hemerhoid surgery, which I bring up because):
Isn’t that exactly what I am supposed to be learning right now? That the “dirt” of life, and the messiness of the body are just as much me and as important to my journey, my spiritual growth, as the sublime, the ecstatic, the intellectual moment? I know this year I need to have a lot more experiences with my body. Yoga, obviously. Walking, working in the garden, smelling flowers and incense and just trying to learn to experience the Divine in ways that aren’t filtered through my brain so much. And I’ll try to NOT write about all of them, either! : )

January 25
[Just to give you a taste of what trying to truly live in my body was like at the time . . .]
I don’t know if I can do this. I am more miserable than I know how to describe. Broken glass is a fairly good description of how it feels inside my rectum, except it doesn’t capture the sense that there is also a wound that has healed shut that I must break. I’m repeating myself. Its just that the more stressed I get, the more my PHN [post herpetic neuralgia] flares. The higher the pain level, the less control over my heart rate, blood pressure, tension. So the sphincter spasms, which is AGONY – chewing glass with your butt. I actually have bands of pain across my nose and cheeks and a few other strange sensations, all derivations of the extreme pain my behind is in. It’s like a kind of shock, I think. Nausea also playing a role, of course.

January 26
I am finally reading the Changdogya Upanishad, which is focused primarily on the High Chant, OM. The texts are not as easy for me to enter into as the BU, because they largely provide history, theory or rationalization for ritual. Or instruction for rituals that are laid out in the Vedas and most of which I don’t imagine I’ll ever pick up. Of course, that isn’t necessarily true. Ritual is important and I’m not knocking it. But I didn’t grown up with these, I’ve never seen them, I have no idea if they are – or which ones are – ancient history and never practiced now, and which are daily habits for modern Hindus. I don’t have access to a temple or any of the appropriate priests. In fact, I know that some of these priests – the Udgatr, Saman and Prastotr priests have been replaced by those for the gods from the Mahabharata.

I’m learning what I can. Getting a better feel for how scriptures and stories work, in themselves, in India. And the role of the Upanishads. I see better why it is called the Vedanta, the “End of the Vedas,” but yet is still classified as part of the Vedas, part of Vedic time. It is very in-between. At one momen very magical – mix this, say this, stand here and eat that three times in order to . . . At other times there are appeals to a priestly or deity’s authority “just because I said so.” But the general tone and thrust is one of attempting to explain the rituals, provide some philosophical basis or foundation for the things that make sense and an attempt to eliminate or reform all that has become empty or meaningless.

One can also see parallels with the Old Testament – the time of Judges and Kings. A certain kind of thinking that must have been common in those early states. Trickery on the part of the holy men and the kings. It is not considered deceit, somehow, to pretend to be someone else in order to avoid paying people, or giving them a blessing or whatever. I admit this drove me crazy in the Bible. How can these supposedly “good” people do things like . . . Abraham pretending Sarai was his sister and prostituting her to Pharoah, and a hundred smaller deceptions and tricks? But the truth is that different cultural rules apply. Now in the Abraham case, even Pharoah and Abe’s own people were horrified. But a certain amount of trickery seems to indicate craftiness is admired. It is not considered evil or bad.
Another sort of contradictory thing – the sages in the Upanishads are always being rewarded with cows and riches and kingdoms. If they are sannyasin, what do they do with those? Maybe the category doesn’t really exist yet, nor the ideal.
The CU devotes whole chunks to not only translating but deeply exploring some of the chants in the Vedas, like the five-fold Saman chant, described in CU2. I have no idea if those are the same chants that are used in yoga classes today, or in any temples, but surely having some familiarity with these chants and knowing their “hidden wisdom” (the meaning of upanisad) of each syllable will make any chant more open to meaning for me.
In fact, I just began to make some connections between what Turlington said about pranayama – breath control – and these first few chapters. So let’s look a little closer.

The Saman Chant
Opening – OM
Introductory Praise – hum/upsamai gayata narom
High Chant (Udgatr) – om/pa(2)va(2) manayendava (2) abhi devam iya (1212)
Response (Pratihartr) – hum/a (2)
Female (Udgatr) – Ksato
Concluding (all 3) – sa (345)t

Then all of chapter 2 explains how various aspects of the world, the body and the spirit are reflected in or by this chant. The seasons, the rain, the digestion, sexual intercourse, breathing – everything. If you know this, and you can “hear” the rhythm of the chant in these everyday things, multiple blessings unfold for you. I wish I could hear it, I think I would understand it better. It would also be nice to have a translation. But maybe, like OM, there is no translation, really. Or not a full one.
The chant is woven upon all these things, so when one knows this, one doesn’t mindlessly repeat words but has the tools to meditate upon the ways this chant weaves the universe together. I think that is what the chapter is saying. And so one’s life becomes even richer and more blessed. Instead of complaining about rain, or Brahmins (both specifically mentioned) one sees their place and how to fit in with them, how to “use” them.

Oh! This is too fantastic! As in what a cool scripture! Instructions for good comebacks if anyone criticizes the way you chant! I’m not kidding! The Cu 2.22.3-4. There it says vowels are the corporeal form (atman) of Indra. Spirants are the corporeal form of Prajapati, and stops are Death. So if someone criticizes you for the way you pronounce your vowels, “he should tell that man, “I have taken refuge in Indra and he will rebut you.” For spirants, “Prajapati will crush you,” and for stops, “I have taken refuge in Death, and he will burn you up!” Isn’t that great? A tool for stutterers!

When speaking, vowels should be uttered, “with resonance and emphasis, thinking “Let me give strength to Indra.” One should pronounce all spirants without swallowing or ejecting them, and with an open passage between the tongue and the place of articulation, thinking, “Let me surrender myself to Prajapati.” With stops, check slightly, separate them from following sounds thinking, “Let me save myself from Death.”
As I was copying all that out I got thinking about how slow you’d have to talk, or how fast you’d have to think to actually dedicate each noise to the appropriate deity. I know that such activities, practice, do occur at ashrams all over the world. You sure wouldn’t say much, would you? You’d think pretty hard about what was important to say.

January 27
Another rough night. Couldn’t fall asleep ‘til 2, then was up at 4:30 with abdominal pain. Could barely pull myself out of bed. These actions become contortionist challenges, trying like crazy to stay relaxed so that the sphincter won’t clinch, while not allowing one’s bottom to touch any surface – do that while rolling out of a bed so high you need a step ladder to climb into/out of, pull on socks (doubled of course because it is so cold) and pajama bottoms, all while trying to make it to the bathroom on time and not disturb your husband or the cat. The latter because she’ll go stomp on the husband. It just isn’t fun. All around, this recovery is the super duper pits.
I’m reading the 3rd chapter of the Changdogya Upanishad. Much of it is way over my head, with its references to the sun as the honey of the gods, and the various parts of the sun – the rays . . . No, the various parts of the honey – the honey cells, the bees, the flower – all correspond to the rays, chants and Vedas. The diferent directions correspond to different Vedas, e.g. East = Rg, South = Yaju and West = Saman. North = Athava and Angirasa. The “upward” cells correspond to the secret teachings – the Upanishads themselves, I guess. Okay, so I can parse all of that, but I have no idea what it means.
Maybe if I follow it out, because the next part is about nectar. I picked up my pen because I was going to write that I’m beginning to get a tiny inkling of the main classifications of the gods and how they came about, though I’m not sure that’s even true, as I write it. I was kind of giving up on figuring out the deeper meaning of the text, but maybe it is worth a shot. I’ve read it several times and it is pretty mysterious. It is also considered very important. In 3.11 it says a father should only teach this knowledge to his eldest son or a wealthy pupil, even if someone offered the world’s weight in riches to him.
The first verses seem to be setting up a metaphorical structure. A model of the world, the sacred universe is like a honeycomb. The purpose of which is to produce honey, or nectar. The next verses talk about how the various classes of gods subsist on the nectar that is produced by the – oh yeah, the Vedas - the chants! The gods survive on the chants. They exist because of ritual. That is what it boils down to, right?

When you realize this, it says, “When someone knows the nectar in this way, he truly becomes one with those very Rudras, with Indra himself as his mouth . . . he enters into this appearance and emerges from this appearance; and he will achieve dominion and sovreignty over these very Rudras for as long as the sun will rise in the south and set in the north, which is twice as long as it will rise in the east and set in the west.” 3.7.3
And so it goes through all the gods, beginning with the Vasus, with fire as their mouth, then Rudras, Adityas, with Varuna as their mouth, Maruts with the moon, Sadhyas with brahman as their mouth. All the gods exist through ritual, are kept alive through ritual remembrance and chant, and thus, if one knows that, one has dominion over them. That would have been a pretty big secret at the time.
It terms of gods, I’m still a bit confused, but I’m getting that these three groups go together – Vasus, Rudras and Adityas. There are 8 Vasus, but they are vague. There are 11 Rudras and Rudra is one of them. He is a storm god, also a healer, and may be a precurser of Siva, as he was sometime called Siva ahd shares some of his aspects. Rudra also rules over the Maruts, a group of – lesser? – deities. The Adityas are literally the children of Aditi, the Mother God. Associated with the earth (of course), she’s the mother of Varuna, Indra, Mitra and others, who are therefore the Adityas.
But what remains confusing – and likely always will because it reflects a bunch of diverse belief systems and mythologies – is the Varuna/Prajapati/Indra thing. It isn’t troubling; they are all “stand-ins” for an idea of Sky God in any case. I just marvel at how little trouble local peoples had with the name differences. After all the killing Western peoples have done over what name God wears, one becomes conditioned to believe it is somehow human nature to slaughter one another over what to call the Maker of Rain, the Creator of Life. If that isn’t sad, I don’t know what is. But how joyful, now, to realize all these other people never dreamed of fighting, much less killing over such a silly thing.
There is a lot more in the next verses I’m not going to go into, but if only I had the confidence! In 3.16 are instructions for how to avoid sickness in the various stages of life by chanting the appropriate word of the Soma metre. Life is divided into 3 stages according the length of the Soma verses, 1st 24 to Vasus, next 44 to Rudras, last 48 to Adityas. If you get sick you are to do certain dedications. But if you are a master, like Mahidasa Ditareya, you can say, “I am not going to die because of it, so you why do you have to afflict me like this?” And his troubles were presumably removed and he lived to 116. Guess that’s what happens when you have dominion over gods people still believe in.