May 26 – 31, 2007

May 26, 2007

It's still a bit chilly to sit outside on the deck. I'm trying to wrap and tuck myself up so I can stay out here.

The Fourteenth Teaching: The Triad of Nature's Qualities

In the third verse, Krishna begins to explain how it is that nature exists, how all this matter of the universes comes into being. He uses words we can understand, wombs and embryos and seeds, but it seems a mistake to read this too literally. "My womb," he says, ". . . is Brahman; in it I place the embryo and from this comes the origin of all living creatures."

The infinite spirit is the great womb

Of all forms that come to be

In all wombs,

And I am the seed-giving father. v. 4

Brahman is feminine, Krishna masculine – but of course Krishna is brahman and so are we. So it's a way of explaining it. Somehow brahman splits itself – the first division? – Its parts we label in our way male and female.

The part that seems most revelatory to me right now is next, where Krishna explains how the infinite spirit makes itself into nature. Maybe limited by its own knowledge (maybe this is what we are learning to enable us to change form?) brahman creates nature, and nature has three qualities. Maybe it is that for there to be anything, there has to be a dark side. Or again, maybe that just appears to be true at this stage of brahman's growth. In any case, the worlds, or rather the substance out of which univeres and worlds are made is called "nature," and it has 3 parts – the gunas, or qualities of nature.

Recall that the last teaching concluded by saying we are not nature, we are free of nature. But it doesn't appear that way to us because we have participated in this experiment. Those parts that are ready to end the experiment must first understand the "nature" of their bondage, or the conditions of the participation.

Lucidity, passion, dark inertia

The qualities inherent in nature

Bind the unchanging

Embodied self in the body. v. 5

So there you go – this is the material that issues out of brahman, out of the womb. The three qualites are all intertwined. In verse 6, Krishna says lucidity binds us with attachment to joy and knowledge. Passion, v. 7, is emotional and binds us with attachment to action. Dark inertia, "born of ignorance, as the delusion of every embodied self" binds us with negligence, indolence and sleep. V.8.

One can see immediately why this is so; how could brahman play hide and seek without hiding? Each part of brahman that participates, each "self" must accept forgetting, ignorance, delusion. Without that, the experiment wouldn't be real. It must be built in, and so it must be that some selves either were able to forget better, or they reveled more in the delusion, or they were weaker and couldn't find their way out of the delusions for longer, or all three with different selves. Maybe the proportions of the gunas are a bit different, or were a bit different at the start. Why not? Some selves got more lucidity, some more passion, and some more dark inertia.

But of course these are simply the forms – the real Self, the omnipotent, omniscient, eternal Self, is in there, or above or something, and knows what's going on – the Lord, consenting and enjoying and watching how it plays out.

We can therefore manipulate the amounts of the qualities of nature. Give ourselves to passion and "greed and activity, involvement in actions, disquiet and longing arise" – this seems like the main goal of the experiment, since in v.18 Krishna says those who give themselves to passion 'stay inbetween" while those of lucidity go up and inertia go down.

Again, it isn't "wrong" to give oneself up to any of the three; it's all just about where you want to be.

When lucidity prevails,

The self whose body dies

Enters the untainted worlds

Of those who know reality v.14

This must/might be a real place, a very cool kind of "watcher" place, where we can watch the action and learn from it – maybe still in separate bodies. This is my idea of heaven!

When he dies in passion,

He is born among lovers of action;

So when he dies in dark inertia,

He is born into wombs of folly v. 15

The latter doesn't sound so good to me now, but perhaps it did at one time? And maybe I'm not really ready to leave the arena of passion, of action and emotion. I guess only time will tell. But certainly I yearn for that place of lucidity, that community of those "who know reality."

Arjuna asks how it is that we can come to realize we are not this nature at all – how can we cross over the gunas and get back to the Self, maybe to the Whole. Krishna responds:

He does not dislike light

Or activity or delusion;

When they cease to exist

He does not desire them v.22

It isn't like Christianity, Judaism or Islam where spiritual growth is in loving good more and hating evil more. No, there is no hate here. No dislike, even.

He remains disinterested

Unmoved by the qualities of nature;

He never wavers, knowing

That only qualities are in motion v. 23 (my emphasis)

So instead of being angry at myself, say, for eating brownies, I "should" only observe that the qualities of passion and of inertia are in motion. When I read about ignorant people doing hateful things, my emotions "should" not be disturbed, as again it is only the qualities of nature that are doing their thing – doing their part in the experiment I helped to design.

Disinterested here doesn't mean "having no interest," no curiousity. It means not being invested in a particular outcome. Like a good scientist, be intersted in how the data turn out, but not emotionally invested such that if an ant or a bacterium or a computer program does one thing we feel despair, if another happiness. Whatever the data are, they are "good," interesting.

Krishna repeats all he's said before about remaining indifferent to blame or praise, hot or cold. Abandoning involvement, and now it makes more sense. Like the analogy I've used in the past; if I were to play chess against myself to better understand the game, it truly wouldn't matter which side won. Either way, it's still me, and the purpose – to understand the game better – has been realized. This pain – it is a game. Whether I cry and wail, whether I give in and take medication, whether I learn to retreat into meditation – they will all have different results in my life and in the next life this self embodies. But they don't touch the real me except to give me more information.

Can I watch it unfold with dispassion? It has been an interesting life so far. Can I watch my Dad's life with disinterest? With compassion? Can I remember that his Self is learning, just like mine? It is the qualities of nature moving that I see, not Him, as He really is.

May 31

[In the intervening 5 days, I had a spinal headache from a mistake made during an epidural, when Dr. C "nicked the dura" in my spine, leaking spinal fluid into my brain. After a trip to the emergency room (where they diagnosed a migraine – wrong!) and an eventual blood patch, I was finally feeling better]

What a waste! Four days, completely lost! I did deepen my use of the mantra; I guess that makes it not a complete loss. Last time I wrote, Saturday, I really did try to meditate. I gave it 15 minutes, but could not hold the words through the pain of that headache. I really tried. Had to lie down, though, and then switched to the mantra and slept.

I clung to the mantra, repeating it endlessly, or countlessly, over the five days, and it helped me stay alive. Helped me find a place in myself where the body was not quite as loud or as powerful. Not exactly as Easwaran suggests – he doesn't say one should use mantram to enter meditative states, which is what those places were. But the whole experience deepened me, I think. I hope. Hope it wasn't a complete waste. I kept trying to remind myself that my Self had consented to this happening, had consented to my being in that pain, so I better try to figure out why.

Reciting the mantra was the only response I was able to muster, so I hope that was enough. Enough that my wonderful Self doesn't think I need any more of that pain right now, I hope.

I'm not sure why I was confused before by the 15^th Teaching: the True Spirit of Man. In it Krishna says what he has said before, just with different metaphors.

He begins with the idea of a tree – an upside down tree, whose roots are in the air, branches below. The Tree of Life, of nature, that is. The roots are the Truth, the Eternal Self, but the branches are the Self in nature, and are thus composed of the three gunas, I'm guessing.

Its branches

Stretch below and above,

Nourished by nature's qualites,

Budding with sense objects;

Aerial roots

Tangled in actions

Reach downward

Into the world of men. v. 2

Nourished by nature's qualities – lucidity, passion, dark inertia, the tree of life grows sense objects – worlds, right? – With all their visual, sensual parts. And by nature of its qualities, like passion, the branches get entangled in actions, karma. I guess I'm not adding much by what I'm writing, but I feel I'm "getting" it. In the third verse, he says, "cut down this tree with the axe of detachment."

Maybe it isn't really "cutting down the tree" which sounds violent and doesn't appeal to my "green" politics, but shifting the way one looks at the tree. Realize it is a game, a metaphor, a trick of the light. All through my hellish headache I tried to remember to practice that – detachment. I would say to myself – "Poor whitethoughts, she's having a terrible time with that headache!" I tried my hardest to remember, to KNOW, that it wasn't me, not my real Self, and to therefore be detached, disinterested. Let me tell you, that isn't easy.

And right now whitethoughts is waging a battle with her side. The pain wants to control her mind. Maybe not the battle epic songs will recount, but a plenty intense battle nonetheless, and all between parts of the same whole we call "whitethoughts". I just need to keep practicing this disinterest. Be a detached observor of my own life. Of whitethought's life. It will be interesting to see how she manages to catch up on all the work she's missed, and how she manages to get this summer class to come together around the description she wrote. Here's to her effort!