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?