Discipline - NOT Punish (April 29-30,2007)

I am gradually coming back to life. Man, that was a tough recovery, and I'm getting to be pretty knowledgeable about various recuperation periods from surgeries. But I trust that will be the last one! Forever! I have learned some things, and had some really intense insights that are going to profoundly change the way I live my life due to this last round. I hope to write it all out for y'all soon. Right now I'm trying to dig myself out of the hole missing two weeks of work created. Thanks for all your kind wishes - I sure used them!

April 29, 2007

[Spent a good 2 pages writing of my plans for exercising, eating healthfully, losing weight, and of course, meditating]

Sixth Teaching – The Man of Discipline

Know that discipline, Arjuna,

Is what men call renunciation;

No man is disciplined

Without renouncing willful intent

There you go. You cannot be disciplined without giving things up. One has to be willing to sacrifice what one's senses say they must have. And as discussed before, one can make this easier by consciously sacrificing willful desires to someone. Much easier to give things up out of love. And the other tool is to realize that the self who craves ice-cream and brownies is not the Self. A kind of confusingly worded stanza gets at this:

He should elevate himself by the self,

Not degrade himself;

For the self is its own friend

And its own worst foe.

In Easwaran's book on meditation he talks about how good the mind and senses are at distracting us, and how talented they are at manufacturing desire for sense objects . . . like ice cream. But once one achieves discipline - control - the mind and senses become one's loyal servants. And crave brown rice, for example, instead of baked potatos with butter and sour cream. To get to that place, one must be firm with them, tell them no and don't give in. And here is Krishna on the subject:

The self is the friend of a man

Who masters himself thru the self.

But for a man without self-mastery,

The self is like an enemy at war.

"Thru the self." It is no good keeping one's self on a diet by, say, locking the refrigerator, or having one's stomach stapled. Those external means may help you lose weight, but they haven't changed who you are. As soon as the lock is removed, or one finds another means of satisfying one's gluttony, one is right back in the same situation. So with every other "vice."

And I do find myself at war; one part wants pie, another part wants to look like a model. One part wants to just lie on the couch, another wants to go spend money we don't have. My body is literally a battle zone in which nerves want to fire all the time, the immune system wants to – well, does – attack the virus and anything else that gets in its way. How do I stop the craziness and bring peace and control to my mind and body? The following stanzas show the way:

First, he says seclusion, isolation (10) I can't do that. But I could find moments of it. Then find a good place to sit – firm, pure, not too high or low, with a covering (11).

He should focus his mind and restrain

The activity of his thoughts and senses (12)

And

He should keep his body, head,

And neck aligned, immobile, steady. (13)

He also suggests staring at the tip of one's nose, but I prefer other strategies that the scriptures also support.

But that third thing, in stanza 12, that is hardly easy! In fact right now it seems downright impossible. Easwaran and Ram Dass and everyone else say it improves with practice and only with practice.

Then Krishna says to sit in discipline. With thoughts fixed on Krishna, intent (14).

Disciplining himself,

His mind controlled,

A man of discipline finds peace,

The pure calm that exists in me. (15)

Going overboard on anything, even piety and extreme asctecism, is not discipline (16). I know I'm often guilty of that, so I'll have to watch it. Meditating all day is not necessary or helpful at this point. Half an hour a day is enough. Again, the rewards are great.

When a man disciplines his diet

And diversions, his physical actions,

His sleeping and waking,

Discipline destroys sorrow.

One becomes truly free when one can make choices instead of being driven by tastes and preferences, cravings and desires. Easwaran says one can have total control over sleeping and waking, even over dreams. That's where I'm going to leave it for the day. Only let me remember this, that all of the great sorrow I feel can be dispelled by the simple expedient of sitting down for half an hour every day.

April 30

I guess it's time to think about discipline again. Krishna continues to offer a picture of what a disciplined person is like, and the rewards of such discipline.

Absolute joy beyond the senses

Can only be grasped by understanding [jnana]

When one knows it, he abides there

And never wanders from the reality. v.21

Why would one leave? Joy beyond the senses means better than sex, better than pie and ice-cream, better than a sunset, better than teaching, than gazing into a lover's eyes – once one's had that, why would one ever trade it in for the petty fun of one-upmanship, or a cigarette, etc.?

He gives explicit instructions that would be really useful, I'm sure, if I was meditating daily and knew where the pitfalls or difficulties further along the path lie.

Arming herself with discipline,

Seeing everything with an equal eye,

She sees the self in all creatures,

And all creatures in the self. v. 29

I'm going to make the language female-oriented from now on. It's important to me. Phyllis and I talked about how, though they may be small traumas, the words of exclusion, belittling, un or undervalue, they do add up, making little dents and bruises on the soul. About the verse – all things are One. Since we are selfish creatures, use the self to understand the reality. When I see a person or a dog or whomever, I should be saying "There I go" and also seeing them in myself. This is the start of real liberation. If I could truly enjoy another's success as mine, and see my success as truly theirs, I'd be in good shape.

And from there (or simultaneously) I should turn from self and see God. I love this passage. And isn't it like what Jesus would say?

She who sees me everywhere

And sees everything in me

Will not be lost to me,

And I will not be lost to her. v.30

Throughout the Gita, Krishna is often so tender, it is no wonder he attracts so many devotees, including me.

I exist in all creatures.

So the disciplined man devoted to me

Grasps the oneness of life;

Wherever she is, she is in me

When she sees identity in everything,

Whether joy or suffering,

Through analogy with the self,

She is deemed a person of pure discipline.

At bottom, this is the same as Jesus' command to love others as you love yourself. Of course, it goes further; others ARE oneself! And like with Christianity, it is easy to love kittens and people who think like we do; much harder to love our enemies. But both Jesus and Krishna say it is necessary. Not because you will be rewarded by God, in Krishna's case, but because it is True. It is just accepting reality. Dick Cheney is me. I am Karl Rove. George Bush is me. Whoa. That is tough! How do I come to love them as I love Indy? As I love J? As I love Mom?

Maybe we don't expect perfection all at once? Especially from someone who is not meditating faithfully yet? This is the goal though. "when she sees identity in everything." Not "in the things she likes the looks of." Okay. Practice closer to home. With each student that walks into my office. Each faculty member who speaks to me. My doctors and their staffs. Okay. And the members of my family.

April 27-28, 2007

April 27, 2007

The Fifth Teaching – Renunciation of Action

Arjuna asks for clarification: Which is better, discipline or renunciation of action? Krishna responds right away that disciplined action is better than non-action. Explains Ghandi better.

Aha! And here is where Krishna clearly says that if you follow raja or jnana yoga you'll end up practicing both; they lead to the same place:

Simpletons separate philosophy [jnana]

And discipline [raja], but the learned do not;

Applying one correctly, a man

Finds the fruit of both. v. 4

And:

Renunciation is difficult to attain

Without discipline;

A sage armed with discipline

Soon reaches the infinite spirit. v.6

One cannot really let go of desire and attachment, (preference), without discipline, which in this case means yoga – jnana, karma, or raja – meditation and/or one-pointed devotion. As part of seeking, one should meditate using raja yoga, and also do what is taught in the Upanishads – jnana yoga, or reflection on the fact that one's self is not one's true Self.

Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling,

Eating, walking, sleeping, breathing,

The disciplined man who knows reality

Should think "I do nothing at all."

When we engage with sense objects – eating Cheerios, standing in front of the class, etc., we should think, "It is the senses that engage with sense objects." Not I. I am something other than what I feel, sense, taste, do.

And a reminder of what it is like if we don't – we are then driven by our desires – to eat pie and ice cream, to have sex, to be loved by students. Desire drives us from one thing to another; we are not in control of them, freely choosing which things would be good to do.

Relinquishing the fruit of action

The disciplined man attains perfect peace;

The undisciplined man is in bondage,

Attached to the fruit of his desire.

The only way to get that peace, to be successful in letting go of the pleasures and pains of the senses is to meditate. To be disciplined. One learns through meditation, and it alone, that one should and can run one's own brain. We do not have to allow the mind to think three thoughts at once, to yell about what it wants. Through meditating we come to realize we can, and begin to do these renunciations. First one must control one's thoughts, then one's senses, and ultimately, one's desires.

I have been doing it on and off – and I have one more week of classes, so one more week to play at it this way. Then no more excuses.

April 28

Have been up since 6, talking to J. First about the government and the new corruptions and atrocities each of us learned about yesterday, then switched into religion, since I wanted to share my insight of last night with him, and then it went from there to range widely but ended with the subject that we need a community of fellow believers/seekers. J is using the web now to try and find something – a temple, a meditation center, something.

It is so difficult to not be outraged at our government. Last night I was thinking about my tendency to see this administration as the worst ever. And I realized (again) that it is nearly always this bad. As long as there have been states, there have been corrupt, evil, exploitative people. The little people have been robbed, abused, exploited, lied to and more by the people they trust to protect them. I'm sure there are cycles – one can see them all through history – of times that are really bad and times that are better, but it probably isn't worse now than at many times in history.

It is important to know that, because it makes clear that I can't use these terrible times as an excuse. Things were really awful in China at the time Lao-tzu wrote that we must accept things the way they are. What does it mean that things are always bad all over? It doesn't mean we shouldn't fight, or there would be no balance. The bad guys would win. What it might mean is that the world is supposed to be like this. It is a training ground, remember? A chess game. If the two sides in a chess game were just having a picnic together, instead of fighting one another, there'd be no game, thus no point in playing it.

So we are exactly at where the Gita begins: I must do my dharma, my sacred duty, by picking a side and staying on it, fighting for it with my body – my senses, intelligence, actions – but at the same time accept how things are. Act with the body because it is the right thing to do, but do not expect or even desire, a particular outcome. Remember that ultimately, I am not the chess piece, down in the muck of battle, but the player – which means I am God itself, and I am Bush and Rumsfeld and Erik Prince as much as I am whitethoughts. Wow. I just had a split-second of truly grokking that. So back to our study of the Gita. The second stanza from where we left off:

The lord of the world

Does not create agency or actions,

Or a union of fruits with actions;

But his being unfolds into existence. v 14

Whoa, so in this version of creation even Brahman, God, does not act. He/It/She did not create the world; rather it came to be out of God. It naturally unfolds out of God because that is what God is. So you can't really say, for example, that an ember that shoots out of the fire was "created" by the fire – at least not in the purposeful way people usually mean. They mean that God thought out, designed, planned a universe, and purposely brought it into being. Not with hammer and nails but something like it.

But what if the meaning is closer to that of "the fire created the ember"? That's true, there wouldn't have been an ember without a fire; the fire is it's Source. And thus the ember has the qualities of the fire, is part of the fire.

Krishna is also saying God did not create cause and effect, it is simply How It Is, how god-stuff is structured. God didn't make a list and say "I like these things, I'll call them good and reward humans for them." Or "I don't like that so I'll call it bad and punish those who do it." No! It just is.

All the next 4 stanzas are wonderful, saying once you realize this, realize you are in fact the fire, god, then life becomes really sweet. Full of light. Knowledge "illumines ultimate reality" like the sun. One's atman, god-self, becomes one's identity, and "that becomes their understanding, their self, their basis, and then goal, and they reach a state beyond return." I guess that means they can never go back to seeing the old way; the new/old, real self connot fit back into the tiny ego. And then they see all as one.

If you didn't understand the context, you might read this next first line as life-denying, see Hinduism as joyless, but that isn't what it means at all.

He should not rejoice in what he loves

Nor recoil from what disgusts him,

Secure in understanding, undeluded, knowing

The infinite spirit, he abides in it. v.20

Detached from external contacts,

She discovers joy in herself;

Joined by discipline to the infinite spirit

The self attains inexhaustible joy. v.21

So far from being grim! Or selfish, as one might also read it. It means don't rejoice in what one loves more than you rejoice at what you don't love. Obviously I'm not even close to being there, but I get it. Intellectually. Back to the chess game. If you are playing both sides, it doesn't make much sense to rejoice at one side's winning move, when that means failure to the other side. Don't be swayed by emotions, it also means.

And then the promise: through disciplined meditation, you can use the link inside you, that piece of god to unite with Ultimate Reality. There is a well inside each of us, a well of infinite, brilliant joy. It takes discipline, practice, effort. But once found, one can drink from it as much and as often as one likes. Repeated trips to the well beats a path to it, strenthens leg muscles, so the more you walk the path, the easier it is to go there.

Inexhaustible joy. Whenever we want it. Who would forgo that in order to continue hating and despising one's fellow humans? The answer to how to deal with corruption, waste, dishonesty, etc., is to fight them with the body, sure, we've established that. But really the answer that will sustain you through all battles is – meditate! Discipline the mind and find one's way to the well. Tapping into infinite joy will make things not only bearable but acceptable, understandable. The following stanzas essentially say that. A person "able to endure the force of desire and anger" will be joyful.

The man of discipline has joy,

Delight and light within

Becoming the infinte spirit,

He finds the pure calm of infinity.

Hardly a life and joy-denying religion.

I was just thinking about how I've been guilty of pulling Bible verses out of context to "prove" something negative about the Bible to Mom or Dad and being reminded that it isn't fair or truthful practice. It is easier now to imagine someone like Mom finding comfort in the very verses I didn't like, because like these lines in the Gita, they are leading up to something bigger, a seeming paradox, perhaps. Don't rejoice in what you love . . . because controlling your preferences will lead you to TRUE, infinite joy:

The pure calm of infinity

Exists for the ascetic

Who disarms desire and anger,

Controls reason and knows the self v.26

I don't know if one truly must become an ascetic fully, but again, desire and anger must be disarmed. Okay, we can easily understand that (if not do it!). but control reason?

J and I were just discussing ways faith is hard for us, especially J, because of our intuitive grasps of logic, and especially for J – dedication to rational, deductive thought. So what is the Gita saying here? It is an immanently reasonable document, which largely tells people to think for themselves. But here reason must be controlled. "Truly free is the sage who controls his senses, mind and understanding, who focuses on freedom and dispels desire, fear and anger" v. 28.

I'll keep pondering. I think I know the answer to my question but don't feel like writing it out. I also haven't written out all my meeting with Phyllis and some other things, but I feel eager to get to work.