Both And · 10 December 2007

Some sensitive came around today with the tip that active & receptive, will & surrender, are as Siva and Shakti: we contain both, and cheat ourselves in any reduction to one disposition or the other.

Which reminded me of the brilliant and controversial Wendy Doniger’s words on Siva as the embodied resolution of apparent opposites. Here.

 

[O]ne must avoid seeing a contradiction… where the Hindu merely sees… correlative opposites that act as interchangeable identities in essential relationships.… Tapas (asceticism) and kama (desire) are not diametrically opposed like black and white, or heat and cold, where the complete presence of one automatically implies the absence of the other.

They are in fact two forms of heat, tapas being the potentially destructive or creative fire that the ascetic generates within himself, kama the heat of desire. Thus they are closely related in human terms… opposed but not mutually exclusive.

The mediating principle that tends to resolve the oppositions is in most cases Siva himself. Among ascetics he is a libertine and among libertines and ascetic; conflicts which they connot resolve, or can attempt ot resolve only by compromise, he simply absorbs into himself and expresses in terms of other conflicts.

Where there is excess, he opposes and controls it; where there is no action he himself becomes excessively active. He emphasize that aspect of himself which is unexpected, inappropriate, shattering any attempt to achieve a superficial reconciliation of the conflict through mere logical compromise.

Indian mythology celebrates the idea that the universe is boundlessly various, that everything occurs simultaneously, that all possibilities may exist without excluding each other.

The myths rejoice in all the experiences that stretch and fill the human spirit; not merely the moments of pure joy that we want to capture, nor the great tragedies and transitions that transform and strengthen us, but all the seemingly insignificant episodes and repetitious encounters of banal reality which the myth… teaches us to sanctify and to value….

The conflict is resolved not into a static icon but rather into the constant motion of the pendulum, whose animating force is the eternal paradox of the myths.

                   Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Siva: The Erotic Ascetic
                                                                pp. 35-36 & 318

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Categories: arbitrage , astanga yoga , esoteric shit , evolution , having a body , integration , spirituality

Comment

1. how cool is that? i am such a fan now.

   Posted by: eor · Dec 11, 09:50 AM · #

2. well said, wendy :)

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Dec 11, 11:34 AM · #

3. Yes, she is good. Her love for this stuff shows through her writing, especially when she gets into translating and telling all the stories.

   She’s come under fire from Hindu nationalists. Some interesting debates and great criticisms there (especially of the pretentions of “western,” “secular” scholarship and appropriation of traditions), but much of it is just the usual area-studies-chic backlash that showed up everywhere in the 1990s. How ironic to play identity politics with this tradition.

   Anyway, yes, I like this a lot. Especially the bit about two forms of heat, and how they are not diametrically opposed. We in the west really do tend to think that sexual energy is “bad” and want to draw bright lines around it to say where it is and is not allowed.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 11, 03:13 PM · #

4. I meant to toss this comment in earlier: something here reminds me of Jeff Kripal’s work on Ramakrishna and tantra (and the psychoanalytic line he takes, which really turned off a few friends of mine).

   Posted by: patrick · Dec 11, 05:36 PM · #

5. Psychoanalysis is maximally obnoxious; but it is also fun. (Lacan is so 1995.) I bet I’ll really like this Kripal guy and thank you for the tip.

   I wonder if he comes from Kripalu?

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 11, 05:44 PM · #

6. Hah! Maybe he’s THAT Jeffrey Kripal, you know? Like James Bond at parties: “Kripal. Jeff Kripal. Like Kripalu, the yoga they named after me.” Ok, enough goofing. :)

   Posted by: patrick · Dec 12, 05:24 PM · #

7. Caving to the temptation straightaway…:

   Anus. John Anus. Like the yoga they named after me.

   Bad owl.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 12, 05:35 PM · #

8. Funny owl.

   You raise a good point, though. Anusara is obviously a western derivative of Iyengar. (i.e. Anusara is to Iyengar as Power Yoga is to Ashtanga). Now, when he was sitting in a room trying to come up with a name for his brand, why did he go for such a ridiculous one? I respect that he didn’t name it after himself (although ‘Friend yoga” would be awful as well) but why didn’t anyone pull him aside early on and point out the obvious hilarity of the name?

   Posted by: cody · Dec 13, 04:50 AM · #

9. This is bullshit. There is no conflict to be resolved.

   Posted by: Susan · Dec 13, 07:12 AM · #

10. Keen moment for a vedanta slap. Thank you. It is true that I only write out of confusion. Mmmmmm.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 13, 09:18 AM · #

11. I don’t know anything about Anusara yoga and cannot say that I am even curious about it apart from the silly (and, yeah, exciting) tantric stuff they decided to use with it. Yet the name, whether or not it is supposed to sound “Indian” or point to “Sanskrit” meanings, is quite unfortunate considering the practice was made for Americans.

    Richard Freeman makes a passing comment in the Yoga Matrix about “concocted” asana-yogas. I wondered in hearing it if it was talking about Anusara. But... we are always concocting, all of us.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 13, 09:25 AM · #

12. I actually trying to de-concoct. Concocting is so
    out these days….:)

    Posted by: Susan · Dec 13, 05:24 PM · #

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