Eaten By Ants · 17 October 2007

Tonight, during Prasarita D, I had an urge more intense and crazy than anything I’ve ever experienced on the mat. It struck, and filled me with restlessness all the way to the brink of giggles. I pictured myself following through on the urge and had to scurry out of the room to stop myself.

It’s that I wanted to walk over to a fellow student, swipe his cheat-sheet up off the floor, and take a bite out of it. Then I wanted to chew it thoughtfully, look him meaningfully in the eyes, and say something like:

“Better hurry up and learn this sequence, because I’m taking a bite out of this paper every day ‘til it’s gone.”

The man is named M and I find him inspiring as hell. Of course we’ve never spoken, but I have overheard his amazing story. Something about a life of hardscrabble business dealings and incredible stress, interrupted early this year by a violent attack that left him barely more than dead. And now he’s starting a second life—one that includes yoga every afternoon. His body, covered in new scars, looks like it’s been through decades of hard, blue-collar life. He comes in when I’m towards the end of the standing postures and sets up next to me. He hums at first, which is great. Often he smells of a cigar, which doesn’t bother me because I'm too charmed by the guy. Other days, there is a vague nacho aroma. He has a bath towel and a basic blue mat that is usually rumpled, but that in the past two weeks he’s been lining up carefully parallel to our mahogany floorboards. Nice to see a little ashtanga analness taking root.

This is someone for whom you would want to make every exception in the world. He is still figuring out who he is this time around; he is visibly filled with gratitude and consistent in his practice; perhaps, too, he's still a little disoriented from the trauma. I figure you let the guy have his cheat-sheet, even for months if that is what feels right to him.

When I scurried from the room to stop myself from eating his paper, the teacher and my friend J were on the other side of the door. I was so freaked out and disoriented by the impulse and its strength that it showed on my face. When they asked what was wrong I wasn’t sufficiently ahead of myself to say anything but the truth.

I am usually reserved and methodical, so the little drama probably came off strange.

J nodded. I know exactly how that can be, when you get those urges. His paper must be yummy. The teacher took it all as a sign that I crave more starch in my diet and made me promise to eat root vegetables for dinner. Yes, ok: ketchari with potatoes and chickpeas.

I nodded at them both, flummoxed, and went back to practice. It was clear to me that the root urge was to play the teacher with M, not to eat, but I didn’t take the time to explain. Especially because it's not an unproblematic urge.

When I thought it through again after practice, I realized the joke my mind had been playing. There’s an old story SKPJ tells, about going to some library with his guru Krishnamacharya, and finding there the true ashtanga sequence written down on banana leaves by sages of old.

And where are the precious documents now? When asked this, SKPJ says they have been eaten by ants. And so: lost to the mists of time.

It appears that what I wanted in that moment was to do M the favor of being his ant.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , esoteric shit , having a body

Comment

1. lovely!

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Oct 17, 07:16 PM · #

2. You’re weird.

   Posted by: Carl · Oct 18, 04:11 AM · #

3. That’s not megalomaniacal psychoanalysis, either.

   Posted by: Carl · Oct 18, 04:13 AM · #

4. well, that’s the pot calling the kettle weird!

   Posted by: Tova · Oct 18, 05:53 AM · #

5. Interesting story. Only way it could have been better would be to eat the cheat sheet. No doubt the guy’s reaction would have been noteworthy.

   Posted by: jlafitte · Oct 18, 06:17 AM · #

6. I recall and incident where a fellow practitioner did eat the proverbial label. I was visiting a far away shala, thousands of miles from my teachers and their, ahem, “style” doing my practice. And the guy next to me kept saying “not breathing” over and over which I believe was in reference to the manner of my Ujjayi… weird. Who was more crim – me for “not breathing” like an ICU patient on a ventilator or him for doing “my’ practice (as in NPAAIC – do your neighbors practice and all is coming)?

   Posted by: es&j · Oct 18, 09:33 AM · #

7. I don’t think we can know anyone unless we connect intimately and on a sustained level with them. Certainly not a stranger in a shala. When I look only at myself it amazes me how many stories wind thru my mind and then rewind just in the course of 2 practice hours. The emotion body is magnificent,wondrous and treacherous in its capacity for illusion and complexity. The emotion body gets seriously disturbed,shaken and stirred in the course of many of the asanas. I often resort to projecting alot of this baggage out into the room because sometimes its just too much. It certainly makes this practice challenging and exciting.

   Now regarding banana leaves. I think these 2 guys were devoted yogis but also good salesman. But they could have pulled out a better story from the rabbit’s hat for god’s sake. I have heard better material from carneys at the All Iowa Fair. I beleive the tradition to be about 70 years old and to be influenced as well by British gymnastics. The best way to sell something is always to create a lineage and color on the exotica. Westerners love that stuff, they can’t get enough of it. In the end, thats all projection too. A kid from a small beach town somewhere in SoCal imagining that the vinyasa he sweats thru has been performed for thousands of years in a faraway land choked in incense and primitive nakedness. Jung would have a field day with this stuff. He’d go absolutely ‘bananas’ wouldn’t he?love,tristan

   Posted by: tristan · Oct 18, 02:45 PM · #

8. I’m not weird. Yoga is weird.

   I remember that experience with the ICU ventilator breathers. When this need to have someone else’s practice look like your practice (or the NPAAIC converse) comes up, I’ll do well to remember that extreme example. God.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 19, 12:48 AM · #

9. Sometimes youth ("All New," "The Latest Research") is the hallmark of highly saleable knowledge. But when people go looking for “spiritual” practice, there’s often this anti-scientist bent towards the “wisdom of the ages.” Not much of a market for "new and improved" meditation practices, even though some of them are great.

   According to some sociologists of knowledge, the tendency to legitimate ideas by saying one did NOT invent them, and that rather they date back to the mists of time, is the basic M.O. in the Indian context (if I remember, there’s a nice discussion of this in Classical Indian Metaphysics by Phillips). In that spirit, I love the banana leaf history. Crucial for balancing out the disgusting picture of the pasty old imperialists and their calisthenics out in the yards of the occupied palaces. Faced with that shit, of course an Indian would want to Orientalize himself!

   Though yes, of course, westerners are the real Orientalizers. Makes me cringe when the yoga bums take it too far in their searches for non-western “authenticity.”

   About the sages of old, as pathetic a species as we may be, I’m pretty sure we’re on average smarter and better-equipped than the ancients. Nostalgia for a “simpler time” is nostalgia for a simple mind, and not in a good way.

   I’ll take the complexity and chaos and big ideas of the present. I suppose that’s because I’m a damn optimist who believes in human evolution.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 19, 01:05 AM · #

10. First, A+ for this essay. Perhaps your best concept/execution. It’s perfectly wonderful! Dare I say…delicious?

    Secondly, isn’t the underlying point of the “alchemy” stories – grail etc., that there’s nothing to find and nowhere to go? But the realization only comes about through the journey? The result of the journey is understanding that the journey was never necessary.

    Posted by: cody · Oct 19, 06:35 AM · #

11. Shhhh! Cody, what are you talking about? The whole idea is to discover the secret!!!

    STOP DECONSTRUCTING THE GRAIL QUEST!

    Thank you sincerely for enjoying the writing.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 19, 12:48 PM · #

12. I think it is time for a new PAAIC:

    Astanga Yoga. Reconstructing the Grail Quest One True Believer at a Time.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 19, 12:52 PM · #

13. back online!

    Posted by: R · Oct 21, 06:08 AM · #

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