It Don't Last, Don't Satisfy, and Ain't You · 30 April 2010

Here is how any given practice is said to work: it is supposed to put you in touch with the nature of experience. Who cares what form any particular practice takes. If it works, it’s able to remove some delusion.

The proposed, sought-after nature of experience is:

process, interconnection, rhythm

AKA: no-self, can't get no satisfaction, and transitoriness.

In vipassana, once you move out of the concentration practices that make the mind useful for seeing stuff with a bit less of the residue of fear and self-protection and jittery idiocy that’s normal for us humans, then you start parsing experience in to bits. And once the parsing begins to happen, even as flow and love arise, you’re often experiencing experience as just as (in still other words):

movement, contingency, and passing away.

Daniel Ingram puts it like this. You begin to realize that experiences don’t last, don’t satisfy, and ain’t you.

But what if you do a practice in a way that actually shows the opposite? You channel all your energy away from service and family and study, and in to some weird, intense activity that you experience as self-defining, massively satisfying, and a fountain youth?

So, parsing experience coarsely not in to subtle moments but big fat asanas, you take your increasingly advanced ashtanga as a practice of self-definition (I am my X series), as a ticket to permanence (if I do this I will live longer than anyone else) and satisfaction (I really get off on this shit).

So one may believe on an intellectual level in all this woo-woo shit about impermanence and the limits of the small self, but really what he is doing for hours a day on his mat (and what he uses most of his energy and caloric intake to confirm) is quite the opposite. The practice lasts, satisfies, and is you.

No wonder it’s so awesome!

Wouldn’t it be kind of ironic, then, to pass off that practice as something sort of morally and spiritually edified? Wouldn't it be hilarious if the people who were especially wrapped up in asana perfection were also the ones assumed to be most spiritually insightful?

Wouldn’t it be kind of a joke to expect insight to arise unless it were intentionally, bravely pursued despite the increased incentives and tools for avoiding it?

Svadhyaya doesn't happen by itself, yo.

Thanks, Karen, for most of this perspective...

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , evolution , having a body , spirituality

Comment

1. I’ve never, ever met an advanced practitioner who said they expected it to make them live longer!

   I’ve also never met an advanced practitioner who wasn’t very attached to the idea of their skill set. I think that’s one of the ironies of the thing – the beginners tend to be way better at keeping their egos out of it. They come into a Mysore class & see all this wacky shit and then…

   Lastly I’ve never met anyone who seemed permanently enlightened! I think that’s a myth.

   I am into just practicing lately… I think about the nitty gritty but not in terms of anything other than how it went & how it might go tomorrow.

   Posted by: boodiba · Apr 30, 02:59 PM · #

2. On getting off on that shit, I think Ingram would say (if he was being nice about it), “Great, you get off on that shit, what color is that feeling, what shape is it?”

   More specifically to me, I’ve been getting non-stop lessons in loss these days, and while on an ego level I feel myself eagerly anticipate the return of being an X practitioner who does thing Y and so forth and so on, intellectually I know better, and then this post hits right in the middle of that: indeed, which way am I going to go?

   Would it be possible to combine “what am I losing right now, what am I not” with “am I doing the full expression”? Chewy little question.

   Posted by: patrick · Apr 30, 04:06 PM · #

3. Enlightened… time with Shinzen has really given me some new feeling about it. His nervous system not exactly human :-)

   Being identified with the advanced skill set… no kidding! Problematic. If it’s an accessory of self, how subversive can it really be as a practice? Getting wrapped up in a spiritual identity is always seen as an obstacle, but ashtanga doesn’t even have check on that tendency. Maybe the contrary, even. We get super obsessive, which kills contemplation. It wants to make us stay stuck, perspectivally.

   When you’re interacting with practice as a humbling and an opening device (not as some confirmation of identity), maybe this ego stuff doesn’t necessarily happen. Like what you're saying about beginners. Maybe you’re more in tune with the three characteristics, or at least more likely to stumble on them.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 30, 04:34 PM · #

4. The term or concept of “enlightenment” probably doesn’t help. The Buddha was “the awakened one,” not “the enlightened one.” He had clarity about his (and our) (an everything’s) state.

   One measure of clarity is around the impulse to be “special.” The ego wants to be special. So people learning new tricks (whether physical, mental, technical, aesthetic, etc.) are super-focused on their skill set. That’s fine; it’s like you’re an independent contractor in the world, going around with your special skillset.

   A little bit of sustained meditation practice (think of the body melting away in savasana, think of hinyana meditations on the body) starts to intimate that the body isn’t the point, that it’s transient — so what’s that about? Well, it’s about the fact that separateness is a weird little trick we play on ourselves. Because we’re not separate: we’re all expressions of the same ground of being. Attention to breath (zazen, Ashtanga, your pick!) makes that clear. Putting down the busy ego-building thoughts in the mind makes that clear.

   So you start to wake up. Now you’re not an independent contractor any more. You’re not so enamored of a separate skillset you think “belongs” to you. You’re not obsessed with being special. You really DO have a compelling interest in and love for all beings, even the ones who make you crazy. You see that we are all the same.

   You lay off the “special” Self-building. You turn your vision out instead of in. You note that other people and your relationship to them are more interesting that your Self. You’re a bodhisattva. You’re free. You can use the aptitude to create energy that you’ve learned in your practice to benefit all sentient beings.

   And you’re still not special.

   Posted by: karen · Apr 30, 05:20 PM · #

5. my favorite lunch is irony sandwich with palm sugar on top. sometimes i wash it down with a glass of water in which a newly dead fly floats on its back— in ain’t-i-fly asana.

   hoot hoot on the love horn in your direction, owl.

   maybe the buddha just held up the famous one flower to show off his bling?

   a huge bow to all the buddhaful ones who keep this conversation zinging—-

   Posted by: Sara · May 2, 01:07 AM · #

6. ‘It lasts, satisfies, and is you.’
   Hahaha!!
   I’ve always known this was a razor’s edge path…. but I used to think it was because it’s so easy to blow out your knees….

   Posted by: susananda · May 2, 07:01 AM · #

7. :-)

   Love it.

   Posted by: (0v0) · May 2, 02:01 PM · #

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