Justification Machine · 3 March 2009

In school when the tribe really wanted to insult me, they’d call me by my bad name. Ms. Why.

By the end of eight years together (school started in first grade—before that we were feral), the 17 of us knew all each other’s buttons. We were 13 boys and 4 girls, children of corn and beet farmers with a few shadow children whose parents were constantly avoiding the law and wouldn’t be noticed or hassled coming around our isolated county school. And me, a preacher’s kid imbricated in frontier farm society for reasons I’m still not supposed to tell.

Anyway, I never understood why Ms. Why was supposed to be such a bad thing. The more affectionate nicknames based on body size were much more annoying. It was  my curiosity coupled with extreme luck that eventually made me one of the two of us 17 to escape and attend college. I like the Mrs. Why in me, and like the But why? vibe in others too.

But I understand that it can become annoying. We had a little hiccup last week over whether we should chant in a teacherless room. People coming from different perspectives, considering reasons for and against an arbitrary, senseless, beautiful, meaningful, crucial, empty, formational act.

As a public service, I am trying to think up a justification for every belief system that an ashtangi might hold. (There are reasons not to do it for every belief system too. Haha.)

Why chant to invoke the jungle physician with his thousands of gleaming white heads? Well that depends. What’s your belief system?

Proto-nationalist/groupist: You want to be a member, don’t you? Chanting is an inclusion-rite.

Magical thinkers: It’s a mystery. Nobody really knows how the spell works but let’s not risk not doing it. I hear that if you practice on moon days you get really bad injuries, too.

Mythic: We are speaking the unconscious in to existence!

Psychological: Chanting establishes rapport between teacher and student. Chanting without a teacher present calls that rapport to mind and helps us feel supported by the teacher’s. It re-engages the transformative energy of transference.

Scientific: The cadences and vibrations of the chant initiate a shift in brain wave frequency. This is especially true as students reinforce the practice until it becomes a trigger to shift mental states.

(Reactionary Postmodern: Science is the control-myth of the powerful. We liberate ourselves into the randomness, by doing something irrational. Fuck you, science.)

Postmodern: But isn’t it more beautiful that way? (And beauty’s all we’ve got now that we have temporarily deconstructed truth and goodness.) Do what thou wilt, but do it in style.

Postpostmodern: All of the above. With maybe some extra love on the side.

I am learning to appreciate the mindfuck of substituting in a different belief system’s answers to arbitrary questions. So, for example, the Encinitas/Carlsbad shala is our knowledge center for moon days. The dominant belief system of the shala is mythic—they’re a good bunch of practically minded Hanuman-worshipers down there—but the reason they give for refraining from moonday practice comes right out of the Farmer’s Almanac: our bodies are mostly water so like the sea we respond to the moon. That’s science, not myth. Woah! Are you saying it’s about molecules, Tim?

Swapping justification schemes on people is likely to piss them off: it can be harsh to tell a therapy head that transference is empty and we babble like idiots merely to celebrate randomness.

It can also be dangerous: in ashtanga, groupist and magical thinkers like to use “science” for false power. They tell students not to question authority, but instead of stating their true reasons—that they dislike noncomformity or think the chant is magic—they justify their own unconscious power plays by telling students that the system is a perfect science and cannot be altered. That’s a pretty hilarious misunderstanding of self-conscious science, which is thoroughly experimental. This self-contradicting delusion—that ashtanga is a science and therefore is perfect—used to show up a lot. Thankfully, our culture seems to be mostly over it as practice turns us from quack scientists in to real ones. (Admittedly, in addition to the mythic belief system, the scientific one is my favorite.)

Despite the drawbacks, a good sleight-of-ideology mindfuck can create empathy, inspiring a person to shift between belief systems. Sometimes it’s worth taking the risk.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , beta state , crypto-Hegelianism , esoteric shit , evolution , integration , morality , science , social theory , sound , spirituality

Comment

1. so, what reasons do we have for not chanting the prayer? maybe, the same reasons for chanting the prayer. i like to think of it as an intentional act for invoking grace. because either way, the grace is still there. why? because it’s not dependent upon us. because if it were dependent upon us, we would have nothing to write about.

   Posted by: charusheela · Mar 4, 03:46 AM · #

2. That’s beautiful, Charu. The old paradoxes actually infuse everyday decisions. Emptiness and form. Many and one. Action and stillness. And under some aspects, they are not opposites, just overlapping senses of the same experience.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 4, 05:22 AM · #

3. Oh and yes. I’m saying the reason against would be variant of the reason for. “We don’t want to be like them.” “It is a curse, not a blessing.” And so on.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 4, 05:26 AM · #

4. Maybe it’s that chanting is such a weird thing for people who don’t open their mouths to make noise for irrational reasons. We usually speak with some sort of purpose, so maybe we gauge chanting against that same template.

   I realized a couple days ago that I’d been attempting to call all these crows using their language, which I simply do not understand, and that was why their reactions were so unpredictable. During a time when I felt alone amongst them — no other people around — I just started talking to them. It was surprisingly liberating. They don’t know my sounds and I don’t know theirs but we all made our respective noises together and it was very nice. There was no rational purpose to it, but just tonal mixing and mingling.

   I think the tantric practice of mantra japa is similar — the point to making the sequences of harmonic tones is to penetrate the mind in some way other than through our rational processing channels.

   Posted by: Carl · Mar 4, 11:03 AM · #

5. The nice thing about a class of 17 is that everyone makes varsity. Was the other escapee male or female?

   Posted by: cody · Mar 4, 11:11 AM · #

6. I laughed at your reference to the moon day rationale. When I started practicing and was first given this justification, I was dumbstruck and (good little scientist) went away and tried to calculate the variation in gravitational pull. I got stuck (it’s rather complicated and I’m not the right kind of scientist), but there must be an ashtanga geophysicist out there who’s done the math…

   More kindly, I try to be generous with other perspectives in the “Practice and all is coming” tradition — sometimes things seems silly until you do them for a while.

   Posted by: Wombat · Mar 4, 12:47 PM · #

7. Brief ones:

   I read this this morning and thought it was hilarious.

   “Why” is good.

   I sometimes chant solo, simply to get into practice space. But I’ve also found that a conscious ujjayi/bandhas/dristi, even just standing, also does that.

   However, I’ve also felt a chanted OM get down deep in me (I’m reluctant to say it was echoing around in the moola bandha, but that’s how it felt) and so indeed, maybe there’s something to chanting, not just to open and close, but as a practice, a “way” if you want to consider it such.

   Posted by: patrick · Mar 4, 07:23 PM · #

8. Carl, have I told you I love you today?
   I can’t believe you’re chit chatting with the crows. Brilliant.

   Owl, this post was really fun to read. My teacher was out once and I was sort of the designated chant leader. I was very shy about it. A sweet, sweet woman who has the calmest and most grounded energy ever said to me in a soft voice, “it’s okay, Liz, you’re among friends”. And so it went… and all it took was for me to start. My lead stopped at “Vande” as the group took over.

   Posted by: Liz · Mar 4, 08:37 PM · #

9. Wombat, nice to see a number-crunching kind of scientist in these parts!

   Ideas I like… penetrating the rational mind, vibrating the inside of the body (of COURSE that happens!). I much prefer the populist “all together now” to the call-and-response technique.

   CP, The other was also a woman—she’s still in the military (the original escape route) and we’re friends. No coincidence it was two women who left-—growing up with 13 rough and ready farm boys made us pretty spry and assertive but also out-of-place (the other two girls never joined the rest of us on the playground—so not everyone did make varsity). Of the others, one is on FB (last update: “Craig is planting winter wheat”), one I found through classmates.com, and every single one of the others cannot be located anywhere on the whole internet (at least the non-p0rn half of the internet). It’s just a super isolated area—-several of the poorest counties in the US are found in SE Montana, and I’m guessing many of my childhood quasi-siblings are not online at all. Even cell phone coverage is very patchy out there. I would love to write about this world and my brother’s and my bizarre stories there. Someday.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 4, 09:17 PM · #

10. So, a non-Chanter here. Never went to classes so just wasn’t exposed to it. One of the reasons I avoided going to a led class was because of the chanting that might be involved. Would have found it inauthentic (personally) to do it, and disrespectful to everyone else who was not to. One of the two times I visited a Shala, a guy came in rolled out his mat and chanted softly, almost inaudibly to himself and then began his practise.
    Seemed like a ritual performed to get in the mindset for practise. I spend five minutes arranging my mat, squaring my eQua towel and brushing out any creases. Reminds me of the rituals performed in Tarot, I Ching, the Sibyl, kind of hermeneutic preparation.
    And yet I wonder, the idea of the loving kindness meditation is that you don’t even have to mean it at first but it becomes a habit. I wonder how the chant/prayer begins to work it’s way into your being there and affect how you view your/the practise.
    Oh and on the crow thing. i talk to my chinchilla too we make all these tiny,little squeaks at different pitches made by pushing the saliva against the front of your teeth. every now and again i must make the right one because he’ll come flying over and snuggle up close. What did Wittgenstein say about, if we could speak with Lions we wouldn’t understand what they were saying, something like that.

    Posted by: grimmly · Mar 5, 01:15 AM · #

11. If chanting included a chinchilla snuggling up to me, I’d definitely like it a LOT more.

    Posted by: karen · Mar 6, 05:10 AM · #

12. and who wouldn’t be inspired to chant by a snuggling chinchilla?
    we are a mumble the invocation under your breath whenever you start your practice sort of shala. or don’t. they don’t teach it unless you ask to be taught.
    i was alone today when i started practice and chanted out loud, and it was lovely. not my voice, but the experience.

    Posted by: tova · Mar 6, 02:05 PM · #

13. Room chant experiences:

    C would do it early, call and response. I sometimes missed it; Trikonasana was as late in practice as I EVER got, pre-chant.

    M wouldn’t lead it, that I remember. I’d do it solo and get underway.

    K did it fairly late, and we’d all do it together. I was frequently at Mari D before she’d begin it.

    Posted by: patrick · Mar 7, 07:32 AM · #

14. Hello fellow Practitioners –

    I do the chant because it creates context. Its asana for the mouth, tounge, larynx and pharynx. It denotes and charges, in a arbitrary way perhaps, the sacred space within and without. It honors the teacher, the teachings, the lineage, the ancestors, the guru internal (Sushumna Nadi). It simply sounds interesting – just vibration – without so much story (the English “Our Father” brings a lot of connotations and repressed memories with it). It says “OK codifier Patanjali, I am willing to try it your way with all your yamas and niyamas and all the rest as best as I can and let go of “my” way perhaps just a little”. It reverberates in the room, it synchronizes the many into the one and yet lets the one join the many (supports Sangha). It asks some sort of something somewhere for peace, for happiness, for joy and the end of suffering (the intention of practice – it reminds us that really, no really, its not about getting your three legs behind your two heads). It asks you to stand equally, in the shunya – the 0 position – aka Samasthitih and get centered, grounded and there in the present moment. We can reacquaint ourSelves with the vayus prana and apana and listen. “Yoga begins with listening. When we listen we give space to what is.”-RF

    I am not sure where all of that fits into the above catagories. A mixed bag most likely that varies from day to day.

    And one other thing, this practice in Mysore class of coming in while others are already practicing and starting up with an audible chant is, IMHO, a little inconsiderate (just like throwing the mat/rug down and creating a breeze that disrupts, distracts fellow practitioners).

    Posted by: e&sj · Mar 7, 11:22 AM · #

15. The mat breeze – UGH. It makes me sneeze because it flies the dust around. But I was a bad mat dropper until someone pointed it out to me, so I try to be forgiving.

    Posted by: V · Mar 7, 12:02 PM · #

16. BEAUTIFUL! (E&SJ)

    Posted by: J · Mar 7, 02:13 PM · #

17. hi (0v0), in the situation of change i find myself in, practicing yoga regularly gives me a meditative grounding. i haven’t been able to couple it yet with daily sitting to meditate, as i used to, because of the craziness of the schedule, but find that the yoga movements serve, in a way, that purpose. so your observations resonate with me. wow, i said that in English.
    hugs
    Arturo

    Posted by: arturo · Mar 8, 02:25 PM · #

18. oops, i have to laugh at myself. maybe i just wanted to say something, but i said nothing about the subject of your post, chanting. i do it, quietly, for ashtanga. for Zen, i chant in sino-japanese, and yes, it is a physical form of meditation that involves repeating words i does not understand. you have to have studied sino japanese, an ancient language, to understand the meaning. but the act of chanting has a way to empty worries and concerns from your mind, i’ve been told by teachers. i think Carl’s and Grimmly’s ideas of conversing with animals are very interesting. recently, i find myself conversing with people in a language i don’t yet understand by nodding and agreeing.
    cheers,
    Arturo

    Posted by: arturo · Mar 8, 02:35 PM · #

19. Isn’t it fascinating, Arturo, how well we can communicate with others without much more than a smile and a nod?

    “Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting don‘’t matter. Chanting “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola …” can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But if you don’t keep a clear mind, and are only following your thinking as you mouth the words, even the Buddha cannot help you.” — Seung Sahn

    Posted by: karen · Mar 9, 04:07 AM · #

20. Fascinating. I have been doing the opening chant on my own (slightly audibly or silently) so long that only upon reading this did I realize I’d forgotten about any relation between it and the teacher.

    Posted by: katie · Mar 10, 09:33 AM · #

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