Wanting it all, dedication, belief · 25 January 2010
Or, Faith in Faith Itself. Moment in conference yesterday:
An American guy in the back raises his hand high at the end of the Q&A. He’s agitated, passionate and confused.
-I want to know, how much am I supposed to sleep? …When do I sleep? ... How much do you sleep? Because I’m going back home and I want to know, how am I supposed to take my practice with me? Am I supposed to get up at 4 o’clock? Cos I live in New York, and you know, it’s hard to go to bed early…
-S chuckles. Yes, hard to go to bed early, especially in New York (smiles… he loves New York). Many distractions…. It is not easy. It takes dedication. What do you do?
-Me? Do? I’m a consultant. A financial consultant. (Audience sighs.)
-Aah. I take some tips from you later… (he laughs… then everyone else laughs)
-So how much do you sleep?
-(pausing, in what seems like reluctance to say) I am sleeping four hours. Sleep at nine, one o’clock I do my practice. Then teach… I almost don’t leave the house. Only difference is go upstairs, go downstairs. (laughter) At twelve o’clock I sleep for exactly one hour.
-How do you get energy for your family, teaching, practicing…?
-Read scriptures! Always study…
This is a paraphrase, and likely the ordering of sentiments is inaccurate.
Afterwards he expanded on this topic of dedication, and talked for a while about doubt. Doubt mostly serves to distract you from your practice and reduce your energy.
That is why you have to believe in what you do. If you do not believe the method will work, no matter what it is, it will not work.
……………
Been feeling that lately, a lot. I identify as a skeptic, cynic, and critical thinker. I would prefer to operate as if without a "hard core" belief system, theology, ideology, whatever: understanding the endeavor is niave, but at least trying to be so free.
But somewhere between Kirkegaard’s leap of faith and the dirty truth of the placebo effect, it did occur to me that I’d given myself to this practice despite myself.
The fact that this has been true for years—that my actions have outpaced my critical mind—is only now coming home to me. But so it is: practice two hours or more a day, outsource the dirty work (the gross physical structure) to a teacher, dive in to meditation, commit most other cognitive resources to professional things… then, not as much room left for compulsive questioning.
That’s not the same as subscribing to a belief, but now I realize I’m already living as if I’ve taken the leap of faith. It’s so weird. At this point I really don’t have a problem placing faith in faith itself.
In fact, I sense that doing so is a lot more effective than my default way of doing things—treating everything as an amusement, an experiment, or a piece of my worldly education.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, evolution
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Maybe I’ll write a bit about current tradition – method and guidelines these days. Drop an email if you’d like me to put you on the BCC line of such messages.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 25, 01:07 AM · #
Hey, count me in for anything you’re writing, please.
Faith in the process.. it’s faith in transformation, really. To me it’s not really a leap, it’s SO grounded in my own experience.
I really love listening to Sharath speak, his little jokes, the way he grins and opens his eyes really wide.. quite charming. Not to mention the content, of course : )
Posted by: susananda · Jan 25, 02:17 AM · #
PS your brother looks sweet!
Posted by: susananda · Jan 25, 02:21 AM · #
I love your accounts of conferences, and can relate to the banker… Somehow
as per you, that was so well put, it seems sometimes not only the practice, but also faith “chooses” us rather than the other way
Posted by: Claudia · Jan 25, 03:04 AM · #
I’m in for the tradition update, please. As for faith…when mine has wavered, things have gone awry. So I don’t care whether it works or I’m just hypnotizing myself – all I care is the end result, which for me is good.
Posted by: V · Jan 25, 03:10 AM · #
I too would love to read your writings on the current tradition, thanks.
Posted by: Fatou · Jan 25, 03:49 AM · #
I want to read, too.
“treating everything as an amusement, an experiment, or a piece of my worldly education” — I hear you on that.
Posted by: karen · Jan 25, 04:19 AM · #
the phrase that came to mind while reading what sounds like a recognition narrative above was “hysteron proteron”— the rhetorical device in poetry whereby chronological order is intentionally reversed. “moriamur et in media arma ruamus” offers vergil, via worldly wikipedia; “let us die and charge into the fight.”
this pertains! we die to something, something, when we enter this/these practices. but it is a kind of charging forward, far more vital than fatal, far more vivid than flatlined. i also think vergil did verbal sun salutations everyday to stave off the sleepiness of doubt, and then poured a libation. to the gods? to himself? to the nearest owl?
Posted by: Sara · Jan 25, 04:20 AM · #
definitely interested in your ruminations on the current iteration of the tradition
Posted by: Portside · Jan 25, 06:16 AM · #
and! please include me in email thread. which leslie kaminoff (sp?) used to refer to as “e-sutra”—-
Posted by: Sara · Jan 25, 07:58 AM · #
Me please.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Jan 25, 08:18 AM · #
yes! add me- of course.
I think Susan says it best- it’s really about finding grounding in the personal experience. What is confusing (and I’m not immune) is when there’s the “this is the way”, “no, this is the way” – back and forth (guilty as charged) and all the time, each person has found a way that works. So why question? Maybe those who are truly stumped by how to make the practice fit into life are those who haven’t found a reason to make it work. What I mean is, if a person has a practice (home or shala) and it’s working for them, they will find a way to work life around it. No one is going to be able to answer the question for them-
Once it’s been answered for each person, from within, then all the curiosity about what others are doing is really just a fun pasttime and hopefully not a source of confusion (though “fun” can sometimes get combative). I think we all belong to a larger picture and it’s intriguing to see how others make it work. It is for me at least.
Posted by: Liz · Jan 25, 10:59 AM · #
Sara, Kaminoff still has his “e-sutra” mailing list going, I’m pretty sure you can hop on his website to find it!
I definitely love the faith aspect of the practice, especially since this faith requires no belief in god or thumping of any particular book. But as others have pointed out, easy to have “faith” when it is materially supported and reinforced by experience.
Oh, and please count me in on your email list for summaries and other deep thoughts.
Posted by: liz2 · Jan 25, 03:11 PM · #
I love this post! Sharath’s conferences are such good food for thought and I loved reading about this one. And to reiterate and agree with the comments here – it’s easier to have faith in this practice once you’ve started and seen/ feel what it does, even in a short time. It can only keep getting better! Pls. count me in your email list! (can you get it from this comment form or do I need to email you separately?) x
Posted by: Skippetty · Jan 25, 07:37 PM · #
Yeah count me in on the tradition show.
I’m reading—trying to read, in my ahem “spare time”, haha—a book called FOUCAULT SPORT AND EXERCISE, which predictably is about the disciplining and yet potentially liberating/subjectifying power grid to be negotiated in sport. I’m not far in yet, but perhaps chewy ideas await.
Faith? Or discipline? Would it be brute reductionism to consider it “discipline” if all a practitioner wants is shapes, but “faith” if a practitioner wants, whatever, enlightenment, the esoteric aspects?
Posted by: patrick · Jan 25, 08:02 PM · #
Hello! I haven’t read the comments from all you friends, but wanted to respond quickly to an email before I’m off for the day.
This email was from someone who felt like I was denigrating critical thought. She mentioned that in meditation practice she uses critical thought to take her deeper and to prevent herself from getting stuck.
I buy that. More where I’m at right now is recognizing the value of out-and-out fuckin’ commitment. Commitment for commitment’s sake. Why indulge petty doubts? Why be half-assed about my practice? Why use my mind in in a dull way, for mental masturbation?
Massive abject unknowing… more useful. I like massive abject unknowing. :-) Critical thought seems a nice companion to it, too.
Intense critical thinking is something westerners bring to the practice. We’re great at it, and experts to a fault at self-reliance and evidence-based practice. I am not saying I want to kill that part of myself. Maybe, pardon the Wilber-speak, just use critical thought to go deeper, rather than to travel laterally through variations of the same stuff.
So for example, S said last year in conference that MB is contracting the anus. He was talking to the brand new practitioners in the room, who scarcely know they have an anus. It was the right thing to say in that context, and it doesn’t even make sense to take those comments on the road—which is why I didn’t blog them at the time. But to many of the others, the instruction reads inaccurate if not insulting. Why do the kindergarten MB if you’ve long since graduated to college? So instead of uncritically regressing back to the gross level of practice, they engaged critically: investigating in books, by drawing on the community of practitioners and especially by going deep in their own bodies. You practice and investigate, you start engaging the next two layers of the pelvic floor and then the energetic stuff. TMI? Sorry… I a new school. I don’t want to sit around and cogitate about the anus all day.
Ok, more l8r! It is nice to see so much interested in this stuff. I had considered not blogging about yoga at all this trip, but maybe people out there really do care about yoga... not just the scene, engaging the KPJAYI on the level of playing the game, finding out what time I start my practice, and learning what postures I’m doing and whether I’m binding the ankles, the calves or the knees in backbends. Booooooooooooooring.
Narasimhan time. Love,
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 25, 08:31 PM · #
put me on the list. and thanks for your writings.
Posted by: e&sj · Jan 25, 10:21 PM · #
reminds of the time hegel and kierkegaard were driving through colorado. when i get to gokulam i’ll tell u : )soon, soon!!
Posted by: eeyore · Jan 26, 12:03 AM · #
Here here to each person quietly deciding how to orient the internal compass, Liz! It is true that doubt and indecision zap your prana faster than an orgy of surya namaskar naked on an iceberg.
Posted by: Sara · Jan 26, 05:15 AM · #
Hi. :-) Good slackline tonight. We got mobbed by schoolchildren at the end. I am interested in to learning to walk on it backwards. Then maybe natrajasana? But I wonder if that would offend the yogis.... Surely not Eeyore…
Re-reading, I shouldn’t really say that the matter of my backbends is boring to me. That's not true. It would be wrong to hide the truth that I am an asana junkie, and that there is little that thrills me more than backbends…. I was just saying that I wish mine were “boring” to others.
Patrick, that works for me. Skippety, I’ll get your email from the comment cache. Sara, that Vergil is amazing! Never heard of it. And Susan… yes, sweet beyond words. Glad you noticed. :-)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 26, 05:43 AM · #
Oh... Check this out. Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History was just announced a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle award. Here’s the kind of annoying NYT review from last spring -- also reviewed elsewhere. I think some people here have already read her Siva: the Erotic Ascetic. Kind of fun.
Speaking of, I broke down and went to the bookstore here, for poolside reading after Cosmicomics is done. A horribly written biography of U.G. Krishnamurthi is first in the stack – so interesting I read myself awake on the first 50 pgs last night. It looks like the (anti) guru who pretended to come out of nowhere and have no point of view was, in historical time, kind of a reactionary from the start…
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 26, 06:01 AM · #
Hi Owl!!! I just like reading you & you know I’m allergic to “current tradition”, so I’ll stay away from that, but your brief account was entertaining!
I think for me it’s sometimes easier not to question the “why/s” of what I do – why quit my job?, why arrange my life around this thing?, why go so far away, periodically, for immersion? – and just pay attention to my gut longings. Don’t fight it! Just do it. I’m going to be all Nike about it I guess.
Posted by: boodiba · Jan 26, 11:40 AM · #
Please put me on your “current tradition” list. And thanks for your blog. As a recovering academic I really enjoy reading it.
Posted by: Rene · Jan 26, 07:08 PM · #
Hey, new readers and those who have sent semi-anonymous emails.
I am really happy that Sharath’s words have so much power (a thousand times more than my own) and that I can share some of what I observe here with people around the world who are interested.
But the depiction of ashtanga in the blogosphere has gotten really contentious and confused the past year. This has taken away much of my own joy in writing online and made me much, much more guarded about what I feel I should share about even my own practice, let alone what’s happening all the way over here in Mysore.
If I don’t know you and you still want some email from me or whatever, please write me a little letter about yourself and give me your word that you will not to use my comments out of context or broadcast them widely. Thanks and peace.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 26, 07:32 PM · #
I’d love to hear what you have to say (about current tradition and otherwise)...
Posted by: Sally · Jan 26, 09:41 PM · #
MEETOOOO MEETOOOO!!
Except I am going to broadcast it everywhere.
Just kidding. I won’t. Promise.
I would really like to hear your thoughts on the matter though— I keep mine somewhat silent most of the time except when in trusted company because, well, I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m going to end up with a knock at the door and two smooth bendy ashtangis carrying me off to a pogrom somewhere just for not buying in to the ‘scene’, but I still keep my mouth shut most of the time.
I’d also like to point out to you, Owl-io, that there is something about this practice that allows one to give oneself over to it without becoming caught in a paradigm. In fact, it seems to me that the deeper you go in this practice, energetically, the more the boundaries are removed. In attempting to remain paradigm-less and, say, switching it up… 3 days of ashtanga, a Bikram class, some Iyengar… this depth is lost, the freedom that comes from reaching those depths are lost, and one remains trapped in what I think of as a dilemma of perspective (the postmodern condition, imho). Of course, it’s what you choose to do with it too— if you are practicing at Yogaworks or somewhere like that then there is often a subtle (insidiously so) paradigm.
And, btw…. I can’t believe that nobody commented on this, but 4 HOURS? 4 FUCKING HOURS? I’m glad that my path lets me sleep a bit more than that :D.
Posted by: Rebecca · Jan 27, 07:31 AM · #
rebecca, we were just waiting for someone else to break the expletive barrier. i kiss your lotus feet for the above comment, even if those feet are shackled at a yoga pogrom where you have to dig for your mukti in a concrete garden.
Posted by: Sara · Jan 27, 09:54 PM · #
Seriously, four fucking hours! (Plus a fifth hour for the nap he mentioned.) I have the sense that some people think he is being “metaphorical” about the amount of sleep. I doubt it.
Though those doubts are only in me because I’ve spent a lot of time working with union activists and immigrant workers who also sleep 3 or 4 hours a night. That’s pretty normal for any janitor, maid or line cook in LA. I would never have believed it until I was immersed in worlds where it’s like that, but honestly workers’ bodies adapt so they can push like that for years (the lifespan tends to decrease sharply, however). Or… biggest contrast I can imagine (in terms of reasons the body can go without sleep) are monks who regularly get 2 or 3 hours a night because their nervous systems are so refined that’s all they need. I also wouldn’t believe those stories, except for when I go on retreat, my sleep needs go down to 4 hours after two or three days…
Three people emailed today in response to my request for a bit of an introduction— silent readers in three different countries, with their own stories of practice. Each one made me so excited and filled my imagination with happy visions. Thanks so much for delurking, even just by email. Makes me feel a bit happy again about blogging…
Battery’s about dead here (power has been off all afternoon while I’ve been working), and it’s about time for slacklining, but maybe I’ll write that email tonight.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 28, 01:20 AM · #
Oh crap, you guys! I just realized it’s the full moon. Have you noticed a pattern of ashtangis getting all conflictual amongst themselves on the full moon? Why, just last month…! And the month before that, come to think if it…! And just today I had a disagreement with Julian Walker about ashtanga yoga….
This is not the time to be writing about even remotely tender topics. Maybe I’ll discuss the weather or cute kids or Sanskrit pronunciation for a while and come back to this topic in a couple of days…
:-)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 28, 04:49 AM · #
Complaint is only possible
while living in the suburbs
of God.
Hafiz :)
Posted by: eeyore · Jan 30, 01:12 AM · #