Good Works and Industrial-Sized Kudzu

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Lots of us are familiar with the concept of karma – action and its consequences. Or to put it in bumper sticker fashion, what goes around comes around. But the Hindu concept of karma isn’t just a tit for tat, moralistic concept – its really a much deeper description of how we create the reality that we experience, including what we experience across multiple lifetimes.

Generally our actions bind us to the world. We weave ourselves into the warp and woof of what we see around us by wanting, always wanting – be it things, people, attention, fame, love, whatever – and our actions moving us toward those things go out and create a net that comes back and wraps us as tightly as a chain. We are trapped in a destiny of our own making. Think of each desire as a tendril of industrial-strength kudzu: a tree might grow strong and beautiful in the sunlight; then one tendril of desire-kudzu begins weaving up the trunk, then another, and another and another, each growing wildly, until the tree is totally covered.

That’s you, Mr. or Ms. Tree, encased, enclosed and totally encumbered in your desire-kudzu. The question is, how do you get unencumbered again?

Karma yoga, the spiritual path to which Krishna calls Arjuna, is all about unencumbering. It’s about taking control of our destiny – by letting go of our desires. Ironic, huh?

Each yogic path has a primary action or focus, and for karma yoga it is about being active in the world through doing good. But here’s the catch: you do this with the understanding that you, little ol’ karmicly screwed up you, aren’t doing the good work here: it is Brahman, God, working through you. No credit at all to you; i.e., get your ego out of the way.

Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. He is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law…

                                                Chapter 3.15-16

You do the good things, the right things, because they are the right things to do, not because of anything good that you’ll get out of it. Not a “my, aren’t you a wonderful person,” not a cosmic pat on the head, not the promise of spiritual treats, not even necessarily a good feeling.

Act selflessly, without any thought of personal profit.

                                                Chapter 3.8-9

Gives a whole new meaning to “Just Do It”, doesn’t it?

In doing all of this you work 180^¡  away from where you’ve been in terms of gathering karma. In fact, karma yoga is all about undoing karma, slowly but surely pulling off those strands of kudzu you’ve been using for lifetimes to bind yourself to this world:

Those who live in accordance with these divine laws without complaining, firmly established in faith, are released from karma.

Chapter 3.31

Like I said, taking control of your destiny by learning how to let go of your desires.

More next time on how undoing karma and acting selflessly helps us take control of our destinies.

Image found at 

http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu/sculptures.html

Alive Beyond Wisdom

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Continuing our look into the Bhagavad Gita’s description of the 4 paths of yoga.

Last time we noted that one of the traditional areas of concentration for the person traveling the path of jnana yoga is the seemingly-simple-yet-annoyingly-frustrating-yet-amazingly-productive practice of continuing to ask “Who am I?” This practice can lead past layer upon layer of character, identity and ego – and yay for that – but this is far from the only area where the jnana yogi seeks wisdom.

With the “Who am I?” question, we start with something seemingly solid – the self – and by degrees we realize how ephemeral our hold usually is on the truth of the matter. With another jnani question, we start with what seems ephemeral -  “Who is Brahman/God/Ultimate Reality/the All?” – and discover that we have hit the bedrock of all creation. Speaking of his own ultimate nature, Krishna says

“it supports the whole universe and is the source of life in all beings…The birth and dissolution of the cosmos itself take place in me. There is nothing that exists separate from me, Arjuna. The entire universe is suspended from me as my necklace of jewels.“

Chapter 7.6-7

Brahman is at the heart of everything, every single thing, but very few people realize this. Most of us simply see the surface, how this world is full of things and ideas that dazzle our eyes and set our pulses racing. All the bright shinys that keep us focusing on the outward. But look inside the fancy car you’ve been craving, under the hood, inside the engine, beyond the level of frame and metal and computer chip, and you find essence, energy – Brahman. Just as you find inside every leaf, and volcano, and brick and face and piece of plastic blowing in the wind.

Spend enough time thinking about that, truly realizing what it means, and you are faced with another jnani-level question: What is it that you truly want – the fancy car or Brahman? A created thing, whether natural or built, or the Uncreated, the Source?

If ever you decide that it is Brahman, then you begin to realize that you have your desire already:

“Arjuna, I am the taste of pure water and the radiance of the sun and moon. I am the sacred word and the sound heard in air, and the courage of human beings. I am the sweet fragrance in the earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature…”

Chapter 7.8-9

Does this mean that the jnani doesn’t have to do anything, then? Well, let me ask you: when was the last time that you took a drink of water and realized that you were taking in the Source of the entire universe? Until you can give a full and unconditional yes to that, then you’ve got a ways to go. But if ever you get there, then you are alive in a way that most people never are, because you are alive within an all-consuming truth:

After many births the wise seek refuge in me, seeing me everywhere and in everything.

Chapter 7.19

It is this aliveness which goes even beyond wisdom, this living within Brahman, that the jnana yogi seeks.

Quotations taken from The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran

Image found athttp://www.virtualsynapses.com/2012/06/ramana-maharshi-all-is-brahman-but.html#.Ua615esj6ZI

Who Am I?

Continuing our look into the Bhagavad Gita’s description of the 4 paths of yoga.

Now that we’ve seen something of raja yoga, the royal path of meditation, let’s look at jnana yoga, the path of wisdom. “Oh good, wisdom,” you think, “I’ve got some wisdom, that’s easier than finding time to meditate.” NAH! Sorry, wrong answer. While raja yoga focuses more on advanced meditative stages and techniques than the others, ALL the paths are understood to involve meditation as a necessary part of the practice of being a connected, grounded, spiritual human being. So be ready to plant your behind right back on that floor/cushion/chair, no matter what path calls to you.

Jnana yoga, though, uses the conscious mind to move toward the divine, rather than overcoming or moving through it as we seek to do in meditation.

With your mind intent on me, Arjuna, discipline yourself with the practice of yoga…Listen, and I will dispel all your doubts; you will come to know me fully and be united with me. I will give you both jnana [wisdom] and vijnana [knowledge and understanding].  

Chapter 7.1-2

The most basic question that jnanis ask is “Who am I?” Sounds simple, right? But just try to hold onto an answer for

very long and you realize that it’s like building a sandcastle with the tide rolling in. Maybe you start with relationships, something like, “I’m a mother/father.” Okay, what if you didn’t have children? There would still be something you intended to call “I”, right? So that is not “I”, at least not all of it. Moving merrily along to what you do, you might try, “I’m an architect/accountant/aerospace engineer.” What if you could no longer design, add, or build anything? Would there still be an “I”?

So these nouns, titles really, aren’t working; maybe we can try adjectives. “I am creative and passionate;” “I am careful and steady;” “I am loving and kind.” Great, this seems to be getting closer to the you-ness of who you are. But then, the same old question comes slinking in: are you still you when you are not these things? Even the most creative and passionate person has times when she’s kind of boring; even a very steady person might get a wild hair; and even someone who is loving and kind can be mean and hurtful on occasion. But that person is still “I”, right? So who is the “I”?

Alright, nouns are out, adjectives don’t work, and you’re getting the sinking suspicion that going for verbs and what you do is gonna get you exactly nowhere. Maybe the answer isn’t grammatical at all. Who am I, if I strip away everything that I do, every title that I can give myself, every characteristic that I can think of – who am I then?

Now we’re talkin’ some jnana yoga serious-level kickass thinking. The kind that’s going to twist your brain, not your body, into pretzel poses, that’s going to lead you deeper and deeper into questions of spiritual knowledge until the mind breaks through its own barriers and moves into true spiritual wisdom. And then goes beyond that wisdom into oneness with the divine.

 

Unwavering in devotion, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others. To them I am the dearest beloved, and they are very dear to me. All those who follow the spiritual path are blessed. But the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self.

Chapter 7, 17-18

 

Quotations taken from The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran

Image found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sand_castle,_Cannon_Beach.jpg

Trying to Contain the Wind

 

Last time we learned from Krishna that raja yoga’s use of meditation would lead us to “abiding joy beyond the senses” (6.21).

Sounds great. Let’s get right on it.

I’m sitting here, my back is straight, I’m meditating. Peace flows within me…OM…Did I remember to put wood filler on the buy list to fix that crack in the stairs? It’s right by the air filter. Oh yeah, it’s time for new filters. Wait, meditating, right. Peace flows within me…stillness…OM…OM…And I should get weed killer for the driveway, too…Okay…Peace flows within me…OM…

Sound familiar? If you think it’s just untrained Westerners who don’t learn meditation with (the equivalent of) their ABC’s, or just modern craziness that makes the mind flit about like a bee in a flower patch, think again. Arjuna had the same problem:

O Krishna, the stillness of divine union which you describe is beyond my comprehension. How can the mind, which is so restless, attain lasting peace? Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, powerful, violent; trying to control it is like trying to contain the wind.

Chapter 6.33-34

And now Krishna gives the super-secret reveal, the thing we’ve been waiting for, the thing that will tell us how to make the craziness inside our minds stop so that we can be good meditators now and forever more:

It is true that the mind is restless and difficult to control. But it can be conquered, Arjuna, through regular practice and detachment. Those who lack self-control will find it difficult to progress in meditation…

Right. Got that part. Here comes the good stuff!

…but those who are self-controlled, striving earnestly through the right means, will attain the goal.

Chapter 6.35-36

Yep, that’s what he said: just sit down and do it, and keep on doing it even if you don’t think you’re getting very far.

And keep remembering WHY you do it: it isn’t just to clear your head, or relieve stress. You might lower your blood pressure, find calmness in the storms of life, learn to be a better friend/spouse/parent as you learn to respond rather than reacting, and find out more about yourself. Meditation as the main element of raja yoga can help with all of these things, but here’s the thing to remember: none of these is the goal - union with the divine is.

Abiding joy comes to those who still the mind. Freeing themselves from the taint of self-will, with their consciousness unified, they become one with Brahman.

Chapter 6.28

And once that union is accomplished, the Atman, the Self, the divine part of you and me and every being that is always at one with Brahman, the Source of All, recognizes that it is not alone.

They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self...Seeing all life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me. They worship me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me. Wherever they may live, they abide in me.

Chapter 6.29-31

So the one established in the yoga of meditation comes to recognize his or her oneness with every living being. No more loneliness. No more sense of separation from other human beings, or from the divine. Instead, knowledge of the complete enveloping, now and always, in the arms of divine, human, mortal, immortal, eternal, unending Love, and knowledge of enveloping others in it as well.



Quotations taken from The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran

Image found at: http://teachmag.com/archives/4681

The Flame of a Lamp in a Windless Place

In previous posts I wrote about Arjuna’s despair (here) and what Krishna had to say about it (here). As powerful as all that is, it’s just the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita. Let’s take a look over the next several blog posts at one of the main themes that emerges from this song of the Lord: the paths of yoga.

For most of us, the word “yoga” might bring to mind a vision of people in spandex and pretzeling bodies. To say that this is a limited vision is a massive understatement. In the traditional understanding, there are 4 paths of yoga. One of those paths is raja yoga, which is often broken down into 8 limbs; one of those limbs is asana, or the physical postures at which most of us haphazardly throw the entire term “yoga”. So, let’s do the math:

       asansa (postures)     _*_    4 paths   =   a wee little bit

         8 limbs of raja           *       of yoga

Raja yoga is all about meditation as the highest path to the divine, and asana is meant to work out the kinks and quirks in the body so that it can dutifully sit quietly while the mind lets go and does its thing. Strength, flexibility and bodily ease are all well and good, but these were never meant to be the ends of any of the traditional forms of yoga, which are all about the spiritual goal of union with the divine.  

Whew, now that we’ve got THAT cleared up, let’s see what the Gita has to say about raja yoga.

Well, it gives practical guidance.

Select a clean spot, neither too high nor too low, and seat yourself firmly on a cloth…Then, once seated, strive to still your thoughts. Make your mind one-pointed in meditation, and your heart will be purified. Hold your body, head, and neck firmly in a straight line, and keep your eyes from wandering….

Chapter 6.11-14

We are used to seeing the image of the meditator sitting quite upright. This is to allow the free flow of energy along the area of the spinal column and helps the meditator keep from drifting…drifting….drifting away….And the practical advice isn't done there:

[T]hose who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. Bu those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation. 

                                                            Chapter 6.16-17

Moderation is the key here, not asceticism. As the Buddha had discovered in his own quest, wearing the body out just makes it harder to let the body go, mentally; give it what it requires, care for it and treat it respectfully but without acceding to its cravings, and it will remain quiet as you work in, and then through, and finally outside of your mind to the place of full communion with the divine.

And that’s what it’s all about, after all:

When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.…Having attained that abiding joy beyond the senses, revealed in the stilled mind, he never swerves from the eternal truth. He desires nothing, and cannot be shaken by the heaviest burden of sorrow.

Chapter 6.19, 21-22

Laying down our sorrows – honestly, isn’t that what we all long to do?

More on raja yoga next time.

Quotations from The Bhagavad Gita, trans Eknath Easwaran

Image found at http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/03/truth-creativity-vision-chakras-5-and-6-julian-walker/meditator-2/

“Breathe into these bones and make them live.”

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I read these words from Ezekiel 37:9 today, and the first thing that came to my mind was the dancing skeletons of Halloween: grinning skulls, limbs akimbo, ghoulish humor a-flying. Not exactly what the prophet had in mind when he recorded this image some 2600 years ago, I think, but it did make me grin.

Still, I stayed with the words. As part of my spiritual practice, each day I pray with a reading from a sacred text, and these words called to me so strongly out of something I was reading that I decided to meditate upon them and see what opened up. This was not study; I was not trying to understand the meaning of Ezekiel’s text, but rather seeking to know what the divine was sending to me with these words.

What came before my mind's eye were the images of the scene just following the bombing in Boston: the chaos, people falling down, many hurt, some with lost limbs. As the phrase repeated like a mantra in my head and this image unfolded before my interior vision, I did not fully understand why these two were coming together, so I continued to sit, and repeat, and wait with an open heart.

Then my inner visual switched to a house near my own home, farther down the street, where I had recently seen a lot of cars parked in the yard over the course of multiple days, and many people wandering in and out all dressed nicely. Funeral clothes, I had realized; someone in that house had died. As I prayed Ezekiel’s prayer, I began to make the connection that I was being shown: it was not for the dead that I was praying, but for those left after the death. Not the person who died in my neighborhood, but those whose lives were forever changed by that death; not those who lost their lives in Boston, and not even just those who lost limbs, but those who lost something even more intrinsic: a certain kind of hope, a faith in themselves or the world or goodness.

I was praying for all who grieve, whether they grieve the loss of a loved one, a lost innocence, a happier worldview, the pain of others or their own brokenness. I was praying for the bones of kindness, charity and compassion which can become brittle and lifeless when we lose our vision of the beauty in the world and in each other.

And so I continue Ezekiel’s prayer tonight. Make these bones live, I pray, the bones of the ones left on the earth. The ones who can grieve themselves out of real life, or fear themselves out of it. The ones whose bones may clink as they continue walking but in whom the breath of full and conscious living is missing. Breathe into those who so very deeply need it; and with this inspiring, this in-breathing, bring to joyous life the bones of those whose grief has trapped them in a diminished field of existence. Breathe into these bones, and make them live. 

Where Limitations Stop

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We begin with the Tao, the eternal, the Way, which cannot be told. And then we begin to try to tell it, right? Or at least to tell something. Why? Because “the name that can be named is not the eternal name,” but we really, really need to name things.

Remember in the last post how I talked about how naming = capturing and tying down? Well, you can’t do that with the Tao itself, but you have to do it to plant a tree or build a house or develop an identity. The writer of the Tao Te Ching, traditionally known as Lao Tzu, understood this:

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

http://tiltonfenwick.com/2012/09/paint-is-boring/

So the nameless, the Tao itself, gives rise to the basis of creation – and then the stuff comes creeping in. “Ten thousand things” means “all the stuff in the world” – rocks, trees, squeegees, wall clocks, incredible bouncing balls, etc. Now, there are lots of “things” we don’t need, surely, but there are some things of which I’m awfully fond – cooking implements and substances used to create shelter jump right to the top of that list. No “things”, it seems, no life. We need the named, and the ten thousand things to which it gives rise (at least some of the them).

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Where we get tripped up is when we start thinking that either

1)   the ten thousand things is the totality of the Tao and there is nothing more than this materiality that we can see,

OR

2)   the ten thousand things has nothing to do with the Tao and being in harmony with the Way means being out of harmony with all the stuff that’s around you (especially the stuff you don’t like, be that water pollution, urban sprawl, the gun lobby, the anti-gun lobby, your neighbor mowing his lawn at 6 am on Saturday morning, whatever).

So if the Tao isn’t comprised of the ten thousand things, and getting in harmony isn’t about getting all rarified and separated from the ten thousand things, then just exactly how are we supposed to understand the relationship between this great Way and all the cluttery little stuff that we find around us? Turns out, it just depends on how we ask the question:

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

So when we are able to be at play with the moving colors of the iridescence rather than trying to pin them down, in harmony with what is, flowing without desire from one moment to the next, then we are aware of something more like the Way in and of itself. At other times, when we want to find the paci so the baby will stop crying, or buy a new car to replace the heap in the driveway, or get that promotion that we really deserve, then we are looking at the ten thousand things. But – and here’s the fun part – they aren’t really different:

These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

                                               this appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery.

The Tao and the ten thousand things, the harmony and the craziness – it’s all the same. It just depends on which way you are looking.

We want to trace a logic line through all of this, but Lao Tzu tells us that when we try to do that we are missing the point. The “darkness” he talks about is that place where the logical mind can’t draw lines, where words fail to capture the essence anymore. It’s the place where limitations – like the limitations between harmony and craziness, things and not things – stop. It is darkness, it is mystery, it is Tao. And it’s all good.

Quotation from Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. 

Going Someplace Else With The Tao

“You can’t get there from here;
you’ve got to go someplace else first.” 

That’s what my father-in-law used to say about places you could see from a road but couldn’t find any roads leading TO. The locals always know the right path, but the sojourner has to hunt around a bit or stop and ask directions before he or she can figure out how in the heck you get from here to there. (And if you’ve ever been caught in the labyrinthine streets of the small medieval city of Toledo, Spain, where the streets twist and curve back in upon themselves, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.)

So what happens when you get to the next street, and the next and the next, and you’re still not there? Well, then you might just be in search of the Tao.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1

What we hear right off the bat is that if you can talk about it, then it’s not the real thing. Why? Because the real thing is beyond words; words are just too puny, too limiting, to hold it. It’s like that place you can’t get to: if you get there, then you are in one spot, and that spot may be great, fantastic, terrific, like no where else – but it’s just one spot in a big, wide universe. So if you’re in that one spot, you know it can’t be the All. And the Tao, it’s the All, the Way. So if you want to know it, you have to keep going someplace else first, metaphorically speaking, because you can never capture it, you can only move with it.

We humans, we like to capture things, to tie them down in nice neat packages, but “capture” and “tie down” are exactly what you cannot do with the Tao. It is the way of harmony in the universe, and harmony both includes everything (no need to capture) and is constantly in motion (cannot be tied down). Think of something that is iridescent: can you capture its color? As soon as you define one of the colors, you have defined yourself right out of all of the others – and the whole changing interplay – that makes it iridescent in the first place. The best thing you can do is let your eyes play along with the movement of colors, understanding all the while that this movement itself is the source of beauty and harmony. Just like the Tao.

More on this next time.

Quotation from Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.

Photo by Ute Esser, found at http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/msg/1194022

“You Were Never Born; You Will Never Die”

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So there is Arjuna, falling down on the field of battle, overcome with such weariness and despair from even the thought of the fight before him that he can’t imagine going on. Why live at all if this is the battle he must fight? He places himself at Krishna’s feet, literally and figuratively, looking for something to help him move from the place of complete and utter STUCK that he is in. And he gets it – boy, does he get it – but not at all in the way he is looking for.

Arjuna is waiting for a pep talk on why he should make a choice for one course of action or the other. Instead he gets the deep dive into metaphysics and the ultimate nature of reality.

“You speak sincerely, but your sorrow has no cause…One man believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realizing that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to slay?”

                                                      Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2

Bet Arjuna wasn’t expecting THAT as the answer.

Krishna does tell him to stand up and fight, to do his duty and stop being a sissy (okay, not in so many words, but close), but it’s all as a way of explaining to him that the whole world around him - and he himself within it - are not what he thinks, and his despair comes from all this wrongheaded thinking. What Arjuna does matters because it affects the people around him; but at a much deeper level, the only actions that can ever really matter are those that lead to an understanding of the Self, the truest part of every being, which is “everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundation of eternity.” If he can come to realize this, Krishna is telling him, all despair and doubt, all fear of any kind, will be but a whisper of wind passing by him because he will be living in full knowledge of the truth.

The Self is not the same thing as the Christian understanding of a soul. The Self is immortal, unchanging, tied to a body for a time but never contained within it. The Self is not where human and divine meet: it is where they recognize that they are one and the same. The divine is the Self writ large; the Self is a part of the divine essence attached to a personality, at least for a while. Atman, the Self, is one and the same thing as Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, the ground of all being, the essence which stands behind all deities and creations.

Do you feel this sense of profound connection to everything that is? Do the tiniest blade of grass and the largest galaxy in the universe and the face of every human you see all reveal the divine to you? If so, then the Bhagavad Gita, in all its sheer beauty, may be a scripture that calls to you.

The impermanent has no reality; reality lies in the eternal. Those who have seen the boundary between these two have attained the end of all knowledge.

                                                      Chapter 2

Quotations from The Bhagavad Gita, trans Eknath Easwaran

Image found at http://heartofphilosophy.wordpress.com/events/past-events/edge-of-reason-ngv-2007/