Ahimsa and its impossibility

This week was a curious one. Some of the highlights were a collective practice session to a recorded class from 2006, group reading, some aha moments during assisting a class, helping in therapy and teaching a class. Outside the mat, there were experiences with good friends, acquaintances and complete strangers that made me grateful for my life experiences which made me uniquely suitable to be present for them. There are no coincidences.

Sometime last year, I was working with a volunteer in the archives and in the course of conversation, a short version of my life story came out. Last night that person reached out to share their life’s struggles which were eerily similar. It is a tough place when there is no choice but to make a decision. The angst is great when the choice means ripping away your life as you’ve known it for long. A few years ago, I was in that spot. But today, there is wealth of a journey from then to now which is testimony to personal growth. 

Since I was wide awake after that call, I decided to read and in a while, I heard a fight. Loud voices of a couple fighting with plenty of expletives thrown in. In the distance, I saw their forms moving from one room to another and there was a young child in the arms of one parent. That story repeats itself in so many households, so many villages, cities, countries and another generation grows in trauma. 

Response to violence is usually either violence or meekness. The abuser is in a position of power while the abused feels impotent. It is a mental state we find ourselves in because of a wrong reading and repetitive patterns. Our responses tend to be habitual but what we need is a fresh response to each moment. This particular moment demands its full attention and appropriate response while one normally reacts out of habit. Difficult to break but possible. 

Patanjali’s yoga starts with ahimsa and ends with samadhi. That ahimsa is a tricky one to sit with. With time, we circle back to the same things in our lives but it is never quite the same. The interim between repetitions changes us and so the understanding is different each time, increasingly nuanced. Perhaps an initial conception of ahimsa may be interpreted as avoiding physical violence but later we consider even mental tendencies under its purview.

Existence itself is violence. How do we navigate that fundamental fact as we negotiate the path of yoga? It is an ongoing process and therefore ever fresh. With time, many doubts drop off as faith becomes firm and at the same time, there is enough softness to be open to look again and again to see what today might reveal. Arjuna’s quandary and despondency which opens the Bhagawad Gita captures the dilemma beautifully. At each moment, we are poised to observe, examine and act. All pieces of our lives are arrayed and each step is a choice. How often do we really act to make those choices and how often we act by not choosing? Ahimsa is a choice, to others and to oneself.

Movie Time

Setting up for movie time

Last Friday we had a video screening at the institute. Another opening of a gateway to study as we watched a video from 30 years ago. It was a Q & A session on the therapeutic application of asana. While the brilliance of asana technology was on display, what was implicit was the need for study in one’s own practice. How problem areas need to be explored and addressed. When one stops to think of it, the vast knowledge of B.K.S. Iyengar seems inevitable. He spent hours in trial and error as a young practitioner and that relentless quest showered him with awe-inspiring brilliance that shines bright even beyond his time.

Another thing that surfaced was the student master relationship. Guruji was not merely a teacher, he was an accomplished master and while his utterances may seem arrogant, they are not. I don’t know if his statements were seen for what they were, a culturing of an attitude for they seem harsh. At its very heart though is deep devotion and religiosity in his practice. He asserts that he cannot pollute the subject. Something Prashantji mentions comes to mind here. He often says that he does not teach students, he teaches the subject. How many of us have that absolute fidelity to a chosen sadhana?

It was interesting to notice the dynamics of student teacher/master communication. It is a subtle thing, the traditional relationship between student and teacher. These days, one doesn’t see it much as there is easy familiarity between students and teachers not just in yoga but across all disciplines. Sometimes it can be disadvantageous as the necessary surrender is not present to allow transmission of learning. In learning, there is the teacher, the taught, the subject and the teaching. This set is the matter for contemplation on knowledge in the Taittiriya Upanishad. Well worth exploring as a preparatory exercise.

Studentship is a gift, like a well rounded, wholesome childhood fully secure in the knowledge that the elders have got your back. I feel like that unfettered child as I navigate my days at beloved RIMYI.  

Reading together

Yesterday we had a reading session at the institute. It was a first and I wasn’t sure what the response would be since reading as a habit is not very common. But, people showed up and it was a lovely 45 odd minutes where we read and had the opportunity to listen to a teacher’s experience. He spent a lot of time with Guruji and it was a gift to get the benefit of that conduit to read between the lines. Literally too. 

An image from the centenary year calendar of B.K.S. Iyengar at his desk in the library.

The library has been open now since December and there is a trickle of local students who come by. Sometimes I read aloud with a friend from a book she wanted to read and slowly the others sitting also get involved. And then there is exchange of stories we’ve heard. We’ve been reading R.K. Narayan’s version of the Mahabharata for anyone who is curious. He was one of India’s finest writers in English. And the story is an exciting one which jogs our memories with various other retellings. 

This group reading however was a different one with the intention being a joint study. We read Effort, Awareness and Joy from The Tree of Yoga and some interesting questions and insights came up. That piece of writing in the book is one of my favourites and my copy has notes scribbled in and underlined passages. The essay uses a couple of asanas to illustrate what he speaks about concentration, meditation and how we need to study. There was a light moment when one of the participants was asked to do sirsasana on a stool that was angled on a rolled mat. She was stumped. Of course , it was a rhetorical question. But, R proceeded to demonstrate a sirsasana on that angled stool. It reminded me of stories I have heard of Guruji making someone do a pose to clarify a question they would ask him while in the library. He never missed a teaching moment whether in class or outside of it.

The idea was to get us to consider one of the things mentioned in the essay about direction of asana and the centre of gravity. Something Raya mentioned stayed very deeply. The centre of gravity is the surrender of fear. 

Most of us students have no experience of Guruji’s direct teaching and having an intermediary helps in learning to see how one might approach learning. It is the same sense I get in the classes I attend. Going beyond the mechanical process of learning to learning to see. The goal not being to learn something but more a learning how to learn, how to study. It cannot be taught as our teachers point out. 

Reading the essay again, I look at my notes and see how my interpretation is a juxtaposition onto life off the mat. The principles are the same. The process of prayatna shaithilyatha may find its tangible form in the paschimottanasana journey but through it one finds the practice of kriya yoga of tapas, svadhyaya and ishwarapranidhana. The possibility of change is in the very situation of the struggle. If I have to change a pattern of behaviour or thought that does not serve, the place to begin that change is in the situation that triggers the habitual reaction. Response has to be learned till it becomes intuitive. That learning process is an individual exploration. Guruji gives a liberal dose of questions to ask oneself and they are a lovely way to begin the inward journey.

In many ways, his writing is like the aphoristic Patanjali, just more accessible. Powerful, potent thought expressed with elegant efficiency. They need multiple readings, multiple sitting with the words. Everytime I reread something, I am blown away by how deep and wide his life was. He was truly a phenomenon.

One from the blog archives for Guru Pournima

Guru Pournima yesterday and I was thinking over what Prashantji spoke at the event on Sunday. Recollecting what a panel of students spoke about and it reminded me of another Guru Pournima function at the institute. I had jotted something then, sharing it here. May our Gurus always be with us.

Where do I start? Talks at RIMYI are always rich in subject and today’s exploration was ‘Guru’.   The thoughts expressed were familiar and new, the nuances different and it probably cannot be summarised in a post. Simply, because there is much to ruminate on. Prashantji left us with an interesting question to ask ourselves, […]

Namo Namah Shri Guru Padukabhyam