Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 8)

So, I want to make one thing quite clear before I truly begin today's lesson concerning samadhi: Sanskrit, like Finnish, is one of those languages in which there are hardly any of those awful words that are spelt and pronounced in similar ways, only with entirely different meanings, such as the English words "hear" and "here". The type of samadhi that is spoken of in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is an ancient Sanskrit term meaning "to establish" or "make firm". This definition of samadhi is to be in no way confused with the samadhi which is the Sanskrit word for the kind of structures that are errected for the sole purpose of commemorating the dead after cremation, similar to those old crypts and mausoleums you find in places like New Orleans, which may or may not contain the body of the deceased. Samadhis like this are often built to honor certain individuals regarded as saints and gurus. Pantanjali's definition of samadhi is widely recognized as a Hindu and Buddhist term that describes a totally non-dualistic state of conciousness, in which the very conciousness itself becomes one with the object that is being meditated on. True samadhi is an extremely complex and many-layered part of yoga philosophy, and I don't even know of I have the right to even make an attempt towards teaching it. I am no one's guru; I'm just an unusually thoughtful girl. I suppose I could say that I'm an unusually thoughtful yogini, but, after much meditation and deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not even sure if I have the right to call myself that. I've probably mentioned several times by now, throughout this entire blog, that I want to become a certified yoga instructor. Yoga is almost my number-one priority in life. But how can I do that, when aside from being thoughtful, I'm also unusually weak, clumsy and silly? I am absolutely nothing like the real yoga teachers I've had in the past. I'm pale and twisted and half-blind. That's the reason why even though I love to read various books and manuscripts on the subject of yoga, I don't even have anything like yoga magazines delivered to my house, even some of those are actually quite cheap and easy to get hold of, nowadays.

Maybe this kind of mentality just proves that I don't really have "yoga", in a sense of the inner power and balance that I've always thought I had before. Because, didn't Pantanjali himself say something important about having confidence in your own yoga once or twice in the Yoga Sutras? It could very well be that I truly am bipolar, and that this unhealthy disconfidence I feel entirely trapped in right now is only a momentary thing, and that an hour from now I'll have my yoga mat laid out on the floor of my mom's bedroom, enjoying my daily ritual of surya namaskara and feeling really great about it and my own body's ability to be even doing such a good and holy thing. For, even though I am an exceedingly thoughtful girl, I'm also an exceedingly troubled girl, and yoga brings me elation and bliss. Really, I swear it does. In the past I always felt as if doing yoga was like being in church, and that I shouldn't be smiling or thinking of anything silly while I go through vinyasa. But then they invented something called Laughing Yoga, and it became clear to me that there was absolutely no harm in smirking, grinning, or even laughing during a yoga session, at least provided that I wasn't disturbing anyone else in doing so. If anything, the act of me grinning happily during the flow of asanas was a nice and healthy addition to my daily yoga practice, both on and off the mat. Laughing is said to partially detoxify your body, anyway. (And detoxification seems to be exactly what I need more of, seeing as I actually had to quite my Master Cleanse a damn seven days early, after all the citric acid from the organic lemons made me sick as a dog.)

I think I definitely have yoga, at least in my own sense then. I'm going to be ninteen years old this year, and I feel that more than ever, I know exactly where I stand in the world. I feel and understand my place in the cosmos, and with this comes a secondary feeling of higher individuality. Despite my troubled mindset, which seems to have high and low tides like the ocean, I feel that I've actually got quite a lot going well for me. I am going to be a yoga instructor, if I can only find the teacher-training program that works best for me. I don't expect this to happen for the next few years, and maybe not even in the next ten years, however. It needs to happen after I'm able to totally complete my clinical certification thing at the North Carolina School of Holistic Herbalism, and I haven't even begun the first part of that yet, which is called Fundamentals. (I did actually get accepted into NCSHH, by the way, thank goodness.) The Fundamentals program at NCSHH begins March of 2008, which is still a long way of yet. After I complete the Fundamentals course, which lasts several months and several hundred hours, I'll have to wait a few months more and then move onto the next level of clinical herbalism. And after that, I'll have to wait even longer before I begin the real thing, which will allow me to legally practice herbalism in the United States.

Ah, but whatever! I began this essay on yoga philosophy thinking that I was going to only lecture on the definition of samadhi, and look what I've done. This essay has gone absolutely everywhere, from yoga philosophy, to be doing and teaching yoga, and possibly being bipolar, to my ramblings that involve my future studies at NCSHH. All this can mean only one thing: I do have yoga, as we all do at one awesome level or another, but that my attainment of basic samadhi is going to be something I will obviously have time to deal with in the years to come. Or maybe it won't really be attained at all in this lifetime, or even the next. Only God in the cosmos knows!

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 7)

Last night I did something that was quite weird: I randomly contacted this girl I know, who was my best friend for many years, and kind of like a foster-sister to me for a while, as well. She and I met in the sixth grade and hit it off almost immediately. However, a few nasty things happened during seventh grade that caused several very sad and tearful fights between us, which resulted in an enstrangement that lasted for nine or ten months. We began to experiment with hanging out again and having fun during about the midpoint of eighth grade and eventually succeeded in rekindling the great and true friendship that had once been ours. And I was absolutely elated when that happened, of course; I thought that it would last forever, or rather, I hoped and prayed that it would last forever. However, the second part of the awesome saga belonging to Jenni and I only lasted until about our second year of high school, during which she was in a lot of bad relationships with guys and my way of life at home seemed to be further deteriorating. To explain things very briefly, I'll just say that we left each other's company and concentrated on the separateness of our own paths with only short, possibly hour-long intervals of bland and awkward communication. Because of this, and because of Jenni's apathy and the indifference I sought to force on myself, our relationship became stagnant and painful to even reminisce on. Jenni and I grauduated from Reynolds High School in May or June of 2006, and up until only late yesterday evening, we hadn't spoken a single word to one another. It was me who called her, of course, but I shouldn't be glorifying in that and thinking of it as a way to prove, once again, that I was always the one who tried to keep us friends when she was out running around with all these horrible guys who cheated on her and did drugs. In truth, after something else that happened to me last night suddenly inspired me to put aside my pride and give Jenni a ring, I flipped a penny on the matter to help me decide if I should try to call her at all. I said that if the penny landed one way, then I would call Jenni, no matter how angry I still felt towards her. If the penny landed the opposite way, I told myself that I would go for another solid year without attempting to speak to her. But dharma, it seems, intervened in my desperate divinination by penny-tossing, and I found myself facing the coppery profile of Abraham Lincoln before I could chicken out and change my mind. I gave Jenni the call, and her mother answered, not even recognizing the sound of my voice on the phone. I think I must have been near to tears at that point, anyway, and maybe I subconciously pitched my voice slightly lower so that I could hide it. Thus began my planned rendesvous with Jenni, which lasted for about three hours downtown under the bright, blistering sun. She did most of the talking during our brief get-together, as I knew and hoped she would. I just walked by her side as we passed Lexington, Broadway, Chesnut and pretty Holland Street.

When Jenni and I were walking the dusty, mica-flecked length of that street that Malaprops is on, we came upon a small knot of people in straw hats, orange and white robes that reminded us of the Buddhist monks of Southern Asia. However, these people were all Hindus, and when Jenni and I got to talking to them, we found out that most of them had come straight from some city in Germany, or at least two of the women had. Those girls were hardly older than us, I think, and they had the kind of pollen-like yellow paint on their foreheads that those who consider Shiva to be their personal diety usually wear. However, instead of Shaivites, they were members of the ISKON (International Society for Krishna Conciousness), and therefore aspirant devotees of Krishna. These people were standing on the edge of the street with books about Hinduism and their philosophy, asking for donations. Depending on how much of a donation you gave them, one of the women would give you some kind of a book in return, as a ploy to spread the philosphy. Jenni handed the woman handling the books a dollar, and she handed us a couple of small copies of a rather well-made illustrated pamphlet called Beyond Birth and Death, by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada, who is the founder of the International Society for Krishna Conciousness. All right. So, when it was about time for Jenni and I to be leaving downtown, we got into the red car she drove us there in, and she shoved her copy of the pamphlet at me, claiming that she just didn't want to have anything to do with "any of that really religious stuff", though, only about an hour and a half before that, Jenni had claimed that she was "no longer an atheist, by any means". Whatever. Jenni drove me to my mom's house back in Oakley, and I left her car carrying both copies of the pamphlet, as well as the yellow disposable camera I'd been taking pictures of certain places in the city with, to show people when I go back to Finland here in the next couple of days, and barely said good-bye to her. I didn't hug her or anything, as I'd thought I might like to do, earlier. I know how that one additional year will go by before I ever speak to Jenni again. It's easy to see that she and I come from completely different worlds. And this is something very complex, which I must definitely think on, carefully and extensively.

Which, of course, brings me directly to tonight's essay, which is on dhyana, or an aspect of meditation having mostly to do with thought and conciousness itself. Dhyana's beginnings are traced back to Hinduism in ancient times, when it was a concept considered to be an instrument used to gain self-knowledge, seperating this from reality, or the reality of others in order to attain eventual enlightenment. In the Bhagavad Gita, which is a holy text thought by some historians to have been written at some time between 400 and 100 BCE, dhyana was mentioned in correlation with Lord Krishna's in-depth explanation of Raja Yoga. The definition of the art of dhyana is also mentioned several times throughout Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. The concept of dhyana also exists entirely in Buddhism. Dhyana is only possible through the complete transendence of five earthly hindrances, which are listed in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras as being craving, aversion, sloth, agitation and doubt. Any one of these hindrances that are not transcended cause the person meditating to be totally incapable of discursive thinking; but when all five of these earthly hindrances have been entirely transcended in every possible way, the mind of the person meditating becomes empowered with the unshakable ability to penetrate into the deepest truths of our existence, and the existence of the universe in which we reside. These are the six steps towards enlightenment through the process of dhyana, listed according to the teachings of Patanjali:

1.) Vitakka: The movement of the mind onto the object.
2.) Vicara: The retention of the mind onto the object.
3.) Piti: The joy that comes with meditating and growing closer towards enlightenment.
4.) Sukha: The extreme happiness and bliss that comes with attainment of piti. (It just keeps getting better and better after this.)
5.) Ekaggata: One-pointedness.
6.) Upekkha: Finally, total equanimity with the meditative state.

Dhyana in Jainism is known as samayika. That's all I have to say.

Coming Soon: The last part of my essays concerning yoga philosophy, and what it means to me, though certainly not the last part of my posts having to do with the way I see yoga philosophy in general. This one will be about the eighth limb belonging to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, called samadhi. I'd really like it if everybody actually read this essay, very closely, and tried to understand what I'm saying, even if it sounds like I don't even really understand what I'm saying. Trust me, it's important.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 6)

This evening I plan to write rather extensively on the subject of dharana, which is a Sanskrit term used mainly in the philosophies of Ashtanga Yoga, meaning, "holding steady", or "to take hold of" in reference to the practice of deep meditation, though which the object meditated on is held in the mind with full, unwavering conciousness. So, I find myself at least attempting to meditate in this way quite often these days. I can definitely see myself doing it a lot more often in the future, too: In only eight days, I'll be forsaking Asheville once again, as I've done twice before during the last four years, to spend a few months living in Finland again with friends I have there. And because it takes a good eight hours to fly from any point in New York or New Jersey to Helsinki, you can be sure that I'll be spending a great deal of that time in some level of deep meditation, if only as a way to conquer the ceaseless boredom and restlessness that comes with long plane flights like that, sleeplessness, oncoming jetlag and the anxiety that will surely flood my heart as soon as I touch down in that other country.

If you happened to read my Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 1) post, you may already know that dharana is listed as being sixth of Patanjali's eight principles having to do with Ashtanga Yoga, which is mainly the kind of yoga I choose to explore when I'm home by myself or teaching one of my occassional "classes". The ancient yogins, male and female, from back in the day in India, state that dharana proceeds a pair of other, secondary terms that are meant to break down the theory of deep meditation so that more people can understand the complexity of the technique. While dharana stands for the object of meditation, dhyana is said to be the meditator himself. Samadhi is the name given to describe very act of meditation, in itself. The yogins of India said that to understand these three sacred words is to understand what deep meditation is. You might say that these three words are even like stepping stones, or stairs descending into a dark and mysterious basement...You go deeper and deeper into the deep form of meditation, so deep that in the end, it's said that even the concept of "self" dissolves, leaving only the meditative mind and memory. That sounds pretty freaky, now, doesn't it?

In the world of today, I really find that there are more things that I concentrate on, or else, need to concentrate on, than were there for me when I was a little girl living in Fairview. However, I don't mean to say that I never concentrated on anything at all when I was young. I think that one of the main reasons why my eyesight is so bad today is because of my habit of questioning the world around me in quite a different sense than most other children, and certainly most adults, do. When I was a kid, instead of just wondering why the sky was blue, I wanted to know what the air was made out of. And when I was four or five years old and found out that the air was, in fact, made up of myriads upon myriads of invisible, yet forceful things called "atoms", I then graduated to wondering what sight was made of. I would stand in the yard on an overcast day and squint into the gray horizon, taking notice of the fact that everything we see is actually made up of something not totally unlike pointalism, only far smaller and more refined. My parents always told me that my eyesight fell downhill so fast because I drew and read too much, or that I did it with my face held too close to the paper for too long. But really, I think they were both wrong, and that I'm so myopic now because I was studying the atoms of the air and their components too closely...

Mm, but I digress, and I seriously shouldn't be doing that, especially when I'm trying to discuss something as important to a highly meditative yogini like me as dharana. There are many methods of practicing dharana, ya'll, but one way that I particularly enjoy is through mantras. Whether they know it or not, nearly everybody has created a mantra at one point during the course of their lifetimes, which they've either lived up to or not. When I was a kid, one of the mantras I commonly used was "If you don't like what I'm cooking, get the hell out of my kitchen". That one was really directed towards self-defense, though, as a way to stay above those who constantly ridiculed me for my "weird" ideas and theories on the universe. To me, my mantra was telling the others that if they didn't like what I was saying or doing, then they should simply stay out of my life. But nowadays I'm acutely aware of just how childish that must sound, especially coming from someone like me. I've always labled myself as being very anti-social, but I'm really not. I love to have people around me. I love to have a lot of friends and friendly family members. As far as mantras go, there is one manta stemming from the holy Sanskrit language, which a lot of people are already aware of: OM. Upon hearing this mantra spoken or sung, you might get a mental image of an order of orange-clad Buddhist monks in their seemingly-eternal chant of "OM, OM". But what most people don't know is that the mantra of OM actually has four syllables and a thousand, or even a million, different meanings. I have a bright red tattoo of that symbol in the center of my left shoulder blade, to show what the all-encompassing mantra means to me, personally. But when I'm meditating, it's very rare that I choose to employ the sacred OM as my mantra. There are countless additional Sanskrit mantras out there to choose from, anyway, and when choosing a mantra to use for your own meditation, the declaration or prayer has to be something that you feel comfortable with doing. Also, you should know exactly what the Sanskrit words mean when translated into English, so that you can truly live up to the meaning of the holy words. OM is considered to be a bija mantra. Mantras are holy truthful words that are handed down through generations by religious seers, yogins, monks or nuns who had attained self-realization by chanting them. Mantras are words or syllables in Sanskrit which, when repeated in meditation, eventually cause you transcend into that coveted higher state of conciousness, which is called Nirvana, or enlightenment. Sound waves echo eternally as something known as "sound energy". Sound energies, like sound waves, have always existed in the universe. They cannot be created or destroyed, and are in the command of the great power to heal you physically or spiritually, which explains exactly why you usually feel so wonderfully happy when you hear one of your favorite songs played on the radio. This is one of my absolute favorite and most beloved mantras of all time, which you may recognize, or not:

Hare Krishna
Hare Krishna
Krishna, Krishna
Hare, Hare
Hare Rama
Hare Rama
Rama, Rama,
Hare, Hare.

Coming Soon: An essay on the concept of dhyana, or, once again, meditation. I can't wait to get on it, honestly, but at the moment I feel more than a little weak from the Master Cleanse that I've just begun. I'd like to talk about that later, I think, because what it's been doing to be entire body is rather interesting, to say the least. And besides, the drink, made of purified water, organic lemon juice, organic Grade-A maple syrup and Cayenne pepper, tastes great, like an unusually spicy sort of lemonade.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 5)

So, I tend to meditate a lot. I most enjoy metitation when I'm home alone, and am therefore free to sit anywhere I want, even if I don't have a yoga mat around to use. There are many different ways to meditate, perhaps even infinite ways with each phsysical meditative position being different from the last, but however you choose to meditate, whether you know it or not, you're meditating through an ancient and rather difficult process known, in Sanskrit, as pratyahara. Unfortunately, due to the sheer complexity of its nature, there's not a whole lot I can say about the concept of pratyahara, other than that when translated from Sanskrit it means something like, "removing indriyas from material objects". Indriyas, of course, is the general name given to describe the tenacles of conciousness Patanjali was talking about in the Yoga Sutras. Pratyahara is the stage at which a human being figures out how to control these so-called tenacles of conciousness through the form of meditation. The concept of pratyahara allows men and women to achieve the ability to sense, in the subtlest of ways, the purity of multidimentional space.

In the Bhagavad Gita, which is my absolute favorite Vedic text and most likely the most well-known ancient manuscript having to do with the basic concepts of Hinduism, the battlefield reincarnation of Lord Krishna spoke quite extensively of indriyas, naming each one as the five physical sense we're most familiar with, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, as well as a sixth non-physical sense he described as being the innate sense of the mind. Having control, more or less, over the indriyas you were born with is like...Well, let me try to explain it in a slightly different way, saying only that giving your full concentration on a tangeable item is not completely unlike reaching out an invisible sensory tentacle towards that object, which relays bits and pieces of external information back to other indriyas, working one way or another. That way of teaching it still might sound quite twisted and strange. I really wish I could find a better way to explain exactly what the definition pratyahara is! The concept of pratyahara is simply something that's far too complex for me to articulate; and because I'm a very inarticulate human being by nature, and also because pratyahara is such an extremely important thing in the world of meditation, I cannot find the appropriate words to fill in the army of gaps I've created by even attempting to tackle the ambiguous subject of pratyahara.

I admit defeat, kids. I hate to say it, but...This essay, which is the fifth in my series of teachings of rudimentary yoga philosophy, is several paragraphs shorter than I had originally intended it to be. I'll stop, now.

Coming Soon: An essay concerning the concept of dharana. That one will be quite a lot better than this, I promise!