yoga
everything is achieved by discipline
nothing can be achieved by discipline
marguerite yourcenar
_______________________________________________
space, which no one can draw, because it is imperceptible as the medium and origin of our gestures and of our permanent habitation, is the absolute foundation of our temporal being and our ever-renewed continuity
antónio ramos rosa
___________________________________________
start by evoking the empty space, timeless, in your own body, in all directions
in the pause between exhalation and inhalation, proceed by witnessing the emptiness of the mind, free from duality, in fusion with its original source
the unsupported position revealed at this point is the true asana, accomplished through the delivery of the body, as the receptacle of the great emptiness, in an offering to the sacrificial fire
elements, organs, objects, the mind itself understood among them, this is the true oblation, received in the ritual cup of consciousness
vijnana bhairava tantra
(trans. & adap. nc)
____________________________________________
sadhana
we live in a highly mechanistic age, when we are used to explanations for everything
one gets the impression sometimes that the whole point in human life is to understand how everything works
i recall a remark by ralph waldo emerson in which he cautioned against becoming too conscious of the internal workings of the body
the eagerness of science to explore the sky has taken away a significant amount of the magic and fantasy that people once found there
in this mechanistic, rationalistic context, prayer may seem out of place
hildegard of bingen, meister eckhart, john of the cross, teresa of ávila devoted their lives to the interior life, to that area of religious experience where the mistery is approached carefully, slowly, and sometimes painfully
they advocated receptivity rather than activity, and they recognized an important connection between a person's way of life and their preparation for contemplation
the mystic may seem self-absorbed, but this is not necessarily the case
the inner life, just like the outer life, opens into a universe of mistery where the ego hardly exists
the interior life doesn't necessarily mean the personal life: it is no longer you who go in quest of stillness, stillness takes possession of you and overwhelms you
the point is not to make progress and achieve control but to surrender to the stillness that is within you
in psychological language we could call this a non-ego element in contemplation
our world is full of ego, full of strategies of analysis and manipulation of oneself and of reality
in the opposite sense, i like to recall william blake's statement that the body is the soul perceived by the senses
the body doesn't need the mind to justify itself, it isn't without life and meaning, it isn't even separate or distinct from the soul
therefore, when we make gestures, we pray - nothing has to be added
thomas moore
(trans. & adapt. nc)
______________________________________________
the body is my temple
asanas are my prayers
b.k.s. iyengar
______________________________________________
freedom of the body
in a general way, guided by the image of an autonomous and delimited self, we use objects in the pursuit of security and the preservation of this imaginary identity: we use our car, our dog, our husband, our apartment, our children, our profession, our bodies, to prove something, to prove ourselves and others that we exist
we use the body as an object: we make efforts to make it look like this or that, we train it, we try to keep it in good health, to feed it in this or that way, so that it resembles the idea that we made of our identity, imposing on our body what we guess that will allow us a better recognition from the environment that surrounds us
we end up, in this way, in the experience of an instrumental body, an explored, enslaved body
when we deeply understand that we do not have to put ourselves up for sale, that there is no need to be certifiedby the outer world, when we begin to sense this emotional autonomy, we look at our dog, at our car, at our husband, at our wife, at our carpet, at our body and we see something else, we no longer see a material to inscribe in our business card, we no longer see a brand to commercialize ourselves and others, we see a vastness, we see life , we see meaning that we listen to
there we will truly see the dog and what will be more functional for it, the same will happen with regard to the carpet, the husband or the car, not to impress the neighbor when he appears but by evidence of what is most appropriate to them
at that moment, when we are listened to, the body, like the other objects, naturally assumes its place, allowing us to discover our abilities, talents, assets or liabilities, and we can let this sensitivity express itself strongly, not in function of what we would like, not because of what it may bring us, but simply according to what presents itself at each moment
this form of being present to the body sometimes becomes surprising and incomprehensible to the outside, since we cease to listen for survival, for commerce, we listen as love
other listening networks offer themselves to us then, much more intimate, much deeper than the superficiality of the concepts of comfort or discomfort, health or disease, functionality or dysfunctionality, frequencies that aren't affected by them, it's rather those polarities that participate in them, in a natural way: pain and disease do not have to be a mistake, health and comfort are not necessarily a good sign, they are what they are
only in a mind without opinions can we understand in a nonconceptual way what consonances and dissonances are, from the common point of view, their understanding becomes reductionist
a form of deepening occurs, the body presents itself as a mystery: like our dog, like our carpet, like the moment when we swallow a sip of water - what can be more extraordinary than drinking a sip of water or having the possibility of simply inhaling, or feeling a finger of our own hand, or contemplate a leaf that is carried by the wind?
the depth and the fullness are in everything and when I stop trying to know and understandthey reveal themselves in an ever wider and less conceptual way
this is the true beginning of an intimate investigation in which we also have the evidence that to feel isolation is to live on the surface of beings and things, is to live in thought
when we really start to feel the body, isolation can't even be conceived of, it is unthinkable: there is no contact, the body is nothing other than contact, the touching is constant, we are permanently immersed in the experience of touch, that is where we find affection, deep connection, which is not a psychological connection, it is a bond made by the heart, incomprehensible to the intellect
in a living body, in an awakened sensibility, we may have a deep contact with someone who is not even objectively present, an eminently physical contact, but not the physical as the mind conceives it
the one who lives it feels this bond as such, but it is a connection that does not need to bind, it just re-unites, it is a current of energy like that which relates certain trees, certain animals, certain spaces, certain countries, certain cultures - these are not imaginary ties, they are resonances
we let all those forms of reverberation, that do not even belong to the past, come to us, the past exists only as a concept, resonance happens in the present: when, for example, we come into contact with a sword that was used in specific rituals, these are present, they are not in the past, before we find a ritual sword, before we find a father or a son, before we find a husband or a lover, a friend or an enemy, the line is already there
in a subordination to these lines, the encounter occurs in a specific instant, of course, but what is there essentially is the line underlying it, so that the externalization does not have to even incur an energy expenditure
humans and objects are part of an immense cartography that has its rules
in the same way, the practice of yoga postures consists on a celebration of a return to fundamental archetypal forms, not the attainment or conquest of random configurations, unrelated to the body
the yoga posture pre-exists in space, the physical body flows into it, until it merges in it
there is nothing that is truly external to us, a lightness arises, there is nothing that is alien to us, all we encounter is our intimacy
eric baret
(trans. & adapt. nc)