1.1 atha yoga anushasanam. Now is the time to practice yoga.
What could be more applicable to life than the first sutra? When Patanjali invites us to gather ourselves and remember all we have done to now receive these teachings, we sit quietly and set ourselves to the task. What is truly remarkable is that even if this is not the first time we have heard these teachings, it becomes new once more. The process is totally natural when we are engaged. Now we are ready to receive the teachings, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time.
Truly great teachings just keep giving. They are like love that is tended, like flowering faces of children smiling up at us. When we move towards them, they freely offer their sweet fragrance. This first sutra is not to be overlooked, as I have learned from Douglas Brooks. It is in itself a teaching of presence, of the fullness of time, of what meaning we infuse into our lives. One of Iyengar’s defintions of atha is benediction. How wonderful--bene is Latin for good or well, and dicere is to speak. Ironically it is usually an invocation at the end of a service. This gives us a twist in meaning for the word “now”. “Now” becomes “then.” At the end of our processes, we can invoke Saraswati and any other deity of such prodigious wisdom, because the end of whatever we were just doing is the beginning of now.
What does it mean to start with saying “now we will commence the study?” Saying the word now means everything. It means all time, and so encompasses a sense of timelessness. Past has placed each of us right here in our own individualities, and as such we are setting our intentions for future study in yoga. We are about to study, so we ready ourselves. We center. Presently, we pay the closest attention as we do when we fall in love with something, mesmerized by the potential that will possibly unfold in the future. And, to ravel time a bit more, all those times we have studied ourselves in the past--all those insights that have marked our way--will turn their lights towards this present endeavor to study once more. Each time we have gathered, it is as if we have gathered light and the light grows in its splendor. This light is a gathering of strands of past efforts and reflections on change, lovely intentions in the present, and future promises. Looking into the future, we say this one word: Atha. Now.
Not tomorrow, not next year, but for however long we have traveled thus, we find ourselves at the feet of a sacred wisdom that is a map of our own souls, so much more than some old forgotten, inapplicable and inexplicable pedantic text. Let us make no mistake--whenever we study a sacred text we are studying ourselves.
And so we begin. Shall we? A Patanjali Party anyone? An oxymoron if you are a classical yogin, but a challenge well worth the effort for us Tantrikas. It’s my first challenge to myself: Can I make this fun without reducing its seriousness or effectiveness in any way? It sounds so much like a Pajama Party, I couldn’t resist. Much of this will surely be written when all the lights but this one at my desk have gone out, when the children are nestled. Justin has said “come to bed”. . .soon honey, but not yet.
Okay, now. . . atha, bed. Tomorrow will be the time, will be the now to study and contemplate sutra 1.2. It is the big one.
What could be more applicable to life than the first sutra? When Patanjali invites us to gather ourselves and remember all we have done to now receive these teachings, we sit quietly and set ourselves to the task. What is truly remarkable is that even if this is not the first time we have heard these teachings, it becomes new once more. The process is totally natural when we are engaged. Now we are ready to receive the teachings, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time.
Truly great teachings just keep giving. They are like love that is tended, like flowering faces of children smiling up at us. When we move towards them, they freely offer their sweet fragrance. This first sutra is not to be overlooked, as I have learned from Douglas Brooks. It is in itself a teaching of presence, of the fullness of time, of what meaning we infuse into our lives. One of Iyengar’s defintions of atha is benediction. How wonderful--bene is Latin for good or well, and dicere is to speak. Ironically it is usually an invocation at the end of a service. This gives us a twist in meaning for the word “now”. “Now” becomes “then.” At the end of our processes, we can invoke Saraswati and any other deity of such prodigious wisdom, because the end of whatever we were just doing is the beginning of now.
What does it mean to start with saying “now we will commence the study?” Saying the word now means everything. It means all time, and so encompasses a sense of timelessness. Past has placed each of us right here in our own individualities, and as such we are setting our intentions for future study in yoga. We are about to study, so we ready ourselves. We center. Presently, we pay the closest attention as we do when we fall in love with something, mesmerized by the potential that will possibly unfold in the future. And, to ravel time a bit more, all those times we have studied ourselves in the past--all those insights that have marked our way--will turn their lights towards this present endeavor to study once more. Each time we have gathered, it is as if we have gathered light and the light grows in its splendor. This light is a gathering of strands of past efforts and reflections on change, lovely intentions in the present, and future promises. Looking into the future, we say this one word: Atha. Now.
Not tomorrow, not next year, but for however long we have traveled thus, we find ourselves at the feet of a sacred wisdom that is a map of our own souls, so much more than some old forgotten, inapplicable and inexplicable pedantic text. Let us make no mistake--whenever we study a sacred text we are studying ourselves.
And so we begin. Shall we? A Patanjali Party anyone? An oxymoron if you are a classical yogin, but a challenge well worth the effort for us Tantrikas. It’s my first challenge to myself: Can I make this fun without reducing its seriousness or effectiveness in any way? It sounds so much like a Pajama Party, I couldn’t resist. Much of this will surely be written when all the lights but this one at my desk have gone out, when the children are nestled. Justin has said “come to bed”. . .soon honey, but not yet.
Okay, now. . . atha, bed. Tomorrow will be the time, will be the now to study and contemplate sutra 1.2. It is the big one.
posted by Sangati at
2:09 PM
5 Comments:
The most interesting thing to me about this post is the idea that "now" implies everything leading up to this point. I was literally finding it unfathomable just a few months ago how anyone could spend hours, pages, days, thinking about this short and simple phrase. How could it mean anything more than just what it is saying?? And now I think hmm... maybe there IS more to this than just what is obviously being said. How can "now" be so complex? Life is so fun in that way!
xoxo, andrea
I had to smile when i read your comments, because i, like you, focused on "now" for a good portion of my time on 1.1. I went back to my notes for that day, and present them here (in two parts, because of space limitations) for discussion.
Patanjali 1.1: atha yoganusasanam.
“Now begins an exposition of the sacred art of yoga, with prayers for divine blessing.”
Reflections: “Now.” Fitting and ironic that the text should begin with so powerful and difficult a word. Fitting, because it is properly the focus of WHY we are doing what we are doing. We practice this art, this beautiful melding of mind, body, and heart, with an eye towards being here now – not tomorrow, not yesterday, not two hours from now, but right now. For if we are not living now, when are we actually living? Throughout my reading and my meditation and my practice this morning, this one word continued to reverberate through my mind. Now. Over, and over, and over. Now. An uninvited mantra – uninvited, yes, but welcome. For it reminded me when and where to be, in order that I may be. Be, here, now.Our experiences can only be present, or they are not experiences at all. Why is it ironic? Because it is among the more difficult practices to master. This is ironic, for if we are not living now, we are not truly living, yet surely none among us would say he or she is not living. But this is the hard fact. If we are not present, we miss the moment, we miss life. So, now.
This is where my concentration dwelt. Now. There is more in this sutra, though, and for whatever reason, my reading, meditation, and practice never reached it. The mantra “now” continually flooded me, and took all my attention back to the present, which is fitting. By the end, actually, it was amusing. I shall risk looking to some of the remainder of the sutra now. Prayer: the dialogue begins with a resort to prayer for divine blessing. In fact, Iyengar places an invocation before the word “now” (I purposefully reversed it above). This is an interesting editorial choice on Iyengar’s part, to be sure. But prayer, invocation, divinity: this has been the study of my entire life for the past twenty years or so. What does such a statement mean? What is “divinity” is this context? In ANY context? There are answers to this from any one of many disciplines. Each has its own metaphysical and epistemological challenges. The necessary limitations of our human condition make it such that we can never answer this question with finality through deduction or any other logical means. Instead, the answer comes from somewhere else, if ever it comes at all. Even then, there may be some nagging question or doubt. Again, a symptom of our humanity. Ultimately, it is a product of the inner conversation convincing itself. It is conviction, belief. These all have different meanings when parsed fully, but they all relate to the inquiry. In our discipline and tradition of yogic philosophy, especially from a Shiva-Shakti Tantra viewpoint, it really has two important meanings – it is a calling forth (invoking) of the transcendent divine that permeates all things and is always present, and it is an invocation of the wisdom within ourselves, which is the manifestation of the transcendent divine within each of us, the divinity expressing itself in our individual limited form purely for its own amusement, really; just to see where it goes. So, as Bill Mahoney put it last week, an invocation is a calling ON these qualities, and a calling FORTH of these qualities from within.
continued. . . .
Epistemologically, it is interesting to assume that an invocation would have any meaning at all in this first context. Why assume an interventionist divinity? Ishvara pranidhana, indeed, but to a meaningful end? Why ask for it from without if we are, as we have already discussed, ourselves divine? It seems odd that we would ask, in essence, ourselves to bless our own activity about to commence. Or, alternatively, if we are asking an external divinity for blessing, how can we be so bold, arrogant, and self-absorbed to believe that divinity has any reason to participate in our tiny human existence? That question has always puzzled me. Would the divine not be concerned with divine activity rather than human activity? It just seems awfully presumptuous of us to believe that we are entitled to such treatment. Then again, I suppose it is equally bold, arrogant, and self-absorbed to believe that we ourselves are divine. Either way you cut it, the question of invocation is perplexing. We are either asking ourselves for a blessing we have already bestowed, or we are assuming that divinity would care about us enough to intervene. This doesn’t even reach the question of what happens if we make the invocation and divinity chooses NOT to intervene (e.g., the problem of evil), or intervenes on behalf of some but not others (thus not being truly impartial in bestowing of love and goodness), but that is a treatise unto itself. I do not have an answer for this that is satisfying, other than to say that it is respectful, humbling, and proper that we should do so, not because of Pascal’s wager, but because of a more deontological purpose: it is the right thing to do.
Alas, I must truncate this discussion, and get on with the "now," which involves making grits and cutting plums for my little ones. Until next time,
Saprema,
Kelly
Christian meditation often uses the mantra Maranatha, the word maranatha is the final instruction of St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians & St. Johns final instruction in the book of Revelation (which is all about the Kingdom of God with-in you)The final teaching of the entire Christian Bible is Maranatha which is Aramaic and means "Come Lord". There is also a teaching that says when maranatha is broken into syllables it has different meanings: Mara-natha = "Come Lord" or "Lord come"
Maran-atha (atha like atha yoganusasanm)= "Lord is here" or "Lord has come" , to me that says the Lord is here NOW you can only truly experience the Lords presence NOW you can think about past encounters or speculate about future unity with God, think about how you will allow him to lead, guide and move through you, yet only NOW is it possible to do it to actualize it to surrender your will to the divine, moment by moment, to choose to step into the flow of Grace. One commentary says "the Maranatha prayer is an expression of our desire to be united (yoked, yoga) in the loving presence of God rather than following any thoughts or ideas of our own" so flow implies continuous movement and I think of the beginning Sutra 1.1 and the ending teaching of the Bible and how connected it all is, and how relevant it all is, how the teachings are here the Lord is here in the flow, waiting for us to step in, when? NOW
Beautiful contemplations, Kelly.
Nan, I am so glad you posted this. And as we talk of now and time, then we must also think of here, and space-where and with whom, and with what tools, with whose guidance. If we only have so many hours, may we choose the greatest company as Douglas and our Dear Apa say: "You are the company you keep, so keep great company".
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home