Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 15
A message arrived today, from a trusted source, “This guy said to tell you he’s with you. So there you go.” Included is this Wikipedia link to a page about Patanjali, who lived about 2000 years ago and was the author of the Yoga Sutras, a foundational text of the theory and practice of yoga.
The name is very familiar to me. He’s the author of the only book I’ve been called to read in years. I’ve been so busy learning from the experiences of daily practices, it’s been like drinking from a firehose. How to absorb even more?
But I was called to it, and so I’ve started reading the Yoga Sutras this year, slowly, just a few stanzas now and then, memorizing the Sanskrit of just one new stanza at a time.
So given the recent message above, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras may have something to say about this week’s topic. Let’s see:
Anger and misplaced energies have been relevant lately.
We’re now arriving at the 1 year anniversary of an event where so much anger and fear appeared on different levels, the events of January 6 2021 in Washington DC. And on a more personal level, a friend recently expressed a great deal of anger over a recent event. Oh they were so righteously angry, with so much logical justification. And also a young adult I recently spent time with, so indignant with the current arrangement of the world. And I had an experience of my energies being directed down into a base physical manifestion. I was just vibrating with physical energy, that much farther away from the more subtle spiritual energies.
So I was going to reconcile and resolve these negative forces of anger by invoking our lack of choice in the circumstances of This Exact Moment Right Now, and also our absolute choice in how we choose to act. But now it’s time to take a broader and simpler view.
Let’s start with the broadest possible perspective, the very beginning of the Yoga Sutras:
atha yoga anushasanam
Yoga Sutras, 1.1
Now the exposition of yoga is being made.
First let’s just recognize that there’s a situation we’re aware of, a situation that presents a challenge to our happiness and peaceful well-being. Perhaps you’re one of the angry and upset people recently encountered. From this unsettled awareness this opening lesson brings a new challenge — now it’s time for the calm acceptance and unity that yoga brings.
Without this unsettling event or condition we would have no context from which to see. Relevant to this week’s topic: Now that we’re angry it’s time to teach us how not to be angry. The lesson would have been meaningless before.
Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah
Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanamRestraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga.
Yoga Sutras, 1.2 – 1.3
Then the seer abides in its own nature.
With so few words we’re jumping right to the heart of meditation: all we need to do is settle the mud of the ego-based mind chatter, and then be aware of the consciousness that remains.
What we really see here is the entire game of life, wrapped up in these 3 short sutras that compose the opening of the Yoga Sutras. We might spend the rest of our days wrapped up in our own self-created mental worlds, but right here is summarized for us the basic challenge we must face eventually:
Can we just “settle our mud”, look past the body and mind’s chatter, and just abide in our own nature?