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Tatah Dvandavah Anabhighatah (and “winners and losers”)

ByElizabeth

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra II.48, tatah dvandaha anabhighataha is translated by B.K.S. Iyengar as “from then on [after the yogi through steady practice has absorbed him/herself in the practice of yoga), the sadhaka (practitioner) is undisturbed by dualities.”  This sutra follows the only two in all of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that specifically discuss asana, which Patanjali describes as a controlled and perfect ease and steadiness of mind and body.

I was thinking about the freedom from the “pairs of opposites” — pleasure and pain, etc. — when I read an article in the Washington Post yesterday dividing everyone who was impacted by the blizzard as a winner or a loser.   Children off from school were winners, frustrated parents, travelers who were grounded from flying, and politicians sure to be blamed for not having planned in a Southern city to have the snow removal equipment, personnel, and budget of a city like Buffalo, NY, were losers.  I am fairly certain (based on the harangues on the blogs) that the author was not alone in seeing everything as winning or losing.  To me, though, it feels like one of the “afflictions” described by Patanjali.  I was a grounded flyer.  I was much looking forward to a trip to San Francisco to see a dear friend from college and then to attend the weekend workshop with John Friend.  It would have been great fun to be there.  I was disappointed.  But it never would have occurred to me to label myself a loser.  Do so so would just had me hold onto unhappiness.

Yoga teaches us to look for the good, to accept what we cannot change, and to seek to respond in the highest.  In essence, we are changing what we can change, which is how we react.  If my only reaction to the storm was pain and sadness from having the pleasure of my planned trip taken away from me, then I would in fact be a loser.  If I just accept that no one can anticipate when record-breaking winter storms are going to arrive and then have the best day I can under the unavoidable circumstances, then I am a winner.  I am not a winner in a game where someone else is a loser.  I am not a winner in that I did not let Mother Nature win.  Rather, I have learned that the steady practice of yoga makes life more easeful and delightful even in challenges and disappointments.  I am motivated to practice more.  The lessons learned from being confined a blizzard when I was warm, well fed, and surrounded by friends are a hopeful prelude for how the yoga will serve when I really face a challenge.

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    Abhinavagupta (X-Rated or Not?)

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    As I get deeper into studying tantric philosophy I have taken the time to pause and reflect on how that philosophy originated and grew and who were the people offering and practicing the teachings.  The tantric teachings I have received and offer are completely chaste.  Put “tantra” into your favorite search engine, though, and you will see that people tend to think it is about intimate physical connection (my first euphemism).  What is tantra?  Is it one or the other?  Is it something one can have without the other?

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    I did not get into the depths of knowing the historical details before I had been strongly drawn to the metaphysics of Kashmir Shaivism, which has been an integral part of my yoga studies.  As I think about how a feminist, pacifist can find the universal teachings while still acknowledging the historical and social context in other texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible, it seemed given tantra’s rap in today’s society, I should see what my answer is for the tantric teachings as well.  In thinking about the issue, I contemplated how I see the teachings in and out of the historical context (as you can see from the link to Swami Lakshmanjoo, the philosophical teachings are presented today without a hint the secret rituals).

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    I think that the Wikipedia entry for Abhinavagupta, which mentions that the community would have engaged in secret (my spam-avoidance euphemism) ritual, but avers that “[w]e can only speculate about whether he was physically chaste, and either answer to this question is not very meaningful in the context of his life and teachings” gets it half right.  It seems to me that it would be meaningful when looking at his life, but not of import in the modern receipt of the teachings.  I think, for me, the very resonance of the philosophy and the practices with which I am familiar are not less meaningful for the historical concomitance of the hidden practices.

     

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  • Some Excellent Questions

    ByElizabeth

    I went to the first day of a weekend workshop with Amy Matthews, co-director of the Breathing Project, at Willow Street Yoga.  As always when I go up to Willow Street, it is always good to see friends from the shared practice and study of yoga.

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    As students, we are ultimately responsible for taking care of ourselves as we practice.  If we do not assume that responsibility, we cannot experience fully what we are trying to know/learn.

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