“For him who is moderate in food and play, moderate in performing actons, moderate in sleep and waking, for him is the yoga which destroys sorrow.” Bhagavad Gita, 6.18 (trans. Gitartha Samgraha, in Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita).
Food here, of course, is more than what we put into our mouth. It is everything that comes in through the senses. Play, too, is beyond what we do for “fun” in this society. How much these words have kept their truth since written; what different meanings they carry in our time of technological marvels. What does “moderation” mean to us? Does moderation have an implicit relativeness?
Since I first read the Gita in high school, I have been contemplating this sloka and resonating with it. Now, I come back to it over and over again, as my understanding of the rest of the text deepens and my practice grows. It is still giving me food for thought. (Pun intended).
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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
It is too far from my current world and beyond my temporal limits at the moment, but if you are interested, please contact my friend Robin through the website link below, who writes:
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Take care and thanks so much, Robin
Several years ago, when I still had a working art studio in my house, the favorite thing to do of a friend’s child when the family came over was to go into the studio to see what I was painting. I had just finished a piece on which I had painted the words, “Sometimes I have nothing to say.” D was five or six at the time — just learning to read full sentences. He chortled delightedly, pointed to the painting, and exclaimed, “I get it! I get it!”
As I have been studying and contemplating yoga philosophy in a group setting recently, I have been thinking about the tension between saying and not saying, the conundrum of yearning to communicate the indescribable, and the countervailing desire just to experience and not to try and describe or communicate.
