Yoga: A Buffet of Happiness

D. Deepak Chadha

In the last post we introduced the nature of our True Self as Sat(existence), Chit(consciousness), and Ananda(bliss and happiness). We noted that when we stop the chattering of our monkey mind, we experience Ananda. This week we shall introduce a buffet of options for increasing our happiness through yoga. I use the word buffet from my first experience with Swedish Smorgasbord.

As a graduate student in Toronto, I was thrilled to hear of the new all you can eat concept. So I shelled out the $9.99, a considerable sum for a graduate student living on assistantship. I was sure that I was going to get my money’s worth. Actually I filled myself with soup, salad and bread and never even got to the main course or dessert. So when I hear many fellow students so focused on the incremental improvements of an asana or striving to get what they like and avoid what they dislike, I am motivated to share the wide offerings of the yoga buffet. My hope is that the reader will identify several other choices including their favorite asana and enjoy even more.

Yoga

Yoga simply means union with Brahman. A more practical description is dissolving our lower self into higher self or merging individual consciousness into universal consciousness. The perishable world in all the variations of name and form is simply a manifestation of the total energy form of the Brahman. Eventually it will dissolve back into the same energy form. Because of our ignorance arising from our sensory inputs, we forget our True Self. We start associating ourselves with the perishable world and in the process start suffering the pain and pleasures of this changing and finite world.

The Rishis (research scientists) tell us that when we think of Brahman and our True Self 24/7, we become the same and achieve Moksha (permanent happiness and bliss). The Advaita concept of Moksha does not require going someplace special like heaven above. One can experience Moksha even in this world and at any time. We have tried to clarify that all of us experience Ananda momentarily during our yoga practice, but don’t recognize its correct nature. Instead we continue to pursue the perishable objects and experiences that can at best give fleeting pleasure.

The Rishis discovered four methods of achieving Moksha; Raja Yoga, Karma (action) Yoga, Bhakti (devotion) Yoga and Jnana (knowledge) Yoga. I shall discuss only Raja Yoga, also called Ashtanga (eightfold path of Patanjali) Yoga. The objective is to explain the path to you, but Gentle Reader, you have to do your own work to enjoy any benefits from this knowledge. Knowing it but not doing it is like the person who knows of the medicine or even gets the medicine for his illness, but does not take it. If you are interested in learning about the other three types of yogas, you may choose to study the Bhagavad Gita under a qualified teacher.

For the sake of overview, I add that most of the Hindu sages have focused on practice of the other three yogas. For example, Bhagavad Gita mentions the Raja Yoga in a couple of shlokas (couplets) in chapter nine out of the 701 shlokas in the whole book. Hatha yoga is not even mentioned. My guru, Sw. Chinmayanada, used to say that doing body contortions is not any yoga. So there is lot more to learn and benefit from.

Any student interested in yoga will have to expend necessary effort to understand the path correctly and then practice the eightfold path. My favorite guidance from sage Adi Sankara is fitting to keep in mind. A good student has the responsibility of gaining the right knowledge from a qualified teacher and then accepting and practicing what agrees with his or her own experience. This is akin to the scientific approach where any results by any scientist have to be replicated by others to gain their acceptability. While this method gives freedom of choice, it also puts all the responsibility on the student. To succeed, the student must have a burning desire to achieve her objective. Without that commitment, no progress will follow.

Ashtanga Yoga

The eight steps of yoga are briefly explained below. Many yoga enthusiasts start at the third step. It is beneficial to incorporate practices from the other steps in your daily living; otherwise you will get only limited benefits.

These five practices relate to our physical body and its sense instruments.

1. Yama means the ultimate controller, which is the Lord of Death. In practical terms we are urged to practice controlling our mind by adopting non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence and non-craving for sensory pleasures. So the mind learns to control its attraction and repulsion for the five sense objects.
2. Niyama means regularity in cleanliness, contentment, self study, austerity and surrender to reduce our ego. In this stage one starts being oblivious to the attraction and repulsion of sense objects and experiences.
3. Asana or Hatha Yoga is what you are all familiar with. As we noted earlier, we gain a taste of our True Self.
4. Prana is the infinite and omnipresent power of the universe. The Rishis devised Pranayam to further reduce the chattering of our mind. Anybody that has practiced Pranayam knows how focused one gets when one has exhausted one’s ability to hold one’s breath.
5. Pratyahara means restraint of the senses in being attracted to objects. At this stage we are constantly aware of the insufficiency of sense objects and therefore are not chasing after them.

The next three steps relate to the subtle body of mind and intellect. The ultimate prize is long periods of meditation leading to Smadhi.

6. Dharana is fixing the mind to one spot or one idea. Japa, repetition of a mantra, is a very helpful practice to build Dharana capability. All of us experience Dharana in sports, music, dance, paintings, sculpture or enjoying nature. In my knowledge, only yoga builds on this experience to greater heights.
7. Dhyana is the ability to concentrate the mind on one thing for a longer period of time.
8. Smadhi is the ability to empty the mind of all the extraneous thought, but remain alert and conscious focused on our True Self. It differs from deep sleep in which both the physical and the subtle (mind and intellect) body are suspended, but the mind is not alert and conscious.

I conclude by reminding you that Ananda is the nature of our True Self. To access it, we need to learn to stop the chattering of our minds. Hatha Yoga gives a taste of what it can be. Adopting other yoga practices in our life can hasten to slow down and achieve the necessary introspection. The guiding objective is to detach from the sense objects and attach to the True Self. May He grant you all of your wishes!

Next week I shall describe some of the ‘why do we’ and how they accelerate our journey to permanent happiness.

Hari Aum

Shree Guru Bhayo Namaha

Hari Aum

Why Do I Like Yoga

D. Deepak Chadha

If you ask the question ‘Why do you like Yoga?’ from the many yogis and yoginis who practice Yoga, there will be many different answers. Probably the most common ones are that “I like stretching” or “It helps my flexibility because I am very stiff” or “I have an injury.” I am going to offer the scriptural answer to this question and provide background information on Yoga. The latter is simply to give you a choice to enhance your happiness even further.

Personal disclosure: I am a born Hindu and became an ardent student of our scriptures in my mid-life. This note is written only to provide an introduction to this great science for persons with a Judeo-Christian background. Hinduism does not have a tradition of proselytizing. Instead, the entire burden is placed on the student to find the right guru, have a burning desire to learn and practice what the teacher determines is the student capable of learning. Only in gratitude does the student commit to do the Guru’s bidding. It is like Harvard selecting to admit students and saying that they pay the fee they think it should be paid after they finish their education.

Before I address the actual question, let me give some background information. We start with the eternal questions like “Who made this universe?” and “What is the nature of its maker?” and “Who am I?” In the Abrahamic tradition, the Old Testament tells us that God created the universe in seven days. This story sets the stage for what Hindus call “Dvaita” or duality of humans and God. The monotheism of the Jewish faith was declared by affirming the faith in one God who was up there in the heavens.

Advaita – No Duality

Hinduism is also a monotheistic practice (in spite of your experience of many different images of gods). It proclaims only one God, but also insists “there is only God.” In other words everything we see, including ourselves, is a manifestation or projection of God. The imperishable and unchanging energy form of the creator is called AUM. The world as we experience is perishable and dissolves into the unmanifest form. God is omnipresent or all pervasive, like space or ether. This framework responds to dualistic view by categorically saying there is no duality or “Advaita.” Also since we come with our notion of what God is, let us change to the Hindu vocabulary of calling him/her/it Brahman. Yes, it is accurate; Brahman covers both sexes and even the neutral form.

So Advaita tells us that Brahaman is the substratum on which everything inanimate and animate is projected. This is a very troubling concept for some of us, because we simply do not feel like God or what we think God is like. But with some imagination we can be persuaded to agree with at least our own goodness. However, the general extension of the same idea that all of the persons around us or many historical figures also have the same spark of the Brahaman is extremely unsettling. By now you may think I have gone too far. So let us suspend this line of thought here for a moment and try to answer the third question. Who am I?

Who am I?

Most of us think of ourselves in terms of our physical body and our position in the society. All of us have gone through different stages of change from the time of conception through birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age and then old age, where some of us now are. In many conversations, people often say that even though their body is changing (the more precise word is aging, even though it is politically incorrect), they do not feel any different than they felt in their early youth. So what is that something that we experience that has not changed?

The ancient Rishis (research scientists) called it the True Self. On further examination they determined that the True Self is not only changeless, it also has the attributes of Sat (existence), Chit (consciousness) and Ananda (happiness and bliss). It is helpful to recognize that pleasures are temporary and entirely associated with our five senses, while happiness comes from more subtle experiences of doing service or love and tends to persist. We shall skip the first two attributes of True Self for now and focus on Ananda.

Ananda

Let us recollect what we have said so far. The highly subtle Brahman pervades everything that we see and experience. Our True Self is changeless and its nature is happiness and bliss. Naturally we ask why I don’t feel that way. In fact I am constantly working very hard to seek happiness. The Rishis tell us that inadequacies and limitations of our five physical instruments (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin) and two subtle instruments (emotional mind and intellect) that are our gateways to the outside world are the cause of our problems. In Hinduism the progressive subtlety is associated with wide pervasiveness. For example, water is more subtle than ice and steam is more subtle than water. Since the outside world is continuously changing, we can at best get some short term pleasure from these interactions, but not the lasting happiness.

Specifically our mind is constantly processing the sensory input and is never still. It is only through the stillness of our mind that we are enabled to experience our true nature of Ananda. So when the yoga teachers give those seemingly incongruous instructions and our mind is focused entirely on one task of executing those instructions, it stops chattering for a very brief moment. That is when we experience Ananda. It is the cumulative experience of such moments that we come to relish and start craving for.

Now I have given you a framework in which to think about your yoga experience. In summary, it is the momentary stopping of our monkey mind that gives us happiness. In the Hindu thought the wild activity of the mind is considered similar to the restlessness of the monkey. The execution of Asnas does have its benefits, too. But yoga’s addictive quality comes from the introspection we achieve and its ability to calm the mind.

To further clarify, here is another way to understand the pleasure we get from an object or experience using the Ananda paradigm. I like chocolate and am convinced that it would give me pleasure. So when I prepare to eat a piece of chocolate, my mind is chattering full blast in anticipation. When I put that piece in my mouth, for a fraction of a second, my mind shuts down and I experience pleasure. Out of my ignorance, I attribute the pleasure to chocolate. The Rishis argued that it is incorrect to subscribe to the idea that chocolate gives me pleasure. If chocolate had inherent properties of pleasure giving, then more of it would give me more pleasure. But we all know that after eating a couple of pieces we get full and do not even want to look at it. A more extreme example is the child who gorged on chocolate after a Halloween collection and got sick. This child then associates chocolate with getting sick. So I submit that chocolate has neither the inherent attribute of giving pleasure nor pain. It takes on the attributes I imposed on it. The Rishis say that all the worldly objects and experiences are perishable and cannot be the source of lasting happiness. Instead only being aware of your True Self 24/7 gives bliss and happiness.

In the next note I shall explain how Yoga offers many paths to happiness.

Hari Aum

Shree Guru Bhayo Namaha

Hari Aum