Lost Ways of Knowing

There are many different ideas about what enlightenment is: some come from the dogma of particular schools; some come from individuals only vaguely associated with a set of schools, etc. What follows is a list of “contemporary definitions” from teachers important to the Shala. The list is gleaned from Marianna Caplan’s very valuable book: Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment.  Are there desires after awakening? Does liberation mean that all of my problems are going to disappear?

This episode begins the conversation about the nature of awakening. The spirit of the discussion precedes in a way that hopes to shine light on how we might be confused about the subject itself. Without trying to define enlightenment in a propositional way, we look rather at what kind of transformation it is, and investigate the idea that Awakening is a qualitative transformation such that our deepest layer of values and desires is altered. What does it mean to value something? Can we simply decide to value things that currently do not? What is the nature of the agency that we display as we aim toward liberation and act?

Our sense of what is meaningful is tied directly to our sense of what is real. Humans need to feel that their hopes, beliefs, efforts, and relationships are grounded in something that transcends their own lives, something more substantial than their own personal concerns. This moreness is the sense of the real. Without that sense there is no meaning in life. In this episode we look at some of the work of cognitive psychologist and philosopher Dr. John Vervaeke of the University of Toronto, who has put forth several ways that we come to know the real, and hence to experience meaning. Along the way we’ll speak of Yoga as a system of embodied practice that addresses each of these ways with great facility.

Having established that what is most meaningful to us is that which is experienced as the most real, this episode delves into ways of imagining the specifics of realness itself. Drawing again on the work of Dr. John Vervaeke, we discover that realness is experienced along four dimensions. The real is purposeful, coherent, significant, and it grounds our sense of what matters. In the absence of these four things, humans begin to sense that they are in the grip of illusion, and the yoga traditions have much to say about the prevalence of illusion in our lives. The discussion ends with a few thought experiments geared toward demonstrating that we prefer reality to illusion. 

This episode investigates the idea that human beings manifest an essential nature defined by the ancient Yoga tradition. We suggest that the modern world has mistaken this nature and that we have been educated incorrectly as a result. This in turn has made it much more difficult to experience meaning, which we need in the same way we need things like food and water, breath, and love. We trace the plausibility of these ideas from both Eastern and Western sources: from ancient models of the soul in the Taittiriya Upanishad, which identifies our essential essence as bliss (Ananda), to the work of Dr. John Vervaeke of the University of Toronto’s Cognitive Psychology department. What if loss of meaning means loss of contact with our essence?

Season 5 continues our conversation about Yoga and the centrality of Awakening in its many manifestations. We look specifically at why things like self transcendence and awakening are necessary for humans, and how these things are intimately tied to our need for Meaning in life. We initiate an inquiry into the nature of liberation itself in order to speak about what kind of “thing” it is, rather than define it specifically as if it were a fact for instance. And lastly, we are hoping to steer these various themes in the direction of  Wisdom, which is central to the project of awakening. Along the way, we’re enlisting the help of not only traditional sources from the Yoga tradition like the Bhagavad Gita, The Vedas, Upanishads and the Tantras, but also cognitive and social psychology.

Yoga is a discipline that has a complex and accurate understanding of all the things we need to do in order to determine what is real so we can determine what we care about, the nature of our relations and therefore help us determine what we should do.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on modern, transnational, anglophone yoga, which has tended to emphasize the practice of asana over certain other techniques that were central to the Hatha tradition: e.g. shatkarmani, mudra, and etc. This emphasis is fueled by the influence of European systems of physical education, and the revival of the physical culture movement in India that they helped to spawn. T. Krishnamacharya (the Father of Modern Yoga) is a key influence on modern practice. His tenure at the Mysore palace was a time of great experimentation with regard to Yogasana, and his vision made its way to the west through many famous students. His imperative that Yoga is to be taught via an appropriate adaptation strategy relative to time, place, and culture remains a guiding principle here at the shala. (Vini-yoga)Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on Swami Vivekananda, a key figure who brought Yoga to the West. His political and spiritual leanings show a strong influence from British colonialism, including: Western (Greek) notions of rationality and more universalist interpretations of Christian doctrine. His legacy left us a polarization between systems of yoga oriented by his definition of raja (“royal”, superior), and those oriented toward the more gross-physical (in his estimation) concerns of the Hatha Yogins. We see this value system at work today when, for instance, “gym yoga” is disparaged as “unspiritual”, or we hear “it’s not about the asana.” We should be careful with such ideas...Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

The last episode on Siddha based practice looks deeper into two famous aspects of the subtle body: the chakras and the Kundalini. We discover a dizzying array of teachings concerning these matters, not all in agreement with one another. We also find that our modern notions of the chakras and the kundalini as endowments with which we are born is only half of the story, for each must also be created, or “installed” via dedicated practice. This is a paradox necessitated by the nature of the enlightenment endeavor, or what we have already called qualitative transformation in previous episodes, and which is also the central subject of many future episodes.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode elucidates the final stage of the Siddha’s alchemical endeavors, which is known as reversal, or “ulta sadhana”. In reversal, the breath, mind, and seed of the human being are coagulated into a stable substance and directed into the subtle body to be transformed into the nectar of immortality. We look closely at the nature of this process and the specifics of the subtle body itself, which is found to be lunar in its nature: an ebb and flow of spirit and essence, coming into and passing out of being like the waxing and waning moon in its journey across the night sky.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on the period that follows preparation and purification, which for Siddha based practices is known as immobilization. It turns out that the subtle sexual essences humans produce are also homologs of breath and mind. Breath, Mind, and Seed tend to evaporate and disperse quickly and must be caught and held in one place in order for the transformational process to proceed. The classic techniques of asana, pranayama, bandha, mudra etc are discussed as the means that drive this process.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on the period of preparation and purification that must precede the generation of the divine body and the emergence of its powers of transformation. We look closely at how preparation and purification are themselves patterned on the Vedic sacrifice, and specifically how the metaphors used to describe the process are those of fertility and gestation.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode is the first in a series that delves into what is known as “Siddha” yoga, which is a combination of indigenous Hindu Alchemy, Tantra, and Hatha Yoga. We discuss each of these areas as key sources for the ideological framework, the aims, and techniques of Modern practice. The images that emerge are those of mystical eroticism, in which all aspects of the universe are in an alchemical process of generating a subtle essence whose symbolic representation is that of divine and human sexual fluids. Via interaction with this sexual essence, the Siddha based traditions aim at the creation of an immortal body with the power to transform reality at any level.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on the life of the Buddha and the impact of his teaching in the Indian philosophical sphere. We tell a basic story of his life and journey to enlightenment, and detail the essence of his realization as the teaching of no-self (anatman), which represents a radical shift away from the atman based traditions that preceded him. We look at his concept of the Madhya-marga (“the middle way”), expressed in the four noble truths, and the eightfold path.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on the intersection of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, which is a key text for modern practitioners. We compare and contrast the aims and means of the two texts by way of the three great yogas, karma, jnana, and bhakti, which show up in new forms in the Yoga Sutra as the elements of Kriya Yoga, known as tapas, svadhyaya, and Ishvarapranidhana. Contrasts center around the place of devotion and surrender in the two texts.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!

This episode focuses on the central epic in Indian history known as the Mahabharata, the twelfth chapter of which is Bhagavad Gita. We look closely at the Gita as a great synthesis of the Vedic tradition of sacrifice and the mysticism of the Upanishads. The new way offered in the Gita is known as renunciation in action, which leads to devotion. Along the way we look closely at the three great paths known as jnana, karma, and bhakti yoga and how they prefigure our modern concerns.Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions here.Matt will be glad to answer you!