Balance? What's Yoga Got to Do with Balance?
Rajanaka Newsletter for April 6th 2024
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Aho’ Rajanaka,
I hope this finds you well.
Buddhism resumes today, Saturday at 5pm on Zoom. Link below. Join us!!
Mahabharata is tomorrow, also at 5pm Eastern.
Tantric Ganesha’s Thursday lecture has landed and can be had for the listen.
SUMMER CAMP! The email came last week, it’s posted on our Substack. Joining Substack is free! Come to Bristol this July. You’ll have so much fun.
Details about all of these below, including registration (which is just come to Zoom!) and tuition (please). Come. Drop a rupee and join us for the conversation.
It’s sure been sumthin’ in this past week though not as weird as an earthquake in New Jersey. We lost Old Man Willow, the huge (and I mean huge) willow tree dvarapala door-guardian at the entrance to our drive. I will count rings and measure girth to estimate age, but this was a sad matter---no one was hurt, other than losing electricity for a few hours, you know what matters when you grieve even for something like this. Though a small matter in the scope of things, small matters matter too.
This week an undergraduate in my Yoga Philosophies class asked a question right outta’ the contemporary yoga playbook. She said, “this story you are telling of Śiva as the Lord of Yoga seems so extreme, unbalanced. In my yoga class the teachers talk about balance all the time, so what’s going on?”
Ah, ‘twas brilliant. I first told her that Modern Postural Yoga as I think we might distinguish it, is the most significant innovation and appropriate of traditions in the last 100 years. What we learn in yoga classes reflects current concerns but may not be consonant the views of the past. Of course, in 1893 the great Swami Vivekananda, as a true Vedantin called most “posturalists” charlatans and imposters---ironic since Yoga Journal in 1993 marked the 100 year history of yoga by citing Vivekananda who really had nothin’ good to say about the body-centered fakirs in the bazaar. But let’s get back to balance because he didn’t talk about that any more than others have.
Let me overstate the case because that’s how I continued my reply to the undergraduate student yogi. I said, “Yoga has nothing to do really with ‘balance’, not as least in any way we mean that word today. Hindu yoga is better understood as fire and ice, bringing oneself all the way to the boundary, and asking how much more can be had. Buddhists aren’t looking for a middle ground but rather to reject extremes, which perhaps ironically is no less committed to making their case---the middle is not a balancing act. That said, we can look at what the primary sources say.”
Yoga samatvam ucyate, “yoga is called equanimity” is likely the definition that comes closest to “balance.” This is from Bhagavadgita 2.48 and in the etymology of the word sama we can find a cognate to our English word “same”---though word sourcing doesn’t tell us what words mean in context. There’s little sense here or elsewhere that yoga means finding ways to balance one’s experience, be that physical, emotional, or cognitively.
[^^this is Vyagrahpada, our pal the sage Tiger Paws.]
The equanimity posited here is about having the ardor, clarity, and sheer chutzpah to face life’s vicissitudes with aplomb, stoical indifference, and all at once, no less head-on. Just ‘cause you’re calm doesn’t mean you’re balanced. The “sama” or balance is all in the burn, the tapas, the ardor, and while that might be moderated, it is no less an injunction to put every bit of yourself into every bit of everything.
Thus the apparent calm, the resultant “balance” is not harmonic counterbalance, evenness, or parity; rather, it’s no longer permitting the maelstrom of the world to shape life’s conditionality and that equanimity reflects a state of ultimate immunity, extrication from the worldly problematics. You can’t be balanced if you’re not balancing with. I can’t think of a yoga tradition that wants to make a balanced deal with the worldly storm.
Yoga insists instead we engage. Of course, it’s only inviting insistence. Up to you. In traditional sources we’re not being invited to live a “balanced life” that places family, work, personal needs into a perspective of priorities to create more ease or comfort. Rather, we’re acknowledging that a life led without focus, determination, and ardor will decide for us what is possible.
So, what about all of those postures standing on one-leg (or worse)? Isn’t that balance? Well, perhaps if we think that the ability to sustain such positions (now think of them as not only physical but all the rest) is an epiphenomenon, a kind of secondary coincident, an adjacent result.
To put it simply, balance is not the point but a consequence of…the burn, the tapas, the ardor required to make the connection (yoga). Making it look easy is not irrelevant but as far as I can tell there are precious few actual sources in historical yoga that encourage us to live “a balanced life” in the way I hear that phrase banted about. It may not be the lesson we prefer to hear but yoga is more avidity, determination, and ferocity than easeful perspective. Sigh. Were it otherwise. Life gives no quarter, which is not to say we can’t make some.
If this sounds as exhausting as our politics, the truths of climate change, and the rest of impending mortality, we can expect relief to the degree that we engage---and sometimes engaging deeply is withdrawing plenty. Again, I’d have a hard time seeing that as “balance” but either way, stay in the fray, don’t give us because we have each other. We’re gonna rage on, calmly.
Our studies in Buddhism have come a long way, I think, in understanding how early traditions describe the perspicacity, sensitivity, and astute empiricism that characterizes theory and practice. Today we’ll take these teachings further---into history, into ideas and insights, into practices so that we can appreciate further how Buddhism is part and parcel of yoga traditions that invited us to care, commit, put our all into living. When we learn from the sources we can decide for ourselves what we want to take to heart. We have a several more sessions ahead.
Time: Saturday, 5pm Eastern
ZOOM link: https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268
Recordings: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yted2ht281tfrn74ig0c2/h?rlkey=d9ut9dmpqvrha6d3aevq32r6j&dl=0
Last Thursday’s Tantric Ganesha Practicum took up the subject of bija mantras. There’s much much more to come.
Time: Thursday, 7pm Eastern
ZOOM link:
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/98183733328
Recordings:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/aj2q0pqv6k62vaxy2h810/h?rlkey=ag6ijieez888x4yi9kjggthq2&dl=0
Details about tuition and other matters are below the line, where you can find all sorts of good stuff.
Join Rajanaka Substack, it’s free and if become a paid subscriber you’d do a good thing for our causes and community.
Talk soon. In the meantime, may the ledger sheet be ever so to your advantage whenever that’s the best thing you can do for all involved. Take care!
Saprema, Douglas
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Buddhism: Origins & Evolution, Philosophies and Practices
For 12 Weeks we will study the origins and development of Buddhism in south Asia. This course will give you a solid foundation in how the Buddhist tradition began its journey into a world religion. We’ll focus on Indian Buddhism and cover the development of early traditions, the sources of the Pali Canon that form the core of “early” mythology, theory, and practice, and the evolution that brought about the Mahayana or Greater Vehicle, and at last Tantric Buddhism. (After this course, we’ll look further into Buddhism’s development in southeast Asia, Tibet, China, and Japan. But first we need a solid groundwork.) If you took a class like this in college, then it’s probably been a long time since. If you never had that opportunity, I think you’ll find this kind of study deeply satisfying both intellectually and personally. We’ll do the facts, naturally, we’ll take history and the resources of learning seriously---what is the deep background, how do the stories and texts, the earliest artifacts, and the philosophies of practice evolve? And we’ll take to heart what Buddhism in its core traditions have to say to us. There will be a syllabus and readings, or you can just listen along and take it in as you please.
Buddhism will begin on Saturday, February 3rd. There will be 12 Sessions, each about 90 minutes.
All Sessions are at 5pm Eastern and will use the same Zoom link (the same as all Saturdays past).
A downloadable Archive of recordings will also be available each week. If you can’t make the Sessions live on Zoom, this is a good option, you can listen anytime.7
Tuition for all Sessions in advance is $120. This includes access to the Archive and all study materials. Otherwise, tuition for individual Sessions will be $12. Please use the usual methods: Venmo (douglas-brooks-8 or svcourses@gmail.com) or PayPal (svcourses@gmail.com). If you can’t afford tuition, please let me know because you are always welcome.
Scheduled Dates:, Feb. 3, Feb. 10, Feb. 17, Feb. 24, March 2, March 9, March 23, March 30, April 6, April 13, April 20.
Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come! https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268
The Dropbox Archive will include all lectures and handouts here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yted2ht281tfrn74ig0c2/h?rlkey=8j5bvomcf9ate80us41n2vj25&dl=0
(To listen to any Dropbox you must download the file to get the entire recording. No risk, no cost.)
2. Thursday Evenings at 7pm Eastern for Winter Semester: February-April 2024
Practicum: Ten Tantric Ganeshas with Visualization, Mantra, & Meditation Practice
Each week we will study a particular form of the elephant-headed Ganapati with particular reference to his nuanced expression and spiritual purpose. Who is this Ganesha? How do we visualize him? What is his mantra and what does it mean? What is his purpose within a spiritual practice? In Tantric practice, there are dozens of forms of Ganesha, each associated with different kinds of insight and empowerment. We’ll take up ten and see them as a kula, a collective, such that the practice can focus on any one of these forms or as a group. We have studied Tantric Ganapati before but have not considered the work as a practicum: this means we’ll be looking through the lens of practice in ritual and meditation with a particular focus on the subtle mantra body. No prerequisites, just bring your open heart!
The Practicum will begin on Thursday, February 1st. There will be 10 Sessions, each about 90 minutes.
All Sessions are at 7pm Eastern and will use the same Zoom link (the same as all Thursdays past).
A downloadable Archive of recordings will also be available each week. If you can’t make the Sessions live on Zoom, this is a good option, you can listen anytime.
Tuition for all Sessions in advance is $100. This includes access to the Archive and all study materials. Otherwise, tuition for individual Sessions will be $12. Please use the usual methods: Venmo (douglas-brooks-8 or svcourses@gmail.com) or PayPal (svcourses@gmail.com). If you can’t afford tuition, please let me know because you are always welcome.
Scheduled Dates: Feb. 1, Feb. 8, Feb. 15, Feb. 22, Feb. 29, March 7, March 21, March 28, April 6, April 13.
Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come!
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/98183733328
The Dropbox Archive will include all lectures and handouts here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/aj2q0pqv6k62vaxy2h810/h?rlkey=ag6ijieez888x4yi9kjggthq2&dl=0
3. Sunday Mahabharata, 5pm Eastern for Winter Semester: February-May 2024
For those of you who have been with us (or at least some of the time during these last two years), we carry on! Every week there is a complete story, a Session that stands on its own. You’ll have context and a way in each week even if this is your first time or you just like to drop in now and then. There is nothing better than Mahabharata. And I rarely speak in absolutes.
We begin on Sunday, February 4th. For this Semester we’ll have 15 Sessions, each about 90 minutes.
All Sessions are at 5pm Eastern and will use the same Zoom link (the same as all Sundays past).
A downloadable Archive of recordings will also be available each week. If you can’t make the Sessions live on Zoom, this is a good option, you can listen anytime.
Tuition for all 12 Sessions in advance is $120. This includes access to the Archive and all study materials. Otherwise, tuition for individual Sessions will be $12. Please use the usual methods: Venmo (douglas-brooks-8 or svcourses@gmail.com) or PayPal (svcourses@gmail.com). If you can’t afford tuition, please let me know because you are always welcome.
Scheduled Dates: Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Feb. 18, Feb. 25, March 3, March 10, March 24, April 7, April 14, April 21, April 28, May 5.
Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come!
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/314987250
The entire Mahabharata Archive is here ANYTIME: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wn3icbb418qcsrjqhk6ke/h?rlkey=nzdh43ld5xitb96duffoflhlg&dl=0
Oh the nuance.