Rajanaka Newsletter January 27 2025

We Need to Ask More of Ourselves and Our Yoga

Monday, January 27, 2025

Aho’ Rajanaka,

I hope this finds you well. Two weeks home from India, under the best of circumstances that's never proven to be a particularly soft landing. I’ll continue with Pilgrimage Diaries and other reports and our plans for study but we must address as well the turn of events.

This is not a letter about politics or the catastrophic climate change plain for all to see or even about world events. It is about how we need ways to engage these worlds with more capable definitions of yoga that don’t choose the bypass we might honestly prefer. Some of us will write or speak up, others will sing, dance, or draw. Look for what speaks directly to you when you’re having trouble sorting out the dross and hearing above the din.

I was listening to Chicago bluesman Otis Rush this morning. I Can’t Quit You, Baby. He was known for his “slow burn,” the way he could make notes soulful, mournful, push matters past worldliness and yet never leave this world, the world of connection, joyful or blue. I think we’re going to need some slow burn and take some time to cool down. Yoga is as much lyric set to music as it the space between notes. Lyrics, music, and room to hold the space in between---yoga’s never just one thing, it’s in relationships we create.

Well, I can't quit you baby
But I got to put you down for awhile
Well, you know, I can't quit you baby

It wasn’t so much denial as it was repulsion that followed from November’s election results. I did not need to follow every subsequent word---they have been telling us for years what they were going to do. If you turned off the news, you weren’t quitting or merely exercising privilege by turning to other matters---though I’d also not deny you the five stages of grief all bundled into one evening’s worth of “news.”

Well, I'm so tired I could cry
I could just lay down and die
Oh, I'm so tired I could cry

I too retreated into work and winter holidays from both necessity and a certain privilege of choice. And how could a few weeks reprieve prepare us for the torrents of madness we knew would follow?

What we need now is not altogether different from where we were that night; it is within our power to pledge continuance. We will answer to ourselves and to each other’s needs. If you feel safe, remind yourself that others do not. Your soul contains everything that has ever dwelt in human souls, all the gods and demons that have ever existed. They exist there as possibilities, wishes, dreams, for better and some for worse. But there is a difference between carrying the world inside you and living to experience those worlds. When these feelings turn from desire to necessity, you’ve arrived at your yoga.

It is just as important to know with whom we are engaging whether we are turning towards or away. I would not say I was surprised with America’s decisions; incredulity only leaves us less capable of formulating meaningful responses. When you are in effect powerless to effect the world that surrounds you, you need an even greater receptivity and a more vigilant redoubt to withstand the overwhelming desire to turn away or, worse, merely accept or rebuff reality.

I could just lay down and die
Yes, you know you my only darling
You know you my desire

When the world provides no model for a future that includes you, you must become the example that provides the presence you need. There’s no opting out that isn’t another denial, another kind of nihilism. If you go inside yourself to meditate, if that soothes or illumines you, let it prove an opportunity to refresh, for you to become more receptive and capable, better prepared to return to the world. The world in all its tumult, strife, and complexity is your chance to make the difference only you can make.

You know it hurts me deep down inside
When you hear me holler, baby
Oh, you know your my desire

Our adversaries are not merely nihilists, they are as much sadists. A good friend of mine pointed this out the other day. She put it so clearly. They need to create pain in others because to attack what is sacred to us is their thrill. They want us to reject our will, bend to theirs; not merely reject our values and boundaries but replace them. It’s up to us to decide what power they have.

Let’s be clear: they don’t have to try to make us hurt though that is essential to their game. We’re going to hurt. But not for their reasons but our own. We feel because we choose a humanity of inclusion, we seek the facts that inform justice, and we have the need to put empathy before profit or personal pleasure. How can we not feel the pain they so gleefully inflict? We will not submit to their cruel desire to impose their worlds of pain. We will turn what we know we don’t entirely control into opportunities to break further into ourselves.

It’s no crime, no failure of character to feel your heart break. That is a great yoga. There is no path that cures the human condition of suffering. Ourcondition is our gift. Our limitations do not merely contain us, they empower us to keep what is true and real and valuable in view. Not every gift is joyful or happy, but all are part of the blessing to be alive. We’re not here to suffer any more than we can extinguish all suffering: we are here to experience what has always been true about this precious mortal life.

There may not be much more to understand about our opponents’ claims---why call them less? Do we diminish our humanity by denying what they have denied to so many? Even less to persuade, advise, or influence. But that does not mean we will emulate their tawdry example nor admonish ourselves with the feckless calumny that by “respecting” the outcome we must also respect those who’ve invited this horror. I have little to say to those for whom theirs is an acceptable “alternative” simply because it has won power. Power has never had a claim to goodness that is not its own constraint. We shouldn’t expect better of those who expect nothing more of themselves. We should expect better of ourselves.

I am content to live without more of their conversation while I applaud those who engage to resist their profligacy. We don’t deny their humanity by refusing their engagements; we remind them that being humane is a choice within each of us to make. It is to create a limitation, not to be defined by others who would limit our choices.

A “dialogue” requires good faith conversation and acknowledges that tolerance must not become another form of moral indigence or compliance with sordid dishonesty. In the end, you must live with yourself, not only the neighbors. Forgive me but I’m not on board with those who will not commit to mercy or truth or even a splinter of decency. If you want a yoga, a life of deep engagement with life, it’s going to demand something from you: time, commitment, a willingness to learn that happiness is not a goal but a gift to savor as meaning unfolds.

I have heard some say “just do your yoga” as if this could mean that some blithe insouciance, that sheer will can relieve the burdens of conscience and consequence. When you look inside make sure you see the world we share.

We going to have to take to heart the all that is happening in our world whether it comes in torrents or treacle and we’re going to have to put up meaningful boundaries, disallows and exceptions, impeachments and alternatives, even when no one cares to listen. Our efforts might well smack of futility and ineffectualness but that is not the same as meaninglessness. Meaning evaporates when we succumb to indifference.

Meaning becomes possible if we resist the notion that it depends on success rather than value. Sustain your worth. Ask yourself what’s worth your effort, your heart and soul, your tears and toil. The rest will come, success and failure, but no matter the result you will have not forsaken your soul.

Results matter, do not mistake me. But results we must accept ask more from us than tolerance. If this sounds like conflict will find a place, then perhaps such a collision of facts will inform our deeper engagement---because that too is yoga. Since when did yoga mean ‘everything was gonna be alright?’ If you want a life free of conflict, you’ve chosen to stop learning what more is possible. Don’t forsake the courage to seek. It’s in us all.

We don’t yet know where all this madness and cruelty will lead but the most vulnerable among us will need every bit of relief we might provide. The fact is America---and with it the world---has made a tenebrous turn. As tempted as I am just to give up because there’s little at present we can do to stop them, to defeat nihilism we must continue to bring forward the example of grace.

Quite simply, grace is to commit to your gifts no matter you succeed or fail. Grace is a quality of the heart, a distillation of the mind’s engagement with truth, a trial of the body to step fully into life--- because courage like commitment is not virtue but the ground on which all the rest will depend. Grace comes from a human soul’s desire to make connection, what the Gita tells us we must do to be human: stand in yoga (yogasthah).

By the end of the week we’ll have a schedule and a plan for Rajanaka Sessions coming in February.

Forgive me this long, preachy missive but better to suffer the sententious than pretend we are immune or will somehow overcome the madness and malaise armed with belief or faith. Worse still, both. We’re going to need to light a different fire.

What we need is the ardor, the tapas, that withstands the torrents of insensibility, that sets ablaze our intentions and motivations, that illumines and warms the heart to act--- and when we can’t do much or we are thwarted, then we will become as citations of humane commitment and compassion no matter who claims the power over us. It will not be theirs to levy but ours to create.

Take care, a full schedule of studies and plans for a rich conversation---all before Friday. We will resume Rajanaka Zoom on February 13, 15, and 16. Details forthcoming.

With affection, saprema, Douglas