Threading Meaning and Making Now the Time (Written Essay Version, DYS #1)

Understanding the Method of Sūtra Study and the Value Implied Demystifying Yoga Series, Essay no. 1

Today we release the first recording and written essay combination in our new series called Demystifying Yoga.   Last week’s introduction describing the Series was published only in written essay form, but I thought it productive to offering the Series essays also as a pod/recording.   So many have time to listen but less time to read.

 

In our series I will take up important concepts, values, and practices from India’s yoga traditions and the history of Indian philosophy and literature.  If you find the material challenging that would please me more than if you find it too confusing to follow.   But I do expect that most will find these essays challenging, dare I say a bit demanding of time and effort.   That’s what it takes to study yoga seriously.

India’s philosophical and mythical worlds are complex, they are rich in possibilities and potential meanings, and they are determined to raise the bar, to demand something from us if we chose to become seekers of truth.  There’s nothing easy about this work, we’ll struggle and stumble, we’ll have to review again and again in order to follow the lines of argument and take up the path to learning.  Being challenged is going to be the ordinary state of affairs, so I’m not going to demur. 

I can’t make this simple unless it is but I can make this a bit more approachable and perhaps intelligible.  The original material in Sanskrit or other languages was not designed for every person, the authors are not reaching out to make their efforts accessible; instead they are participants in traditions of learning and our task as students is to invest and grow into the process.

It wasn’t much different for me those years ago in advanced Sanskrit classes at Harvard: if you could not keep up with the professor and the most advanced students in the class, you sat quietly on the side, not at the table.  Here everyone is welcome to the table, at least that’s my aim but I’m also beginning here with something of a disclaimer: these essays are supposed to take more than one reading because there’s a lot here to digest and most of it is likely unfamiliar to you.

I’ve always liked to say that anyone can learn this stuff because, well, I did and I’m just a fella’ from the swamps of Jersey who wanted to learn.   I hope you enjoy the recordings and the essays.  Do let me know what you think by leaving a comment or writing me a message.

Let’s have at it.   This one is called,

Threading Meaning and Making Now the Time

Understanding the Method of Sūtra Study and the Value Implied

Many of the defining resources in Indian philosophical and spiritual practice traditions are composed in sūtra format.  “Sūtra” literally means “thread” and it’s been posited that it has both a literal and metaphorical sense.

When these texts were composed and bundled as manuscripts there may well have been a thread holding the pages together (we’re not talking paper here until very late in the game, but the story of media material is another topic).  Indeed, we see historical examples of this.  There are bundles of pages threaded to form manuscripts with needle-sized holes for the threads that would bind them.

But it’s far more likely that the reference is to the form of composition itself, that the authors give us the essential thread of the idea with the implicit direction to create exposition in either oral or written commentary.  A sūtra is an aphorism, sometimes axiom, sometimes adage but necessarily a precept or truism composed because it contains something deemed to be of inestimable value.  The sūtra implies further the commentary tradition of exegesis and its process is another matter for us to demystify, so let us focus at present on work composed in the sūtra format.

At all sūtra texts are mnemonic usually meant to produce self-replication, thus memes constructed in the most succinct, pithy, and precise formulation possible, easy to remember and important by definition.  The long prose Buddhist sūtra discourses (or suttas, in the case of the Buddhist Pali canon, one of the three baskets of the Buddhist canon and meant to preserve the conversational teachings of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other luminaries) are not particularly terse or laconic.  Buddhist sutta/sūtra is in fact discourse, prose with plenty of memoizable tricks and twists, like cliches, skeletons, and other methods of repetition and familiarity, but not aphoristic.  Buddhist sutta/sūtra typically begins with a standard introductory formatting (“thus it was heard, by me” evam mayā śrutam) and proceed to recount in full-throated rhetoric its contents. 

We have here in the Buddhist use of sūtra the sense of a luminary’s teaching that is by definition partial, only a thread of what must be spun into a larger fabric and at once must be threaded through the needle of understanding.  We are presented with more dissertation and discourse, sermons and lectures as it were which for all their enigmatic meanings are not deliberately reduced into ZIP files.

The more typical meaning of a sūtra is just that: a condensed, zip-file that requires a certain set of techniques and keys required to unlock and expand in order to reap the more fruitful lucubration.  To put this in Sanskrit terms, sūtras are seeds, bīja, and to cultivate them is to experience the information latent within come into manifestation.  Just how deftly and distinctively we can grow these seeds will demonstrate how vast the possibilities contained within them.

The image of the aśvattha or banyan tree comes to mind here: from the bīja that is contained in the form of the sūtra comes branches that reach up to bear fruit only to re-root themselves from those very branches.  This might well describe how sūtra texts formulate into lineages and traditions that reproduce themselves from a shared source.  Traditionalists can plant the same seed with a sūtra text or, as it were, sew with the same thread and yet spin out different branches of interpretation and practice that root, regrow, reemerge as yet more from the same source.

It has long been a principle of Sanskrit composition, as the grammarians and logicians put it, “the economy of but half a syllable is more auspicious than the birth of a child.” (cf., Paribhasendushekara).  This citation from the prolific and often prolix 18^th century Naggoji Bhatta, expert in Dharmasastra, grammar, and equally prolific as a commentator comes late in our story of Sanskrit’s preoccupation with economy of language but clearly, we are not meant to confuse the fewest number of words required with necessarily using few words.

At issue is not brevity but pointedness and, when possible, condensation.  Philosophical works, like those exegeting grammar, were supposed to require explanation, not only to comprehend the points being made directly but to implicate further the prerequisites, contexts, and direction of thought and thus the need for further study.  Things of value, like the need for a composition that collects and preserves critical matters, never stand on their own as such: they demand a more comprehensive curriculum of learning, annotation, and appreciation.  We’re being invited into worlds of learning, not islands of thought. 

Thus, even the sūtra compositions that are wholly committed to concision, squeezing every syllable of every word for the elixir of meaning, insisting none be excused that must be present just as none be adventitious, sometimes make their point by deliberating leaving out even critical words.

For example, while the verb ‘to be’ is often deleted from ordinary Sanskrit sentences, it’s not uncommon for a commentator on a sutra  text to gloss ambivalent terms not only to clarify but to expound, thus they will use the phrase iti artha, ‘this is the meanng’ or iti bhavah, ‘this is what is implied’ to help out the reader.

But even more telling is when they use the phrase iti śeșah, which means ‘this is the remaining [word, grammatical form, etc.] that one needs to complete the sentence or conjure the proper meaning.  Important things are being left out on purpose.  This suggests further the importance of the teacher to know what is iti śeşah, “thus the residual required,” and to be indispensable to the educational model. 

There are other important features of the sūtra method that feature more than mnemonics, educational methods and standards, and the cultural value of learning with others rather than reading or studying alone.  Certain words, letters, or the language itself can provide and suggest values.  The meaning of the text is complemented by an ethos, a suggestion of subtle connotations and significance that comes through the process of language itself.

Thus, while the Rg Veda is not written in sūtra-format, its first word is Agni, the name of the god of fire (thus the cognate in English ignite, the Latin ignis) and this word, this letter “a” that begins the word critically sets forth the notion of the message and messenger (the role of Fire in the ritual sacrifice). Even more pungently that Agni begins with the vowel ‘a’, the first letter of the Vedic and Sanskrit languages means we are at the auspicious beginning.

Rg Veda sets the first known precedent that such value to be recorded and remembered is auspicious, that in context and purpose the endeavor being set upon is remindful of benefit, import, desirability, and distinction.  Just the letter ‘a’ is enough then to suggest that everything that follows will further the trajectory of the auspicious as the vital condition to be recognized, imputed, and fostered.  We must set out on the right foot, as it were, and ( forward the power of the auspicious as a feature of reality itself.   Starting with ‘a’ is to begin at the beginning but it is also to arrive at the all.

In the Buddhist Perfection of Wisdom literature, the famous text declaring the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines (itself a concision of 25,000 or more) can be reduced to perfection in one letter, the letter ‘a’.  Similarly, later Tantric Śaivism will describe the sublime Śiva not only as anuttara, literally unsurpassed, ‘none higher’---the word itself of course beginning with the letter ‘a’ but simply as ‘a.’  To wit, all of reality begins, persists, transforms, and resolves as nothing more than this most essential, primal expression of essence in the form of the first letter.

The principle of auspiciousness is everywhere to be found in Indian culture’s ethos and habits meant to confer value, worth, importance, and power.  And we see it again appear when we turn to way sūtra is used to condense and then expand auspiciousness itself in the form of work worthy of the effort.  Sanskrit writers must justify the very act of composition for the expense of time, emotion, and intellect it exacts.  It is a crime against the urgency of importance and worthwhile interest to waste a syllable or to fail to mark the endeavor’s auspicious purpose.  Auspiciousness is no mere formality of commencement, it is a demand, a precondition and stipulation of the effort to be expended.

A fine example of this sensibility of the use of language as a form of spiritual practice appears in the first of Patanjali’s Yogasūtra: atha yoganuśānam, ‘Now let us study yoga together.’  The 194 sūtras that meet will the expectations of the format: each one will require exegesis to be understood more fully, some will require us to know “missing words” (the iti śeşa piece), others will be pregnant with ambiguity such that meaning will require pause, contemplation, or even practical implementation in order to be appreciated.  Without at least the Vyāsabhāsya commentary (which may be from the author/compiler of the sūtras themselves, cf. E. Bryant’s superb translation), it’s fair to say that the Yogasūtras would be nearly unintelligible, which is not to say that Vyasa provides a definitive interpretation but rather that he provides a certain sine qua non for even the simplest rendering. 

But there’s more.  The text begins with atha, ‘thus’ or ‘now’ and as importantly with the letter ‘a’.  The letter is auspicious, the word is auspicious, and the meaning implications are myriad because as part of a sūtra we can pull on this thread and unravel more possibility and value.  We’ve already considered how just the utterance of ‘a’ in atha can be compared the ‘a’ in Agni in Rg Veda, how the first sound of the alphabet is itself the signifier of the auspicious.  To this we can now add the auspicious value of atha even before we consider its purpose in the proposition put forth in the sūtra.

Even if atha had only marginal significance we might expect it to be the first word of Patanjali’s text.  The Mimamsa-sūtras begin with the sūtra athāto dharma-jijñāsā, the Vedānta-sūtras begin athāto brahma-jijñāsa, and even the famous medical text the Charaka-samhita begins thus, athāto’ dirghajivitīyam adyāyam vyākhyāsyāmah, “Now let us make an exposition of the chapter concerning longevity.”

Plainly what all of these works mean to convey that atha confers blessing, invites fortuitous study, fosters goodwill, and that this project of value warrants proceeding forward.  “Atha” is principally a signal of auspiciousness, and it makes itself indispensable as such to be included in the sūtra, which we must recall frowns upon the redundant, gratuitous, or avoidable.  Atha shows it worth by declaring without saying as much that the auspicious is generative in the letter, the word, the utterance.

Thus the meaning of atha may well be secondary to its being mangala, auspicious, though its sense of now is also worthy of consideration.  To put the matter simply, atha aims at four kinds of time.

1.     Now means the linear progress from the past to the present: you are ready now because of all that has come before---your previous births, your karma, your current state of readiness in qualification (adhikāra).  Thus, linear time brings the consequences of the past into the present and the text declares in this first word that you have arrived, you’re ready, your time has come because of all you have done to get here.  Now presumes you have the prerequisite knowledge and capacities; you’ve done the work that is required to have arrived at now.  (We can further the conversation of adhikara or qualification on another occasion.)

2.     Now means the moment and that there is not a moment to lose.  If you are ready for this teaching, then the fact that there is a sūtra text determined to make its value known is in this very moment the task before you.  Life is precious, the situation is rare, the value of this work has been declared in no uncertain terms as now.

3.     Now means that the truths preserved here are trenchant by virtue of their application again. In other words, what we are invited to now comes to us from a place of truth and value that must be regenerated by study and practice.  In this sense now applies to a cyclical sense of time; the time has come around again, now is the season.

4.     Last, now speaks to a recursive power of both time and truth.  When something is true and valuable it is (and has been) always so (at least that is an implication).  Truth replaces itself with itself, thus it is recursive insofar as in the experience of now we can experience what has always been the case.  When Patanjali says that now we will study yoga he also means that the yoga we are studying has always and will always be efficacious.  This is no mere yoga for just now but for the ages and what makes that so is that now refers to the recursivity of truth and time.  This means a kind of eternal or perennial truth is being proffered now but that these facts, truths, practices, etc. are efficacious because they are true, will never not be true, and will reappear again even as they have now.

These implicit claims in Patanjali’s opening salvo tell us nothing about whether his arguments are sound or his practices actually productive of his claims and experiences.  In other words, we can obviously contest the merits of Patanjali’s sūtras for their content but what we learn from the very first word is that he is part of a long tradition in which the concept of auspiciousness (mangala, bhadra, śrī, śiva, svasti, kalyāna, etc.) is inceptive, that this value precedes his presentation.

Atha is the embryonic expression of a purpose and purport that will bear fruit.  We also learn that atha serves to situate the student of the work in time, place, and a context of learning that confers privilege, assumes responsibility, and implies accountability to the task.

Now is not to be tossed aside as a mere trope, an inaugural expression that initiates but does not also convey meaning and purpose.  Patanjali wants to know, as do the authors of other sūtra texts, if you are ready for the difficult work it takes to unravel the complexities of the world, declaring it is worth your while and your time, and wanting to know if you are up to it.  Is now a good time?