What's Yoga For? Got Artha?
'Cause Your Job is to Give'em What For
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Aho’ Rajanaka,
I hope this finds you well. Yoga’s modern traditions, especially in the past century, are among the most innovative in history.
Much of modern yoga has focused on creating wellness and healing, no matter how it defines its further purpose or goals. (And n.b., not having a goal is having a goal: it’s not having one. Zen on, you crazy yogin.) The object of such yoga may focus on the body, the heart, more rarely (to our chagrin, the mind), but its larger purpose is to address the human condition.
We’ll return to that in a moment but we can begin by asking what is yoga for? To say this in Sanskrit we would use the word Artha? Artha can be purpose or method, goal, meaning, objective, more commonly object or wealth, and even politics.
The Arthaśāstra attributed to the sage Kautilya is a manual of “political science” that in would make your hair stand on end by the ways it reminds us how we humans have treated one another since, well, ever it seems. (We will undoubtedly have to return to this meaning of Artha in the all too near future.)
Yoga has been all of Arthas----did you know that there are documented armies of renunciate sadhus serving in wars? Yoga is about engaging with Artha, and that too invites us to more complexity and reflection. Sometimes our engagement invites demurral, that is, the admonition not to connect in certain ways so that we might instead (re-)connect in others. Your call.
We might be running towards and other times away, but we’re going to find ourselves ever in the middle of things because no matter which way we turn we must deal with ourselves. How we decide to address the world that both supports and consumes us depends on the yoga we are practicing. Do we head for the hills? Disengage the worldly? Do we go deeper into the fray? And at what cost?
What we want for ourselves may not be what the world is asking from us. What we must then answer to is who do we want to be and who could we be if we knew how to ask for more. Yoga teaches us how to ask what matters and what then. Answers may not be as important as the asking.
A condition is not necessarily curable or antidotal though the liberation traditions think it so. We can also be therapeutic, restorative, or reformatory. We might in fact simply be committed to a demulcent understanding that reframes the world so that we might simply live, perhaps live better with what is. When is a renovation or revision an advancement? What more is worth our time?
Sometimes everything depends on how we decide to ask, to seek, to go about the future before us when we don’t know what is to come, recognizing that certainty doesn’t feature and may not help. This is when yoga is at its best because we may not be able to determine the results, but we can choose how to live in the middle of things. If this sounds like where we are in our politics and our finances, in our family and work lives, with respect to goals and meaning, then all of those Arthas are your best yoga.
We’ve been continuing our studies of Buddhism on Thursday evenings and what I love best about Buddhist yoga is that it refuses to shrink from the difficult tasks that define the human condition. By making the first of their Noble Truths duhkha (usually “suffering,” of course, but more like the inevitable reality of things gone amiss), they turn directly to trauma as our first and ordinary condition.
Suffering is not optional, no matter the internet meme that claims otherwise, though most Buddhisms will claim it curable by extinction (literal nirvana). Whether we agree with their ultimate Artha----that we can indeed relieve ourselves from conditional reality’s traumas---is a matter we mean to discuss further. But we must admire their willingness to face our prospects head-on, with seriousness, and with more than a tincture of promise and aspiration.
We need not feel helpless if we are willing to bring ourselves wholly to the truths of our shared conditions. We’re going to explore further in the weeks to come how Buddhist traditions----all of them yogas---advance their strategies and claim experiences that put us in positions to deal with a world in which extremes are so dangerous and the middle some better possibility. The Middle Way is never mediocre, only occasionally moderate, and audacious in its affirmation of what middle can provide.
Today we will have our second Session of the Lotus Goddesses, the Sixteen Laksmis. (All Sessions are recorded so you can have them all and each Session stands on its own. Just come!) These are the Artha Goddesses. And in contrast to the Buddhists, their aim begins not with trauma as such but with the radical claim that in the middle of our traumatic human condition lies a celebration, a wonder and beauty that fetes and frolics as our innermost human triumph. We will suffer humanly, She will remind us with clarity and candor, but our Artha, our purpose while we can is to learn how to revel, honor, and rejoice in the gifts of life, and importantly how to bring our gifts to others and reveal them in all. The Lotus Goddess won’t go back. She insists we move forward and let the mud-born lotus find its nourishment in the deep fires of a moistening heart. We meet the first of the kula of sixteen today, Saundarya Laksmi. Join us at 5pm Eastern. Links below. Recording Archive also.
Epic Mahabharata takes on the compelling task, an Artha of the inside out this week. Rāma is not the Ramayana but is Ramayana from inside the riddlesome middle that is Mahabharata. We will be telling this important book of the Book of the Forest and you are welcome every time, any time.
Yoga really is about every Artha, every kind of Artha. The genius of yoga is that you get decide for one or all, some or none. That is why yoga is, as Krsna says in the Gita (2.50), yogah karmasu kaushalam, that is, “yoga is creating skillful experience.” Let’s make that happen.
As ever, with affection, saprema, Douglas
PS
HERE’S ALL THE LINKS
Rajanaka Fall Sessions: Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays on Zoom
Our aim is, as it has always been, to develop an appreciation of the sources in their original contexts and to ask how these teachings can inform and address our own lives.
· Thursday at 7pm Eastern: Buddhism in the Mahayana and Vajrayana Tantra
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/98183733328
· Saturday at 5pm Eastern: Fulfilling the Lotus of the Heart, The 16 Laksmis of the Shakta Tantra
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268
· Sunday at 5pm Eastern: The Mahabharata Finale in the Forest
Thursday Buddhism, 7pm
Oh Buddhism, how we love thee. You welcome our better angels, poke our inner bear, and nurture heart and mind with desireless passion and selfless self.
Our studies of Buddhism will focus on the philosophies and practices of the Greater Vehicle traditions in India and the way these visionary teachings evolve, expand, and mature into the Lightning Bolt Vehicle, the Vajrayana that is Tantra. We’ll be able to develop our understandings by examining how early Indian Buddhists adapt and elaborate, cultivate and ripen the teachings in the centuries following the historical Śakyamuni Buddha. How did Mahayana develop and why? How did they create consonance and divergence with the early practices and philosophies? This study will invariably lead to Tantra and in its incipient Buddhist forms, Tantric theories and practices become foundational to the expansions we will eventually see in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. Our focus this Fall Session will be on the original sources in India. These teachings create an incredible depth of perspective both for understanding the histories of yoga and for our own personal spirit. No previous familiarity is required.
Registration: You register for the Sessions merely by attending live or accessing the archive. Tuition is on the honor system. Each Session runs about 90 minutes.
All Sessions are at 5pm Eastern and will use the same Zoom link (the same as all past Saturdays past). A downloadable Archive of recordings is available for all completed work. If you can’t make the Sessions live on Zoom, this is a good option, you can listen anytime.
Tuition for all Fall Sessions (from September through December) is in advance is $150. This includes access to the Archive and all study materials. Otherwise, tuition for individual Sessions will be $15. 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.
Zoom: Our Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come! https://rochester.zoom.us/j/98183733328
The Dropbox Archive will include all previous and current Session recordings and handouts here in reduced form: https://bit.ly/3xJs6cz
(To listen to any Dropbox you must download the file to get the entire recording. No risk, no cost.)
Dates: There are 12 Sessions beginning September 5, 12, 19, 26, October 3, [10 is fall break, no class], 17, 24, 31, November 7, 14, 21, December 5 is the final Fall Session
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Saturday Session, 5pm: The Lotus Goddess, the 16 Laksmis of the Shakta Tantra
Here is a rare and exceptionally beautiful teaching of the Goddess from the south Indian Tantric tradition and the practices of Rajanaka.
The Sodasi Laksmi or Sixteen Laksmis form are a kula or group of goddesses that form a fulfilling lotus (purna-kamala). Laksmi appears in nearly all particular Hindu deity traditions---Saivas, Vaishnavas, and Shaktas---but here She is indeed very rare and distinctive. This grouping is not to be confused with the well-known Asta or Eight Laksmis. The teaching here comes straight from the Shakta traditions of embodying identity: we are invited to see the goddess as ourselves, the world, culture and nature. She is more than you, something like you, also just you. Taught within the tradition as meditation and puja, this is what Appa called “thinking ritually” meaning that this rich philosophical spirituality was offered in symbols, forms and images, objects and practices. This is performance philosophy, contemplative reflection, rich suggestive examination that you can take to heart. We will begin with the essentials and work our way carefully through this process. These Fall Sesssions will undoubtedly continue into the Spring to create a year-long course but each and every Session will stand on its own. There will be, of course, recordings and a complete archive, you can drop in, catch up, have it all on your own terms. I will provide all the materials you need for this work since the original material is likely not available elsewhere. This is a treasure trove. We have the map, we know where to dig, and the results will speak for themselves.
Tuition for all Fall Sessions (from September through December) is in advance is $150. This includes access to the Archive and all study materials. Otherwise, tuition for individual Sessions will be $16. 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.
Zoom: Our Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come! https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268
The Dropbox Archive will include all previous and current Session recordings and handouts here:
(To listen to any Dropbox you must download the file to get the entire recording. No risk, no cost.)
Dates: There are 11 Sessions beginning Saturday September 7, 14, 21, 28, October 5, [12 is fall break, no class], 19, 26, November 9, 16, 24, November 30 is the final Fall Session. We will resume in January!
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Sunday Mahabharata, 5pm
This will be our concluding semester for the epic Mahabharata, Book of the Forest. Every week there has been a different story, another page turned, every Session stands on its own. This has been quite a journey over two years and there’s still nothing better than Mahabharata. I rarely speak in absolutes, it’s unseemly but the Epic warrants distinction and exception at every turn. We will finish the Book of the Forest and then we will have a tour, a review, an encore of sorts that will give us another look and even some more.
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.
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. HERE is the entire Archive:
If you access the Archive honor the tuition if you have not already.
Zoom Link requires no special codes, just come!
https://rochester.zoom.us/j/314987250
The entire Mahabharata Archive is here anytime: https://bit.ly/3vYADrv
Dates: There are 11 Sessions beginning September 8, 15, 22, 29, October 6, 20, 27, November 10, 17, 24, concluding on December 1st.
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Rajanaka Live in Philadelphia at MahaYoga on November 2nd and 3rd. Come and join us! Here’s the registration link:
https://share.fitdegree.com/?share=65fccb4d2df6d
There are still a few spots open for India in December. All the information in on Rajanaka Substack. Write to me! Come! It’s the trip of a lifetime. Pilgrimage with fellow pilgrims.
There’s always more and more to say. Let’s call it here. Join us. I really miss you all. See you next week.
Saprema, with affection, Douglas
Join the Rajanaka Substack! Please! So much more to come. Here’s the link. https://rajanaka.substack.com/