mudita for a joyful state of heart.
Happiness is available. Please help yourself to it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Mudita is a Sanskrit and Pali word for the pleasurable feeling we get when we can take delight and actively rejoice in the good fortune, accomplishments, or luck of others, even when those things don’t seem to be of any direct benefit to us. A sort of vicarious joy, Mudita is the opposite of envy and the icky feeling of schadenfreude (taking pleasure in others' misfortune).
In Buddhism, Mudita is the third of the four brahma viharas (“divine abodes”). The brahma viharas are qualities of the heart that bring happiness to ourselves and others. We can practice these qualities so that over time, they become comfortable and familiar like home—the places where we come from in our relationships with ourselves and with others.
While Mudita often bubbles up liberally and with ease for close friends and family, Buddhist teachings encourage us to extend this feeling to all beings, even those we don't know, and yes, even to those who may challenge us a great deal.
Perhaps it is no surprise that there is no word for Mudita in English. To be sincerely happy for someone else’s success is just not that common in our hyper-competitive Western culture. Many of us go around living out the fiction that there is somewhere hidden a finite cache of happiness, and when someone else draws from the limited supply, it leaves less for us. Shall we challenge that story? Is that is really how happiness works?
What if we could rewrite the prevailing happiness narrative in a way that reflects the truth of our interdependence with the world around us.
Isn’t it true that the more happiness we can muster for the happiness of others, the more joyful we become? And that the joy we cultivate within ourselves contributes to the endless bubbling well of joy available to everyone?
Joyful people make more joy.
Besides, Mudita feels good. In contrast to gut-twisting feelings of judgment and comparison, and the choke holds of avarice and jealousy, Mudita feels clean, bright, and boundless.
The Buddha called Mudita a “rare and beautiful state.” Beautiful because it un-selfs us. And rare, because it is difficult to develop. Rare because it takes us to the uncomfortable place of judgment and comparison, the place where we think we know if they have joy, we don't. Mudita can be especially challenging to feel for people who have harmed us or our beloveds. It can also be tough to feel joy for the happiness of those who have made life choices different from our own. Can you be happy for a person who chooses to live lavishly when you’ve chosen a simple life, and may be feeling the pinch of it?
Joy is a practice, and cultivating Mudita for others with whom we have difficulty can help uproot resentment, and in its place grow us into deeper peace and higher happiness.
There's enough happiness for everybody. And Mudita helps us find a free joy ride. Friends, let’s practice.
metta for a kind state of heart.
To begin, a quick recap of last week’s reflections on the heart quality of Mudita.
Remember Mudita means delighting in the positive experiences of others—finding inner joy in for the joy out there—untainted by jealousy or envy. It is one of the four Buddhist Brahma-viharas, the pure and precious qualities of heart that promote inner joy, well-being, and spiritual growth.
The term Brahma-vihara is composed of two Pali words. First, Brahma. In the Buddha’s time, a brahma was a deity who lived in a heavenly realm. The word vihara means abode or dwelling. Brahma vihara can be directly translated as “abode of the divine”— and (this is beautiful!) it points toward the heart of one who has fully cultivated these qualities.
The other three brahma viharas are metta (lovingkindness), karuna (compassion) and upekha (equanimity).
But before we dive in to these, there’s one thing more from Buddhist teaching I’d like to highlight for now: each of these qualities of heart has one or more opposite qualities known as its "enemy.” The enemies of Mudita are envy, greed, schadenfreude. When we work to cultivate the Brahma-viharas, we are in effect sheltering, defending, or freeing our own hearts from the grasp of the “enemies” and the pain and discomfort they inflict.
About Metta. Put most simply, metta is wishing well for others. Often referred to as lovingkindness, metta is a friendly, gentle quality of heart that we are asked to offer all sentient beings, including ourselves. The Buddha taught thousands of years ago, and modern studies are confirming, that practicing lovingkindnes towards self and others is one of the most direct routes to happiness: it helps us feel more content in our relationships and enjoy better health. While we all have a natural capacity for kindness, sometimes we don’t take steps to nurture and express this capacity as much as we could, and that’s where practices such as the metta meditation we will explore in class this week can help.
Some look at Metta as the foundation for the other three Brahma-viharas. When Metta in our heart comes into contact with joy in the world, it becomes Mudita. This makes sense, right? When we are able to truly open our hearts to care for the wellbeing of another, it follows naturally that we will rejoice in their joy and the happiness they experience.
According to Buddhist teachings, the "far enemies” of lovingkindness are hatred, ill will and resentment. There is also a “near enemy” of Metta—love that is clingy and conditional. While this sort of attached love may share some of the beautiful qualities of lovingkindness, it is not the same as wishing someone well just for the sake of wishing them well (because our egos are wrapped up in this conditional love that is coloured by grasping and partiality).
To stoke us for this week’s Metta classes, let’s close with some teachings directly from the Buddha:
Monks, when the liberation of mind through lovingkindness is practiced, developed, resorted to, used as one’s vehicle, made one’s foundation, steadied, consolidated, and perfected, eleven benefits can be expected. Which eleven?
One sleeps happily.
One wakes happily.
One has no bad dreams.
One is loved by others.
One is loved by non-humans.
One is guarded by devas.
Fire, poison, or sword won’t touch one.
One’s mind becomes concentrated quickly.
One’s complexion becomes clear.
One dies with a mind free from confusion.
If no higher attainment is reached, one is reborn in the Brahma realms.
Wow. What good good things may be in store for us! Friends, let’s practice.
karuna for a compassionate state of heart.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV
In the last couple of classes, we’ve met Metta (lovingkindness) and Mudita (taking joy in the joy of another). As you may remember, these are two of the four Brahma-viharas, or divine states of heart that the Buddha points us to as being the surest way to find our innate sense of joy. Another of the Brahma-viharas is called Karuna in Pali, and in English, compassion.
Just as Mudita can be understood as the state of heart that arises when Metta/lovingkindness faces joy, Karuna/compassion is the quivering and soft expansion of heart that happens when Metta/lovingkindness faces suffering. Compassion is caring about all of the pain we are faced with, be it our own, or that of another.
Witnessing the suffering of others can be difficult, and a common reaction is to look away. Buddhists call this look-away tendency “aversion,” and recognize it to be a self-centred perspective that ultimately keeps the heart closed and hardened. Aversion is said to be the “far enemy of compassion.” The Buddhist teaching is that true joy requires an open heart, and so to the degree that aversion keeps our hearts closed, it will also diminish our joy.
Buddhism offers many Karuna/compassion meditations with which to cultivate the compassionate heart. The essence of these practices has us setting intention to open our hearts to suffering, rather than pushing it away. This may seem counter-intuitive. How, we may ask, could opening my heart to suffering make me a more joyful person? The teaching as I understand it is that the opening of heart is not circumstantial—the more it opens to suffering, the more open to joy it also becomes.
This said, opening to the suffering of others doesn’t mean we make their pain our own. The compassionate heart requires us to be present for suffering whenever, however and wherever it may come, and then simply to meet it with love, to offer care to the being experiencing the pain.
Sometimes the being experiencing the pain is ourself! And then the work becomes self-compassion! Treating ourselves with compassion involves accepting that there are parts of our personality and our lives that we may not be satisfied with, but we do not berate ourselves as we try to address them. It means that we are caring and kind to ourselves when we go through a difficult time, as we would be to a friend. When we are feeling down, it may help to recognize that we are not alone in the muck—all people have, have had, or will have such feelings—and with this sense of shared humanity, we may feel better able to meet our own challenges with curiosity and acceptance rather than rejection or self-judgment.
Most of us need so much help with self-compassion that it has become a science unto itself. If you are curious, I encourage you to listen to any of the talks or meditations of psychologist Kristin Neff, the leading expert on self-compassion.
Friends, let’s be kind to one another. Let’s be kind to ourselves.
uppekha for a equanimous state of being.
This week we meet the final of the four Brahma-viharas: Upekkha, even-mindedness or equanimity.
Equanimity might be felt as a soft but solid container of sorts, one that holds us steady as we pursue the heart-opening practices and open-hearted states of the other Brahma-viharas: lovingkindness (Metta), compassion (Karuna), and sympathetic joy (Mudita).
Equanimity may be understood as the quality of remaining grounded and in balance in the midst of the swirling everything.
It may be described with a collection of words that include acceptance, patience, and trust. With acceptance, we are able to separate our wishes for ourselves and others from what is reality in every moment. With patience, we do not trouble ourselves by clinging to stories about how somebody else should act or what life should be offering us. With trust, we are able to face with courage the challenges we are faced with.
Moving towards greater states of equanimity in our lives takes us closer to an abiding sense of joy, and also takes a great deal of practice. Pema Chodron writes:
To cultivate equanimity, we practice catching ourselves before feelings of attraction or aversion harden into the kind of grasping or negativity that compromises our stability.
Formal equanimity meditation is one way to practice. The practice involves maintaining a steady, non-reactive awareness of thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise and pass, without clinging to pleasant ones or rejecting unpleasant ones, and recognizing that both pleasant and unpleasant experiences are impermanent.
Time in Upekkha meditation may help us face the great and mundane encounters of our everyday lives with the awareness Pema Chodron is pointing to. With that awareness may come a letting go of the impossible need for control, and the ability to meet all experiences, whether pleasant or painful, with a calmly balanced attitude and a sense of ease.
An equanimous open heart that is present and accepting of life as it is, is not the same as an apathetic heart. With Upekkha we can care deeply and passionately, but even in the throes of those feelings, still be steady and non-reactive. Non-reactive does not mean non-responsive. We tend to react when we are ungrounded. From a state of Upekkha, we are able to respond well. Do you feel the difference?
One of the common phrases used in formal Buddhist equanimity meditation is “all beings are in charge of their own karma.” Although we may have compassion or wish well for somebody else, we recognize that the happiness and suffering of that other somebody is ultimately up to them. The corollary is also true: rather than recklessly letting our precious happiness ride on the actions and feelings of others, as a quality of heart, equanimity helps us to take our joy into our own capable hands. Understanding that each of us is responsible for our own actions and the results that follow may help us to foster a deeper sense of peace and non-judgment.
As we come nearer to this state of Upekkha, we may begin to wonder: what if happiness isn’t an emotion that bursts and flares like fireworks, and then just as quickly evaporates? What if happiness is in fact our most natural abiding expression? What if happiness isn’t waiting out there for life to fall perfectly into place, for me finally get whatever it is that I have been chasing? What if happiness is already here? Already and ever alive inside of me? What if just this, is enough for happiness?
What if just this, is enough?
Friends, let’s inquire!
mantra: say what?!
At the very outset of this current session on joy, we identified (and maybe even felt) joy to be an open quality that both begins with and sustains an open heart. We’ve since been looking to Buddhist teachings about the expansive states of heart called Brahma-viharis, and with our Brahma-vihari practices, inviting mantra into our physical yoga sequences. I’ve been fielding many questions about mantra, so I offer here a few words about mantra and why it may be worth practicing.
Unlike a prayer—which channels a hope at some entity that may be capable of interceding in favour of that hope—a mantra is not addressed at anything or anyone external. Mantra is entirely devoted to distilling one’s own hope to its clearest essence. Over practice with time, this distillation has the effect of transforming hope into intent, making it actionable.
A mantra is not a form of magical thinking. While there is often a tingling sense of magic to how hope-distilled-to-words often seems shift a situation by its very utterance, it is an entirely practical sort of magic. A mantra simply clarifies, concentrates, and consecrates intent. And all meaningful transformation springs from purposeful, devoted intent.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes about mantra:
A mantra is a kind of magic formula that, once uttered, can entirely change a situation. It can change us, and it can change others. But this magic formula must be spoken in concentration, with body and mind focused as one. What you say in this state of being becomes a mantra.
Friends, shall we speak the words and be curious?
the kleshas
avidya
We’ve worked through the Brahma-viharas, four states of heart that Buddhist traditions teach will bring enduring joy.
Let’s move on to consider yoga’s teachings on five states of being that make enduring joy impossible—the kleshas.
The word “klesha” is often translated from Sanskrit to mean “poison,” but softer touch commentators talk about the kleshas instead as “veils”— which I take to mean layers of gauzy acculturation that prevent us from seeing clearly the light at the very core of us all.
The age-old teaching from the sages of yoga is that in spite of all the shiny things we might accumulate in this life, when the kleshas have us several layers removed from our own inherent shininess, we will suffer. There’s a corollary: more clearly we see our inner light and the nearer we hold to it, even painful or dull outer circumstances might seem brighter.
Either way, it’s about parting the veils—or dissolving them completely—so that we might align ourselves with the light that is true, unchanging, and ever-present within us. And to act in accord.
We’ll explore each of the 5 kleshas over the next weeks. And as we do, we may discover how very very often our clear seeing may be clouded by these veils. And yet there’s good news, friends! Yoga does not abandon us in the deep darkness. Yoga gives us theory as well as practical tools we might use to find our way back to the light.
Let’s look at the first klesha, avidya. Many texts describe avidya as the trunk of the tree of suffering, with the other kleshas pretty much branching off of it. It’s a biggie.
The Sanskrit word vidya means true knowledge, a deep inner knowing and higher wisdom. The prefix ‘a-’ essentially negates that which follows, so in this sense we can understand that “a-vidya” refers to a lack of knowledge, lack of insight, or simple misunderstanding.
Yoga teaches that when the veil of avidya is before us, we don’t see reality, we see what we think is reality. The “reality” we think is made up of our past experiences, expectations, and what we have been taught to believe. Here, we become stuck at the frothy surface of our existence—believing that our thoughts are always true, certain that our perceptions reflect what is actual, and pulled here and there by our erroneous thoughts and perceptions. This wrong-seeing is difficult to overcome not because there’s so much to learn, but because there’s so much past conditioning to un-learn.
Yoga reminds us that our true nature is goodness, whole and complete. When we mistake ourselves for the part of us that is changing (our body, mind, emotions, thoughts, and sensations), we forget the eternal truth each one of us harbours. In our forgetfulness, enduring joy is elusive.
All practices of yoga are intended to lead us to clear seeing. Yoga’s most fundamental purpose is to lift the veil of ignorance or forgetfulness of our true nature. The very point of yoga is to reconnect those who practice with their original goodness and that same light in others.
Friends, let’s practice.
the kleshas
asmita
Last week we met to the first of yoga’s 5 kleshas, avidya. Remember that avidya refers to a lack of wisdom or insight, or general “wrong-seeing” and is the trunk from which the other 4 kleshas sprout like branches.
Today we meet the second klesha, a particular kind of wrong-seeing, called asmita. Just like the other kleshas, asmita blocks our joy.
Let’s look at the word: a-smita. The prefix a- negates that which follows. So asmita literally means not “smita".
What’s smita?
In very ancient Hindu mythology the word smita is used to describe “smiling.” In later texts the word smita develops to mean something like “expanding” or “blossoming.” To consider these descriptions of smita helps us understand its flip side, and how the veil of asmita obscures joyful living.
Commentators describe the state of asmita as “over-identification with self.” It’s the egoism that keeps us small—neither expanding, blossoming, nor really smiling. Asmita is the pinchy-faced way we get when we are shrink-wrapped up in I-ME-MINE-MINE-MINE; when we pin ourselves as the epicentre of an infinite and expanding Universe, and live as if it all revolves around us. We might recognize ourselves caught up in asmita when a disproportionate number of our sentences begin with the word “I,” and the only perspective we have to offer is how whatever topic at hand affects “me.”
Often, this is our ego talking. Ego is the voice that would have us elevate our own desires and struggles over and above the desires and struggles of others. It’s the bossy, stubborn part that also tends to resist change, heightens our fears, and declares the obstacles in our way to be insurmountable (all of which, of course, prevents our expanding, our blossoming, our smita).
The yogic teachings on asmita don’t ask that we somehow evaporate our ego, only that we recognize it for what it is—one limited source of information—and resist over-identifying with ego to the detriment of other inherent ways of knowing.
Yoga teaches that to over-identify with our ego is to suffer. Suffering comes since the ego always needs (and goes relentlessly seeking for) external approval that isn’t always there. And the suffering continues as long as the veil of asmita separates us from a sense of interconnectedness with everything outside of us—humanity and all of life in the cosmos. And we keep on in this lousy pinchy-faced state of suffering because asmita also separates us from the light of our True Nature. Over attachment to the ego-self keeps us from the goodness at our core.
I imagine we’ve all been caught up in asmita at one time or another, and so we may be able to remember how asmita feels in our body. Not smiling, not blossoming, not expanding. We know how closed and tight we hold ourselves when we are in a very selfish way over something; how chronically on guard our bodies become. As we become more seasoned yogis with increased body awareness, we get more skillful at noticing and deciphering these physical tensions, and hopefully, releasing them (with a smile).
What is one way to release those tensions and dissolve the veil of asmita? The practice of lovingkindness, or Metta.
Yes, back we come again to this simple (but not always easy) practice of well-wishing for others. We come back again and again because it is a practice that grows richer the more we invest. And a practice that contemporary Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg says may fundamentally change our very relationship to life. Practicing Metta, we overcome the ego’s selfishness and illusions of separateness, and replace that stuff with tremendous compassion and a sense of connection that has the power to dispel the wrong-seeing of asmita.
We have practiced Metta a couple of times in the last couple of sessions. Many find it to be sweetly calming and settling in the moment. Goodwill feels good, and extending it to others spontaneously generates more goodwill. Yes, and (big AND) it’s worth noting that many of us become surprisingly ruffled, unsettled or completely blocked when asked to send lovingkindness to people that challenge us a great deal. That’s good to notice, eh? Please remember that if you meet resistance or feel blocked in this practice, it’s not the end of Metta. To the contrary, it’s the beginning. Pema Chodron teaches that what feels like a blockage of lovingkindness is the very seed of blossoming in our hearts. Go there.
Go there and don’t be afraid to bring with you all of the tools you have learned from yoga. Slow, intentional breathing and easeful movement are ways to support you in clearing emotional blockages and getting unstuck from the vice grip of our own egos so that we may expand in new and astonishing directions.
Friends, let’s go see.
the kleshas
raga
We are moving on with the kleshas today. Remember that yoga identifies five kleshas—ways of seeing and being that get stuck between us and the enduring joy that yoga points to as already ours, and waiting to be claimed.
On to the third klesha: raga.
Raga is the energy that fills us with selfish desire for things that make us feel swell and comfortable.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with preferences for comfort and swell. The trouble comes when these preferences consume us. Raga makes us feel unduly angry, frustrated, or sorry for ourselves because (bad news flash!) we can’t always have the comfort and swell we crave and have become attached to. When raga has us hooked real good, it keeps us miserable even when, although we may be surrounded by the objects of our desire, we’re not enjoying the swellness of the moment because we are too busy anticipating the discomfort should it disappear.
Which, naturally, it will.
It will go, it will change. Yoga reminds us that everything of this world is in continual flux. Life is change. And as we live, we will be asked again and again to let go of everything that once made us comfortable, every darn swell thing we once revelled in, or loved.
The change is not a mistake, it is all there is.
The mistake is our reaction to change.
The mistake is the raga, the mighty but futile hanging on that steals so much of our life force—for nothing.
Rather than dreading or fearing change, Thich Nhat Hanh challenges us to dissolve raga by fostering a sort of appreciation for impermanence:
We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible.
If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.
If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest.
So instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say, "Warm welcome and long live impermanence."
Wow. He makes it sound easy. May we meet him one day in that place of gracious praise for impermanence!
Until then, we can minimize the suffering of raga and move towards enduring joy with a conscious practice of non-attachment.
Yogis have a word for non-attachment: aparigraha. Gorgeous word, gorgeous concept. The non-attachment of aparigraha does not mean that we stand on life’s sidelines, dis-engaged. Aparigraha calls us to let go of the clinging to things, not the deep and fulsome enjoyment of the things themselves. Actively practicing aparigraha looks like finding great joy in present moment circumstances, without becoming attached. Aparigraha is loving and living with full intimate contact, and then, having lived and loved, when it’s time to let go, to let go with grace and gratitude and without regret.
The more freely we are able to let go, the more space we make for whatever wants to come to us next.
What we hang on to is often so small.
And the promise of what wants to come is so great.
Yoga teaches that what wants to come is nothing less than the joy of the fullness of being.
And so, Yoga asks us to trust life, and loosen our grip. To give thanks for things that once may have been very swell, to exhale, let go, and let change, change us. Again and again, as long as we live. That’s aparigraha in action. And it’s how we can dissolve the veil of raga/attachment and put an end to the suffering that comes from clinging to that which we cannot keep.
Mary Oliver nails it, as usual. From In Blackwater Woods
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
Friends, let’s practice.
the kleshas
dvesha
On to dvesha, the fourth klesha.
Dvesha is the flip-side of raga. Remember that raga is excessive attachment to fleeting pleasures. Dvesha is an excessive aversion for all that we deem unpleasant.
Forgive me while I rewind to raga for one long paragraph. Remember the primary teaching on raga is that by releasing our clinging and desperate grasping on to the objects of our desire, we avoid the suffering that comes when those things inevitably go away. This is the difficult “letting go” that we talked about last week. There’s another way to consider raga, and it asks us to become really, acutely aware of what it is we are desirous of. All of us have trivial desires for things that we don't really need, aren’t really good for us, and really enslave us when we become too needy of them. We need not disparage ourselves for having these small “d” desires, nor should we conclude that every desire starts with a small “d”. Rather, we could think of these little desires as misguided, bumbling longings, amateur expressions of a faculty for longing that might become far more expert! We have become the expert of desire when we notice that our longings are for things that are really very good for us, for all beings, for the Earth. It takes a lot of self awareness and practice to “educate” the faculty of our longing this way, but when we notice ourselves fervently wanting for the Good, the True, the Holy, the Just, and the Beautiful, we know we have liberated our longings from the constraints of our selfish ego. Our desires have become Desires. Clinging to these Desires and in fact aiming our very lives in their direction is not raga. It is living into our purest expression. May we all cling to these Desires like our deepest, most enduring joy depends on them (it does).
Now to dvesha. The opposite of clinging, it’s excessive avoidance.
No one likes to put their face up to the face of that which they experience as unpleasant, and most of us have whole big bunches of things, people, tasks, and other sundry unpleasantries that we go around avoiding at all costs. Avoidance of discomfort is normal. Aversion is in fact a deeply ingrained survival mechanism.
And yet yoga challenges us to develop enough self-awareness to challenge our aversions. In my current understanding of the teaching of dvesha, it is often our very aversion to (normal and inevitable) discomforts that causes us to suffer even more than the dreaded things themselves—should they ever even come to fruition.
We drain so much energy in conscious and unconscious mental and physical gymnastics to avoid that which is often unavoidable. Our aversions push and pull us in all directions, meaning we’re forever at the mercy of what we find unpleasant. How much energy might we liberate if we stood strong, tall, and easy in the pose of the Mountain and chose to squarely face the discomfort, rather than tying ourselves up in knots of fear, dread and avoidance? And how much present moment pleasure, joy, and ease are we missing in our desperate striving to avoid anticipated displeasure, unhappiness and dis-ease?
Have you ever experienced how dvesha works to magnify the unsavoury into something far more monstrous in our imaginations than it actually is in real life? Oh! the nose-wrinkling and repulsion! Oh! the apprehension and foreboding! Oh! don’t make me don’t make me… until ding ding ding…
Oh.
Gee.
That wasn’t so bad. Actually.
And I feel kinda better now???
Paradoxically, in the act of doing rather than avoiding the hard thing, we liberate a bunch of energy that had been stuck in the vortex of dvesha.
It can be a fruitful reflection: am I suffering by hiding from what is? Is my worry and dread causing me additional suffering beyond that which the thing itself might bring?
There will always be unwelcome situations that we can’t change just now. Life brings it all: losses, illnesses, and failures; injustices, upheavals, and catastrophes of all geometries. Yoga offers tools to help us accept the present moment just as it is, to ground into our feet, drop our shoulders, and turn to face the thing. To get uncomfortable, and then, quite to our surprise, to find some comfort there.
Friends, wanna get uncomfortable? :)
the kleshas
abinivesah
A wee review of the kleshas to begin.
Remember, according to yogic thought, the kleshas are ways of being that rob us of enduring joy. They are the causes of suffering. Let’s pause here a sec.
Dukkha is a word often used in Yoga and Buddhist texts that usually gets translated as “suffering.” It’s a Pali word, and most commentators trace its origin to a term describing a wagon wheel that doesn’t fit very well on its axle. Note that the yogis and Buddhists didn’t choose a word that means something like “intense pain” to describe the human experience of suffering. They chose a word that might be equivalent to “having a bumpy ride.”
What do most of us most often do on bumpy rides? Turn up the music, of course. Masters of distraction! We distract ourselves from our suffering because to lean in to what is unpleasant can be… unpleasant. However, if we don’t want to keep being hijacked by our suffering, we need to start by recognizing it.
Most of us don’t notice when we may be angry, sad, or scared until the intensity of the feeling is, like, an 8 out on 10. By that time, our suffering has completely taken over. However, it’s possible to learn how to tune in to our suffering when it’s just a little bump, and deal with it before we are thrown right off the wagon.
There’s another good reason to practice noticing the little bumps rather than turning a blind eye, and this circles us back to the teachings on the kleshas.
The kleshas are described in the ancient texts as five veils that cover the light of the divinity (within self and others), obscuring it from recognition. When we are disconnected from this essential goodness within and around us, we are in for a bumpy ride.
The word “yoga” means connection. The most foundational reason for the teachings and practices of yoga is help us to yoke our everyday selves with our higher Self. Friends, this is what yoga invites us to reach for while we twist and stretch and breathe. We could choose to refuse the invitation, turn up the music, and continue on the bumpy ride. Disconnected.
And what keeps us in this state of disconnect? The kleshas! Those dang veils hanging out between us and our True Selves. The barriers that prevent us from seeing clearly, from touching what is the highest Truth, and in that way opening the path to enduring joy.
Remember these veils are:
Avidya: ignorance of our true nature as whole, complete, eternal, and identifying instead with the ever-changing imperfect mind and body. Avidya creates a fertile field where the dormant seeds of the other four kleshas sprout and take root.
Asmita: over identification with ego/small self
Raga: excessive attachment to pleasures that are fleeting
Dvesha: excessive avoidance of that which we judge to be unpleasant
Abhinivesah: the final of the kleshas is excessive fear—most often translated as fear of death.
Abinivesah, the fifth klesha
Fear of death is a rather unsurprising fear, right? After all, our most fundamental instinct is to stay alive. The irony is that an over-attachment to staying alive (or to life as it is now) can really get in the way of whole-hearted living. Shrouded in the veils of Abhinivesah, we live half-hearted, small, caged, wings clipped by our fears.
In yoga, a life of half-hearted living induced by fear, is a life of suffering. The teachings and practices invite us to move into whole-hearted freedom, and we are free to the extent that we can accept that everything will change and life must end.
In The Inner Life of Asanas, Swami Lalitananda writes:
Our culture keeps death at a distance, fights it, tries to avoid it. It is shrouded in fear and locked away… buried deep.
But death is a gift that is born with life. In yoga, we don’t ignore the fact, but invite it in to help us live life with awareness. You know how working with a deadline can result in productivity and creativity? Life comes with one of those deadlines. Dare we forget?
Abhinivesah includes not just excessive fear of the death at the end of the road, but fear of everything that feels like mini-death along the way—the failures, changes, losses, embarrassments, and all of the little mortifications.
As a very persistent YouTube ad relentlessly keeps asking me:
Do you sometimes find that the fear of what could happen is making nothing happen in your life?
Ooph. It’s a challenging question, right?
Dissolving the veils
From the ancient Yoga Sutras:
II.10 With keen observation and discretion, these kleshas become translucent.
In other words, noticing the presence of the veils can enable us to dissolve them.
So… this week’s class is about spot the klesha! Let’s try to notice how thoughts of attachment, aversion, fear, egoism or ignorance might be making for a bumpy ride. It happens to all of us during our practice. We try to come home to our bodies and find ease and peace, only to get carried off by the commentary in our minds.
Do any of the following examples sound familiar? What klesha may be present in each one?
This is ridiculous, I don’t want to do this.
How embarrassing!
I love the way this feels. I wish it could last forever.
Ooooooh look at me! I’m the best in the room!
I’m terrible at this. I’m terrible, period.
Remember to buy dish soap.
I should be better than I am.
Some thoughts might fall into more than one category. Some thoughts may fall into none. Let’s notice them all as they pass, and then just keep on coming back, a neutral observer, testing a theory.
Remember the theory:
II.10 With keen observation and discretion, these kleshas become translucent.
If the veils are present in feeling and thought, keen observation is enough to enable us to disperse them.
It sounds to me like something a friend was talking about the other day: the observer effect.
Sourcing Wikipedia on this: in physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A common example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire; this is difficult to do without letting out some of the air, thus changing the pressure. Similarly, it is not possible to see any object without light hitting the object, and causing it to reflect that light. While the effects of observation are often negligible, the object still experiences a change.
When we touch the light of our awareness to the veil, it cannot help but change. We simply observe the veils in our minds. And they change. All we have to do is become aware. This is exciting! Our awareness is a superpower! With our keen observation and discretion, we don’t leap tall buildings or eject tensile webbing from a portal on our wrists (yet), but we can do something even more fundamental in support of the power of good. We can dissolve the veils that obscure divine light.
!!!
If we are to benefit from these teachings, we can’t leave them in our yoga class. Remember that yoga is a way of life. What we practice grows stronger. Take yoga into your day. Be a super veil-dissolver and see whose suffering you might ease, whose aliveness you might save, whose essential goodness you might recognize and honour, whose joy you might spark.
(It might be your own.)
Namaste, friends.