 Last Friday after work I met Yoga Journal's Managing Editor, Kelle Walsh, at Farmer Brown's in the Tenderloin for a bite to eat. I had never been there before because, even though they focus on local and sustainable ingredients, Farmer Brown's is a soul food restaurant. Traditionally, soul food is not so vegan friendly. Somehow I found out (through the vegan grapevine) that Bryant Terry, author of Vegan Soul Kitchen, had the folks in the kitchen cookin' up his vegan gumbo, and so I hightailed it on over. Come to find out they also make a vegan jambalaya AND a vegan tempeh sandwich! Love me that Frisco style soul! After filling up on gumbo we walked many sobering blocks through the Tenderloin district of town, where there are more people "living" on the street than anywhere I have ever seen. Once we reached Herbst Theater, Kelle and I were ready to hear what the smiling mystic who's face we kept seeing advertised on buses had to say about the world and its incongruities. The Theater was packed to capacity with a calm and polite crowd of all sizes, ages, and origins to hear Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, who turned out to be not quite what I expected. Yes he is Indian, and yes he wears flowing robes and has a huge, white beard--but this is no traditional Guru! The serious, solemn vibe I have felt in ashrams and around other guru figures was conspicuously absent from the evening. Instead there was a palpable joy and eternal optimism radiating from this chuckling man who ended every other sentence with a lilting, rhetorical "Isn't it?" He sat, he spoke, he laughed, and before we knew it, two hours had gone by. Part of me wishes that when Sadhguru walked out on stage I recognized immediately and absolutely that he was the embodiment of the Divine. I have never had a guru, and I think it might be easier, or at least a refreshing change of pace, for someone to tell me the what, when, where, why, and hows of spiritual practice, instead of stumbling around trying to figure them out on my own. But it seems there is to be no immediate and absolute for me right now, only patience and possibility. What's with the picture of the bull, you ask? A Sadhguru anecdote: There once was a pheasant sitting atop a bull. The bird was complaining to the bull that he was too weak fly to the top of a beautiful, shady tree nearby. The bull told the pheasant not to worry, if he ate a little of his dung he would regain his strength and be able to fly to the top of the tree. "Nonsense!" exclaimed the bird, but then remembered how people used the bull's dung to grow food, and decided to try. Every day he ate a little of the bull's dung, and every day he was able to fly higher and higher until, at last, he was at the top of the tree. In the distance, a farmer saw a nice, fat pheasant sitting high up in a tree. Thinking of dinner, he took out his gun and shot the pheasant dead. Moral of the story? Bull$#!% may get you to the top, but it won't keep you there!
Guru's with potty-mouths...oh the humanity!
Ian Whicher is one serious yoga philosopher. While I realize it is the job of the scholar to contribute new interpretations of humanity's existing knowledge, I think challenging the traditional dualistic view of the Classical Yoga Darshana was a pretty bold move! Imagine: from Advaita Vedanta to today, everyone else is certain of Patanali's separate Purusha (pure consciousness) and Prakrti (nature/the world), and the final goal of yoga as transcendence from this world. As in "Sayonara, see 'ya later, I am enlightened and so out of here. Best of luck to you!" And then along comes Whicher who flips it and reinterprets Patanjali's Yoga Sutra to be non-dual, Prakrti and Purusha equal parts of the liberated self. AND instead of renouncing the world, he politely argues that yoga has an ultimate goal of "living liberation," or jivanmukti. I am inclined to agree with Whicher, non-dualist that I am, and world-renouncer that I am not. Perhaps this explains the current guru explosion? This month there are no less than 3 "self-realized masters" visiting San Francisco. I am going to listen to one of them tomorow night, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. He's giving a free talk at Herbst Theater. I'll let you know how it goes! My two favorite definitions of a yogi so far? Both Whicher's: "one who gains through practice increased discernment to override compulsion," and "one who incorporates a clarity of awareness with integrity of being and action." How kind of him to put into words what I am trying to do!
 I am finding that just as I prefer different types of asana depending on my mood, I also modify my meditation practice to suit my current space. In asana sometimes I want to move and sweat and play the edge, other times I just can't wait to get an eye pillow and some sandbags and put my legs up the wall. Likewise with meditation. Some days I am inquisitive and excited and ready for some philosophical wrestling, "net, neti" style. Other days, when there happens to be a lot going on around me, much noise and external distraction, mantra repitition is just the thing to center and quiet. Then there are those days when I am already quiet and internal, the days when I am not mad, or sad...but still don't really want to talk to you. My meditation for these days is usually some sort of visualization. I am not very good at visualization, mind you. My skeptical self complains "Poppycock! A waste of time!" as I try to envision that bright, white, healing light. I have been attempting to work on my visualization game, however, with another Upanisadic meditation Carlos Pomeda introduced to us. While I had heard of " lotus heart" meditation before, I didn't realize this was a traditional meditation and not some new age creation (of which I am judgemental and wary, but that is another post). But there it is, in the Chandogya: Within the body there is the heart, and within the heart there is a cave, in the shape of a lotus flower, and within this lotus flower of the heart exists everything. Pomeda suggested we see this everything as pure, white light (I'm trying!), the size of the top half of a thumb, and located in the middle of the chest. He then quoted Kabir, which really helped explain just what "everything" might be. Kabir had said, "Everyone knows the drop is contained in the ocean, but very few know the ocean is contained in the drop." So now, when I am feeling particularly insignificant, I shall meditate on the macrocosm of the universe contained in microcosm of my heart. It's nice to know (if only for a fleeting moment) that it's all in there already.
 I have a confession to make. Before last weekend's intensive on the Upanisads with Carlos Pomeda at CIIS I thought the word neti referred only to the little white pot I use to irrigate my sinuses ( jala neti), or that infernal piece of waxed string I had the pleasure of inserting into my nostrils and pulling out of my mouth during my yoga teacher training at Mount Madonna (sutra neti).
Neti, neti, which translates as "not thus, not thus" (or "not this, not that" in more modern language) is in fact not a shat karma excercise, but one of the three main meditations set forth in the Upanisads and lovingly expounded on by Pomeda, my favorite Spanish former-monk. With his 18 years of traditional training as a monk in the Sarasvati order and his degrees in Religious Studies and Sanskrit, Pomeda is an expert on the Upanisads. Ancient texts written (a term used loosely as these teachings were passed down orally for hundreds of years before ever actually being written down) over a period of about 800-1000 years, the Upanisads cover more philosophical ground than could ever be explored in a four-month course (or four-year course, for that matter)!
The neti, neti meditation is found in the oldest and longest Upanisad, the Brhadaranyaka, and becomes the foundation of the Vedantic system of meditation on "the witness." Basically it is a practice of identifying everything that you are not in order to be left with what you are. I am not this body. I am not this breath. I am not this mind, etc. The kick of it is that what you are trying to grasp, the Self, you cannot ever grasp because it is, well, ungraspable. The one who is grasping is the Self, not what is being grasped. The Self is the subject and anything it can know and perceive is therefore not the subject, it is "not this."
I know. It's confusing. If you ever have the chance, I suggest you ask Carlos Pomeda about "neti, neti." I promise you will not be disappointed! In the meantime, I am not this blog.
 Perhaps it is our common thirst for the roots of yoga, or maybe the result of spending entire weekends together wading through recondite philosophies, but our Yoga Philosophy Kula (community) is really starting to solidify. No longer single seekers, my fellow yoga scholars and I are learning the value of satsang. As you can see in the above picture, all this seeking makes us hungry! We have decided to have a pot-luck whenever we have 2-day workshops (of which there are many) and this makes me very happy. If there is anything better than good company, it is good company and good food!
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