SATTVA AND TAMAS

9th February, 2012

As I was recently reading the Bhagvad Gita for a yoga assignment that I had to do, something about the gunas caught my attention. As Arjuna stands emotionally distraught before his uncles and brothers and teachers, on the verge of a war that he now suddenly feels is completely unjustified, thoughts of leaving the battle field and going away into the jungle come to his mind. This powerful warrior who is both wilful and confident throughout the Mahabharata suddenly finds himself at the mercy of his emotional attachments. In his own eyes, he is being completely humane and compassionate in doing so. For killing his loved ones, he feels is sinful.
Krishna thinks otherwise. What Arjuna tries to call love or compassion for his kin, Krishna calls cowardice. He calls it adharma. For, he explains to Arjuna, the dharma of a warrior is to wage war against that which is evil or supports evil. And the Kaurava army that stands before them is made up of people who fall into either of these two categories. He explains to Arjuna how death is but inevitable for everyone and therefore, in killing his kin, he would become only an instrument of the infinite.

What is fascinating here is that Arjuna feels that at that moment on the battlefield he is dominated by sattva. He believes that by withdrawing from the war he will be following the path of ahimsa and will be professing compassion for even those who have caused them much pain in the past. But is this what sattva is about?
Swami Vivekananda in his commentary on the Gita points out that that which enters the mind in the guise of sattva could well be its nemesis- tamas. Rajas is easily distinguishable as the passionate energy that flows through a person with all recklessness. Tamas, on the other hand can easily be confused with Sattva. They both come with a certain amount of motionlessness. While in tamas there is a dull stillness, in sattva it is calm tranquillity. What Arjuna believes is his compassion for his opponents, could really be his fear to face reality. What he terms as an ahimsic path is actually a coward’s path. For by leaving the war, he would be encouraging injustice. Hence, Krishna calls him a coward.

I tried to think of my own daily practice in the same terms. Sometimes when I feel lethargic in the mornings and don’t feel like doing my yoga practice, I’m convincing myself that I should be accepting of my lethargy and therefore don’t need to do my practice. I’m content with the belief that I’m learning to be more aware of and accepting of my body’s needs when actually all I’m doing is giving into lethargy, which as Patanjali points out is one of the obstacles in the yogic path.
When I spoke to my guru about this, she told me, that acceptance of one’s state of mind or of one’s body is necessary but that only means that one can change one’s practice to accommodate how one is feeling on that day. Acceptance never ever means giving up your practice because of what it is bringing up in you. It just means staying with what comes up from time to time without any judgement and yet continuing with the abhyasa. That is the tapah that we need to do in the path of kriya yoga. This automatically leads one to introspect about what is happening with oneself (svadhyaya) and the acceptance itself is a form of surrender (isvarapranidhanani).

This is the difference between sattva and tamas. Just like in Arjuna’s case, true sattva requires that one follows one’s dharma and that too with a unified state of mind that is not caught up in the results of its action. The abhyasa is necessary. In Arjuna’s case it was to drop away all the attachments he had to his worldly relationships and constantly bring back his focus on a higher goal- which was to vanquish evil. And eventually, Krishna says to him, when one has done this enough, it becomes so instilled in the person that the gunas have no control over one’s mind. He says that it is at this point that one comes in touch with his true, permanent, indestructible, inner self or the atman.

In my world what I think this means is that, there will come a day when I wake up in the morning and go about my entire day knowing exactly what responsibilities or actions I may have to perform in the various roles that I play in life, and being able to do this efficiently, single-mindedly with a certain goal in mind for each of my actions, but with no attachment whatsoever to what may come out of those actions. My senses will have no effect on my mind, and my mind will be in my control rather than the other way around. I will not be reactive in any way and my every action will be done with no wastage of energy, or any selfish desires.

This is what I think it means! Lofty thoughts indeed!

PRATYAHARA

9th February, 2012

It is possible that Pratyahara or the withdrawal of one’s senses from the outer world is more an act of the mind than of the senses themselves.

As V.S.Ramachandran, one of the world’s most renowned neurologists proves through his unique and numerous examples in the book- ‘Phantoms In The Brain’, perception is a function of the brain rather than only of the senses. He states that the eyes may act as the instrument of perception but the act of perception is indeed done by one of the visual centres in the brain. Hence, according to his research both of these, the instrument as well as the centre in the brain are required to be functioning in accordance with one another for the perfect act of perception to occur.

Patanjali stated years ago in the Yoga Sutras, in much more detail and with much more clarity, hundred-fold of what modern science is now fumbling to uncover. Anyway, I’ll leave the rest of the explanation to the book itself for this write-up is not so much about the brain as it is about the more subtle ‘mind’. And more importantly it is not so much about the mechanism of perception as it is about the mechanism of non-perception.

I sat down one of these mornings after my asana practice to do my pranayama practice. I began comfortably with an even ratio of inhale and exhale, with no agitation in the mind and a nice, stable breath. My pranayama seemed to be going well. Then, I began to hear an argument between two of my family members- my mother and my grandfather. As is common in most Indian households, the argument was both loud and clear enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear and understand. Maybe this is what makes us the overly empathic beings that we are; we always know what’s going on in each other’s lives!

My breath continued to go on, my count of the inhale exhale began to become a little shaky but carried on mechanically, but my mind was with the argument. I could actually see ‘in my mind’s eye’, as is the much-used term, what was going on downstairs between my mother and my grandfather. The entire scene along with the minute details of my mother’s and my grandfather’s expressions, began to play in my mind like a movie. And of course the most beautiful thing about all this was that my eyes were closed.

Suddenly, I became aware of my mind’s wanderings and tried to bring it back to the moment. I focussed back on my breath and my mind went blank. I began floating in the world of pratyahara for a brief few seconds until I could tether my mind no longer. And back it went to its movie-watching.

But then it struck me, that just because my eyes were closed, it did not mean that my sense of sight was withdrawn. My imagination still had the gift of that sense. And that’s when for the first time I understood the real meaning of pratyahara. When there is any external stimulation for any of the senses, it is not so much the sense organs that we have to control, as we have to the mind.

This also seems to be the reason why Pratyahara is given so much importance by Patanjali in the process of ‘citta vrtti nirodah’. Maybe because even if we were put in a dark room where we could not see anything, where we had ear muffs to prevent any external sound to reach our ears, or had our nose clipped so that we could not smell any enticing odors, we would still need to lay a firm hold upon our mind. The vrittis, namely, Pramana- right knowledge, Viparyaya- wrong knowledge, vikalpa- imagination, nidra- sleep, or smriti- memory, could still all operate through the mind and summon up sensations that do not exist at that moment. Even sleep cannot be complete pratyahara for even in that state we feel very real sensations through dreams. And anyway, sleep is an state of the mind when we are not aware of even our conscious selves, leave alone our real inner selves.

So, while I used to feel earlier that if I could resist talking to anybody for a day, or resist eating my favourite food for a week, I would be well on my path to perfecting Pratyahara, now I am humbled by the thought that this would be just a tiny pebble of a stepping-stone towards it. For the real disciplining is in silencing the mind in the first case and not even thinking about food in the second case, while I simultaneously try to control my senses.