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With yesterdays big protests in Berkeley, the continuing unrest in Syria and Egypt, and big new gatherings in Russia, it seems that the world is now fully perinatal:  something new is coming from the womb.

The self-immolation of a 26-year-old Tunisian    fruit seller named Mohamed Bouazizi on Dec. 17^th, 2010, set off a wave of revolts in North Africa and the Middle East—dubbed the Arab Spring—which soon spread to Europe and the West.  Youths ramapaged in Britain, the Middle Class marched on the Kremlin and the “Occupy” movement  bloomed in American cities from New York City to Flagstaff, Arizona.

Old-school protesters and the Right-wing critics of Occupy bewailed the indirection of the movement, but as a one Egyptian professional caught up in the Tahir Square protests said, “I know what I don’t want.”   Americans are angry about the skewed distribution of wealth in the country and business-as-usual aftermath of the mortgage crisis, among other things.

A positive new vision hasn’t emerged, but that is often how it is when change is demanded in a society or a relationship or life-path.

First we say, “no!” then we make new dreams.

A swami in Rishikesh, India’s north, listened for months to a voice that told him to go to Bangalore.  He talked over the move with his brother disciples, but got no support.  “What is in Bangalore?” they would say.  “It is a city of money.”

But the messages still came and eventually, trusting spirit, he traveled south.  He expected that a guru would appear in his life, or a disciple, or a situation, but when he got to Bangalore, nothing came to pass.  He idled for weeks, not knowing what to do.

This is sometimes how protest the status quo works.  Protest is usually a destructive act. It is a shattering of standing relationships.  It is a “yes” to change—the change from something is often sure, but the change toward something is sometimes vague.  In every case, “Something is rotten in Denmark” and the stench drives us forth.  We end up with less at first—a life on the road, a day without a job, or a bed without the one we loved.

Change may be hard, and we hesitate.  Saying, “It’s alright,” is always an option, as we recoil from rocking the boat.

One night, I was walking the streets, taking a break from my desk, I passed a man who walked slowly, breathed heavily and had a profound stoop in his shoulders.  I’m a yoga teacher, and when I see bodies closed by habits of emotion or diet or movement patterns, I feel called to help.  Usually I mind my own business, but that night I felt the sharp obligation to say something.  “Have you tried yoga?” I asked. Abruptly, he said, “I’m alright!  I’m breathing!”

—————————————————————————–

So it goes in the pre-change world.

Things are alright.

We’re breathing.

But it’s getting harder to inhale. That’s the common pre-amble to protest.  Things as they are make us uncomfortable.  That foreshadows  a new pattern of choice.

Things might be lousy, or they might be just alright. We’re hanging tough, but we sensed there’s a better way.

When I was in Junior High, I wasn’t a tough kid, but I stood out in my own way, and found myself in fights from time to time.  A kid named Steve Anderson who’d been insulting me for months, threw a text book of mine into the trash in our locker-room, and I’d had it.  I shouted in his face, “fuck you, Anderson,” and he duly challenged me to a fight him.  He was bigger than me and a better athlete, and I’d been trained to avoid conflict from my life as a preacher’s son.  I matter-of-factly refused him.  Disregarding the rules of masculine of engagement, I just said, “I’m not fighting you, Anderson.  You’d kick my ass.”

That pretty much ended it.

Sometimes we protest, and that’s it. The change is internal and the external situation changes spontaneously.

The “no” we make creates a new map of experience. Our perceptive frame, new self-concept and pattern of choice suffices to shift things.   The simple “no” kills something that has little will to live.

Sometimes the protest wells up within us to create change easily, but more often  comes after great courage and sacrifice.  As John F. Kennedy phrased it, it is a “long twilight struggle, day in and day out.”

Change is often undramatic. It comes from daily re-commitments to shift habit.  The great poet, writer and compiler of the first English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson, re-committed himself all his life to the simple, but constantly frustrated goal of getting to bed early.  If our foe is worthy, the business of protest may be life-long.  Chronic problems require chronic resolutions.

As Krishna cried out to his chela (student) Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, “fight!” Though a junior high pacifist, when I said, “Fuck you, Anderson!” I was already fighting.

The protestors in Tahir Square encountered the police and army again and again and—even now—with Egypt’s president Mubarak in jail, and elections in progress—the military still bullies the people, still kills protestors in Egypt.  And people still fight.

Our Occupy movements don’t seemed to have changed the status quo much yet, but this is just testament to the worthiness of our adversaries and the unchanged portion of ourselves.  Protest is, an ongoing event for societies and individuals.  To grow requires resistance, focus and dull work.

At the end of the day sloth, habit and comfort are our most trenchant devils.

In the 1980s, I had a favorite synth-rock band called the Human League who cut a track titled, “Comfort Kills.”

It’s a good message to keep in mind, when the notion of protest enters the head, and the urge to stay in bed, or say “yes” one more time, or to avoid acting for fear of the unknown visits us one more time.

Sometimes it is time to say “no” regardless of what waits on the other side.

Sometimes it is time to fight.

Or, go to:   http://www.sopdigitaledition.com/commonground/#/36/

In comparing the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras, the first general distinction we make is that the Gita offers prescriptions amenable to householders (grhasthas) and the YS offers prescriptions suited for renunciants (sramanas, sanyasis, viras).  Indeed, local commentators have suggested that the Gita was written partly to curtail the loss of male social capital to renunciant lifestyles.[1] In our time, where new forms of Hatha Yoga are all the rage and the Yoga Sutras are the going template for Hatha practice, it is rarely noted that much of the phenomena described therein would be encountered only by the committed sanyasi. The physical culturist yogis now paying sweat equity in homes, gyms and neighborhood studios are not spiritual heroes, but grhasthas (householders).  Only viras (heroes) will depart mainstream life to do the painful practices that yield siddhis (yogic powers) and explore the rarified states of samadhi described in the YS.

This bias in the two texts is apparent at the most superficial level.

Let us first look at the Gita.

The Gita establishes its target audience and its message through the content of a story and the very fact that it is story.  Though it deals with personal practice, this practice serves not just salvation but society and society’s mundane and spiritual relationships, too.  In its discourse, it attempts to speak to and about a variety of dispositions in human character as well as the wider cosmological community (animals, gods, plants, the elements, etc.).  It discusses a broad typology of human types, their concomitant behavior and the spiritual practices (yogas) appropriate to them.

Its instruction is framed first by the relationship of the royal aid Sanjaya through his conversation with the blind king Dhrtarashtra (which begins the book) and then by the God/chariot driver Krishna’s speech to the Pandava warrior, Krishna (ostensibly narrated by Sanjaya).  Sanjaya’s and Dhrtarashtra’s relationship sees no meaningful evolution, but the larger corpus unfolds as Arjuna gradually realizes Krishna’s status as the greatest of Gods.

These relationships play out over time and space.  References are made to events in the immediate vicinity of speakers (Arjuna: “and the divine Gandiva bow slips from my hand,” BG 1:30), as well as distantly (Sanjaya:  “seeing the army of the Pandavas, Duryodhana went to his acarya Drona, and said:” BG 1:2).  Future events are described such as the eminent death of heroes (BG 11:26-34) and past events are described, such as Krishna’s passing along of “this deathless yoga” through a line of sages (BG 4:1-2).   Though it may sound over-obvious to say so, it is through a struggle with our familiar social and spatio-temporal concerns (though they may be without the drama of an oncoming war—the setting of Krishna and Arjuna’s conversation) that we recognize the Gita’s plot, characters and timeless wisdom.  Our own challenge to be socially well-adjusted and spiritually evolved is mirrored in this tale, and we can argue that it was composed to advance the cause of justice within the human community, as many commentators have done.[2] Krishna’s confident avuncularity as he unfolds it all, allows us to read the Gita for pleasure as well as instruction.

The Gita is both casual and serious fare.

Indeed, its readability makes it one of the greatest tales of human imagining and, by itself and—as part of the Mahabharata—the Gita orients Indian social and national identity.[3]

The Gita is both “horizontal” and “vertical.”  It is a guide to relations in this world—friends, kin and community—as well as our relationships to gods, destiny and the ascent of the soul.

Though Arjuna’s struggle is existential and personal, its implications are social and the struggle is resolved in the context of relationships to gurus, fellow soldiers and family. Arjuna waffles amidst these obligations. These relationships provoke his crisis.

Early on in Krishna’s argument to show Arjuna his error, he states:

3:33 But if you persist in denying dharma,

Your dignity and sva-dharma are lost;

And you expose yourself to shame

34 Your shame will never end, never

Shame is worse than death

to a man of honour.

35 The maha-chariot-heroes will say,

“He fled.”

And those who once praised you

will brand you a coward.

36 Your enemies will hurl insults at you.

What could be more painful than this?

Such arguments appeal to a social self, not an intrapersonal one. As Krishna spins out his instruction to Arjuna over 15 ensuing chapters, he will depart from such facile arguments and focus profoundly on personal sadhana (spiritual work), but in doing so, he will continually speak of the social whole, referencing his own varied incarnations in humankind (BG 10:21-37), the divine and anti-divine persons and how they affect the Earth (BG 16), his relationship to the bhakta (BG 7:14, 16, 17, 21, 28; 8:22; 11:54-5; 12:6-11, 14, 17, 19, 20—and elsewhere) and numerous other social themes. Two of the four main yogas described in the BG are specifically social and relational in nature:  karma and bhakti. Karma yoga, as the Gita explains it, is mainly the proper expression of svadharma—individual responsibility to family, society and labor; and bhakti yoga, of course, unfolds within an intimate society of devotee and deity.

The Sutra, on the other hand, has nothing to say about community, communal practice, society, or social duty (despite the fact that its ethical codes, the yamas and niyamas could be construed as a people’s “Ten Commandments.”). There is no situation in the Sutra, no plot, no characters, no dialog, and no mirror of history or everyday life.  Its message comes from no named time or place.  It is entirely focused on the existential desire to attain liberation from every limiting context–social or otherwise.  The purusha itself—that the Sutra holds as yoga’s goal—has no relativizing conditions, no Earthly context.  It hovers as a posited “true identity” of humans and has a “proximal” relationship to nature (i.e. prakriti), but technically, it has no immanence—no horizontality.  Furthermore, liberation into purusha, as Patanjali describes it, happens to individuals (seers), not to groups.  This liberation is not called moksha or nirvana in the Sutras, but kaivalya.  Kaivalya is commonly rendered as “independence” or “aloneness.”[4]

The Gita may spur one to practice, but the Sutras assumes not only an established practice, but a nonsocial one.  In the Hindu tradition, the sanyasi ceremonially forsakes family and social obligation when beginning sadhana (work on the spiritual path).  Though monasteries were popularized by the Buddhists and existed in the time of these texts, the vira’s path was still conceived as a solo act or, at best, a small-group affair—the sanyasi, guru and perhaps another disciple (or two) could join together for liberative work.  Indian Renunciants are commonly wanderers, living from begging bowls (or nowadays, begging cans!), abiding by the Vedic injunction to remain dormant only in the three-month rainy season.  They are often naked and strangely adorned—to assert their freedom from social stricture and to signify their separate, iconic status.[5] Often the sage retreats to a wholly unpopulated place—the jungle, desert or mountains.  Internal bodily powers, not social powers, are cultivated here—though they may eventually have a social effect or a social role. (The sadhu may be sought for blessings, satsang, healing, or other ministerial purposes.)

Patanjali’s has written a manual for these lone, hardy practitioners. Such manuals were apparently common in Patanjali’s era[6]—one in which the sramana movement had good momentum.

The Sutras is trued by this categorical imperative and a disembodied authorial voice. It lays out the navigation points for a far-reaching, ambitious practice, while making no attempt to convey concern for the reader or entertain him.  Patanjali provokes limited sentiments in laying out his plan of attack on kaivalya.  At the end of the day, the Sutra is a strictly informational treatise on yoga practice that resonates with the patent authority of a realized sage—while giving practically no hint about who he might be. As one swami put it,

Patanjali would like nothing better than to remain utterly anonymous or to present himself in the most impersonal ways. Patanjali puts on a deliberately impenetrable mask and creates a precise game he can play without the slightest concern for personal disclosure.[7]

To make use of narrative voice or, further, story structure, characters or drama would betray the Sutra’s intent to quell vikalpa (fancy) (YS 1:6, 9).  Stories invite future and past projection, emotions, and meditations on illusions.  Stories create needless vrtti (mental turbulence). Patanjali goals would be clouded by blandishments.  He lets nothing interfere with his goal of identifying you with the purusha and making you a seer.

Within this address to viras, there is a slight bow to social variance. The Sutras provides a slim typology of sadhaks (spiritual practitioners) and explores a narrow field of spiritual practice.

It speaks of videha, prakritilaya and common yogis (YS 1:19-20).  Vedehas are disembodied and merged into Purusha and prakritilayas are spontaneously merged into the purusha at birth or a young age.[8] (Common yogis, of course, have to work!)  The Sutra describes three types of strivers on the path: mild, medium and strong (mrdu, madhya, and adhimatra, YS 1:22).  Each reaches asamprajnata samadhi[9] at different speeds (YS 1:21-2)  To these practitioners the Sutra offers a range of modes for stilling the mind beyond the well known eight limbs—including devotion to Isvara (1:23), chanting om (1:27-9), concentration on one principle (1:32), cultivation of a peaceful thoughts (1:33), pranayama (1:34), attention to the senses (1:35), manifesting inner light (1:36), meditation on passionless persons (1:37), and knowledge of dream (1:38).  These practices form the preamble to a long, thorough slough through dhyana, dharana and samadhi to kaivalya that are described in the ensuing chapters.

However, the Sutras cannot compare to the Gita in offerings of this type. This tells us that the Gita was meant for a wide readership practicing at varying levels of depth and bearing diverse proclivities.  It differentiates among human types throughout the text, but is particularly explicit in chapter 17 where it speaks of 3 types of devotees—satvika, rajasika and tamasika—and in chapter 12 where Krishna differentiates between the renunciant vira-type yogi and the bhakta.  Its sadhanas are copious.  Chapter five alone offers 23, including: renunciation (BG 5:2), Karma yoga (5:2), practicing in earnest (5:4), commanding the senses (5:7), disciplining the body (5:7), detachment (5:10), abandoning the fruits of work (5:11), taking refuge in the body (5:13), self-realization (5:16), reposing in Brahman (5:20), maintaining serenity (5:20), eschewing delusion (5:20),

equanimity amidst pleasantness and unpleasantness (5:20), disaffection toward worldliness (5:20), meditating on Brahman (5:21), finding no joy in sense pleasure (5:22), devotion to service (5:25), controlling desire and anger (5:26), controlling vision (5:27), disciplining life breaths (5:27), controlling prana and apana (5:27), disciplining senses, mind and intellect (5:28), and eschewing greed and fear (5:28).

Arguably, there are redundancies here, but such a list could be compiled from other chapters, too, thus suggesting a motivation to provide an encyclopedic compendium for sadhana (spiritual work).  This gives the document wide appeal.  And when we consider statements that seem to open salvation up to low castes, (BG 5:18; 9:26, 29) the Gita sounds even more populist—though within limits, as we shall see below.

The Texts’ Modern Social Position

If my eight years of global experience in modern yoga is any indication, the Sutras are the most authoritative and widely-read traditional text in modern Hatha yoga practice. Sutra study is de rigueur for yoga teacher training programs and for university study of the yoga tradition throughout the world.  A casual investigation of “Yoga Sutra course” on Google yielded 84,700 hits.  In the “post-modern” period, the Yoga Sutras are live.

This is partly because of the law of increasing returns—Swami Vivekananda introduced modern postural yoga and the Sutras to the West at the same time.  Vivekananda was an instinctive public relations expert and his beachhead speech at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893 took America by storm.[10] Though critical of Hatha Yoga,[11] he taught it to his followers, establishing what the New York Herald called a fad in the practice by 1898. [12] His 1896 translation of the Sutras (titled Raja Yoga) imitated the conversational style of gilded age Americans[13] and sold well, affecting the burgeoning New Age community perhaps even more than the small but concomitantly emerging “yogic class.”[14]

It’s been salad days for the Sutras ever since.

Srischandra Basu, a capable scholar (but not a celebrity) published an English version of the Siva Samhita in 1887, and the equally non-celebrated S. Iyangar translated the Hatha Yoga Pradipika to English six years later. These were true Hatha Yoga texts. They describe the yoga of the body.  The Yoga Sutras describe a mental yoga, not the physical yoga that is popular now.  Bodily yoga was a pariah practice to Occidentals in the late 19^th century, no better than any other fakir art.[15] Only scholars and renegades had minds free enough to embrace these strict and somewhat carnal Hatha Yoga texts.  According to one source, even Indian pandits in Vivekananda’s day had slim praise for the Pradipika, the Gheranda Samhita, and Hatha texts of their ilk.[16] To this day, the Samhita and Pradipika still have not attained the fame of the Sutras, probably because neither is as elegantly abstract as Patanjali’s text, neither is as “safe,” and neither has been championed by a religious superstar like Vivekananda.  Nonetheless, Basu and Iyangar may have more accurately pointed to true Hatha practice and its modern variant.

Like the Sutras, The Gita established a worldwide following in the modern period—within a century after its English translation by Charles Wilkins in 1785.[17] The first edition was accompanied by a stirring commendation from India’s first governor general, Warren Hastings, that bore the then-novel sentiment that the Gita was “evidence of the achievements of Indians and truth of their worthiness to be treated with respect.”[18] Emerson and Thoreau wrote about the Gita in the mid-19^th century and the fame of these authors glamorized the text for others. In the late 1800’s Gandhi was introduced to Arnold’s translation by some friendly Theosophists.[19] Thereafter he expanded on the work of the nationalist Bal Gandrahar Tilak to co-opt the Gita’s lessons for swaraj (Indian Self-rule). [20] By this time (the 20^th century), the Gita’s centrality as the putative “Bible” of Hinduism was broadly accepted and a broad demographic of Indians looked to the text as a social apologetic for India’s current malaise and past greatness, as much as for its spiritual purport.[21]

However, in the postmodern yoga community, the Gita—regardless of its wide fame or keener adjustment to third-millennium yogic lifestyles—still plays second fiddle to the Sutra.  The Bhagavad Gita’s gifts are its shortcomings!  A yoga community founded on a taste for esoterica probably finds this text insufficiently cool—it’s too prosaic, too knowable, and too mundane.   The Bhagavad Gita is “PG.”

Though richly meaningful and well-tailored to the modern yogi’s social position, the Gita cannot match the Sutra’s mystery, elegance and singularity of focus.  For these reasons and others referenced here, the Gita is consigned to second place behind the Sutras in living yoga counterculture, and, barring some upheaval of postmodern yogic taste, that is where it is likely to stay.

Endnotes

Books:
Jois, Sri Krishna Pattabhi, 2005, Suryanamaskara, NY: Ashtanga Yoga New York.

This is an excellent little book by Jois with very cool pictures of him doing the practice as a young man. It provides a welter of information that gives rarely found background information on Jois’ understanding of the practice and his knowledge of how the practice is rooted in scripture.

Jois, Sri Krishna Pattabhi, 1999, Yoga Mala, NY: North Point Press

A developed treatise by Jois, but still a relatively short book (130 pages).  It includes some of the same info of his Suryanamaskars book.

Pant, Apa, 1998 (1970), Surya Namaskars, Mumbai: Disha Books.

Apa Pant was a successful diplomat in the new India, and was the son of Bhavanrao Pant (below), the King of Aundh–which dissolved upon the attainment of nation status for India after 1947.  This is also small book.  It includes some wonderful stories, philosophical perspectives and a basic outline of the practice with both photographs and drawings. 

Satyananda Saraswati, Swami, 1983 (1973), Surya Namaksara:  A Technique of Solar Vitalization, Munger, Bihar, India:  Yoga Publications Trust.

This is an excellent complete guide that gives the positions, philosophies  and mantras by a master of the tradition.

Nithyananda, Paramahamsa Nithya Yoga Surya Namaskar

A new book by  this famous living swami in India.

The Raja of Aundh, Bhavanrao Srinivasrao Pant Pratinidhi, 1989 , Surya Namaskars

This is the king who had SN taught throughout his land in the 1920s and 30s.  It is the first book on the practice in the modern age (reprinted).

Scott, John, 2001, Ashtanga Yoga:  The Definitive Step-by-Step Guide to Dynamic Yoga, Three Rivers Press

John Scott gives a breakdown of the two forms of SN from the Ashtanga system with very clear photographs and explanations.

Singleton, Mark, 2010, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Oxford University Press

Mark gives a detailed history of how SN was brought into Modern Yoga and is a great resource for understanding the modern practice generally.

Stenhouse, Janita, 2001, Sun Yoga, The Book of Surya Namaskar,

This is a paper-bound, homemade encyclopediac work on the topic.  It offers a broad swath of information on the practice.  Most interestingly, it includes diagrams of over 20 different forms of Sun Salutation

Websites

http://www.suryanamaskar.info/guidelines.htm

This site is the greatest resource I’ve found on the web.  It is encyclopediac in its information and the details agree with other trustworthy authorities.

http://www.harekrsna.de/surya/surya-names.htm

A very full  website with fascinating details.  It’s information also agrees with other authorities and seems trustworthy.

Wikipedia has two pages on SN which are very useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surya_Namaskar_Origins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surya_Namaskara

http://chrysalisyog.homestead.com/surya.html

This site includes information not found elsewhere

The Yoga Sutras describe Raja Yoga–a mind-focussed yoga practice from around the year 200 CE.

It was consistent with the Buddhist methods of the time.  It granted profound states of concentration won through consistent practice.

In these states, the true nature of Reality (vidya) was evident.

Later, around 1300 CE, Hatha Yoga was developed in India.  It sought the same state, but took advantage of a biological potentiality in the energy body called Kundalini Awakening.

The writer Stuart Sovatsky has called this awakening a “second puberty” that is the birthright of all humans.

In Kundalini awakening, the energy body is re-patterned through a dramatic upswell (and downswell) of life-energy that moves through the system.

When that process is complete, the bodymind has been transformed, and advanced or more limited states of vidya are readily available.  This state is the same as that achieved through meditative sweat-equity in the Yoga Sutras‘ system.

As the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (c. 1500 CE) puts it, “All the processes of Hatha Yoga are but the means to attain Raja Yoga.”  (HYP: 4:103)