Memorization is Cool

Last June, Sonia Nelson did a Vedic chanting workshop at our center—it was just a couple hours introduction sort of thing.  I imagine to a lot of people that doesn’t sound very interesting, but to me it sounds very awesome.  And, in fact, I had so much fun.  (If I were going to get all woo-woo, I’d say something about how it feels like something I have done in previous lives and that somehow I am supposed to be chanting, but I won’t).  Anyway, I bought her Yoga Sutras Tutorial CD and have been working with it pretty regularly during commutes since then (with some days/weeks off for Cheri Huber podcasts).

In the last few weeks, I finished memorizing the second chapter.  And I have seen many interesting things in the process.

1) Things that seem insurmountable in the beginning, if taken step by step, are actually totally achievable.  At the beginning of this endeavor, when I was probably on sutra 1.10 or something, it seemed like so much for my brain to hold, I couldn’t really see how I could learn the whole chapter.  Then when I did, I thought, “How can I possibly learn the second chapter? Will I have to forget the first one to make room for the second?” It felt like my brain was literally stretching when I started it and then, incredibly, I did actually learn the whole second chapter while still remembering the first.  Crazy!

2) Life is non-linear.  This project seems to really highlight for me how things do not go in a straight line. I learn a little chunk and really get it down, then I go back to the part before so I can put them together and I can’t remember how that part goes, or I remember the first part and can’t remember the new part anymore (even though I was chanting it just a couple minutes before).  It seems like a continual process of learning and forgetting around in circles until at some point it’s finally in there for good.  And the whole process could be quite frustrating if I were really wanting it to be orderly.

3) Having an outside guide is really important.  I’ve had the first chapter down for a while now, so I don’t need to concentrate super-hard to chant most of it.  Sometimes I can even do that thing where I chanted part of it but I wasn’t paying attention and wonder if I really chanted it (like arriving somewhere in your car, but you don’t remember the trip).  Recently, I was chanting it through with Sonia on the track where she chants it straight through and I caught quite a few places where I had gotten sloppy or mis-remembered a note or a long vowel. It made me think that’s why we have teachers or therapists or other outside people to reflect to us what we are doing.  It is easy to start to drift off into my own little world and I could imagine my version of the sutras getting further and further from the original. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to have an objective view of ourselves.

4) Memorization is cool. Memorizing things seems very old school.  I wonder if kids memorize things in school anymore.  We have much more emphasis on understanding things, which I generally agree with. Understanding something seems better than just being able to spout off information. But memorizing the sutras has been very fun.  I feel like it uses my brain in a different way and it really gets rid of the cittavrttis (the waves of the mindstuff). There is something relaxing about just learning all these sounds and not worrying about what it means. (Though I am learning more about what it means as I go).  And it feels good to have it inside me.  I would recommend memorizing something to everyone—a poem or a chant or whatever.

So I don’t know if that is interesting to anyone.  A little tapa (effort, determination), a little svadhyaya (self-study), a little ishvara pranidhana (surrender)—hey, that’s kriya yoga (sutra 2.1)!