What's Happening in My Head

Sutra 1.2 yogashchittavrttivnirodhah is a definition of yoga. Yoga is the restraint of the fluctuations of the mind. Restraint can be thought of as stilling or focusing (or maybe both). So I’ve been looking at the mind movements in my own head. What’s going on in there? Well, there is an ongoing commentary about just about everything. But one of the things I notice that happens a lot in there is a planning of things I am going to say (which for the most part I never end up saying despite the rehearsing and re-rehearsing). The first time I saw this was when I was on my first week-long silent retreat at the Zen Monastery Peace Center a few years ago. I spent the first 24 hours or so planning what I was going to tell people about the retreat when I got back! (So I was trying to figure out what I would say about the retreat I hadn’t even experienced yet). It had to be that ridiculous while I was practicing silence and didn’t have anything else to do but watch my mind for me to see it. This is probably why we need a whole text on the topic—it is so pervasive and constant that we don't even notice it happening.

If we build on the message in the last sutra, which is that yoga is now, then it becomes pretty clear why that involves quieting the mind. All of the commenting and planning and judging and reviewing that goes on in there takes me out of the present moment. I’m not experiencing what is actually happening—I’m thinking about being on the retreat instead of being on the retreat.

The other thing that comes to mind in relation to mind fluctuations is all the current hoopla around the election and debates. If you watch or listen, the newsfolks keep going around and around repeating the same things (commenting and planning and judging and reviewing like my mind does). I watch because it seems important, yet I find it just keeps the mind fluctuations going. I have to wonder if it is useful. Nothing comes of it. One could argue that it might spur me to action, but in my experience, action borne from chittavrttis doesn’t compare to action borne of clarity (which is what we get when we calm the chittavrttis).  

Now, all the rest of the yoga sutras talk about how to do this (restrain the fluctuations of the mindstuff) and I am no expert, but what I can tell you is this.  It is possible to quiet the mind and it takes a lot of work and determination (24/7). What I realize in reflecting on this sutra is that I have slacked off.

Now

Atha yoganushasanam is the first of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.  It means something like, “Now begins the instruction of yoga.”  Swami Venkateshananda explains that atha doesn’t just mean now but indicates some auspiciousness, that now is the moment when everything comes together to make this explication of yoga possible. It occurred to me the other day that the other important meaning of the word atha or now in this sutra is that now is the only thing—we can only learn about yoga in this present moment.  We have to be here now (to quote an oft-quoted book title) in order to do anything, including studying or practicing yoga.

When I was driving home a couple of days ago from the Samarya Yoga Teacher Training, I got frustrated with a few drivers and even passed some cars on the two-lane road. At some point, I was driving behind a black car, maybe a Trans Am (if people still drive those). I think I was off-and-on irritated with the driver’s driving who sometimes put on the brakes for no apparent reason, but mostly I was thinking about all kinds of things, about the training, about this blog, about yoga and probably all kinds of other mundane things. Then, the car in front of me braked again and I braked and said out loud, “What the f**k?” And then the driver put his arm out the window and flipped me off. And it was a quick trip back to NOW. I suddenly realized how unpresent I had been.  I will admit that I occasionally tail someone who is not driving according to my standards, but in this instance, I actually had no idea I was being a pain in the ass to this driver in front of me—I was just off in my own little world. And then I had the opportunity to wake up.  I was back in the now and I was grateful for that.