At least I think I do. The sages say to let it all go. Drop it and see your perfection. Practice, don’t practice. You’re already there. Can your imperfect practice yield perfect realization? Not if you won’t let go of what binds you. And really, nothing binds you. Nothing can. It’s a misperception. You’re not held. You hold.

And what practice is there that will loosen my grip? Maybe I’ll never let go. If I ask, how can I just be? That’s still a question, still an action. I’m still saying that I need to be some other way.

I’m still missing it, still holding on. Cease all striving. Cease all action. Stop complaining. Stop wishing, stop fishing. Stop investigating. Come to zero for a moment. Let your brain cool down.

What’s left when I’ve let it all go?

This is a difficult teaching. In our outcome oriented culture it is hard to understand how the outcome might not be the most important part of an action.

Someone I love was in a difficult situation. He had chosen a difficult path of service, and his plans had been cast into doubt. He was faced with at least two possible outcomes neither of which was attractive. I wanted the best for him. I wanted things to turn out well for him. But I realized that even if I had the power to bring about a worldly outcome that would resolve his situation, I did not know which outcome I would choose to bring about. I did not know what to pray for.

Everything changes so every situation does resolve – it resolves into something else – and what at first seems desirable may in time seem undesirable. I could pray for a particular future as if I had a god’s-eye view and could know what would be best for everyone. I realized, though, that of course I do not know which outcome is best for anyone. Because the infinite unfolding of possibility that we all live within is beyond my control or knowing. I cannot claim that the future is mine to know just because I imagine that I know what it should be. If I’m honest about it, my preference for one future rather than another is just that – my preference. Selfish, in other words.

So I come to this: My prayer for my loved one is the same as Krishna’s prayer for Arjuna. I pray that my loved one comes to realize his true, deep Self. I pray that he not be distracted from that quest by fixation on worldly outcomes. I pray that he finds joy in his labor. I pray that he realizes his divinity.

And I make the very same prayer for you. I pray the same for everyone. Without exception.

Maybe you think that I figured this out. I didn’t. It came to me immediately as knowledge – immediate apprehension, no words involved. I just knew, then I added the words later. This occurred during a yoga training at Kripalu. We had been instructed to go outside and practice samyama. [See Yoga Sutra, 3.4] I began practicing with a leafy sapling of a tree. As I released my own individuality and position as observer, I began to experience no-difference with the tree. There was no tree, no me, just an experience of being. After a while I experienced the wordless knowing described above.

Intuition is an aspect of the vijnanamaya kosha.  We may frequently have experience of the intuitive body – the experience of unmediated knowing. The experience can be fleeting though and go unnoticed. Since I have become more mindful of such experience I notice that I often have an immediate, wordless knowledge of something, and then the words come. The knowing is first, then the words.

I might also see intuitively my own motivation for an act. I act selflessly with no motivation of self-gain, and quickly the ego comes in and rationalizes the act into selfishness, looking for a payoff. If I don’t maintain mindfulness and the self-serving words come to dominate and displace the subtle knowing, then I might have regret for having acted selfishly when in truth I had not acted selfishly at all. Likewise with judgement of others. I might have no intuitive criticism of another person’s actions, but the reactionary ego might arise and start to build a case against the other that, at a deeper level, I don’t believe.

Yoga practices can lead us to a  progressively deeper understanding of ourselves.

If I identify completely with the annamaya kosha then I may get stuck in form and my asana practice may never be other than physical. But if I approach my asana practice with mindfulness, then I can practice concentration, dharana. And if my concentration is good, I can practice meditation in motion as I move mindfully through an asana practice. I can become aware of the energy body and the emotional body. With sustained practice in the present moment I can move to no-thought and my practice becomes intuitive. I may experience ananda, bliss.

The body is called form. It takes a certain position in space which position also is called form. Even so, asana can be practiced in love and prana and bliss, and what is the form of love or prana or bliss? Form doesn’t limit or define my reality in any ultimate way unless I let it. Form is a way to name an experience I have. My experience may manifest in name as asana or as ananda. Or it may manifest as the formless and nameless.

If I think I am limited by form then I’m stuck because I’m an embodied being – I need my body in this life. More likely I’m not limited by embodiment so much as I am limited by a bounded awareness.

The yamas from the yoga sutra of Patanjali:

• Ahimsa – Practice nonviolence in thought, word and deed.
• Satya – Practice truthfulness.
• Asteya – Don’t take anything that isn’t freely offered.
• Brahmacharya – Have perfect respect for everyone’s intimate relationships, including your own.
• Aparigraha – Don’t think that happiness resides in the accumulation of possessions and privilege.

Aversion is reaction to unpleasant reality. Craving is attraction to the things that we use to distract ourselves from the unpleasant moment. If on our path we would learn to not wall off parts of our own experience, then we would do well to practice guiding toward and engaging with the things that we find aversive. Rather than turn away from obstacles, turn toward them. Rather than seek only the smoothness on our path, seek also the stones in our pathway.

Consider how anger is an aversive reaction that shields us from unpleasant reality.

Now suppose that you have come to believe that you know of a better way to live. A way based upon renunciation of violence in all its forms, compassion for all and ill will toward none. A way of humility, patience and doing whatever you can to help.

Can such a practice engage with such a world in an effective way? Or is that sort of practice an empty idealism that must be subordinated to the exigencies of the day?

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Recently the subject of the additional troops being sent to war in Afghanistan came up. Someone asked what we can do with our practice – what does our practice lead us to do about war?

I think that our practice is much the same whatever scenario we consider. Our practice teaches us to live mindfully and ethically whatever the situation and to see our motivation as clearly as possible. Our motivations arise from our values, and if our commitment to a value – let’s say nonviolence (ahimsa) in this case – becomes shaky under stress, we want to face that shakiness. For example, we might think that we have no ambivalence about war. To look more closely at that we might consider whether our opposition to war would lead us to support the unconditional disarming of our military. In this violent, militarized world would we make the decision on behalf of all of our countrymen to be the first to lay down our arms? If we found the answer to be no, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that we were not committed to nonviolence or were not sincerely opposed to war. It might mean that there was some other competing factor complicating the situation. Fear, perhaps. The point is to work with what we find. Our resolve is strengthened if our understanding is better.

We’re not only looking deeply (svadhyaya) at our motivations and our actions we also are trying to see clearly the reality of things in general. Buddha taught that phenomena do not come into existence on their own. Things come into being because of causes and conditions. War has no existence of its own separate from the causes and conditions that give rise to it. So to take action we might work to end the causes and conditions that give rise to war while speaking out for peace.

War is an important case to consider, so much suffering arises from it. If we find that we ourselves have some ambivalence about war, that we might hesitate to disarm even though we believe in nonviolence, then that knowledge might help to open us up to more compassion for those who give the appearance of favoring violence. It might make us more compassionate toward the soldier who believes that he or she is serving honorably. And it might give us a better understanding of why people compulsively resort to violence.

Maybe in looking closely we see that, while we yearn for the ideal, we fear the loss of mundane effectiveness because we suspect that the ideal and the down to earth are dichotomous. We aren’t really sure of the ideal’s relevance in our day to day life, especially when the going gets rough.

I think that this is a false dichotomy. The principles of conduct given in the yoga sutra or in Buddhism are not commandments. There’s no condemnation for not practicing. It is completely conditioned upon our choice and our will power. In fact, it may be that the hardest thing about this is that we don’t have to do it. If our practice is anything at all it is a practice of daily life. Again and again we are instructed to pay attention to the present moment. And whatever progress we make is due to our own day to day effort. No effort, no progress. The ideal that inspires us and guides us is always there. The ideal is necessarily a part of our practice; it is the target we aim for. But as the master archer told the student, you must act as if the target were infinitely far off. The real practice is in the mindful, present-moment aiming of the arrow. If we only look for good practice through an imaginary lens of perfection our daily practice is apt to never feel like enough.

The great teachers have not taught us that we must be perfect. The great teachers have simply said, practice like this. And I do not think that the great teachers have set us tasks that are impossible. We can realize the truth. We can have a transforming practice. But we must not disdain small accomplishments. The path is long and difficult, and our small victories are cumulative. It is my belief that the real and true ideal to strive for is constant effort, abhyasa. The yamas and other precepts are our guides. They tell us to “practice like this.” And we can realize those ideals but not if we fixate on some imagined degree of realization. The practice is right here, right now. It can’t be otherwise. And it is inseparably ideal and ordinary. And it is perfectly practical. And our strongest position for action is the one which is based upon our deepest understanding.

Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program
Off The Mat Into The World
Peace Action Maine
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Pax Christi USA
Prison Dharma Network

Gandhi, the great champion of peace, has said that the Gita “is the universal mother.” He considered the story to be a teaching of selfless action, of karma yoga. And in the story Krishna teaches Arjuna that doing his duty requires that he let go of his self interests. Krishna tells Arjuna that he is not entitled to the fruits of his work; he is entitled only to the work itself.

The battlefield has seemed an unlikely metaphor for a yoga teaching to me. But the battle can stand for the struggles of life that we cannot opt out of. And we summon the courage of the warrior in doing our duty as we see it, whatever the difficulty. I don’t think that the story is meant to reify service, to make it an end unto itself detached from purpose. Buddha, for example, taught that intent is crucial. Duty itself is empty; and it matters completely to what purpose we give our allegiance and service. We cannot be indifferent to the outcome. We should know well the ends to which our service points. It is the egoistic attachment to those ends which we renounce.

It is a mistake to locate the problems of the world in the other, as if we stood outside of the collective condition. Trying to change others in ways that will lead to a preferred world-experience for ourselves is misplaced effort. The deep and lasting change that is within our grasp is within ourselves.

Can we see our own face as the world face? What if we could look into the mirror and see not just our own face but the face of all people; see the human condition in our own reflection?

As a practical matter, the power of example is great. And we cannot credibly ask others to change if we ourselves are not willing to make the same changes. People will see eventually that we do not take our own medicine. And since our actions follow our thoughts we must first work on our own minds, work on the quality of our own intentions.