You can't experience BLISS without the GRIT
As translated from The Yoga Sutras…
If you are unfamiliar with the Yoga Sutras, they are THE foundation from which ALL western yoga is taught and practiced today. Meaning, the origins of your yoga practice; the why, how, when and what, have all been addressed and out lined for you to contemplate. When I was in my teacher training, my teacher, Carmen Fitzgibbon said, ‘the sutras are like pearls of wisdom strung together to make a necklace that is Yoga’.
Another approach I love is written in, Inside the Yoga Sutras by Reverend Jaganath Carrera. In the introduction he states,
“The most useful strategy to employ when studying the Yoga Sutras is to approach them as you would a piece of art or poetry, where a literal, there-is-only-one-way-to-understand-this outlook can smother the nuances, beauty, and various levels of meaning. “
I am currently leading a Yoga Teacher Study Group on the Yoga Sutras and it is so wonderfully potent to explore them together. A collective provides the diversity that you need to capture more color and perspective from each multifaceted statement you read. It is reminicent of the imbedded Jewish wisdom of a minyan. The requirement of 10 Jewish adults to gather for certain religious rites and obligations (I have more to say about the benefits of gathering for prayer and connection during difficult times, but that is another blog post).
As our group dispersed from our last meeting I was inspired to sit with The Sutras longer and watch for what seemed to ‘jump out at me’, so to speak. What I found most interesting, in retrospect, was the mind. My mind, shifting from trying to draw a conclusion and make meaning out of what I read to simply swimming in the questions themselves. Which brings one of my favorite poets and his verses so clear to my ear. Rilke echoes,
“ to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.”
From this place I question and from this place I live, experiencing the current state of affairs with one big gulp of everything great and horrible at the same time. It’s from this place of feeling my own pain and sense of peace, simultaneously, that I document this….
Sutra 1.5 (translated in English):
There are five kinds of mental modifications which are either painful or painless….
Sutra 1.6:
They are right knowledge, misconception, verbal delusion, sleep and memory.
( my commentary from 1.7-1.11…)
… Then a break down of the specifics of each modification. Inherently there are “strengths and weaknesses” to each. What I find interesting about this section of the sutras is the fact that he shares with you the potential outcomes of these mental modifications to be either “painful” or “painless”. This is interesting in that, there’s no description of an outcome to “Bliss” or “Joy”. Which makes me think the opposite of pain is the absence of pain, rather than a favorable feeling to move in it’s place. I suppose when you break down all emotions and experiences, they are transient. There is no constant state. I have also read in the commentaries that what can initially be seen as “painless” can bring about pain and visa versa. What initially was thought of as painful can later be “painless”. But that still begs the question, why leave out the potential for an outcome to source the feelings of “Joy”, “Peace” or “Bliss” even? Buddhism’s relation is revealed in this sentiment. Buddhism says life is suffering (check out The Four Noble Truths). The suffering comes from our attachments and expectations.
In addition, there is a primordial sense here of the “Greater Whole”, which encompasses all feelings, states, thoughts and emotions. This to me implies that, you can’t have an absolute feeling of BLISS or JOY without the grit or “pain” it took to get you there. Perhaps it is still there, remnants of it at least. Like the impressions in a stone from an organism that lived billions of years ago. The object touched is forever changed. Evidence that something happened.
Link to Raquel’s sources:
*If you are a certified 200hr yoga teacher and would like to join The Sutras study group, please reach out to me via email or social.