DIGGING DEEP - Winter/Spring 2023
Our winter/spring programming registration is open.
We have created opportunities to “dig the hole deep” this winter and spring, exploring what Patanjali tells us in Chapter One of the Yoga Sūtra: if we want to overcome obstacles, we need to choose one line of study and practice and stick with it. Please join us as we do exactly that!
This sūtra (YS I.32) comes immediately after he offers a list of nine potential obstacles: illness, haste, lethargy of body or mind, and so on. None of these nine obstacles, or antarāya in Sanskrit, are unusual or rare occurrences in a human life. Quite the opposite, in fact. He presents us with nine states of being that we will most surely encounter in the course of our lives. Heck - in the course of a week!
So, if we all bump up against these obstacles sooner or later, why are they here in the first chapter rather than in the second chapter? The second chapter is more often presented as the “student” chapter or the chapter for the ordinary practitioner. Chapter One is usually framed as the chapter for a mature practitioner who just needs a bit of refinement. My guess is that they land in Chapter One because they are so darn persistent - there is no “one and done” with any of them. We need to practice them as they arise, each time they arise, because they will surely keep arising.
But are they inherently obstacles?
The advice that Patanjali offers us so that we might overcome these obstacles suggests to me that there is nothing inherent in any of these states. He doesn’t say, “eat healthy so you don’t get sick” or “go out and take a walk if you feel lethargic.” For one thing, the Yoga Sūtra is never prescriptive in that way. But I also suspect that he doesn’t go in that direction here because he is pointing us to examine the actual nature of the obstacle.
For example, what makes illness an obstacle? In the sūtras following the list of nine obstacles, he gives us ways of looking closely at the question - what exactly IS the obstacle? Where is the obstacle? And, who is obstructed?
These are not linear ways of asking a question and receiving an answer. We can’t think our way out of this, at least not in the way that we might normally go about our business.
Remember! Patanjali lists things in order of importance and YS I.32 is the first sūtra after the list of obstacles. The implication is that choosing one thing - one tradition, one practice, one path - and following it will help us no longer be thrown off by obstacles, even if we do nothing else.
If we look a little more closely, we can see that he is showing us that there is value in sticking with something even when the honeymoon is over. We can expect that the excitement and romance will start to dim and there will be times when practice starts to feel a bit repetitive and even boring. We might even feel angry and blame our teacher for the things that are coming up. (Of course all of this is predicated on having a skillful, trustworthy teacher! Please do your due diligence here!). He is saying - stick with it, even then. There are important things to see in exactly those moments of boredom, anger, and dullness.
We may imagine and want the glory of the lightening bolt of brilliant insight but Patanjali is saying that there is great value in all of practice - the highs, the lows AND the middles - without distinction. But you need to dig the hole deeply to truly realise this.
Join us as we dig and dig some more this winter/spring.
