First Day of Mysore Practice
Today was my first day of Mysore practice at the Shala.
I’m in the 6:00 time slot, which is the middle group. I am thankful that I do not have to be there at 5:00 am every day! I got there at about 5:30 because I was nervous about being late and was invited to come right in and start.
I started going through the sequence with a little bit of “monkey mind” even though I was trying to focus on my practice. I was having trouble not looking around at the other students and trying to figure out how Saraswati (our teacher, and the daughter of Pattabhi Jois) was deciding whom to help. As I contemplated this, Saraswati looked at me and told me to wait. After she was finished adjusting the student she was working with, she came over and adjusted me in Uttita Hasta Padangusthasana. Seemed like she was adjusting most folks in this pose. She lifted my leg up about a foot higher than I had been holding it and told me to put my chin on my shin. Surprisingly I was able to do this with her assistance. Without her help, though, not sure how close I’ll get for a while.
I continued through my practice and then sat and waited when I got to Marichyasana C. I have not yet figured out how to bind and keep my balance so I wanted her assistance. While I was waiting i realized I forgot a poase. Oops! She came over after a few minutes and pulled on my arms until my fingers touched behind my back. The way they do adjustments here is a little more forceful than most teachers in the U.S. – I guess they do not have the same worries about litigation if someone gets hurt! When she let go, I toppled over and fell out of the pose. Apparently it was good enough though, because when I was leaving she told me that tomorrow I would do Marichyasana D. I guess that even though I still have work to do on C she wants me to start working on D. We’ll see how long I stay there before I get to work on the next pose.
After practice I took a short nap and a shower and had breakfast at Shakti house. Here is a picture of my room there, though I'll be moving over to my new place tomorrow.
Yesterday at breakfast I met a nice couple from Aspen who sold all of their belongings and moved to India 18 months ago to write a book on spirituality and architecture in the next half millennium (this place attracts some interesting folks!) They have spent time in a few places in India but ended up in Mysore about 8 months ago. They were back today and we enjoyed another leisurely breakfast together with another fellow from New York before I headed out to do some errands.
I got to explore Mysore on foot for about 2 hours when I took a wrong turn trying to find a bank that would accept my ATM card. The two closest to where I am staying have rejected my card, but I am told this is common and that one of the bigger banks would probably work. When I finally found my way to the street I had been looking for and got to the HSBC, my card was rejected once again and I started to get worried. Luckily it worked when I got to ICIC, the other big bank in town and the last place I had hope for.
While I was wandering around I saw lots of cows and people going about their daily business. Even though Mysore is a pretty big city by Indian standards, it is still very rural.
On the way home I saw this live billboard – only in India (or maybe in the Sahara if there were consumers hanging out trying to decide what to buy).
After getting the keys to my new place, I went back to the Shakti house to take a nap, and study. Here’s todays’ lesson ….
Sutra 2.3 Avidyaasmita Raga Dvesabhinivesah Klesah
Avidya = Ignorance
Asmita = Egoism
Raga = Attachment
Dvesa = Hatred
abhinivesah = clinging to bodily life
Klesah = obstacles
In Other Words (IOW) – Ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred, and clinging to bodily life are the five obstacles to getting to Samadhi/Bliss. These obstacles and how to deal with them are explained in the next five or six sutras so I won’t dwell here.
Sutra 2.4 Avidya Kshetram Uttaresham Prasupta Tanu Vichchimna Tadaranam
Avidya = Ignorance
Kshetram = is the field
Uttaresham = for the others that follow
Prasupta = dormant
Tanu = feeble
Vichchimna = intercepted
Tadaranam = sustained
IOW…Ignorance is the cause of the other 4 obstacles, whether or not they are not yet revealed, weakened, managed, or allowed to manifest themselves. Satchidananda focuses his discussion on the differences between how we act with respect to the obstacles with which we are faced. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about coffee lately because I am trying to cut back - I switched to drinking tea about a week before I came to India. In the case of coffee, someone who has never had coffee would be considered to be in the Prasupta state – they do not know what it is and do not want it because they have not yet been exposed to it. I am definitely not dormant about coffee at this point. The Tadaranum state would be the stage when I was drinking coffee regularly, almost unconsciously, without any concern for whether it was good or bad for me, and I was not considering quitting. Right now I am in the Vichchimna/intercepted state where I am constantly tempted but am intercepting those thoughts and redirecting them to something else (except for when I was in France and this morning at breakfast when I could not resist any longer!) Hopefully I will eventually get to the Tanu state where the temptation is minimized, and though not eliminated, I rarely think about it. (Mmmm….double soy mocha from Starbucks….)
Come to think about it, my vegetarianism when I was still practicing was like that. I never even really craved meat or thought about it eating except on rare occasions. Hard to imagine getting to Tanu with coffee, but who knows.
In terms of the bigger picture, I am pretty attached to lots of stuff at this point. Evolving to a state of Tanu in all aspects of my life seems pretty far away right now.
The next Sutra after this goes into a lot more detail on Ignorance, so we’ll wait for that before I get into what Ignorance really is.
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