Containers 2: Yoga
I mentioned in my inaugural post (is that what this is called?) that a conversation with my yoga teacher anchored itself in the notion of a container. The short story is that I need one in my spiritual life. In parallel fashion to my intellectual/academic life, my spiritual life needs some containment.
How does one contain spirit? Isn't it antithetical to spirit to be limited and enclosed? Aren't we aiming for some kind of union with the greater mystery? Aren't we a drop of liquid aching to merge soundly with oceanic vastness? Are these goals not contradictory to containment?
Perhaps we ultimately are chasing after that union. But, in the meantime, we are stuck here on earth in bodies of flesh, blood, bone, hormones, nerves, andrenal glands, and other messy parts. What I mean by that is not something as simple as mind-body dualism in which the mind simply rides about in its Cartesian carriage.
Rather, I mean that as bodies in the world, we are individuated in a terribly physical sense. There are very few ways in which we can merge bodily with another human and experience communion at its most basic and often profound level. That degree of intimate communication is what draws us to our partners in a way that grows and reaches progressively deeper into our being.
While we are stuck in bodies (a gross overstatement of the relationship of mentality and physicality) we mostly abide as individuals. There is a social aspect at work here that I am going to bracket out, for society is a collection of these bodies and provides a completely different set of challenges. Conceptions of the nature of bodies and individual instantiations of humanity are various around the world and for that we must allow a nuanced treatment of such differences. However, common to each human experience is the location of a consciousness at/in/on/by a body. The body is a unit and so is the awareness of that body.
The body is not enough to contain spirit and, indeed, to speak of the mind as contained by the body is too coarse an analysis. Some dismiss the notion of mind and spirit as merely epiphenomenal to the physicality of the brain. I am more inclined to agree with them then not. The physicality of the body serves as a "necessary, but not sufficient" condition for mentality. This means that the physical body must be present in order for their to be qualities of mind. It also claims that the physical body is not enough to give rise to the mind.
I half agree with this claim.
I would say further that the particular physicality of humanity is directly related to the presence of mind. And so the body is not the container of spirit, rather, I would say that it is the location of spirit.
The real containment for spirit life needs be of a spiritual order. In fact, it could very well be spiritual order itself. One way of pursuing spiritual order is practice of some kind. Practice (literally practicing being/doing in some way or another) grinds out a karmic rut that stands opposed and yet embedded in our mundane, unreflective lives. Practice can be a container in which we can settle our spiritual uncertainty and questioning. The questions do not go away, however, with practice we can develop a safe means of exploring the wavering ways of spirit.
Another container for spiritual life is a goal. Goal can mean a few things. Primary among these are two meanings.
1. Goal as end point towards which we aim
2. Goal as object or focus of practice
These meanings are not coextensive nor are they mutually exclusive.
I will explore goals as containers in a later entry.
May all beings be happy, May all beings be free.
How does one contain spirit? Isn't it antithetical to spirit to be limited and enclosed? Aren't we aiming for some kind of union with the greater mystery? Aren't we a drop of liquid aching to merge soundly with oceanic vastness? Are these goals not contradictory to containment?
Perhaps we ultimately are chasing after that union. But, in the meantime, we are stuck here on earth in bodies of flesh, blood, bone, hormones, nerves, andrenal glands, and other messy parts. What I mean by that is not something as simple as mind-body dualism in which the mind simply rides about in its Cartesian carriage.
Rather, I mean that as bodies in the world, we are individuated in a terribly physical sense. There are very few ways in which we can merge bodily with another human and experience communion at its most basic and often profound level. That degree of intimate communication is what draws us to our partners in a way that grows and reaches progressively deeper into our being.
While we are stuck in bodies (a gross overstatement of the relationship of mentality and physicality) we mostly abide as individuals. There is a social aspect at work here that I am going to bracket out, for society is a collection of these bodies and provides a completely different set of challenges. Conceptions of the nature of bodies and individual instantiations of humanity are various around the world and for that we must allow a nuanced treatment of such differences. However, common to each human experience is the location of a consciousness at/in/on/by a body. The body is a unit and so is the awareness of that body.
The body is not enough to contain spirit and, indeed, to speak of the mind as contained by the body is too coarse an analysis. Some dismiss the notion of mind and spirit as merely epiphenomenal to the physicality of the brain. I am more inclined to agree with them then not. The physicality of the body serves as a "necessary, but not sufficient" condition for mentality. This means that the physical body must be present in order for their to be qualities of mind. It also claims that the physical body is not enough to give rise to the mind.
I half agree with this claim.
I would say further that the particular physicality of humanity is directly related to the presence of mind. And so the body is not the container of spirit, rather, I would say that it is the location of spirit.
The real containment for spirit life needs be of a spiritual order. In fact, it could very well be spiritual order itself. One way of pursuing spiritual order is practice of some kind. Practice (literally practicing being/doing in some way or another) grinds out a karmic rut that stands opposed and yet embedded in our mundane, unreflective lives. Practice can be a container in which we can settle our spiritual uncertainty and questioning. The questions do not go away, however, with practice we can develop a safe means of exploring the wavering ways of spirit.
Another container for spiritual life is a goal. Goal can mean a few things. Primary among these are two meanings.
1. Goal as end point towards which we aim
2. Goal as object or focus of practice
These meanings are not coextensive nor are they mutually exclusive.
I will explore goals as containers in a later entry.
May all beings be happy, May all beings be free.
posted by Breathing at 9:52 PM
1 Comments:
"Practice (literally practicing being/doing in some way or another) grinds out a karmic rut that stands opposed and yet embedded in our mundane, unreflective lives. Practice can be a container in which we can settle our spiritual uncertainty and questioning."
Thanks for this simple, yet profound, statement. I practice, and sometimes forget why. Practice takes so much time and discipline and often becomes a routine motion, a rote activity, a ritual. But that ritual, that time set aside, stands in contrast to the rest of the day/week/year. When I count up the hours spent practicing, I sometimes wonder, what is all this practice for? As you ask, what is the goal? But the karmic rut that practice creates changes a person, deeply, fundamentally. I have no idea who I would be today, if I had not spent those many hours of my life practicing. We are comprised of our karmic ruts, controlled by them, and the creator of them. I am practicing with faith that the practice itself is an end, but also practicing with faith that there is a end worth practicing for.
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