What can Buddhism offer a yogi ?
Yogis and Buddhists typically have little understanding of each others' traditions, but it wasn't always this way. Buddhism and Yoga come from the same ancient Indian culture, and in fact they engaged in friendly debate for 1700 years, greatly enriching each others practices and philosophy.
However that healthy sibling rivalry came to an end 800 years ago with the Islamic conquest of India. Buddhism, being reliant on royal patronage and monasteries, was an easy target and was soon destroyed in its homeland. Yoga, on the other hand, being more grounded in the lives of the people, survived perfectly well. As a result, these two traditions have developed in complete isolation ever since.
So despite their common spiritual ancestry, an Asian swami will probably know less about Buddhism than the average informed Westerner, and a Buddhist monk may know nothing about Yoga. Furthermore, in my experience, I have found that both the swami and the monk are likely to subtly discourage you from investigating the other's practices. The implication is that a "serious" practitioner will do best by going deeply into one tradition, and not mixing his practice.
Yet after 800 years, Buddhism and Yoga are inevitably reuniting in the minds of the modern Westerner. In fact I've practiced both disciplines for over thirty years myself, and I find they are very complementary. Cool, analytic Buddhism can greatly extend a yogi's understanding of meditation and the mind. Conversely, Yoga has more heart and soul, and a deeper connection to the body. In this article, I'll explain how Buddhist meditation can help the practice of Yoga.
In his lifetime, the Buddha was very successful. He taught for forty years, and left tens of thousands of followers and many teachers behind. Whereas Patanjali is know for just one magnificent text which can often be difficult to interpret, we have some seven hundred sutras attributed to the Buddha. We know exactly what the Buddha taught, because he said it over and over in many different contexts.
Despite their wealth of information, the Buddhist sutras have none of the charm of the Upanishads or the Yoga Sutras. They are so grimly ascetic that few people read them with pleasure. Yet there is one short text, the "Satipatthana Sutra", that beautifully crystallises the Buddha's whole teaching on meditation. Its ideas and methods underpin the practice of many, if not most, Western Buddhist meditators.
"Satipatthana" translates as "The Four Foundations of Awareness". The text explains how to develop a clear, continuous awareness of your body, your emotions, your thoughts and your underlying states of mind, as they come and go during the day. This awareness ("sati") is regarded as the rerequisite for "vipassana", which literally means "to see deeply" (into the nature of reality). In other words, awareness is the foundation for wisdom and liberation.
"Sati" or awareness, is often contrasted with "samadhi", which is a term that most yogis would be familiar with. Samadhi, usually translated as "absorption" or 'oneness" or 'tranquility" is a state that generally occurs only in deep meditation, if at all. In samadhi, the mind turns back on itself and reflects its own radiance. You escape the outer world, first by going deep into the body, and then by resting in pure consciousness.
In Yoga, the word "samadhi" usually describes just that ultimate, perfect state. Buddhism, however, also uses "samadhi" to describe those practices that strive towards the ultimate samadhi, whether you attain it or not. In other words, any practice that cultivates mental stillness is regarded as a "samadhi' or 'tranquility' practice.
Yet tranquility practices, glorious as they are, are problematic. You can't remain in that still, inward place forever. Sooner or later you return to your body, your kids, your work and the confusion of everyday life. What do you do then?
You can switch the emphasis of your meditation practice from tranquility to awareness, from samadhi to sati. Most meditators can calm their bodies and minds while in a sitting meditation. Sati means you train yourself to keep this quality throughout the whole day. Samadhi is the mind turned inwards on itself, while sati is the mind turned outwards towards the world. You aim to have a calm, clear, observant quality of mind in everything you do.
The concept of sati is contained in mantra such as "Be here now", or "When eating, just eat". Sati includes the concept of "Mindfulness", which means knowing what you are doing, as you are doing it (and therefore doing it more consciously). Mindfulness is also described as being able to see your thoughts and feelings objectively (and therefore breaking their compulsive grip over you).
Useful as these ideas are, I've found they rarely bear fruit unless they are cultivated through deliberate exercises. In The Satipatthana Sutra, the yogi is instructed to first calm his body and mind, sitting alone under a tree. He then tries to retain that calm state of mind as he does more complex activities. He walks to and fro in front of his tree; he walks to the village to beg for food; he tries to remain calm and centred in the hustle and bustle; he returns to his tree; he eats mindfully; he lies down and rests, remaining fully conscious and aware throughout.
The yogi is training himself to meditate in the four classical postures: sitting, walking, standing and lying down. Once he has mastered those, he expands his awareness into every activity he does. The Buddha then talks about meditating while you turn to the left or right, when you bend down, pick something up, get dressed, urinate or defecate. In other words, literally every activity.
You'll soon find you can do nearly any activity in either a tense or a relaxed fashion. You can walk down the street, or eat a sandwich, tense or relaxed. If you're tense, your movements will be stiff and jerky, and you're likely to be holding your breath. If you're relaxed, your movements will be smooth and flowing, and you'll be in harmony with what you are doing.
If you want to bring this idea to life, I suggest you choose one simple activity, and practice it for at least four days in a row. It could be getting dressed; doing the dishes; preparing food; walking to the car; having a shower; shopping; going to the toilet; eating breakfast. For months, I trained myself to relax and "be present" every time I walked up or down a flight of stairs.
Without doing your chosen activity any more slowly, let your mind slow down and notice the sensory detail involved. Consciously "do what you are doing", and notice the quality of your movements. Are you tense or relaxed? Are your movements tight and jerky, or do they flow? A relaxed action has a certain graceful harmony about it, even if you're just picking up the telephone.
Another way to relax is to check your breathing. Just ask "Am I holding on or letting go?" When tense, you usually hold the breath in, and breathe from high in the chest. When you are relaxed, the breathing is loose and soft, and the out-breath is longer than the in-breath.
You can easily relax the breath by deliberately sighing. This breaks the lock in the chest, and frees up the out-breath. I do three or four deep sighs many times a day, as a deliberate exercise, particularly when I get up from a seated position.
This continuous body awareness leads into the next stage of the Satipatthana Sutra: observing your mental activity. As before, the Buddha suggests you watch your thoughts and feelings first in seated meditation, and then throughout the day. So when you are tranquil, rather than descending deeper into tranquility, you dispassionately observe that never-ending sequence of thoughts, feelings and sensations that we call "the stream of consciousness".
But how can you see your thoughts objectively? While meditating as usual, instead of trying to ignore the thoughts that arise, you give yourself permission to notice what they're about. In the Burmese tradition, you are invited to actually "name" or label the thoughts. For example, if you realise you've started thinking about work or food or last night's TV, you would say to yourself "work" or "food" or "TV". You notice the presence of a thought without processing it further.
Naming a thought brings it into the full light of consciousness and objectifies it. This gives you the choice: do you want to continue pouring your energy into that thought, or do you want to let it go? You can't stop a thought arising, but you don't need to engage it in conversation.
You can observe your emotions in the same way. Because many of our habitual emotions are unpleasant, we generally try to ignore them. Sati, however, means you bring your underlying feelings into the full light of consciousness. You can ask yourself "What is my emotional state right now?" or "What is this feeling?' or 'What is disturbing me?"
If you look, you may realise you feel sad or angry or frustrated or restless, or some other emotion. If you "name" it and bring it to the surface, it paradoxically becomes much easier to handle. Instead of unconsciously fighting it, you realise "It's just sadness. I've been sad before and it usually goes in time. Sadness is just a part of life. I can still relax and calm my mind while I'm sad. And I know that when I calm down, whatever is making me sad becomes easier to handle anyway. I don't need to be dominated by my sadness."
Pure awareness is often described as a "mirror-like" state that reflects the stream of consciousness with complete detachment. In practice, sati means you try to neutralise the emotional charge that accompanies particular thoughts, feelings and sensations. Generally, we either subtly like or dislike anything we notice, and the Buddhist ideal is to eliminate that response.
You strive to "see things just as they are" without any emotional reaction (even if someone is killing you or your friends, said the Buddha!). Buddhist serenity is about having no likes or dislikes, feeling neither attraction nor aversion, so that nothing tugs you one way or the other.
At this point, I part company with the Buddha. I believe that a healthy mind is never as passive or emotionally neutral as that cold, "mirror-like" ideal. The lifeforce within all of us continuously evaluates good and bad, thereby steering us towards the good. The body maintains homeostatic balance in this way, and the mind incessantly seeks out what is good for our soul.
Though awareness seems a passive and disengaged state, in fact it has a subtle, dynamic effect. By clearly identifying unhealthy thoughts, feelings and sensations, it helps us abandon them. Likewise, it helps us recognise and cultivate what is good for us.
For example, if you notice that you are tensing your shoulders, you can release them immediately. If you don't notice that tension, your shoulders could remain tense indefinitely. At a more subtle level, you can easy improve a yoga pose by isolating peripheral muscles that are unnecessarily tense, and softening them.
Secondly, the more conscious you become of your emotional responses, the more you can disarm them and gently ride the waves of the mind. Samadhi, of course, attempts to calm these waves ("vritti") completely, but that is only possible under ideal circumstances.
Thirdly, if you know what you are thinking about, you can do it better. Most of our thinking is semi-conscious and mechanical, tangled in emotion, and continuing even while we sleep. By identifying your thoughts, you can shed the useless ones and pursue the useful one more efficiently.
Similarly, awareness will greatly enhance the positive sensations, thoughts and feelings that occur in meditation. In the body, you can notice the finer sensations of release, flow, warmth, balance, and pleasure and so be able to boost them. You can hold and cultivate the beautiful thoughts, feelings, images and intuitions that arise. You can enhance states of mind such as peace, tranquility, bliss, clarity, joy, love, even if they only last a few seconds.
When something good is happening in your meditation, I suggest you consciously affirm it. You can reinforce a state of peace or bliss, for example, by thinking to yourself "Peace" or "Bliss". It is like saying "This is what peace really feels like in my body and mind. I need to remember this so I can find my way back here in the future."
By developing sati, you know exactly what you are thinking and feeling at any time. This dispels confusion and helps you understand how your mind works. The Buddhists say that samadhi gives you the bliss of withdrawal, but sati gives you self-understanding and wisdom. Awareness will improve the quality of everything that you do.