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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 18 2014 : 11:29:29 PM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOS5yvkR41Q
Was watching this video of Sadhguru, and a woman asked him what transformation meant. First, he differentiated between change and transformation. He said change can be just be a rearrangement or superficial movement, whereas transformation is when the substance itself changes in such a way that something totally new emerges.
Then he said something that struck me. He said a rose starts out with just a stem and many thorns. Then, the flower blooms and the transformation has occurred. But, the flower didn't have to strip itself of all its thorns for the blossoming to occur. The roots merely had to be nurtured.
He said human transformation is similar. We don't have to be free of all our imperfections; we just have to tend to the energy and stillness within our being. He said that if you can be really good at just one thing, then people will look right past the thorns.
That made me want to narrow my focus professionally, and also to get better at playing music, which I started a few years ago. I don't want to just dabble; I want to pick a field and let that craft be the flower. Persistence and consistency. I think this is where I have suffered before: not devoting myself fully or sticking with something for the long-term.
Going back to the thorns though...in AYP, there is mention of obstructions lodged in the nervous system. These have to be removed so that something purer can flow through the channels, yes? The obstructions may be habitual patterns that have led to harmful actions, so in some sense, don't those thorns have to be removed?
It just got me thinking. What parts of my character/personality still have to change, or will the transformation occur based more on my passionate pursuit of a chosen ideal?
Any thoughts? |
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adishivayogi
USA
197 Posts |
Posted - Nov 19 2014 : 12:51:52 AM
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| apply it to yourself. attachments are thorns. and this is really more about energtic channels in the body . its intertwinded but still stillness is something different and accumlated in a different way. i did lots and lots of pranayama at some points and not nearly enough medoitation. id go into some samadhi state a couple time a month.im whenever i wouldnt go there within ten minutes id quit and finish with yoni mudra. energtic change doesnt necesarrily come with an equal amount of stillness. thats whgy ayp teaches spinal breathing and deep meditation at the beginning. stillness in your life will affect you at the foundation of experince and relation to thought. what you do or dont do doesnt have to change. but nothing takes anything away from you in a sense. youre free from likes and dislikes from ideals and any other thought form. and its kinda like 90% of who we experince ourselves to be is just thought. |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Nov 19 2014 : 09:46:08 AM
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| Love to you bodhi.The rose desires many things to bloom good soil feeding as they are hungry for many nutrients good light, pruning and dead heading and love from the gardener maybe like ourselves not one practice will suffice and the variety and cultivars are many some even live thornless without fear of being taken for display with constant attention they thrive but have no care for change as on each plant a constant flow of different flowers are produced meaning not one bloom can dominate leaving the plant no choice in which one will provide the most joy for the world as for the thorns when pricked by them it gives us gentle reminder you need gloves when pruning. |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Nov 19 2014 : 5:22:30 PM
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Thank you, adishivayogi and kumar. I especially like kumar's hint that gloves are needed with pruning (or at least delicate hands). That is the essence of self-pacing.
I think what I do does matter, and that action/profession/behavior is a reflection of stillness. Even though life may be a waking dream, I'm still interested in having a joyous dream (not merely escaping, or even transcending prematurely, the dream). Also, I wish the joy for others, because that boosts my joy, and that is good selfishness.
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Anima
484 Posts |
Posted - Nov 21 2014 : 3:43:51 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Bodhi Tree:
Going back to the thorns though...in AYP, there is mention of obstructions lodged in the nervous system. These have to be removed so that something purer can flow through the channels, yes? The obstructions may be habitual patterns that have led to harmful actions, so in some sense, don't those thorns have to be removed?
Dear Bodhi,
Years ago, I was an English tutor. A non-native English speaker asked me what a metaphor was. Although I was well-read, I found myself at a loss. Fortunately, a teacher took over for me. Still, I am not sure if I know what it is... because isn't it using an unreal figure to illustrate what is real or unreal? That possibility faces us with thought and reality, actuality and potentiality. If something is real, how could it require illustration in addition to its reality? And if something is unreal, how could it be illustrated? Of course, these questions play on ambiguity of terms in subject and predicate. Not that our investigation of reality could ever admit of the same thing.
Perhaps the system and focus are both broader than they at first appear. A man is not alone in the world, and a flower is not alone in the glade. Neither is man's art isolated from his work, nor a rose's bloom from its stem. Roots, soil, petal, and air all breathe together. Only the sounds are different.
I was actually just thinking of this in a roundabout way. Man's task of thinking has been one of identifying and analyzing. This naive rehearsal claims an end (telos) of synthesis, recombination, and the clearing of fertile ground (dispelling of ignorance and ambiguity). Yet it is really just an attempt to assure our little mind that it is greater than the cosmos. How does our mind attempt this illusion?
It invents the most insidious ploy in history: The notion that nature itself is atomically accessible, that is, divisible into categorical and bodily kinds and their instances. This is known as the theory of natural kinds, which presumes nature to be "carved up at the joints." How pervasive this delusion is!
It affects every aspect of Western society: Speech (viz., subject predication, verbal mood as expressing factual or contrary to fact potential, and predicative modification in the form of restriction or non-restriction in relative clauses), strategy (assessment, division of cost and benefit, goal-setting as broken into distinctly manageable parts), medicine, ethics, self-image, and even public policy (distrust arising from artificial divisions of self and other). Of course, such distinctions can be justified, leading us to epistemic warrant and its result of arbitrary and narrow justice. That is man's justice, I suppose.
I recently had a talk with a French professor who studied with Derrida and Nancy at UC Irvine. He said that the modern project was one of grand narrative, but that it was actually mistaken. Instead, he thinks, there are only various sub-narratives. I think he may be taking human imperfection a bit too seriously, which, by the way, we can do with our aim of human perfection as well. I have seen firsthand some results in people's lives of viewing the world, ourselves, other people, and our dharma as a shattered or flawless pane of glass.
Consider sub-cultures. They have their own jargon, mannerisms, and artistic templates for producing image. They claim their own meaning for terms and their own cultural uniqueness and purpose. Their ways are not viewed as compatible with some other sub-cultures, what they view as mainstream culture, or with some people who are either too immersed in another sub-culture or mainstream culture, or a mixture of both. Think of how this is true of our analysis of our own thoughts.
All the thoughts and feelings we have in ourselves can also be viewed through the destructive lens of analytical distrust and stratagem. Consider that I may find certain feelings in myself to be bad or shameful. I may see some thoughts to be appropriate and others to be ridiculous. I may also regard the content and form of feelings, their functional relations to each other, their contexts of social and genealogical occurrence, and their relation to truth, my identity, and current trends in language (that purport understanding of self or nature).
When cells live and work in a body, they are distinct, but they are also non-distinct. This proposition reveals itself as less contradictory when we consider that we cannot answer even the simplest question in regarding it. “What is a cell, really?” Whatever delineation we contrive will become too narrow or too broad for our uses, and that is just to say that in uttering its reality, we have effaced it to meet some imagined aim. For example, the biological view of a cell is geared toward providing a coherent, parsimonious, and fairly accurate set of predications that can relate to other concepts in the field of biology. To accept reality is furthest from the aims of the natural sciences; instead, they would extrapolate a method of the nature of any and everything. But they can't, because the nature of anything is not essential, but is rather unlimited and perfect.
The biological and social characterizations above segue naturally into a consideration of a similar, spiritual fracture. This fracture is one of distrust of self, which leads to pessimism. In sadhana or spiritual living, we find much joy but also much discomfort in the work to be done. The thorn and petal : One hurts and one heals. Here, like in the sciences, we aim to dispel ignorance, obstruction, and wrongdoing in ourselves, yet our elements do not require surgical, instrumentalized separation or mental division. It is all part of the process, which I believe is more fully glimpsed through meditation and devotion as we practice in AYP. What is up to us is how we view and participate in this process: Either with telescope, microscope, an eye of suspicion, or open arms. Of course, all these attitudes are part of the (modalities of the) process, too, so they will integrate and become what they will.
Regarding narrative, I will say that every character, act, twist, and turn has been said and seen before. The stories are lived out in different languages, cultures, and even different species. A song is made from different singers, but it is still a song aside from them, and other things beside itself (air, motion, issuance, parting, retraction). Consider hot and cold: They appear to be polar opposites to the extent that we cannot imagine them as being anything but different properties of a substratum (substance). However, in imposing our layered process division, we fail to consider the duality of the (any) substance to its negation (nothingness), and in a similar manner, we lose the implication of any being's opposite, like how heat implies coolness; no metaphor is exhaustively captured as a merely linguistic or cognitive substitution of one word for another. Metaphor is an endless reflection that determines, defines, and emerges from a merely arithmetical or sentential calculation (It must be beyond this narrower sense of word replacement, since simple replacement is tantamount to sentential ambiguity). Metaphor is itself a form of metonymy, which is called figurative language, taking its very name from the Greek words meta ("after" or "beyond") and onoma ("name"). Hence, even its designation points to its being beyond itself.
Rendition of the absolute (Brahman), which is living perfection, falling ever into itself and outward as a flower blooms and shrivels, no matter how minute or isolated, shows that being implies all that never was, is not, and never will be. That is just to say that things are not only what they appear to be: They are everything else, as well. Thus, language is a metaphor for knowledge, and knowledge is a metaphor for ignorance. Every concept or sutra contains every other, though some more obviously from our standpoint than others) and these meanings are known, or at least, perceived or related (Avicenna posits worldly material and consciousness itself as a hypostatic corollary of God's knowledge and will). It's a slippery place to inhabit that is right above complete nihilism and madness. I simply ask myself if I have lived it, and I know that I have not done so fully.
So, my conclusion is to live as I will, as the supple flower's bloom and the bitter thorn's prick; both together with all in Nataraja's cosmic, eternal dance. How far the echoes ring from the footfalls is a matter of perception only, as they undoubtedly return to the very will that bore them, and were never far, distant, or away. I am still just a flower trying to grow, and the universe is a big, scary place. I do what I can and trust in my friends, faith, and the process.
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Edited by - Anima on Nov 22 2014 2:18:11 PM |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Nov 22 2014 : 4:44:59 PM
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Wow anima . |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Nov 22 2014 : 5:52:57 PM
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Now THAT is some discourse.  Reading that was like swinging across the monkey bars, doing some twist and turns along the way, and howling like a wolf all the while.
One thing about the spectrum is...it's more of a play of presence, and lack of presence, rather than two opposing forces. For instance, consider the example of hot and cold. Cold is really just a lack of heat. The presence of heat dispels what is considered "cold", but there is no "cold flame" burning to create the coldness. However, there is a fire or flame burning to create the heat. Similarly, with darkness--darkness is just a lack of light, rather than a presence in itself.
We can go even further with good and evil. Evil has no intrinsic existence other than a perceptual lack in goodness. The divine qualities we cultivate and accentuate in samyama have a flavor of immortality that outlasts the more temporal forms which end up embodying the essence of the sutras. Seed ideas germinate and blossom into physicality. The recipe of BEING.
On further reflection and contemplation, I see the thorns on the rose stem as protection. Protecting what is beautiful is something necessary in the early stages of evolution. Perhaps as we progress, defense and protection will no longer be necessary, but in the predatory culture of Earth, it serves a purpose.
Thank you for diving deep with me. |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Nov 22 2014 : 6:56:27 PM
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| anima the guru in you has held the heart of the guru in me only when reading the gita have i felt so much love. |
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Sadhguru's Metaphor of Transformation
