The Yamas & Niyamas Page 8

  As we turn now to the disciplines of the Niyamas, we move our attention from an adult relationship with the world to an adult relationship with ourselves; and from a social focus to an internal focus.

  Saucha

  It was glistening

  On the green Lady’s Mantle ~

  Dew so clear and pure.

  ~ C.L.

  Purity

  Saucha

  In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning tells the story of a tense moment in a recovery room. A young female patient is lying in bed. Standing beside her is the surgeon who has just removed a tumor from the young woman’s face. Her husband, also in the room, stands at a distance. The patient is looking at herself in a handheld mirror for the first time after the surgery. Staring at the obvious downward turned corner of one side of her mouth, she asks the surgeon if she will always look lopsided. The surgeon replies a solemn yes, noting that he had to cut a nerve to get the tumor out. In that crucial moment, where the silence betrays a young woman doubting her future physical appeal, the husband acts. He walks over to his wife and tells her that he thinks she looks kind of cute with one side of her mouth turned down. Then he looks at her tenderly, shapes his mouth like hers, matching lips to lips, and kisses her.

  The jewel of Saucha, or purity, carries a two-fold meaning. First, Saucha invites us to purify our bodies, our thoughts, and our words. As we purify ourselves physically and mentally, we become less cluttered and heavy; purification brings about a brightness and clarity to our essence. Second, this guideline has a relational quality. No one in the above story could have known ahead of time what the outcome of the surgery would be. Yet in that moment, when the wife doubted her own appeal, the husband was able to be with her purely, and in that purity, support her sense of self and the beauty of their relationship.

  These two practices of purity are interrelated. As we purify ourselves from the heaviness and clutter of toxins, distractions, and scatteredness, we gain clarity to meet each moment with integrity and freshness. We become more pure in our relationship with each moment.

  Purity as a Cleansing Process

  The yogis have many practices to purify their bodies. Some may make us react with a “no way, not in my lifetime” attitude. (Like running string through the nasal passages and out the mouth or running thirty-two yards of cotton strip through the digestive system, to name a few.) Other purifying processes may be easier for us to engage in or at least try, like the neti pot.* Breath practices and postures are means of purifying the body, as are meditating and following an ethical system, like the Yamas and Niyamas. We can say what we want about these practices, but one thing is clear: the yogis place a high priority on purification. Why this importance?

  There is a great energy that lies, mostly dormant, within each of us. This is the energy of consciousness or awakening. We have all, at times, felt the movement of this energy: moments when tears silently well in our eyes with the stirring of overwhelming love; moments when beauty stops us and captures us in wonder; moments when contentment and well-being ooze from our pores; moments when the life force pulses through us like electricity making us vibrant and young; moments when deep wisdom bathes light on our unknowing; moments when awareness comes to us in technicolor. These are small tastes of what happens as the energy within us awakens.

  To practice the guideline of purity is to engage in cleansing processes, both physical and mental, that prepare us for these kinds of experiences all the time. Cleansing strengthens the body and insulates the mind, preparing us for the awakening of the energy within us. Cleansing prepares us for the greatness of our spirit. Cleansing lightens us to experience more of the divine mystery.

  Taking steps to cleanse and purify ourselves will look different for each of us. Cleansing doesn’t have to be earth shattering or weird to begin to work its magic. It might take the form of increased physical exercise, or increased water intake, a day of fasting on fruit and juice, or perhaps a day of cleaning out closets. Maybe we will choose to spend a day purifying our tongue so that we speak nothing of harm or untruth for the entire day. Whatever form purifying takes, it always begins with an intention to “lighten” the load we are carrying.

  Where are these “loads” for you? Maybe your body is carrying poisonous toxins from a poor diet. Maybe your mind is carrying the heavy baggage of victimhood or unforgiveness. Maybe your home and workspace are full of clutter and junk. All of these “loads” weigh down your body, mind, and spirit. They are real and they are heavy. The guideline of purity invites us to move into ease, to do what it takes to get rid of this heaviness, wherever we find it in our lives. Clean your body; clean your mind; clean your living and work space.

  I am one who believes strongly in the power of confession and forgiveness. I have found that some of the things I carry from my past actions need to be confessed, sometimes to a trusted friend and sometimes to a piece of paper that is then ritually burned. For me, this is a necessary cleansing practice for past errors in judgment and selfishness. In any way that we hold on to past wounds, we injure ourselves and keep ourselves from the ability to be pure with what is current in our lives. Forgiveness of self and other is the most generous gift we can give ourselves.

  Several years ago when I did my Kundalini yoga teacher training under Yogi Bhajan, I had the opportunity to have a private session with him and ask him anything I wanted. At that time he had given me the spiritual name Amrit Dev, meaning the sweet nectar and wisdom of the guru is within you. The question I chose to ask him was how to live into the fullness of my spiritual name. He began to laugh boisterously and with a twinkle in his eye and a strong Indian accent, he replied, “Your poop must smell like nectar and your pee must smell like nectar.” He continued to chuckle loudly, and that was the end of my time with him.

  I had to pick my jaw up off the floor before I could begin to contemplate what he had said. I now understand he was speaking directly to the idea of purity. That I should strive to live in such a way that everything that goes into me and everything that comes out of me is pure.

  Yogi Bhajan’s explanation of my name helped me begin to understand the difference between purification and cleanliness. Recently back from India, I am once again sorting through this difference. I spent almost two weeks in an ashram doing purification practices, but it took me two hours when I got home to be “American clean.” In this country we almost obsess about cleanliness, but pay little attention to purity. Cleanliness is a process of scrubbing the outside of us; it changes our outer appearance. Purification works on our insides and changes our very essence. Although cleanliness is important, Saucha calls us to the inward journey of purification not the external appearance of cleanliness.

  Purity as Relational

  Saucha has a relational quality that asks us not only to seek purity in ourselves, but to seek purity with each moment by allowing it to be as it is. We are asked to be with life, with others, with things, with the day, with work, with the weather, as they are in the moment, not as we wish they were or think they should be or expect them to be. We fail this guideline in any of our attempts to change, judge, criticize, alter, control, manipulate, pretend, be disappointed, or check out. Purity is not our attempt to make something different than it is; rather it is to be pure in our relationship with it, as it is in the moment.

  The difference between being pure with something rather than trying to make something pure is a subtle and tricky distinction. We can easily find ourselves in an arrogant position, sitting on our high horse thinking we are bringing something better to the moment, or perhaps thinking that the moment isn’t worth our attention, or maybe even finding ourselves feeling that the moment owes us something. When our thoughts or actions are presumptive like this we actually stain the purity of the moment. We are not to bring our idea of purity to the moment; we are simply to be with the moment as it is.

  In order to be pure with something, we
are asked to do a lot of subtraction. We have to subtract all of our ideals, illusions, and expectations of “what should be” and “how we want it to be.” We even have to drop our image of purity itself to begin to live in the oasis of this jewel. When we find ourselves stuck in a traffic jam, disappointed with our meal, tripping over messes in the house, or dealing with a crabby family member, we are invited to simply be with these times in a pure way, not to judge them as impure moments.

  My sister-in-law recently returned from visiting her two-year-old grandson. She was fresh and alive from the experience. All she could talk about was how everything looked new to her because, for a week, she had seen through the curious, delighted eyes of a child. She had gained what the Buddhist’s call the “beginner’s mind.” Far from being stale, she was gripped with a child’s curiosity which had made her more open, playful, and able to be surprised. She had reclaimed that childhood ability to see things as they really are, as if for the first time. As she stopped imposing her staleness on things, they began to reveal themselves to her in new and wondrous ways. She had become pure with the moment.

  Perhaps the most difficult place to practice purity is with ourselves. Be honest, how many expectations and illusions do you impose on yourself? I am amazed when I read old journals and find them filled with all the things I will do to improve myself. When I listen to others talk, I know I am not the only one who is hoping to make myself into a picture-perfect version of me. Rather than planning ourselves, what if we practiced “unplanning” ourselves? Instead of striving to become someone lovable, what if we loved ourselves fiercely as we are? Instead of managing ourselves, what if we loosened the reins? The question remains for each of us to answer, “Can you be pure with yourself in each moment?” Or in the words of Anthony de Mello, “Can you leave yourself alone?”

  Being pure with ourselves means we are not afraid of our thoughts or our feelings, and we do not have to hide anything from ourselves. Matthew Sanford, speaking from the experience of an accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, says, “I am not afraid of my sadness. My sadness is an incredible gift that allows me to be with people who are suffering without trying to fix them.” Matthew invites us to simply and fearlessly be with all the pieces of ourselves.

  Being pure with all the pieces of ourselves increases our staying power with our own suffering, intimacy, joy, boredom, pain, and anxiety. We become safe with ourselves, and we become a safe place for others. We become a person who can comfortably and compassionately sit with another without the need to fix them.

  Gathering the Scattered Pieces of Ourselves

  Not only does purity ask us to subtract the illusions we impose on the moment, it also asks us to gather ourselves together so that our whole self shows up to the moment. What does this mean? Yogiraj Achala uses the phrase “be unalloyed.” Alice Christensen speaks of being “unfragmented.” Whatever term we use, purity asks that all of us be in one place at one time. And that means that our head and heart are unified, our thoughts, actions, and speech are congruent, and we are in the present moment.

  One of my friends related an incident with her three-year-old son. It was a particularly busy day and she was attending to many different things. In the process of all her busyness, her son was trying to get her attention. Frustrated, he grabbed her face between his hands and said, “You’re not recognizing me.” As this little three-year-old reminded his mother, each moment, each person, each event, asks us to recognize it by truly being present to it as it is.

  Like my friend in the story above, we often enter an experience with the clutter of scattered thoughts and leave the experience with even more cluttered thoughts. It is like we are living on the leftovers of where we have been or the preparations of where we are going. Because we have not taken the time to “catch up” with ourselves, we are everywhere but the present moment. We are missing out on the fullness of life lived in the richness of what is immediately before us. Instead of entering the moment relaxed and spacious, we arrive frazzled and late because we tried to do one more thing before we left. And often we leave messy and cluttered, already rushing off mentally to our next thing instead of breathing in a sweet closure to the moment.

  The practice of purity asks us to slow down and do one thing at a time. Purity embodies the slow steadiness and integrity necessary to give all of our attention to one thing at a time. As we practice slowing down and giving each thing our undivided attention, we will find ourselves more integrated and more pure with the moment. Hurrying, multi-tasking, and busyness, all symbols of success in our culture, are killers of purity.

  I have had the experience of waking up to my morning prayers and meditation, only to find that in one line of a prayer, I have almost planned my entire upcoming day. I have also had the experience of looking lovingly into my granddaughter’s eyes as she is about to speak and then realizing a moment later that she is finished speaking and I have not heard a word she said. In both of these instances, the moment happened and I was not there.

  Purity requires all of our attention in the moment so that we can go on to the next thing with our full awareness and energy. Krishnamurti writes of the freedom this kind of engagement brings when he says, “I enter fully into each experience, and I come out fully from each of them too. I put the whole of me into all I do, and…out of all I do.” Purity asks that we make full and honest contact with the moment so there is nothing lost and no regrets. There is no residue.

  Several years ago I studied the Lord’s Prayer in its original Aramaic language with Neil Douglas-Klotz. The line interpreted in English as, “…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others…” when spoken in Aramaic, has a spitting out quality, as if saying the line itself is a letting go. Douglas-Klotz interpreted this spitting out quality of the words as a literal act of forgetting what you know about the other person.** It is as if you meet each person with a clean slate, not remembering any secrets they may have shared with you. The hidden hope is that each time you see this person you can see them and relate to them in a pure manner. I often remember this line and notice that the secrets I know about others are mere clutter in my mind that keep me from the practice of purity. I continue to pray this petition of forgetting.

  The practice of Saucha, or purity, of cleansing ourselves and cleansing our ability to be with each moment, takes on a visceral quality. As we begin to lose the heaviness of waste and clutter, we begin to feel lighter, more spacious and expansive. Our bodies become more alive, our minds become more clear, our hearts more compassionate.

  Questions for Exploration

  Living with these questions, taking time for reflection, and journaling will give you new insights into your life and the practice of purity. For this month, frame your exploration in the following statement by Krishnamurti:

  I enter fully into each experience,

  and I come out fully from each of them too.

  I put the whole of me into all I do,

  and…out of all I do.

  Week One: This week notice where your body is sluggish. Begin to purify yourself through diet and exercise (and the space around you if that is making you sluggish). Notice how the sluggishness becomes lighter as you purify. Notice the difference between the external process of cleansing and the internal process of purifying.

  Week Two: This week, begin to purify your thoughts and speech. Use friends, ritual, forgiveness, journaling, etc. to release toxic, stale, negative thoughts. Replace these thoughts with love and gratitude.

  Week Three: This week, be purely with yourself. In the words of Anthony de Mello, leave yourself alone. Journal the experience and what gets evoked for you.

  Week Four: This week, set aside one undisturbed hour where you take the entire time to eat one orange. Give this orange, and the delight of eating it, your full attention for the whole hour. For the rest of the week, slow down and be purely with each moment as it presents itself. Journal your expe
rience.

  For this month ponder the words of Krishnamurti and live purely with each moment as it is.

  *A neti pot is a container used to run salt water through the nostrils.

  **One literal translation of the Aramaic is “Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.” Note also, that although the New Testament of the Bible is written in Greek, the language of the common people of that time was Aramaic. Jesus would have spoken the words of the Lord’s Prayer and taught them to the people in Aramaic. Aramaic became a “dead” language in later centuries as the Muslims took power in the area and Arabic became the predominant language.

  Santosha

  Stay in the center

  And notice each moment with

  Calm serenity.

  ~ C. L.

  Contentment

  Santosha

  My husband and I own the three seasons of the TV series Kung Fu on DVD. We enjoy watching these episodes and pretending that, like Caine, we are masters of life; that no matter what happens, we can remain calm and know exactly what to do.

  For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Caine, as a young orphan, entered a Chinese monastery and was trained in the martial arts and way of the Tao. He became a master in his own right and was initiated into a sect of the Buddhist priesthood. After an incident in which Caine was blamed for the death of the emperor’s favorite nephew, Caine fled to America as a wanted man.

  It is in America that we watch Caine wander from town to town in complete mastery of his own life. Bounty hunters are continuously after him, yet he does not walk in fear; instead he meets each moment with curiosity and total presence. He has nothing but he does not walk in lack; instead he meets each moment satisfied, able to see beauty and abundance. Where most people would find loneliness and deprivation, Caine finds contentment. And in his contentment, he is able to skillfully invite others into a deeper realization of their own ability to be strong of will and gentle of heart.