MY YOGA PRACTICE CHALLENGE

This morning I have set a challenge for myself, or, if 'challenge' seems too competitive (even when the competitors are merely different aspects of myself), a theme, for my yoga practice beginning this Sunday morning. The challenge/theme is loving kindness.

In my blog posting of September 26, 2012, I wrote about my being annoyed/angered when people made a lot of noise as the start of yoga practice neared (e.g., to-ing and fro-ing, throwing down mats and props, talking) or in coming in late (with more noise, more to-ing and fro-ing, more throwing down mats and props, etc.). I am going to work on not being annoyed, not being angered, not opening my eyes to take note of who is arriving late, etc. I am going to try to be nonjudgmental. I am going to view with loving kindness those whose actions have triggered my annoyance and anger. This will not be easy for me, but it is something I need to try.

"Just improve yourself . . . that is all you can do to improve the world." Ludwig Wittgenstein

FRIENDSHIP

DISCLAIMER, of sort: Tonight there is a full moon (were I back in the Midwest, we would refer to this particular full moon as the "Harvest Moon"). It is a cloudy night here in Connecticut, and the moon has not been able to break through. I feel it, the full moon, though. I have often wondered whether there was a little bit of the werewolf in me, as I feel a little wilder and have to work a lot harder to contain myself and remain within the socially acceptable when the moon is full. So, what I write below may be me acting out my wildness in words. It is at the full moon that I miss having a friend around, someone to understands my wild, my animal, my darker side. But I have travelled far from home, and I am here in New England where the natives are suspicious of outsiders, and open-hearted, if at all, only to members of their own clan, tribe, club, etc. The werewolf in me howls, hoping a kindred spirit will hear my call. End of Disclaimer.

George Eliot defined 'friendship' as follows. "Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of Feeling Safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out Just as they are chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keeping what is worth keeping, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away."

Friday, during my morning meditation, I meditated on the nature of true or real friendship (neither the "friending" on Facebook--where one notes that on Facebook one "friends" someone, one does not befriend someone on Facebook--; nor the "BFF" of text messaging), and fragments of the George Eliot's definition rose from the depth of memory. After locating the passage in one of my college notebooks, I spent much of Friday and Saturday thinking about my friendships, some long lost, others limping along. And, I realized that, on Eliot's criteria for friendship, I had not made a single (or at best one, now lost) new friend over the past twenty-five years. It has been over twenty-five years since I last experienced that "inexpressible comfort of Feeling Safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words." And, twenty-five years since I have even attempted to offer anyone that "inexpressible comfort of Feeling Safe" with me. It takes a great deal of faith and trust to let down one's guard to let someone be your friend. It takes a lot of time, effort and compassion to work on being someone else's friend. I have lacked the faith and trust to let anyone befriend me; and I have been unwilling to invest the time, effort and compassion to befriend another. It is said one reaps what one sows. I have sown no seeds of friendship. That is a sad statement, and it is all the sadder because it is true statement. Real friendship, real intimacy escapes me. I seem there, yet I am not. I have already slipped away. Leaving carnage and chaos.

"He is a man [] who has never become accustomed to families. All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. [H]e has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses." Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (New York: Knopf, 1992), at 116. 

How does one change one's karma, overcome one's habits and, thereby, prevent even more carnage and chaos? In my case, how do I escape being driven by my dark side, the dark aspects of my karma? And, for matter, how do I find someone capable and willing to deal with me and my dark side? Someone willing to sift through the grain and chaff, when everyone today wants the grain (organic, of course) and not themselves be bother with the sifting or the inconvenient chaff. I do not want to eliminate my dark side, for it is part of who I am? Who wants to be neutered? Who really wants to be a saint? Given a choice, more likely than not, women will choose the bad boy over nice guy. Though, eventually, most women settle for reasonably nice, reasonably safe, reasonably dependable, and uncomplicated guys. Then women reach 45, or 50, the children are gone, and realize they are bored out of their minds, and that they have been so for a decade or more. Their lives probably would have been a lot less boring had they taken a chance and rode through the turbulence along side some bad boy or another who, after all, do stop being boys and become men. But the dark side of the bad boys is out there to be seen, and it scares most women. (And many men learn to hide their badness from women. And those women have a right to feel deceived and defrauded when the badness surfaces, as it always does, as it must.) They settle for the guy who goes with their home decor, not the guy who might break up the furniture. Women want ease and steadiness; they don't want complicated. Yet love without the surviving of complications would not be true love. Friendship without weathering complications is probably not real friendship.  Life without complications, without chaff, is not living. Life without its darker side would not be a real life. I will keep my dark side, thank you very much! Controlling, channelling, challenging, and being responsible for the forces of one's dark side is not the same as eliminating one's dark side altogether. 

My yoga practice is showing me my dark(er) side in greater detail. (Part of the warrior that comes to yoga mat is the dark warrior. And, remember, Savasana, or Corpse pose, is essentially a meditation on one's death. Call it 'Final Relaxation' pose if that gives you comfort, but it is an acknowledgment that in the end we do die. A warrior knows that death is inevitable. And the yoga practice ends with a meditation on death so that one can get off one's mat and live life, confront the challenges of simply living, one more day having accepted the reality that one will die. Accept the reality that life includes loss. One would have little need for a warrior's heart were life all sunshine, roses, and happy endings.) And, in the process, my yoga practice is opening me up to the possibility of true friendship. Yoga, however, does not itself equip one to be a true friend or to accept friendship. Yoga practice itself will not contain my darker side. But it will aid me in acknowledging and addressing my darker side. Another work-in-progress! 

There are magic moments in yoga practice, more frequent in Yin than in Yang yoga, where one no longer sees or hears the other members of the class. The teacher's voice is a mere whisper in the winds. The outside noise has become white. And where it does not really matter what asana one is doing, or whether one is doing it properly. One is surrounded by all that activity of a yoga studio, yet there is nothing in the room but you. That is when the dark side says "Morning!', and the day's work on the mat really begins. 

Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2006) ("Fritz Perls, one of the founders of the Gestalt school of therapy, has often been quoted as saying: 'I do my thing, you do your thing; I'm not here in this world to live up to your expectations....You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful; if not, it cannot be helped.' This statement is on the notion of self and other as separate entities. It is not based on the insight of interbeing. I am not fond of this statement. At the very least I expect you to take care of yourself, because if you take good care of yourself, I will suffer less. My students have the right to expect me to be a good teacher. This means I must practice what I teach--that is only fair. And I have the right to expect my students to put into practice what they have learned from me. That, too, is only fair." "I would like to offer this gatha as a response to the statement of Mr. Perls:

You are me and I am you.

Is it not true that we inter-are?

You cultivate the flower in you so that I will be beautiful,

And I transform the garbage in me so that you don't have to suffer.

This is the kind of insight that is based on interbeing. If we live our lives according to this insight, we will not have to suffer so much." Id. at 165.).

I RELEARNED ANOTHER THING ABOUT MYSELF DURiNG YOGA CLASS YESTERDAY.

I drift off, lose focus, and pay less attention, etc., when some thing is characterized as 'fun.' It is not the doing of a particular so-called "fun" thing that turns me away. For often I have done, and many times have enjoyed doing, that thing. And it is not that I am opposed to having fun. What it is, is that there is something in me that will not allow me to have fun in a public forum. I have so invested in a public persona of seriousness, that I shut down when an opportunity for fun presents itself there. Ah, one more challenge for me on the yoga mat: Getting out of my comfort zone and having a little public fun. Sigh! 

And, wouldn't you know it. My horoscope today (see below) is about having fun. The gods are watching (though apparently not 'watching over') me. I guess I need to lighten up. Yike!


September 28, 2012
An Exercise in Fun
Scorpio Daily Horoscope
A humorous outlook could put you in the mood for amusement today. You might feel inspired to spend quality time laughing and playing with friends, or you could feel a desire to improve your social life by meeting new people. If you allow this lighthearted mood to carry over into all of your activities, you can encourage a greater sense of meaning in even boring or mundane experiences. One good way to do this is by setting an intention to enjoy yourself as much as possible when you enter into a new setting today. Whether you are focusing on your work responsibilities, spending time with loved ones, or meeting new people, simply choose to make your activities fun and enjoyable, and watch your surroundings transform, as if by magic. 

Consciously focusing on fun and enjoyment can intensify our pleasant experiences, while minimizing the negative or difficult. We often express lighthearted humor only while we engage in fun activities, but we can also learn to use humor to enhance any experience. By doing so, we take greater control over our mood at any given moment. Not only can this ease the discomfort of unpleasant experiences, it can also help us to create more enjoyment in our daily lives. Simply by applying the creative power of our thoughts and emotions moment to moment, we are able to make every day an exercise in creating more joy, fun, and laughter. Your humorous outlook can transform any experience in which you choose to apply it today. 

WHAT COLOR IS MY HEART?

Yesterday, my two yoga practices focused on opening the heart. In the morning practice the instructor asked, "What color is your heart?" Without a moment of hesitation, I knew my answer. The color of my heart is black. What I don't know is what that means. In American culture, black has numerous negative connotations (except, for example, one wants one's finances to be in the black). Yet, the color black is the presence of all colors. Black contains all the possible colors of my heart (as opposed to white, which is the absence of color). So, my darken heart, my black heart, though closed, is a huge, beating, organ of possibilities. Who (or what) will tap into and unleash the colors in my heart is the open question. The answer: I just don't know. 

Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love: The Practice of Looking Deeply in the Mahayana Buddhist Tradition, with a foreword by Natalie Goldberg (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996) ("Walking joyfully in the ultimate dimension, / walk with your feet, / not with your head. / If you walk with your head, you'll get lost." Id. at 120.).  

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

I went to yoga class yesterday morning. I thought I was in a very good mood when I arrived after a leisurely mile walk to the studio on a bright, warm, Indian Summer morning. I set up my place on the floor, and waited for practice to begin. I was calm, I was relaxed, I was--I thought--focused. Then, about five minutes before class began, it fell apart. It began as more people began to arrive for class. The chatter increased in volume. More mats were thrown, not placed, onto the floor. The endless back-and-forth to get props, go to the restroom, do that last minute checking for text messages or email on the smart phone, etc. (Anyone who makes the assumption that yoga-types would be light on their feet would be gravely mistaken. It is a mystery to me why so many yoga-types are heavy footed. Heavy-footed, not grounded.) Then it got worse. Class began, and so did the seemingly unending stream of late-arrivals. More loud chatter as each seem to need to announce his or her late arrival. More mats being thrown down. More back-and-forth to find a place on the floor, to get props, to go to the restroom. The class was engaged in a breathing exercise and I could feel the heat rising in my body, the annoyance rising in my mind. I wanted to scream, "Respect the practice! Respect the mat! If you are going to be late, at least come in quietly, take a spot in the back of the class, and sit your butt down." Of course I did not scream. I did not bolt from the room. Why?

Three yoga instructors, each with her own distinct personality and approach to yoga, influence my practice. The first (not in rank, as I shall not rank them) of my favorite yoga instructors is persistent in reminding us that stuff, often quite negative stuff (e.g., anger), will come up during practice, especially when we work on particular parts of the body, and the need to be mindfully aware of such. The second of my favorite yoga instructors says, I think correctly, that how one deals with the things that come up while on the yoga mat is pretty much how one deals with things that come up off the mat. There is a real sense that, with a serious yoga practice, one is always on the mat. And the third of my favorite yoga instructors recently pointed out that the stuff that bothering us out there is the world tends to come onto the yoga mat as our minds do what they are suppose to do, that is, think, wonder, wander, ponder, worry, etc., such that even on the mat we are still dealing with the off-the-mat shit. Even on the mat we are still out there in the world. Moreover, our off-the-mat problems or issues will not go away, will not be resolved, simply by doing yoga. A serious yoga practice may help one to better deal with that off-the-mat world, but yoga does not change that world, or resolve those issues one has with that world. All three yoga instructors are influencing a change in my life, through yoga; but yoga will not resolve my personal problems and issues. I am still annoyed or angered by the same old petty shit. The difference is that I know it is MY annoyance. MY anger. MY super judgmental self. My completely delusional attitude. My 'my-shit-don't-stink' hypocrisy. MY shit. MY off-the-mat and on-the-mat shit. And I realize I cannot scream, unless I want to scream at myself. I cannot bolt from the room, for my annoyance, anger, shit, etc., will be bolting the room right along side me. A serious yoga practice, which entails more than asanas, forces one to confront one's self. I am trying to develop a serious yoga practice. I am trying to confront myself, both on the mat and off the mat. My yoga practice, like my life, is a work-in-progress. You cannot bolt from life. Well, actually you can, but you know and get my point.

Rolf Gates & Katrina Kenison, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga (New York: Anchor Books, 2002) ("Brahmacarya is the feeling of freedom that comes when we have let an addictive craving go--when we can eat to live, not live to eat; when we can work to live, not live to work; when we stand firmly and with ease of heart in the passions of life." Id. at 50. "All yoga is saying is what we already know to be true: that materialism is a lie, that we are spiritual beings with spiritual problems, and that we need spiritual solutions. No matter how rich or powerful or impressive we may be, in the end we must all forsake external power and embrace the power within." Id. at 150-151. "As we accept and connect with the postures that are hard for us, we find the understanding that leads to mastery. That is working with things as they are." Id. at 254-255. "The aim of yogic practice is to free us from the endless distractions of the kleshas--fear, pride, desire, and ignorance--and to teach us to bring a focused mind to bear on the nature of our relationships. Our time on the mat is dedicated to that end." Id. at 280.).

THE TRUE NATURE OF HAPPINESS

Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living, with an Introduction by William Gilbert (Coarsegold, CA: Dharma House Publications, 1967) (From the "Introduction": "What is Suchness? It is things as they are and life as it is. It is truth as it is. Suchness is the world, void of artificiality or make-up. It is 'Sonomama' in Japanese and 'Tathata' in Sanskrit. A rose is a rose; a lily is a lily; and I am I. This is the world of Suchness!" Id. at x. "All men, without exception, wish to have a happy life, and they work hard to attain it.... What is happiness? We must know clearly what the objective is when we seek it. If we do not know, our efforts may be in vain. The ancient Greeks thought good is happiness. But in the middle and modern ages, Aristotle's formal meaning that good is happiness has been altered to the more material meaning that happiness is pleasure or absence of pain...." Id. at 1. "The real way of happiness is the realization of one's life itself. It is the unfolding of the whole self.... True happiness is not given to us--we create it. If you are unhappy, do not blame others or your environment. It is your mind, your attitude, that make you miserable. Changing place, or work, may help, but that is not the complete cure for your trouble and unhappiness. The right attitude, and a clear and right mind are the way to happiness." Id. at 7.  "Buddhism teaches that whatever exists is the result of karma and that you are responsible, not somebody else. No external agent is responsible for your happiness or misery." Id. at 68. "Happiness is in the present, and only by living in the present is real happiness achieved. Actually in the world of truth there is only the present, but people tend to live in three worlds, past, present, and future. ... Living in the present is most important. This immediate present is what we must be concerned with. Are we happy? Are we free, now, from idle complaints, greediness, frustrations, and hatred? Attachment to the past makes a person stubborn, and attachment to the future may cause an idealist illusions and disappointments." Id. at 100. "Buddhism is a religion of enlightenment and a way of life. It is not a religion of belief. Therefore, there is no dogma to believe and no creed to follow. Buddhism teaches to see and understand life and things correctly as they are, and teaches right living." Id. at 34. "It is said in the Dhammapada: 'All that we are is the result of / what we have thought; / it is founded on our thoughts, / it is made up of our thoughts. / If a man speaks or acts with / a pure thought, happiness follows him, / like a shadow that never leaves him. / He abused me, he beat me, / he defeated me, he robed me; / in those who do not harbor such thoughts / hatred will cease.'" Id. at 142. I have wasted/lost so much of my life thinking that some job, some woman, some thing was going to make me happy. Wrong path; wrong direction.).

SUGGESTION FICTION IN TRANSLATION

Jorge Amado, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands: A Moral and Amorous Tale, translated from the Portuguese by Harriet de Onis (New York: Vintage International, 1969, 1997) ("'There you re,' he observed. 'What guarantee does one have? None. Even when you have a moor of a truck repaired, you get a six-month guarantee. And when a person thinks all his life is fixed up, that finally everything is going for him, it comes apart, the saint falls from his float and turns into rubbish . . .'" Id. at 109. "Dona Flor passed them by, deaf and dumb, enveloped in her modesty and her pride as a widow, forced to defend her circumspection against herself, against her errant thoughts, her unfitting dreams, against the aroused and ardent desire pricking her flesh like a goad. She had lost that 'perfect equilibrium between mind and body' which was indispensable for a good life, according to the learned Yoga brochure, 'the necessary balance between spirit and matter.' Matter and spirit locked in a war to the death; outwardly, an exemplary widow; inwardly, afire that was devouring and consuming her." Id. at 268-269.).

Jorge Amado, Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, translated from the Portuguese by James L. Taylor & William L. Grossman (New York: Vintage International, 1958, 1992).

Jorge Amado, Showdown, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Bantam Books, 1988) (a bit bawdy).

Bernardo Atxaga, The Accordionist's Son, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Cull Costa (Saint Paul, MN: Grayw0lf Press, 2003, 2007).

Anouar Benmalek, The Lovers of Algeria: A Novel, translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2004).

Laurent Binet, HHhH: A Novel, translated from the French by Sam Taylor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009, 2012) ("I think I'm beginning to understand. What I'm writing is an infranovel." Id. at 241. Also see Alan Riding, "Operation Anthropoid," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/29/2012.).

Friedrich Christian Delius, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman: A Novel, translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006, 2010, 2012) (From the backcover: "In Rome one January afternoon in 1943, a young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. The war is for her little more than a daydream, until she realizes that her husband might never return. Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman . . . is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost--even at the risk of excluding reality.").

Shusaku Endo, Deep River, translated from the Japanese by Van C, Gessel (New York: New Directions Books, 1994) ("But now that he was all alone, he had finally come to understand that there is a fundamental difference between being alive and truly living. And though he had associated with many other people during his life, he had to admit that the only two people he has truly formed a bond with were his mother and his wife. 'Darling!' Once again he called out towards the river. 'Where have you gone?' The river took in his cry and silently flowed away. But he felt a power of some kind in that silvery silence. Just as the river had embraced the deaths of countless people over the centuries and carried them into the next world, so too it picked up and carried away the cry of life from this man sitting on a rock on its bank." Id. at 189.).

Shusaku Endo, The Samurai, translated from the Japanese by Van C, Gessel (New York: New Directions Books, 1980, 1982).

Shusaku Endo, Silence, translated from the Japanese by William Johnston (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1969, 1980) ("The guards, too, were men; they were indifferent to the fate of others. This was the feeling that their laughing and talking stirred up in his heart. Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind. And then for the first time a real prayer rose up in his heart." Id. at 89."To help others is the way of the Buddha and the teaching of Christianity--in this point the two religions are the same. What matters is whether or not you walk the path of truth." Id. at 146.).

Roy Jacobsen, Child Wonder: A Novel, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett with Don Shaw (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009, 2011).

Yukio Mishima, The Decay of the Angel: The Sea of Fertility, a Cycle of Four Novels, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Vintage International, 1974, 1990) (This is the final volume in Mishima's tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. It was completed on November 25, 1970, on which date Yukio Mishima committed seppuka (ritual suicide). He was 45.).

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses: The Sea of Fertility, a Cycle of Four Novels, translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallager (New York: Vintage International, 1973, 1990) ("For the vast majority of men, romantic dreams are inevitably bound up with a woman. And so when his colleagues intuitively diagnosed the affliction lodged within him since his fall trip to Tokyo as involvement with a woman, they were at least correct in giving it a romantic coloring. Their intuition was indeed remarkable in shrewdly picturing Honda as one who has strayed from the way of reason and was now wandering aimlessly along some overgrown path of emotion. But what might have been expected in a twenty-year-old youth was deemed improper in a man Honda's age, entirely human though the failing was. And this was where most of the disapproval was focused." "Members of a profession in which reason was of the essence, his colleagues could hardly be expected to view with respect any man who, unknown to himself, had contracted the disease of romanticism. And then from the viewpoint of national righteousness, though Honda had not gone so far as to commit any crime, he had certainly defied himself with an 'unwholesome' attitude." "But most surprised of all at this state of affairs was Honda himself. The eagle's nest that he had constructed at a dizzying height in the structure of legalism, which by now had become second nature to him, was--something wholly unforeseen!--threatened with the floodwaters of dreams, with the infiltration of poetry. More awesome yet, the dreams that assaulted him did not destroy either the transcendence of human reason, which he had always believed in or his proud pleasure at living with more concern for principles than for phenomena. The effect was rather to strengthen his beliefs, to heighten his pleasure,  For he could now glimpse towering up brightly beyond the principles of this world an unbreachable wall of principle. Once he saw it, so dazzling was this glimpse of the ultimate that he was unable to go back to the placid, everyday faith he had known before. And this was not to retreat but to advance. It was not to look back but to look ahead. Kiyoaki had certainly been reborn as Isao, and from this fact, beyond one kind of law, Honda had begun to see into the essential truth of law." "He suddenly remembered that in his youth ... the European philosophy of natural law had lost its appeal for him, and he had been much attracted by the ancient Indian Laws of Manu, whose provisions extended even to reincarnation. Something had already taken root in his heart then. A law whose nature was not to impose order upon chaos by to point to the principles that lay within chaos and so give form to a legal code, just as the surface of the water caught the reflected image of the moon--such a law could well have sprung from a source more profound than the European worship of reason that undergirded natural law. Honda's instinctive feeling therefore, may have been sound, but this was not the kind of soundness looked for in a judge, the guardian of the operative law. He could easily imagine how unsettling it must have been to his colleagues to have a man of this sort working with them in the same building. To have one dust-covered desk in a room filled with the spirit of good order. From the viewpoint of reason, nothing so resembled the stains on an untidy man's clothes as an obsession with dreams. Dreams somehow turn on into a slovenly figure. A soiled collar, the back of the shirt winkled as though slept in, trousers baggy--something similar overtakes the garment of the spirit. Though he had done nothing, though he has said nothing, Honda had, at some time or other, come to violate the code of public morality, and so he knew that, in the eyes of his colleagues, he was like wastepaper scattered along the path of a neatly kept park." Id. at 306-308.).

Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow: The Sea of Fertility, a Cycle of Four Novels, translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallager (New York: Vintage International, 1972, 1990) ("The study of law was certainly a strange discipline. It was a net with mesh so fine as to catch the most trivial incidents of daily life, yet its vast extension in time and space encompassed even the eternal movements of the sun and stars. No fisherman seeking to increase his catch could be more greedy than the student of law." Id. at 59-60.).

Yukio Mishima, The Temple of Dawn: The Sea of Fertility, a Cycle of Four Novels, translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle (New York: Vintage International, 1973, 1990) ("[Honda] had even given up his judgeship. It had led to naught, and he had experienced only a shattering failure that had borne home to him the total futility of altruism." "Having abandoned altruistic ideals, he had become a much better lawyer. No longer having any passions, he was successful in saving others in one case after the other. He accepted no assignment unless the client was wealthy, no matter whether the case was civil or criminal. The Honda family prospered far more than in his father's time." "Poor lawyers who acted as though they were the natural representatives of social justice and advertised themselves as such were ludicrous. Honda was well aware of the limitations of law as far as saving people was concerned. To put it candidly, those who could not afford to engage lawyers were not qualified to break the law, but most people made mistakes and violated the law out of sheer necessity or stupidity." "There were times when it seemed to Honda that giving legal standards to the vast majority of people was probably the most arrogant game mankind had thought up. If crimes were often committed out of necessity or stupidity, could one perhaps claim that the mores and customs upon which such laws were based were also idiotic?" Id. at 16.).

Herta Muller, The Hunger Angel: A Novel, translated from the German by Philip Boehm (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009, 2012) ("When the hunger angel weighs me, I will deceive his scales. I will be just as light as my saved bread. And just as hard to bite. You'll see, I tell myself, it's a short plan with a long life." Id. at 215. From the bookjacket: "It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke-processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor camps: 1 shovel load = 1 gram of bread.").

Gregor von Rezzori, An Ermine in Czernopol, translated from the German by Philip Boehm, and with an Introduction by Daniel Kehlmann (New York: New York Review Books, 1966, 2011) (See John Wray, "Changing of the Guard," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/4/2012.).

Georges Simenon, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, translated from the French by Marc Romano & D. Thin; with an Introduction by Luc Sante (New York: New York Review Books, 1938, 2005) ("I'm not crazy. I'm not a sex fiend. I just decided, at the age of forty, to live as I please, without bothering about the law or convention. I'd learned late in life that no one else does anyway and all that time I'd simply had the wool pulled over my eyes." Id. at 132.).

S. Yizhar, Midnight Convoy and Other Stories, Second Revised Edition, translated from the Hebrew, and with an Introduction by Dan Miron (Milford, CT: The Toby Press, 2007) (" 'Well, that's how it is, and what can I do? Didn't we once think of something else? Once we wanted lots of things, and what has become of it all? Things that today you don't even want to talk about--you'd rather put them out of your mind like your youthful peccadilloes. Who would suspect these fellows as they are today, of the ideas and exploits of yesterday? Well, never mind. Human beings. One like this and one like that. And it's really best to go on holding your tongue. But now, look here. I myself, others too, all 0f us--tell me: are we really what we are because this is what we are actually like? This is what we ought to be, this is our real self, the thing that was latent in us them like a bud in the bosom of the leaf? I mean, couldn't it have been different? Surely it isn't reasonable, is it? After all, it all happened just like that, by blind chance, by accident! Just by chance. It's only chance that I'm here and I'm this, chance that I'm not there, somewhere else, that I'm not different and not like this . . . chance! And then we look for logic and law... necessity... you understand?' " From "Ephraim Goes Back to Alfalfa" (1938), translated by Misha Louvish, Id. at 1, 22.).

TRYING TO LIVE A MORE SATISFYING LIFE

Hung Ying-ming, Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life, translated by William Scott Wilson, with a foreword by Red Pine (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2012) (From Book One: "9. Late at night, when others are at rest, / Sitting alone, I look deep into my heart: / For the first time, distractions cease, and the truth along becomes manifest, as dew appears at dawn. / At such times / I experience a free and responsive mind. / Now the truth is manifested about the past, and I am once again aware of how difficult it is to escape distractions. / At such times / I experience mortification and shame." Id. at 11. "44. If you want to study, it is necessary to collect your spirit, / And to concentrate in earnest. / But if in cultivating virtue there remains any idea of merit or fame, / Learning will inevitably amount to nothing. / And if reading books you have a tendency toward recitation and stylishness, / Surely there will nothing in the depths of your heart." Id. at 27. "139. Character is the  master of talent, talent the servant of character. / To have a talent but no character / Is like a house with the master absent and the servant in control. / How many times will the little demons appear? / How many times run amok?" Id. at 71. "187. The disease of blatant desire can be cured, / But the disease of excuse-making is difficult to alleviate. / The obstacles of external affairs and things can be displaced, / But the obstacles of Reason are difficult to remove." Id. at 93. From Book Two: "8. Men understand how to read books that have words, / But do not understand how to read those that lack them. / They know how to pluck the lute that has strings, / But do not know how to play the one that has none. / Caught by the form, but untouched by the spirit: How will they get at the heart of either music or literature?" Id. at 113. "74. If you're bridled and chained by worldly desire, / You will learn how distressful life can be. / If you're comfortable and at ease with your own true nature, / You will learn how life can be enjoyed. / Knowing how you become distressed, / Your earthly desires will be destroyed; / Knowing how life can be enjoyed, / You will, of yourself, reach the mind of the sage." Id. at 146. "100. The actress puts on white powder and daubs herself with rouge, / And with the touch of the brush creates both beauty and crone. / But when the songs have been sung and the theater is closed, / Where are beauty and crone then? / The go player fights for the fore and contends for the rear, / Competes with each stone for victory or defeat. / But when the game has ended and the stones are put away, / Where are victory and defeat then?" Id. at 158. "128. The human is, at bottom, nothing more than a marionette. / You need only to have your hands at the source / To let no string become tangled, / To pull and release each freely, / To have stop and go reside in yourself, / And not to allow even a thin hair to be manipulated by another. / In this way, you can surely transcend this place." Id. at 128. From the Introduction: "Master of the Three Ways is a book about living with simplicity and awareness. It is a book about getting at the true taste of things without all the distracting and encumbering sauces and spices. It is a book about living without stuff, whether it be material, psychological, or spiritual...." Id. at xvi-xvii. From the backcover: "At once profound, spiritual, and witty, Master of the Three Ways is a remarkable work about human nature, the essence of life, and how to live simply and with awareness. In three hundred and fifty-seven verses, the author, Hung Ying-ming, a seventeenth-century Chinese sage, explores good and evil, honesty and deception, wisdom and foolishness, heaven and hell. He draws from the wisdom of the 'Three Creeds'--Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism--to impress upon us that combining simple elegance with the ordinary, we can make our lives into art. This sense, along with a particular understanding of Zen that makes art from the simple in everyday life, permeates Chinese and Japanese culture to this day." Note: This book was previously published under the title The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections on a Chinese Sage.).

SUGGESTED AUTUMN READING FOR LAW STUDENTS

Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (New York: Nation Books, 2012) ("We ... no longer have any mechanisms within the formal structures of power that will protect or advance our rights. we, too, have undergone a coup d'etat carried out not by the stone-faced leaders of a monolithic Communist Party, but by our largely anonymous corporate overlords. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule though fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The internal security and surveillance state, justified in the name of the war on terror, will be the instrument used against us. The corrosion of the legal system, begun by George W. Bush and codified by Barack Obama's Democratic administration, means we can all be denied habeas corpus. The warrantless wiretapping, eavesdropping, and monitoring of tens of millions of citizens, once illegal, is now legal. The state has given itself the power to unilaterally declare U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and torture or assassinate them, as Barack Obama did when he in September 2011 ordered the killing of the American-born Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki  in Yemen. The state can deny U.S. citizens suspected of what it vaguely defines as 'terrosrist' activities the right to a trial. It can turn these citizens over to the military, which can hold them without charges indefinitely. Our country's capacity for draconian control in the face of widespread unrest means we will be no different from other totalitarian regimes throughout history. Police forces in major cities have been transformed into paramilitary units with assault rifles, helicopters, and armored vehicles. Almost certainly, if the pressure mounts, as I expect it will, these militarized police forces will become ubiquitous and people will be killed." "The corruption of the legal system--the ability of the state to make legal what was once illegal--is always the precursor to totalitarian rule. The timidity of those tasked with protecting our Constitutional rights--the media, elected official, judges, the one million lawyers in this country, and the thousands of law school professors and law school deans--means there is no internal mechanism with which to decry or prevent abuse. Occupy encampments were violently shut down by police in major cities.... Voices tasked with defending the rule of law and the right of dissent and nonviolent protest remained silent. If peaceful protest is not defended, if it is effectively thwarted by the corporate state, we will see widespread anger and frustration manifest in an ascendant militancy, rioting, the destruction of property, and violence." Id. at 201-241. Also see, Philipp Meyer, "The Other America," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/19/2012.).

Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, & Andrew Altman, eds., Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2012).

Arthur Goldberg, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right (New York: Pantheon, 2012) ("Just as white supremacists believe that the less melanin they have in their skin, the smarter and stronger and better-looking they are (a faith they cleave to no matter what doubts they might harbor about their dwindling status and declining prospects). exceptionalism is the conviction that America is morally, legally, militarily, spiritually, and economically superior to any other land. Just saying as much--witnessing to it out loud, like a subway evangelist praising Jesus's name during rush hour--is enough to make some of America's intrinsic awesomeness rub off on you." Id. at 308. "Writing in The Washington Post, Karen Tumulty noted that all these recent conservative disquisitions on exceptionalism ... have 'a more intellectual sheen than the false assertion that Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya.' Then she quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institutions, who said that writing about exceptionalism provides 'a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us.'" "And there you have it--the core proposition of the not-so-New Hate: that there are those of us who are really 'us' and those of us who are essentially 'other'--aliens, interlopers, pretenders, and culture distorters, parasites and freeloaders, who bear the blame for the fact that being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American no longer suffices to make one the cynosure of the world." Id. at 309-310.).

Simon Johnson & James Kwak, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (New York: Pantheon, 2010) ("Our goal today is to change the conventional wisdom about enormous banks. In the long term, the most effective constraint on the financial sector is pubic opinion. Today, anyone proposing to end the regulation of pharmaceuticals or to suspend government supervision of nuclear power stations would not be taken seriously. Our democratic system allows the expression of all views, but we filter those views based on a collective assessment of which are sensible and which are not. The best defense against a massive financial crisis is a popular consensus that too big to fail is too big to exist." "This is at its heart a question of politics, not of economics or of regulatory technicalities.... The conventional wisdom, shaped during the three decades of deregulation, innovation, and risk-taking that brought us the recent financial crisis, is that large, sophisticated banks are a critical pillar of economic prosperity. That conventional wisdom has entrenched itself in Washington, where administration officials, regulators, and legislators agree with the Wall Street line on intellectual grounds, or see their personal interests (financial or political) aligned with the interests of Wall Street, or simply do not feel qualified to question the experts in the thousand-dollar suits. Challenging this ideology is ultimately about politics. The megabucks used political power to obtain their license to gamble with other people's money; taking that license away requires confronting that power head-on. It requires a decision that the economic prosperity of the new financial oligarchy is dangerous both to economic prosperity and to the democracy that is supposed to ensure that government policies serve the greater good of society." Id. at 221. "Few people, if any, thought that these crisis had anything to teach the United States, the world's richest economy and flagship democracy. The differences between Indonesia or Korea and the United States are obvious: income level, financial system, political track record, and so on. Our most ingrained beliefs run directly counter to the idea that a rich, privileged oligarchy could use government relationships to enrich itself in the good times and protect itself in the bad times. Our economic system is founded on the notion of fair competition in a market free from government influence. Our society cherishes few things more than the idea that all Americans have an equal opportunity to make money or participate in government. There is no construct more important in American discourse than the 'middle class'." Id. at 53. "The New American Dream was to make tens of millions on Wall Street or as a hedge fund manager in Greenwich, Connecticut. But it was also connected to the Old American Dream--to own a house of one's own. In the last thirty years, the Wall Street ideology borrowed heavily from the older, more deep-rooted American ideology of homeownership, which became widely accepted after World War II as government programs and economic prosperity made possible a homeowning middle class. Wall Street co-opted this ideology to justify the central place of modern finance in the economic and political system, especially as the homeownership rate climbed from 64 percent, where it sat form 1983 to 1994, to a high of 69 percent in the 2000." Id. at 109. "In any case, homeownership ranks alongside motherhood and apple pie in the firmament of American values, and helping more people buy houses is almost aways a good thing." Id. at 111. "For anyone who had doubts about the value of financial innovation and the importance of Wall Street, the ideology of homeownership provided easy assurance. The idea that complex securities could help low- and middle-income families own homes was especially attractive to Democratic congressmen and officials who might ordinarily be distrustful of mortgage lenders and investment bankers, and helped seal off Wall Street's new money machine from criticism." Id. at 112-113.).

Simon Johnson & James Kwak, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You (New York: Pantheon, 2012) ("Both Federalists and Republicans had always been 'fiscally responsible' in the shallow sense that they believed the country should make required payments on its debts. But there is a deeper meaning of fiscal responsibility: the recognition that if you want something, you have to pay for it, either now or in the future. If a government cannot demonstrate that type of fiscal responsibility--through the willingness and capacity to levy and collect taxes when necessary--it will have trouble borrowing money in a time of crisis." Id. at 6. "The prominence of the Tea Party is due not only to grassroots mobilization but also to financial and organizational support provided by traditional Republican power brokers like Dick Armey, conservative billionaires with an antigovernment, antitax agenda, and established media outlets, especially Fox News. Detailed research into the Tea Party by political scientists David Campbell and Robert Putnam also shows that its members are not new entrants to politics hurt by the economic downturn or radicalized by recent events, but largely white, Christian, socially conservative activists who have been the backbone of the of the conservative movement for decades. In other words, the Tea Party is to a significant degree the public face of the conscious product of the same antigovernment movement the Newt Gingrich led to power in the 1990s. But whatever its provenance, the Tea Party has succeeded in making overt hostility toward government and taxes a powerful force in Washington." Id. at 100-101. "Magical thinking enables politicians to avoid seriously addressing deficits and the national debt--and to punish those who try to do so. President Reagan, who made balancing the budget a central theme of his 1980 election campaign, presided over what were then the largest peacetime deficits in U.S. history. When his successor, President George H. W. Bush, agreed to raise taxes to reduce the deficit in 1990, he was widely attacked by conservatives in his own arty, which contributed to his defeat two years later. President Clinton's similar decision in 1993 was one factor in his party's crushing losses in the 1994 elections. A decade later, when Vice President Dick Cheney said, 'Reagan proved deficits don't matter,' it probably wasn't economics he had in mind: it was politics. In this political climate, there are ample rewards for talking about deficits, but not for doing much about them." Id. at 233.).

Garret Keizer, Privacy (New York: Picador, 2012) ("In essence they are raising what may be the central question about the right of privacy, which is not about how best to encrypt our e-mail messages or how best to legislate against online identity theft. The central question is whether we hold our privacy sacred enough to endure the inconveniences necessary to preserve it. Or perhaps the central question is whether such a thing as sacredness even exists in what Americans, with characteristic solipsism, refer to as 'our post-9/11 world'." Id. at 139. "The first thing we can say by way of defining privacy is that it exists only by choice. In the absence of choice, privacy is merely the privation with which it shares a common linguistic root, just as sex, work, and singing a song become rape, slavery, and humiliation when forced on us against our will...." "The confusion of privacy and loneliness amounts to the Gordon knot of modern capitalist societies, the big blue bow of alienation on our package of consumer goods. It also bedevils the thinking of capitalism's less imaginative critics, who mistakenly assume that by eliminating everything private they will eliminate loneliness too.... [S]uffice it to say that privacy is either a choice or a lie." Id. at 14. "[O]nce a society ceases to trust its people, it exempts them from any obligation to be trustworthy." Id. at 46. "Violations of privacy can work up the class ladder as well as down. The only thing a rogue cops loves more than shaking down a Hispanic kid in a lowrider is getting his hands on a college professor in a Saab. (Jackpot if the college professor is black)." Id. at 77.).

Jill Lepore, The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (New York: Knopf, 2012) (See, Dani Shapiro, "Streams of Consciousness," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/12/2012.).

Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2007) ("The institutions of our society co-arise with us. They are not independent structures separate from our inner lives, like some backdrop to our personal dramas. Nor are they merely projections of our own minds. As collective forms of our ignorance, fears, and greed, they acquire their own momentum, enlist our massive obedience, and depend on our collective consent." Id. at 43. "When we are fearful, and the odds are running against us, it is easy to let the heart and mind go numb.... Yet of all the danger we face, from climate chaos to nuclear warfare, none is so great as the deadening of our response. The numbness of mind and heart is already upon us--in the diversions we create for ourselves as individuals and nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, the stuff we buy." "The very alarms that should rivet our attention and bond us in collective action tend to have the opposite effect. They make us want to pull down the blinds and busy ourselves with other things. We eat meat from factory-farmsed animals and produce grown by agribusiness, knowing of the pesticides and hormones they contain, but preferring not to think they'll cause harm. We buy clothes without noticing where they are made, preferring not to think of the sweatshops they may have come from. We don't bother voting, or if we do, we vote for candidates we may not believe will address the real problems, hoping against previous experience that they will suddenly awaken and act boldly to save us. Have we become callous, nihilistic? Have we ceased to care what happens to life on Earth? Id. at 92. "To dismantle weapons, in every sense of the word, they [i.e., the Shambhala warriors] must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made." The Shambhala warriors know they can do this because the weapons are manomaya. They are 'mind-made.' Made by the human mind, they can be unmade by the human mind. The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers threatening life on Earth are not visited upon us by extraterrestrial powers or satanic deities. They arise from our own choices, our priorities and relationships." Id. at 121.).

Joanna Macy & Norbert Gahbler, Pass It On: Five Stories That Can Change the World (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2010) ("When anger arises over stupid, destructive policies, and the pollution of our world tempts me to hopelessness, I remember Tulku's smile on the parapet of Khampagar. And when I catch myself looking for a quick fix of inspiration, or assurances of success, or simply a mood of optimism before doing what needs to be done, I think of him and hear words that he never spoke. Don't wait, just do it. A better opportunity may not come along. Place one stone on top of another. Don't waste your spirit trying to compute your short-term chances of success, because you are in it for the long haul. And it will be a long haul, with inevitable risks and hardships. So just keep on, steady and spunky like a Khampa pony crossing the mountains, because in the long run, it's our perseverance that counts." Id. at 100.).

Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, It's Even Worst Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012) ("The dysfunction that arises from the incompatibility of the U.S. constitutional system with parliamentary-type parties is compounded by the asymmetric polarization of those parties. Today's Republican Party... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties .. constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance." Id. at 102-103. Also see, Michael Crowley, "A House Divided," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/22/2012.).

Kimberly J. Morgan & Andrea Louise Campbell, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Policy (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2011) ("Where does administrative power lie? How effectively is the federal government achieving its stated aims? And what do particular governing arrangements mean for politics, redistribution, and accountability?" "In answering these question, we arrived at a view of the American state as a system of delegated and diffused authority in which public and private administrative capacities are pervasively intertwined. Much of the expansion of the American state since the New Deal, and particularly since World War II, has come about though heavy reliance on private actors that are subsidized, regulated, and otherwise encouraged to furnish the goods and services that the state does not directly provide. Private bureaucracies are frequently substituted for public ones. And authority over the management of public programs is delegated to actors who are not only unelected but indirectly accountable to the mass public. When viewed this way, one can say that the American state is vast, as its influence extends well into the many nooks and crannies of our economic and social life. Yet, it influence is indirect, diluted, and masked by a facade of private actors who deliver needed goods and services. When people tell pollsters that they want government to keep its hands off their Medicare or Social Security benefits, they express the very contradiction that lies at the heart of the American stare. It is both there and not there, a leviathan of tremendous power but also an enfeebled giant, one incapable at times of managing seemingly basic governmental tasks." Id. at 223.).

Carl H. Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2012) ("The New Right's 'color blind' revival of the once-faltering 'religion of whiteness' is one of the most important events n the world history of racial theory. It also represents another example of the impact of cross-oceanic intellectual exchange upon the politics of urban space. Once in power, New Right movement leaders (helped by center-left parties that have adopted New Right techniques) combined racial fear-mongering, denials of racial inequality, and free-market rhetoric to blast open a wide political roadway around the flanks of the midcentury antiracist revolution. Three kinds of policy tools helped to drive urban segregation forward and even to give it new forms: authoritarian anticrime and anti-immigration policies disproportionally directed at urban people of color; a willful neglect of fair housing laws that encouraged a variety of segregationist dynamics to persist in land markets and a campaign to deregulate the financial industry that gave lenders and speculators enormous renewed sway over both global and urban politics." Id. at 395-396.).

Carlin Romano, America the Philosophical (New York: Knopf, 2012) (Though I admire the effort, I am not persuaded. Also see, Anthony Gottlieb American Issue, NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/1/2012.).

Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) (See Jeremy Waldron, "Where Money & Markets Don't Belong," New York Review of Books, August 16, 2012.).

Dan Simon, In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2012) (So much for thinking of oneself a good judge of demeanor/character: "The legal system places a great deal of trust in jurors' ability to detect deceit. As the Court stated, 'A fundamental premise of our criminal trial system is that the jury is the lie detector.' Jurors are explicitly instructed to rely on witness demeanor in assessing the credibility of the evidence. [D]istinguishing between truth and lies on the basis of witness demeanor is a most difficult task. Performing this task successfully requires that liars and truth tellers emit different cues that reliably correspond to the veracity of their statements and that the observers are capable of perceiving and interpreting those cues correctly. The scope of potential cue s is extensive. For example, the definition of the term demeanor in Black's law Dictionary enumerates twenty paraverbal and visual cues, including the witness's hesitation, smiling, zeal expression, yawns, use of eyes, and 'air of candor.' Recall that researchers have examined a slew of 158 cues that people use, and have found that the vast majority, including the universally trusted cue of gaze aversion, are plainly useless as indicators of deceit. To the extent that liars behave differently from truth teller, they do so in ways that are diverse, idiosyncratic and barely perceptible. Even if a universal set of diagnostic cues existed, it is doubtful that people could attend to them all at once, interpret them correctly and integrate them into a discrete inference of veracity. Numerous studies have found consistently that people's judgments of deceit from demeanor are barely better than flipping a coin." Id. at 166. And, the wisdom of crowds depend on the task and the crowd: "It is widely intuited that groups outperform their individual members. The underlying notion is the belief in collective wisdom, which posits that pooling knowledge and judgment produces the best that the group has to offer and discards the worst. The research, however, indicates that this belief does not always correspond with reality. The preponderance of the research suggests that judgment by groups cannot be said to be generally superior or inferior to the performance of their individual members. On some tasks, groups do indeed outperform their members. On other tasks, however, they perform comparably, or fall short of their members. The respective strengths and weaknesses depends on a host of contextual and group-specific factors. Crucially, the effect of deliberation on the group's decision will depend on the accuracy of the faction that wins the day. Groups are bound to reach correct conclusion when the prevailing members hold the correct views, but when they are wrong, deliberation is bound to promote error." Id. at 198.).

Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York & London: Norton, 2012) ("This book is about why our economic system is failing for most Americans, why inequality is growing to the extent it is, and what the consequences are. The underlying thesis is that we are paying a high price for our inequality--an economic system that is less stable and less efficient, with less growth, and a democracy that has been put into peril. But even more is stake: as our economic system is seen to fail for most citizens, and as out political system seems to be captured by moneyed interests, confidence in our democracy and in our market economy will erode along with our global influence. As the reality sinks in that we are no longer a country of opportunity and that even our long-vaunted rule of law and system of justice have been compromised, even our sense of national identity may be put into jeopardy." Id. at xii. "What the banks did was not just a matter of failing to comply with a few technicalities. That was not a victimless crime. To many bankers, the perjury committed as they signed affidavits to rush the foreclosures was just a detail that could be overlooked. But a basic principle of the rule of aw and property rights is that you shouldn't throw someone out of his home when you can't prove he owes any money. But so assiduously did the banks pursue their foreclosures that some people were thrown out of their homes who did not owe any money. To some lenders this is just collateral damage as the banks tell millions of Americans they must give up their homes--some eight million since the crisis began, and an estimated three to four million still to go. The price of foreclosures would have been even higher had it not been for government intervention to stop the robo-signing." Id. at 199. Also see, Thomas B. Edsall, Separate and Unequal," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/12/2012.).

Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2012) (See Michael W. McConnell, "You Can't Say That," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/24/2012.).

Luigi Zingales, A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 2012) ("For those readers who are already angry, I hope that my no-holds-barred  expose resonates with your frustration. For those who were not angry when you picked up this book, I hope my expose has made you so." "The degeneration of the US free-market system into crony capitalism should anger any person who loves freedom and democracy." "The purpose of social scientists is to provide a framework for interpreting--and, more important, addressing--economic and social problems. In a democracy, comprehension of problems and their causes is necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for change." Id. at 121.).

BUDDHIST YOGA

Thomas Cleary, trans., Buddhist Yoga: A Comprehensive Course (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1995) ("The word yoga has many meanings, including the ideas of union, method, effort, and meditation. The elaborate physical exercise routines of Hindu Yoga are familiar to Westerners, but the subtle metaphysical and refined methods of spiritual development characteristic of Buddhist Yoga are not well known." "This volume presents a translation of the Sandhinirmochana-sutra, 'Scripture Unlocking the Mysteries,' a complete classical sourcebook of Buddhist Yoga. This is one of the main texts of that stream of Buddhist tradition known as Vijnanavada, 'The Doctrine of Consciousness,' or Yogachara,' The Practice of Yoga.'" "This sutra, or scripture, provides a remarkably detailed course in the philosophical and pragmatic basis of Buddhist Yoga. This is a text that is meant to be read and reread many times as essential preparation by those who are thinking of undertaking meditation exercises of any sort. This procedure was the classical way, and many of the shortcomings and aberrations of modern Western meditation cults can be traced to abandonment of this tradition." Id. at vii.).

SIX MONTHS IN, STILL TRYING TO DEEPEN MY UNDERSTANDING AND PRACTICE OF YOGA: READING YOGA'S HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY

Swami Prabhavananda & Christopher Isherwood, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, translated with a Commentary by Swami Prabhavananda & Christopher Isherwood (Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press, 1953, 2007) ("Basically, yoga means 'union.' It is the Sanskrit ancestor of the English word 'yoke.' Hence, it comes to mean a method of spiritual union. A yoga is a method--any one of many--by which an individual may become united with the Godhead, the Reality which underlies this apparent, ephemeral universe. To achieve such union is to reach the state of perfect yoga. Christianity has a corresponding term, 'mystic union,' which expresses a similar idea." Id. at 13. "15. Non-attachment is self-mastery; it is freedom from desire for what is seen or heard." Id. at 26. "Non-attachment is the exercise of discrimination. We gradually gain control of the 'painful' or impure thought-waves by asking ourselves: 'Why do I really desire that object? What permanent advantage should I gain by possessing it? In what way would its possession help me toward greater knowledge and freedom?' The answers to these questions are always disconcerting. They show us that the desired object is not only useless as a means to liberation but potentially harmful as a means to ignorance and bondage; and, further, that our desire is not really desire for the object-in-itself at all, but only a desire to desire something, a mere restlessness in the mind." Id. at 28. "Our proper approach toward our fellow human beings is summed up in one of the first of the Hindu monastic vows: 'The flies seek filth, the bees seek honey. I will shun the habit of the flies and follow that of the bees. I will refrain from finding faults in others and look only for the good which is in them.' That is a vow we should all take and try to live up to." Id. at 69-70. I wish I could do so. "[I]t must never be forgotten that pranayama is merely a physical means to a spiritual end. Many uninformed people imagine that yoga is nothing but a system of breathing exercises and complicated postures--'holding your breath and standing on your head.' When they speak of 'yoga' they really only mean hatha yoga, which is the correct name for this system of exercises, as originally practiced in ancient India. Hatha yoga was designed to prepare the aspirant for spiritual experience by perfecting his body; but it has been condemned by spiritual teachers because it tends, in practice, to concentrate the mind upon the body itself. In the West, it is to be found in a completely degenerated form, as a cult of physical beauty and prolonged youth. As such, it may be effective, certainly, but also dangerous. Overindulgence in breathing exercises, just for the sake of the agreeable 'oxygen jag' which they produce, may lead to hallucinations and, possibly, insanity. And, even at best, an excessive preoccupation with our physical appearance and well-being is obviously a distraction,  causing us to forget, in silly vanity, our proper purpose." Id. at 70-71. "Everything we do, say, or think, or even indirectly cause or passively sanction, will inevitably produce consequences--good, bad, or composite--and these consequences will react in some measure upon ourselves. Our most secret ill-wishes toward others, our remotest permission of evil done to others, can only end by hurting us, by increasing our own ignorance and pain. This is the absolute law of nature. If we could remember it always, we should learn to control our tongues and our thoughts." Id. at 155. "The 'seed of evil' is ignorance. Because of ignorance, man forgets that he is the Atman* and creates for himself the illusion of a private, separate ego-personality. This ego-personality is intent upon satisfying its desires, and acquiring possessions and powers over external nature. Of all powers, the psychic powers are, from the standpoint of the ego, the most desirable; and, of the psychic powers, omnipotence and omniscience ... are obviously the greatest. The yogi who has held even these powers within his grasp and nevertheless renounced them, has rejected the ultimate temptation of the ego. Henceforth, he is freed from bondage. (For example, Christ rejected the psychic powers offered to him by Satan in the wilderness.)" Id. at 207-208. *"God, the underlying Reality, is by definition omnipresent. If the Reality exists at all, it must be everywhere; it must be present within every sentient being, every inanimate object. God-within-the-creature is known in the Sanskrit language as the Atman or Purusha, the real Self...." Id. at 15.).

Sri Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translation and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda (Yogaville, VA: Integral Yoga Publications, 1978, 2011) ("You seem to have lost you irugubak identity with your thoughts and body. Suppose I ask who you are if you don't identify with anything whatsoever. If you say, 'I a a man,' you have identified yourself with a masculine body. If you say, 'I am a professor,' you are identifying with the ideas gathered in your brain. If you say, 'I am a millionaire,' you are identifying with your bank account; if 'a mother,' with a child; 'a husband,' with a wife. 'I am tall; I am short; I am black or white' shows your identification with the color and shape of the body. But without any identification, who are you? Have you ever though about it? When you really understand that, you will see we are all the same. If you detach yourself completely from all the things you have identified yourself with, you realize yourself as the pure 'I.' In that pure 'I' there is no difference between you and me." Id. at 7-8. "Another obstacle is slipping down from the ground one has gained. This puzzles many people. A beginner, for example, will practice with intense interest. Everyday she will feel more and more interested and feel she is progressing steadily. She may even be proud of her progress. All of a sudden one day she will find that she has lost everything and slipped down to rock bottom." "It happens to many people. If we know it is a common occurrence on the spiritual path, we won't get disheartened. Otherwise, we will say, 'Oh, I lost everything. There is no hope for me,' and we lose all our interest. Let us know that this is common in the case of every aspirant. The mind can't function on the same level always--it has its heights and depths. If there is going to be steady progress always, there will be no challenge, no game in it." "Remember, Yoga practice is like an obstacle race; many obstructions are purposely put on the way for us to pass through. They are there to make us understand and express our own capacities. We all have that strength, but we don't seem to know it. We seem to need to be challenged and tested in order to understand our own capacities. In fact, that is the natural law. If a river just flows easily, the water in the river does not express its power. But once you put an obstacle to the flow by constructing a dam, then you can see its strength in the form of tremendous electrical power." Id. at 50-51. "33. [] By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undistributed calmness." "Whether you are interested in reaching samadhi or plan to ignore Yoga entirely, I would advise you to remember at least this one Sutra. It will be very helpful to you in keeping a peaceful mind in your daily life. You many not have any great goal in your life, but just try to follow this one Sutra very well and you will see its efficacy. In my own experience, this Sutra became my guiding light to keep my mind serene always." "Who would not like serenity of mind always? Who would not like to be happy always? Everybody wants that. So Patanjali gives four keys: friendliness, compassion, delight and disregard. There are only four kinds of locks in the world, keep these four keys always with you, and when you come across any one of these four locks you will have the proper key to open it." "What are the four locks? Sukha, duhkha, punya and apunya--the happy people, unhappy people, the virtuous and the wicked. At any given moment, you can fit any person into one of these four categories." Id. at 54-55. 'Any person' includes oneself; includes me. Which category do I fit into this moment? At any given moment? "Asana means the posture that brings comfort and steadiness. Any pose that brings this comfort and steadiness is an asana. If you can achieve one pose, that is enough. It may sound easy, but in how many poses are we really comfortable and steady? As soon as we sit in a particular position, there is a small cramp here, a tiny pain there. We have to move this way and that. Continuously we are reminded of our legs, hands, hips and spine. Unless the body is perfectly healthy and free from all toxins and tensions, a comfortable pose is not easily obtained. Physical and mental toxins create stiffness and tension. Anything that makes us stiff can also break us. Only if we are supple will we never break...." "What we need is the strength of steel, but with steel's flexibility--not like crude iron, which is very strong and hard but breaks. The body must be so supple it can bend any way you want it to. Such a body will always be healthy and tension-free. The moment we sit down for mediation in such a body, we'll forget it." "In order to achieve such a meditative pose, we may practice many preliminary cultural poses. This is why Hatha Yoga was created. People trying to sit quietly found they couldn't. They encountered pain, stiffness, bile, gas, etc., and thought, 'What is the reason for these things and how can we get rid of them?' They realized it was due to toxins from eating the wrong foods, at the wrong times and in the wrong quantities. These people pondered, 'What is good food that won't leave toxins? What should the limits be? When is the proper time to eat?' They formed the Yogic diet, free of meat, fish, eggs, stimulants and excessive use of spices." "The next problem was what to do with the toxins already inside the body. They concluded that these could be gotten rid of by squeezing the body in all different directions.... Although Hatha Yoga is several thousands of years old, it never becomes outdated. The truths of it are always current...." Id. at 152-154.").

David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1996) (From the backcover: "The Alchemical Body excavates and centers within its Indian context the lost tradition of the medieval Siddhas. Working from a body of previously unexplored alchemical sources, David Gordon White demonstrates for the first time that the medieval disciplines of Hindu alchemy and hatha yoga were practiced by one and the same people, and that they can only be understood when viewed together. White opens the way to a new and more comprehensive understanding of medieval Indian mysticism, within the broader context of south Asian Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism,and Islam.").

David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in Its South Asian Contexts (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2003) ("As far as I can recall, my searches for an authentic Tantric practitioner began in 1974 in Benares.... This was the first time I had heard the pseudonym of the English court judge who, based in Bengal, had became the father of Tantric studies and, by extension, of the emergence of 'Tantric' practice in Europe and the United Sates. This was also my first introduction to the funhouse mirror world of modern-day Tantra, in which Indian practitioners and gurus take their ideas from Western scholars and sell them to Western disciples thirsting for initiation into the mysteries of the East.... Today Assi Ghat, just a short way up river from Kedar Ghat, will, on any given day in the same postmonsoon season, sport a number of North Americans and Europeans dressed up as Tantric specialists. California, France, and Italy, in particular, are crawling with such people, may of whom advertise New Age 'retreats' or 'workshops' in 'Tantric sex' and many other types of hybrid practice on the Internet." "Medieval Indian literature had an overarching term for entrepreneurs of this type, who targeted a certain leisured segment of the population in their marketing of a product nowadays known as 'Tantric sex': they were 'impostors.' Now, there was and remains an authentic body of precepts and practice know as 'Kaula' or 'Tantra,' which has been, among other things, a sexualization of ritual (as opposed to a ritualization of sex,  one of the many fundamental errors on the part of the present-day 'Tantric sex' entrepreneurs). In about the eleventh century, a scholasticizing trend in Kashmirian Hindu circles, led by the great systematic theologian Abhinavagupta, sought to aestheticize the sexual rituals of the Kaula. These theoreticians whose intended audience was likely composed of conformist householder practitioners, sublimated the end and raison d'etre of Kaula sexual practice--the production of powerful, transformative sexual fluids--into simple by-products of a higher goal: the cultivation of a divine state of consciousness homologous to the bliss experienced in sexual orgasm. At nearly no point in the original Kaula sources on sexualized ritual, however, is mention made of pleasure, let alone bliss or ecstasy. Nonetheless, it was this experience of a blissful expansion of consciousness that became the watchword of later scholasticist revisions of Tantra. Now it was precisely these second-order, derivative developments that early-twentieth-century Tantric scholars-practitioners, both Asian and Western, emphasized in their attempts to rehabilitate Tantra. Here, I am referring specifically to the 'reformed' Tantra of Bengal and the influence it exerted on Sir John Woodroffe, a.k.a. Arthur Avalon, the father of Western Tantric scholarship...." "Presenting the entire history of Tantra as a unified, monolithic 'cult of ecstasy' and assuming that all that has smacked of eroticism in Indian culture is by definition Tantric, New Age Tantra eclectically blends together Indian erotics (kamasatra, ratisatra), erotic art, techniques of massage, Ayurveda, and yoga into a single invented tradition. Furthermore, its emphasis on ecstasy and mind expansion draws on what was already a second-order reflection in the original meaning and power of Kaula ritual, a cosmeticized interpretation offered to a stratum of eleventh-century Kashmiri society for whose members the oral consumption of sexual fluids as power substances, practices that lay at the heart of Kaula ritual, would have been too shocking and perverse to contemplate. Abhinavagupta's 'packaging' of Tantra as a path to ecstatic, exalted god-consciousness was pitched at a leisured Kashmiri populace whose 'bobo' profile was arguably homologous to the demographics of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century New Age seekers who treat 'Tantric sex' as a consumer product.... " Id. at xi-xiii.).

David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2009) (From the backcover: "Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga's origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger and more entertaining than most of us realize." "To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga's practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia's vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities---which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation--to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren't downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western stereotypes about them. By turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers finally placing them in their proper context.").

David Gordon White, ed., Yoga in Practice (Princeton Readings in Religions) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) (From the backcover: "Yoga is a body of practice that spans two millennia and transcends the boundaries of any single religion, geographic region, or teaching lineage. In fact, over the centuries there have been many 'yogas--yogas of battlefield warriors, of itinerant minstrels and beggars, of religious reformers, and of course, the yogas of mind and body so popular today. Yoga in Practice is an anthology of primary texts drawn from the diverse yoga traditions if India, greater Asia, and the West. This one-of-a-kind sourcebook features elegant translations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and even Islamic yogic writings, many of them being made available in English for the very first time...." From Sasidhara, The Garb of Dispassion (Vairagyamvara), as discussed in the chapter/essay by Sthaneshwar Timalsina, titled "The Yoga System of the Josmanis," 309-324: "For the sake of maintaining the practice of yoga, one should think of things that are good for the body and eat mild, warm food. Not all [people] have the same body.  With this insight [in mind], one should think of one's body and eat the things that are good for one[self]. This body is impermanent. One should be dispassionate toward [worldly] objects and keep practicing as long as the mind does not dissolve in the abode of Hari. One should not talk too much.  One should not walk too much. One should keep one's body pure and at peace in these ways, and being endowed with love and the yoga of devotion one should practice a self that is eternally at peace. All [one's] defilements will be removed through the glory of [this]non-dual practice. One's primordial form will be illuminated.  Furthermore, the bliss that is free from all fears will be natural. The more the non-dual self is practiced, the more [one's] heightened bliss will be revealed. The more [one's] heightened bliss is revealed, the more the mind will dissolve in the self. The more the mind dissolved, the more one will hear various sounds, such as [that of] a flute. Among all the sounds, one very blissful sound will be heard.  On certain occasions, something like lightning will appear around the eyebrows. One should hear that [blissful] sound and be immersed in the practice of sound. Due to the good conduct [observed] in previous lives, some will realize these symptoms quickly. Not everyone will have the same symptoms of yoga due to the kindling of the Brahma fire. There is no rule with regard to the sequence [of symptoms]." Id. at 317. From T. Krishnamacharya''s Yoga Makaranda, as discussed in the chapter/essay by Mark Singleton, "Yoga Makaranda of T. Krishnamacharya," 337-352: "I have something extremely important to say right at the outset. There seems to have been of late an increase in the numbers of commercially minded people. Such a tendency is highly detrimental to one's evolution. Merchants who wander in the marketplace like to get what they want without delay, and are ready to pay any amount to obtain what they desire. This sort of expectation is known as the 'commercial mentality.' Introducing such commercial-mindedness into this ancient dharmic society of ours, and into the path leading to evolution and evaluation, is frankly detrimental not only to society but to the individual as well. We should never insist on, nor even hope for, immediate results in return for an hour or two repeating mantras or engaging in worship (puja), yoga practice, or dawn and evening prayers etc. If we do, we are like the coolie who considers that it is not worth doing a couple of hours of work if he does not receive his wages. Ever since monetary considerations of this kind have caught hold of our minds, we have become victims of the venal mindset and are growing meaner by the day." "Discipline in yoga (yogabhasya) is not like the activities that one sees in the bazaar. Nowadays in every aspect of life, including the domain of dharmic action, people are losing interest simply because there is no quick monetary return. Because of this tendency our minds are becoming distanced from elevated thinking and higher aspirations, and we are more in doubt and crisis at each and every moment. This is the primary and paramount point that our dear readers should know." Id. at 344.).

Vivian Worthington, A History of Yoga (London: Arkana, 1982, 1989) ("Only in the last thousand years or so have efforts been made to provide [yoga] with intellectual content such as would elevate it to the status of philosophy in it own right. The attempts have not been successful because yoga is not an intellectual activity.... Yoga has in fact tended all along to be anti-intellectual, even anti-religious. To be true to itself it must ever stand close to the spontaneous fount of human creativity. It is more intuitive than reasonable, more experimental than formalistic, more other-wordly than of this world, and more akin to art than to science." Id. at 1. "Because it is non-intellectual and even anti-intellectual, yoga has never felt the need to have a carefully worked-out rational explanation for things. Any explanation only becomes apparent in the course of actual experience. For those who look for a rational explanation it points to a system of thought almost as old as itself, and whose tenets accord very closely with its own. This is the Samkhya philosophy." Id. at 85. "In the West at the present time the physical benefits of yoga are emphasized. Hatha yoga is so popular, especially among women, that many teachers do not teach the other aspects. This is often because they are ignorant of them Raja or mental yoga is more popular among men, who usually study and practice alone." Id. at 8. "Who sees the many and not the one wanders on from death to death. This truth cannot be learnt even by the mind. It can only be learnt by the practice of yoga. When the sense and the mind are still, and reason itself rests in silence, then begins the path supreme. This calm steadiness of the senses is called yoga. But in treading this path be watchful, for yoga comes and goes. It is difficult to hold this state for very long at any one time." Id. at 25-26. "The importance of [The Bhagavad] Gita cannot be over-emphasized. For the first time the practice of yoga is brought right down into ordinary life. A new kind of yoga is promulgated. This is not the traditional ascetic and meditative jnana yoga of the Upanishads, but an active yoga of everyday living. It is not intended to supplant but to complement the older form. Its results are to be social and psychological, not transcendental. The full potential of this yoga has yet to be realized, and the Gita has by no means had the last word." "This yoga of selfless action takes hold of the ancient concept of dharma, and makes its ramifications more understandable to ordinary people. The concept...is here brought out into the daylight and given a broader interpretation. From being a moral precept it became an active discipline, being combined with yoga in a most original way." "Karma yoga calls for performance of the ordinary activities of daily life, but ordains detachment from their fruits. Think of the act, not the result...." Id. at 59. "When you are free from all delusions you will be indifferent to the results of your actions." "This is the central theme of karma yoga--to work according to one's dharma, but be unattached to the results of one's works. Be established in the Atman, and walk among sense objects unaffected by them. To find the Atman, control the mind and withdraw the sense. Find the Atman, unite it with Brahman, and then do your duty. In this state of mind your work will be effective, and you will not be anxious about results." Id. at 61-62 "The yogi must free himself from all mental distractions fixing his attention only on the Self, the Atman. If the mind wanders it must be drawn back unceasingly. The yogi sees the Self in all things, and all things in the Self. He suffers the sorrows of all creatures, and feels joy at their happiness." "If a man practises yoga, but falls away from the practise, finding it too rigorous he will still have earned merit. He will be born again in better circumstances than his present life. In his next life he will return to the position he reached in this life, and will be able to make further progress. In this way he will reach perfection through many births. The yogi who seeks to unite the Self with Brahman is greater than those who practise austerities. He is greater than the learned, and greater than those who practise good works." Id. at 63. "Hell has three doors: lust, rage and greed. All three must be avoided or they will lead you downwards. For one who has sunk to the lowest depths the way to climb back is first to practise the yoga of selfless action, karma yoga. This is easiest for them. Then read the scriptures, and so rise to bhakti and the ascending order of yogas. The task is immeasurably difficult, and will take many incarnations, and aeons of time." Id. at 66-67. "Buddhist yoga, or at least the mental side of it, is designed to conduce to the understanding that there is no substantial ego. This is somewhat different from the older jnana yoga which implied that the ego was real, even though we might ultimately be prepared to merge it into the being of supreme Brahman. The Buddhist ascetic training and meditation is meant to prepare one for the realization that nothing ultimately has any substance. There are only spiritual processes, sensations, feelings and visions appearing and reappearing. They can be watched with complete detachment. They can also be set in motion or brought to rest. The suppression of desire, which is the greatest message of the earliest of Buddha's discourses, became meaningless when the detachment of this point of view has been attained." Id. at 92. "The Buddhist yogi is taught, by means of the disciplines, to realize within such a peace as one realizes when looking into the realms of infinite space. He looks inwardly, and there experiences the wonders of his own nature. Through successive stages of self-control and meditation he realizes utter stillness and voidness unmodified by any thought and uncoloured by any emotion. In these deep meditative states he realizes that fundamentally nothing is happening to the true essence of his own nature, nothing to cause either distress or joy." Id. at 94. "Meditation is the very heart of yoga." Id. at 126. "It has always been customary to refer to the devotee of Zen as a Zen yogi, when he is somewhat advanced along the way." Id. at 153. "Zen too has always been at pains to insist that it is not only anti-intellectual and anti-morality, but also anti-religious. The writings of its leaders are proof of this. But if neither intellect, morality nor religion find any foothold in it, what is left? The answer is yoga, and a very distinctive brand of it. Technique, method and personal experience are everything in Zen." Id. at 154. "The Chan (Zen) school teaches a direct way to enlightenment. It has no formal organization, nor any sacred literature. Although its devotees are encouraged to read sacred literature from any sources and traditions, it is made clear that the reading of literature alone will not lead to enlightenment. At the same time the reading of elevating ideas can create a translucent state of mind which is conducive to the growth of the intuitive faculty, and will better allow the flash of intuition to become manifest when the student is ready." Id. at 156. "[O]ur claim is that Zen is entirely yogic,  and has been so throughout its history.  The yoga element has been strong in all the schools of Buddhism in China and Japan." Id. at 181. "References to asana (postures and exercises) are found in all yoga literature right back to the Upanishads. At that time the asana were for purposes of meditation. The body was to be placed in a suitable seated posture so that the aspirant could meditate with a straight spine, and with lungs and stomach not restricted. In such a position the body could be forgotten and rhythmic breathing practiced " Id. at 162. [Note: It would seem, then, that the typical Western yoga studio gets wrong both the order and the emphasis of yoga. The typical Western yoga practice is essentially an asana or posture practice; beginning with a short (e.g., 3-5 minute) meditation, followed by an hour or so of asana exercises. This is so, rather than an hour or so of asana exercises, followed by an hour or so of meditation. Of course, perhaps the attendees at such yoga studios go home immediately and engage in an hour of so of meditation. I doubt it. More likely it is an hour or so of hanging out at the local coffee shop.] "This array of physical practices was considered entirely secondary and subservient to the main practice, which was sitting for meditation  with the object of eventually  achieving samadhi.... In the tantric period, however, when attempt were being made to develop the siddhis, more active exercises began to be employed. It was also noticed that the general health of yoga practitioners could often be greatly improved by the practice of certain asana. It began to be apparent that the purely physical aspect of yoga had its own considerable value." "The Nath yogis of north India took up this aspect of the art, and widened its basis considerably...." "The yoga became distinguished from other forms by taking the name hatha yoga. Hatha is a compound word. 'Ha' means sun, and 'tha' means moon.... Both must be brought if our nature is to be balanced, " Id. at 162-163.).

FOR APPRECIATING THAT TRUE YOGA IS ABOUT SOMETHING SIGNIFICANTLY GREATER THAT MERE POSES, THE FOLLOWING LINK IS HELPFUL:

http://www.swamij.com/traditional-yoga.htm

"The goal of Yoga is Yoga: The goal or destination of Yoga is Yoga itself, union itself, of the little self and the True Self, a process of awakening to the preexisting union that is called Yoga. While it is not the intent of this article to give a final or conclusive definition of the term Yoga--which can be described in different ways--it has to do with the realization through direct experience of the preexisting union between Atman and Brahman, Jivatman and Paramatman, and Shiva and Shakti, or the realization of Purusha standing alone as separate from Prakriti. The mere fact that one might do a few stretches with the physical body does not in itself mean that one is headed towards that high union referred to as Yoga."  
From Modern Yoga versus Traditional Yoga by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati.