Class cancellations, at the yoga studio where I practice, resulted from Hurricane Sandy, followed a week or so later by a snow storm. The impact of canceled classes was compounded for me by my injuring my back, causing me to miss a few days of class. I am a creature of routines, and I do not deal well with my routines being turned inside out. Yoga, meditation and Zen Buddhism have helped me deal better with such disruptions. And, fortunately, these particular disruptions have turned out to be blessings in disguise.
I had been reluctant to develop a home yoga practice. This was due, in large part, to the simple fact that home has its own routines, and beginning a home practice would disrupt those routines. The other part is that a home practice can be done at just about anytime you want, so if you don't do it at, say 9am, you can always do it at 9pm; whereas a studio class is when it is scheduled and you are either there or you are not. But the catch with the flexibility in the home practice is that the 9am gets pushed to 12noon, which gets pushed to 4pm, which gets pushed to 8pm, which gets pushed to 10pm, which get pushed to not being done at all. A home yoga practice (just like a home office) requires a lot more discipline to get oneself onto the mat, i.e., setting a time and sticking to it. So, the cancelled studio classes and the back injury forced me to begin development of a home practice. Moreover, I had the good fortune of one of my yoga teachers emailing a set of asanas (some yang/vinyasa; some yin) for me to work on in connection with the back injury. I am still working out the logistics of the home practice, but a home practice is here to stay. That is the principal blessing in disguise.
One great feature of the home yoga practice is the lack of external chatter. No more unnecessary chatter from some instructors (Why do some instructor insist on 'entertaining' the students? Why do the students want to be entertained?). And no more totally inappropriate chatter from some members of the class. In a home practice there is just you and, unless you are talking out loud to yourself, there is no external chatter. No external chatter, but plenty of internal chatter.
So, borrowing from Eugen Herrigel, see below, I have been working on my Zen in Hatha Yoga, or my Zen in the Art of Hatha Yoga, and hope to be able to bring it into my studio practice.
Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, translated by R.F. C Hull, with an introduction by D. T. Sukuki (New York: Vintage Spiritual Classics/Vintage Books, 1953, 1981, 1989) ("The process of letting go of oneself [is] divided into separate sections which had to be worked through carefully...." "The first step along this road had already been taken. It had led to a loosening of the body, without which the bow cannot be properly drawn. If the shot is to be loosed right, the physical loosening must now be continued in a mental and spiritual loosening, so as to make the mind not only agile, but free; agile because of its freedom, and free because of its original agility; and this original agility is essentially different from everything that is usually understood by mental agility. Thus, between these two states of bodily relaxedness on the one hand and spiritual freedom on the other there is a difference of level which cannot be overcome by breath-control alone, but only by withdrawing from all attachments whatsoever, by becoming utterly egoless: so that the soul, sunk within itself, stands in the plenitude of its nameless origins." "The demand that the door of the senses be closed is not met by turning energetically away from the sensible world, but by a readiness to yield without resistance. In order that this actionless activity may be accomplished instinctively, the soul needs an inner hold, and it wins it by concentrating on breathing. This is performed consciously and with a conscientiousness that borders on the pedantic. The breathing in, like the breathing out, is practiced again and again by itself, with the utmost care. One does not have to waist long for results. The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background. They sink away in a kind of muffled roar which one hears with only half an ear at first, and in the end one finds it no more disturbing than the distant roar of the sea, which, once one has grown accustomed to it, is no longer perceived. In due course one even grows immune to large stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care had only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting, or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether." "This exquisite state of unconcerned immersion in oneself is not, unfortunately, of long duration. It is liable to be disturbed from inside. As though sprung from nowhere, moods, feelings, desires, worries and even thoughts incontinently rise up, in a meaningless jumble, and the more farfetched and preposterous they are, the less they have to do with that on which one has fixed one's consciousness, the more tenaciously they hang on. It is as though they wanted to avenge themselves on consciousness for having, through concentration, touched upon realms it would otherwise never reach. The only successful way of rendering this disturbance inoperative is to keep on breathing, queitly and unconcernedly, to enter onto friendly relations with whatever appears on the scene, to accustom oneself to it, to look at it equally and at last grow wary of looking. In this way one gradually gets into a state which resembles the melting drowsiness of the verge of sleep." Id. at 35-27. From D. T. Suzuki's "Introduction": "Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. 'Childlikeness'* has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attainted, man thinks yet he does not think. He thinks like the showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens; he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage." "When a man reaches this stage of 'spiritual' development, he is a Zen artist of life." Id. at viii-ix. *Childlikeness is not silliness. Oftentimes the supposed childlikeness in yoga class is really just silliness. Not childlike self-forgetfulness, but rather conscious (though not sufficiently self-conscious) narcissism in the form of adult(?) silliness.).
I aspire to be a Zen yogic-artist for life. It is a long journey, and I have taken my first few baby steps along the path.
