TAKING A BREAK FROM YOGA STUDIO PRACTICE
As of late, I have sensed, in myself or in others (probably my projecting myself onto them), emptiness at studio yoga practice. It is not the emptiness of Buddhism, just emptiness as in void. I have not been able to concentrate on the practice, and I have been increasingly annoyed by the pop psychology of some instructor and class members. I have found myself frustrated by what Americans are doing to yoga, making it into a business. I have noticed another local studio is marketing itself through sex, with its photographs posting on Facebook essentially amounting to soft pornography.
So, am stepping away for a month or so. I need to find myself and remember why I am doing yoga. Perhaps I need to find a guru/teacher, someone to take me deeper into jnana-yoga. I am deeply lacking in tranquility, restraint, patience, dispassion, and virtue.
C. Mackenzie Brown, trans. & intro., The Song of the Goddess: The Devi Gita: Spiritual Counsel of the Great Goddess (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002) ("Yoga of Knowledge (jnana-yoga): the path to realization of pure consciousness and of the essential unity between the soul or Self and Brahman. It is one of the three major traditional yogas, requiring a number of preliminary mental and moral qualifications for the aspirant. These include tranquility, restraint, patience, dispassion, and virtue. Knowledge is said to be the supreme end of devotion. While the path of devotion leads, ultimately, to the Jeweled Island paradise of the Goddess, but no further without knowledge, the path of knowledge can lead to the ultimate realization of pure consciousness even here on Earth. The path of knowledge consists of three main stages: 1) listening to the teaching of scripture that demonstrate the unity of the soul and Brahman; 2) reflecting on the meaning of such texts; and 3) intensive meditation thereon." Id. at 145.).
