Happy (Objective) New Year!
A Yogic New Year's Resolution...
Have you ever noticed that it's easier to give great advice than it is to do the right thing in your own life? This is because, when it comes to someone else, you are able to be objective. When it comes to your own life, it's easy to get lost in myriad likes and dislikes, preferences and aversions... and ultimately make choices based on subjective confusion.
Imagine, for a moment, that an engineer designs two bridges - one is safe and secure, while the other is unstable and its safety is questionable. This engineer shows both designs to the city planner, and though the city planner has been told that the second design is less safe, she chooses it for the city. Why? Well, she likes that one better - she thinks the design is more beautiful, and the colors remind her of her childhood bedroom walls. Plus she dislikes the appearance of the safer bridge - it has more sharp angles which remind her of her ex-husband's taste in interior design. So... based on her personal likes and dislikes, the city planner chooses an unstable structure for the new bridge. Sound familiar? This is what we tend to do with our own lives when we are not seeing objectively. We make decisions based on likes and dislikes and these are tied in to memories.
The Sanskrit word for likes, is rāga - which means craving, attraction, liking, thirst, or desire. The word for dislikes is dveśa - which means aversion, disliking or respulsion. Patanjali describes these in the Yoga Sūtra, the ancient description of the path, practice and result of yoga - a text that is mainly about the mind. In the second chapter, Patanjali lists the five causes of pain and misery - rāga and dveśa are two of these causes.
Rāga and dveśa have their place in the mind and heart - they are part of the play of consciousness, part of the richness of life. Yet, a life based on likes and dislikes is a life of pain. And because living this way is "normal", and even encouraged, everyone is in some degree of pain - whether they admit it or not. Everyone is lost in confused and limiting layers of preferences. Unless they were enlightened beings, your parents modeled rāga and dveśa beautifully for you, as has nearly everyone you've ever encountered. Based on likes and dislikes we repeat the same habits or mistakes over, and over, and over again.
Here are some examples. You want to loose weight, and you know that means less ice-cream and more veggies, but you like ice-cream and you hate green vegetables because when you were little your brother tricked you into believing that green peas were a sort of insect. You've heard that you should sleep at regular hours to have more daytime energy that's not dependent on coffee, but you stay up late every night because you want the buzz that comes on at 11pm, and you don't want to do something that someone else has recommended because it makes you feel powerless. You keep getting into unhealthy relationships with people who make you feel small, unloved and unworthy, but feeling this way is familiar to you, because it's how you've always felt and feeling loved, strong and powerful is unfamiliar.
It's not that life should not be experienced and enjoyed. You can have your favorite foods, your favorite movies, even your favorite people. But should you base your life in your likes and dislikes? Should you make all of your decisions based on your preferences and aversions, rather than what's right? If you could see yourself and your life objectively, as you can when you give someone else advice, would you be making the same choices?
We trick ourselves into believing that our likes and dislikes free us, empower us, when in fact they limit us. The layers of craving and repulsion keep building, as we become narrower and more contracted with time, and we get further and further from the underlying reality, beneath the preferences. Yoga's purpose, is the discovery of that which lies beneath the likes and dislikes. The reality of your being is revealed when you can see past rāga and dveśa to who you truly are.
How to get there? The remedy for a "normal" life - one based in rāga and dveśa - is vairāgya. Vairāgya is the practice and experience of a life lived objectively, without agenda, without neediness, without subjective desires and aversions. Vairāgya frees you from the restrictions and limitations of likes and dislikes, so that your true nature springs forth. Vairāgya means seeing things as they truly are. Vairāgya is about applying the discerning intellect that is innate within you, which sees past rāga and dveśa.
Let's look at two examples. We'll start with high heels. A shoe is made for the foot, protects the foot, enables walking and standing, allows for stability and balance. Picture a high heel, and see it objectively. Does a high heal provide the things a shoe is meant to provide? Is it even really shaped like a foot? Does it give the appropriate effect of a shoe? Or is it about something else? How about SUVs. There is a time and place for a large vehicle - perhaps you live in the mountains, with a large family and need the space and driving capacity that a Sport Utility Vehicle provides. But did the SUV owner who is single, living in a city and parallel parking on narrow streets choose their car based on an objective view, or something else? Maybe you don't wear high heels or drive an SUV, but where in your life are you allowing rāga and dveśa take over, and not seeing things as they truly are.
In the beginning, vairagya is a practice, a discipline. You pause before you make a choice, or you apply it to your new year's resolution by looking at your life objectively. As you continue on the path of yoga, you may even find your choices becoming easier. Your preferences and aversions stop dominating you. Your inner state is no longer based on your your likes and dislikes. You are no longer like a toddler who throws a tantrum when he doesn't get exactly what he wants when he wants it. You begin to automatically make choices that are appropriate. You make choices that have a "rightness" about them. Eventually, your objectivity arises spontaneously. You see things as they are, and live life a life based in the underlying reality of all things, rather than in contracted, limiting preferences. Such a life has a "rightness" about it.
Until you get to spontaneous, natural vairāgya, pause before you make a choice. Consider, am I lost in personal preferences? Or can I establish an objective view that sees things are they truly are. Can I remember Patanjali's wisdom... a life based in likes and dislikes is a life of misery, while a life based in objectivity, leads to the discovery of what was there all along, beneath the likes and dislikes.
Perhaps this year, you can choose a simple way to practice vairāgya in your day-to-day life. You can apply yourself to seeing things as they truly are. You can apply yourself to the discovery of what lies beneath the small, contracted preferences, by developing your ability to see objectively. Inevitably and reliably, Patanjail promises, the smallness, the contraction around preference will give way to clear knowing of what truly is.
Svāgatam,
Kaya
