Many Iyengar Yoga students have written about the practical
matters when one comes to RIMYI in Pune: how to find an apartment, how to get
around, how to get cash, etc. However I would like to address the inner work of
being a student at RIMYI, especially in this period in which India as a rising
global power attracts travelers from all over the world.
At the end of last night’s class Raya UD gave an impassioned
request to the international students: “PLEASE DO NOT COME HERE FOR VALIDATION
OF WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW.” In other words, don’t come to have your ego stroked,
don’t come to confirm your beliefs and practices, don’t come to validate what
your Senior Teacher has taught you, don’t come as a teacher at all. Come as a student,
come empty, come humble. Be ready to be vulnerable, be ready to be corrected
and even reprimanded, perhaps harshly. Instead of being affirmed, be ready to
be disrupted, shaken up, and confused. Out of that confusion can emerge radical
new learning.
Please don’t come to India to help. Come to BE helped. Come
to be transformed, not to transform India to your standards. As the Australian
Aboriginal activists say, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your
time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let
us work together.”
Of course classes are crowded. Of course it’s noisy. Of
course there is pollution, poverty, hawking and spitting. Of course there are
mosquitoes and cockroaches. We cannot change or control these circumstances. As
we practice nonjudgment and acceptance, we have more energy and space within
for more learning, more transformation. We realize we don’t mind the dirt in
the cracks of our feet—it all washes off.
The first time I came to Pune I witnessed a simple act that
made a profound impact on me. I was staying with a woman who shared an
apartment with her daughter and grandson. As we sat one morning at breakfast, a
few mosquitoes hovered around the grandson’s head. After some research and
discussion I had decided not to take the recommended malaria pills even though
it was monsoon season. So when I noted the mosquitoes in the screen-free house,
I experienced a little niggling anxiety. Usha, the grandmother, was as casual
as ever, as she waved her hand around her grandson Akshay’s head. In the USA,
even without the threat of malaria, we would have swatted violently at them,
even if it meant striking the child. Then we would have been very proud of
ourselves for decimating them. Here, the mosquitoes just were not a big deal at
all.
I learned to practice this equanimity in evening Pranayama
class, when at dusk, the mosquitoes would float indoors. Lying in Pranayama
Savasana, I would feel a sting, but instead of reacting and scratching, I made
myself lie still. What I learned is that the bite would swell up but stop
itching in about 15 minutes. If I withheld the urge to scratch, by morning, the
bite would be a tiny, inconsequential dot that didn’t even itch.
“When you come here, you are NOBODY,” Geetaji harshly
reminds us, tired of the expectations of international students who are used to
red carpet treatment. For some people this is a vacation, and the yoga is part
of a range of activities which may include travel to a resort in Goa, shopping
every weekend, day trips to ayurvedic spas or exotic temples, and so forth.
Others may want to replicate their life in their home country and feel
frustrated that they cannot find the right ingredients for their favorite
dishes, or that things just are not as “good” here. Others may come here to be
useful and helpful, and want to be appreciated for their service and sacrifice.
Morning practice in the hall can be intense. Mat to mat, we
compete for space, props, and walls. Practitioners contort themselves into the
most advanced poses that you’ve only seen in books, as well as those spending
all morning propped in supine restoratives. Senior Teachers from around the
world vie for Guruji’s attention, and the local teachers are on alert to
anticipate and meet his requests. In that atmosphere it can be difficult to
concentrate and impossible not to compare. One has to practice being fully in
the present moment in that 24 x 68 inch space of one’s own mat, to listen to
one’s own body and with intelligence, discern what should be practiced that
day. Only here do we settle into anandamaya kosha, the bliss of the practice.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron points out, “Our ego is like a
room with a closed door. Our whole life work is to open that door.” Study at
RIMYI will be most rewarding if we let that door open: If we come with modesty,
humility, openness, and trust, with a willingness to listen more than to be
listened to, a willingness to have our ego bruised which could include getting
our feelings hurt, and a willingness to feel small and empty. We learn that OUR
ways are not always the best, that Western pharmaceuticals may hurt more than
help, that what we believed about an asana may be delusional, and that
cockroaches really can’t hurt us.
“Learning is as much an art as teaching,” BKS Iyengar
observes. We come to RIMYI to shed the armor of our egos and practice the art
of learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment