Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness, Part 2

by Baxter

Upside Down by Nina Zolotow

Nina did such a nice job on yesterday's post "Yoga Sutra 1.2: Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness" that I felt compelled to jump in and add my two cents. The tendency Nina identified for the mind to brood about the past or fret about the future is only of several dyads or other causes of our mental whirling, according to yoga's perspective. In fact, there are five main causes of affliction or klesahs that Patanjali identifies in the Yoga Sutras, and it is interesting to view any particular whirling difficult thought via his lens.

The first one, and the one that sprouts the others, is known as avidya, sometimes translated as misapprehension or an error in our view of reality. Yogis believe that we start out not quite understanding the world correctly, and out of that misunderstanding, all kinds of troubling thoughts arise, often connected to fear, jealousy, anger, greediness. One of the main problems is that we view ourselves as separate from all other people and beings in our reality, which almost guarantees conflict and struggle on some level. And therefore, because I don't quite view the world accurately, one of the first errors I make is to create this sense of I-am-ness, know as asmita, the second of the klesahs. This separates me, with all my opinions and ideas of who I am, and how I am different from you, with all my likes and dislikes.

In fact, out of my ego self arise the next two klesahs, raga and dvesha, or attachment (or things I desire or like) and aversion (things I dislike or try to push away). These two klesahs alone account for so much of our mental activity all day long: I want to do this, and a lot more or it!  I don't want to be doing this, I am bored with this, I wish I was doing that. You get the idea.

Finally, the yogis concluded that the preceding four klesahs create the condition of clinging desperately onto life, know as abhinivesha, even though we don't even really understand our reality clearly enough to know what we are clinging onto! And this desperate clinging can actually shut us down for living fully, as we become so fearful of aging, losing function, or death itself.

Oy, oy, oy! So what's a poor yogi to do? Well, the klesahs are said to exist in different states of activity, sometimes dormant, sometimes active, and sometimes influenced or attenuated by our yoga practices. I have noticed lately as I have been experiencing some increased effects of stressful changes in my life, that an active asana practice, guided relaxation via yoga nidra and breath awareness and mantra meditations have each been effective methods for attenuating the whirling patterns of thought that have been under the surface of my perception of stress. In other words, they seem to short circuit my mind's fruitless machinations, providing me with some temporary peace and quiet. And the more regularly I do my practice, the less frequent these particular upsetting patterns of thought happen. I even begin to notice that many of the thoughts are not even really true. I have also noticed that playing my violin for an hour, especially newer music I am not so familiar with, has a similar effect. If you find yourself under increased stress, instead of doing what a lot of my students seem to default to, which is to not practice as much, you might commit to doing a little yoga every day, and see if things don't start to shift for you, too.

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