Yoga for Justice, and a Brief Book Review
Yoga has a history spanning centuries which includes its practices being used by people in power to further their own agendas. Today's yoga has so many branches, lineages, and teachers, that one could find yoga to suit any individual's interests, preferences, and agendas: yoga and chocolate, yoga for athletes, yoga and beer, or yoga with goats are a few that come to mind. On the surface, today's yoga still has an image problem - the people who are seen doing and teaching yoga are still presented as being largely white, upper class, thin and able-bodied with bodies that are somehow both bendable and strong. Yoga promises relaxation, lowered stress, ease and calm. But yoga today has the potential to be so much more.
Yoga for decades in the west was practiced to find inner peace and greater ease in the body. People came to yoga to "bliss out", and the practice involved a significant amount of navel-gazing. If we each individually could find our own peace, then the practice had worked. We had evolved. This mindset gelled well with the Boomer-era indulgence of yoga's Western golden age. The Me Generation that led to yoga's wider acceptance here in the States wanted to consume anything that would make them feel good: drugs, sex, music, surface-level spiritual colonialism symbolized perfectly by the Beatles' trip to India. If it made you feel good, it was an end in itself - no further investigation, thought, or work needed.
Yoga always demanded more, though, and has been waiting, I think, to be used in a different way. Going back to the Yoga Sutra(s), one of the older guiding texts of the practice dating back to at least the first half of the first millennium CE, we find the seeds of the practice I describe. Granted, the Yoga Sutra(s) are basically the Cliff Notes of an oral tradition that was meant to be memorized, passed down teacher to student in a much more fleshed out manner. Given the nature of the surviving text, it is easy to pull out discreet passages to back up whatever the teacher is trying to convey. This is not unlike other revered texts from most traditions, practices, and religions.
The Sutra can be read in a circular fashion, no beginning or end. In this way, it feels not unlike my unfolding sense of time and memory as I get older: time increasingly seems to flow forward and backward both, or to come in loops. In the Sutra, as in my mind, I come back to some passages over and over. (Yoga Sutra 1.2-1.4) Yoga is the stilling of the whirring of the heart-mind. Then the seer dwells in her own true nature. Otherwise the seer will be the same as the whirring. As a result of practice, the veil is lifted, and we see things clearly for the first time. It is not unlike waking up in the morning, the difference felt when the veil is lifted. In fact, the Buddha said that his followers were "awake".
The Me Generation felt that the veil was lifted when the beauty of the world around them was revealed in its entirety. Peace and love. But that was never enough. The veil became more transparent for me in the weeks following the death of Trayvon Martin. Every subsequent televised death in the ensuing years poked additional holes in the veil. I feel like the campaign and win by the current president lifted the veil the rest of the way and set it on fire. When that veil lifted, I saw clearly for the first time in my life the true nature of the suffering around me and understood for the first time that this suffering was not separate from me or not my problem just because it was happening to someone else. For the first time, another truth of the contemplative practices - the concept of the interconnectedness of all things - really struck home. I can find peace and love in my practice, but unless I do something else, do more, the injustice that we are all stewing in stays in place.
I regret that I woke up so late, but I am grateful that I woke up at all. Like many who wake up, I feel that I flail about at times, looking for how I can do more to alleviate this racially-based, systemic suffering that benefits folks that look like me at the expense of others. I have tried to study and learn, to read and listen to the words of people of color and to have discussions with other white people about our involvement in these systems so that more of us can wake up and do the work to dismantle the systems. But I still largely feel like I am flailing, ineffectual, never doing enough, always on the edge of falling back asleep to these injustices.
There are yoga teachers and meditation teachers who are starting to turn their attention towards the larger suffering, towards the collective good, mindful of the concept that if one part suffers, every part suffers with it (which here comes from 1 Corinthians 12:26). Certainly, there have been teachers who have gone in this direction all along, but I did not come across any through a lifetime of practice until very recently. I am happy to work alongside many yoga teachers who are using their own practices and their platforms as ways to dismantle systems that do harm. It is a tricky business: as yoga teachers, we acknowledge that we receive benefit to our bottom lines from the mass marketing of yoga to the world largely through images of healthy, thin, able, white bodies. We derive benefit from the appropriation of a practice taken from another culture. And yet we are attempting to use the platforms that we have achieved through these means to dismantle these very systems and others.
Buddhist writings and contemplative practices illustrate the interconnectedness of all things. When one sits and observes, practicing and experiencing equanimity, one begins to see the way the systems that we are all participating in work and how they cause harm. The veil is lifted. One begins to see how much of life consists of illusion and constructs, from the binaries of our social structures to the nature of concepts such as "self" and "other". If any of us suffer, we all suffer.
I woke the other morning with one of my children standing near my bed. He was wearing a gray hoodie. He is fourteen. I felt a jolt as I thought, "He looks like Trayvon." Trayvon was three years older than my son is now when he was shot. I thought again about how my boys - all white - are safer out in the world than Trayvon was, how they can wear a hoodie out of the house and be relatively unseen, unnoticed, and safe. I thought about how I cried with Trayvon's mother when I found out about her son. If any of us suffer, we all suffer.
I recently read Ruth King's book entitled Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out and received it as a balm for my own suffering. I recommend it to everyone who is trying to battle injustice or who is trying to do a contemplative practice during these times. It is great for all levels of mindfulness practitioners and all levels of compassionate warriors. In the book, King discusses the particulars of race as it relates to life and practice today and the ways that practice relates to life and race today. She talks about a variety of practices that will help a person to break apart internalized racism, and she gives solid and easy-to-follow directions for mindfulness practices and justice practices you can do right away. She does a very good job of breaking down Buddhist psychology which has a lot to say about our racial past and present. She asks each of us - regardless of color - to find the ways that racism has done us harm and to do the work to heal that harm. I honestly had never thought of racism exacting a toll on me in this way before, but when I brought this in to my practice, I was surprised by the flood of experiences and emotions that came forward to be seen. Ruth's tone throughout the book is gentle but unrelenting: we must do this work to end the suffering. We must take care of ourselves and each other while we do this work. As the Buddha said, "There is suffering. There is a way through the suffering."
King's words are evocative and tender, and she will guide youfirmly along the path:
"To begin, we must first take a deep breath and consent to this journey. We must be willing to be diligent in service to our belonging and to this planet that nurtures us. We must be willing to exchange comfort for racial consciousness and to be more curious than critical or dispirited. If I didn't belong to you, I wouldn't have written this book. If you didn't belong to me, you wouldn't be reading it. I'm you, and you are me - you just don't know that yet. We are here, sharing these pages, to embrace our membership in each other's lives, to discover our wholeness, and to remember that we belong. Be willing to be a light and to let your heart lead the way."
Yoga for decades in the west was practiced to find inner peace and greater ease in the body. People came to yoga to "bliss out", and the practice involved a significant amount of navel-gazing. If we each individually could find our own peace, then the practice had worked. We had evolved. This mindset gelled well with the Boomer-era indulgence of yoga's Western golden age. The Me Generation that led to yoga's wider acceptance here in the States wanted to consume anything that would make them feel good: drugs, sex, music, surface-level spiritual colonialism symbolized perfectly by the Beatles' trip to India. If it made you feel good, it was an end in itself - no further investigation, thought, or work needed.
Yoga always demanded more, though, and has been waiting, I think, to be used in a different way. Going back to the Yoga Sutra(s), one of the older guiding texts of the practice dating back to at least the first half of the first millennium CE, we find the seeds of the practice I describe. Granted, the Yoga Sutra(s) are basically the Cliff Notes of an oral tradition that was meant to be memorized, passed down teacher to student in a much more fleshed out manner. Given the nature of the surviving text, it is easy to pull out discreet passages to back up whatever the teacher is trying to convey. This is not unlike other revered texts from most traditions, practices, and religions.
The Sutra can be read in a circular fashion, no beginning or end. In this way, it feels not unlike my unfolding sense of time and memory as I get older: time increasingly seems to flow forward and backward both, or to come in loops. In the Sutra, as in my mind, I come back to some passages over and over. (Yoga Sutra 1.2-1.4) Yoga is the stilling of the whirring of the heart-mind. Then the seer dwells in her own true nature. Otherwise the seer will be the same as the whirring. As a result of practice, the veil is lifted, and we see things clearly for the first time. It is not unlike waking up in the morning, the difference felt when the veil is lifted. In fact, the Buddha said that his followers were "awake".
The Me Generation felt that the veil was lifted when the beauty of the world around them was revealed in its entirety. Peace and love. But that was never enough. The veil became more transparent for me in the weeks following the death of Trayvon Martin. Every subsequent televised death in the ensuing years poked additional holes in the veil. I feel like the campaign and win by the current president lifted the veil the rest of the way and set it on fire. When that veil lifted, I saw clearly for the first time in my life the true nature of the suffering around me and understood for the first time that this suffering was not separate from me or not my problem just because it was happening to someone else. For the first time, another truth of the contemplative practices - the concept of the interconnectedness of all things - really struck home. I can find peace and love in my practice, but unless I do something else, do more, the injustice that we are all stewing in stays in place.
I regret that I woke up so late, but I am grateful that I woke up at all. Like many who wake up, I feel that I flail about at times, looking for how I can do more to alleviate this racially-based, systemic suffering that benefits folks that look like me at the expense of others. I have tried to study and learn, to read and listen to the words of people of color and to have discussions with other white people about our involvement in these systems so that more of us can wake up and do the work to dismantle the systems. But I still largely feel like I am flailing, ineffectual, never doing enough, always on the edge of falling back asleep to these injustices.
There are yoga teachers and meditation teachers who are starting to turn their attention towards the larger suffering, towards the collective good, mindful of the concept that if one part suffers, every part suffers with it (which here comes from 1 Corinthians 12:26). Certainly, there have been teachers who have gone in this direction all along, but I did not come across any through a lifetime of practice until very recently. I am happy to work alongside many yoga teachers who are using their own practices and their platforms as ways to dismantle systems that do harm. It is a tricky business: as yoga teachers, we acknowledge that we receive benefit to our bottom lines from the mass marketing of yoga to the world largely through images of healthy, thin, able, white bodies. We derive benefit from the appropriation of a practice taken from another culture. And yet we are attempting to use the platforms that we have achieved through these means to dismantle these very systems and others.
Buddhist writings and contemplative practices illustrate the interconnectedness of all things. When one sits and observes, practicing and experiencing equanimity, one begins to see the way the systems that we are all participating in work and how they cause harm. The veil is lifted. One begins to see how much of life consists of illusion and constructs, from the binaries of our social structures to the nature of concepts such as "self" and "other". If any of us suffer, we all suffer.
I woke the other morning with one of my children standing near my bed. He was wearing a gray hoodie. He is fourteen. I felt a jolt as I thought, "He looks like Trayvon." Trayvon was three years older than my son is now when he was shot. I thought again about how my boys - all white - are safer out in the world than Trayvon was, how they can wear a hoodie out of the house and be relatively unseen, unnoticed, and safe. I thought about how I cried with Trayvon's mother when I found out about her son. If any of us suffer, we all suffer.
I recently read Ruth King's book entitled Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out and received it as a balm for my own suffering. I recommend it to everyone who is trying to battle injustice or who is trying to do a contemplative practice during these times. It is great for all levels of mindfulness practitioners and all levels of compassionate warriors. In the book, King discusses the particulars of race as it relates to life and practice today and the ways that practice relates to life and race today. She talks about a variety of practices that will help a person to break apart internalized racism, and she gives solid and easy-to-follow directions for mindfulness practices and justice practices you can do right away. She does a very good job of breaking down Buddhist psychology which has a lot to say about our racial past and present. She asks each of us - regardless of color - to find the ways that racism has done us harm and to do the work to heal that harm. I honestly had never thought of racism exacting a toll on me in this way before, but when I brought this in to my practice, I was surprised by the flood of experiences and emotions that came forward to be seen. Ruth's tone throughout the book is gentle but unrelenting: we must do this work to end the suffering. We must take care of ourselves and each other while we do this work. As the Buddha said, "There is suffering. There is a way through the suffering."
King's words are evocative and tender, and she will guide youfirmly along the path:
"To begin, we must first take a deep breath and consent to this journey. We must be willing to be diligent in service to our belonging and to this planet that nurtures us. We must be willing to exchange comfort for racial consciousness and to be more curious than critical or dispirited. If I didn't belong to you, I wouldn't have written this book. If you didn't belong to me, you wouldn't be reading it. I'm you, and you are me - you just don't know that yet. We are here, sharing these pages, to embrace our membership in each other's lives, to discover our wholeness, and to remember that we belong. Be willing to be a light and to let your heart lead the way."
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