In the beginning… | Heavy Metta

Posted by einajs in Writing, Yoga on 12 17th, 2008 | 2 responses>

…there was the word. Word.

I couldn't resist

I just love language: its textures, contours, nuance, peaks and valleys. I love the most extravagant high-minded pretention, and I love “dude…wait, what?”. This is like Grade 9 English, but each word has multiple layers of significance: its basic sound divorced from meaning, its barest and least embellished meaning, its etymology or history, its homonyms, and my personal fave, its connotative meaning. That’s the entire catalogue of what the word evokes in its reader or listener. Lately I’ve been enjoying using connotations to pop culture, song lyrics and advertising, not least because there are so darn many of them. Sure, some tweedy prof somewhere thinks that this is just winking in-jokes, but come on: tell me that the combination of “palm+olive” stands in connotative isolation from the brand name? Not possible. How about “word” itself? It’s a colloquial statement of solidarity or agreement, it’s software, it’s a dessert topping AND a floor wax! [See what I did there?]

DFW mentioned this embarrassment of intertextual riches w/r/t television in “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, and he also talked about the tweedy resistance to making pop-culture reference, and he ALSO discussed how easily this can devolve into a series of weird little coded in-jokes, so basically this whole post is cribbed from this essay, but I’m-a spin it my way [I hope].

The coded in-joke part I find particularly interesting, because the reason I talk and write this way is to INCLUDE, not to exclude. Let me see if I can come up with an example:

A.“In your practice, you will cultivate increased physical strength and mental agility, but we are served well by B.K.S. Iyengar’s admonition in his classic “Light On Yoga” where he describes the relationship between the sisya or disciple, and his guru. Iyengar writes: ‘Power without humility breeds arrogance and tyranny. The true sisya learns from his Guru about a power that will never leave him, as he returns to the Primeval One, the Source of His Being.’ Please sit in meditation and offer the fruits of your practice to this Great Source.”

B.” In your practice, you will cultivate increased physical strength and mental agility, and I’d be no kind of teacher if I didn’t encourage you to think seriously about what you’ll do with all this increased energy. The best advice I’ve heard on the subject is when Peter Parker, who you might know better as Spider-Man†, is starting to get a bit cocky what with the walking up the walls and swinging from buildings thing, and his Uncle Ben lets him know that ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. Arguably Uncle Ben’s words encourage Peter to become the hero that he is destined to be. Let’s sit together and think about our responsibilities, and how this powerful practice might serve them better”.

Yes, I know that not everybody has seen “Spider-Man”. But not everybody has read “Light On Yoga” either. Both of my little examples here are saying similar things, and although one is obviously more stuffy than the other, which one do you think people would connect to? Which one did you connect to? How many people have watched The Simpsons? More, or less than have read the Hatha Yoga Pradipika‡?

I guess it comes down to whether you really believe this yoga stuff is meant to be shared or to be exclusive. It makes you feel pretty darn clever and fancy to learn something esoteric and strange, but is that the purpose of the teaching? It’s been exclusive for many hundreds of years. Has this exclusivity served our species and our world?

Anyway, back to the words. As much as I enjoy a big florid, arcane passage in the Pratyabhijna Hrdayam, if I can’t translate it into love song lyrics or an episode of “Friends” in about 25 seconds I know that I either don’t get it or it’s not relevant to my students [most likely the former at this point, but that's the trick; if I don't get it, I certainly can't teach it]. I’m exaggerating a bit, but honestly, the way I want to choose my words is to connect and integrate, not remove these teachings from our reality. And our reality is a world of syndicated sitcoms and DVD extras and the Safeway and traffic and season premieres and finales. The Word is sat+cit+ananda, not just cit+ananda; it’s not how much I know that will take me to bliss, it’s what is REALLY around us as the ground of these teachings.

†Desiree Rumbaugh actually used the Spider-Man thing when she was here; great minds and all that.
‡ Yes, I know several intransigent Luddite hippies who scorn TV and similar. Not just “don’t have a TV”, which I sort of admire in the same way that I admire pro athletes, but actively harsh on the whole project. Don’t worry, you can always wear a tinfoil hat to protect yourself from the US government’s mind-control program. Luckily they are so intransigent and Ludditic they won’t get on the Internet. This calls for a