The Mirror of Yoga by Richard Freeman

Author:Richard Freeman [Richard Freeman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780834824874
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

7

Tantra and the Radiant Earth

Crying sounds of cuckoos, mating on mango shoots

Shaken as bees seek honey scents of opening buds,

Raise fever in the ears of lonely travelers—

Somehow they survive these days

By tasting the mood of lovers’ union

In climaxing moments of meditation.

—Gītā Govinda of Jayadeva, I. 36

When we understand that the essence of yoga is that of pure love, pure bhakti, it is natural to think that this is exactly what we want to do; to give up everything else and discover pure love. But then we find ourselves wondering how to actually go about doing so using our body and mind. Even though the senses and the mind may have given us a flash of insight into the teaching of bhakti, we are confounded by the task of deciding exactly what action to take in order to act in a way that reflects pure love. So the mind does what it does best: it begins to categorize, theorize, attach itself to ideas, and as it does this we encounter the danger of feeding our own ego as we imagine we are following the path of yoga. Using the mind, the senses, and the ego to realize yoga is like asking a bull to fix the porcelain it just knocked off the shelf; there is a very real danger that the bull will make an even greater mess. In our practice of yoga, however, we have no choice but to use ourselves as we search for insight.

The true practice of yoga cannot occur until all aspects of experience throughout the day and night are attended to with singular intention and devotion. All of the things that you do, everything that constitutes real life can be yoga. Otherwise our actions and the events of our life become distractions and pockets in which the ego can hide. For example, cooking and eating can become part of the practice or a great escape from it. Imbalanced eating, from gorging with junk food to punishing the body with a salad diet, is a common and effective way for the ego to sabotage yoga. Alternatively, food can be selected, handled, and prepared as if it were a way of benefiting or communicating with the beloved, a means of connecting sensually with pure awareness directly through your taste buds. The practice becomes one in which while tasting food you might think, “The beloved within me is tasting this offering through me, and the food itself is the supreme deity.” The same concentration and awareness can be brought to walking, running, working, thinking, and even to pleasures like love and relaxation. This same depth of devotion can be carried out with every breath, every thought, and in every situation when practicing yoga. When we find that our need to practice yoga and meditation has come to every aspect of the inner and outer worlds, the time is here to dip into the vast ocean of what is called tantra—the experiential unveiling of reality.

Tantra is one of those exciting buzzwords that catches the ear and invokes images of the sensual, exotic, and the mysterious.

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